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Mother’s Day is on Sunday, May 13, 2012. Show mom how special she is by taking advantage of all that gorgeous South Florida has to offer. From green bookstores and oceanside picnics to natural treats and relaxing massages, there’s plenty of gift ideas to choose from.

Books and Leisure

Is mom a reader? Out of South Florida’s many used bookstores, perhaps no bookstore is more green and stylish than my beloved Second Edition Book Shop. Better yet, if mom loves popular fiction, check out the book bundles at Second Edition. The book bundles consist of gently used books that are packaged together and sold as a set. Not only are they cost-effective, but they’re also green and perfect for Mother’s Day.

Treat mom like the queen she is and give her a tour of Villa Viscaya, Miami’s breathtaking Italian villa. Built in 1916 by industrialist James Deering, this spectacular house has been featured on Martha Stewart’s website and is considered one of the most beautiful homes in the country. If you want to pamper mom, South Florida has several green and local spas, including the organic, eco-friendly (and very chic) Uhma Organic Spa.

Picnics

South Florida has many gorgeous, natural places to celebrate Mother’s Day. Enjoy the outdoors with mom by arranging a small, beachside picnic. You can sit right on the sand with her, watch the waves, and have some organic treats. Moms and families can also take a stroll along Hollywood’s famous 2.5 mile Broadwalk, just a short walk from The Desoto.

Farmer’s Market Gifts

Get mom some fresh-cut flowers or some garden supplies at Flamingo  Road Nursery and Farmer’s Market. The local farmer’s market has many earth-friendly options for Mother’s Day, including a variety of plants and flowers. The bamboo wind chimes at the Flamingo Road Nursery and Farmer’s Market are one of my favorite items. The sound adds a sense of tranquility to any indoor or outdoor setting.

By Marissa Cohen

Photo By Unique Hotels Group

Mother’s Day is just around the corner on Sunday, May 13. On Mother’s Day celebrate mom in environmentally friendly ways and give her a green Mother’s Day.

Body Care

Pamper mom with organic body wash and bath salts. (General body wash often has petroleum or parabins in it, both of which can cause cancer or have other dangerous, long-term side effects). When selecting bath goodies for mom, make sure that they are cruelty free and made without any animal byproducts. Alba Botanica has fantastic parabin/petroleum free body care items. There are many wonderful body scrubs out there, but green, organic scrubs and body washes will protect mom’s health while helping her feel like a queen.

Books

If mom doesn’t already have an e-reader, consider getting her one because the more you read, the greener of an option the e-reader becomes. If she’s an avid reader, pick her up a Kindle or other e-reader so she can download her favorites. If she really loves real books (and really, who doesn’t enjoy curling up with a real book?), get her some gently used books from a site such as Better World Books.

Traveling Mom

While nurturing her kids was probably a great adventure, it’s time for mom to see the world and explore new places. If mom enjoys packing a bag and seeing the world, make sure she’s got the eco-friendly supplies to do it. A stainless steel water bottle is a must have for any traveling mom. If mom’s taking a flight, get her some carbon-offset credits. If she’s the slow-and-easy type of traveler, you might want to plan a train trip for two, so that you and mom can see America from the window of a train. Plus, train travel is one of the greenest ways to explore.

Cards for Mom

While you could go with traditional Mother’s Day cards, let yourself get creative and make her a collage using pictures cut from magazines using what you already have. Get creative with pen, crayons, or even pictures from magazines and put your unique collage into a frame. If you’d rather go with a traditional card, find one printed on recyclable paper.

By Marissa Cohen

Photo By Etsy Ketsy

Courageous, profound, and tender, these memoirs describe the lives of three very different celebrities.

Untied by Meredith Baxter

Best known as the hippy wife from the 80s hit Family Ties, Meredith Baxter played America’s favorite left-wing mom as she parented junior Republican Alex P. Keaton (Michael J. Fox), Jennifer (Tina Yothers) and Malory (Justine Bateman). But the woman behind the scenes of Family Ties hid a life-changing secret: tv’s favorite mom was gay. Meredith Baxter’s memoir Untied follows her journey to self-acceptance. From a troubled childhood to fame and fortune in Hollywood, Baxter relays her experiences as an emotionally and verbally abused wife, her struggles with alcoholism, and eventually her self-acceptance as a lesbian.

Unbearable Lightness by Portia de Rossi

Model and actress Portia de Rossi struggles with self-acceptance and a life-threatening eating disorder as she achieves fame and fortune in Hollywood in Unbearable Lightness. One of the best things about de Rossi’s book is the relationship she draws between her eating disorders and her repression of her sexuality. Eventually, de Rossi undergoes treatment for her anorexia (at one point, the 5’7 actor was an almost fatal 82 pounds) and finds love and strength as she heals, comes out as a lesbian, and eventually meets and marries Ellen Degeneres. De Rossi’s voice is brave, strong, and interesting; her memoir is important, eye-opening, and it should be on the shelf of anyone who has ever struggled with eating disorders.

Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man by Chaz Bono

Bono’s memoir, Transition: The Story of How I Became a Man about his transition from female to male bodied, is brave and extraordinary. Everyone knew Chaz as Chasity Bono, the adorable daughter of superstars Sonny and Cher, then as an out 90s lesbian, and now as a transgender activist and writer. Chaz’s honesty, clarity, and sweetness shine through the pages of this one-of-a-kind tale of self-acceptance, courage, and gender identity.

By Marissa Cohen

Photo By Pulicciano

When my favorite local and green bookseller Danielle recommended The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentleman Farmers by Josh Kilmer-Purcell, I was intrigued just from her description. “It’s about this couple who leaves the big city and opens a farm. One of the guys used to work for Martha Stewart, I think. You’ll love it.” She took the book from the stand behind the counter and handed it to me. I took it home and then spent the next two days devouring it and laughing hysterically.

City Slickers Turned Country Farmers

New York Times Bestselling Author Josh Kilmer-Purcell (I Am Not Myself These Days; Candy Everybody Wants) and his partner Brent Ridge, a doctor and a former executive of Martha Stewart Living, are stars of the docu-series The Fabulous Beekman Boys, the Green Planet tv show which is now moving to the Cooking Channel for its third season. Consider The Bucolic Plague a deeper, witty look at the same premise explored in the show: a city couple decides to become farmers.

Living the Questionable Dream

We’ve all had this time-tested dream: leaving the big city with your significant other for a gentler, calmer life Away From It All. Anytime pop culture wants to chuckle with mingled jealousy and relief, we’re bound to watch a story about city slickers who try to take on country life. Usually, they go on vacation and find a gorgeous vacation spot surrounding a “fixer upper” house, and voila! It’s time to make arrangements to move to the countryside and Experience Life. What happens? The inevitable: stress, too much fresh air, and the growing horror that owning a tremendous farm may have its drawbacks.

And that’s exactly what happens to our heroes.

Honest and Hilarious

Josh and his partner Brent take a trip to upstate New York, fall in love with and purchase the two-hundred-year-old Beekman Mansion, and slowly become “gentleman farmers,” eventually starting the Beekman 1802 mercantile, a company that also partners with Williams-Sonoma on “the world’s largest community garden”.

The Bucolic Plague is hilarious and touching. This is the book that David Sedaris would have written if he’d decided to live on a farm. “The last time I saw 4 A.M., I was tottering home in high heels and a matted wig,” quips Josh in the opening lines of the book. That line starts one of the funniest scenes in the entire book as Josh transports five baby goats to from update New York to the city for their appearance on The Martha Stewart Show. However, Josh doesn’t listen to Farmer John, his caretaker, and promptly overfeeds the baby goats, resulting in a gagging Josh, a very smelly three-hour car trip, and an irritated Brent.

The Bucolic Plague is very, very funny and very honest look at life on a farm after big city life. For more Fabulous Beekman Boys fun, check them out on Beekman1802.com or look for the third season on the Cooking Network.

By Marissa Cohen

Photo By greginhollywood

On Monday April 16, 2012, environmentalist and poet Lola Haskins will read from her work at Broward College, from 12:30 to 1:45 pm as part of Broward College’s Environmental Week.

Acclaimed Poet

Haskins has been published in many acclaimed journals and publications, including The Atlantic and The London Review of Books. She’s written over ten books of poetry, starting with the 1993 Iowa Poetry Prize Winner Hunger and ending with her most recent book of poems Still, the Mountain, which won a 2010 Florida Book Award prize. Haskins often writes about the wonder of nature, including poems that explore Florida’s natural settings. “Prayer for the Everglades” is featured in the prose collection, Book of the Everglades. Haskins has also been featured on NPR.

Local Activist

Haskins is a board member of the Florida-based organization, Florida Defenders of the Environment, a non-profit organization devoted to environmental education and protection since it began in 1969. Currently, the Florida Defenders remain an active and important part of Florida’s quest for environmental justice and are vocal advocates for environmental protection.

Her writings about nature can be found in two university press books: Wild Heart of Florida and Visions of Florida. To date, she’s won several awards, including two National Endowments for the Arts fellowships, and several for her cultural affairs involvement. She’s also taken part in many arts projects and stage productions. To learn more about Lola Haskins, please visit her website at www.lolahaskins.com.

If You Go

Lola Haskins will be reading from her work at Broward College. For more information about this free event, please visit Broward College’s website or call Dr. Barbra Nightingale at 954-201-8873.

By Marissa Cohen

Photo By heraldpost

Only days before the start of April’s National Poetry Month, Adrienne Rich, famous lesbian poet, died last week in her Santa Cruz home at the age of 82.

A Lifetime of Honors

Rich is known for her passionate poems about women’s rights, racism, and economic issues. Her career included many notable awards and honors, including two Guggenheim fellowships. In the 70s, she won the National Book Award for Poetry, in the 80s she won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and in the 90s, she won (and declined, in protest) the National Medal of Arts.

A Pioneer

When I woke up on the morning of her death, it seemed that every blog and website had weighted in on the death of this literary giant. She influenced countless women writers, giving a voice to their experiences. Rich famously shared her 1974 National Book Award for Diving into the Wreck with fellow nominees Alice Walker and Audre Lorde.

Rich fully realized she was a lesbian late in life, leaving a 17-year marriage to Harvard economist Alfred Conrad. Not long after, she settled down with writer and editor Michelle Cliff.

The Political is Personal

Rich’s lifelong body of work mainly focused on women and the disenfranchised. However, we can see in her life one of the major principles of ecofriendly living – that, at some level, the personal is always political.

Green issues are personal for all of us, and headlines about global warming or toxic waste don’t exist in a political vacuum. The politics of the green movement – the food we’re eating, the waste we’re trying to reduce, the plant we’re trying to protect – are deeply, deeply personal. We all have different ways of expressing the personal and political – and Rich showed generations of writers, activists, and thinkers how to blend the two.

By Marissa Cohen

Photo By K. Kendall

I was a fan of the graphic novel series Fables long before it became the hit TV show Once Upon a Time, a drama set in both modern-day America and in a skewed world of fairy tales. As I looked through my old copies of Fables, it dawned on me that “skewed” fairy tales are often the most interesting. We all know what happens when the prince rides up on his white horse and rescues the princess, but what happens when another woman rescues the princess? Or when the prince braves otherworldly dangers to find his one true love – another man? Here are some of my favorite fairy tales, gay-style.

Kissing the Witch by Emma Donoghue

Before Emma Donoghue won awards for her 2010 thriller Room, she wrote a charming 1996 collection of short stories called Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins. In Kissing, Donoghue rewrites her takes on classics – and all of the “new-skinned” tales are sharp, funny, and very queer friendly. (In her version of Beauty and the Beast, Beauty discovers that the “beast” is a woman.) The best part about her revisionist fairy tales? All are gorgeous, poetic, and original.

The Next Fairy Tale

Maybe one day they’ll be a soundtrack for Brian Pugach’s original 2011 musical The Next Fairy Tale. Prince Copernicus wants to rescue his one true love, Prince Helio, from a tower. The only problem is that the mission is facilitated by klutzy godmother-in-training Hazel, and the real trouble starts when Hazel’s homophobic boss, “godmother-queen”, Minerva steps in to create magical obstacles for Prince Copernicus.

Bending the Landscape Series, edited by Nicola Griffith and Stephen Pagel

Griffith and Pagel edited these LGBT-themed fiction collections. The Bending the Landscape Series has three award-winning anthologies – one fantasy, one science-fiction, and one horror- that explore gay and lesbian characters in fantastic settings and wildly imaginative situations. This series won several big awards, including the World Fantasy Award, the Spectrum Award, and two Lambda Literary Awards.

By Marissa Cohen

Photo By Jason Pier in DC

When I was a teenager in high school, I had a copy of a book called Growing Up Gay/Growing Up Lesbian, a literary anthology edited by Bennett Singer. It was my first glimpse into a world where I could see images of myself and other people like me. I still have it – it’s worn, written in, and destroyed. The spine is bent. The pages are folded. I have vivid memories of carrying it in my high school backpack, terrified that someone would notice the cover and I’d be outed.

Things have changed since I was sixteen, thank God.

With the awareness surrounding Glee and movements like the It Gets Better Project, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered youth are starting to get the respect they deserve. But there’s still a long way to go. Anti-gay language is constant. How often have we heard “That’s so gay” to describe something that’s hated? Even though Tennessee lawmakers are stalling, it may soon become illegal to say the word “gay” or discuss any topics on homosexuality in the Tennessee public school system, an issue which school counselors fear may lead to more bullying, silence, and potential suicides.

But if 15-year-old Amelia Roskin-Franzee has anything to say about it, gay books will be in the hands of the kids who need support. Her charity, the Make It Safe Project, is out to change the world, one book at a time.

About Make It Safe

Make It Safe is a charity dedicated to putting LGBT books into the hands of students and homeless kids by donating age appropriate LGBT books to schools and homeless shelters (over 80% of teen runaways are LGBT).
Reading about yourself can raise your self-esteem. It makes you feel like you’re worth something, not a second-class citizen. Books and stories matter because through them, we learn about our worth, our dreams, and our uniqueness. We learn that we’re not alone, and that our stories matter.

“One book can save a life,” reads the main page for the Make It Safe Project, and I couldn’t agree more, especially if gay teens are living in rural or conservative areas where books with LGBT themes are often removed from libraries and gay characters are rarely included in the English curriculum. The site also provides a wealth of information about starting a GSA (Gay Student Organization) on campus.

How to Donate

To donate to Make It Safe, please go here.

By Marissa Cohen

Photo By Skokie Public Library

Regulars to this site know that I’m a dyed-in-the-wool bookworm. If possible, I like to purchase my books used either from sites like Better World Books or from fun, little out-of-the-way used bookstores. Buying a used book is much greener than buying a brand-new book that’s fresh from the publisher.

And while e-readers are green and perfect for travel in their own way, some of us want to go on vacation with paper books. The publishing world is moving fast – maybe we’re nostalgic, but there’s something so perfect (and green) about a previously owned paperback.

Since we’re all about green tips at the Desoto, I wanted to share one of my favorite used bookstores with you: Second Edition Book Shop located in the Lincoln Park Plaza on Stirling Road in Hollywood. Best of all, Second Edition Book Shop isn’t a chain; its independently owned and operated by Danielle Joy-Whatley.

Independent and Green

The tagline is “Recycled Books. Shared Joy.” And this little bookstore is a joy, indeed.

I’ve been in bookstores that are one big, dust-covered mess. Often that’s what’s come to mind when I think of used bookstores in Florida, but Second Edition is a book lover’s dream. It’s easy to see why Second Edition won the 2009 Broward/Palm Beach New Times for Best Used Bookstore.

For those of us who’ve longed for the type of small, cozy bookstore often found in Portland or San Francisco, check out the Second Edition Book Shop. It’s independently owned and operated, which means that patrons are supporting a small, local business. If you’re sick of the Nook or the Kindle, no worries; you won’t find any flashy signs advertising the latest development in electronics. Looking to unload your gently loved books? Second Edition has a decent trade-back program, and if you’ve got adult paperbacks collecting dust, they’ll take them for store credit.

Cozy

From its hardwood floors and comfortable armchairs to its rows upon rows of books on dark wooden shelves, Second Edition Book Shop is the place to curl up and read for a while. Owner Danielle Joy-Whatley might offer you a lollypop from the bowl on the front counter or make a reading suggestion. There’s a never-ending flow of loyal customers of all ages, from retired folks to kids looking for a good book, all eager to chat about what they last read.

Community Involvement

Second Edition Book Shop often has sidewalk fairs that promote local crafts and food. SEBS also has a thriving Facebook page.

If You Go

Pack up your books and head down to Second Edition Book Shop, located at 6812 Stirling Road in the Lincoln Park Plaza in Hollywood.

By Marissa Cohen

Photo By hannaneh710

Each March since 1978, America has celebrated the diverse accomplishments of women. These three women have been agents of change in the environmental landscape. Our three Women’s History Month heroes are Laurie David, the American producer of award-winning documentaries, Frances Beinecke, the president and one-time executive director of the National Resources Defense Council, and Dame Jane Goodall, world-famous subject of the film Gorillas in the Mist.

Laurie David

An American producer, writer, and activist, Laurie David‘s passion has brought global warming into the public eye. Called the “Bono of climate change” by Vanity Fair, David has made numerous appearances on Oprah and was a three-time guest editor of Elle Magazine. David has been the recipient of several awards, including the Audubon Society’s Rachel Carson Award, and the U.S. EPA Climate Protection Award. Not only is she a trustee of the National Resources Defense Council, she has produced numerous shows that deal with global warming awareness, including the Academy Award winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, and HBO’s documentary Too Hot to Handle. David is also the author of several books, including the bestselling Stop Global Warming: The Solution is You!, and is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post.

Frances Beinecke

Beinecke became president of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) in 2006 and is also active on the boards of the World Resources Institute and the Energy Future Coalition, to name a few. She is the co-author of the book Clean Energy Common Sense: An American Call to Action. Her history with the NRDC is long and varied; for almost a decade, she served as the executive director. Under her leadership, the organization saw a dramatic increase in both membership and staff. With Beinecke at the helm, the NRDC focuses on everything from the future of energy to protecting endangered places.

Jane Goodall

Played by actress Sigourney Weaver in 1986’s Gorillas in the Mist, British anthropologist Dame Jane Goodall is considered to be the world’s expert on chimpanzees and is best known for her four-decade-long study of their social and family patterns. She is the author of books such as 40 Years at Gombe and Through a Window. She is the founder of the Jane Goodall Institute.

By Marissa Cohen

Photo By Medill DC