Back

So, it was actually a lousy vacation. I've spent the bulk of my time with ugly digestive complaints or working through the various management issues of having a home health care agency up in my life 24/7. Or both. But anyway, there was good amidst the bureaucratic busy-ness and grumpy misery. Two highlights of my August were a family gathering in the far reaches of western Minnesota and meeting Brownfemipower while she was in St. Paul for the MALCS conference*.

The Gimp Compound inhabitants met with a dozen other Olsons, including the French branch of my cousinry, in the little city of Montevideo. We shared the courtyard of a great little coffeeshop with a local family where a father and a newborn son spent a few precious hours together while the former was briefly home on leave from Iraq. Poignant, that.

Brownfemipower and I met in the union of the University of Minnesota while my parents wandered around sucking up massive doses of alumi nostalgia. Like everyone I've met in person after getting to know online, BFP is just exactly herself, but more. One of the things we talked about was what candidates would be good for a Radical Hot Off of disabled celebrities. It shouldn't be, of course, but the question is deeply problematic: Mainstream celebrities people would be familiar enough to vote on don't celebrate their disability if they have one, disability is stereotypically seen as the antithesis of sexy, and iconic or noteworthy disabled characters in pop culture are usually performed in film by nondisabled celebrities. Our short list consisted entirely of Peter Dinklage. And while that makes the list perfection, I look forward to adding to it.

Anyway, I'm back.

* Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social (MALCS, Women Active in Letters and Social Change) is an organization of Chicanas/ Latinas and Native American women working in academia and in community settings with a common goal: to work toward the support, education and dissemination of Chicana/Latina and Native American women's issues.