Joe's profileGrandpa JoePhotosBlogListsMore  |  Tools Help |
|
July 30 Another Damn AIDS death Thankfully, it's been awhile, but my experience is that one death brings back all the others and especially all the anger. Ferd Eggan wasn't a close friend. I got to know him because Claire Gorfinkel, who is a close friend, would drag him over to my house for one of our movie nights. Claire comes over occasionally and we make dinner and watch movies. Ferd also had worked a little with the AFSC as a volunteer. He was a life long activist, working for many causes over the course of his life, but mostly in the struggle to help those living with AIDS. He set up the first social group for those who were positive. He was the Executive Director of Being Alive and he was active in ACT UP. And he was a brilliant artist with a wonderful quirky sense of humor. As the AIDS Coordinator for the city of Los Angeles, he got the city to support a needle exchange program, which was against the law in those days. How ironic that the DEA busted ten marijuana clinincs this week, locally legal but federally illegal. Our god damned federal government again deciding to choose death over life!
At his memorial yesterday I was taken back to when 40000 had already died and neither Reagan or Bush would even comment on the disease. I was taken back to the days when we struggled to even find funneral homes that would handle the bodies. I was taken back to when 5 or 6 friends would be in the hospital actively dying, and when I volunteered one day a week at a hospice. Mostly I remembered Ferd's wonderful video-blogs "Communiques from the Cranky PWA" (http://www.crankypwa.blogspot.com) and his wonderful rememberances of early gay liberation in a piece called "Fags and Dykes Want Everything", published in That's Revolting: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation (http://www.november3rdclub.com/11-06/nonfiction/liberation.htm).
I think what made Ferd so special was his ability to see irony and to use it to channel his anger. It was really difficult yesterday for me to do that. I didn't realize how much anger is still there, but then we still live under a government that refuses to deal effectively with the world AIDS crisis, or even to insure that our own citizens have access to quality health care.
So, my friend Ferd, the struggle continues without you. Many of us are still left, and many more young folks are beginning to realize that they need to join the struggle for personal and societal liberation. As I sat in the memorial service yesterday I felt the presence in the room of all those I knew who had died, and all those around me who were remembering all of their friends who had died. Being a mathematician I did a little calculation in my head, and realised that there were probably 10000 souls with us, remembering you and all those others, killed by 25 years of folks who thought AIDS was a moral disease, the just rewards for being gay.
You did a good job, my buddy. At the end, all that matters is personal integrity and our community, both our blood family who stand with us and our made family. The poster honoring Ferd below was done by Judy Sisneros. I threw in the Chaney cover just because I knew Ferd would have laughed...
July 27 Sixth Month Anniversary This week I have been playing the banjo for 6 months. Hurrah! I replaced the bridge on it yesterday and I'll replace the strings on it before I head off to music camp. I told my teacher this week that I'm pleased with my progress, though it often seems a very slow learning curve. I've started bringing a compact disk recorder into lessons with me. Playing back later always amazes me. How much better I sound on the disk! I still haven't gotten to the point of remembering to breath when I play for my teacher though. "Joe, breath, you're turning blue!" July 26 Tour of FancifulAH, well. It appears there's a greater connection between school and the Tour than I guessed. Rasmussen is gone. Vinokourov is gone. Cheaters. Liars. At least according to the drug testers. What I don't understand is that they appeared to ignore how easy it was to be caught. Of course, that's true of many of the students I catch cheating, too. It's as if they think I'm deaf, dumb and blind. Now it is true that some students get away with it. But, as I tell my students, think of the consequences if they don't get away with it.
I feel very sorry for those who generally worked honestly hard to get where they are in the Tour. Now the whole tour is tainted by these cheaters. I hope folks can see the value of the Tour and not brand everyone by the actions of these folks.
Some good news. The AMGEN Tour of California next February will start in Palo Alto, go through Sacramento, and end in Pasadena. Mike and I should have front row seats for at least two of the stages! July 25 Pacific Yearly Meeting Gathering Well, less than a week away from PYM. Perhaps I've had too much vacation. Perhaps I've had a really hard year. Perhaps I'm beginning to loose it, but I'm really looking forward to clerking our annual sessions! As clerk of Orange Grove Monthly Meeting, some of the most deeply spiritual times in my life have been watching the leading of the Spirit move over the group, especially at times when I wondered if we would ever come to unity. It is an amazing things to watch from the clerk's table. My greatest wish right now is that the Spirit will wash over PYM, not just in the Plenaries, but also through out the whole week.
Folks come to PYM for many different reasons, to reconnect with old friends, to do the business of the Yearly Meeting, to learn what other Meetings are doing, some simply for vacation and relaxation. My hope is that Spirit covers all these activities, giving rest to the weary, insight to those seeking learning, Spiritual fellowship to those seeking connection, and gathering our worship so that we might deepen our time with each other. As we meet for worship with attention to business, I hope we remember that unity is not consensus and that we seek unity with the Spirit and the work we are called to do in the world.
So I'm excited, knowing that if there are rough times we will be polished and if there are gathered times we will be renewed.
July 23 From MoveOn.OrgCongress wants to offer free health care to millions of uninsured children. Who could be against that? But President Bush is afraid insuring kids is a slippery slope -- opening the door to affordable health care for everyone. How terrible. Many Republican senators are ignoring Bush in favor of insuring kids. But we still don't have enough votes to override Bush's veto threat -- and the Senate vote is just days away. I signed a petition urging Congress to vote for the biggest health care expansion in over 40 years. Can you join me at the link below? http://pol.moveon.org/kidshealth/?r_by=10851-4362068-fFMQue&rc=comment_paste Thanks! Fair and equal and Le Tour These days the big educational idea is that everyone must have the same access to education, an idea which I think is wonderful, to a point. But what's happened is that it's morphed into everyone having the same chance of passing and graduating. I was reminded yesterday when I was watching the Tour de France time trials that life is just not like that. Those who started the trial early had dry roads and fast times. Those who started in the middle got rain and wet, slippery roads. Many fell. Those who started later got no rain and drying roads. Had this been an educational test, everyone would have protested that they didn't have an equal shot at passing. They'd be right, not everyone had the same chance. But my running coach used to say to me, "No excuses, Franko!"
Last semester I had a student who failed every test and turned in incomplete projects, but who insisted that he should have passed instead of failing the class, because he was "close" to passing. When I asked him what he was thinking, he said he thought it was unfair his class had to take their final at 7:30 am instead of at 11 am as the other class had done. He said he wasn't given a shot at passing. This sense of entitlement is pervasive in the American educational system today and it's unfair to everyone, but especially those who work hard to pass.
What this attitude in American education does is to encourage mediocrity. Because my coach taught me "no excuses" mattered, I went on to win a 100 mile trail race and to win several silver buckles in a one of the most difficult mountain races in America. Had I been allowed to make excuses I might not have pushed myself so hard. What we saw in the Tour de France time trial were athletes taught to excel in their sport and one athlete in particular, Michael Rasmussen, do the time trial of his life in conditions that were worse than he had to face in previous, good condition, Tours.
Courage consists in doing your best when conditions are stacked against you. Not everyone can be a winner and when things are rigged so that everyone is a winner, than no one really wins. These days in education it's fashionable to talk about self-esteem as being more important than competition. I'd like to go back to the days when educational competition encouraged excellence and courage.
July 18 Jesus in LoveOne of the nice things about vacation is having the ability to read non-technical books. I just finished a superb novel about the first half of Jesus' life. As a gay man I appreciate calling this a book about a gay Jesus, but this book is really about accepting the fact that Jesus was not only divine, but also fully human. If anything, this is a Jesus in love not just with John, but also with Mary. This is a Jesus who, as his divinity grows, so does his experience of sexuality. Whoa!
What if Jesus fell in love the way we do, only he was fully aware of the responsibility and gift of loving? This book paints a Jesus who is not only divine, but also learning and growing in both his awareness of his divinity and his humanity. How refreshing! How beautiful! A divine Jesus who is also fully human! That's what makes this book revolutionary. Kittredge Cherry has written about an accessible Jesus who loves us on so many dimensions and who is open to his own sexuality, though struggling with how to express that sexuality in the context of his divinity. This is a man who finds that he loves not only with agape, but also with eros, and that the deeper his divine love is for us, the deeper is his erotic love. But this is also a Jesus with divine consciousness who knows that the pwoer imbalance can not be overcome and so he struggles to love without overwhelming his lovers.
Buy this book for a view of what Jesus might be like if we accepted not only his divinity, but also his humanity. Buy it if only because it will piss off the Christian right, who think they have a lock on Jesus. But it to trouble all those Christians who are so sex-phobic they can't believe that a Jesus who is fully human must also be fully sexual. Although we think of Jesus as the Son of God, he is more often named Son of Man in the Bible. I can't wait for the sequel, "Jesus in Love on the Cross." Hope it's finished soon! July 14 Washington, Wisconsin, Iowa and Le Tour de FranceBack home again. Seems like I've been gone forever! At the end of June I flew up to San Jose and helped my son pack up his house and load a 26 foot truck up with all their belongings. I had a wonderful trip with him up the coast to Lakewood, south of Seattle. It's been a long time since my son and I did a long trip together (I think Costa Rica was our last trip together) and I had forgotten how much I enjoy spending time with him. I'm so grateful he gave me that opportunity. And Jennalise has really grown up. I had such fun with her. It was also good to see Rose Marie, Tana, and Elizabeth. I was bummed about not getting to say goodbye to everyone. There was a mixup in communication and I left for the airport thinking we'd meet there for lunch, only finding out when Elizabeth, I and Rose Marie got to the airport that it wasn't planned.
Was home just long enough to wash clothes and take off for FGC Gathering in River Falls, Wisconsin, about 35 miles outside of Minneapolis. I was to do a workshop and I was able before leaving to get my handouts run off and bound into a little booklet of 80 pages. It was a wonderful booklet of excerpts from writings on non-violence and confrontation. I discovered the first day of the workshop that folks were coming with lots of different expectations, which made doing the workshop very difficult! Evaluations showed that I personally received high marks as a workshop leader, but folks wanted the workshop more focused. Ah, well. I knew it was going to be difficult to bring it all together. I think by the end of the week it came together, but most folks missed the point that the workshop was structured to show confrontation without community building was merely violence. It's all about community and most folks felt that we spent too much time building community! The best part of the workshop, though, was the people. A very interesting and engaging group of people and we had 5 high schoolers in the group. It was so good to make new friends.
I had forgotten how hard leading a week long workshop was. We met every morning from 9 to about noon. A lot of work which would have been impossible without Sonia, the woman I asked to be my elder. Sonia is my former Associate Regional Director, now a Regional Director in the AFSC Central region, whose home office is in Des Moines. She was invaluable in helping me during the week. One of the things I've always loved about Sonia was her ability to speak plainly to me...a really valuable asset in any friendship.
I had thankfully arranged to visit with Sonia after the workshop was over, so she drove us from River Falls down to Des Moines. We decided to take the scenic route, along the Mississippi River. It was a perfect trip for decompression. I spent a couple of days in Des Moines getting to know her partner Michael and her dog Bear. Michael is a sweetie and he and Sonia make a wonderful couple. It's really nice to spend time watching Jaemon and Tana, and Sonia and Michael. Watching couples who clearly love each other always gives me hope that the human race can find a way to live with each other. Michael began a new job this week. Hope the week went well for him. He was as nervous about his new job as Jaemon was about his. Watching Jaemon and Michael made me glad I'm seattled into my job. While at Sonia's we did the Tour de Joe's Houses, visiting all the houses I lived in in Des Moines. Sonia discovered Chattauqua Park, a little known area of Des Moiines that is stunningly beautiful and is where Maggie and I had our house. It was so good to see it spruced up and pretty again. Someone lives in it who obviously loves it.
Sonia showed me her office and gave me a chance to visit the Meetinghouse. We visited the new Statehouse grounds and took a tour of West Des Moines and Downtown Des Moines. I forget how much of a small town Des Moines still is. It looked pretty barren to me after living in LA for all these years. The small shops I used to love in the downtown area are gone. A few have moved to the East Village. I was sad to see how Des Moines has mostly become office space for big insurance companies, thought the river walk area is beautiful and the people are as nice as ever. Gone are the Yonkers tea room, the small shops and restaurants, etc.
I fit in a few days up in Ames with Margaretjean. Lots of time to remember in a 35 year relationship! We visited a winery in Ames (!) and did lots of driving around and eatting out at wonderful places, but mostly we talked a lot. It was really nice spending time with Mj. I love her so much and wish we still lived close enough to spend time with each other over the kitchen table. Too many good friends in my life have died or disappeared, so I cherish the ones from long ago I've managed to stay in touch with. i managed to hook up with Bob, a friend who goes back even farther than Mj does. Bob and I grew up on Long Island together. He and his partner Steve are doing well. Wished I had a chance to visit with Steve, but he was at work the whole visit.
While at Sonia's and Mj's I got rehooked on the Tour de France. It's a wonder to me that even with Lance and Floyd gone I'm still hooked on the damn race. Perhaps it's because it reminds me of endurance running. Each mile brings a new adventure, an unexpected turn of events, a new challenge to overcome. The first week has been filled with serious injuries as the bikers sort out who will be the winners of the yellow, green, polka-dot, and white jerseys. I'm thoroughly hooked on it. Which reminds me, time to go watch the first stage in the mountains. GO GEORGE HINCAPIE!
|
|
|
