No, I’m not thinking about myself becoming gay.
I’m thinking about what it is like to be gay after seeing Brokeback Mountain, after emailing back and forth with a relative who is.
I never met anyone who (as far as I knew) was gay until I went to college. I didn’t have much to do with gay girls at that point because I could never tell whether they were hitting on me or just wanted to be friends. I liked straight boys too much to understand where those odd girls were coming from. But the gay guys (well, back then the guys didn’t openly admit it)! But we all sort of knew. They were usually the best dancers and the most fun on dates. As far as I’m concerned, the same is pretty much true to this day.
In my professional life, I worked alongside of all kinds of gay people: male, female, somewhere in between, closeted, out, flaming, and subdued. As with all of the people I met, some I liked, some I didn’t, and some became friends of mine. One of my first cousins died of AIDS. Another cousin is still alive and kickin’ in his 80s.
And so I’m posting here a eloquent letter sent to Jay Leno by Jeff Whitty, a playwright who wrote the hit Broadway musical “Avenue Q.” The letter was featured on CNN, but in case you missed it, here it is:

April 20th, 2006
Dear Mr. Leno,
My name is Jeff Whitty. I live in New York City. I’m a playwright and the author of “Avenue Q”, which is a musical currently running on Broadway.
I’ve been watching your show a bit, and I’d like to make an observation:
When you think of gay people, it’s funny. They’re funny folks. They wear leather. They like Judy Garland. They like disco music. They’re sort of like Stepin Fetchit as channeled by Richard Simmons.
Gay people, to you, are great material.
Mr. Leno, let me share with you my view of gay people:
When I think of gay people, I think of the gay news anchor who took a tire iron to the head several times when he was vacationing in St. Maarten’s. I think of my friend who was visiting Hamburger Mary’s, a gay restaurant in Las Vegas , when a bigot threw a smoke bomb filled with toxic chemicals into the restaurant, leaving the staff and gay clientele coughing, puking, and running in terror. I think of visiting my gay friends at their house in the country, sitting outside for dinner, and hearing, within hundreds of feet of where we sat, taunting voices yelling “Faggots.” I think of hugging my boyfriend goodbye for the day on 8th Avenue in Manhattan , and being mocked and taunted by passing high school students.
When I think of gay people, I think of suicide. I think of a countless list of people who took their own lives because the world was so toxically hostile to them. Because of the deathly climate of the closet, we will never be able to count them. You think gay people are great material. I think of a silent holocaust that continues to this day. I think of a silent holocaust that is perpetuated by people like you, who seek to minimize us and make fun of us and who I suspect really, fundamentally wish we would just go away.
When I think of gay people, I think of a brave group that has made tremendous contributions to society, in arts, letters, science, philosophy, and politics. I think of some of the most hilarious people I know I think of a group that has served as a cultural guardian for an ungrateful and ignorant America.
I think of a group of people who have undergone a brave act of inventing themselves. Every single out-of-the-closet gay person has had to say, “I am not part of mainstream society.” Mr. Leno, that takes bigger balls than stepping out in front of TV-watching America every night. I daresay I suspect it takes bigger balls to come out of the closet than any thing you have ever done in your life.
I know you know gay people, Mr. Leno. Are they just jokes to you, to be snickered at behind their backs? Despite the angry tenor of my letter, I suspect you’re a better man than that. I don’t bother writing letters to the “God Hates Fags” people, or Donald Wildmon, or the Pope. But I think you can do better. I know it’s “The Tonight Show,” not a White House press conference, but you reach a lot of people.
I caught your show when you had a tired mockery of ” Brokeback Mountain,” involving something about a horse done up in what you consider a “gay” way. Man, that’s dated. I turned the television off and felt pretty fucking depressed. And now I understand your gay-baiting jokes have continued.
Mr. Leno, I have a sense of humor. It’s my livelihood. And being gay has many hilarious aspects to it — none of which, I suspect, you understand. I’m tired of people like you. When I think of gay people, I think of centuries of suffering. I think of really, really good people who’ve been gravely mistreated for a long time now.
You’ve got to cut it out, Jay.
Sincerely,
Jeff Whitty
New York, NY

After muddling through two days of steady and soaking rain, we woke to the greens of spring dripping from the forest.
It’s been bad with her. Now she has mood swings, crying over things she can’t seem to articulate. Her hearing is getting even worse. Her hands and feet are like ice. Communication is just one more frustration. The hiding of things is worse. The fear of being robbed is worse. ” What is happening to me?” she asks. She rubs her stomach, her right shoulder. Sleeps. Presses her hands to her head. Cries. She needs me with her constantly. I feel sick-to-my-own-stomach smothered.
And so after the rains, I leave her in my sib’s care and drive up the gloriously green-edged Thruway, to Albany, to a retirement party for one of my closest former colleagues. I get in town early enough to hit Targets, and Jo-Ann’s crafts, and B.J.’s Warehouse. My trunk is filled with economy-sized packages of toilet paper, tissues, and other such — yarn and fabric and thread. At Home Depot I buy bird seed and hummingbird food and fill up my back seat with vegetable and flower plants and a stupid-looking planter with big human feet and an idiotic smiling face. Perfect.
My retiring colleague takes belly dance lessons, and part of the entertainment at her party are a pair of belly dancers. After the performance, they teach a short lesson. I tie a yellow spangled shawl around my hips and go to it. I work up a sweat. I can really get into that, I think. Years ago I dated a male belly dancer. (He was also a very good ballroom dancer.) He taught me a few good moves. But that was when I had a waistline.
I spent today planting patches of garden. I have a tomato patch, a broccoli patch, a lettuce patch, and an herb patch. And one strawberry plant. I put in some lavender and daisies and three exotic lilies next to the house. I’m out in the sun and the wind all afternoon. I feel better.
The mesclun and marigold seeds I started indoors are ready to plant too. I’ll do those patches tomorrow. After I paint the tire I found in the woods green and plant some impatiens in it. And before we take her to the doctor’s to try to figure out what we should be doing. Or not doing.
We’ll have sun for several more days. And then it will rain again. And then there will be sun.

DA FRE INTERN3T IS ON TEH V3RGA OF DESTRUCTION AND SO IS DA ENGLISH LANGUAEG!!11111 WTF LOL I DONT T3XT M3SAEG I DONT INSTANT MESAEG AND I DONT UNDERSTAND DA ABR3VIAETD FORMS USED IN SUCH11!!11 OMG LOL AND I REFUS3 2 L3ARN!!1111
The above is a translation of the following, according to “the aol translator.”
The free Internet is on the verge of destruction, and so is the English language. I don’t text message, I don’t instant message, and I don’t understand the abbreviated forms used in such. And I refuse to learn.
After reading this article in the online edition of the Chicago Maroon (thanks to b!X for the link, even though I know he disagrees with my position on language), I decided to try and find out just how out of touch I was with the netlingo.
While plenty of commenters disagreed with the Maroon piece, I’m not one of them. I particularly appreciate this part of the article:
Language is precious, and being able to express oneself through writing, even in something as apparently trivial as an e-mail, is vital. AOL-speak strips all the beauty and nuance out of written language, converting it to a means rather than its own end, shifting the emphasis from quality of self-expression and communication to sheer speed, efficiency, and volume of dispatches. Personal communication used to mean something; people took time in the composition of correspondence and invested something of themselves in it. Now, however, cookie-cutter abbreviations have overrun the realm of language, leaving it a bleak, monosyllabic wasteland.
Of course I agree with that quote. I was, after all and English major and and English teacher. Although, in actuality, I really don’t care if netspeak is used when and where appropriate, as long as schools continue to teach the English language at its more eloquent. Back in October of 2004, I posted something related to Ebonics as a result of the more than two dozen comments I got on a post I made on a totally different subject.
I guess there’s something about me that just doesn’t like lazy language. (Obviously I DO like alliteration.)
Some interesting quotes about “language:”
Arguments over grammar and style are often as fierce as those over IBM versus Mac, and as fruitless as Coke versus Pepsi and boxers versus briefs. — Jack Lynch
We learn what we have said from those who listen to our speaking. — Kenneth Patton
The quality of our thoughts is bordered on all sides by our facility with language. — J. Michael Straczynski:
Language is the blood of the soul into which thoughts run and out of which they grow. — Oliver Wendell Holmes
Language is the dress of thought. — Samuel Johnson
A different language is a different vision of life. — Federico Fellini

The free and open Internet is under seige.
Internet providers like AT&T and Verizon are lobbying Congress hard to gut Network Neutrality, the Internet’s First Amendment. Net Neutrality prevents AT&T from choosing which websites open most easily for you based on which site pays AT&T more. Amazon doesn’t have to outbid Barnes & Noble for the right to work more properly on your computer.
MoveOn has already seen what happens when the Internet’s gatekeepers get too much control. Just last week, AOL blocked any email mentioning a coalition that MoveOn is a part of, which opposes AOL’s proposed “email tax.”[2] And last year, Canada’s version of AT&T–Telus–blocked their Internet customers from visiting a website sympathetic to workers with whom Telus was negotiating.[3]
Politicians don’t think we are paying attention to this issue. Many of them take campaign checks from big telecom companies and are on the verge of selling out to people like AT&T’s CEO, who openly says, “The internet can’t be free.”[
Together, we can let Congress know we are paying attention. We can make sure they listen to our voices and the voices of people like Vint Cerf, a father of the Internet and Google’s “Chief Internet Evangelist,” who recently wrote this to Congress in support of preserving Network Neutrality:

Moveon cites this excerpt from the New Yorker:
Until recently, companies that provided Internet access followed a de-facto commoncarriage rule, usually called “network neutrality,” which meant that all Web sites got equal treatment. Network neutrality was considered so fundamental to the success of the Net that Michael Powell, when he was chairman of the F.C.C., described it as one of the basic rules of “Internet freedom.” In the past few months, though, companies like A.T. & T. and BellSouth have been trying to scuttle it. In the future, Web sites that pay extra to providers could receive what BellSouth recently called “special treatment,” and those that don’t could end up in the slow lane. One day, BellSouth customers may find that, say, NBC.com loads a lot faster than YouTube.com, and that the sites BellSouth favors just seem to run more smoothly. Tiered access will turn the providers into Internet gatekeepers.
All of the above is from Moveon.org, where you can sign a petition to keep the Internet free.
Still not convinced? Think about this:
If Congress abandons Network Neutrality, who will be affected?
Advocacy groups like MoveOn–Political organizing could be slowed by a handful of dominant Internet providers who ask advocacy groups to pay “protection money” for their websites and online features to work correctly.
Nonprofits–A charity’s website could open at snail-speed, and online contributions could grind to a halt, if nonprofits can’t pay dominant Internet providers for access to “the fast lane” of Internet service.
Google users–Another search engine could pay dominant Internet providers like AT&T to guarantee the competing search engine opens faster than Google on your computer.
Innovators with the “next big idea”–Startups and entrepreneurs will be muscled out of the marketplace by big corporations that pay Internet providers for dominant placing on the Web. The little guy will be left in the “slow lane” with inferior Internet service, unable to compete.
Ipod listeners–A company like Comcast could slow access to iTunes, steering you to a higher-priced music service that it owned.
Online purchasers–Companies could pay Internet providers to guarantee their online sales process faster than competitors with lower prices–distorting your choice as a consumer.
Small businesses and tele-commuters–When Internet companies like AT&T favor their own services, you won’t be able to choose more affordable providers for online video, teleconferencing, Internet phone calls, and software that connects your home computer to your office.
Parents and retirees–Your choices as a consumer could be controlled by your Internet provider, steering you to their preferred services for online banking, health care information, sending photos, planning vacations, etc.
Bloggers–Costs will skyrocket to post and share video and audio clips–silencing citizen journalists and putting more power in the hands of a few corporate-owned media outlets.

I have to admit it’s a great idea. And it’s not only that b!X has a hand in making it happen.

Fandom is a fascinating phenomenon. Fans stalk, gawk, and hawk. They gather and blather and can pretty much obsess about the objects of their fan-aticism. There’s even a documentary called Fandom that chronicles the journey of one man bent on meeting the object of his obsession –no matter the cost..
And it’s all that which make this effort of some of the fans of (the FOX-nixed television series) Firefly, (its big-screen movie sequel) Serenity, and (the creator of it all and more) Joss Wheden so unique. It’s really none of the above.
Thanks to the creativity and persistence of many Browncoats (which is what the fans of Serenity call themselves), as of today, benefit screenings of the movie Serenity are being planned in more than 23 cities In 4 countries on 3 continents. The proceeds of the screenings will go to Joss Whedon’s favorite charity, Equality Now (go here to see a PSA for Equality Now featuring Meryl Streep, Marissa Tomei, and Sarah Jones). The organizing Browncoats intend this effort to raise money for Equality Now as their birthday gift to Whedon. Many of the showings will be on June 23 (Whedon’s birthday), including the one at the Palace Theatre in Albany, New York, for which I already have tickets.
Now, I imagine that Browncoats pretty much range among the 20- to 30- somethings, are long-time comic and sci-fi fans, and do not wear suits. So what’s someone who’s their parents’ age (or even thieir grandparents’!) doing planning to drive 85 miles to see a movie.
Well, I love kick-ass female characters, and Joss Whedon knows how to create great ones. Great sexy ones. Great sexy smart ones. Courageous, too. My favorite Serenity character is Zoe Washburn, played by Gina Torres, a strikingly effective actress in all of the various roles in which I’ve seen her perform. The other female character that fascinates me is Inara Serra, played by Morena Baccarin, an actress I don’t ever remember seeing before and one who is rumored to be under consideration for the role of Joss Whedon’s planned “Wonder Woman” movie. In the Firefly series, Inara Serra is a character that sets feminism on its ear in the most acceptable ways as far as I’m concerned.
Whedon’s creations are uniquely and irreverently his own., and that’s why I’m a — as much as I hate to categorize myself as one — “fan.”
I love this quote from Whedon about the Browncoats (of which I am not, officially, one).

“Firefly went on the air a few years ago and was instantly hailed by critics as one of the most cancelled shows of the year. It was ignored and abandoned, and the story should end there. But it doesn’t, because the people who made the show and the people who saw the show—which is roughly the same number of people—fell in love with it a little bit too much to let it go, too much to lay down arms when the battle looked pretty much lost. In Hollywood, people like that are called unrealistic, quixotic, obsessive. In my world, they’re called Browncoats.” — Joss Whedon, “Joss Whedon Introduction”, Serenity DVD

In addition to all of that, the movie Serenity, with it’s wild west/sci fi zippy dialogue and characters you won’t meet anywhere else, is worth your time and your money.
If you’re in Albany on the evening of June 23, come and join me at the Palace, knowing that your time will be well spent and that your money will be going to Equality Now.

The job from which I retired in the state’s Education Department was more than a job. In many ways, it was family, a vocation. Not only did I believe strongly in what I was supposed to help to achieve, I worked with people who were my kindred spirits.
I’m thinking of this today because one of my best work buddies has retired. Interestingly enough, there was much we did not have in common — she attends church and is much more a workaholic than I. She’s a softer touch, too.
But she would accept the kind of rant I made in the post below because she knows that, basically, we share the same moral and humanistic values — no matter what our outward trappings might be. One summer we spent a week together at the Omega Institute together — she to a workshop on African dance and I to one on dancing the Lindy Hop.
I’m thinking of this today because my former “secretary” (I hate to call her that because she was so much more than that) send me a joke in an email. We laughed a lot together. Here’s the joke — which you might already have hearad, but I like it — well, it will be obvious why:
A woman in a hot air balloon realized that she was lost. She lowered her
altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted out to him,
“Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend that I would meet him
an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am!”
The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, “You’re 30 feet above
sea level. You’re at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100
degrees 49.09 minutes west longitutde.”
The woman rolled her eyes and said, “You must be a Democrat.”
“Yah, I am,” said the man. “But how did you know?”
“Well,” she answered, “everything you told me is technically correct,
but I have no idea what to do with your information and I’m still lost.
Frankly, you haven’t been much help to me.”
The man smirked and responded, “You must be a Republican.”
“Yes, I am,” the balloonist replied. “How did you know?”
“Well,” said the man, “you don’t know where you are or where you’re
going, you’ve risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air,
you’ve made a promise you have no idea how to keep then expect me to
solve your problem for you, and you’re in exactly the same position you
were in before we met but, somehow, it’s now my fault.”
I’m thinking of this because today, as I finished putting together a couple of those “assemble yourself” pieces of furniture and am therefore motivated to rearrange and spring clean, I know that my daughter has the same impulses — change something, add something new and that gets you to do the cleaning that needs to be done. These days she’s antiquing her kitchen cabinets. We both like to build things, make things, fix things. Hands-on. She thinks maybe she should have learned to be a carpenter. I wonder if there is something I should have learned to be.
There is something about the coming of spring that makes me nostalgic for a life filled with life-filled people.

For lots of people, it’s Passover. For lots of other people, it’s Easter — or, as I prefer, Eostre. We’re not celebrating Easter around here; my mom forgets from day to day what day it is. Besides, I don’t buy the whole story that leads up to Easter either.

And apparently other people disbelieve what I disbelieve so strongly, that they made a movie of it. clips of which you can watch here. I don’t buy many DVDs. Farenheit 9/11 was one I did buy. Also, the Firefly series (the precursor to the movie Serenity), and the MTV series, Aeon Flux. And I just ordered the DVD of “The God Who Wasn’t There.”
I stumbled on the existence of this irreverant flick when I linked from b!X’s post on our mad, mad, mad, mad leaders making use of a terrorist organization in order to prepare for their latest mad scheme in the Middle East. When I got to the original piece at Raw Story, I saw the ad for the movie. The clips sold me.
So, on Easter Sunday, when so many people will be in their churches praising that god who was never really there, I will be sitting on the screened breezeway, chuckling at the antics of our two resident chipmunks and getting better acquainted with the red-headed woodpecker. the cardinal couple, the several finches, and the lone nuthatch who frequently visit our bird feeder.
Such will be my celebration of Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Eostur, Eastra, Eastur, Austron and Ausos, as I eat my slice of homemade Russion Easter Bread and sip my mango flavored green tea.
And I assume, that over there in Massachussetts, where my grandson lives, he will be waking to find a basket from the Easter Bunny the same way that his mom did when she was a child.
The coming of Spring is worth celebrating no matter how you do it.
I do believe what my car’s bumpter magnet says:

What a glorious day! I managed to get up rearly enough to sit on the screened breezeway and have my black currant tea and a half-bagel with cream cheese and lox spread. I rocked in the rocking chair and meditated on the plantings I will put in to make my little garden space inviting. It’s not big — maybe 15 X 15 feet. I’ve already bought some ground cover and ordered some plants.
I’m the only one up. The sun is shining, a comforting breeze is wafting through the screen. It’s serene.
And I will post about another Serenity soon, in hopes of getting even more of my Albany friends to join me.

Well, he’s not a boy any more, but he’s still my boy, and he’s still got clout on the Portland OR political scene, even though his popular former blog is static.
This is what Oregon Live, the online extension of The Oregonian newspaper, just had to say about b!X’s current blog and postings:
For the politically minded, it’s a great time to be online, if only because there’s something for everyone. The biggest blogosphere news of the past few months is the return of Christopher Frankonis, otherwise known as The One True b!X. His original Web site is dormant, and he’s not yet doing the kind of shoe-leather reporting that made him a famed figure in the halls of Portland government. (Can he resist for long? We hope not.)
But b!X is back weighing in on a regular basis on the day’s big events (www.furiousnads.com). And that’s good news for anybody who enjoys a lively debate.
He also is “that which does not surrender.” (See quote in sidebar.)
That’s my boy!

If you can’t get to the LA Times article, I will reprint the best parts after my rant.
At first, reading all the hoo-ha these days about creationism, I dismissed the stick-stirring of the right-eous as an annoyance on the educational plain that would soon pass. That’s probably what those poor old women in Salem thought about the witch hunts.
I am always amazed at how readily too many people choose to blind themselves to factual evidence. When it comes to evolution, as in all on-going scientific investigations (which they all pretty much are) we still don’t have all the evidence. But that doesn’t mean it’s all wrong. Scientific investigation into our origins, like most important parts of living (birth, sex, sowing and reaping, having relationships) is messy. All that digging, all those smells, the dirt, the blood, those pieces of our puzzling past still buried, rotting somewhere under tons of stone.
How much “nicer” to follow the fervently religious leaders down that garden path. Unfortunately, it will not lead to Eden — certainly not to any provable truth. But is is cleaner, and more simple, and requires much, much less work for that mass of marvels we call our brains.
I can’t imagine being Al Frisby, the biology teacher in Los Angeles who is trying to teach what science has managed to uncover about the origins of life on this planet. I would never have his patience and tenacity in dealing with a class of uppity adolescents brainwashed by the god-fearing adults in their lives.
Some quotes from the artice in the LA Times: Testing Darwin’s Teachers
“Isn’t it true that mutations only make an animal weaker?” sophomore Chris Willett demands. ” ‘Cause I was watching one time on CNN and they mutated monkeys to see if they could get one to become human and they couldn’t.”
Frisby tries to explain that evolution takes millions of years, but Willett isn’t listening. “I feel a tail growing!” he calls to his friends, drawing laughter.
Unruffled, Frisby puts up a transparency tracing the evolution of the whale, from its ancient origins as a hoofed land animal through two lumbering transitional species and finally into the sea. He’s about to start on the fossil evidence when sophomore Jeff Paul interrupts: “How are you 100% sure that those bones belong to those animals? It could just be some deformed raccoon.”
From the back of the room, sophomore Melissa Brooks chimes in: “Those are real bones that someone actually found? You’re not just making this up?”
“No, I am not just making it up,” Frisby says.
At least half the students in this class of 14 don’t believe him, though, and they’re not about to let him off easy.
Two decades of political and legal maneuvering on evolution has spilled over into public schools, and biology teachers are struggling to respond. Loyal to the accounts they’ve learned in church, students are taking it upon themselves to wedge creationism into the classroom, sometimes with snide comments but also with sophisticated questions — and a fervent faith.
As sophomore Daniel Read put it: “I’m going to say as much about God as I can in school, even if the teachers can’t.”
Such challenges have become so disruptive that some teachers dread the annual unit on evolution — or skip it altogether.
In response, the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science is distributing a 24-page guide to teaching the scientific principles behind evolution, starting in kindergarten. The group also has issued talking points for teachers flustered by demands to present “both sides.”
The annual science teachers convention next week in Anaheim will cover similar ground, with workshops such as “Teaching Evolution in a Climate of Controversy.”
“We’re not going to roll over and take this,” said Alan I. Leshner, the executive publisher of the journal Science. “These teachers are facing phenomenal pressure. They need help.”
[snip]
Frisby promised to show the class several fossils that document the halting and gradual evolution from apes to humans. Then he reminded them not to expect equal numbers of human and dinosaur remains, because hominids emerged only recently, while dinosaurs ruled the planet for nearly 200 million years.
At that, sophomore Derik Montgomery snapped to attention. “I heard that dinosaurs are only thousands of years old, like 6,000. Not millions,” he said.
“That’s wrong,” Frisby responded briskly. “What can I tell you? You can’t believe everything you read.”
Sprawled out across his chair, Derik muttered: “You can’t believe everything you hear in here, either.”
When I taught, I welcomed challenging discussions with my students. I liked when they asked questions; didn’t mind at all when they brought in factual information that proved me wrong about something I said in class. But this creationist thing is a different challenge. How do you confront the strength of such misguided and simple belief with facts?
Now, don’t get me wrong. I respect the fact that, for many, belief in the tenets of their religion is an important part of their lives. It’s the part that transmits moral values, rules to live by, a sense of security in world caught up in chaos.
But pitting religion against science, faith against facts, we set up a battlefield on which knowledge and wisdom will be the victims. And lost under all the carnage, will be the intellectual curiosity of our children — the intellectual curiosity that results in all of the modern day “miractles” that scientific fact-finding creates.
When it comes to what learning is all about, the Righteous have it all wrong.
(Thanks to b!X’s link for pointing me to the LA Times article.)