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The Return of LGBTSr (If not Now, When?)
Mark McNease, EditorLife is not linear. Love is eternal. Strength is essential.
An excellent grief counselor once told me grief is not linear—it does not build, crescendo, then recede and leave us to move on with our lives. It comes and goes, sometimes for many years.
I look at life that way. It’s not, and need not be lived, as a linear experience: young, older, old. Here, there, gone. Life can be made of cycles and phases, and letting go of something doesn’t mean we won’t do it, or hold it, or be it again.
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Lee Lynch’s Amazon Trail: The Six-Foot Table Solution
Photo by Sue Hardesty By Lee Lynch
The Amazon TrailYes, we can solve all our problems with six-foot tables, even world peace.
I’m surprised no one thought of it before. It was my fairy goddaughter (FGD) who opened my eyes to the concept. She, also a writer, was the one who designated me her fairy godmother, in my opinion a great honor.
She was in the process of moving into her new house and a little bit overwhelmed. Or perhaps scared silly at the gargantuan task ahead. All her possessions were in a jumble. Like most of us landing in a new home, she didn’t know where to start.
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Rod Hensel: It’s Time for New York State to Step Up for LGBT Seniors
Rod Hensel By Rod Hensel
Our LGBT seniors who are still out and about and active need to be willing show they know how to post on Facebook and use a phone when election time draws near. We’re not even asking for money, just the right to live with dignity and pride.
On the west coast, California gets it. Washington state gets it. It’s time for New York State to take a leadership role on the east coast and show they “get it” too.
The “it” is legislation requiring professional caregivers — especially those in nursing homes and senior housing facilities — to take a course on the special needs of LGBT seniors so their charges can be out, open and comfortable in their senior years.
You can call it “cultural competency” or “sensitivity training” or whatever you wish, but the fact is LGBT people of my generation are scared to just be themselves and are going back into the closet in their autumn years.
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Snow Day in Jersey
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One Thing or Another: The Kids Are Not All Right
It’s always One Thing or Another … a lighthearted look at aging, life, and the absurdities of it all.By Mark McNease
Imagine the despair young people feel today. Imagine the frustration at being governed by the old who ignore their fears, anxieties, terrors, hopes, dreams and concerns …
Not long ago I was among those crusty older people who bemoaned and occasionally belittled younger generations for effectively forgetting I’d existed. As a sixty-year-old man (I tend to round up), I was embittered to know so many people even a decade younger did not share my memories of the devastation of AIDS, of my government’s indifference to that plague, of Madonna’s performance in a wedding dress at the Grammys, or of the celebration in the streets of West Hollywood following Bill Clinton’s election. It was, I insisted, a matter of preserving history, without admitting it was as much my personal history I wanted preserved as that of my country or tribe.
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Four New Profiles for Angel On My Shoulder Cancer Foundation
Hey, I’ve only got so many murder mysteries in me. I’m doing writing assignments again, working for and with my 30+ year bestie and collaborator Rick Rose. I’ve been doing work for their Jolly Good soda campaign (see Jolly Good’s Facebook page here, Instagram here, and stay tuned for more stuff I can’t reveal right now), and I just did four profiles for the Angel On My Shouldernewsletter, an amazing organization founded by Lolly Rose after the death of her husband, Rick’s father and namesake, Dick Rose.
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Working on new writing assignments (photo)
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Stephanie Mott: Pink Pussy Hats, Drag Shows, and Confederate Flags
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Stephanie Mott Guest Column
Stephanie MottI am offended by pink pussy hats. There, I said it. They can be seen as exclusionary of trans people and women of color. This is a fact. It is also a fact that they mean different things to different people. I am not going to tell someone else whether they should or they shouldn’t wear one. And quite frankly, I am saddened this is causing division, because we have so much to do.
I am also offended by drag. I believe it perpetuates the myth that transgender women are just men in dresses, and it sexualizes women in a world where we need much less sexualization of women. But this doesn’t mean I think we should eliminate drag shows.
Why? Because I also understand drag is an outlet for some people, a lot of money has been raised to support LGB & T causes through drag shows, and just because something offends me does not give me permission to ignore how other people see it or demand they stop.
So you won’t find me complaining about drag or protesting drag shows. But if you watch closely, you will sense I am not at ease at drag shows and will likely leave if my uneasiness reaches a point where I feel like I need to.
I am offended by confederate flags. To me, they represent fear and intimidation, slavery and hatred for people of color and people of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities.
A couple years ago, I was driving from Tulsa, Oklahoma to Oklahoma City and a white pickup truck passed me with an image of the confederate flag on the tailgate. In the truck, were three white guys, shoulder to shoulder to shoulder, easily filling the space of the cab.
When you drive a car with a “Transgender and Christian” bumper sticker on it, and a “Black Lives Matter” bumper sticker, and a “Nevertheless, She Persisted” bumper sticker” as well as a few more; you notice things like confederate flags on the tailgates of passing trucks.
About 20 minutes later, the same truck passed me again. I will admit to being more-than-a-little concerned. However, the truck went on down the highway just like it had before, and I surmised they must have stopped for gas or something – nothing to do my me or my bumper stickers.
Back to pink pussy hats. I will not wear one. I have my reasons. I will also not complain when someone chooses to wear one. I suppose they have their reasons, too.
This is what concerns me about pink pussy hats.
The Trump administration just created a new division in the Department of Health and Human Services dedicated to making it easier for health professionals to discriminate against reproductive healthcare, people who are LGBTQ+, and other groups of people based on some definition of a deeply-held “religious” belief.
Kansas has yet to expand Medicaid and continues its assault on some of the most marginalized people in the state. This is just one of many Kansas policies doing the same thing.
There is an identifiable pathway, relentlessly pursued, in which Roe vs Wade could be overturned.
We have an election coming up this fall where we have the possibility of preventing the furtherance of these, and many more, dictatorial policies and actions.
Every single seat in the Kansas House of Representatives is up for election. Every single seat in the US House of Representatives is up for election. And it is possible in this election, control of the US Senate could be taken away from the Trump administration.
I’m not really interested in talking about pink pussy hats; if we should or should not wear them. I think people who love drag should continue to love drag. And I know there will always be people who have confederate flags on the tailgates of their pickup trucks. I support their right to do so. I don’t want to talk about any of those things.
I want to talk about how to save our state, our country, and our world. If you want to talk about these things with me, I’m not that hard to find.
Stephanie Mott is a transsexual woman from Topeka, Kansas and a nationally known speaker on transgender issues. In addition, Stephanie is the executive director of Kansas Statewide Transgender Education Project and a commissioner on the City of Topeka Human Relations Commission. She can be reached at stephanieequality@yahoo.com
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Author Michael Craft’s ‘Inside Dumont: A Novel in Stories’ Now An Audiobook
Are you listening? Author, craftsman and master storyteller Michael Craft has just released his latest novel, Inside Dumont: A Novel in Stories, on audiobook.Narrated by the author, Inside Dumont: A Novel in Stories uses interconnected viewpoints to tell a touching, funny, intricate narrative about lead character Marson Miles’s later-life journey toward discovery—of himself, his desires, and his place in a town called Dumont.
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By the Light of the Fake Fire
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Lee Lynch’s Amazon Trail: Zipline Vegas
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Photo by Sue Hardesty Guest Column
Lee Lynch’s Amazon Trail: Zipline VegasIn the end, it’s all about ego. I’ll do almost anything, apparently, to protect my ego from being bruised.
She’s going on a zipline in Las Vegas. That’s what my sweetheart announced this morning. It gets worse. She said the zipline goes over city streets and buildings—and here I was envisioning a sweet pastoral zip across raging river rapids and sharp rocks. Now I only have to worry about her colliding with concrete, metal, and glass. Head first. Seems you have options; she plans zip to belly down, like a diving bird, a Peregrine falcon perhaps, which can reach speeds up to 200 mph.
She concocted this scheme with our friend Heather, who lives in Vegas and knows all the cool things to do. I have a feeling this trip will be a lot different than the one I took to the Lambda Literary Conference back in the early 1990s.
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January Subscriber Exclusive: Complimentary Copy of Jean Ryan’s ‘Lovers and Loners: Stories’
Coming soon in the January newsletter: I’m excited to be offering subscribers a complimentary copy of author Jean Ryan’s stellar short story collection, Lovers and Loners. Jean is a master storyteller and among the authors I feel privileged to know. She makes the extremely difficult seem effortless. It’s the kind of writing in which you just know every word was the perfect word, the only word that could have been chosen. She’s that good.Said Publishers Weekly of her previous collection, Survival Skills: “Ryan controls devastating psychological material with tight prose, quick scene changes, and a scientist’s observant eye.”
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A Dog’s Life
