Boot or Sandal?

It's too grey and cool to be Labor Day weekend.

First oil change with the new car today... Painless.

Mineral Point, WI
Rockford, IL
St. Louis, MO
Milwaukee, WI
Oak Creek, WI
Madison, WI
Des Moines, IA
Tonganoxie/McLouth town-ish line, KS

I needed to wear purple polar-fleece socks yesterday to remember some of this...

I know there's still a heavy amount of rage in me over my school years. In my case I seemed to catch hell before I even knew I was gay, with name-calling and ostracism that carried from the second or third grade, turning more decidedly hostile once I got to high school (and violent on several occasions, including getting beaten up pretty badly by a mob of neighborhood kids in front of my mother's apartment building when I was 14, the event that made moving back in with my dad - his heavy drinking and all - seem not so upsetting six months later). Add clearly not being "Black enough" for even the smart kids in most of the inner-city schools I attended - shitty at athletics, not the greatest dresser, too light-skinned, too flighty to the possible point of ADHD - on top of being queer, and you get not many, or at least not enough in my case, opportunities to hear that I was sufficient as I was, and a lot of opportunities for kids who didn't know me well at all to let me know where they thought I fell short of their standards, or - crueler still in my opinion - how they'd treat me better if I was only black OR gay, and not both (I remember a couple of black classmates telling me "If you were white, it'd be different" when I confronted them after hurling eggs at me while I was jogging on the indoor track at my high school.)

It was also possible to end up more than a little resistant to believing it when people (like an older cousin who was the first college graduate on my father's side of the family, and a schoolteacher - I hated her when I was a child, but she busted ass on my behalf at times!) actually DO let you know that you are quite capable of doing awesome things in life.

Fortunately for me, late in high school I started associating with people who saw that there isn't simply one path toward excellence and joy in life... and I've kept finding those people throughout the years since, and doing those small and large things to be as worthy as I could be of their trust and friendship (and some love, too).

I have no idea if any of this makes sense - it's just how I feel, and what I know.

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Mine is a cutoff New York Mets sweatshirt that REMINDS me of the cultural hot mess (racial strife at UMass-Amherst to the point where it made "Donahue" - ask your aunts, kids!) that occurred when Bill Buckner spread it like a Vegas hooker (to my extreme pleasure!!) in the '86 World Series (I started college... in Boston... 2 years later, and rubbed my New Yorkness - and Metness! - in a few faces I KNOW I shouldn't have.)... More than 20 yrs. later, I still have the shirt - even though my muffintop is more of a weddingcaketop! - and it makes me smile!

My $0.02US on the 2009 Major League Baseball season goes like this...

a hurt team can rebound...Let's Go Mets 2010!!!

Happy Birthday, Ben!! (kc_risenphoenix)

Thanking elderfear profusely...

The words too hot for even HBO (since their cablecast started after he'd already spoken to the crowd), from the Rev. V. Gene Robinson (also available on the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire's Web site).... and fuck you if you wanted this behind a cut!

A Prayer for the Nation and Our Next President, Barack Obama



By The Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire



Opening Inaugural Event

Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC

January 18, 2009



Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next president.







O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will…



Bless us with tears – for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.



Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.



Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.



Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.



Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.



Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.



Bless us with compassion and generosity – remembering that every religion’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.





And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.



Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.



Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.



Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.



Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.



Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.



Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.



And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand – that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.



AMEN.

© Copyright 2004-2006 by The Diocese of New Hampshire, The Episcopal Church

BTW, you can express your disappointment/unhappiness/etc. with HBO here.

I love an explosion...

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