Hasta La Gadget!

Spelunking and sunbathing don’t typically go hand-in-hand, but there are exceptions, and they are glorious.

In the rainy season, Hang En cave in central Vietnam isn’t someplace you’d want to go swimming. The Rao Thuong River, which courses through the cave, surges 300 feet and covers the otherwise picturesque beaches seen in the photos below, according to National Geographic.

But in the dry season, the river recedes, leaving a surreal paradise like few other places in the world.

David W. Lloyd described Hang En in a piece for The New York Times’ travel section in 2011:

At 300 feet in height and 600 feet across, the cavern is big enough to fit a Boeing 747 with room to spare. The space was flooded with rays of natural light coming in from an arch high above us. The beams of light illuminated a yellow sand beach hundreds of feet below, surrounding a calm turquoise pool.

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Senator Elizabeth Warren has reintroduced her bill allowing borrowers with outstanding student debt to refinance at lower rates. Her similar bill was voted down last summer. This will certainly appeal to those students with high-interest rates in the 7-8 percent range, but it won’t help the many students who are struggling to pay their debt, and are close to the default.

Surprisingly, those with the most amount of debt have the best repayment records. They will clearly benefit if interest rates are cut in half as advocated by Senator Warren. Perhaps counter intuitively the students with smaller debts are most likely to be in default. About 35 percent of defaulters have only $1,000 to $5,000 in debt, an additional 28 percent have debt ranging from $5,000 to $10,000. Refinancing these loans with Warren’s bill will only help lower their monthly repayment by $5 to $10, which is not enough to prevent them from defaulting. A Brookings Institution analysis argues that this bill is not as progressive as it seems, estimating that “the poorest quarter of households would receive less than one-fifth of the benefits of such a proposal.”

Does interest rate relief offer a real solution for what ails student debt or is it a temporary band aid that diverts our attention? In my view, as long as tuition continues to rise and the government continues to subsidize it, pumping billions into colleges in the form of student loans, no cure exists.

Tuition goes up by 3.7 percent on average each year in the last 30 years. From 2011 to 2012, this increase roughly equals to 5 billion more in total revenue for all colleges. The interest on that amount is approaching $350 million*. You tell me which sum is the bigger problem. Imagine if the government told the car industry or the airlines that as long as they held price increase to below 5 percent each year, the government would guarantee whatever loans were necessary for customers to pay for their products. That’s exactly what the government tells colleges with a wink of the eye. And then they dish out the loans to pay for it.

Earlier this month on WBUR, Senator Warren disputed Republican claims that Pell grants help colleges jack up tuition, but why didn’t she look closer into the role that loans play instead? I think she is wary of any link between financial aid and higher tuition because it would add fodder for Republicans to cut aid without any replacement. That would be a body blow to both students and colleges.

So instead she points her finger at states which have lowered support for public colleges. It is true that states have decreased support for higher education and those colleges and universities have partly offset this loss in revenue by increasing tuition. But what is less understood is that both states and colleges have been free riding on federal student loans. This is effectively helped transfer the cost of higher education onto students and their families.

At this point, simply increasing state aid, as Senator Warren demands, may not help either. In fact, it might only further fuel tuition increases. Colleges and universities are bound to set the price so that they eat up all the revenue available to them. Renewed increased state aid will simply be another revenue source for colleges to eat, leaving plenty of room on their plates for federal loan payments.

*At 7 percent interest rate

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The secret was tearing me apart. I hid for so, so long. Not only from others, but also from myself. I could not even admit it to myself. I got to be an expert in hiding, denying and making excuses. I learned that this is a very common experience for people like me, who are transgender.

My inner experience was really an inner war that I describe in the introduction of my book, No! Maybe? Yes! Living My Truth:

A part of me kept screaming, ‘Be a Man!’

While another part could not stop laughing while thinking, ‘Who are you fooling?’

I had a part that got so turned on by girls; that wanted the sex, the pleasure, the release, the intimacy.

Another part took me to flights of fantasy and then scolded me for hiding my truth.

There were many more… arguing and fighting and judging and criticizing and making all sorts of noise.

These conflicting parts were tearing me apart from different directions. At the time, I had no idea that each had their own single mission — to protect and save me — to save me from something they each thought I could never handle. I tried to shut them all down in many various ways. This proved impossible.

For those of us who come to understand, and accept that we must transition gender to find inner peace, we know that we are faced with finally telling our “secret.” It’s hard to describe to those who do not experience it. We can watch how others perform their own “coming out,” but each of us will have to find our own path. There is no other way.

For me, the physical changes were already happening. I was the old guy with the ponytail growing. The day I came into work with my ears pierced everyone made some comment. That only lasted a single day and was attributed to my “mid-life crisis.” I laughed with them on the outside, but was a nervous wreck on the inside. Even so, I knew I had put another check on the transition checklist. I started taking hormones and my body was changing. The tight t-shirts were eliminated from my work clothes and replaced by baggy shirts and sweaters. I purposefully went for electrolysis on Friday evenings, so my face would heal before going back to work on Monday mornings. I managed like this for almost 2 years.

I had a date for my facial surgery — April 28, 2011. I knew I would be out of work for four weeks healing, so I had to start sharing my secret. It was time. I had a plan and a timeline. I always recommend this to anyone transitioning. First, I told the diversity team and human resources — then senior management followed by confiding my secret to about a dozen peer level managers. The first time was excruciatingly difficult, but it got easier with each person. When I left work to have my surgery I didn’t tell all the coworkers what was going on. That was handled the week before I returned with an HR training class held for around 200 people. I was told it went well. Looking back now, I can certainly say my experience returning to work was positive and amazing. I was fortunate to have the help I got at work.
…

We now have seen “The Interview” with Bruce Jenner. I can’t help but reflect on how similar his journey seems to be to the one I traveled only a few short years ago. However, there is one big difference.

When I started to share my secret, every single person was surprised. No one had guessed, or expected me to announce I would be transitioning my gender. Some got it and some did not, but they all professed support. This was a giant relief and helped relieve my internal shame.

I am sure that the screening of the Interview was a huge relief for Jenner. I know because I too have walked in those shoes. The path is not easy, internally or externally, but it is a journey that so many of need to travel.
…

After I transitioned, I started to run workplace trainings just like the ones that were done at my company when I transitioned. Over the past few years, I have had the opportunity to train hundreds of people to help them understand what the transition journey is like. When we see someone transition, it is often after many years of hiding and struggling to find self-acceptance. There are stages most people go through to transition. In 2004, Aaron H. Devor, defined these stages in his paper, Witnessing and Mirroring: A Fourteen-Stage Model of Transsexual Identity Formation. I’ve shared an info graphic I’ve developed for my teaching that shows these stages and the transition timeline. It’s clear to see there’s a lot of internal hiding for many of us before we accept our truth — long before the actual transition “event.”

It’s critical to note that the “event” is far from the end of the journey for any of us. Perhaps if Jenner does indeed announce his transgender journey, this will give us a better sense of his timeline and the path he has traveled. I suspect, that just like me and many of us who have found the courage to share our secret, Jenner will reveal he has been on his journey for far longer than anyone may know. Perhaps no one will be surprised given the exhaustive public scrutiny that began when he grew his ponytail and pierced his ears.

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Grace Stevens is a transgender woman who transitioned at the age of 64 and holds a Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology. She is a father of three, grandparent of two, athlete, advocate and author of No! Maybe? Yes! Living My Truth, an intimate memoir of her personal struggle to transition and live her true life authentically as a woman. For more information about Grace, her work and how Gender Variance Education and Training can help you, visit her website at: http://www.graceannestevens.com/. Follow Grace on Twitter: www.twitter.com/graceonboard .

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As part of its 25th anniversary season, Seattle’s Book-It Repertory Theatre recently premiered the theatrical adaptation of Chris Cleave’s best-selling novel Little Bee. The play focuses on the experiences of refugees seeking protection in a foreign land from the points of view of two characters, a Nigerian girl who has taken the name Little Bee, and Sarah, an English journalist and young mother. Little Bee was adapted and directed by Book-It Founding Co-Artistic Director Myra Platt from the novel that was featured in the Seattle Public Library’s 2011 Seattle Reads program.

The play begins with Little Bee recounting her journey to England and being held at a refugee detention center for nearly two years, but as it unfolds, the horrors she has had to endure are revealed, as is the connection between her life path and Sarah’s. Throughout this complicated story, characters lives intertwine with great passion and compassion, and all this is portrayed in just under three hours.

Opening night could have easily been a progressive political rally with an audience filled with liberals, including Congressman Jim McDermott. That seems very appropriate as the show really focuses in on refugees, an issue that is currently in the news.

To help audiences understand the issue even more experience, Book-It is partnering with Northwest International Refugee Project (NWIRP) and Refugee Women’s Alliance of Washington (ReWA) whose representatives will lead pre-and post-show discussions around the issues of asylum seekers and refugees as it relates to our community and to the events in the novel. These events will be pre-show on Wednesday evenings April 29 and May 6, and post-show Sunday afternoons on May 3 and 10.

Little Bee runs through May 17.

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They’re being banned from museums, art galleries, and sporting events faster than people can buy them, but that’s ok because selfie sticks are awful and deserve to disappear . However, designers Justin Crowe and Aric Snee may have found a way to redeem them with a selfie stick that looks like a human arm so a self-shot can help hide someone’s crushing loneliness.

Read more…