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The Betty Blog

Special Note: Scroll down and see the entries below. The most recent is the first you'll see, and the earlier ones are on down. You are welcome to reply by e-mail to: BettyS@bettyslist.com.

The Betty Blog Anthem: "There's No Letter Better Than B" performed by The Dixie Chicks.

"Characters" mentioned in multiple entries: Miss Louise, Betty's mom now deceased; Pop, father now deceased; Stan, big brother; Liz, daughter; John, son-in-law; Audrey, first partner & Liz's other mommy; Tonda, second partner; Sherrye Garrett, colleague, business partner & friend; Margie Adam, singer/songwriter; Barb Rush, longtime friend and co-founder of the "Party Women"; "Tha Girls," Dixie Chicks: Emily Robison, Martie Mcguire, Natalie Maines; Mary Juanita, childhood best friend; Ed Brownson, tech consultant & confidant; Kathleen McGuire & Tha Guys, Artistic Directory/Conductor San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus and the 200 guys who do what she tells them; David Perry, PR guru; Miss Frances & Louie-the-Great, attack cats guarding this site.

(Photos 1 & 3: Cynthia Lee Katona)

Ladies Night - 1st Thurdays

Thursday, February 4th

Thoughts on Ladies Night, Singles Programs
. . . and 1st Thursdays

Here's a nod to shorter blog entries. Tonight Stacy Poulos, Sharon Van Loon and I sat around the bar at Orson and solved the problems of the world. Stacy told me about the video of Finding Stella she has created that's on YouTube, so I posted a link to it on our homepage. Chris Snyder is definitely hot, and I do not know what hot really means! But, she is . . .

"The Original" Ladies Night with Betty on the 1st Thursday each month now includes a hosted "Singles Section." Tonight Missy Morgan co-hosted with me and we had a relatively small but nice group. We built a fort using the modular furniture in the small lounge on the right side of the bar at Orson. Sometimes the best things happen when the group isn't so big that it's hard to focus and have a good conversation!

(Photo Courtesy Finding Stella)

Entered by BettyS 1:00 AM

Welcoming the New Year, the New Decade

May My Stars All Come Out . . .
Welcoming 2010, the New Year and New Decade!

Near ‘bout impossible. Tis the likelihood that I might overstate, from this vantage point, just how weird a year 2009 has been.

From its strange beginnings with a botched effort to enjoy a curtain call party at MECCA on New Year’s Eve a year ago . . . when the girlfriend literally walked out and left me sitting there . . . to colleagues who have disappeared overnight or ignored invoices or wallowed in indecision . . . to complaints worthy of a Baptist from the Midwest made by an SF club manager about our “too go-go” star dancer and “too loud” music, to being told “get out of my life” to one unexpected turn of events after another all the way to losing a suitemate while cruising the Caribbean Sea, to losing my favorite ring to . . . What more need I say, and there is a lot more . . . but . . . ouch!

What’s worked, however, has worked oh so well . . . outstanding outdoor adventures, the launch of new venues for Ladies Night, a birthday bash I won’t soon forget, outstanding Smart Women business networking evenings all over the Bay Area, and terrific events for Singles led by Chef Amy Shaw . . . there you have it! There were some bright spots amidst the dim and grim.

And I think the year’s highlight may be happening this very night at Ondine in Sausalito where our sold out crowd is set to enjoy an elegant New Year’s Eve Dinner, Dance & Celebration with our featured guests: Twilight Vixen Revue burlesque, jazz artist Shelley Kutilek and DJ Tina Silano from New York City. Olivia’s Tisha Floratos who will moderate the evening wearing her boa, while I hope to sit back and enjoy . . .

My resolution? Once again, hit the treadmill. I discovered yesterday there were none of those peel and stick stars in my desk drawer to reward myself with by affixing one to each date on my calendar when I’ve done a workout of any sort. What? No stars!? But, not to worry as the supply is now replenished and away go I to the land of exercise once more . . . long walks, Gold’s Gym, treadmill, more. One potato, two potato, three potato, four.

Goodbye and good riddance to 2009 . . . an odd, odd-numbered year was she! Hail the New Year lads and lasses, fa la la la la, la la la laaaaaaa!

Graphic Source: Unknown

Entered by BettyS 1:55 AM

At Least on Some Days, It Is Good To Be from Mississippi

November 21, 2009

Of Red Satin, Southern Pride, Parenting and The First Amendment
or . . . At Least On Some Days, It Is Good To Be from Mississippi

My mom dressed me in a handmade red satin outfit for the Holiday Pageant at Culkin School near Vicksburg. My six-year-old heart filled with pride about the shiny red satin and the fur trim too. I stood on the school auditorium stage with classmates from Mrs. Beasley’s First Grade, and we gave our best for that song about the famous reindeer and the red nose.

Fifty years hence, my daughter is pointing out just now the report in today's Huffington Post of the KKK Rally at Ole Miss. It happened as alumni gathered for the annual football game against archrival LSU. The Mississippi Chapter of the Ku Klux Klan was on campus to protest the banning of a song called “From Dixie with Love.”

For several years, the fans at football games tacked on a chant - “The South will rise again!”- at the close of each performance by the marching band. This tune has thus joined Confederate flags and Colonel Reb mascots among game day elements no longer welcome in the stadium.

Now, here am I half a continent away, answering the call from my daughter who’s with my son-in-law at their home in Oxford near the campus. She guides me patiently to her facebook commentary on free speech, divergent opinions and the right to protest, and she points out the link she’s placed there to the HuffPost online coverage.

She speaks to me with pride of fellow alumni from this school known for tailgateing and high rankings on Newsweek’s list of top party schools. Perched at my screen in the hub of San Francisco’s very gay Castro district, I am listening and reading words she wrote on her facebook page: "Today we said no to hate."

We view photos and YouTube videos of Klansmen in bright costumes standing on the steps of an old chapel building where her granddad and grandmom, her uncle, her father and I, each in our own time, once attended lectures. She is adamant I must pay attention to the part in the videos and adjacent AP story about the counter protesters reading the University’s creed – students, faculty, staff and alumni reading in unison.

She points out to me where the designated free speech zone was on campus today and where it was also on the day of the first Presidential Debate between Obama and McCain. She reminds me of a photo she took of a poster declaring “Rednecks for Obama.”

I am preoccupied, though, peering at my screen. I am preoccupied with shiny satin Klan robes appearing digitally before me. The red one is trimmed in green. I see myself on stage in red satin with fur for the Holiday Pageant fifty years ago.

And, I see myself, a high school student, looking out the front door to see the KKK cross burning outside our home that night in the 1960s, during the era of desegregation. My father, her granddad, a Mississippi public school administrator, had refused to meet local Klan demands.

And it occurs to me that I, too, might be prideful on this day, during this phone and online visit with my child who's come to be an adult. It occurs to me that I, too, can have pride in being among Ole Miss alums nationwide who watch as this teapot tempest unfolds peacefully. And I am thankful it is exactly and no more than that.

And I enjoy the thought that there’s no need for me to speak of First Amendment rights on this phone call. No need, indeed, for in this conversation those rights have already been spoken of to me.

And I feel pride in being a parent deemed worthy of alerts from half a continent away, and that I have done my job and so can daydream about red satin memories of long ago.

And, finally, I feel pride that I may be ready, at last, to assume my own grand role in the audience applauding the next generation of singers who cheer for reindeer on a school stage somewhere, should that, in fact, be what comes to be.

Photos: Huffington Post Blog

Added 11:00 PM, 11/21/09

Pumpkins Are at the Safeway . ..

September 23, 2009

Pumpkins at Our Lady of the Safeway
Or . . . What Fall Season Means to Me

Methinks my most very favorite month is just around the corner! October, October, October! The heat would finally break in Greenwood, the self-proclaimed Cotton Capital of the World, down in the Delta during October, during those years I lived there and taught school . . . taught . . . or tried to teach English to speakers of a local dialect . . . and how that led me into the field of linguistics I would pursue later at Columbia University in New York.

I have always loved the Fall season. Using Crayola crayons in the 1st and 2nd and 3rd and 4th grades to color up images of the season - leaves turning to show their xanthophylls and carotenes - pumpkins and witches and black cats and scarecrows - turkeys and the horn of plenty - footballs and cheerleaders - mistletoe, angels and Santa Claus by the tree and fireplace. I loved the intoxicating smell of fresh purple ink from the ditto machine, predecessor to what we now call a photocopier.

How I loved the sound of my father's voice on the loud speaker at school or from the press box above the bleachers at the first football game, and I loved seeing him crown the homecoming queen. How I loved my mom's confidence and enthusiasm for Beowulf, The Wife of Bath, Macbeth and also the Dart Throwing Booth she oversaw with her Senior Class students at the annual Halloween Carnival in that classic school gymnasium where one could always count on winning at the cakewalk.

How I love those memories of heading up the way from Vicksburg toward Water Valley and on to Taylor, the tiny town where Miss Louise was born in the house her father built there by the railroad, and driving across the wooden bridge over the creek where folks knew there was a swimming hole and the other one over the Yocona River, Yocona . . . root word for the fictional county in Sartoris and so many more that Mr. Bill wrote stream-of-consciousness. Do you know stream-of-consciousness when you see it?

How I love some of those memories of Fall with Liz's father when we made out in the backseat of his cousin's car on the way home from a game, or in his room in the men's dorm over by the old cafeteria at Ole Miss where I spent the night with him more times than can be counted on two hands. And the time we stayed over in Gatlinburg after going to a game against the Tennessee Vols where we said Hotty Toddy and some similar such about "nothing sucks like the Big Orange sucks." Am I really writing about him? What's this world coming to? Passing health care reform is more likely.

And I loved those drives toward home down through the Delta, looking out across the cotton fields and seeing smoke going up from the chimney of a sharecropper's house along the way, wondering what they were cooking, and how Miss Louise and Pop would welcome me when I got there, sometimes with bar-b-qued chicken, baked beans and lemon or pecan pie.

And there were the years we all drove school buses for the Oxford Municipal School District to make some extra cash for our final years in college and then first years of graduate school. How much I liked the kids on my St. Andrew's Circle route, many of them youngsters whose parents were professors there at the University where William Faulkner's words are immortalized on the side of a wall at the big library and the annual Yoknapatawpha Conference is held and we laughed at the graffiti in the elevator that said "Jesus Saves" and under it was written "At the Bank of Oxford."

And that Fall season I was teaching in Holly Springs in the latter months of pregnancy with Liz, climbing up those stairs in the Holly High building that's now gone, and how the following year I was in the Homecoming Parade with my students going around the courthouse square where the infamous Marshall County Sheriff's Office was located and the Dollar Store.

How I love the memories of Basketball Season finally starting and marching in the Viking Band with my snare drum and the time we marched up Washington Street in the annual Christmas Parade, our drum section playing our new cadence with all our hearts - Claudia, Alan and me along with that boy with a special name, Happy, who died a few years later in a car wreck.

How I love the memories of the Fall season activities in Memphis during my coming out years when we played volleyball at a Memphis NOW retreat at Shelby Forest or when Audrey and I were first dating and she took me to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show and told me what the toast and newspapers, lighters and squirt guns were all about, and together we took my students to see the traveling company of the Broadway show Chicago at the Orpheum, the first ever Broadway show either my students or I had ever seen . . . but not so for Audrey who grew up visiting aunts in New Youk and going to college in the Ivy League. I was so excited and optimistic about life back then.

And that Fall season when three friends of mine took me to New York to visit the campus at Columbia and we left the car at Newark Airport and rode a bus into the Port Authority Terminal because none of us had the nerve to drive through the Lincoln Tunnel and into Manhattan. I remember that very moment of seeing the skyline for my first time, and then looking back at it for one last look as we headed back down the New Jersey Turnpike a few days later.

There were four subsequent Fall seasons in New York, and oh yes, Halloween times in Bancroft Hall when I was a witch at the door. We spent Thanksgivings watching the big parade out the window of the building where Audrey's cousins lived on Central Park West. In December, Audrey made a wreath by stringing up bagels and she hung it outside on our door.

Then there are those memories of Fall season living in Washington, DC and northern Virginia where the colors of leaves are pronounced and one year I boxed up a bunch of them with a pumpkin and shipped it off to Liz who was living in New Orleans and they have no leaves to speak of, and mowing the lawn for the last time before Winter at the home Tonda and I shared there by Nottingham Street where Miss Frances, as a tiny runt kitten, first came to live with us and she ran so fast around the backyard it looked like she was levitating above the grass.

That backyard where I found out about bird-feeders and wars with squirrels and the suburban possum that climbed up the walnut tree and hid out under the deck behind our house. The deck where Tonda's dog Jessie cornered that possum more than once and woke us up in the middle of the night sounding off barking for all she was worth. And the possum just bared its teeth at the dog and sneered like saying "You wouldn't dare!"

I have so many memories about Fall, about going hiking in the Marin Headlands during my first season here in the Bay Area and looking out over the Pacific Ocean and thinking what a place this is, and memories of setting up booths for one group or another year after year at the Castro Street Fair and having been there under a canopy in all kinds of weather.

And this year, well, I do sequester here in my hermitage, nursing aches and pains from foolishness, and it is good to see during this time an accomplished New York Yankees team has this very day clinched a playoff spot, the Ole Miss football team is ranked #5 in the nation, and the Giants and Colts where Archie Manning's boys are quarterbacks, both have won their first two games in the new season. Archie was quarterback at Ole Miss when I was there and saw him walk the campus with a pretty girl who is now wife and mom of NFL stars. It works for some, I guess.

I welcome this Fall as a time of recovery and re-connection with my heritage and thoughts of what kind of legacy there might be for the work I've been devoted to the past decade and almost a half and thoughts of the more immediate time to come and what needs to be done. And though I fancy myself a gentle soul like Miss Louise, the part of me Pop influenced has risen, so there's a sign hung on my door just now saying "Beware! She's finally angry and suffers no fool!" Miss Louise was like that too, quiet and sweet until she was finally angry or fed up once in a while.

Yes, pumpkins are at the Castro Safeway now, so I must go once more to retrieve one, maybe two. I like tending pumpkins. I like seeing the church, St Francis Luthean, across the street from my grocery store, the church where the PFLAG Chapter meets. Funny, it is that church that 'tis referred to by some locals as they smile and say: "Our Lady of the Safeway."

(Vintage Postcard Image - Source Unkown)

Entered 7:30 PM

Of Culkin Wildcats . . .

Saturday, August 29th

Of Culkin Wildcats, Warren Central Vikings and the Fort Hill Bicycle Gang

facebook is changing things. My grade school, junior high and high school classmates are finding me out here on the edge of the continent in the Land of Fruit and Nuts. I haven't seen or heard tell of most of them since 2001 when I dared go with Dr. Leon back to Vicksburg for our 30th High School Class Reunion.

They voted and awarded me their "The Most Changed" declaration, which set off an essay back to them about how happy I was to have changed and about how I wished some of that for some of them. Shortly, I noticed the e-mails stopped coming and I figured they had dropped me from the list . . .

Some of them are finding me now, and I don't know if they really know who I am or what I am these days. Do I care? Well, yes, I suppose I do. Some of them are "way cool" southern folk free thinkers who could give a hoot about sexual or gender identification or what anybody does about anything so long as they are good to others. Some of them, I suspect, hardly know the meaning of gender or sexuality-related terms, and some of them claim in their profiles to be very conservative and religious.

Perhaps I shall become their conduit to a friend-of-queers sensibility, such as my children have, or maybe PFLAG gets new members. I think some of those girls in our class were among the first I ever fell in love with . . . and they are still beautiful . . . and some have memories of my playhouse.

I'll invite them to come visit out here, and we'll drive across the Golden Gate with the top down and sing Beach Boys songs and yell at the top of our lungs about pushing our bicycles all the way up Fort Hill in the Vicksburg National Military Park on a hot and humid Mississippi day way back when we were . . . well, we were probably about in Mrs. Wilkinson's Class or some where there 'bouts. Kathy and I chat about that sometimes.

Do they really want to be friends with me on facebook?

I typed "Culkin Wildcats" in and Google searched. The thing spun and spun and spun . . . and I thought I'd have to refresh and start over. Then comes the list and it's all about that child actor Macaulay. Somehow, I found my way to the Culkin alumni website Annie Douglas keeps and found they've written there about Miss Louise and her English teaching.

What popped up on my desktop here, as I searched for a place to copy and paste their words to keep and read again sometime, . . . what popped up was something about Conde Nast declaring Infusion to be one of the Top 35 hottest new clubs in the world. Tomorrow I'll go back to writing about Infusion, Orson and gay life here in The Castro. Not the Baptist Church, as my cousins write about.

I wonder what Miss Louise might have said about my writings on that phenomenon we call "Ladies Night." Probably she'd say something she said so many times and I hated it: "Do the best you can. That's all a mule can do." Admitting I too say it now . . . she was cutting me a break but at the same time urging me on and inspiring me too. A friend I told about that recently asked if Miss Louise might have been comparing me to a jackass.

Well, there you have it! Her students wrote that she had a wicked dry sense of humor. She spoke from the grave when my friend said the jackass part, since I'd never even thought of it that way in all these years. I think, too, that my friend, who is a California girl, probably doesn't have a clue about the difference between a jackass and a mule.

I think Miss Louise also would most likely have found it funny what Pop said to me the last time I saw him before he died: "Go on out now and get your brother." In other words, get the hell out of my hospital room . . . But, hey, I had the last word anyway in his . . . his what's called a eulogy . . . and I spoke right at him too from up there at the funeral home podium, looking down upon the flowers and his casket, the casket my brother had picked out before I got there. My brother was always there before I got there.

Sometimes lately I've missed ole Pop and wished he were here to cook up something with me late at night like we used to do when I went home. He'd stuff some leftover cornbread with a teaspoon into a glass of cold milk, finish it off and then have a link of pork sausage from Bryan's packing company in Jackson . . . He'd say nothing and cook one for me, too, just because he knew I loved them wrapped in a slice of Wonder bread. But, I never have understood why he liked so much having cornbread soaked in cold milk.

Where I live now there are so many varieties of fancy baked fresh bread with special stuff inside, like olives or cherry 'n chocolate or more grains than anyone can count. So many to choose from, it's hard to say, but none of it here smells as good to me as Koestler's Bakery did when we rode by there on Clay Street headed to what we called downtown Vicksburg. I have come to know that Vickburg really has no downtown or uptown either.

So, when someone asks me that question: When did you know you were gay? I used to say I knew in first grade when my best friend Mary and I got locked in our classroom's restroom one time. I've realized, though, that it was even earlier. As a toddler, I had a favorite babysitter, one of Miss Louise's students. Her name was NonaVee and she was indeed my very first dreamgirl. On some level Miss Louise knew it too, because she'd always ask NonaVee first if she was available to come over, if she could, and take care of me. When NonaVee did come, I was then just sure - even though I could not explain why - that all was good in this world.

(Entered 12:45 AM)

(Vicksburg National Military Park Photo)

Barefootin'

April 1, 2009

Barefootin’

'Tis April Fool’s when the St. Stupid’s Day Parade happens every year in San Francisco’s Financial District – another reason, perhaps, why we do live here . . .

But . . . I do not love April, not anything like October. April is my Birthday Month, nonetheless, and time has come to plan at least a week of birthday celebrations.

Miss Louise, when best friend Mary and I were kids, would give us her green light so we could go barefoot on April 1st. ‘Twas thus then and shall ever be. April 1st. Barefoot.

By mid-summer, Mary and I could and did run across the rocks up the gravel road with no need for shoes. But not on the 1st day of April. We were reminded every year . . . we were just tenderfoots with tender feet. No hope of running on the gravel in early Spring, yet hope still springs eternal this day every year. Miss Louise is turning over about typos and grammar . . . I know this to be true.

Dr. Leon has gifted me a CD of himself singing gospel tunes. I listened to it yesterday. I listened to it all the way through while driving down to San Jose. His voice is a melodious and mature one now. I like it better than I did when he sang for us in high school. I have not heard him sing for . . . well, shall we say, several decades, but I’ve always loved that he is by, for and about music.

Dr. Leon begins his CD with a spoken essay about “home” and what it means going back to Rawhide, his family’s ranch there in central Mississippi where we grew up. He talks about going home or coming home as a source of solace and recalls his peaceful walks in the woods.

Among all the tunes in the collection on the CD, that perennial favorite “How Great Thou Art” struck me as most familiar and one I could sing along with, passing the Menlo Park and Palo Alto exits on California Highway 101, going on down the peninsula freeway in LaLa Land. Yes, I confess to singing gospel tunes once more here in LaLa Land.

I have learned the difference between freeway and expressway, the former being in California and the latter in New York. Both, however, can be extended parking lots. I have also learned the difference between singing gospel songs because you are serious and singing gospel songs for the pure joy of the musicology, the lore, regionalisms and culture . . . dare I say "southern culchah" or the appreciation thereof.

Dr. Leon might come to visit this year to check out the boys in the Castro. He complains with vigor when I do not write here about my memories of growing up. Perhaps this entry will sufficeat least a while. There are no pumpkins to speak of this month, however, so I shall recount that today I learned while watching Matha Stewart on TV that the birthstone for April, the diamond, is a symbol for . . . innocence. I believe I have lost mine. Diamonds and innocence alike, that is. Martha's lost hers too, you say?

Dr. Leon is the man, my first grade sweetheart, I should have married him - after Liz’s father, of course but only because he is her father. I should have had Dr. Leon's children. It is too late now.

Thus, I am just waiting to be "Grand Betty" when I can reaffirm Miss Louise's grand tradition. I, too, shall then be telling kids it is okay. Go barefoot today. Feel the cool of young grass blades between your feet. So tender and new they are now, before becoming dusty, dry and hot with Summer heat there in the rich Delta cotton country.

Photo Source Unknown

Entered 10:30 PM

January's Come In with a Bang Thus Far . . .

January 27, 2009

January’s Come In with a Bang Thus Far . . .
And We've Five More Days Yet to Happen!

New Year’s Day found me battling severe laryngitis and a sore throat. Then, a round of antibiotics later, we’re on the go! Speaking of "go," those young women from GoGetYourGirlOn.com have joined "Betty's List" supporters and friends for so much fun . . . They have caused the fun. No, it wouldn't do to tell. My linguistics professor once smiled broadly telling us that the word "go" in English translated to Japanese means "come." Think on that for a while, will ya?

One week to the day into 2009 and we celebrated the first Ladies Night at Orson. Yes, Orson is the new home of our signature weekly event for women and their friends. This move was not one that I decided on quickly or easily given that MECCA has been a second home for six years. But year seven finds us joining Chef Elizabeth Falkner and her life/business partner Sabrina Riddle at their dynamite new restaurant Orson. The first two Ladies Nights at Orson have been outstanding and all bodes well for more, more, more! Yes, someday I will write my story of MECCA . . . and it will have to be one of those they call a "tell all." Geez . . . how I've love the good times there, now all gone.

Liz, my daughter, and her “other mommy” Audrey called at 3:00 AM (PST) on Tuesday morning, January 20th to let me know they were sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial awaiting the Inaugural of President Barack Obama. What a day for me - lover of historic events and live media coverage - watching the scenes on multiple TVs and web streaming too, direct from Washington, DC. The evening found me with friends at The Green Room on Van Ness Avenue at the War Memorial Building for the SF Democratic Party’s official Inaugural Party.

Two days later found me at Orson and then on to Ruby Skye for the annual Curve L-Word Premiere Issue Party where L-Word star rose Rollins (Tasha) and DJ Pat Pat from Miami plus go-go dancing girls got the crowd – including me –going, going, going . . . gone! A fun time was had by all! Yeah, we had fun in that festive atmosphere.

In other news, my boots are made for walking once more heading down to the Ferry Building and around about the Castro neighborhood too. One of those outings found me finding and claiming my first ever serious grown-up desk at the Under One Roof Sale at the old Tower Records store just up the street a bit and across Market. Todd, Cheryl and a good neighbor came to my rescue for the move and installation up a flight of San Francisco stairs. The damn thing is heavy. Let’s rephrase that. My lovely new elegant desk is quite well made and not easy to move around, especially not up a flight of San Francisco stairs!

And January has five more days to go yet! Go get your girl on . . .!

(Photo by Trish Tunney)

Entered 4:45 AM

Ladies Night @ Orson

January 9, 2009

Sometimes I Have to Pinch Myself and Ask Is This for Real . . . or
Could It Be that Orson Really Is a Girl?

I suppose we don't really know what's going to happen until it happens. Last night the love, support, good cheer and good-times-had-by-all by the 300+ who joined us at Orson for the first Ladies Night there in the new location . . . well, it blew my socks off . . . and I liked it. Yeah.

A huge room full of women and their friends, well, you all never cease to amaze me when I'm there looking at it happening and feeling gratitude and somehow wanting to say to someone, anyone, pinch me, is this for real?

Yeah, we sort of knew ahead of time that the vibe was right and the evening would be fun, but who knew? How could anyone really know that it would be huge and once again I would wish to jump over and help a cute bartender move the drinks along . . .

. . . She was saying how she had several orders "in my head" that she was working on, and how she would get to us just as soon as possible, and it was true how you knew in your heart of hearts that she meant that just as sure as she was there in front of you moving stuff around, working hard. And everybody was saying how no one knew the turnout would be more than twice what could have been anticipated.

The energy was high with a special vibe and everyone was understanding and gracious and excited and happy and congratulating Chef Elizabeth and Sabrina and me, too, and wow, there were women who came that I haven't seen in years. And several of my closest dear, dear friends were there in case I needed hot tea for my laryngitis or to be carried down the road for any or all of the reasons that might have been. And there were women there asking "Are you really Betty of 'Betty's List' . . .?" and that, you know, always evokes a chuckle. And on the way home, Cheryl and I were laughing so hard and so happy and making wrong turns in the streets like we'd come from somewhere we'd never been before or just liked the idea of riding around for a while.

Well, something inside me says now it is a "New Day"! and it's off to a new start and it's great to be in women's space where indeed, indeed "All are welcome!". . . all who are friends and friends of friends and . . . must always know the welcome part. Where, indeed, there's a wish to make sure that you are heard and being female, being a lesbian, being woman-centered, is a good thing after all. And, I was soooooooooo glad Michael came - in his Everyman kind of way - bringing those Michael kind of well wishes he has.

Yes, y'all do come . . . Orson . . . check it out. Enjoy the feast of the five senses. Stay tuned for more and yes, I'll make an effort - however inadequate it may be or impossible the task to grasp and explain - to record or capture the feel, the energy and my own deep sense of gratitude and smiles and smiles and smiles!

My own sense of how media - in all its manifestations - can be good and powerful and makes it possible to be in control of choices . . . and that high blown philosophical abstract stuff is lurking there at Orson somewhere in the subtle background of analysis and it's there in the architecture and demolition menu and in the end, the young bartender wins . . . wins hearts and minds . . . and in the end we are all so happy to have a place called Ladies Night, whatever that means, to gather and well, just be!

When it was all said and done as the evening waxed and waned, she paused shaking up some fancy drink, she smiled and said with no prompting from anyone anywhere, "Thank you for this . . . and see you next week . . . " or something like that.

And, I was reminded once more of talking with Kate Kendell earlier about how rewarding it is to see these fabulous young women emerging in our community as strong professionals and leaders and carriers of our culture. Why, they were there for sure . . . all over, and some of us more like me, we were basking in the glory of watching them and I, appreciative that while they are not our students, they always will be even as they are our friends and colleagues . . . there, in that great big beautiful space that has many parts to it where all are welcome that has much to look at and enjoy and feel and taste! That new space with a name straight out of cinematic lore . . .Orson . . . Why, well, why couldn't it be that Orson is a girl's name after all?

Okay, what about the Sexy's Back part? She was there too, Sexy, for real, all over the place with it's many, many sexy sections. Sexy's at Orson and is in all of us and she's gorgeous in her own right whomever and where ever she shows up and wants to be. It's good to be Sexy at Ladies Night, or not, just be who you are and well, quite frankly . . . be!

Photo by Cathy Blackstone, Special to "Betty's List"

MORE PHOTOS - Link to additional photos from Jan. 8th, 2009 Ladies Night

Entered 1/9/09 3:00 AM

Olde Year Out, Adieu! Adieu! – Welcome Now The New! The New!

December 31, 2008

Olde Year Out, Adieu! Adieu! – Welcome Now The New! The New!

To the Olde Year, I say . . . So long! Farewell! So very glad that you are gone!

Yes, and we sure did accomplished a lot, in spite of ourselves.

To say 2008 was stressful is an understatement. Could I have lived it better? Yes, and the way would have been by exercising more and paying closer attention to nutrition and health matters. That’s my #1 observation . . .

Did good things happen? Oh, yes! And some of them have surely set the tone for future growth and new directions. There were a lot of good times with a lot of good friends, new friends and those who will become friends as time goes . . .

Favorite memories include a surprisingly pleasant ride on the Cal Train to South Bay one day, me the driver - not the passenger - with the top down to Guerneville for Russian River Women’s Weekend in May, hiking on my birthday at Point Reyes, Whitewater Rafting on the American River with Liz & Audrey on board, buying Halloween stuff at Fioli’s Gift Shop, celebrating Election Night aboard Roosevelt’s Yacht USS Potomac, the Ole Miss v LSU Football Game in Baton Rouge and exploring the road to and from Hana & a helicopter ride in Maui and renewing my membership in the 30,000 Foot Club.

How did we at “Betty’s List” keep ourselves occupied during the stressful year that was? There were a few things to do:

443 Messages sent to “Betty’s List” for an average of 1.2 per day
48 Ladies Nights on Thursdays
40 Segments for Comcast Out Spoken TV and Outlook Video
13 Book & Author Events @ Dolores Park Cafe with Rachel Herbert, Cynthia Katona & Annie Stuart
10 Smart Women Business Network Events with Catherine I. Pinkas
11 Events for Single Women (Connexions, ThirtySomethings and dinner at Nordstrom & The Rrazz Room, Valentines Dinner, Pride Dance, New Year’s Eve)
6 Ladies Go Biking Rides a locations throughout the Bay Area led by Kathleen McGuire & Patti Segarini
5 Booths or Info Tables at Exhibits & Festivals: Santa Cruz Pride, Dyke March, SF Pride, Castro St Fair, G/L Travel Expo
5 Benefits / Receptions: Young Artists, SF AIDS Ride, Catholic Charities HIV Support Group, SF Gay Men’s Chorus Catered by the Chorus, Under One Roof/New Leaf
4 Outdoor Adventures: Kayaking, Whitewater Rafting, Tidepooling & Sunset Sail
4 Groups to SF Gay Men’s Chorus Concerts & Music Reviews
2 Nordstrom Fashion Shows
2 Russian River Women’s Weekend and Music Festival Events
1 Fun Train to Reno with AAA Travel
1 San Francisco Pride Parade Contingent

Surely I have left something important off. I shall save this list to pull out when someone asks, as will inevitably happen, “What does ‘Betty’s List’do?”

What else did we do in 2008? Met thousands of new friends, contacts and colleagues! “Thousands” is not an overstatement, and it is incredibly hard to remember all the names. I should like to grow a new head just to keep up with it.

What’s coming for 2009? Ladies Night begins its 7th year with a new home at Orson, the new restaurant owned and operated by Chef Elizabeth Falkner and life/business partner Sabrina Riddle.

Catch Restaurant in the Castro is now the San Francisco home for Smart Women Business Network and sites are being selected for the South Bay and East Bay too.

Special events for single women will continue; and with organizer Don Spradlin, a new series of events, Society for Men, will be announced soon.

Wine events with compatriot Pam Truswell are on the horizon. Patti Segarini and Stephanie Vance continue the Ladies Go Biking leadership, and Annie Stuart, Judy Wenning and Rachel Herbert have their arms around our Book Club.

Unique collaborations are in the works with Curve Magazine and Go Get Your Girl On. More new partnerships will indeed emerge!

We have Outdoor Adventures on the calendar with Kim Powell/Blue Water Ventures and Women On A Roll, and more fun is being planned with AAA Travel, including trips to Reno, Paso Robles and Hawaii.

We have new Signature Sponsors for "Betty's List" soon to be appear on our website in the left side menu, and . . .

What else will the New Year bring? For me, exercise, exercise, exercise. Just have to do it. Just will do it. Yes, we can! The athlete within . . . she will, rise again!

(Photo by RINK, Special to "Betty's List")

Entered 5:00 AM 12/31/08

Gratitude & Wishes At Christmas Eve & Hanukkah

December 24, 2008

Gratitude & Wishes At Christmas Eve & Hanukkah

Today is Christmas Eve . . . a favorite day that brings for me fond memories of family times growing up down in the deep South, and also of more recent community times here in San Francisco for more than a decade.

As 2008 draws to a close, I am reminded once more of how grateful I am for the opportunity to live and work here in the Bay Area with its vibrant and diverse LGBT community.

And, in spite of frustrations coming during this past year, I am thankful for many good things on the horizon as a new day dawns and new opportunities abound . . .

Thus, this message is actually as much about gratitude as it is about memories, and it’s as much about looking forward as it is about wishing the old year anon.

To you, our subscribers and friends, only the words “Thank you!” will suffice, because we truly do appreciate you and you are with us each and every day! I personally thank you for your support for the work of “Betty’s List,” your support for the events and projects we announce and conduct, and your support for the relationships we foster in partnership with individuals, small business and large ones too . . . our sponsors and advertisers, our colleagues and compatriots.

Since 1996, we have strived to build connections here in the Bay Area, and now - actually more than a dozen years later - I am so grateful to have you in our “chosen family.” With 2009 will come change, but today we pause to appreciate a year coming to its close. Time . . . how it passes constantly, relentlessly, inevitably.

There are innumerable friends and supporters to whom we send gratitude and thanks. You all know who you are . . . and we are so blessed to know you!

Special thanks to our 2008 Signature Sponsors: AAA Travel Northern California, Nevada and Utah; Beth Hofffman/Alternative Mortgage Sources; Azure Restaurant San Carlos; Susan Adams/Lavender Liaisons; MECCA SF; Nordstrom; Catherine I. Pinkas/Sage Financial Network; and Nanette Miller/Stonefield-Josephson, Inc. Also, our sincere appreciation to each member of the “Betty’s List” Directory / Smart Women Business Network and to the myriad non-profit groups, businesses and individuals who have called on us for e-mail announcement services this year.

Thanks to thousands of you who have attended our events, and to the leaders, sponsors and featured guests of our Book Club, Ladies Go Biking and other special interest activities.

Thanks to those special volunteers who have co-chaired and/or led our Outdoor Adventures and to those too who have contributed content to our website. Thanks to all who have supported and participated in our Connexions and ThirtySomethings for Singles programs throughout 2008.

And, finally, thanks to those quiet and steady persons who have, behind the scenes, continued to stand by us and believe in our singular mission of community education and helping others to obtain, through various media channels, the information needed to be in control of one’s own life.

From here at the “Betty’s List” home base in the Castro, all of us on our team – including Kate, Alex, John, Juliet & Nikki, Melanie and Cheryl – we wish you and yours very Happy Holidays and Best Wishes for the New Year!