[Note:  I wrote this review many moons ago.  The book is mostly very hard to find now…unless you want a pdf version.  When I was looking or something to publish for this Mother’s Day, I rejected my own letter to my mother (Dear Mom), also written many years ago, and selected this.

The sheer number of issues the concept of gender variance raises is sometimes overwhelming.  Just exactly what does it mean to be differently-gendered?  How did we get to be this way?  How are we supposed to live our lives?  How do we build respect for ourselves in this culture?  How do we ask to be treated as any human being would/should be treated, while simultaneously asking that our difference be acknowledged in the world community?  How do we establish that we are not crazy and simultaneously acquire the medical treatment we desire?

One question which has been addressed all too little is, “How should we be raised?”  Given the number of transgendered people who have spoken in less than glowing terms about their treatment as children, the lack of positive writings in this regard is disheartening.  Are we not shirking our duty to future generations of gender-variant people by failing to address this issue?

I should be busting my ass grading the quality of work submitted by my students.  But I’m a bit under the weather.  I don’t enjoy feeling like I can’t catch my breath.  The new drug helps with that somewhat. but there is a dizziness factor that comes with.

So I let my students down a bit.  I didn’t go in to my office on the day the projects were due.  We can hopefully work things out by Monday.  Monday is when grades are due.

I don’t enjoy grading.  No good teacher that I know of enjoys the grading.  It is fraught with disappointment that the students didn’t do better.  One has to establish a bit of distance and concentrate on the fact that what they did learn probably outweighs what they didn’t.

When one has small classes it becomes easier to confuse judging the work done in a class with judging the human being.  How much value does one assign motivation, curiosity, and understanding the larger picture, to the ability to understand that this patch of learning is but part of a larger tapestry.  All one can ask is that the students give honest effort.  But how elusive is the measurement of “honest effort”?

Imagining the Pain Away Floating beneath a sea of pain Focusing on the point where the pain seemed to reside I aimed my thoughts to move that point through my body to a locus an inch or two off the tip of my nose where it would hurt no longer Wouldn’t it be grand if our collective consciousness could cause a similar effect on the blights humans have inflicted on this planet? –Robyn Elaine Serven –March 5, 2008

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Pains The Damage Done Aches and pains of muscles and bones of nerves and organs are bearable when old injuries to the psyche have been soothed when the twinges of a fragile confidence the throbbing of squandered initiative and the millions of stings that punctured a too slim veneer of self-esteem have been given tender care –Robyn Elaine Serven –March 4, 2008

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Cyanide On Being Lazy The bad part about laziness is the guilt that insists I accomplish things in order to hide that facet The paradox is that if I became free to be lazy I suspect I would get much more accomplished –Robyn Elaine Serven –February 5, 2008

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Seeds What if? What if rainbows came in textures and kaleidoscopes played with sound What if feelings were for wearing and thoughts weighed each a pound Would hope appear upward and love feel cerise? What would be the taste of freedom? What would be the scent of peace? Could I pay my rent in moonbeams when the future becomes our toy? When hate and greed are left behind could I measure wealth in joy? –Robyn Elaine Serven –February 26, 2008

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Distortion on a Gray Day Memories With any luck the ragged people discover how to sing on the countless gray days which occupy time between those occasional days of sunshine In a better world one not consisting of lies and jest going away is not necessary or required or even desired –Robyn Elaine Serven –February 22. 2008

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Thoughts a-jumble.  Mind in a twist.  Ideas mixed like succotash, vegetables that should never touch.

Weekend before finals.  I should be grading, but I am waiting for submissions.  Ever in hope, I extended the deadline to Sunday.

Questions of adequacy always arise.  Did I do right by my students?  One of the reasons for teaching in a small college like this is that I only have 33 students to be concerned about in three classes.  Some of them have given up.  Some of them never started.  What more could I have done to light the fuse that will detonate the desire to learn?

How did one of my students get all the way through Java I and Java II with me letting her think writing code consisted of copying code she had seen produced for her in it’s entirety  once before?  She asked, “When did you show us how to produce an interface for the final project?”  My response:  “The last two semesters.”

Escape the mundane.  Penetrate the surface…

Tears Toxic Raindrops Spitter, spatter – dribble, drip eroding the soul The sizzle of acidic water dissolving resolution Hard hail pellets hammering the identity Cold shards of sleet penetrating the heart Invisible tears damaging the interior where the scars are mostly not visible except in the resulting behavior which can be so terribly bizarre Confidence roughly scoured forcibly removed from internal corridors while outside there was a smile and a helping hand for those less fortunate –Robyn Elaine Serven –February 21, 2008

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Half Twist Mental Gymnastics Steps forward do not automatically come with steps back Expecting them is the road to pessimism Better is to follow the steps forward with two and a half somersaults with a half twist to the left in pike position and see what can be seen from this new perspective –Robyn Elaine Serven –February 18, 2008

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Evaporation Inattentive I spent much of my life speaking in paragraphs to people who had difficulty waiting for the end of a sentence before breaking in to change the subject to talk about them their thoughts not mine which lay unfinished by the side of the conversation with my ideas drifting away somewhere probably forgotten if not evaporating into nothingness –Robyn Elaine Serven –February 6. 2008

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Sun Reflections New dawns have come and gone The years assembled Decades folded upon themselves Time dwindles Could once just once before I… just once while I… one precious time could such a dawn bring forth a better day, one not ending in horror Could there be some glorious light before darkness falls again –Robyn Elaine Serven –February 5, 2008

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