BE PROUD OF WHO YOU ARE!

(No one can take that away from you ...)

Hi! I'm Kymberleigh.

I get preoccupied with other matters, so this personal home page is always under construction. (Still, it's better than supporting Facebook and I don't have all those tagged pictures!) I make additions as I find stuff, so bookmark this page and come back to visit often.

Yes, I'm a transwoman. Yes, I'm a lesbian. Yes, I can be both. (See the bottom of the page.) Yes, the cartoon at the left means I am single and looking. No, I do not do dating sites either, because these days the only people there looking for same-sex female partners are couples and TERFs.

I presently am semi-retired (since I get a monthly check from my late mother's trust fund that covers my rent, utilities and food) after leaving AT&T on a disability in 2003 (please support the National Psoriasis Foundation); before that I was in market research, published a transgender magazine called Cross-Talk, operated a transgender BBS, and (before all that) spent 15 years in radio broadcasting (and have continued as a consultant, off-and-on, since my last on-air work in 1989).

I've also been an advocate for improved public transportation, having served 11 years as a member of the San Fernando Valley Service Council for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (I was an original member of the Council when it was created in 2003, and served as chair in 2006-07 and 2011-13). In addition, I served for nine years as the public and legislative affairs director of the non-profit Southern California Transit Advocates. I've also written occasional letters to the editor or opinion articles on transit issues in both the Los Angeles Times and the Daily News. And, for nearly 20 years, I owned the Valley Transit Insider website; I stopped updating it when I left office at Metro and shut the site down three years later.

I have lived with pet parakeets (budgies) for 49 of my 68 years on this planet (1968-89, and 1995-present): Currently, my feathered roomates are Paste* (September 19, 2014) and more recent adoptees BoyPeep (February 9, 2022), Dasher and Kiwi (August 3, 2022). All were adopted from the Mickaboo Companion Bird Rescue organization, which I also do volunteer work for.

Now doesn't that sound like a perfect lesbian partner?

If you have ever considered having a budgie or two (or three or four!) as pets, this would be a good time to adopt them; Mickaboo is presently overrun with budgies who have been surrendered by people who have decided they don't have the time for them (poor little things). Please note that Mickaboo is in the San Jose/San Francisco area and they will not ship birds, although transport to Southern California can sometimes be arranged ... as my little guys can tell you.

Two other Mickaboo adoptees, Buddy and Chance, came to live with me February 13, 2010. Buddy developed a tumor and passed away suddenly June 21, 2010; Chance developed nerve damage in November, 2011 which eventually led to his passing January 18, 2012. Their predecessor feathered companion was Tiki, who came here September 18, 2006 and had to be put to sleep February 1, 2010 to relieve his suffering from a tumor he developed near his abdomen. (Unfortunately, budgies are susceptible to tumors.) Mieli, who originally came here with Apollo on July 10, 2010, developed a similar tumor and was "put down" February 13, 2014; Apollo battled a disorder with his liver for well over a year before it did him in on June 11 of that year. Peter -- who had arrived with Hyacinth and Martin on September 26, 2013 -- died of old age in-between the two, on April 1. A year later, Miracle (who had come here with Volvo on March 4, 2013) passed away in the early hours of June 1, 2015, of unknown causes. Volvo himself died just after midnight on what would have been his four-year anniversary of March 4, 2017. Percy (arrival date June 27, 2014) had to be put to sleep February 12, 2019 due to -- you guessed it -- a tumor. Martin passed away in the early morning hours of October 8, 2020; he was pending a vet visit to examine a growth near his vent that I suspect was also a tumor. Hyacinth lasted until age 14½ -- a very old age for a budgie -- and went quietly in the night January 11, 2022. Chaos, who was with me a long time as well (adopted on June 17, 2011) lasted about six weeks longer, passing on February 23, 2022. Coco, who originally arrived with BoyPeep, didn't even get to stay here for two months before also moving to the Rainbow Bridge on April 4, 2022. Poppy, who had arrived with Copy & Paste, had an accident in the middle of the night December 3, 2023 and died from his injuries. Brazil (arrival date October 25, 2020) showed sudden signs of distress and passed away within one day, on April 9, 2024.

*-Paste was originally adopted with his twin brother Copy (think about the names and you'll get the joke) but passed away from unknown causes on December 10, 2020. I thought about renaming Paste but didn't.

My non-Mickaboo budgies of recent years were Tiki (discussed above), Chatterbox, who came to live with me on February 13, 1999 and passed away from a sudden illness on September 3, 2006 and Littlebit, who was with me from the fall of 1995 (I never noted the exact date I got her) until January 31, 1999. (And I had five budgies, one at a time, between 1968 and 1987 when I lived in Ventura; their names were Dickie, Sammy, Woodstock, Nielsen and Mensa. Yes, that means I have had at least one budgie companion for most of the past half-century ... and continuously for the past quarter-century.)

Why do I adopt my budgies rather than just go buy new ones? Read this commentary from an animal shelter manager.

Then read these clever lyrics sung to the tune of an old Julio Iglesias song.

A (then) young friend of mine from IRC (Internet Relay Chat, where I was previously known as "Kymber" on the Undernet channel #lesbian30+ and as "Kymmer" on the EFNet channels #sappho, #lesbian and #lesbiancorner) wrote a short poem inspired by my homepage's title. I also used to help manage the Lesbian Chat Network site but left there in mid-2019; I don't go back often enough to suggest looking for me there.

Funny Stuff A collection of humorous images collected over my more than two decades on the Internet. Hope it gives you a chuckle.

Ask the Professor My one must-hear podcast of the week. Produced by the University of Detroit Mercy, the show features a panel of UDMercy professors in an "unrehearsed session of questions and answers" which are sent in by the listeners. I submit two or three sets of questions per season and am referred to by its moderator Matt Mio as one of their "favorite listeners". They keep an archive of old shows going back as far as 2011 (although it says 2014 on the ATP homepage); my personal favorite is #1518, in which I guest co-host the program via telephone. I also was a guest panelist six years later on #2044 and #2045.

Hidato This is my absolute favorite online game. It literally is the first thing I do on my computer every day, while enjoying the single cup of coffee I allow myself. Created by Israeli mathematician Dr. Gyora Benedek in 2008 (and I think I have been playing it from almost the beginning), it is a numerical "pathfinder" problem where there is only one workable solution. It comes in two designs: I prefer the "classic" version rather than the "beehive" but there are people who literally do both each day. And it's free! (But buy a couple of his printed books of puzzles anyway, because he deserves the money.)

Countdown with Keith Olbermann I have been a fan of Keith Olbermann for many years, and after the iconic Countdown news program left MSNBC after eight years for Current TV (where it imploded after less than one year) I missed his combination of hard news reporting and intelligent commentary. Well, more than a decade later, he has returned with a weekday podcast with the same title, theme music (Beethoven's Ninth Symphony), news, special comments, and of course the "Worst Person In The World" feature. Sure, it's audio only, but I'm glad to have him back and I highly recommend that you take the 45 or so minutes each day to listen. (If you would like the backstory on the show, Wikipedia actually has the facts correct in its page on same.)

Lesbians on Transgender Cross-Talk, when I was publishing it some two decades ago, at one point crossed paths with a woman-only e-mail discussion list called Sappho. The participants got into a discussion about transsexuality and lesbianism which went on for a considerable length of time; when it was done, I obtained the permission of all the participants, edited all the posts together into a coherent order, and published it in three parts in the magazine. Here, I have reconstructed it from the original magazine text archives and am making it available as part of our community's history.

Identity Spectrum Back around 2010, one of the members of DeviantArt created an online project called the Identity Spectrum, in which many GLBT members downloaded a template and then marked it to show where they identified in terms of physical sex, gender identity, gender expression and sexual orientation. Although the project ended some time ago, I still had my landing page and chart available, so here it is.

And, finally ...



(Created by the same lesbian couple who produced the famous Lesbians 101 primer.)

© Kymberleigh Richards
Click on the budgie to send me e-mail!