About

I’m a doula, librarian-by-trade, dog person, and generally geeky wannabe hippie. I live in Toronto, and am slowly coming to see myself as a city person and semi-Canadian after spending my first 24 years in rural Illinois.

On my blog, you’ll see personal stuff, bookish stuff, geeky stuff, my dogs, and whatever else comes up. I don’t like fighting on the internet and do my best to stay civil even on frustrating topics, but every once in a great while I come across something that makes me hitch up my proverbial skirt and come in kicking.

“ehbeesea” is a pun on my initials. “Hold your courage, Pumpkin Dear” is a line from a song based on Catherynne M. Valente’s book The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. If you haven’t read it, you probably ought to.

These are the things that matter to me: 

I believe very strongly in the inherent value of cohesive, collaborative, inclusive communities, and live by the standard that we all have to be intentional in order to make that work. I believe in the power of community organizations and institutions, and the people who keep them operating, to foster and develop strong and powerful connections between individuals, but I also strongly believe that we all have a responsibility to one another. This means respecting differences and being intentionally inclusive of the differences in experiences, both positive and negative, that come with differences in gender, race, religion, orientation, and expression. I value the voices of the oppressed over those of the oppressors and use sociological definitions of racism, sexism, and so on (prejudice+power). I place an extremely high value on the rights of all people, including and in some cases especially children, to tell others what they need to thrive and have those needs acknowledged.