BROAD CAST: SOLSTICE 2007

Now we are in winter.

Tomorrow a group of us are gathering for the ritual practiced over millenia by our nature- and freedom-loving ancestors. We'll build a gigantic bonfire to remind ourselves that habeus corpus will return, and to hasten her arrival, we've constructed a giant elephant from faux wicker crap on sale at Garden Ridge which we will stuff with neocons and toss onto the blaze while singing "Hairy-legged lesbians sing / glory to our cunning ling!" You're welcome to join us. Bring your own jello salad.

(Postcard for Pine Street Art Works, copyright 2007 Liza Cowan.)

Speaking of Jell-o: Liza Cowan has at last begun her own blog, See Saw, concerning art and retail (as only Liza the Dyke Mother can do it). An auspicious sign of the year to come.


December 22nd is also Global Orgasm Day. Please contribute as best you are able. If you need help, reach out to live members of your community. Consensually, of course.

And I will award 50 (FIFTY) Sistahood points to anyone who can make the link between the graphic preceding this announcement (the cover of Marilyn Gayle's book) and why it is appropriate to the day in question.


Also, in the Old News For Some Of Us Department:

Jodie Foster acknowledges her female partner. After fifteen years.

Why is this news? I mean, here's a matching headline for you: Eva Longoria, Heterosexual!

Nobody with any depth of experience is buying that you were simply "protecting your privacy" -- not when you have two turkeybaster kids and managed to at least confirm their existence without rupturing your veil of mystery.

Nope, it's obvious that you were scared. And that you still are.

Good luck with that, honey. Next....


Returning to our obsession with all things polar exploration-esque: BBC News announces "Penguin sketches made by Captain Scott and Ernest Shackleton have been found in a basement at Cambridge University. The legendary explorers drew the pictures on blackboards, probably for public lectures, in 1904 and 1909." I, of course, immediately discerned character-revealing differences between the two sketches and have been moodily examining them for further illumination. Anyone else similarly afflicted?

(Image from Julie's Magic Light Show.)

In past posts here, I've written about waking up during surgery and other complications of anesthesia. There's a new movie out now, called Awake, which addresses the issue of "anesthesia awareness". The New York Times review states this "occurs when patients wake up during surgery because they are underanesthetized. In real life, these periods are generally brief. But the patient can indeed feel pain, ranging from minor to unendurable."

Ever since the late 1980s, with the advent of PET scans and other forms of advanced imaging studies, our ability to study the human brain has catapulted forward, and if it seems like new insights about consciousness and brain function arrive weekly, that's largely accurate. This week, the PBS series Wired Science aired a segment entitled Mixed Feelings: Helping The Blind See With Their Tongue. To quote from the website (which also has video and other links):

"Most of us see with our eyes, but what if we could see with other parts of our body, too? The idea may seem ridiculous, but it's already been done. Nearly a half-century ago, maverick neuroscientist Paul Bach-y-Rita discovered that it was possible to 'rewire' the adult brain, connecting regions in ways no one ever had imagined. Today, his ideas have given a handful of blind people the ability to see for the first time—using their tongues.

"For a long time, scientists believed that after childhood, the brain became 'fixed' in its ways and impossible to change. But Bach-y-Rita reasoned that because the nerves carrying messages from one part of the body to the brain are identical to those carrying messages from other body parts, it might actually be possible, even in adulthood, to substitute one sense for another."

I was especially intrigued by the work done with folks who have severe inner ear damage that renders them unable to tell whether they are prone or upright, leading to profound disability. "Rewiring" the sensory apparatus of the brain, using tactile regions instead of ear regions, has proven in some cases permanent, a complete cure.

The boundaries of human brain plasticity are definitely out of sight at the moment. For those of us who can manage balancing science, art, and faith simultaneously (however you define those) instead of believing them to be in conflict, the sense of hope and excitement is tremendous. It will, of course, mean giving up all the myths that race, class, gender, and sexual orientation are primarily "hard-wired" rather than manifestations of the brain's ability to adapt (even physically alter) to cultural demands placed on newborns. We'll have to accept that difference is mostly a matter of choice, and, as Stuart Smalley would say, "That's...okay."


In related news, this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that human evolution is speeding up: "People are evolving more rapidly than in the distant past, with residents of various continents becoming increasingly different from one another, researchers say.

"'Rapid population growth has been coupled with vast changes in cultures and ecology, creating new opportunities for adaptation,'" the study says. 'The past 10,000 years have seen rapid skeletal and dental evolution in human populations, as well as the appearance of many new genetic responses to diet and disease.' And they found that different changes are occurring in Africans, Asians and Europeans."

Environment over biology. And -- feed your sisters and brothers elsewhere, because our vigor as a species depends on everyone's development.

(This I Can Haz Cheezburgr image created by little gator.)