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Below are the 7 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Zoe Trope" journal:

March 30th, 2012
06:01 pm [Link]	one of the refs has breasts I sat down to write about something this afternoon and this is the first thing I thought of - I don't mean for it to read like a school report, but it sorta does. Sorry! Matt and I were watching the Blazers game on TV last night when Matt said, “One of the refs has breasts.” “What?” “Number twelve,” he said. “Look.” I waited for the next play and, when a foul was called, I saw a woman in an NBA referee uniform do a bounce pass to a player about to take the foul shot. We’ve been watching the Blazers pretty consistently for a couple of years and had never noticed any female referees until that moment. I used my phone to search “nba ref 12” and found the Wikipedia page for Violet Palmer, the NBA’s only female referee. I learned that she’s been a referee since 1997, the same year that another female referee, Dee Kantner, was hired. Dee was let go in 2002 due to poor performance and currently works as the supervisor of officials for the WNBA. In 2005, USA Today featured an article about Violet and her career as a referee. The narrative is frustratingly glossy and positive – the players just think of her as “one of the guys”; she’s so down-home and sweet that she has dinner with her mother every Sunday. The article also mentions that she is single, wears men’s shoes, and prefers Marc Jacobs or Michael Kors perfume. It doesn’t say anything about Charles Barkley calling basketball a “man’s game” and saying it should “stay that way.” In 2007, a commentator for the Boston Celtics said Violet should “get back in the kitchen and make me some bacon and eggs.” In 2007. This is the part where everyone can laugh at my neo-feminist third wave something-something naiveté, but it really does floor me that anyone would think it’s okay to talk about a woman that way, in any context. I wish women – myself included – paid more attention to these things, because it means that there is always, heartbreakingly, more work to be done. In 2010, five years after the USA Today fluff piece, Curve Magazine included her as one of the Top 11 Most Powerful Lesbians In Sports. I haven’t seen any other references to her sexuality, which I imagine is something she probably keeps pretty guarded. I found some strong criticism of Violet on the Philadelphia 76s’ blog, the Sixer Sense, where Sean O’Connor wrote on February 8, 2012: …Violet Palmer is the biggest joke the NBA has right now. She likely wasn’t the reason the Sixers lost. Rarely do home teams win/lose a game because of the refs (okay, so Blazers fans might yell at me about this, but for the most part this is true). But it is undeniable that fans notice her officiating more than any other official – she is as much a part of the games she officiates as the players. It is not because of race and gender. I admire her courage. But she’s an awful official who regularly makes terrible calls or completely misses others. She becomes a distraction, a scapegoat for some, because she is awful at her job. If I performed like she does at my job, I’d be fired. There’s plenty of room in the NBA for female officials. There should probably be more than one. But there’s no room for incompetence. The mention of the Blazers is apt – fans are still sore about the goal-tending call in the game with the Oklahoma City Thunder on February 6, which was later found to be incorrect and some say triggered a landslide of frustration that lead to heartless play and the firing of Coach McMillan – but those refs involved are still working, as far as I know. And I haven’t heard any big headlines about Violet’s recent calls being redacted. I feel mixed about statements like these, where someone says, “Hey, it’s not because she’s black, or a woman, or gay, but she’s just terrible at her job.” It could be true, but where’s the criticism of all the other male referees? One of the concerns in the article about Dee Kantner’s firing was that her bosses didn’t know how to evaluate her because they were comparing her to all of her male colleagues, and that her build or voice, which are not masculine, could have been interpreted as inadequacies. Did everyone else out there already know about Violet? Am I totally behind the times? Additional reading NBA says goaltending call was incorrect (2012) Violet Palmer on the Sixer Sense (2012) Calling the shots - where's the next Violet Palmer? (2011) Top 11 Most Powerful Lesbians in Sports (2010) NBA's only female ref 'doesn't back down' (2005) Dee’s firing (2002) A referee draws her line on the court (1997) (2 saved latin \| What did you ever do?)
March 29th, 2012
10:35 am [Link]	remix the man who cried like industrial noise a remix of "Killed with an Apple Corer, She Asks What Does That Make Me" by Patricia Lockwood, from her forthcoming book Balloon Pop Outlaw Black (Octopus Books). she was the same that way she lived in the squarest state she did red blueprints of oranges she was soft one neat piece steel driven to make things pure thousands built them up worked until told, “The orange forest is as tall as each tree tonight,” he took her walking there, and they envisioned as a bundle of missing cues, as map creases are and then sent a lover shoehorned in room by room one floor above one floor below when he climbed upstairs home in steel and shoehorns and horseheads instead of the grass lay down on his line fell at her feet she took him using her deep sleeve pouring red set on endless Ls a hole in her to breathe brought to life a paper mill raised a right arm at her lover and he leaned down he was unlucky too rolls of the dice and terrible skills on the assembly line tied piece work themselves when For all her life his whole body he lost piece by piece to graze on his wounds the man who cried like industrial noise “What is happening?” she asked she no longer wanted him she tied him off from her awful flesh knots at the ends of her father her father squinted he leaned down and told how the air made things and, and finally “Machine beats man,” and he said her name but finally it meant nothing, (What did you ever do?)
March 19th, 2012
06:22 pm [Link]	familiar I wrote this at work on Friday while crying at my desk. A good number of people who’ve visited our home over the past eight years probably never realized that we had two cats. Lilah, the velvet gray party cat, is always at hand to squawk at guests and demand attention. Anise, in contrast, hid under the bed at the sound of strange footsteps, or, during prolonged visits, he would deploy his ostrich strategy and huddle into a donut-shape beneath our blanket. He did not care much for strangers, or for most people, really. You could say that he was shy or skittish – these things are true – but I also believe that he was incredibly selective about the company he kept, and he only trusted a few people. When Anise was a tiny handful of a cat, Matt rescued him from a Humane Society foster home. While the other kittens tumbled over each other and mewed adoringly for Matt’s attention, Anise darted from corner to corner, wide-eyed and cowering. Matt is a very focused man, though, and he had a singular goal – to find an all-black cat, reminiscent of the barn cat named Midnight that he’d had as a child. Matt brought Anise home to his studio apartment on the 8th floor of a building that overlooked the Portland Art Museum. Anise spent the first two days hiding behind Matt’s laundry hamper in his closet. Eventually, Anise was coaxed out by Lilah, and by the promise of food and gentle hands. He and Lilah grew quite comfortable in that apartment, and they kept Matt company when he was playing games or watching pirated West Wing episodes. They were both so small that they could sleep together on the back of his boxy computer monitor. Shortly before I left for college, Matt moved from his studio apartment to a one-bedroom five stories above a freeway on-ramp. It was more glamorous than it sounds – the apartment had a huge west-facing window with a beautiful sunset view and a little balcony. Anise and Lilah loved having more room to run around, and it was in this apartment that Anise became particularly adept at playing fetch. At night, as we were falling asleep, Matt would toss a soft foam ball through the bedroom door and down the hallway, and Anise would run after it. He would bring it back in his mouth and spit it out right next to Matt’s hand so he could throw it again. As Anise grew larger, his tail grew faster than he did, and he would whip it from right to left like an excited puppy. Another perk of the new apartment was the full size washer and dryer. Anise was never terribly bright, and he proved this when we found him sitting inside the dryer when we’d left the door open after retrieving our clothes. (His face clearly said, “What? It’s warm!”) Anise and Lilah went through two more moves: from the one-bedroom over the freeway to a smaller, ground-level one-bedroom, and then to the duplex, where Matt and I moved in together after I graduated from college. The duplex was enormous – cathedral ceiling and fireplace in the living room, man cave in the basement, and shiny hardwood floors, on which Anise’s claws made little scratchy sounds as he chased those foam balls. Anise and Lilah both loved to watch the birds and squirrels that taunted them just beyond the windows of the duplex, but they were only allowed outside on our enclosed back deck. Anise spent many happy afternoons sleeping in sunny spots on the linoleum or rolling around on the carpet in the living room. One of Anise’s signature moves was what I called The Gravy Boat. Anise liked to lie on his back with his paws up, kind of like a dead bird. He would stay in that position indefinitely, craning his neck from side to side. I always thought it looked like you could pick him up and pour him out, like a gravy boat. When we moved into our current home two and a half years ago, Anise and Lilah were introduced to the concept of yard. Officially, they were indoor cats, but we let them roam around outside a bit when we were lounging on the patio or working in the garden. Anise was always more of an escape artist and wanted to be outside as much as he could. He spent one particularly lonely evening crouched in the weeds when he got locked out. I remember the way Matt cradled him as he brought him inside and admonished him for being so silly. Shortly after we got married in October, Anise got sick. We found vomit on the guest bed. Then on our wedding quilt. Then in puddles on the living room furniture. The vet suggested we switch to a grain-free diet, so we put aside our bag of Iams for expensive tin cans of mackerel and duck. That didn’t help, so we tried steroids, which made things better briefly, and then he went back to being sick. He threw up in my suitcase the night before I left for Atlanta. He puked on a journal I had left on the floor. He got sick on Matt’s flip-flops, so I had to throw them out and buy new ones. When we left for work in the morning, we closed the doors to the bedrooms he wouldn’t be able to get sick on the bedding. Instead, we came home to find he’d been sick on the couch, the chair, the ottoman, or the floor. When I returned from my business trip to Atlanta, Matt was emotionally exhausted – helpless, frustrated, and upset that he couldn’t help Anise, whose illness seemed to be taking a turn for the worse. Matt took Anise to the vet the next day and the vet prescribed more treatment. At the end, we tried a combination of Chinese herbs, steroids, and ulcer medication, but Anise continued to be sick every day. We took him for an ultrasound on Tuesday, which revealed a mass in his stomach lining. Given that he had been losing weight and wasn’t responding to medications, Matt made the difficult decision to put him down. Yesterday, Matt made an appointment for an in-home euthanasia treatment. I spent some time with Anise in the morning before I left for work and noticed that his face seemed more angular, his haunches more bony. I stroked his back and felt his spine, and reached around his side and felt the sad, shaved spot on his belly from the ultrasound. Matt said Anise was having a pretty good day – he had eaten some cat treats and a bit of tuna, and was cuddling with Matt on the couch when I came home. Anise hid in the bedroom when the vet arrived while Lilah, in typical fashion, introduced herself. She sat on my lap while Matt made out the check and signed the release. She purred so hard it made my hand rattle. The vet gave Anise the first injection in our bedroom and Anise dove under the bed after the initial sting. Matt tried to coax him out, but Anise ran away. Matt picked him up and sat with him on the couch, but he wiggled out of his lap. Anise attempted to run to the basement, but his legs went rubbery and he weaved across the floor. He flopped down the stairs like a slinky as I watched with my hand over my mouth. Matt stayed with him downstairs to let the sedation kick in. When he came back upstairs, Anise was heavy but struggling – he kept jerking his neck around, frustrated that his body wouldn’t move. I hated seeing him so scared. Matt sat with Anise on the couch and the vet suggested giving him another shot. I said no, I didn’t want him to have another shot if we could avoid it, and just suggested that we give it more time. I sat next to Matt and stroked Anise’s face. After a few minutes, he stopped jerking his neck, and then he stopped darting his huge eyes. The vet came over and gently asked Matt to turn Anise so that she could shave his leg. Anise didn’t respond to their touch. I couldn’t stand to look at the needle so I kept stroking Anise and looking into his eyes, and he looked back at me. I repeated over and over again in my head, “It’s okay, Anise, it’s okay” and then his ears went completely soft and he wasn’t looking at me anymore. The vet quickly packed up and left. Matt put Anise in my lap so I could hold him for a little while. He asked if we could take Anise outside and I started crying harder. I swaddled Anise in his blanket. He was still warm. “I don’t want to take him outside,” I said. It had been raining hard all day and it was dark and cold. Matt said, “I know. But, the way I see it, he has his blanket, and he’ll be wrapped up and warm.” I asked Matt to hold him while I put on my shoes. Then I asked Matt to hold Anise while I smoothed out the blanket so we could wrap him up properly. We curled him into his donut shape with a foam ball and a toy mouse by his paws and folded the blanket around him. Matt carried Anise outside and we put him under our cedar tree. Anise loved to sit in our front window and twitch his long tail back and forth as he watched squirrels climb up and down the tree. I put some flowers on top of the blanket and Matt covered him with earth. I started laughing and crying at the same time as I realized that Matt and I had slept under that blanket together the first time I spent the night at his apartment when I was 17 years old. Matt made a joke about burying my youth and we hugged each other and cried. Last night I had a dream that Anise was running around our house, and I was calling to Matt to come see, to come see that Anise was back, that he was fine. I always believe dreams about the dead. I believe they're true, even if they're not real. (14 saved latin \| What did you ever do?)
February 9th, 2012
03:34 pm [Link]	Valentines. Valentines., a photo by Trope on Flickr. (2 saved latin \| What did you ever do?)
January 22nd, 2012
09:00 pm [Link]	Volcano bowl. Volcano bowl., a photo by Trope on Flickr. (1 saved latin \| What did you ever do?)
January 20th, 2012
09:01 am [Link]	shoes off, shoes off. Tulle nest., a photo by Trope on Flickr. "They found me with my shoes off." - The Lower 48, "Into the Woods" from their album, Where All Maps End In Bloor's young adult novel, Tangerine, a character dies when struck by lightening, and his brother tries to take his shoes off. What else happens with our shoes off? In case you haven't seen it, I have new fiction at Housefire Publishing. (What did you ever do?)
January 8th, 2012
05:57 pm [Link]	Sun like flames. Sun like flames., a photo by Trope on Flickr. I think this is my first public entry in three and a half years. I took this photo on a hungover morning bike ride, when I couldn't sleep after drinking too much weird red wine (it had a Barbie doll aftertaste). I passed a man on the Eastbank esplanade who had frost on his sleeping bag. The sun looked like it was setting everything on fire. Livejournal says that I still have 1,098 friends. Are you out there, world? (28 saved latin \| What did you ever do?)

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