JFB in NYT: This Astronomical Recession

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: August 5, 2011

This op/ed column appeared on August 5, 2011.  It was the first of a month of “guest columns” for the New York Times.  I was substituting for David Brooks for August, a substitution which itself is not without its own pleasures.–JFB

OP-ED COLUMNIST

This Astronomical Recession

By JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN
Published: August 4, 2011

Belgrade Lakes, ME

If the decrepitude of Neptune caused me to briefly lose my faith in America, it was the ingenious rings of Saturn that restored it for good.

Two weeks ago, on the day of the very last shuttle landing on Earth, I drove along Route 1, taking a good look at the Maine Solar System Model. This would be a scale mock-up of our cosmic neighborhood unveiled in 2003 and devised by Kevin McCartney, a geology professor at the University of Maine at Presque Isle, who built the thing because it “seemed like a good idea” at the time.

Driving the 40 miles from the Sun (at the university’s science museum), to Pluto (in nearby Houlton), also struck me as a good way, as the government likely prepares to cut the nation’s safety nets, to gauge the impact of the recession on Aroostook County, the state’s northernmost county and one of its poorest.

I saw plenty of signs of economic ruin — boarded up businesses, burned-out houses. But there were signs of life as well, like the tough-looking farms surrounded by fields of yellow-white potato blossoms and, on a mountain range between Saturn and Uranus, the swiftly rotating sails of a brand-new wind farm.

“We built it ourselves,” said Professor McCartney, meaning the universe. “Around here we sort of take care of ourselves.”

Hardship is nothing new for “The County” (as everyone in Maine calls it). “This area was never rich in the first place,” explained the professor’s wife, Kate, who runs a bed and breakfast. The county took its hit in the ’90s when Loring Air Force Base closed. “It’s not as if things are so much harder than they were. They’ve never been easy in the first place.”

As I headed away from the three-story-tall cross-section sculpture of the Sun, the inner planets came swiftly. Each mile represents one astronomical unit, the distance between the Earth and the Sun; I passed the silver model of Mercury in 0.4 miles, followed by a red and white Venus outside the Budget Traveler Inn. There, Stephanie McIntosh, a desk clerk, said occupancy was down except during snowmobiling season and the Maine Potato Blossom Festival. The best part of the festival, she said, is the mashed potato wrestling contest.

A cloudless planet Earth, about the size of a navel orange, sat on the top of a pole outside of Percy’s Auto Sales. Brian Rackliffe, a salesman there, told me sales have improved since the dark days of 2008. “But they have a long, long way to go before we’re back to normal.”

I found Mars by the “Welcome to Presque Isle” sign on the way out of town. From there, it was a long way to Jupiter. I passed fields of potatoes, hay and broccoli, and in a ditch near a lot filled with construction equipment, a model of Ceres that represented the asteroid belt.

Jupiter was by a sign marked “Moose Crossing.” Five miles beyond was Saturn, which had its own parking lot. It was hard not to be impressed by the planet, with its beautiful rings, built by students at local schools. “Saturn weighs over a ton,” Professor McCartney told me.

Next was Uranus, at the Bridgewater rec center, where a sign read, “Congratulations Chloe Wheeler. 2011 Pre-Teen Miss Potato Blossom.” Then there was Neptune, a blue basketball-size sphere another 12 miles down the highway, in front of a large garden of what looked like squash or pumpkin vines. Potatoes are still Aroostook County’s No. 1 agricultural crop, but the industry has been in decline for years, the result of shifting consumer tastes and competition from other states, particularly cursed Idaho. As I looked up at Neptune, it was clear that the planet had been through a few rough years itself. Paint was flaking around its equator.

I’d been wondering how the people of Aroostook County would handle Pluto, since it had been downgraded from planet to dwarf planet in 2006. Professor McCartney admitted that the demotion had hit him hard. With a Mainer’s mix of cussedness and generosity, he reacted to Pluto’s degradation by putting up a second Pluto. He also added a model for Eris, another dwarf planet.

At the second Pluto, I met a woman who said she’d spent her whole life in Aroostook County. “My son’s the son of a potato farmer,” she said, “but he had to leave. Now he’s a sea captain. It’s always a problem, keeping the young people from going away.”

Earlier in the day, I had driven up to Limestone, Me., on the Canadian border, to the old Air Force base. Once it was a weapons storage area and home to the 42nd Bomb Wing. Now the whole area is called the “Loring Commerce Centre,” a name that I tried hard not to find ironic. As a storm came on, I drove past ruined, rusted hangars, fields of decommissioned military vehicles and a rotting structure with four towers resembling desolated, ruined minarets. After a couple of wrong turns, I accidentally wound up on the vast, wind-swept runway, as rain blew horizontally past my car and lightning struck the ground.

The skies cleared on my way to Eris. Driving, I saw the St. Croix River off to the east, and the green forests of Canada beyond, and a black Labrador retriever with a snake in its mouth.

When I finally found the dwarf planet, it was across the street from a shuttered general store and next to a veterans’ memorial with a flagpole and no flag. But there was a new store a few doors down, selling fishing lures and cheeseburgers. Loggers were pulling their trucks into the parking lot, their rigs full of newly hewn timber.

I cast a glance north, toward the distant model of the Sun, and remembered something Kate McCartney had told me. “People always think the end of the universe is coming,” she said, referring not only to deadly asteroids but to the American economy as well. “But we’re more resilient than that. You drive the Maine Solar System Model, the speed of light is seven miles per hour.” She smiled. “At that speed, you have to believe everything is going to be all right.”

Jennifer Finney Boylan, a professor of English at Colby College and the author, most recently, of “Falcon Quinn and the Crimson Vapor,” is a guest columnist.

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What Trans Activists Can Learn from New York

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: June 25, 2011
jfb4

Jennifer Finney Boylan • Photograph by Augusten Burroughs

Amid all the cheering about marriage equality in New York State, it’s worth remembering that transgender people continue to lag far behind our gay brothers and sisters in the fight for equal rights.  In 36 states, I can still be fired for being my own damned self, and here in Maine we only narrowly defeated a bill this spring that would have actually removed people like me from the Maine Human Rights Act.  But the victory in New York is an occasion not only for joy for our allies, but to observe how this victory took place.

Three quick observations:

1) Marriage equality advocates in this fight were unified. According to the New York Times:  ”Five groups pushing for same-sex marriage merged into a single coalition, hired a prominent lobbying firm with ties to Mr. Cuomo’s office and gave themselves a new name: New Yorkers United for Marriage.  Those who veered from the script faced swift reprimand. When Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell, an openly gay Democrat from Manhattan, introduced a same-sex marriage bill in May without first alerting the governor’s office, he was upbraided by Mr. Cohen. “What do you think you’re doing?” the governor’s aide barked over the phone.”

Advocates avoided the traditional urge to  stab each other in the back;  contrast this with the endless internet sniping over the very definition of  the word “transgender;” or with the way trans leaders are constantly belittled and heckled by their own communities.  I can’t think of a single trans activist who has stepped up to the plate in order to work for something bigger than herself who hasn’t been sniped at.  The gay and lesbian community has had plenty of internecine strife over the years, but this time–particularly under the unifiying efforts of Cuomo–a straight, Catholic governor–the movement stood together.

2)  Be public. The victory in NY was an avalanche made possible because of the stones that Harvey Milk–and others–got rolling.  The message: Come Out.  Let people see your face.  Over the last several decades, straight America now associates gay men and lesbians with their neighbors and their own family members.  Again, according to the Times,  it was a group of Republican donors who made the change: “the billionaire Paul Singer, whose son is gay, joined by the hedge fund managers Cliff Asness and Dan Loeb — had the influence and the money to insulate nervous senators from conservative backlash if they supported the marriage measure. And they were inclined to see the issue as one of personal freedom, consistent with their more libertarian views. Within days, the wealthy Republicans sent back word: They were on board.”

Because Singer’s son is out, and because of thousands of gay men and lesbians who have found the courage to live their truth publicly,  the image of gay men and lesbians has changed, both in the eyes of those Republicans, as well as in the eyes of all America.

To be out as trans is harder, and scarier, and trans people have much more to lose by being public. But here in Maine, activists were able to push back at the Statehouse on anti-trans legislation because dozens of trans people, and their allies, stood up and spoke before the Judiciary Committee.  A Republican legislator asked me, in the end, if I would address the Republican caucus;  a transgender middle school student from Orono looked those legislators in the eyes and told them what her life is like.  When legislators see us as human,  things change.  As a woman from Nebraska wrote me after an Oprah Show years ago, “Jenny, the strangest thing about you is that you seem almost like a person someone could know.”

3)  Be patient. We have seen several states wrestle, and fail, with trans protections this year, most notably in Maryland.  We wait year after year for ENDA to make its way through the Congress, and for other gender bills to progress in state capitals (including Albany).  We should remember that no defeat is final. The marriage bill in NY failed twice before– when Democrats had the majority in the Senate; this year it passes when that same house is controlled by Republicans.

Mara Kiesling at NCTE reports that the list of co-sponsors of ENDA in Congress is now growing, and includes Republican allies.  Will we achieve victory this time?  I surely hope so.  Will we achieve victory sooner or later?  This I know.

When we face defeats, we must resist the urge to despair, to hide our faces,  to turn on each other.  The victory in New York shows that it is possible with time.  As Paul Simon sings, “I believe in the future we will suffer no more.  Maybe not in my lifetime, but in yours I feel sure.”

(In case you missed it, here is my testimony to the Maine Judiciary Committee;  I had three minutes, and that’s what they got. My testimony is followed by that of other good allies, all of which contributed to the victory.)

–Jennifer Finney Boylan is professor of English at Colby College, and the author of 12 books. She serves on the board of directors of GLAAD.

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JFB op/ed in New York Times: “Oprah, I Hardly Knew You.”

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: May 28, 2011

THERE I was, on Oprah Winfrey’s couch, when she turned to me and asked: “So. You have a vagina?”

As a transgender woman, I’d gotten this question before. I allowed as how I did.

Ms. Winfrey began to sing to me. “Yes, she has a vagina.”

I interrupted her. “What you mean,” I said, “is, yes, we have no bananas.’”

Everyone screamed. Ms. Winfrey said, “We’ll be right back.”

During that commercial break, as my interviewer was swarmed by her producers and directors, I got my first good look at her. The strange thing was that at such close range, she didn’t look anything like Oprah Winfrey at all.

I’ve been on the program, the last episode of which ran on Wednesday, three times since then. Now whenever I go somewhere to speak about gender issues — whether it’s the National Press Club, Harvard, the Judiciary Committee of the Maine Legislature — I find that there’s one question I’m asked more frequently than any other.

“What is Oprah really like?”

It’s asked by earnest moms in book groups, by excited teenagers, by literary critics who disdainfully claim never to have owned a television. Once, a stoner in a bar asked me that, then said, with considerable melancholy, “Dude, it should totally have been me who got to give everybody a car!”

I never know how to answer. Like a lot of authors, I had some anxiety about going on her program. There was the very likely possibility that I would make a colossal fool of myself. More urgently, I feared that transgender issues would be treated sensationally, as is all too often the case on daytime television.

I needn’t have worried. Ms. Winfrey treated me with respect and that first show made a brief and unlikely best seller out of my tragicomic memoir, “She’s Not There,” about changing genders and keeping my family — my wife and our two sons — together. The day the episode was broadcast, my book went from about No. 300,000 on Amazon to No. 8.

Ms. Winfrey may not have hailed me as the next Tolstoy on that show (plus Tolstoy never had to allow people to film him putting on his pantyhose) but her endorsement helped people see that transgender Americans are human too. One viewer wrote to say, “The strangest thing about you, Jenny, is that, sitting there next to Oprah, you seemed almost like a person somebody could know.”

Not all of my appearances went as well as the first. The last time, the episode was titled “Oprah’s Most Memorable Guests.” They included Ted Haggard and his wife; the husband of the woman who drowned their children; an 800-pound man who’d dieted himself down to 500; a mother with no arms and legs; and a previously recorded segment featuring the Texas polygamist wives. My sons had wanted to be on as well (we Skyped in from our living room) to show that children of transgender people can turn out to be perfectly well adjusted, and as this parade wheeled by, the younger one turned to me and whispered, “I thought you said she liked us?”

What could I tell him, except, “I know. I’m sorry. I thought so too”? (My older son only had questions about the polygamist wives. “If you’re going to have 12 wives, shouldn’t, like,one of them be hot?”)

I was left feeling unsettled. Oprah Winfrey has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to charity, started a school, entertained millions and helped to change the perceptions of gay, lesbian and transgender people in this country from marginal to mainstream. But at least some of her power has come from episodes like the one my sons and I shared with Ted Haggard.

Looking back, though, how could I be anything but grateful for my time as her guest? Last year, a trans woman stopped me as I was walking up Seventh Avenue in Manhattan, and told me that my appearance on the show literally saved her life.

“But can I ask you something, Jenny?” the stranger said, after she’d finished hugging me and wiping away her tears. “What’s Oprah really like?”

What could I say? “She’s nice.”

As a guest, I felt that Ms. Winfrey was a very smart, inscrutable performer. It was only when I watched the show at home, safe in my living room, that I felt again that she was a woman I’d turn to for friendship and advice. She generates a sense of intimacy, to be sure — but you can really appreciate it only from a distance.

After that first show, she paused with me backstage for a photograph. It was the first time all day I’d seen her off camera. “We did good today,” she said, and she put her arm around me.

Later, when the photo was delivered to my house, I looked at the two of us standing there. With all that stage makeup on, I hardly recognized myself. But the woman to my right? That could only have been Oprah Winfrey.

Jennifer Finney Boylan, a professor of English at Colby College, is the author, most recently, of “Falcon Quinn and the Crimson Vapor.”

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Video of JFB testimony to Maine Judiciary Committee

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: April 14, 2011

This is the three minutes of testimony I provided to the Maine Judiciary Committee, which was considering the bill to exempt transgender Mainers from the Human Rights act.

This is part 3 of four videos that cover the entire testimony. If you want to study the whole process, you could begin with part one, below, which presents Representative Fredette’s introduction of the bill, followed by the committee’s questioning of the congressman. This is followed by a legislator seconding the bill. Then Jennifer Levi from Equality Maine presents an articulate rebuttal. This continues in part 2. Her testimony is then followed by a half hour of testimony in support of the bill, largely from right wing religious nuts, and this is then followed by a half hour of testimony in opposition. Of particular note in that second video is the opening testimony by Wayne Maines, the father of a 13 year old transgender girl. Testimony in opposition continues into part 3; my testimony opens part 3, as above. The opposition continues in part 4, and includes smart words from Jean Vermette, well-regarded trans spokeswoman in Maine.

Part one: the bill is introduced by Rep. Fredette; the committee asks questions; a second Representative speaks in favor of the bill; then Jennifer Levi from Equality Maine testifies against it.

Part 2 of the testimony; Jennifer Levi’s testimony continues. 30 minutes of support for the bill from conservative witnesses; then the beginning of 30 minutes of opposing testimony.

(part 3 is at the top of page, opening with Jenny Boylan’s testimony, and continuing on with other testimony in opposition.

Part 4, concluding testimony.

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JFB testimony to the Maine Judiciary Committee: “The ‘Wacky’ Professor”

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: April 13, 2011

Yesterday, I spoke to the Maine legislature’s Judiciary committee. A bill has been proposed to “exempt” transgender people from protections under the Maine Human Rights Act, which went into effect six years ago. Currently, Maine protects GLBT people from discrimination, and this includes a so called “public accommodations” provision of the very sort that was, in part, the deal breaker in the Maryland law that was shelved last week. (Although I should make it clear that the Maine law has been on the books for six years without problem, and the proposed legislation is to REMOVE the protection for trans people; Maryland currently has no such provisions and the shelved legislation would have put these protections into place.)

There’s a lot to say about my day at the State House, but the thing I was really left with was how much the bill–and the overall acceptance of trans people is about passing.

A supporter of the bill (remember that “supporting” means being against trans rights; “opposing” means being for them) said as much. One of the Senators asked, “If a trans person has had surgery, and appears to be female in every sense, how would you be able to know they were in violation of the law?” And the supporter of the bill–another Republican legislator–said, “Well, if I have no way of telling, the person wouldn’t be in violation.” He then looked around and said, “I mean, if you can’t tell, what’s the difference?”

Cindy Redmond, another supporter of the bill, said more bluntly, “I’m not saying that all transgenders are wacky because they’re not, there’s lots of very nice transgenders,” Redmond said. “But there are a few, and what happens if one of those has used this law to be able to go into a female bathroom for the purpose of perpetration?”

Holding aside the insulting assumption that trans people are somehow more likely to “perpetrate” than straight people, Redmond’s comment here really gets to the heart of the matter. “Wacky” here appears to be a synonym for “not-passable.” Among other things.

I have seen this prejudice against “not-passable” people both within and without the trans community. The fact, of course, is that “passability,” like all forms of “beauty,” is more or less a genetic roll of the dice–it has nothing to do with what is in a person’s heart.

Anyway, EQME did a fine job of assembling its witnesses; while the proponents for the bill seemed limited, largely, to a few right-wing religious nuts–and the governor–the opponents included a Sheriff, a school principal, the father of a 13 year trans girl, and a well-regarded endocrinologist from Boston. I think I was the fifth witness, and the first trans person to come to the podium. The legislators treated me with respect and dignity.

Here’s a copy of my own remarks to the committee. You’ll be struck, perhaps, by their brevity, but we were given a very clear three minute time limit, and my reading of this testimony came out almost exactly at that length.

The committee now goes to ‘working session’, and we’ll see whether the bill makes it out of committee and onto the floor.

Testimony of Jennifer Finney Boylan, Belgrade, Kennebec County

Speaking in Opposition to LD 1046, 
”An Act to Amend the Application of the Maine Human Rights Act Regarding Public Accommodations”
 before the Joint Standing Committee on the Judiciary.

April 12, 2011

Senator Hastings, Representative Nass, and distinguished members of the judiciary committee:

My name is Jennifer Finney Boylan. I live in the town of Belgrade Lakes, in Kennebec County. I have been married since 1988, and am the mother of two teenage sons, both of them on the honor roll at Kents Hill School. I am the author of twelve books and have been Professor of English at Colby College for twenty-three years.

I’m also transgender. In the year 2000, in consultation with a therapist, a social worker, an endocrinologist, and my minister, I carefully went through the complex process of going from male to female. It was a terribly difficult journey, but in the end, I was able to complete that transition and at last live my life with honesty and authenticity.

I know that the lives of transgender people can be hard to understand. A report issued last week by the University of California suggests that less than .3 percent of the population of the United States is transgender. With numbers that small, it’s understandable that the issues that trans people struggle with are not easily grasped. But it’s worth noting that transgender Mainers are citizens too. We pay taxes, we do our jobs, and yes, like other people, we occasionally need to use the restroom.

Gender, as it turns out, is complicated. I honestly wish that this were not the case, and that the world were simpler, but it is the case, as scientists and neurologists have made abundantly clear. And the consequence of this fact is that some of us– who already lead difficult and complex lives– need to rely on the rest of you—good-hearted, intelligent Maine citizens—to look out for us, to protect our dignity and our safety.

Fortunately, you can do just that by rejecting this cruel and vague bill, which would make businesses responsible for checking the sex of people using their facilities. By saying no to a law that would marginalize people already at risk for discrimination and prejudice.

In short: Transgender Mainers should not be exempted from the protections of the Maine Human Rights Law, for the very simple reason that we too are human.

Thank you.

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Interview with JFB at Barnes & noble audio site

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: April 4, 2011

Here’s an interview Barnes & Noble’s podcast division did with me during the I’M LOOKING THROUGH YOU TOUR. I’d forgotten about this entirely before coming upon it by accident recently. Hit the ol’ play button to hear the talk.

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A little more info on the 3 Toledo, Ohio readings this week

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: March 28, 2011

Just a quick note here about the three readings I’m doing this Thursday in the Toledo Ohio area– two at the two campuses of Owens Community College in Findlay and Toledo, and one at the University of Findlay.

I have been given, at last, some actual times and room numbers for anyone in the area who wants to stop in and hear me tell the same old jokes.  They are as follows:

9:30 AM, College Hall 100, Owens Community College, Toledo Ohio

2 PM, EC 111, Owens Community College, Findlay, Ohio

7 PM University of Findlay, Findlay, Ohio

Looking forward to seeing readers there!

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The IT GETS BETTER anthology, pub date March 22. Containing JFB story, “In the Early Morning Rain.”

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: March 18, 2011

Tuesday is publication day for the new IT GETS BETTER ANTHOLOGY, the book based on the Youtube phenomenon of last fall in response to the suicides of a series of young LGBT people.  The book, published by Penguin, contains 100 stories of heartache and hope by gay, lesbian, bi, trans people, and their allies.  Contributors include Ellen DeGeneres,  President Obama, and Jennifer Finney Boylan.

My story, “In the Early Morning Rain” is a slightly re-worked version of a story I told in SHE’S NOT THERE, about a trip to Nova Scotia, where I hiked for hours alone and stood at the top of a cliff and looked down at the sea, and thought, Well?

There are a surprisingly healthy number of trans-identified authors in the collection, including my fellow Mainiac, Jean Vermette.  There are several genderqueer contributors (whom I don’t know personally).  And Kate Bornstein has the final essay.

All proceeds from the book go to charity.

There’s a web site for the book here.

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On Washing Elephants Naked

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: March 15, 2011

Today we introduce a new feature in this blog which we’ll call “Stories Our Friends Swear Are True Though We Actually Doubt That Very Much.”  As our first example, I’ll share the following, told to me this week by Colby’s resident scholar in Greek and Latin, Dr. Kerill O’Neill, Ph.D.

It seems that a few years ago Colby employed a professor whose primary area of study involved the lives of circus performers.  This individual, whom we’ll call Professor Barnum, was a woman who had come to academia, like most intellectuals, after a failed career in the circus.  She allowed as how among circus people, the highest possible honor is being given the opportunity to scrub down the elephants; you know you’ve “made it” among circus people if they hand you a long handled brush and a bucket and say, “Wash Jumbo.”

The other part of this tradition, apparently, is that washing the elephants is to be done topless.

So there was our future professor, Ms. Barnum, washing down the elephant in a small, run-down circus in the American south, on the bank of a swiftly running river, when all at once, the bank she was standing on suddenly gave way, and a moment later Barnum found herself being carried away by the raging torrent.

As she rushed toward what she feared was certain doom, she says she was comforted by one thing only—the sound, reaching her ears through the rushing waters—of Jumbo, back on dry land, stampeding along the river bank.

Professor Barnum had given up hope for her own survival at this point when suddenly she felt herself being uplifted.  She opened her eyes to find that—I believe the proper interjection is “lo and behold,” she had drifted into the arms of a Southern Baptist minister who was even at that moment baptizing the members of his congregation in the rushing river.

And our minister held our future professor in his arms (remember of course that she is still topless) and said to her, “I baptize you with water for repentance.”

At which point the trumpeting, stampeding elephant rushed into the church campground, stamped its feet, and plucked our heroine out of the minister’s arms, placing her, with his trunk, upon his mighty back.  And with that, the elephant turned around and headed back toward circus town, trumpeting in triumph.

I asked my friend Richard “They Made My Movie” Russo about this story the night after Professor O’Neill told it to me, and he said, “You know what’s suspect about this story, Boylan?  That business about washing the elephants topless.  That’s such an awkward, clumsy element of the story that I assumed it would somehow play into the punchline. Which it doesn’t. Which can only mean one deeply scary thing:  the story must be true.”

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The Month of the Buckeye (and a week of the Cardinal)

By Jennifer Finney Boylan | Published: February 20, 2011

Greetings, Buckeyes.  Jenny Boylan will be making not one but two trips to your fair state of Ohio in the forthcoming month of March.  Trip the first is on March 3, when I’ll be speaking at Wright State University in the evening.  I believe my event will be open to the public, and I’d be glad to meet readers of all stripes if you’ll come on down.

I’ll post more specific details about this event within the next week, when they are safely in hand.

Secondly, I’ll be doing a whirlwind tour of the Toledo area at months’ end.  I’ll be doing two events on March 31st.  First, a morning event at the University of Findlay, in Findlay, OH.  Then, a late afternoon/evening event at Owens Community College in Toledo.

I’ll let you know more of the details on that one too, as we get a little closer. Also, I’ll be speaking at SUNY Plattsburgh on March 10th.  (The home of the Fightin’ Cardinals.)  So if you’re in the upstate area (and in Plattsburgh, we mean WAY upstate), I hope you’ll swing through and say hello on that occasion too.

I generally try to suspend travel and lecturing from Thanksgiving onward, as the Maine winter just makes travel too insane.  The winter will continue on in March in Maine, but I’m hitting the road anyway, and will hope for calm weather.  Wishing will make it so!

(And yes, I’m aware that “Bucky” Buckeye pictured above left is the mascot of Ohio State, not Owens or Findlay, but please.  Any opportunity to post an image of Bucky Buckeye really ought to be seized, don’t you think?  (And yes, Bucky Bucky really did once win first place for “Queerest College Mascot” in a contest sponsored by a group of national GLBT college organizations.  When I spoke at Ohio State a few years ago, I was given a little Bucky doll that still sits on my desk– one of my happiest mementoes from the endless road trip that is my writing and teaching life.  (Right after the Jack Kerouac bobble-head  I got from U-Mass Lowell.)

This also puts me in mind of an old Burl Ives song, slightly altered for the occasion :

Way up yonder above the sky

A blue jay nest in a jaybird’s eye.

Buckeye Jen, you can’t go. Go? Even spin, you can’t go.

Buckeye Jen.

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  • 4576011240_572c819271

    Jenny Boylan's twelfth book, FALCON QUINN AND THE CRIMSON VAPOR, now on sale from HarperCollins!

  • Browse Inside Falcon Quinn!

  • PROFESSOR JENNIFER FINNEY BOYLAN is the author of twelve books, including She's Not There: a Life in Two Genders, and I'm Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted, both published by Random House. A novelist, memoirist, and short story writer, she is also a nationally known advocate for civil rights. Jenny has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Live with Larry King, the Today Show, the Barbara Walters Special, NPR's Marketplace and Talk of the Nation; she has also been the subject of documentaries on CBS News' 48 Hours. and The History Channel. She is a regular contributor to the op/ed page of the New York Times and Conde Nast Traveler magazine. Since 1988, she has been Professor of English at Colby College in Maine; in 2010, she was the Hoyer-Updike Distinguished Writer at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. She has also served on the judging committee of the Fulbright Scholars, administered by the U.S. Department of State.

    Her next published book will be STUCK IN THE MIDDLE WITH YOU: Parenthood in Two Genders, coming from Crown/Random House in 2013, along with an updated, 10th anniversary edition of SHE'S NOT THERE.

    Check out the Twitter feed at JennyBoylan; or join Jennifer Finney Boylan on facebook.

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  • Will Forte as Jennifer Finney Boylan on “Saturday Night Live”

    WiFo-Jennifer Finney Boylan-1

  • Jenny with Barbara Walters, December, 2008

    wawa

  • Jenny atop Maine’s Mount Katahdin

    2036947979_34bfbec240 August, 2002.

  • Surrounded

    boylanWith President Clinton and Maine's Governor John Baldacci, fall 2006.

  • JFB and Edward Albee

    edward_albee_by_fred_j_field-150x150

    Edward had been my teacher at Johns Hopkins in the winter of 1986. He visited Colby in fall, 2007. As we took our leave of each other, he kissed me on both cheeks and said, "We have done well. You and I."

  • Jenny and her teacher, the great John Barth

    Boylan_Barth

    Jack was my professor at JHU when I did my thesis, back in the day. After many years, I can now confidently say I finally understand his definition of plot. Which is, of course, "the perturbation of an unstable homeostatic system and its catastrophic restoration to a new and complexified equilibrium."