Dopp Juice

First of all, thank you for all the kind notes of support you’ve been sending me over the last month. I’m so grateful for your comfort, inspiration, and encouragement.

I just got back to San Francisco after that three-week emotional roller-coaster. In a nutshell: I got to NH just in time (thanks to you). I held my grandmother as she died. I picked out her casket. I spoke at her funeral. I held the hands of two young cousins as they walked through everything they feared about death. I wrote. I worked. I spent two weeks living with my grandfather, helping him sort through details, clothing, trinkets, sympathy cards, visions for the future, and messy smatterings of sadness. I missed two Queer Open Mics. I left my car parked illegally. I forgot to pay my rent. I attended my cousin’s wedding. I fixed issues on four family computers. I found people. I held space for grief. I invented a new card game. I flew to Colorado and hiked beside the Continental Divide.  I threw a snowball in August.

And the lesson I’m taking home from all this is actually about dancing in China six years ago. It may seem completely unrelated, but it’s not.  Here’s what happened:

The “Dancing in China” Story

In 2002, I spent four months living in China. More than half of that trip was unplanned — I attended a 5-week study abroad program, and then just didn’t get on my plane home. Instead I set up shop in Qingdao, connected with other ex-pats, taught English under the table, and rented an apartment illegally. I spent many nights at a local bar called the Jazz Bar, which was the central hub for foreigners (and Chinese people who wanted to meet foreigners).

The bar was large and had great floor space. A local band named Angel Hair Tobacco played covers of American rock songs three times a week. It was a neighborhood pub set up for drinking, chatting, and playing darts. No one there danced.

My friends and I spent most nights playing cards, where the winner of each game always dared the loser to do something small and silly. After one particular card game, where I came out as the loser, the winner dared me to get up and dance to the next song at the front of bar.  This was a hugely bold dare and my pals laughed at the idea, figuring I would refuse to break the no-dancing taboo.

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“How Do You Make a Handkerchief Dance?”
My grandmother is lying on a hospital bed,
holding a small square of paper
in her hands
and pausing between words
as she reads it to the nurse.
“I don’t know, Sally,”
the nurse says.
“How do you make a handkerchief dance?”
“You Put a Little Boogie In It.”
She tells it to the next nurse, too.

Grandma kept things simple.
Red lipstick, jigsaw puzzles,
and photo albums.
Chicken salad on finger rolls and
As the World Turns at 2 o’clock.
Judge Judy, Star Magazine,
and the National Enquirer every evening.
But she read the Wall Street Journal, too.

And she focused on the details,
placing towels and a fruit basket on the bed
for every guest.
Suggesting a nap if you looked tired,
and complimenting your outfit.
She wouldn’t start eating until the hostess
had lifted her fork,
and always passed the food counter-clockwise.
She kept her elbows off the table, too.

But it was in between those moments
that I finally found her.
In between the hugs and kisses,
the pleases and thank-yous,
the celebrity gossip and 9 o’clock news
that I cornered her in a La-Z-boy
alone one day
and asked her about her life.
I found the pearls and blossoms of her wisdom
in those reflections, that narration,
those worries, her hopes, and all the angles of her spirituality.
My grandmother was never afraid of death.
But as long as living was comfortable, she preferred to keep going with that.

She loved through the details and I loved around them
and we met each other someplace
where line meets line.
Hand to cheek,
hour to minute,
we lost our barriers when our thoughts
melted fear back down into love,
and we decided to sit in that space for awhile,
because the weather was nice
and we had a lovely view of the birch trees.

I couldn’t fluster her.
Every time I shapeshifted,
grew into a new awkward and challenging angle of myself,
she looked me in the eye consistently,
the same way she always had,
with adoration and eager hope
for my happiness.
She loved
constantly
thoroughly
and fully,
teaching me by example
that we can overcome our egos
if we find footing in honesty and acceptance.

I’ve only met one person in my life
whose sole job was to love
and she raised me
through a family with thick, strong arms.

I loved being loved by her.

I think she knew that, too.

- Sarah Dopp
August 1, 2008
Rest in peace, Grandma Sally

(Extra mushy thank-you hugs to Dawn, Shaun, Amy, Devil Crayon, Marcie, John, and Jon for the last minute editing help.)

I’m doing two things right now that feel a little… strange.  One is that I’m spending days on end by the bedside of my dying grandmother, holding her hand and carefully watching her body shut down.  The other is that I’m writing about it in real-time.  On the Internet.

My grandmother, Sarah “Sally” Dopp (they gave me her name but not her nickname) is going to die soon. The fact that she hasn’t yet is shocking. She’s come really close. Twice.

The first was Friday afternoon, when my mother called me to say they had stopped her chemo and dialysis treatments, and that she was dying. The doctors didn’t think she’d last a few hours, let alone the whole night.  They were in New Hampshire, I was in San Francisco, and the only bookable flights I could find were red-eyes that would get me there at 6am.  I panicked, packed anyway, and shot a message out to twitter:

sarahdopp: Grandma’s dying. I need a flight from SFO or OAK to BOS or MHT *right now*. Cant find anything that lands before 6am tomorrow. Can you? Help

I was flooded with messages. More sites to check, tips on how to approach and talk to airlines at the last minute, offers of frequent flier miles, specific research on possible flights, offers to help raise funds to pay for the expensive last minute ticket, ideas for other airports I could fly into, echoes to broader networks of people, and messages of love and support. A few people even started calling airlines on my behalf, asking which flights were already booked and what my other options were.

A dear friend got to my apartment as soon as she could and drove me to the airport. I spent the ride checking messages and calling people, trying to narrow down what airline would be the most likely solution. For each possible flight someone had found for me, I only had a window of 15-30 minutes to buy the ticket and board the plane.  I ran. I got a direct flight. It landed me in Boston at 10:25pm.

I would not have gotten there on Friday without your help.

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I spent four long days at my grandmother’s hospital bedside in New Hampshire and got back here just in time for BlogHer.  That is to say, I’ve been on emotional input overload for the last week, and my brains are a little muddled.  That is to say, the post that I’d like to write about where BlogHer is in the context of its own history and the broader evolution of social media will have to wait.  And so will the post about all the neat stuff I learned at panels this weekend.  In the meantime, I want to give you the post where I shower lots of people with the love that’s still ricocheting around in my brain from the last few days, because that’s what matters right now. That is to say, if you don’t like love, you should probably just stop reading.

Still here? Great! I’m in love with…

• Mle-Mle for being extraordinarily gracious about the fact that I accidentally locked her out of my apartment and made her roam the streets of San Francisco without sleep for an entire night.
• Susan Mernit for inviting me to speak on such an inspiring and affirming panel, and for moderating it with such skill and compassion.
• Fivestar for showing up, for pointing me in the direction of the queers, for helping me flirt with the mommybloggers, and for sporting the hottest blog redesign I’ve seen in awhile.
• JenB for being so beautifully warm, welcoming, and open when she sat next to me on the panel that I felt like I was chilling out with family instead of speaking in front of 100 people.
• Shuna for letting me turn into a cuddly fuzzy pet cat on more than one occasion, and for raising her hand to say (something like) When we own something about ourselves and put out it into the world, the people who want to criticize us can no longer use it against us.  
• Elkit for hugging me for a full five minutes to help me get my bearings after a painful-to-face serious of panels when my mind and heart and body were already completely exhausted.
• Amy for making so much space for me.
• Koan for showing up and telling a hard story to tell, and an important story for people to hear.
• Nicole Simon for laughing with me as we ate messy Chinese food over a display of $900 shoes at Macy’s.
• Lisa Williams for wearing dead sexy cowboy boots and for calling me the “Queer Oprah.”
• Angryrock for crashing the conference (crash! smash! bash!) and for griping up a storm of entertainment.
• Debbie and Laurie for being consistent voices of strength, reason, guidance, and encouragement. Always.
• Liz Henry for licking chocolate off my face and letting me bounce my breasts gratuitously on her head.
• The Queen of Spain for attempting to introduce me to one of the heads of the Obama campaign while I bounced my breasts gratuitously on Liz Henry’s head, and for gracefully changing the subject by asking me to go hug her husband innappriately on her behalf.
• Deb Roby for becoming stronger and more gorgeous every day.
• Maria Niles for slipping me a new vibrator (shhh!).
• Stephanie for telling her story with an honest smile.
• Jess for telling her story with honest eye contact.
• Schmutzie for being a totally charming real person and getting into a mutual-fangirl-oglefest session with me.
• Denise for hugging me just slightly more often than she teased me.
• Carfi for getting the word out about the fact that we’ve built the best damned conference widget EVAR, for making me continually proud of my work, and for always wearing a conspicuous hat.
• Jenijen for kissing me on the cheek whenever she walked by me.
• Kirrily for pre-stalking me, finding me, and getting me super excited about the direction women’s spaces are moving with O’Reilly conferences.
• Beth Kanter for sidling up to share tech tips, happy life news, and stories about how her kids are becoming dangerously similar to me.
• Sean for being the most attractively dressed human being at the conference (sorry, ladies).
• Genie for standing up tall in all the ways I like to think I would, too, if I were paying as much attention to the world as she does.
• Lisa, Jory, and Elisa — BlogHer’s founders and fearless leaders — for winning my heart, devotion, and adoration forever and ever and ever.

There’s more.  I’m just too wrapped up in love pillows to keep typing.  You’ll have to take my word for it — the rest of them are amazing, too.

And on that note, thank you everyone for fantastic weekend!  See you again in the fall for the BlogHer Reach-Out Tour (which — yay! — I’ll be tagging along for)!

Technorati Tags: blogcrushes, BlogHer08, gratuitous linklove

I have really exciting news for you (if you haven’t already heard me bragging like crazy about it): I’m the new co-host of San Francisco’s Queer Open Mic!  This is an incredible opportunity for me to give back to something that’s been deeply special in my life for a long time.

The Queer Open Mic has been my creative home for the last year and a half — I go religiously, I love the atmosphere, and I love the people.  Cindy Emch — the open mic’s founder (and the host who’s handing the reigns over to me) — worked her butt off to create a space that felt safe for poets, prose writers, comedians, singer-songwriters, and other artists who fell anywhere along the gender and sexuality spectrums to share their work with one another — even when it wasn’t perfect.  The result was always rich show of ecclectic work that felt deeply personal, creative, inspiring, and generous.

Can you tell I’m in love with this venue?

Oh, and let me tell you about the features!  At every show, there’s a feature performer who takes up about 20 minutes in the middle of the show, and they always knock my socks off. Sometimes it’s a local hero, sometimes it’s a kick-ass artist on tour from another state, and sometimes it’s a bright and shiny Queer Open Mic regular who’s doing their first-ever feature performance.  No matter how you slice it, the show is always intense and beautiful.

But enough of my gushing, let’s jump to the details.  My first show as co-host is next week and I want you to be there.  To make sure you have plenty of reason to clear your calendars, I’ve booked one of my favorite people on earth — a soulful, funny, kinky, creative, and drop-dead adorable singer-songwriter named Fivestar.

Allow me to introduce you.  Fivestar writes…

I’m originally from South Texas and have been making trouble in the Bay Area for 6 years.  When I’m not working with video and the web, you can find me riding my bike, exploring the fabulousness of this city and making music.  Music has been an emotional outlet for me as far back as i can remember.  I’ve been writing music for ten years for the sole purpose of dealing with heartaches and joys.  Aside from a few past public performances, I mostly sing for my friends.  I started performing Queer Open Mic a few months ago and am excited to find more people to share my passion with.   Thank you!

Visit http://www.iamfivestar.com or http://twitter.com/iamfivestar for more.

The show will be followed by a table full ‘o beer at Zeitgeist (an outdoor bar filled with picnic tables and attractive hipsters) to celebrate Fivestar’s performance, my new role as co-host, and the fact that my best friend from high school just moved to San Francisco (it’s about time, girl!). So even if you can’t make it to the show, you should come out and share a pitcher with us there.

Are you in yet?  Here are the details…

What: Queer Open Mic, featuring Fivestar (and Sarah Dopp’s first night as co-host!!)
When: July 11, 8-10pm (sign-ups start at 7:30), followed by beer at Zeitgeist
Where: The Three Dollar Bill Cafe, San Francisco’s LGBT Center (1800 Market St.)

About the Queer Open Mic
Queer Open Mic is a twice monthly gathering of poets, performers, writers and artists of all types to come together and share art. Proto-feminist and genderqueer in scope, QOM aims to combine raunchy enthusiasm, warmth and community, unapologetic queer, radical politics and sweet rhythms to create a space for spoken word, poetry and performance that is multi cultural, multi gendered, completely inclusive and dynamic. QOM is hosted by Sarah Dopp and Mollena Williams. Please show up around 7:30pm to sign up on the open mic list. You’re encouraged to read one piece of work that is five minutes or less. And by encouraged we mean threatened with spankings, shoe throwings and general hilarious tantrums if you don’t follow the rules.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve found myself in a series of (mostly unrelated) events that all drilled into this same themes from different angles:  Women. Technology. Sexism. Sexual tension. Sexuality. Sexual privilege. Sexualization. Sexual harassment. Feminism. Power. Reaction. Anger.

The tech industry is a male-dominated field, and it doesn’t have a lot of social infrastructure in place for dealing with its sexual transgressions.  To add insult to injury, we’re stuck with woefully inadequate language to describe what’s happening in general terms.  The phrase “women in the tech industry” doesn’t refer to a unified group of people with common opinions and experiences.  Instead it describes a scattering of individuals who are, far too often, trying to get a job done as the only woman in a room.  They face sex-related challenges in professional situations on their own, and they’ve found their own ways of walking through them.

As a young woman in the tech industry who’s still just trying to figure out the rules to the game, I have to admit I’m a little pissed off about how much in-fighting, criticism, and judgment I see women dishing out to each other on the subject of sexism, sexual harassment, and other concepts that start with sex.  Forgive me for sounding naive and idealistic here, but it seems like our energy would be better spent respecting the differences of our individual paths over such a rocky terrain, and throwing each other a rope when needed.

As a gender-bending queer, I’ve always felt like mainstream representations of “women’s issues” included a lot of things I didn’t identify with, relate to, or experience in my daily life.  On the same token, I fight my own unique list of social battles that many “mainstream women” (which is a bullshit notion in itself) don’t have to deal with.  Our paths are different.

Except when they’re not.

Every single person on this planet can look at any large group of people and say, with plenty of evidence, “I’m one of them.”  That same person, looking at the same group of people, can also say with just as much truth and proof, “They’re not like me.”

And when we’re talking about sex -ism/-uality/-ualization/-ual harassment, what we’re talking about is a big fat knot that has no right answers, and we all have to find our own paths through it.

I’d like to walk through it with the support, thoughts, ideas, respect, and understanding of the women around me.

(p.s. Just dawned on me: stuff about sexual harassment in the tech industry is usually about office politics.  I’d just like to say that I work with the best, most respectful team on earth, and that area in my life is just fine.)

I’ll strategize it, architect it, and design it.  I’ll help market it.  I’ll direct the team that’s assembling it.  I’ll even tweak the engine and apply the paint job if we’re short on staff.  But if doing all this also makes me responsible for changing its oil every three thousand miles and providing roadside assistance when it has a flat tire, then suddenly I stop being good at my job.

Websites are like cars. I’ve used the metaphor and I’ve heard it from others as well.  Even the prices are comparable — do you want a $500 clunker?  Something that’s either reliable or sexy (but probably not both) for $5000?  Or are you putting down 25 grand for your new baby?

We’ve got website mass-manufacturers. Website mom-and-pop mechanics.  Website fuel (hosting?).  We sell services that make your website stand out in a crowd.  We even give them vanity plates with the special character “.com” on them, and hand out free bling for your sidebars.  Let’s keep going with this.

Where are the Jiffy Lubes?  Where are the reliable, bonded, high-profile, maintenance shops that you can feel confident handing your hosting passwords to every six months or so for a good, honest, and slightly-overpriced assessment of how things look under the hood?  They should be able to upgrade things like Wordpress, edit that homepage content you only care to change every once in awhile, advise you about any larger issues, apply some Spam Guard, and send you on your way before dinnertime.

And while we’re at it, where are the website loans for new businesses?  And where is the website insurance against hacking, hosting failure, and freeway Digg collisions?  How can you upgrade the sound system that is your website copy?  Where can you get all that bird shit washed off your outside user-generated content surface?  Where can you have your server space vacuumed?  How are you supposed to know when it’s time to get your timing belt replaced? Where are you supposed to go to do that?  And how can we hold mechanics reliable for doing what we ask without ripping us off?  (I suppose that last problem still hasn’t been solved with cars, so maybe I’m asking too much.)

I hate watching people’s transmissions die after driving 100,000 miles without a tuneup.  And I’m even less fond of being handed that panicked problem while I’m right in the middle of designing a beautiful new car.   But I don’t blame them for it — they don’t have much of a choice.  The resources aren’t out there on the side of the road, reminding them to come in for a checkup.  Where’s the freaking Jiffy Lube?

If it’s getting to the point where “married couple” is just another way of saying, “two-website household,” it’s time to scale the industry to address the needs of consumers.  Too many people assume that whoever built a website is going to be responsible for it forever — even if there’s no maintenance retainer plan in the contract.  And true, we — as web developers — created that assumption because we wanted to hold on to our clients.  But how many unloved, unmaintained websites are out there now, rusting and creating an eye sore on someone’s front yard because “maintenance” was an assumption instead of a plan?  Drop your pride and get real for a second.  You’re not happy about it but you don’t want to do the work to fix the situation, do you.

I no longer work on projects where the “designer” and the “programmer” are the same person.  I find that — even if someone can do both — their work will be much better if they only have to do one.  Having two separate bodies engaged in that arm-wrestling match makes for a better website.  And a less crazy team.  Even though I used to try to do both of them myself.

I’m adding maintenance to the pile now.  I don’t think the manufacturers should be the maintainers.  I think it’s a conflict of interest, a disservice to the consumer, and a white lie that’s tainted with an extra layer of fear and pride.

It’s time for the Jiffy Lubes to start popping up on the suburban street corners of the Internet.  We’re ready now.  And please, do it well.

photo credits: “jiffy lube” by joe dunckley and “rusty car storage” by dave_7 — thanks, guys!

Technorati Tags: website maintenance

It’s Father’s Day. Again. This happens every year, and my dad’s been dead for the last ten of them. The holiday always sneaks up on me and forces me into a dilemma. Do I want to…

a) Focus on my father, grieve his death, honor the impact he had on my life, cry, throw things, resent him, laugh, smile, pray — whatever my relationship with him is asking of me right now, or

b) Pretend the holiday’s not happening. Work, sleep, hang out with people who could also care less about the holiday, go about business as usual, or

c) Focus on my other fathers. My step-father, my grandfathers, my uncles, and all of the masculine mentors who have carried and guided me, even when I believed I was dadless?

I lie, though — it’s not really a dilemma. I’m going to do all of the above. I always do.

In a moment of introspection or self-pity, I’ll collapse into the fetal position, hug my knees, and remember what it was like to have a living father, and what a privilege it was to be able to argue with him incessantly and blame him for everything. What a gift it was to walk through his five-year illness as an adolescent. How much I value the way those years stripped away so many illusions and forced me to face so many fears. How much I miss him sometimes. How much I wish I could know what would have changed as both of us continued to grow up. (And has it really been ten years?!)

But I won’t stay there long. I’ll have work to do. A big project is launching (I’ll tell you about it on Monday), and I’ll be up all night making sure it survives. I’ve got an acupuncture appointment. A body to revive and a brain to rest. I’ve got blogging to do, for chrissake. Twittering. Phone calls. I don’t have time for Father’s Day, thankyouverymuch.

But I’ll call my step-father — a strong, quiet man who brought stability into my life without placing any demands, expectations, or judgments on me. A man who’s so consistent and sane that I often forget to be grateful for him. A man who healed a huge part of my life just by showing up. I’ll find the words to thank him for that. Somehow. Hopefully. It’s a hard task. If not this year, then next year.

And my dad’s father. The grandfather who put his hand on my shoulder at my dad’s funeral and said, “I want you to know that I’ll be your father now. Anything you need, you just ask. I’m here.” And he’s kept his word. I won’t even start to tell you how present he’s been for me, and how much we’ve both fought through our own prejudices (him being a staunch conservative and me being a wild liberal) to love each other, because I’ll start crying.

Too late.

Then there’s my dad’s younger brother. The uncle who has stepped up to be just as much a father to me as anyone else. The confidence, the pep talks, the advice, the rib-cracking hugs, the jokes, the morning pancakes, the unquestioned aero-bed to crash on. When I say “I’m going home for Christmas,” I usually mean I’m going to his house. That’s just become how it is.

There’s more. I have a lot of uncles, and one of them is reading this blog (Hi Roger!). And grandfathers — for the longest time I had three of them, and I just lost the first one last year. The tall strong deaf carpenter who spoke with his hands and his smile. We didn’t know each other the way I get to know most people, but he gave me piggyback rides long after I grew into my 5′10″ body, and he caught dinner for me in his lake.

And all the men I’ve worked under, who held up a mirror to me, told me I was strong, and challenged me to hold my ground. Aaron. Stephen. Dax. Terry. Hugh. Wayne. Daniel. Patrick. David. Alain. Dave. Chris. Mark. Thank you.

There’s more. There’s a lot more. There are some very special ones that I don’t even want to allude to here because I’m still afraid to admit how much I’ve needed them. Maybe I’ll find a way to thank them secretly. Somehow. Hopefully.

Maybe next year.

Okay, here’s the plan:

Everyone in the Bay Area who’s paying attention right now, please do the following (even if you’re in a monogamous relationship)…

1. Go to CrazyBlindDate.com.
2. Walk through the SF Bay Area site wizard (it doesn’t ask for any personal info until the end)
3. Make yourself available for Sunday, Monday, and/or Tuesday nights (the more the better).
4. Make your territory as broad as you feel comfortable with, but at least include San Francisco’s Mission District (you can get there. i know you can).
5. Make yourself available for all ages and genders with no other restrictions (come on! you can deal with this! okay, specify gender IF YOU MUST).
6. Use the “Intention” box to be honest about the fact that you’re just doing this for fun and to meet new people. (You should probably mention that monogamous relationship of yours, too.)
7. Finish the wizard, sit back, and see who it sets you up with (you can always say “no”).
8. Show up (even if it seems really really weird. You’re totally allowed to bail after 20 minutes).
9. Twitter an update about your date every time you or your date goes to the restroom (keeping in mind that your date might see those tweets).

You’ve got nothing to lose except your pride, and that’s really not worth keeping anyway. Ready? Go.

The other thing that came up in my conversations with Emma today was ego and its relationship to creativity and public presence. Basically, when my inflated ego is running the show, my work kinda sucks. But when I can skirt under its radar and stay decently humble, I can do wonderful things.

I got hit in the head with this fact about five years ago when I was living on the East Coast and calling myself a “poet.” I was performing frequently, winning slams (competitions), influencing local arts culture, and being told daily how amazing I was. My ego inflated to the size of a rhinoceros, and then — almost immediately — something horrible happened: I stopped writing poetry for three years.

It was the kind of writer’s block that I’ve heard referred to as Superstar Syndrome: I felt like I couldn’t top my own work. I had become so invested in the identity of being impressive that I lost all willingness to make mistakes. It felt safer to create nothing than to risk creating something less-than-awesome.

Fast forward to now, where I’m slowly inching my toes back into the poetry pool (the water’s nice!), and playing around in Social Media sandbox. I’m aware that I’m mumbling into a megaphone with all these fancy tools, toys, and words, and that I don’t get to control the outcomes. Occasionally I get hit with an ego bomb that catches me completely off guard, and I’m reminded to check in with my intentions.

Encouragement is helpful and I usually need some kind of validation, but I also have to constantly work to find a safe balance in my self-image. It’s not something I can just “fix” — it’s constant maintenance. It’s spiritual grounding. It’s remembering that we’re all equal. It’s remembering that when other people give me attention, it’s not about me; it’s about them.

But oooh…. look at all my shiny twitter followers… Look! I must be awesome!

Down, girl. Sit. Stay.