The world of music licensing and distribution is pretty complex. So when I read an article about venues scrapping live music because they’re being harassed for licensing fees, I have to resist the urge to leap directly from zen to foaming at the mouth.

The gist of the article is that ASCAP and BMI are becoming aggressive about collecting licensing fees from small venues to the point where a lot of them are simply opting to no longer offer live music. The minimum yearly licensing fee is $650 in order to “be legal” and ensure that the authors of any cover songs performed in your venue are properly compensated ($650 to each company, mind you). That’s either the deal of the century or a deal-breaker, depending on the number of cover songs performed in your venue over the course of a year.

My knee-jerk instinct is to get raving mad at “the man,” aka the corporate music industry. If the trend mentioned in the article continues, there will be far fewer places for the bands I love to get the exposure they so desperately need. When a venue closes to live music, it affects *all performers* who might use the space including indie bands, open mic participants, local singer-songwriters, etc. Regardless of whether they play cover tunes, or whether they themselves hold licenses for their work, they’re being deprived of performance space and potential revenue. That ain’t good, no matter how you look at it.

However, I have too many unanswered questions to feel comfortable unleashing a rant, which is what I sat down fully intending to do. I was picturing something along the lines of a Snidely Whiplash-type dude cackling and saying, “Muahahahaha! We will crush you, indie bands! One way or the other!” But my gut tells me it just isn’t that simple. What I would love is if my musician friends would take some time to comment and help me better understand this issue.

Because let me tell you, if Snidely really is behind the scenes twirling his moustache, I will unleash hell not only in this space, but in every online space that I occupy. (As a trailer for you fans of creative profanity, the words doucheweasels, assclowns and fucktards will be used in abundance).

The Nation’s health care policy blog recently pointed out the shocking fact that affordable coverage for comprehensive women’s reproductive health care is completely absent from both the House and Senate versions of Health Care Reform. That’s right. Not pared-down or buried beneath legislative double-speak. Absent.

To understand what I mean by this, and why I’m so angry about it, you need to understand the concept of cost-sharing. Cost-sharing is a fancy way of describing the co-pays, coinsurance and deductibles that policy holders are liable for when they seek medical care. Different types of plans have different types of cost-sharing.

Both versions of the legislation contain language exempting certain services from cost-sharing. Among them:

• maternity care
• newborn care
• pediatric vision and dental care

Pap smears and mammograms are also provided for in the legislation.

If the bills passed today and went through reconciliation with this language intact, insurers would be required to provide those services at no additional cost to the policy-holder. In other words, if you get pregnant and have a baby under this proposed legislation, your insurer could not charge you a dime beyond your basic premium.

But that’s great, right? What a step forward for women!!

Yeah…not so much. Because markedly absent from the list of protected services are:

• birth control counseling
• birth control procedures (such as IUD insertion, tubal ligation, etc.)
• pelvic exams
• STD screenings.

Congress is essentially saying that if you’re procreating, we’ll take care of you. If you’re having sex for any other reason, you’re shit out of luck unless you have the money to pay for reproductive health services out of pocket. It’s a legislative version of the old Madonna/whore complex. Tut, tut, says Congress. Don’t you know that sex is for making babies, you unrepentant whores? If you’d just keep your legs shut, you wouldn’t need those services anyway.

Congress can kiss my ass, because that isn’t reform. It’s a sick joke that’s going to continue to doom hundreds of thousands of women to sub-standard health care. Women who are going to die from cancer, become infertile from undiagnosed STDs, or *god forbid* women who are going to add to the abortion rate because they didn’t have access to affordable reproductive health care.

The article rightly points out that Congress can’t cater to every special interest group in crafting this legislation and I get that. However, 50% of the population is not a special interest group. We deserve to be heard over the braying cacophony of the hard-right wingers.

More importantly, we deserve to be treated with respect by the growing group of so-called Democrats in Congress who refuse to go to bat for anything involving the word “reproductive” because “women’s bodies have become political lightning rods, even when abortion is not the issue.” That kind of chicken-shit defection from traditional Democratic values makes me even more angry than the Republican asshattery, because at least that, I’ve come to expect.

The Senate is now considering their version of the legislation and eventually will have to reconcile their bill with the House. Contacting your representative won’t do much good at this point, so I suggest you contact your Senator about this. You can be sure I have.

A friend linked me to this article posted today on CNN.com. I read it. It’s not terrible. It’s not great. It’s typical pseudo-news, skimming the surface of a complex issue and designed specifically to provoke extreme reactions. It irritates me that this multi-faceted issue that affects my life so strongly is clearly being used as an attention grab by CNN. You can see that in the comments, which range from the usual “HEATHENS OMG WTF WHAT ABOUT THE CHILLLLDREEENNNN??” to (a few) thoughtful remarks on the nature of monogamy and whether it’s a sustainable social construct.

After reading each of the comments (OK, I admit it, I skipped over the worst of the fundie doggerel) I’m left with the thought that I’m not really doing or feeling anything much different than the majority of mono people out there. I have relationships outside my marriage. Whoop de do. So do more than 50% of mono people. The difference?

I’m honest about it.

My husband and I refuse to embrace the self-flagellating dogma that you can only have an affair if you feel really, really bad about it afterwards. We refuse to allow the societal expectation that loving more than one person at a time is wrong to destroy the beautiful thing that is our marriage. And despite what some people have intimated, our marriage is not diminished by this. It’s nurtured by our ability to accept one other. Our marriage is as strong as it is precisely because we freely admit that neither of us can be each other’s everything all of the time, nor do we want to.

The media will persist in using fluffy human-interest stories about polyamory to rile up their subscribers and drive people to their content. Therefore, those of us who practice must fearlessly persist in telling the truth from our point of view as well.

I happened to be watching the Today Show this morning (which I virtually never do) and heard that they’re doing a special report on the state of women in America. All well and good, I think as I’m watching the anchors describe what they’re going to be covering.

But then they mention something about the ways modern working wives and mothers’ lives differ from their own mothers. To illustrate the mothers we are supposedly so different from, they showed a bit of stock video of a June Cleaver-style, 1950s era mom.

There’s a demographic problem with this. Any woman born and raised in the 1950s would now be retirement-age and therefore, not the purported focus of the story. I’m 42 and when I think of my mother, I think of the 1970s when she, herself, was working as were many of her generational cohort. The silliness of the stereotype gets worse as you go down in age. I seriously doubt that very many 20-something women in 2009 had moms who wore a frilly apron daily, let alone who would have been filmed in black and white.

Our lives are certainly different from our mothers’, but it’s simplistic to say that it’s because we work and our mothers didn’t. That’s a ridiculous fallacy and it completely ignores the subsequent generations of women to enter the workforce. By doing this, the Today Show is perpetuating an image of women that should have died a natural death a long time ago. They’re presenting a dangerously idealized image of women that simply has no relevance in the 21st Century. Not only that, but they’re denigrating my mother’s generation, mine, and anyone else’s who could have grown daughters by implying that this is the image people should have of us.

My mother was *not* June Cleaver and neither am I.

I’m enormously frustrated with the willful ignorance that’s manifested itself in both my life and in the larger world this week. It’s mainly been focused on two things: flu shots and the economy.

People have always made decisions and formed opinions based on their personal experiences and knowledge. I get that. It’s the easiest way to decide most things. “Based on what I know, how will this action effect me and my family?” It’s how people have come to define what they know that’s driving me crazy.

More credible information is available more easily today than at any point in history. A solid internet search can turn up dozens of credible studies, journals, blogs written by experts, articles, etc. (I’ll get to defining credible in a moment.) Yet more people seem willfully determined to ignore verifiable, proven and tested evidence in favor of crackpot theories and unproven hypotheses than ever before. It’s a dichotomy that honestly puzzles me.

It’s not hard to learn how to tell a credible source from a non-credible source. I teach my students to do it in a week’s worth of instruction. It doesn’t take a rocket-scientist to figure out that Glenn Beck, a pseudo-journalist, is not a credible source of information on, oh, let’s say swine flu. The first lesson I teach my students is the closer you get to the primary source, the more credible the information is likely to be. This is why, in the old days, journalists were taught to get two independent sources before publishing a story. (The second lesson is that credibility doesn’t necessarily equal ironclad truth, but that’s another blog.)

Unfortunately, we can no longer trust the media, social or traditional, to provide unbiased information, if they ever did. It’s become incumbent upon us to do our own fact finding, form our own opinions, and make our own decisions based on those facts and opinions. Too many people never even bother to ask themselves, “Is this posting on an internet forum about someone’s Aunt Martha getting the flu from a flu shot more credible than this scientific study that says that’s not possible?” or to delve further, “Who funded this scientific study and how does that affect its credibility?” They never even bother to *try* to access the amazing wealth of credible information that exists on the Internet and elsewhere.

Yes, there’s an overload of information out there. Yes, it’s intimidating. It’s no wonder that many people willfully choose to remain ignorant or blindly follow the Glenn Becks of the world. But these are our lives and our families lives we’re talking about. Isn’t it worth it to wade in and become informed, if only about the things that affect us most closely? Next time you express an opinion or make an important decision, stop for just a minute and ask yourself, what am I basing this on? A message-board post? A friend-of-a-friend? A self-diagnosis? A talk show heard on the way to work? Do you believe these to be truly credible sources?

If so, there’s not much I can do about it. People are going to believe what people are going to believe and I must respect their right to believe it, frustrating though it might be for me. There is, however, one thing I can and will do. If someone brings their opinions and decisions into my public spaces (my home, my blog, my Facebook, etc.) without credible evidence to back them up, they should expect to be politely questioned about their rationale and possibly presented with evidence to the contrary. And for the record, getting butthurt when these things occur will not score them points in the debate, believe me.

I respect my own intellect too much to silently acquiesce to willful ignorance without question. My public spaces give me the platform to question, and question I will. (Actually, if you know me, you know that last sentence should read: question I *must*.)

One of my favorite things about autumn (and spring for that matter) is being able to have the windows open. I’m sitting here with a lovely fall breeze freshening the house and dusting off the air-conditioned funk that’s built up over the summer. Lest you think my house smells, it’s not a physical stink. It’s a spiritual stagnation brought about by enforced isolation from nature.

Here in Missouri, air conditioning is a necessity well into September. If it’s not oppressively hot, the allergens are so bad that filtration is a must. We don’t have to turn on the heat until November, typically, but then it stays on until late March or so and brings about the same dampening of spiritual energy.

I have not discussed paganism much in this blog, but it is a large part of my life. I don’t belong to a coven. I don’t call myself the High Priestess of the Concocted Mysteries, Third Degree. I don’t cast spells. I don’t even worship a specific deity. My faith is in nature, the sun, the stars, the moon, and in the great One that is above all the universe. Call it what you will, God, Allah, Buddha, Ceridwen, to me all gods are one and the One is all gods.

So, when I get too cut off from nature, my spirit wilts. No…I’m not a camper or an outdoorswoman. In fact, I’m far from that. My idea of camping is the Motel 6 and a hike is a walk around the block. But I still need to feel the breezes and hear them rustle through the trees. I need to taste the air before a storm and smell the freshness when it’s passed. I need to feel connected in my own small way. When I do, my spirit expands beyond the boundaries of my body and twines with nature in an ecstasy that’s impossible to articulate.

My religion…the church of open windows…

I understand that polyamory isn’t for everyone. In fact, I understand it isn’t for most people. I get that people are going to be uncomfortable with the way I live my life at times. I have no control over the attitudes and opinions that people form when they find out who and what I am. That said, I’m not going to put myself in the closet because it makes people uncomfortable.

Recently I had what I’ve come to know is an unfortunately common experience. Guy A finds out I’m poly. Guy A therefore assumes that any contact initiated by me is a come-on because you know…poly girls will do anyone. *snort* Guy A can’t handle this and acts like a doofus every time I’m around him. It’s gone from mildly amusing to making me seethe. I came very close to telling him off the other night and I thought maybe it would be instructive to do so here.

Dear You Know Who You Are:

You seem to lack a fundamental understanding of what it means to be polyamorous. Allow me to educate you. It does not mean that I will sleep with anyone possessing the proper equipment. That is called being a slut, which I am most certainly not. I liked you, made an offer intended to allow me to get to know you better and I was turned down. No big deal. Being polyamorous also doesn’t mean that I don’t have discernment. From your reaction to a one-time, simple overture, I quickly discovered that you could never be my type and I let it drop. So I don’t really see your continuing discomfort as my problem.

What has become my problem is that you won’t let this go. Move on, already. Accept the fact that I challenge your boundaries and leave it at that. But please, don’t act as though you are doing me a favor by speaking to me. I let the matter drop months ago and you continue to be challenged by a non-existent situation. You are not all that and a bag of chips as you seem to think. Unlike some of the women with whom you surround yourself, I’m not going to fawn all over you and tell you what you want to hear just so I can be in the glorious light of your presence. In short, you sir, need to grow the hell up.

Furthermore, if you’re going to make judgments about me based on gossip, misinformation and outright lies by people who are acting out of simple jealousy, you are not a person I care to know in any way. Polyamory is based wholly on honesty and open communication. Because of that, I have extremely limited patience with games and drama of the sort that you attempt to pull every time I see you. So once again, I am going to attempt what I’ve done the past few months and let this go. I really hope you can do the same, because it’s getting old.

Any questions? Feel free to ask.

With extreme annoyance, Leah.

I’ve noticed lately that when the subject of healthcare reform comes up, many people become uncomfortable and demur, usually with a statement like, “I hate talking about politics.” I don’t get this. Has the issue become politicized? Yes. Has the discourse degenerated to name-calling and stupidity? Certainly. But if ordinary citizens can’t talk rationally about something that affects their day-to-day life, something is very wrong.

It’s all too easy, especially for centrists with health insurance (who comprise the majority of Americans), to dismiss issues like this one as “political” and blithely disengage. But when people do that, it opens the door for the fringe to dominate the discussion. Think about that. Do you really want the far-right to determine the future of healthcare simply because they can shout louder? Or the far left, who seem hell-bent on getting their public option to the point where they would rather scuttle any reform that doesn’t include it, no matter how meaningful?

Life is busy. I get that. I’m sure most people would far rather relax with a book or TV program than think about this hydra-headed issue. It certainly makes my brain hurt. But to not think about it and discuss it, to dismiss it as “politics,” is to give over control of the process to people who don’t have the best interests of the majority at heart. There have been many tragic mistakes made over the course of history because the majority remained silent. Don’t let this become one of them.

This weekend, if you haven’t already done so, I’m asking you to find an hour to do a little research, think about what your concerns are, then share them with your Congressional Representative here and your Senator here.

I’ve been thinking about scarcity lately. We live in a scarcity culture, as demonstrated by so many things. We squabble about spending resources on health care. We fear that immigrants will steal our resources. We’re jealous when someone gets an opportunity that we don’t. We compete over jobs, lovers and friends. We do these things because society tells us that if someone else gets something, by definition it takes something away from us.

But does it really? Or are we just too caught up in defending our own small patch of the universe that we fail to see that the most important things exist in enough abundance for everyone to share? Some things will always exist in limited quantities. Time. Physical energy. Money. Food. But the relative scarcity of these things can be offset by the limitless supplies of creativity, love, and regard for our fellow human beings.

Think about it. Perhaps someone you know gets an amazing opportunity. Or your best friend makes a new friend. Do these things truly diminish you in any way? Whether you believe they do or not depends on whether you’re living your life with an attitude of scarcity or one of abundance. It’s a conscious choice.

I choose abundance. When friends and family have good fortune, I choose to rejoice with and for them. Sometimes, it’s not an easy choice. Sometimes, good things happen to people I don’t particularly care for and it’s all too easy to slip into wondering why they deserved it and I didn’t. It is often an exercise in sheer will to continue believing that there are as many good things out there waiting for me as for anyone else. But for me, there is no alternative other than living a life filled with bitterness and envy which I flatly refuse to do.

I just finished reading the text of President Obama’s speech to schoochildren that he’s planning to deliver today, the first day of school for many children in America. As I expected, there’s a glaring absence of political content. He exhorts students to stay in school, find out what they’re good at, be responsible citizens, etc. He also re-tells my favorite story from the campaign about getting up at 4:30 in the morning to study with his mother and her answer to his complaints, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.”

But what I love most about this speech is the following bit of unassuming prose: “You’ll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You’ll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You’ll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.”

Knowledge. Problem-solving skills. Insights. Critical thinking skills. Creativity. Ingenuity. All things that are critically important in today’s world and all in woefully short supply in this country. In fact, the debate over the speech itself demonstrates just how little some Americans engage in critical thinking in particular.

One of my most vivid childhood memories is of watching President Nixon resign his office. I was six years old, roughly the age my daughter is now. We were at the state fair in New Jersey, where we lived at the time. I remember being told to be quiet because the President was making an important speech. But my parents didn’t just hush me and protect me. They explained to me, in words a child could understand, what was happening and why they felt the resignation was significant.

All my young life, my father engaged me on the issues. He loved (and still does) to debate with me, challenging my views and making me think more deeply about my positions. Nothing drew more scorn from him than saying I’d heard it somewhere and therefore believed it. Simply put, he taught me to think for myself.

That, more than anything else, is what bothers me the most about the controversy regarding the President’s address. It’s not that people have different political views that I do. It’s not even that some parents would rather their child be excused from viewing the speech. That’s their right. It’s that an entire segment of the population is blindly, unquestioningly following a few noisy, lazy, ignorant people to whom critical thinking, logic and introspection are anathema.

That kind of blind obedience to anyone, be it God, Jesus or a radio talk show host, scares the wits out of me. Life is questioning. Life is seeking. Life is learning. Without those things, it’s just a long, boring slog to the end of the line. Who would choose to live like that?