From early 2006 onwards, most entries in this LiveJournal have been locked as friends-only, and all subsequent entries will be similarly locked as well. As time allows, I will also go back and change previous posts to friends only. You are welcome to add me to your friends list; the only thing I request is that (if I don't already know you) you leave a post introducing yourself & noting how you found me.

With Hurricane Gustav wreaking havoc on the Caribbean, and bearing down on the western half of the Gulf Coast, I think it's well worth sharing an email I received a couple hours ago from a very close friend (studying environmental law at Tulane) evacuating New Orleans right now. Posted publicly with his permission:


Sat, Aug 30, 2008 at 11:39 AM
subject Dispatch from Louis Armstrong Int'l Airport



Hello friends and family,

I certainly don't want to smell of melodrama, but I felt the need to share my thoughts and feelings as I leave New Orleans. While a direct hit from a major hurricane may spell the end of New Orleans as I know it, as Katrina spelled the end of New Orleans as it knew itself, I don't doubt that the city would move on if the worst happens. It is hard to imagine that no one would want to come back and rebuild. Tulane University would certainly survive, but the city that gives it meaning would slowly erode away, storm by storm.

We, down here, speak a lot of the coastal erosion that is caused in large part by the commercialization of the river. The river is cut off from its marsh areas by levees that are constructed to assist the oil and gas industry drive in a straight line. Apart from the conduit that these channels create for storm swell, they separate the marshlands that need constant reinforcement from each other, to replenish fresh water and nutrients. There is also a good deal of social erosion. In the same way the marshes are cut off and dying, each storm separates families and friends and destroys the sense of community that survived the last storm. And as such, we are left on a literal and figurative island.

If the worst happens, I will mourn this city like a relative. I have grown to love the city, but I have also come to see the city through my daughter's eyes. It is heartbreaking to imagine a world without the St. Charles streetcar and the Audubon zoo and aquarium. Not to mention the joy of a Mardi Gras parade and the incredible trick or treating experience at Halloween. I pray to God that this is just an exercise in paranoia. This city has survived the worst before, but I can't help but see the erosive effects. Just as the wetlands lose an acre per hour to the Gulf of Mexico (never to be reclaimed), every emergency like this causes citizens to lose their roots and drift off. The effect on the land beneath is irreversible.

I sat in class Thursday and heard a moving encapsulation of the predicament that we are in down here. The common cry from the outside public is, "why do they think they are entitled to live below sea level?" Professor Oliver Houck, truly the guru of Louisiana environmental law, has the answer. New Orleans has been occupied for hundreds of years at the end of what is essentially a hurricane bowling alley. The only variable has been human action. We dredge, we pilot oil tanker, we carve straightlines through winding marshes. In 50 years, Louisiana has lost what took over 3000 years to build. The automobile and our endless appetite for oil has no small part.

Last night a dear friend drove a classmate and I to a hotel across from the airport. There is no doubt that we would have missed out flights if we hadn't done this, as I-10 is a parking lot. The local government is still pretty inept in its execution of its evacuation plan, as I heard stories that there were just 2 security guards processing the names of those to be boarded and evacuated on buses. There are lines for blocks waiting to be processed. This is the story I heard from my airport shuttle mate, who just happened to be the federal inspector general for this region. I will defer to her credibility.

The airport is a surreal scene. All the food and beverage stands are closed, save one, and I am enjoying a nice cold coke. I overheard them talking that no relief was coming in and that they were going to have to close down. This underscores the reason you have to plan ahead. Gas stations ran out of gas last night. Taxis will no longer make reservations, but will insist you call a half hour ahead. Slowly but surely, the people running the infrastructure and providing necessary services are heading out and there is nothing you can do to get shampoo or coffee (Gasp!). I am one of the lucky ones to be spending my day in airports and not on highways. When I arrive in Cleveland, eventually to Raleigh, I will be sure to have some coffee and a nice meal. I just hope I haven't had my last Po boy.

During Katrina, Tulane law students were dispersed throughout the country. My friends have already started discussing those contingencies. We are one week into classes and we will have to work like hell if it turns out we need a new school. We will be two weeks in and will have missed some good on campus interview slots and opportunities to join journals or moot court. This is all very minor in the scheme of things, but, it also means that if the worst happens, there will be no time to waste or to mourn.

I am so relieved that I came down here by myself and that [my wife and daughter (and dog)] are safe in NC. I was about to sign a lease, but we will have to wait and see. I am fine and don't need your thoughts and prayers. I would ask you to pray for New Orleans so that it can continue to support new growth and build its defenses. We have been throwing the word "Atlantis" around a bit here lately. I really hope that this is not the first city to succumb to the rising seas. If it does, it is not just New Orleans culture. It is our civilization. If we can't posses enough enlightened self-interest to protect a vital port city, we are civilization that will drown in its excesses and short-sightedness.

I hope that everyone is well.

from Equality Forum:

Barbara Gittings, Gay Pioneer, Dies at 75
Mother of the GLBT Civil Rights Movement

PHILADELPHIA-Barbara Gittings, a seminal gay activist, died on Sunday, February 18. She was 75 and resided in Wilmington, Delaware. Her death was announced by her partner of 46 years, Kay Tobin Lahusen.

Malcolm Lazin, Executive Director of Equality Forum, noted, "Barbara Gittings is the mother of the GLBT civil rights movement. She is our Rosa Parks. Barbara helped organize the first gay and lesbian civil rights demonstrations in the face of a tsunami of homophobia. Her courage helped launch the GLBT civil rights movement."

Barbara Gittings began her career in activism in 1958 when she founded the New York chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), the first lesbian organization. She edited DOB's national magazine The Ladder from 1963 to 1966. Describing those years, Gittings said, "There were scarcely 200 of us in the whole United States. It was like a club; we all knew each other."

In 1965, Gittings marched in the first gay picket lines at the White House and other federal sites in Washington, DC to protest discrimination by the federal government. She joined other activists in the pioneering annual demonstrations for gay and lesbian civil rights held each July 4 from 1965 to 1969 at Independence Hall in Philadelphia. These seminal yearly protests laid the groundwork for the Stonewall rebellion in 1969 and the first New York gay pride parade in 1970. Gittings' role in these early protests is featured prominently in Equality Forum's documentary, Gay Pioneers.

In the 1970s, Gittings campaigned with other activists to remove homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association's list of mental disorders. She recruited "Dr. H. Anonymous," a gay psychiatrist who appeared, masked, on a panel at the 1972 APA conference to tell his colleagues why he couldn't be open in his own profession.

Gittings also crusaded to make gay literature available in libraries. Though not a librarian, Gittings found a home in the Gay Task Force of the American Library Association, the first gay caucus in a professional organization. She edited its Gay Bibliography and wrote a history of the group, Gays in Library Land. Her campaign to promote gay materials and eliminate discrimination in libraries was recognized in 2003 by an honorary lifetime membership conferred by the American Library Association.

For her lifetime of activist work, Gittings was selected as one of 31 leaders for GLBT History Month in October 2006.

Borrowed from mtnkodiak. I just love this... and it's one of the very best reminders of just how very much this administration has screwed up over the past six years. When you see it all in one place (with a good beat & you can dance to it), it's all the more reason to celebrate Tuesday's results, if only as a huge victory for checks & balances.

Please read this... really...

I can't help but notice that Elissa was just a few months older than me at the time of her passing.


Someone you love may be dying as you read this, much sooner than you think or are ready to deal with.
They could be silently suffering RIGHT NOW and not even know it.

It doesn't have to be that way.

DO something - make a difference - declare your love.
Don't wait until there's no choice, do it while you have one.

There is no excuse.

Read angry_biscuit's story. Celebrate Elissa's life and musical legacy. Save someone YOU love.

[click here for more]

I thought I'd take a moment to clarify what I was feeling about marking my father's 65th birthday (& is the 65th birthday the same kind of landmark outside the U.S., since here it's associated with being able to claim Social Security benefits -- government recognition that "you're old," regardless of your physical or emotional state?). The flurry of hugs caught me slightly off-guard, though looking back, I sounded a good bit more down that I felt.

Back when my father passed away in 1997, an older friend (then about 50), who had lost her parents gave me some wonderful guidance. She talked about how I would heal -- not from the wound, the hole in my heart, but around that hole in my heart. I'd still be aware of the loss, the feelings, but the intensity would subside with time, as if contained up in a vase up on a shelf in the back of my heart. She was right (as she often was; K. was, & is, one of those people who radiates joy and understanding, born of experience and hardship and healing), and I try to pass along her understanding to those who are facing the loss of a parent.

What I think I've been feeling then is not per se sadness or depression about my father not being around anymore (kudos to ennnis for pointing out how much he had to offer, even if he was often a very difficult father), but more the awareness of that vase up on the shelf in the back of my heart. It's an odd feeling, hard to explain if you haven't gone through it. but it's basically being mindful of the pain, the loss, on the edge of an old well of sadness but without falling into the past. Having spent 17 years waiting, anticipating -- 17 years from diagnosis to death -- it's almost a bit surreal to stand on the edge of that well but to know (to switch metaphors) that that door is closed.

So once more, thanks for all the warm thoughts.

The managing editor of Soccer America, the soccer magazine of record in the U.S., is reporting that "according to several very well informed sources from the world of football," the anti-racism group SOS Racism said in a statement, "it would seem that the Italian player Marco Materazzi called Zinedine Zidane a 'dirty terrorist.'"

I'm waiting to see if this remains a story that can't be substantiated, relegated to whispers & rumors, or is this explodes into an even far bigger story than the World Cup final is so far.

Rest in Peace, Eric Rofes (1954-2006)

My gratitude to pectopah and madknits for passing this sad news along. Though I never met Eric in person, he transformed the lives of many, many queer men I know, a major pioneer in the field of gay/bi men's health. I also emailed him just the other week about a book review he was writing for me, of Patrick Moore's Beyond Shame: Reclaiming the Abandoned History of Radical Gay Sexuality, along with the films Gay Sex in the '70s and That Man: Peter Berlin. I'm sure it would have been wonderfully provocative.

(see http://baywindows.com for direct link - full link is very long & will break your friends page)

Issue Date: 6/22/2006, Posted On: 6/27/2006

Eric Rofes: 1954-2006

Ethan Jacobs
ejacobs@baywindows.com

Activist, author and teacher Eric Rofes died June 26 in Provincetown from what police say looks like natural causes. Rofes had long Boston roots, working as part of the collective that published Gay Community News. He founded a number of groundbreaking Boston LGBT organizations, including the city’s first group for LGBT teachers, Boston Area Gay and Lesbian Schoolworkers and two of the country’s first queer youth groups, Out Here for Gay Youth and the Committee for Gay Youth. In the mid-70s, he attended a Boston Pride Parade wearing a paper bag over his head and holding a sign that read “Jack and Jill can come out, but their teacher can’t.” He also founded the city’s first group aimed at organizing gay and lesbian voters, the Gay and Lesbian Political Alliance.

In the mid-80s Rofes moved to California, becoming executive director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center in 1985, launching some of the nation’s first HIV prevention programs and opening the first HIV testing site in the state. In 1989 he became executive director of San Francisco’s Shanti Project, which was then the nation’s largest provider of housing for people with HIV/AIDS. In 1993, he was forced to resign after an investigation by the San Francisco City AIDS Project revealed that Rofes and his deputy director Melinda Paras could not account for $2.7 million in federal funding spent by the Shanti Project from 1991 to 1993.

Beginning in the 90s he worked as an activist in the gay men’s health movement, helping to organize three national summits on gay men’s health. He served as an associate professor of education at Humboldt State University from 1999 until his death. His most recent book, A Radical Rethinking of Sexuality and Schooling: Status Quo or Status Queer? (Rowman & Littlefield) was published last year.

Rofes was in Provincetown for the summer on a writing sabbatical, according to information posted on his website. Provincetown police Staff Sergeant Warren Tobias said Rofes passed away from what seem like natural causes, and there was no sign of a struggle or of drug use. He said Rofes’s family has been notified, and the case has been turned over to the Boston medical examiner’s office to determine cause of death.

1) I think I have a new item for my "things to do in life" list: Gay Pride in São Paolo. Boy this sounds fun. Especially Gay Pride in Brazil during the World Cup...

2) Thanks to htrouser to pointing me to the Guardian's blogging of the World Cup (I had a wonderful afternoon watching the USA-Italy tie with htrouser and lady_mactrouser; am now watching the Oilers totally outplay the Hurricanes in game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals. Argh). The Guardian's coverage is (cue the Guinness ad voice) brilliant! Here's the report on the USA-Italy game:

http://football.guardian.co.uk/worldcup2006/minbymin/0,,1788313,00.html

How can you not love reporting like this:

Highlights include:

26 min If Bruce Arena was wearing a toupee - which he absolutely does not, folks - he'd be scratching it now, because his side started so well. Instead he's scratching his perfectly natural and full head of hair.

85 min "Are the Czechs and the Americans part of some High Concept Hollywood Lindsey Lohan comedy where people, or indeed football teams, change identity through a fortune cookie or a kiss or whatever..." asks Rick Burr, not unreasonably, given their respective performances the other day and now today.

Full time: Italy 1 USA 1 That's the end of one of the most surreal matches in World Cup history - three red cards, one slapstick own goal, a dubiously disallowed goal and lots of other stuff to put the hurt on the funny bone. To return to an unpopular theme, it was a talking dwarf and some gentle erotica away from being a David Lynch film. The USA deserved their point, and can go through if they beat Ghana and Italy beat the Czechs.

ESPN's Rob Stone, providing the play-by-play on the Mexico-Angola match, just referred to Angola as "a tiny country." Which would only be sad if he hadn't noted (more correctly) about 15 minutes ago that Angola is "about twice the size of Texas." Ahem.

Still, this doesn't match the other commentator doing the Black Antelopes' first game versus Portugal, who tried to explain the symbol in the middle of the flag of Angola without using the "C" word -- as in "communism."

At least the coverage does get a bit better each tournament...

Alright, time to make my World Cup predictions:

( Read more... )

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2659/

Very scary news from Iraq...

Date: 2006-05-23 16:00
Subject: More Things Parents Just Don't Understand

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/005546.html

Mother: What did you say? He's a professor of cold-cut studies?
Daughter: No, mom! He's a professor of Holocaust studies!

--74th & 3rd

When danbearnyc replied to an earlier post about standing in line at the new Borg-Louvre cube Apple Store in Manhattan, I thought back to standing in line for an hour -- twice -- at the McDonalds in then-Soviet Moscow. Once for the experience, & then again once because nothing else was open, & we were hungry. I still have the Russian placemats...

This remains one of my favorite photos that I've ever taken. A true sign of things to come.

( Moscow, 1990. Behind cut, lest I mess up all y'all's screens )

Apparently, the Borg have visited the Louvre: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2006/tc20060518_284180.htm

I think I'll have to make a pilgrimmage here when I'm in NYC at the end of the week for the Bingham Cup... After all, resistance is... well, a lot of fun.

Saw this a short while ago driving back into Athens (amongst all the other cars with "W" stickers, reminding where I was again...):

http://football.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,1767020,00.html

maybe not everyone's cup of tea, but an article explaining why England's soccer woes for the upcoming World Cup are Margaret Thatcher's fault, with detours through the assassination of Franz Ferdinand (the original one, not the faaaaabulous band), Dr. Strangelove, & the Suez Canal, is for me exactly why del.icio.us rocks.

oh... I'm going to need a World Cup icon...

So today's Friday silliness: who on LJ most resembles the Denver Nuggets' 1970s bear clone logo?



I haven't been much of an NBA fan since my teen years - the Knicks' Golden Age came 35 years ago, & I haven't kept up any enthusiasm for them since I left NYC. Not even the city of Charlotte deserved the Hornets (let alone tragedy-struck New Orleans or Oklahoma City). Atlanta? Hell, the Hawks might not be able to beat Emory. But I have to say, a team with not one but two of the gayest sports logos ever might be a winner -- here's their 1980s Rainbow Flag-meets-Atari^TM Breakout-in-a-Snowglobe logo:

since I'm still without my own computer, & thus without Photoshop or something similar, could someone make this into an icon for me? Gracias!



EDIT: All these posts are clearly the result of me being in the office until 11:15pm, & back at 6:40am this morning - my brain is utterly fried, even as I try to pump out a job letter.

borrowed from htrouser.

Which is your favorite?