So much has been written about the Gay Bomb the pentagon was(?) working on.
Ruben Bolling of Tom the Dancing Bug proves once again how insightful he can be.
Why Do Products and Services Suck?
OK. This is going to be a rant. In the last few weeks I’ve had the opportunity to interact with any number of large corporations. I’ve flown places, bought new computers, new software etc.
And in each case nothing…that would be nothing…has worked. It’s almost laughable…if it wasn’t so expensive and annoying. I’m going to tell you my story. None of the names of the guilty have been changed. I highly recommend not using any of their goods or services (if you can call any of this "service.") It’s a sad and pathetic story. Maybe Expedia isn’t so bad. But the rest of them….suck.
My story starts as I am flying to Wisconsin for a family event. I fly United because that’s where my frequent flyer miles are. It starts with trying to buy a ticket. I go to United (since that’s where my frequent flyer miles are, right?) and try to find a reasonable fare. The cheapest I can find is around $500 and I haven’t even rented a car yet. So I go to Expedia…and find a United flight! For much less…in fact, I end up getting a round trip ticket AND a rental car for under $300. OK…a real head-scratcher…but wait.
I get to the airport for the flight and we’re loaded on the plane with little Homeland Security drama, and we get seated in that particularly insulting and degrading way airlines have found. Why is it that they don’t load from the rear of the plane forward so we’re not tripping over everyone who got on first, or one person who can’t quite get their coat off holds up 125 other people while they struggle with their coat or their over-sized carry-on? No..instead we have to board "First Class" i.e. those people who have more money or an expense account and are willing to pay full freight, while the rest of us wait to get in and sit next to a person on one side of our seat who paid $300 more for the seat immediately next to you, while the person on the other side paid $100 less.
At any rate…we get on. We’re all buckled in and we push off from the gate…and sit there. Twenty minutes goes by and they announce that we have to pull back to the gate. The snacks haven’t been loaded. Snacks? You can’t fly an airplane without snacks? They better be pretty good snacks. Except we never see them. We’re about 45 minutes late taking off. But I never see any snacks.
On the way home, in Milwaukee, that hotbed of terrorist activity, my sister’s homemade jams are confiscated at the security check. Something about liquids and gels. I didn’t realize jams were gels. Or dangerous. But apparently they are. Note to terrorists: If you really want to blow up a plane, try making plastic explosives to look like cheese curds. They let the woman in front of me keep hers. 
We got to Chicago. Got on the plane, pulled out from the gate and…you guessed it. There we sat for 20 minutes. Turns out, it seems, the bathrooms haven’t been properly cleaned, so we have to go back to the gate. Or we don’t. Ten minutes later the captain announces "Oops…my bad. No problem. bathrooms are clean." And then we pull out to the tarmac…and proceed to sit for the next four hours. Apparently, we’re told, there is a system shutdown or some such thing, on the east coast, due to weather. I call home to Brooklyn where I ask my partner what the weather is like. He says it’s sunny and calm. No rain. Not even any wind. When we finally arrive in New York, four hours late, my luggage appears to not have made the flight. They’re on the flight behind me. Apparently four hours isn’t long enough to get from one plane to the next.
Good thing I didn’t have any explosive jams on me when I was at the luggage pick-up. I might have used them. The clerk gives me a $25 voucher for my trouble. Great.
I use QuickBooks to keep track of White Crane finances. I had the old 2004 Nonprofit Premier Edition of it and I thought it might be wise to upgrade it to the 2007 version. Alas, 2007 wouldn’t work on Windows XP, so if I was going to replace QuickBooks, I was going to need to replace my four year old computer. Probably not a bad idea. I’ve (knock on wood) never had a computer crash on me…and I don’t want to. So I thought it would be time to replace the old one with a zippy new one. $1200 later, I get it.
The Dell printer won’t work. They replace the printer. 
Yesterday, I get this notice that my Norton security system needs to be renewed. So I renew. In fact, I upgrade. Bad idea. I download the nifty Norton 360 and I reboot, and everything. And then I go to check the email on AIL…sorry, I mean AOL… and I get an error message. The security sytem won’t let me log on to AOL. So I call Norton/Symantec. In India. and this thickly accently techie in south India does some kind of whiz-bang thing and suddenly he’s taken over control of my computer. From India. And since I have a meeting scheduled, he tells me I don’t need to stick around. He’ll fix it all and if he has any problems or questions, he’ll call me back. Terrific. I come back a couple of hours later and there are these open windows, with Symantec on the label bar, but no Norton 360 anywhere. Odd. And no phone call. So I close it all down. And I call them back this morning.
I get India again. A lovely young woman, I surmise, does the same thing. Takes over control of my computer. Tried to download Norton 360…and while we’re sitting there, the two of us, me in Brooklyn, she in southern India, she gives me this lovely recipe for vegetarian biryani. 
I’ll share it with you all another time. But first…
So, after I get the biryani recipe correct, she notices, as do I, that the download seems to be hung up at "Windows relocatables" or some such thing. We shut down. Reboot. Try again. She does the same thing the other guy did…tells me I can go away if I need to and she’ll fix it all. Except after I come back from making myself some lunch, there in the Notebook window she was "talking" to me on, she’s all of a sudden telling me that my QuickBooks isn’t working.
And I’m wondering why she’s trying to open my QuickBooks? Turns out, it seems, that my QuickBooks "registry key" is incomplete…whatever that means…and so, it seems, is my Windows registry. And I’ll have to call them and get them to "replace the licensing files." Except when I get them on the phone (and explain it all to two different people, twice) neither they nor I can locate this QuickBooks registration file. And I am told that one of their technicians will call me back within the next two hours.
A forty-five minutes have gone by now. I’m still sitting here. I still can’t open QuickBooks. And, unfortunately, I have to fly to Nashville in a week or so to see a dying friend. On United.
UPDATE: QuickBooks didn’t call back (almost forgot…they’re in the Phillipines). I had to call them. They tried to tell me it was "an operating system" problem…i.e. not us, it’s Dell. I get Dell on the phone and a very nice man (in Oklahoma…a little closer to home!) and he responded with no, this isn’t an operating system problem, it’s a problem with QuickBooks.
Really? To his credit he not only dialed QuickBooks into a three-way phone call (things are starting to get kinky!) but stayed on the line and instructed this other techie on what to do! Not only that, but he told me he was "taking ownership of this problem" [!!!!!!!] and gave me a direct phone number to call to follow up.
Honestly, the problems are still not resolved. QuickBooks had me uninstall my QuickBooks! Mind you, that software contains the entire financial records of White Crane Institute. I still don’t actually have the Norton Security we paid for. And, frankly, I’m pretty annoyed with Symantec/Norton for not warning users that by downloading their software…however good it might be…means you are going to have serious problems with any number of other software on your machine. 
It conflicts with QuickBooks. It conflicts with AOL. Who knows what else it conflicts with…but had I been warned, I might have still purchased their product, but I would have been prepared, i.e. I would have known what to do so I wouldn’t screw up everything on the new machine I bought specifically to avoid headaches like this.
The True Moral Majority
A fascinating article in the new edition of The Nation. Maybe the real Moral Majority will finally stand up and be counted.
Michael Moore does more than just healthcare…
I’m excited about Michael Moore’s new SICKO movie, and in the spirit of Gay Pride, I think it’s important to acknowledge our allies. Mr. Moore seems to me to be the balance to the homophobic Garrison Keillor. Check out how he deals with Kansas christo-fascist maniac, Fred Phelps. It is a little surprising to me how many attacks there are on Moore for "making a buck" on this. Just as with the Clinton sex scandal (as far as I’m concerned any President that doesn’t take us to war and eliminates the national debt while creating a surplus at the very least deserves a blow job every day!…I mean, hell, put Edwards in there and I’ll do it myself) I think people making the right arguments ought to be rewarded. And since when was it a crime to make a buck? If Michael Moore’s films aren’t "right livelihood" I don’t know what is.
My Big Gay Day at ALA
As you all know may know I’m a librarian. This last weekend I attended the annual conference of the American Library Association here in Washington, D.C. If you didn’t know the ALA has one of the oldest professional associations for GLBT people, the GLBT Round Table and nearly every year since 1971 the GLBTRT has presented awards to the best queer books of the year. Sunday morning I attended the 2007 GLBT Round Table Stonewall Book Awards Brunch and these were the winners.
The winner of the Barbara Gittings award for best GLBT fiction was Andrew Holleran for his book Grief. Grief is a compelling short novel revolving around a man who upon the death of his mother travels to D.C. and becomes engrossed in the letters of Mary Todd Lincoln. Deeply moving, Grief was the unanimous choice for the fiction book of the year. Unfortunately Andrew was away in Europe on a book tour and couldn’t recieve his award, but he shared his thanks in a letter that was read before the crowd.
Other finalists for best literature were:
The Manny Files / Christian Burch
The Night Watch / Sarah Waters
Rose of No Man’s Land / Michelle Tea
A Scarecrow’s Bible / Martin Hyatt
The winner of the Israel Fishman award for best GLBT non-fiction was Alison Bechdel for her graphic novel memoir "Fun Home." Fun Home tells the story of Alison and her family. Through the process of coming out to her father and sharing her experiences her father begins coming to terms with own sexuality. Alison Bechdel spoke this morning at the brunch and she shared her own story of coming out through literature, and the ping-pong process of reading about sex and actually having it and how sometimes the twain did not meet. It was really quite funny and I look forward to reading her book. Oh, and by the way, it’s also nominated for the National Book Critics Circle award for best non-fiction book of the year and it’s already won loads of awards. The full list is available at: http://dykestowatchoutfor.com/reviews-and-interviews
The other finalists for best non-fiction were:
Covering: The Hidden Assault on our Civil Rights / Kenji Yoshino
Gay Power: An American Revolution / David Eisenbach
Male-Male Intimacy in Early America: Beyond Romantic Friendships / William Benemann
Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son: A Memoir / Kevin Jennings
After the brunch I attended a few other lectures on library stuff, and spoke to a few people about books, bought a few books from the trade show floor reps and then headed up to the Public Library Association keynote speech by Armistead Maupin. Originally Elizabeth Edwards, wife of presidential candidate John Edwards, was slated to speak to the ALA, but unfortunately she couldn’t make it. As Maupin noted to the attendees there was an irony in that Elizabeth Edwards was in San Francisco speaking at gay pride, when one of the most noted gay authors was in Washington DC speaking to a bunch of librarians. We laughed. Oh, his speech was fantastic. It was about the common questions he gets asked, about his inspiration, his life, and his new book Michael Tolliver Lives. I won’t go into all the details, but suffice it to say that some of the story in MTL is based exactly on his life, specifically the opening sequence where Michael at 55 finds the love of his life on the internet, and that’s not giving anything away as it happens in the first chapter. This directly mirrors Maupin’s own experience falling in love with his partner, Christoper Turner founder of daddyhunt.net.
I ended the day by walking another gay colleague back to Lambda Rising to go to the Alison Bechdel book signing and having a couple bits of kissy time. It was lovely.
And I got LOADS of books.
And I’ll be blogging them. Just you watch. 😉
Achilles & Patroclus
The last few hours have presented some crazy synchronicity I thought I’d share. But it involves some storytelling. And since I don’t usually feature a lot of storytelling I thought it might be good for the blog.
This morning Pete and I spent a few hours at two Farmers Markets. He’d been gone for a few days and it was great to have him home and beside me and just enjoying such a beautiful day in the city. We got home a few hours ago and I started roasting some garlic scape I picked up at the market and started reading the Sunday New York Times while Pete snoozed on the couch and finished reading Armistead Maupin’s latest book (which he enjoyed very much thank you very much snippy Washington Post reviewer). Earlier I’d been reading some from a two dollar edition of Aristotle I picked up down on Calvert County yesterday. My friend Kim and I had driven down for the day to the birthday party of a friend of her’s and stopped into a book sale.
So, this morning I began reading the Aristotle book — the introduction anyway, and I’d been reading about Aristotle and Alexander and the Greeks and Persians. It was in keeping with a strange and wonderful Achilles jag I’ve been in of late. It started a few months back when I attended a reading of three Irish poets at the National Geographic. 
The reading was lovely and I especially enjoyed the work of Michael Longley, a living Irish poetic legend who was new to me (don’t you love it when you discover someone really good and you have the delight to immerse yourself?). One of the poems he recited, "Ceasefire" involved the interaction between Achilles and King Priam in the Iliad. The recent movie Troy (not surprisingly) destroyed the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus. A reading of the text shows they were lovers. Achilles kills Hector to avenge the death of his lover. He then makes arrangements to spend eternity with him… it’s all very clear in the Iliad. So, Longley’s poem — which is quite moving — describes the point when old King Priam comes into the enemy’s camp, to Achilles, (who remember has just killed Priam’s son Hector) and begs him for the body of his son Hector. Achilles agrees to give King Priam Hector’s body and then they sit for a meal together. I loved Longley’s poem very much. But I feel it lacked any real sense for the loss that Achilles had suffered at losing Patroclus. In Longley’s poem [read it here], Achilles is shown as a standup guy for giving Priam Hector’s body. But that’s about it. One would have to know the rest of the story to read into it the depth of Achilles’ clear loss as he too sits at the table with the father of the man who took his greatest love away.
So, ever since that reading and hearing that poem I’ve had in the back of my head the desire to write a poem about that very thing. Perhaps a revisiting of that scene in a way that balances the wound and loss. I’m not saying that Priam was trying to erase anything. I think it’s just not his element and perhaps he wasn’t looking for it.
Then about a week ago the wonderful poet Jeff Mann submitted a few poems for the Fall issue of White Crane on "Lovers." One of them is about Achilles and Patroclus although it takes place before the battle where Patroclus dies. Reading the poem sort of revived the task I’d set before myself from Longley’s poem. A few days later I woke up in the middle of the night and tossing and turning I thought of a few lines that were clearly about this idea. I reached for 
paper and pen, which is always beside the bed, and I wrote the lines down. The next morning I read them again and they were in my head for the rest of the day.
Later Pete and I went down to Eastern Market to see what we could see and ran into some lovely apricot-colored yarrow for the garden. The color was just beautiful and different from the yellow colored yarrow you usually see. We picked up a nice bit of it to put in the front garden and placed it in its new place when we got home.
Later that night I went online and started looking up information about yarrow and was stunned to find that the scientific name for yarrow. It’s achillea millefolium. There’s Achilles again. Something’s going on.
Back to today and I’m reading Aristotle and it’s welling up the Greeks and the lovers and the wonderful day we spent out in the beautiful weather and with my love of life and how much I’ve missed him the last few days. I went and wrote the following:
Shall I make us Greek
Because they recorded the names of people like us?
Patrocles and Achilles?
Alexander and Haphaestion?
Hadrian and Antinous?
Ignoring their slaves and empire?
Shall I invoke the names of whispers?
The Lovers that are clear to us
Beyond the burned letters and evasions?
David and Jonathan?
Whitman and Doyle?
Dali and Lorca?Every choice will involve a fight with our enemies
Who have always held erasers in their hands
To wipe away any trace of us.Will there be a trace of us?
Must there be a haunting line in every sweet day
That ages hence no one will remember us
Or remember that men like us knew this kind of love?I should bow and genuflect
At the mere ability to have these days,
To have these moments of truth and gentleness,
I cannot risk the historic,
Or imagine truth as some grander gesture.The simple act of our loving
Is the simplest action of self love.
And then I left it alone. I left it on the screen and went back to reading the paper. The war, the local news, and then a story from New Jersey [read it here] over the weekend. About a boy who paid, like many of his other friends, to have pictures of a kiss, just like everyone else, in his yearbook. And the magic marker and the erasure. And the superintendent claiming she stands for "tolerance" when she orders teachers, (TEACHERS! Teachers who are to "teach"!) to take the stink of black magic markers to the same image on the same page in over 300 copies of a high school yearbook and erase the offending image of two boys who love each other and share a kiss.
I put the story aside and after I’ve finished reading the paper I carry it over to show it to Pete who’s in the living room and I pass the laptop with the poem on it. And there it is today. Achilles and Patroclus and Andre and David and yes, Pete and me.
Make Your Own Faery Wings!
Make Your Own Faery Wings!
With a few basic supplies and your own creative spirit, you can make your own faery wings just to flit around town! Follow the instructions below, or…just wing it! Remember: keep your wings on the small side to avoid snagging yourself on thistles (and other faeries) and make them nice & light so you don’t get a wingache. Take it easy on the faery dust. And be careful if you fly by night!
Supplies You’ll Need:
- 16-gauge galvanized steel wire (14 gauge for ‘high-tension’ wings)
between 6 – 9 feet, for two wings, depending on size of faery
wire clippers/pliers - duct tape
- 1 pair queen-size pantyhose in any color (sheer and/or iridescent look really cool)
Note: Make sure the hose you are using are very stretchy. Don’t use support hose! - Safety pins
- Needle and thread to match pantyhose
- Scissors (sharp enough to cut pantyhose)
- Magic markers in fairylike colors
- Things to decorate your wings! Glitter, feathers, flowers, fluff, lace, foil,
beads, fringe, pipe cleaners, small animals…
1. Make an armature for your wings.
Shape the length of wire into a figure 8, checking as you go to make sure the wings are the size you want and that both sides of the figure 8 are equal in size. Wrap a short (3") length of duct tape around the center join of the figure 8 to fix it firmly in place. If any wire ends are sticking out, trim them with the wire clippers, and cover the ends of the wire with duct tape so they don’t poke you in the back. Test the armature by tugging on it firmly; add more duct tape if needed.
2. Stretch the pantyhose over the armature and shape your wings.
Take the scissors and cut the pantyhose into three pieces: two legs and one "panty." Set the panty aside; it will become your wing halter. Now stretch one pantyhose leg over each side of your figure-8 armature. Pull it taut, but not so tight that it distorts the wings. Use safety pins to hold the pantyhose legs in place at the base of the wings, and shape your wings by bending the wire. Adjust the tension of the 
pantyhose as needed. When you’ve got the shape you want, sew the pantyhose in place at the base of the wings, and then trim off the excess hose (you can use it for additional decoration or to extend your halter ties, if needed).
3. Decorate your wings!
Using magic markers, draw in the basic lines of your wing design. Color your wings according to your fancy, or if you want, you can look through field guides of moths and butterflies to find a pattern you like. Embellish your wings with glitter, feathers, beads… whatever you desire!
4. Create a wing "halter" or ties.
Take the leftover panty, and cut out the crotch area (this will become the neck hole). You now have what looks like a very small tank top (A). For small children, this halter can simply be pulled over the head; larger folks will need to enlarge the holes and/or cut open the front of the halter (B). Some faeries prefer to do away with the halter altogether and instead use long ties that they wrap around their shoulders and torso (C). You can also use a double loop of elastic, one loop per shoulder.
5. Attach your wings to the halter (or ties).
Using needle and thread, securely attach your wings to the halter or ties. Now for the fun part — try them on! Use a hand mirror in front of a bigger mirror to see if the wings are sitting even on your shoulders (or ask a friend to check for you). If necessary, use needle & thread to adjust the wing placement, or adjust the ties until the wings are as straight as you want them.
6. Wear your wings to the May Day Festival!
You may, of course, want to wear them at other times: to parties, friends’ houses, job interviews, even the supermarket. You can also make faery antennae to complement your wings–why not!
(Sad-but-true disclaimer: faery wings do not enable the wearer to actually fly, at least as such action is defined within the realm of Newtonian physics. Flights of fancy are excepted from this disclaimer whether they adhere to Newtonian or quantum physics but we eschew any and all responsibility for any physical consequences of such flights — or physick required to remedy said consequences.)
Wing design ©1997 by Amy Grisham. Used with permission!
Thank you Amy!
Drawings © Amanda Sanow.
We Love Pink
Pink has a few questions for the President…
Nutbar Friday!
A nice bit of running commentary on this…
My Forebears, Whitman, Brown & Cox
As a poet and writer living and working in DC I like to pay attention to writers like me who may have experienced many of the same things I have. What I mean is I’m conscious that my work (hopefully) has something to say about the place I live in that is in conversation with others who’ve written here as well. That’s not to say that all my poetry is place-specific, but a lot of it is. I become more and more conscious of the poets who have called Washington home.
Yesterday I picked up my partner from work and we went to have drinks at a little bar in Logan Square (we were enticed by some very crazy martinis they’re famous for at this place). While we sat there on comfy couches by the front of the bar I pulled out my trusty copy of Walt Whitman and started reading into Pete’s ears. Just loud enough for him to read…
I am indifferent to my own songs—I am to
go with him I love, and he is to go
with me,
It is to be enough for each of us that we are
together—We never separate again.
And we had our delicious fruity drinks and enjoyed being connected to a poet we both love and admire.
I dance with the dancers and drink with the drinkers.
We would’ve danced if the drinks hadn’t been so powerful. Now, I’m sure there were a lot of folks wondering what we were doing there in this bar reading from a book. But Whitman deserves to be read aloud in all places and especially in the Washington he loved so much (the city he probably would’ve been buried in had he not suffered a stroke and had to move closer to family in Camden). So, I take Whitman with me in a lot of places and I become more familiar with the Whitman-specific things in DC (thanks to Kim Roberts, Martin Murry and many writers).
I also think of Sterling Brown because he lived in Brookland and I live in Brookland. I sometimes wonder how he experienced these same sidewalks and blocks in our corner of DC. I think that it’s good to remember you weren’t the first to experience life where you live. Whenever I think it might be odd to be writing about my life or the place I live I recall those who came before me. Those who wrote and to whom I’m endebted for populating my historical mind with precedents of verse and imagery.
Which brings me to Ed Cox. Yesterday I was given a delightful gift by Kim Roberts of an old cover of the Washington Review featuring a great photograph of Cox (by Jesse Winch) on the cover. Cox was part of the Mass Transit poetry scene of the 1970s.
I never knew Ed Cox and didn’t move to DC until 10 years after his death. I first heard about Cox when I picked up a copy of his Collected Poems put out by Paycock Press. I was stunned by his poems.
Along with Beth Joselow, Michael Lally, & Terence Winch, Cox was a key figure in that circle that created Some Of Us Press. As a partner in bringing a small poetry press to life there’s some connection there too. A group of poets wanting to bring the work of their fellows to life. His connection to a circle of friends, literary and artistic reminds me of the work I do with Bo on White Crane.
So, discovering a poet like Ed Cox, who made a life here and was so involved and committed to the city and its people and to living an out life as a Gay man in the 1970s is helpful to me. A poet who was kind and thoughtful and a good listener. These are all good things to aspire to.
If you don’t know who Ed Cox is or aren’t familiar with his work, we are again endebted to the amazing work of Kim Roberts, whose Beltway Poetry site serves as repository of the brain of DC Poetic history. There are a lot of amazing pieces there including a remembrance by Richard McCann, and an old interview of Ed Cox by E. Ethelbert Miller which was originally in the old Washington Review (where the above Cox photo by Jesse Winch comes from). In his gorgeous piece, McCann remembers his old friend as having "a gift for listening deeply, with a patient and even profound attentiveness." This gift, McCann observes, can be found throughout Cox’s poetry.
I am you,
as you are me in the misery of these avenues
and streets. Cuddle the bricks, whisper
beneath the great map of stars.
It seems fitting to remember the work of Ed Cox on this Gay Pride Month.