My big brother, Alan Vandam Bornstein passed unexpectedly this evening, Monday December 29th at 11:15 pm. He was 68 years old. He would have been 69 on January 12th. He and I were the last two survivors of our immediate family. He's survived by his loving wife Deb, his daughter Stacey and his son Brian. I'm heading down to the Jersey Shore to help with funeral arrangements. I'll post those as soon as I know them.
This photo is Alan on the left, our dog Rocky, and me. Alan was a great big brother.
He always had my back. He always stood up for me, no matter what. Damn, I miss him deeply.
I've.been lying about something for a little over 10 years now, and lately it's been getting me into more and more trouble, so I thought I'd set the record straight. Or less crooked anyway, Here's the tagline of a bio I use a lot:
Kate Bornstein was born outside of Fargo, North Dakota, in a log cabin she helped her parents build. Her father was a Lutheran minister, her mother was Miss Betty Crocker 1938, and her brother tends the goats to this day.
photo by Troy Dwyer at a Cracker Barrel restaurant outside Allentown, PA
OK… born in a log cabin I helped my parents build? I really thought that people would get it that I was joking. But no! And daddy having been a Lutheran minister… ummm, Bornstein? I really thought I was being over-the-top obvious about my lie. So I'm sorry to people who believed what I wrote and pinned something nice on me because you thought it was true I was from the Land of Nice.
I always wished I was from there. I was born just outside Asbury Park, New Jersey. Bruce Springsteen and I dated in high school. See? That's another lie I tell that has a clue inside it. Bruce and I were both boys back then, and we both liked girls, I never met him. But it's fun to say the lie and watch people get it. Do ya think it's bad of me to tell these kinds of lies?
Andy Warhol told bio lies.every time a reporter asked where he was from. He'd give each reporter a differentt answer.I thought that was cool! I took that as artistic license for silly fun.
But a lot of people believed the Fargo bit. My fave was a book critic reviewing Hello, Cruel World, The review read, "The warmth and heart of Kte Bornstein's Midwestern upbringing is evident on every page of her book." Awwwwww! But yikes, right?
I've always wanted to be a girl from the Midwest. I wanted to be a Norman Rockwell painting: strawberry blonde, freckles, knee socks and pigtails, born to a sweet Lutheran daddy like maybe Garrison Keillor.
Pippi Longstocking is who I wanted to be, Not the chubby little Jewish boy of Russian heritage that I was. So I made up the Fargo story.
The facts are my mom was a terrible cook, and my brother, well he doesn't tend goats or do much of anything else with them that I know of.
Still, telling that Fargo story makes me laugh.So, I'm going to leave it up, and I'm going to keep using it. But for what it's worth, now you know the truth of it. And go ahead, if the subject comes up, please free to talk about my upbringing in either of those scenarios. Whatever makes you smile.
Oh and by the way, I'm not a blonde anymore, I'm back to redhead. I've unleashed my inner Williow. Or maybe I'm just turning into an anime girl at long last. But a lot of people have missed me at airports cuz they were looking for me being Geena Davis from The Long Kiss Goodnight. Nope, I'm a wannabe Kaylee from Firefly these days.
Alright then… Kiss Kiss from your friendly neighborhood redhead Jersey girl, that's me!
8:30am Tuesday the 25th November. I'm on Amtrack's regional train from Boston to NYC. Love trains.
Last night I performed at Northeastern University, my last college stop for 2008. I'm giving myself December thru February to finish the first draft of my memoir. So excited at the prospect!
I'm scheduling myself some knee replacement surgery in May, so I'll have a short spring touring season. I'm now booking dates for March and April only, so if you've been thinking about bringing me to your town to speak or perform, this would be a really good time to get in touch with me about that. The best email addy to contact me about booking engagements is: on_the_road at Earthlink dot net. Write soon!
I saw wondrous things, met amazing people, and made many new friends over my past 2 months on the road. This photo is from a tech rehearsal for a peformance by Bent writers in Seattle, WA. Bent is a queer writers' institute, the only one of it's kind in the world. My best guess is they are the vanguard of something akin to the Beat movement of the '50s. I'll post more about Bent and my other stops over the next few weeks. And I'm aiming to have a photo blog in place sometime in December.
So, happy pre-Thanksgiving to you USA folks. To you and to everyone else, I hope you get to eat yummy food this coming Thursday. More soon.
My friend, Helen Boyd just now pointed out the embarrassing fact that I’ve not posted a follow-up blog to the announcement of my surgery this past summer and some people are worried about me. SORRY! I’M JUST FINE! See, this is a picture of sassy, healthy me! (photo by Jamie Ann, a new friend of mine in Minneapolis.)
The surgery went GREAT! My surgeon calls me his poster girl for success. Honest, he said that right in his crowded waiting room. I love my surgeon. He embraced the New Age affirmations I got from the book, Prepare For Surgery, Heal Faster. He credits the book for my fast, successful recovery. He’s even recommending it to other patients now (the ones he thinks can deal with it).
The hospital staff, doctors, nurses, physician assistants, everyone at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York—with one or two inevitable exceptions (shit happens)—were kind to me. I gave out about two dozen copies of the (downloadable) comic book I’d prepared ahead of time, and it made people laugh.
Beth Israel Medical Center has a policy to give trannies a private room for post-surgical care. After I got over my paranoia of ghettoization, I begrudgingly enjoyed my at-no-extra-charge private room!
I’m eating well now… anything I want to eat!! No more worries about food restrictions. And my energy level is nearly back to FULL. So, I’m sorry I didn’t post this earlier. I’m doing fine. Thank you to everyone who’s been concerned.
Quick post. This is me in Minneapolis, delivering a talk called “Dangerous Dreams & Damned Desires” at a benefit masquerade ball for the Minnesota Trans Health Coalition. It was the end of the evening, and I’d taken off the cap and collar. But the PVC sure is shiny! La, la, la. (You can click on the pic to get it FULL size. Wheeee!)
More to post on that visit, but I’m home and wiped out just now.
I’m on tour in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. It’s one of my favorite places in the USA: sweet people, great politics, strong human rights movements, and stellar academia. I’ve been having a great time here, meeting wonderful folks and connecting on many levels of mind, body, spirit, and theory. But yesterday, I ran headlong into an old buried obsession of mine: my obsessive need to be recognized as a peer within PhD circles—something I’ve not experienced in the 20 years I’ve been writing postmodern gender theory with my lowly BA degree in Theater Arts.
Here’s what happened… I was invited to a luncheon at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The IAS is based on a great idea: when anyone in any discipline needs to do high level research with anyone from another discipline, the IAS plays matchmaker, provides some grant money, and the research actually gets done. Voila! Coalition building at the level of higher education. The theme of this year’s Institute is “Body and Knowing.” I was thrilled to have been invited, because I felt I had a great deal to offer and a great deal to learn from the multidisciplinary scholars.
I arrived early with two undergrad students who were my driver and companions for the day. We were met at the door by Angie, the gracious woman who manages the day-to-day workings of the Institute. She showed us to the luncheon room, gave us vouchers for our lunch in the cafeteria, and accompanied us as we bought lunch and returned to the room just before noon, when the luncheon was scheduled.
Thirty minutes later, it was still just the four of us in the room. Not a single one of the Institute’s scholars had come to attend the luncheon to which they’d invited me. At the insistence of the IAS, no one else from the U of M campus was invited to this lunch. It was a closed door affair for members only, and me. Well, I took off, leaving the gift of a “Get Out of Hell Free” card for each of the absent scholars. I asked Angie to please phone me when she had any word as to why this had happened.
Just a quick note to say I’m back home from my major abdominal surgery in the hospital, and I’m doing well by all medical standards. I’m deeply grateful for the many calls, notes, comments, and text messages wishing me good health. And I rejoice that I continue to be surrounded and supported by family and tribe. As soon as I get my brain free of all this anesthesia and dynamite pain-killers, I’ll try to put a real piece up here.
OK, I love you. I do.
Kate
PS — Special kisses to the participants and attendees of Trans Pride 08 in Northampton, Transfabulous 08 in London, and the San Francisco Trans March coming up the end of this month. I’m sorry I couldn’t attend.
PPS — My regrets also to the Boston Dyke March 08, and the upcoming Femme Conference in Chicago this summer. Wish I could be there. Maybe a rain check?
PPPS — Lots of warm hugs and best wishes to all the youth—my hosts and hostesses—who’ve made me feel welcome in their schools, at their conferences, and on their campuses these past years. And kisses to my fabulous family in both Norway and Ireland. Love you lots, and hope to see you again sooner than later.
Hey there. I’m writing to say I’m going into hospital on Thursday, June 12th for some abdominal (abominable?) surgery. I’ll be in hospital for just under a week, then pretty much housebound for 3 more weeks, is what the docs say.
Read the next paragraph (in italic type) if you want the somewhat gory details. For the more faint of heart, please skip this next paragraph cuz it’s major league icky! If all you want is the free bonus comic, skip all the way down to the bottom of this post.
I’ve just returned home from tour. I’ve been either on the road or in the hospital (woo-hoo!) from September up to now. Touring and writing are activities that demand all of me, so I don’t do both at the same time. So, I’m back. To everything, there is a season. This seems to be the season for writing.
While I was on the road this year, I either performed my solo show, “On Men, Women, and The Rest of Us,” or I delivered some sort of keynote address. The show is a cut-n-paste piece—drawn from all my favorite words to read/perform at that moment.
The keynote address is something that evolves over the course of months, even years. I spoke the latest version of something I’m working on at the 2008 Western Regional Queer Conference, hosted by UCLA. So, I’m including the text here because this is as far as I’ve gotten with it. The conference theme was “Viva the Queervolution!” Some conference attendees asked me to make my keynote text available, so here it is.
I am feeling SO MUCH BETTER THESE DAYS! I’m just now finishing week one, free of pain and free of narcotic painkillers. My great doctor at the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center (The GLBTQ health clinic in New York City) has put me on a terrific regimen of meds, and now I’m free to get my body into better shape, and that brought me to Yamuna Body Rolling. That’s Yamuna in the picture to the left, holding the red ball.
