The Republic of T.

I had one reaction upon watching this video.

Once upon a time I was that little boy, in more ways than I could begin write about here. If I could give a word of advice to his parents it would be this:

Let him be who he is.

Accept him for who he is.

Be on his side.

Even if you don’t fully understand.

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I know nothing about basketball. I’ve never even played basketball. Well, except for once in middle school, during phys. ed. But that doesn’t count because I had to play. Given a choice I’d have preferred to eat glass. Anyway, I seriously jammed my finger and never played again.

I know even less about March Madness and bracketology. But apparently, thanks to Matt over at The Malcontent, I’ve been bracketed in some madness called March Gayness 2007.

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Reading the news this week caused me to have a flashback to my school days. I’ve written before about the implications of Obama’s candidacy, being underwhelmed Democratic line-up for ’08 thus far, and having already lowered expectations on gay issues for the next few years. But seeing two of the front running Democrats not just trip over themselves running away from gay issues, but also come off sounding like their right wing counterparts reminded me of something I wrote when I asked what the Democrats’ strategy on gay issues might be.

I find myself returning the playground analogy; probably something unavoidable in this situation, for a gay man who came out and grew up smack in the middle of the bible belt. Hearing the Republican strategy is reminiscent of hearing the school bully say he’s gonna pound you good after the bell rings.

And sure enough, he’s waiting for you after school. You know he’s big. Too big to take on by yourself. But you have friends, right? They know how big the bully is. Big enough to pretty much control the whole school. But they’re your friends, right? They might get banged up, but surely they’re not going to stand by and watch you take a beating right?

Well.

Well. If nothing else, it’s good to know who your friends are. Right?

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After grinding away most of the week on a project at work, I’ve fallen behind in my blogging and my blog reading. I’m just about through digging through my RSS feeds. (I know, there’s this handy function called “mark all read” that I should probably learn how to use, but then I’d miss something) That’s just marking the stuff I want to read. Actually reading it comes later.

Being in the habit of posting regularly is a hard habit to break. Half the time, as is the case now, I’ve got four or five posts in mind that I want to write at some point, and I spend a good bit of time thinking about what I want to write while actually doing something else. I won’t have time to write the posts that are percolating in my brain until sometime later. But in the interest of not letting things lie fallow for too long here. I thought I’d post something I’ve been meaning to write for a while.

It’s the answer to a question I often get from people who are about to visit the area. Where are the best places to go for vegetarian food in D.C.?

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I first came to D.C. for the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. I’d never been to the city before, except once on a bus trip from Georgia to Philadelphia, and then I only saw the bus station. This time, I was coming as an adult gay man (just shy of one year sober, too), to attend the biggest March I’d ever been to. We — myself plus the two guys I drove up with— got rooms at the National Cathedral, in a dormitory the College of Preachers. (One of us was dating an Episcopal priest at the time. It was not me.) Lucky for us, because there were no affordable hotel rooms and even floor space in the homes of D.C.’s gay community were scarce.

As soon as we finished the long, grueling drive and put out bags in our rooms, one of the guys insisted we make a pilgrimage to D.C.’s gay neighborhood: Dupont Circle. I knew there were cities that had whole gay neighborhoods. I’d read about the Castro in San Francisco, Chelsea in new York, and I’d been to Midtown in Atlanta. The idea still excited me. After living most of my life in places where being out wasn’t necessarily safe, the idea of a whole neighborhood that was not just gay-friendly space but gay space sounded amazing to me. I had no idea. At least not until we got off the Dupont metro and started riding up that long escalator and I heard a faint roar that grew louder as we rose higher.

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I’ve been churning away on a project at work, so I haven’t had much time to read much, let alone blog anything. Maybe by Wednesday I can resurface and find out what’s been happening in the world. Promise to be back soon, but for now I wanted to share a cute story.

I came home on Friday, and Parker was excited to show me what he’d learned in gym that day. It turns out our little guy learned him some yoga!

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I’ve been wondering lately whether or not I’m too young to write a memoir. Not famous enough, maybe? (I have a hard time imagining that many people would want to read it.) The reason it’s been on my mind is because of a couple of books I’m reading.

I rarely re-read books anymore, and I’m not sure what put me in the mood to read Jeb and Dash: A Diary of Gay Life 1918-1945. I read it about a year ago, finally ordering after it had been recommended by a friend a couple of years earlier. It’s basically the diaries of a gay man — given the pseudonym “Jeb Alexander” — who lived in Washington, D.C. from 1918 through 1945, edited by the niece to whom he willed the diaries. (Actually, he left 50 volumes of diaries spanning from 1912 through 1965, when “Jeb” died following a cerebral hemorrhage.) Maybe it was the opportunity to read about gay life before I was even born, to see how much we had in common across history, and to see the city through the eyes of a gay man who’d lived in D.C. before me.

I guess it was another book I’m reading that made me grab Jeb and Dash off the shelf again, because it made me reflect on my own past and the significant moments that pretty shaped my present.

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Well, he’s free.

Actor John Inman, best known for his role as camp shop assistant Mr Humphries in the long-running BBC comedy “Are You Being Served?” died aged 71 on Thursday.

Inman, who later became a pantomime regular, was one of the sitcom’s most memorable cast members and his catchphrase “I’m free” became part of popular culture.

In 1976, he was voted “Funniest Man On Television” by readers of TV Times magazine and was also named BBC TV’s “Personality Of The Year.”

He died at St Mary’s Hospital in London after having been ill for some time, his manager Phil Dale said in a statement.

If you don’t know who John Inman was — not to mention his famous character, Mr. Humphries — you’ve been missing out.

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(Crossposted from my EchoDitto blog.)

Imagine this. You’re standing, waiting for a bus when you hear a commotion; screaming, yelling, gunshots, etc. You turn around and witness someone being dragged in to a van– kicking and screaming — by several armed, hooded individuals.

Instead of diving for cover, you whip out your mobile phone and start capturing video at the precise moment one kidnapper shoots a security guard and foolishly rips off his mask before jumping into the van just as it speeds away. You have his picture. You have video evidence of his crime. Being a good citizen, you take your video of the crime to the police, and they arrest you. Because what you did is a crime. Or it could be, in France.

That is, if France criminalizes citizen journalism.

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I’m probably not going to come across very compassionate here, but at least I’m being honest. I saw yesterday that David Kuo posted a link to a news article about layoff at Ted Haggard’s former mega-curch. I can only imagine they’re dealing with quite a shortfall in the aftermath of Haggard’s fall. But it was Kuo’s brief comment that got a reaction out of me.

Lost in all the “big” news about Haggard is the big and very hurt church that still lives in Colorado Springs everyday. They need our prayers.

Not to be cold-hearted, but my first reaction is “So what?” Whatever hurt the folks as New Life are suffering is one they inflicted on themselves as far as I’m concerned. And while I feel for the people who’ve lost jobs and security in the post-scandal scenario, there are a lot of other people suffering from hurt dealt them by churches very much like New Life, and people very much like the one’s still sitting in New Life’s pews. I’ll save most of my sympathy for them.

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Not to beat a dead horse on the Michael Savage thing, but when I crossposted it to my Daily Kos diary, I read a comment that made me realize there was more to be said. Melissa Etheridge called into the Stephanie Miller show and commented on the Savage saga. It reminded me of what started this whole thing in the first place. Take a close look and see if you can spot what Melissa did wrong.

Here’s a hint. It’s near the beginning.

It’s a simple “Thank you.”

There’s a few more things that need to be said here.

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We had a pretty good weekend with Parker. On Saturday, we took him to his swimming lesson and then to the library for our regular (once every three weeks) visit, where we checked out some books for him that we spent the better part of the evening reading to him. His favorites right now are Curious George and The Magic Schoolbus.

Reading to him has become even more enjoyable because he’s showing even more interest in the words. He’ll stop us in the middle of a sentence and ask questions like “Which one spells ‘George’?”. And after we spell it for him, the next time he sees the word on a page he point it out, saying “That spells ‘George,’ and that spells ‘George’, and that spells ‘George.’ And he gets it right every time. As a writer and an avid reader, naturally I hope my son develops the kind of love for books and reading that I did as a child, because I think it will serve him as well as it has me.

Sunday we took Parker on a special trip to Baltimore, to visit the National Aquarium. We’d gone once before, when Parker was a couple of years younger, and we thought this time he’d be old enough to enjoy it. We were right. He didn’t care much for the larger fish, though he was fascinated by the dolphins. And he thoroughly enjoyed looking at the smaller fish, some of which he recognized from Finding Nemo, and called them by the names of the characters in the movie. The frog exhibit was a big hit too. He seemed to recognize the tree frogs from watching Go, Diego, Go!, and got a kick out of calling the red ones “strawberry frogs.”

After we got home, we baked a cherry pie together, because we figured it was something Parker would enjoy. Once it was in the oven, I surprised him with a DVD of he favorite-movie-of-the-moment, Cars, which I’d secretly purchased on Saturday. I got the idea when Parker relayed the entire plot to me a couple of weekends ago. We watched it together, and I think he enjoyed sharing the movie with us.

Finally, that evening, I helped Parker brush his teeth before bed. We’re transitioning him to a “big boy” toothpaste, and trying to teach him to spit it out rather than swallowing it. He was anxious to show me how well he could brush his own teeth. Then I took him upstairs, as it was my turn, read Goodnight Moon to him, tucked him in and kissed him good night.

It wasn’t until that evening, after the weekend described above, that I finally sat down to catch up on blog reading and saw Michael Savage’s comments.

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I was a little bleary-eyed yesterday because I stayed up last night to watch the Discovery channel documentary “The Lost Tomb of Jesus.” I opted for the 1am showing because the 9pm showing conflicted with Desperate Housewives. (Priorities, ya know?) I scheduled Tivo to record it, but ended up watching it anyway, since I was still up when it came on again. And though I thought I’d go to bed before it ended at 3am, I stayed up to watch until the end.

It’s an intriguing piece of film. Not being a historian or an archaeologist, I can’t say how much of it can or should be believed. I’m not a scientist, so I can’t vouch for the validity of the science used in the documentary either. At the same time, I don’t think its claims are any less believable than much of what people have believed for last 2000 years, based on not much more evidence than was presented in the documentary. And while I think that’s an important point that will inevitably get lost in the ensuing discussion, I think just the fact that the documentary was even produced could be a significant development in how religion is or isn’t discussed these days.

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After going silent for a couple of days, while I was busy with work & family, I started to wonder if anybody would still be reading here when I finally got back to blogging. Turns out, someone at the Washington Post Express has been reading, and picked up on the post about Strom Thurmond’s family owning Al Sharpton’s ancestors. Nice, especially since that was one of those posts I didn’t think many people would be that interested in.

It seems, though, that there’s still some interest in the subject. Just this morning (and probably late, as I didn’t read my news & blog feeds over the weekend) I came across news that Barrack Obama’s ancestors owned slaves.

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I was not quite eight years old when Roots, the miniseries based on Alex Haley’s’ book, aired on television in 1977. Even then I had enough awareness of African American history to at least know that at some point many African Americans (if not most) had been slaves. I didn’t necessarily know what slavery was, except that it meant people had to work without getting paid, couldn’t do what they wanted to do, and were treated very badly.

But I didn’t really make the connection between that history and myself or anyone in my family. I’m not sure I even realized, intellectually, on some level that most likely some distant relatives of mine had been slaves; had been owned.

I remember, that I was very curious about Roots, and wanted very much to see it when it first aired. But I couldn’t. My parents watched it together, alone, and forbade my sister and I from watching it with them. They said it was because they wanted to make sure it was appropriate viewing for us. But at the time I thought they were protecting us from something, and I wondered what that something was.

It wasn’t until later, many years later when I was in college, that I found out. And I thought about it when I read the news this week that Al Sharpton discovered his ancestors were owned by Strom Thurmond’s family.

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