Welcome & Introduction
Our December blog features what we're doing for the holidays, a few personal stories, pets, and so much more. Grab a cup of hot coco and cuddle up with this month's blog!
What’s going on with S4SB?
The S4SB team is already gearing up for the end of the year. In the next few weeks, we’ll be reviewing your accounts for 1099able vendors, and you may get some calls from us about that. We’re also looking at your financials, and we’ll be in contact with you about anything that has yet to be categorized. If you have any questions about your financial statements for 2021, this is a good time to make an appointment for a virtual meeting to go over them.
All of this is intended to have you ready to jump on a meeting with your tax preparer, first thing next year. As an S4SB client, you can rest assured that your books will be ready to go by mid-January, so call your tax preparer now, and make an appointment. They will be happy to hear from you so early on.
What are you doing for the holidays?
Katherine - we’re looking forward to seeing our son for the first time in a few months. While we’re overjoyed to have him in a great college and loving every minute of it, we miss him. He spent Thanksgiving with his girlfriend in Texas, so we didn’t get to see him then, but he will be home for a few weeks over Christmas, and that’ll be the best present ever. We’ll probably spend the holiday in Concord with my brother and his husband. They bought their first home together last year, and they are looking forward to hosting Christmas in it.
Charlie - our first holiday season in Colorado is something that I have been looking forward to since I moved here! For Thanksgiving, we had a few friends come together for a lovely Friendsgiving with some incredible Korean food from Hunter’s family's recipes. We spent the long weekend exploring the great wonders of Colorado with my close friend Amanda, who came down from South Dakota for a visit. For Christmas, Hunter’s family and extended family are coming here to visit, and I’m excited to finally meet everyone. Fingers crossed that it snows so that skiing will be awesome!
Connie - I make Swedish Cardamom Bread every year for my family. We are not big on cookies and candy, but the breakfast bread is a Christmas morning must. It is a braided yeast bread, sprinkled with slivered almonds, not too sweet. I enjoy giving my hands the annual workout when kneading the stiff dough--sometimes it takes family expectations to make us take that extra time to make something old-fashioned and traditional. I can smell it baking now . . . .
Kiani - Blue (pitbull), Cinco (cat), Lion (tiny dog fox)
I’ll be making Christmas cookies with my sister-in-law to pass out to our friends and family. And on Christmas morning I love to make a nice big breakfast to enjoy together before we open presents
DEI Discussions & Community Opportunities
What abortion has done for my life
Katherine Almy
I’ve had two abortions in my life. The first one was when I was young and foolish, and my birth control method was to cross my fingers and hope I didn’t get pregnant. And we all know how effective that is. I was in no way ready to parent a person - not financially, and certainly not mentally or emotionally. I was fortunate to have ready access to safe, low-cost health care. I was also fortunate that I did not have to ask permission from my parents, the dope that provided the sperm (sorry, but he really was a dope… and so was I), or anybody else. I enlisted the help of girlfriends, and we took care of everything together. I knew what my options were, what the risks were, and what the ramifications were of the various options. I also knew that terminating the pregnancy was the best thing I could do for myself and the baby.
Because I was able to have that abortion, my young adulthood was uninterrupted. I was able to continue my (painfully slow) progress to maturity, my education, and get on with my life. At that point, I still had a long way to go to becoming an adult.
The second abortion was with my current husband and father of my one son. On this occasion, we were being very responsible, but the pregnancy happened anyway, as they sometimes do. I was ready to have a child in some ways, but it was still not a good time financially. I had just finished grad school and was settling into post-college life. I was beginning my career, and having a baby at that time would have made building it very difficult.
Being pregnant is a remarkable experience. From the moment of conception, a person’s body begins preparing for parenthood. There are physical, hormonal, and emotional changes, all of which are getting you ready for taking care of another human being. My experience was that the very state of pregnancy made abortion the last thing I wanted. But even more important than my wants were the conditions that this new person would be growing up in. Choosing abortion was an unselfish decision - the decision of a mother who wants what’s best for her child. Knowing that I couldn’t provide that is part of what led me to the decisions I made on both occasions.
But there was also a selfish aspect to my decision. I was doing what was best for me. I made the choices that allowed me to continue doing what I wanted to do with my life, and because of those choices, I was able to finish college, take career opportunities that came my way, and build my business doing work that I love. I don’t know if I could have managed it if I’d had the children from my first two pregnancies.
I always wanted to have children, and I’m very grateful that I was finally able to have my remarkable son, Slate, who is now in his freshman year at Amherst College in Massachusetts. He came at a time when my husband and I were ready for parenthood, and the result was that he had a great childhood, and is now a thriving young adult. I don’t regret the two abortions I’ve had, that allowed me to take on the monumental task of raising a person at a time when I was in the best position to do so. I don’t regret it, and I am extremely grateful I had that choice. It’s a choice I believe every person should have.
I’m telling this story now because we are at a point in this country where we risk giving up that choice. Before we let that happen, we need to talk about what abortion has meant to the women who have chosen them. Terminating an unwanted pregnancy has changed many lives, mostly for the better. It’s time we told those stories so that we know what this procedure means in the real lives of real people.
What color is Santa?
It’s always nice when a hateful act inspires goodness in people. A couple of years ago, Chris Kennedy of Little Rock, Arkansas, received a letter demanding that he take down the Black Santa decorating his lawn. But instead, he spoke up about the letter and received a lot of support from his community. He not only kept the Black Santa but added a brown-skinned Mary, Joseph, and Jesus that someone sent him. And now, the city of North Little Rock has asked him to be Santa for the Northern Lights Festival. Kennedy said, “I know there are little kids out there that look like me, that will get to see a Santa that looks like them and that’s what brings me the most joy.” Way to go, Chris. You can read the article here
We have a link to a listing of local Black-owned businesses, so you can start your Christmas shopping there. But, if you can’t find what you’re looking for locally, you can try one of these listings of Black-owned businesses.
Thank you for reading our blog and supporting S4SB. Make sure to enter your Full Name and Email to subscribe and receive a monthly email to notify you when our blogs come out on the 1st of each month. If you’d like to submit something to add to our blog, please email crm101@humboldt.edu. Feel free to reach out with questions, concerns, or other ways to support our community.