tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-24420525064072874792024-03-13T00:38:57.486-04:00Not A Super HeroGroovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.comBlogger200125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-12675102789501787882017-04-13T18:46:00.000-04:002017-04-13T18:55:16.410-04:00boom<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">He-who-must-not-be-named got a little undeserved praise from the press last week, and a little bump in his approval ratings too. After a possibly illegal airstrike on Syria using 59 tomahawk missiles (each missile costing upwards of 1 to 1.4 million dollars, incidentally... how many meals-on-wheels is that?), certain pundits claimed he was looking presidential. Only days later, when asked about the airstrike in a tv interview, the vulgarian dolt waxed poeti<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">c about a chocolate cake he'd been eating and actually forgot which country he bombed. NO, HE ACTUALLY FORGOT WHICH COUNTRY HE BOMBED! It's like we're living in some absurdist play where an imbecile king delivers a moral about celebrity and corruption being the undoing of democracy, except it's not LIKE that, it IS that. And it's not a play, it's real life!</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black;">So, the simpleton narcissist man-baby gets some attention when he blows something up (even though, from all accounts, the strike accomplished nothing and the airfield is still operational), and today, he drops a bomb on Afghanistan. Not just a bomb, mind you, but the largest conventional bomb that's ever been used. Reading about the potential destruction of this bomb (a GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB), nicknamed the "mother of all bombs"), I am overwhelmed to consider the death and destruction it's most likely responsible for. I haven't seen reports yet, but one article I read said it's explosion will cause deafness to any person within 2 miles of the blast. Happy Easter.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;">Add to this fresh horror the threats and saber-rattling in the direction of Korea. This know-nothing-reality-tv-bully-carnival-barker-shit-bag is gonna get us all killed. I'm only glad I'm in New York City. I'm imagining one upcoming day, probobly not too far in the future, I'm going to feel it get suddenly very warm. I'll turn to whoever is nearby and say, "Wow, it sure is getting hot. Do you feel that?" and BOOM. It'll be over. It's really too bad for the folks out there in the provinces. They'll all have to deal with the fallout. Ya' know, foraging for food, the zombie apocalypse... you've seen the movies. But us here in the urban centers will very gratefully be spared such unpleasantries. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black;">Oh, America. What have you done?</span></div>
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-85743936877004073812016-11-10T10:23:00.004-05:002016-11-10T20:55:27.795-05:00after the election <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span data-offset-key="1uvfn-0-0" style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Last night I spoke with a friend who is a counselor at a high school here in New York City. He told me his office was a steady stream of children in crisis yesterday - a girl threatened suicide because she's afraid her parents will be deported, another girl, wearing a hijab, sat in his office sobbing all afternoon. My friend was understandably distraught. When I came home last night, the two doormen in my building, one from the Dominican Republic the other from Azerbaijan, usually friendly, outgoing and talkative guys, were uncharacteristically solemn and avoided eye contact. I texted with a neighbor who was trying to comfort her 11 year old daughter who's worried her friends at school, who are different colors and from different ethnic backgrounds are now in danger. </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Traveling around town yesterday, fellow subway-riders were silent and somber. I became acutely aware of my whiteness (and my maleness). Can people think I had anything to do with this? Do they associate me with this tragedy? I'm vowing to replace my usual on-the-subway irritability with kindness. Our world, especially now, lacks kindness, </span><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; white-space: normal;">I'll do what I can however small the gesture</span><span style="color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I'm only slightly encouraged crowds have taken to the streets. I know activism works, but I've also seen vital movements: Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street... be ridiculed and squashed. I'm angered by the stream of empty platitudes and false optimism: it's gonna be okay, we'll get through this. No, actually, not all of us will. Friends and lovers didn't get through the Reagan administration in the 80s, yet somehow Saint Ronnie is still held up as a shining light. And maybe the PTSD I've sustained these last decades since my friends' agonizing and senseless deaths, or the 21 years since my own HIV diagnosis have colored my disillusionment, but probably no more than for the families of Eric Garner, or Sandra Bland, or countless others. Or the suffering of the men and women whose sons and daughters rot inside an unjust industrial prisons system for something as innocuous and benign as walking the street with a joint or jumping a turnstile. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Perhaps what hurts most is that out of fear, or ignorance, or anger, or spite, or hatred, or bigotry, our fellow countrymen and women have done this to us (and themselves). The feeling of betrayal to our nation, and especially vulnerable communities is not only painful, but feels also deeply personal. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">There are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Right now, I feel as if I'm flailing around in a pool of the first four. Old traumas have been triggered, and I know, for myself, I've actually been experiencing physical symptoms of shock: clammy palms, rapid breathing, nausea, weakness, dizziness... On the streets and in public spaces, it feels as if we're suffering a collective fight or flight response. The uneasiness and calm is uncannily reminiscent to those days after 9/11. It's still all very new, and in the coming weeks, as the toxic dust from this catastrophe begins to settle, we'll see how we manage. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">This morning, I'll brush my teeth, and make my bed, and feed my cats, and do the dishes, and do all sorts of other regular things as if today were a regular day. This morning, the sun is shining, the air is brisk, people are going to work, and feeding their children, and walking their dogs, and shopping, and banking, and doing all sorts of other things as if today were a regular day. But it's not a regular day. </span></div>
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-14410025840355309112016-10-31T21:52:00.002-04:002016-10-31T21:52:25.263-04:00halloween memories <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I walked out of my appointment on Van Dam St and Hudson around 3 o'clock this afternoon, and began heading north to 14th and 6th Avenue. I'd forgotten it was Halloween, and walked up Hudson to Christopher St, then cut up Christopher to 6th Ave. I was just in time to see the barricades being set up along the route I was walking. By the time I got to 6th Avenue, there were about 200 cops checking in. I assumed they were checking in for their assignment at the Halloween parade tonight. I started out this morning thinking I should make sure to do everything I need to downtown early, so I'd be sure to be home in time to avoid the parade and the excessive crowds.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Years back, when I was an eager Halloween reveler, when New York was dirtier, less crowded, more dangerous, yet somehow kinder, the Halloween parade was one of my favorite events of the year. It used to begin at 5th Avenue, cross west on 10th St, down the 1 block of 6th Ave to Christopher, and then diagonally down Christoper to Hudson. Kids and parents would walk the route first, then flocks of drag queens and scantily clad young men (gladiators, go go boys, lifeguards, mermen, etc...) It was small, local, crazy, and such unspeakable fun.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The last time I was at the Halloween parade in the Village, it must have been 6 or 7 years ago, I actually feared for my life. I wasn't in costume, and was trying to get to the subway, but was trapped behind barricades in the center of a boisterous crowd of hooligans; kids who'd specifically come to the Village to jeer at men in dresses, throw eggs, and cause havoc and destruction. When I finally freed myself from one terrifying crowd, I found myself trapped in another. It was a harrowing experience trying to make my way to the subway and escape the neighborhood that night, and I swore I'd never go back.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As I was walking up Christopher Street this afternoon, I noticed too </span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">many empty storefronts nestled between the intermittent high end designer boutiques. I fell into the familiar resentment I have at the changing and ever-more-exclusive landscape of my hometown, yet was also somehow feeling nostalgic, and reminiscing about Halloweens past. I was remembering how a gang of us would meet at a decided upon apartment, drink voluminous amounts of booze and do copious amounts of other substances while getting dressed up, then run wild in the streets as if New York City were our own personal playground. Which, indeed, it was. We'd get hammered, laugh, hug, kiss, play with strangers, and have the best time ever. Eventually we'd end up at the Tiffany Diner on Sheridan Square, which is now a Bank of America, a sad and tragically apropos commentary on the city's transformation.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This was, of course, years before LGBT issues were spoken of as any kind of legitimate concern, certainly not by elected officials in any political way or for a national audience. Gay marriage hadn't been thought of yet, let alone mentioned by legislators - let alone become federal law. In the midst of the worst epidemic since the bubonic plague, we had a president who wouldn't even mention it. An HIV/AIDS diagnosis was still a death sentence, and the threat of it was everywhere. Those friends - drag queens, gladiators, lifeguards, cheerleaders - not all of them made it. We needed to get drunk, and get high, and run wild. Halloween was a sacred night, a glorious yearly bacchanal when we could be who we were unhidden, unashamed, and unafraid. I'm sorry younger generations of LGBT kids won't experience what joy it was to be part of that community celebrating together before Halloween became a tourist attraction, but I'm grateful they don't have to live with the fear and challenges we did. Most of all, I'm grateful I was there, that I'm still here, and for all the memories of all those past Halloweens.</span></div>
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-81771389020722553622016-09-13T11:41:00.000-04:002016-11-10T20:45:59.329-05:00noel<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: black; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">A number of years ago, I wrote a rather maudlin post on this blog about the transient nature of life, growing old, friends who've died, and how much I miss them. In that post, I mentioned my friend Noel. I met Noel when I was a kid, about 16, and, for better or worse, he was a regularly scheduled cast member in my life for many, many years. I had such fun with him - such crazy, unspeakable fun, and so many stories.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">Someone, who had apparently also been friendly with him, read that po</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;">st and contacted me through the blog wanting to reminisce about him. We emailed back and forth for a while, eventually talked on the phone, and yesterday, he emailed me a bunch of pictures of my old friend. I immediately got on the phone with my friend, Ed, who I've known just about as long, and gratefully reconnected with a few years back after having lost touch many years ago, and the two of us waxed nostalgic for a while. </span></span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: black; display: inline; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br />Noel was an actor, and for a brief period, back in the day, he was quite the talk of the town. Here's a photo of him with Maximilian Schell in A Patriot for Me (1969), and a headshot from a few years later, which, I believe was featured in After Dark magazine.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivSdCTcPtkiESfOcZHNjPVJNqlqNdqFWA1GpJcOS-c6DeYAvckBT3WW6mNpddtruKmBMrWocRg7zXO_ZAO-gMWx9uwdanFEQJqykSGnCq5hkLMjgjMhoQq4tvm873_2yfanioiVNyADfWx/s1600/A-Patriot-for-me.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivSdCTcPtkiESfOcZHNjPVJNqlqNdqFWA1GpJcOS-c6DeYAvckBT3WW6mNpddtruKmBMrWocRg7zXO_ZAO-gMWx9uwdanFEQJqykSGnCq5hkLMjgjMhoQq4tvm873_2yfanioiVNyADfWx/s400/A-Patriot-for-me.jpg" width="263" /></span></a></div>
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: black; display: inline; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; line-height: 19.32px;">When he was a young man, as you can clearly see from these photos, Noel was very beautiful. As he aged, however, while still handsome, he became, well... crazy. But he was my friend and I loved him just the same.</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; line-height: 19.32px;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: black; display: inline; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br />Noel, that beautiful crazy fucker, took his own life right before I relocated back to New York from California in 2002.</span></span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: black; display: inline; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br />Disturbed, troubled, crazy, whatever - he was someone special to me and now he's gone. </span></span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: black; display: inline; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19.32px;"><span style="color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br />You know, I've learned a lot from experiencing loss and from crazy people - about patience, perspective, acceptance, myself...</span></span><br />
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-21770922789412361552016-08-20T09:27:00.000-04:002016-08-20T09:27:10.118-04:00the tombs<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Sitting at my computer this morning, scrolling around the news sites, drinking iced coffee, eating smoked salmon and heirloom tomatoes on a toasted pumpernickel bagel - suddenly the thought of the guys I'll be talking with tonight came to mind. I'll be doing volunteer service at The Tombs (The Manhattan Detention Complex) this evening. I'm contemplating what they eat for breakfast; what kind of morning they're having inside those cold, austere institutional walls, as the temp<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">eratures outside climb.</span></span></span></div>
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For a couple of hours tonight, two of my buddies and I will surrender our civilian rights to the NYC corrections system, and be let into the bowels of an ugly, windowless 1970s institutional building. We'll share our experience with the inmates who show up, and try to bring them a message of strength and hope. Attendance is voluntary, usually 5 to 10 guys will <span style="line-height: 19.32px;">show up.</span></div>
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When I first started doing this, around 10 years ago, I was more than a little uncomfortable, a little scared, and felt very self-conscious (what should I wear? how should I talk? should I hide my orientation, or pretend to be something I'm not?). My impression is that most of the inmates we see are just guys down on their luck. Guys who were caught doing stupid things, things I might have done myself, but was saved from having any legal consequences because of dumb luck or white priviledge. The injustice and racial disparity of the judicial system is very plain when you're inside the belly of the beast. Of course, there are hardened criminals too, but the disproportionate amount of poor, disconsolate run-of-the-mill joes is a disturbing and grim reality. Glaringly evident is the lack of mental health services inside the system. A number of the inmates are simply mentally unstable and have wound up incarcerated as a result.</div>
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Those who show up are usually so grateful, it's almost heartbreaking. They know we've volunteered our time to come see them and talk to them, and they seem so happy anyone has gone out of their way to give them any attention. I can't begin to know what it must feel to be so isolated and apart; relegated to a community the majority of our culture wants treated as animals, a faction of which actually act as such, and the fear and stress of having to be forced to live among them in such awful conditions. I imagine they feel forgotten and hopeless. Ultimately, my experience has often been both sad and surprisingly rewarding.</div>
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Here is a 1905 photo of the Bridge of Sighs, the covered walking bridge that connects the NYC criminal courts building to the original Manhattan detention complex (the tombs), on Center Street downtown.</div>
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-4301265609438802512016-08-07T21:10:00.004-04:002016-08-07T21:19:32.803-04:00looking<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Forgive me for getting sentimental. I just watched "Looking: The Movie" on HBO. It's the conclusion of the discontinued HBO series Looking. A kind of Sex in the City that takes place in San Francisco featuring gay men in their 20s and 30s. The storyline focuses on friendships, relationships, looking for love, commitment, life choices, and risk taking.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I lived in San Francisco from 1992 to 2002 - some very fun and some very hard-lived years. Having been there for ten years, a<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">lmost every location in the film was recognizable to me. The final scene takes place in Orphan Andy's, a 24 hour greasy spoon in the Castro district that I used to frequent relatively often. At the end of the scene, the group of friends sits embracing each other as the camera pulls out to a long shot of my old neighborhood. Memories of nearly-forgotten relationships, poor life choices, and past friendships came flooding back. Sitting in front of my computer with tears running down my face, I felt very sentimental and self-indulgent. Likely due to the setting and the close friendships portrayed, my mind kept directing me to memories and thoughts of my friend Greg. I took this photo of him at the beach, probably around 1999 or 2000. It sits on a shelf in my room and I see it every day. Greg died in 2002. He was 38 years old. He was kind and he was beautiful, and he was always there for me. My last couple of years in SF, I was in pretty bad shape and was making some very poor life decisions. Greg was there for me; he held me and encouraged me. At my lowest, he was a source of strength and love. We don't get a lot of friends like that along the way. Hold onto the ones you have.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; line-height: 19.32px;">If there exists some 'other side' where we someday get reunited with our loved ones, I want to hold him again. I want to hear his laugh and feel his hand in my hand. I've never stopped loving him, and I miss him every day. </span><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Rest in peace, my angel. </span></span></div>
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-7913375906455057182016-07-15T11:18:00.001-04:002016-07-16T09:21:13.115-04:00la foule<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This performance! Any superlatives I could come up with would be insufficient. The words, the music, the exquisite sorrow, the unspeakable joy! That unlikely little body and that awkward fluttery voice - and the result of that improbable combination, well, there's really no word to describe it other than magic. And while what she does is absolutely personal and unique in every way, somehow, it is also irrefutably French.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">After last night's terrorist attack in Nice (these horr<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">ors seem to be coming with such regularity; FUCK, I'm sick of it!), I fell down a French music rabbit hole this morning. I listened to favorites by Poulenc, Chausson, Duparc, etc... but then I started listening to and watching Piaf, and I became spellbound and entranced with her once again.</span></span></span></div>
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What causes a personality, a soul, to be so irrepressible?</div>
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There have been countless biographies and films based on her life. Of course there have been, her story is miraculous, the stuff of legends: father a traveling circus performer, abandoned by her mother as an infant, raised by prostitutes, singing for money on the streets of Paris as a child (it is believed she was as small and frail as she was in adulthood due to childhood malnourishment). Piaf's journey from hapless and desperate beginnings to the national voice of her country is so extreme as to seem too fantastic even for fiction. Plagued by poor health and addiction, she died a tragic alcoholic death at 47.</div>
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Surprised at my own response this morning, I wept for the senseless tragedy in Nice last night, and I wept at the diminutive chanteuse, dead 53 years now, who still, somehow, through time and space, across continents, different languages, and even modern technology has the ability to touch me so deeply. And I'm pondering the acute and unlikely emotional connection between present day calamity and bygone art.</div>
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Vive la France!</div>
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-73160099187927209552016-04-29T10:51:00.001-04:002016-04-29T10:54:41.574-04:00oh, the interwebs<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">The interwebs are a wonderful way to keep informed about what's going on in the world. They're also a surefire way for me to derail my emotional and spiritual condition. For example, I've just read that a House committee has approved an amendment to President Obama’s executive order prohibiting anti-LGBT workplace discrimination among federal contractors. The amendment, introduced by Rep Steve Rus</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">sell (R-Okla.), would enable religious organizations doing business with the U.S. government to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.<br /><br />Every one of these recent anti-LGBT laws are being pushed through under the guise of 'religious freedoms.' Let's be perfectly frank. The legislators pushing these new laws aren't concerned Jews leave work early enough on Fridays to be home before sundown. Nor are they concerned Hindus be offered vegetarian options, or Muslims have adequate breaks for prayer. These new laws are specifically designed to allow people to legally discriminate against faggots and dykes in the name of Jesus.<br /><br />Let's take a moment to consider what Jesus actually said about discriminating against fudge-packers and carpet-munchers. Please turn to Matthew 25:40.<br /><br />'<i>Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'</i><br /><br />Wait... What?<br /><br />Okay... let's turn to 1 John 4:21<br /><br /><i>He has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><i><br /></i>In other words, Jesus ain't down with this shit!<br />Y'all are just hateful bigots!<br /><br />As you can see, I've gone and made myself completely nuts this morning by keeping abreast of current events. So here's a picture of Matthias Schoenaerts with a bulldog puppy. I'm just gonna take a few moments and let its healing power sink in. </span></span><br />
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-64304834549161617852016-04-11T11:20:00.002-04:002016-04-11T11:21:12.324-04:00look at the pictures<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">I watched the HBO documentary last night, “Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures.” It's very good and very interesting. The big takeaway for me was the necessity of drive and perseverance, most specifically as it relates to having success as an artist. Of course, as always with his work, the issue of exploitation versus love of subject matter is brought to the surface, and it reminded me how essentia</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">l it is for an artist to express his or her own passion and life through their work. </span></span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br />It was certainly brave of HBO to show the images that caused so much controversy back in the day (basically penises, and oh yeah, fisting and pissing, etc...). But they now somehow seem surprisingly tame; maybe because those images have been seen so much as to have become almost iconic representations of what controversial 1980s photography was, or maybe it's just harder for me, personally, to be shocked by sexual imagery, I don't know. </span></span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br />Two people who played prominent roles in my youth were featured in the doc and in the photos. It forced me to think if the trajectory of certain events had shifted just slightly, might he have photographed me? It seems self-centered to even think that, but it's not out of the realm of what would have been possible at the time. The whole thing brought back youthful, nostalgic, exciting, clandestine memories of a vibrant and gritty New York. A New York that's been washed away by tourists and foreign investors; a New York that I mourn daily as I walk through scrubbed canyons of shiny new luxury living towers. Light, shape, form, sexuality, work, friendship, family, the artist's process, the passing of time, the cultural significance of imagery, mortality; this doc had it all.<br />Well worth a watch.</span></span></div>
Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-82157530035828961702015-11-20T10:09:00.002-05:002015-11-20T10:09:20.299-05:00in his hands <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Yesterday, members of congress, Republican and Democrat, proposed to shutting our doors even tighter against asylum for Syrian refugees. In doing so, they've placed politics before the very principles upon which the United States was founded - disgracing our country as well as our reputation around the world. They've cowardly pandered to fear, jockeyed themselves so as not to lose their own positions of power, and allowed terrorists to win by dictating their decision.</span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Adding insult to shameful injury, Republican presidential candidate Trump suggested warrantless searches and mandatory registration in a faith-based identification database for Muslim-Americans. Republican presidential candidate Carson likened Syrian refugees to rabid dogs. </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">When it is suggested that ours is a Christian nation (though it never was, nor was it ever intended to be), when bigotry is disguised as religious integrity, and when people in positions of power blather on about 'religious liberty,' understand that to turn away suffering people; hungry, frightened, oppressed, traumatized, driven from war-torn homes and continue to call oneself Christian is an impossibility. </span></span></div>
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-20292107364454137642015-10-04T10:38:00.002-04:002015-10-04T13:11:05.991-04:00the gun song<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">If it weren't so tragic, it might be comical. We all know how this plays out - there will continue to be talk and articles and posts about guns, gun violence, and gun control and mental health for maybe the next 3 or 4 days, and then we'll snap back to seeing endless loop kitten videos - nothing will be done, nothing will change. To call our national response routine would be an understatement. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">In the last few years, I've traveled to different parts of the world; India, the Caribbean, and <span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">recently, Amsterdam. When people from other countries learn that I'm from the United States, there is the inevitable question about the U.S. and our cultural relationship with guns. Embarrassingly, this is what we are known for around the world. </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="text_exposed_show" style="background-color: black; color: white; display: inline; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Piteous and absurd, the notion of freedom has somehow become conflated with a perverted reading of the 2nd amendment, so much so that the two might never be teased apart. Nor, do I believe, is it possible any longer to remove gun culture from our national identity. It is as undeniable and almost as shameful a part of our country's history as slavery and Jim Crow. From the Revolutionary War, to the Old West, prohibition era gangsters, organized crime, and drug wars - guns are as American as baseball and apple pie.</span></div>
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<span style="color: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">"All you have to do is move your little finger and you can change the world."</span></div>
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-56972139484535593362015-04-25T17:33:00.001-04:002015-04-26T08:44:59.794-04:00abschied <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Few singers ever approach this repertoire, but George London had the vocal power, musicality, and emotional capacity to transform this closing scene of Wagner's Die Walküre into an emotionally overwhelming and stirring experience. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In this scene, Wotan (a Norse god) is duty bound to punish his disobedient, yet favorite daughter, Brünnhilde, by putting her into a deep and long sleep. Conflicted and tormented by his love for her and his duty, he sings some of the most heart-ren<span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline;">ding and emotionally challenging passages in all of musical literature. Beneath London's rich and dark voice you can hear the horns; tubas and trombones, and the huge string section swell; the orchestrations here are sweeping and massive. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 17.5636348724365px;">Ultimately, in the story, he surrounds his sleeping daughter by a ring of fire so that only the bravest of heroes may save her. He knows he will never see her again - the conflicting expressions of loss and tragedy wrapped in tenderness is deeply affecting.</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; line-height: 17.5636348724365px;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Disclaimer: I know this won't speak to the majority of you; at the very mention of Wagner, or The Ring Cycle, eyes glaze over and more than two thirds of any audience becomes instantaneously disinterested - most won't listen simply because of its length, but this performance of this grandaddy of operatic repertoire is vocal artistry and music-making of the absolute highest order.</span></div>
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-12616422587542620792015-03-14T14:01:00.001-04:002015-03-14T20:49:19.391-04:00baby doe<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perusing the news this morning, I became so distressed and disenchanted with everything going on in the country: treasonous senators, "religious freedom" bills, income inequality, police assaults on unarmed black children, discrimination, bigotry, etc... I had to look away; shift my attention. It being Pi day (3/14/15), I turned my attention to pie. I started looking at photos of apple pies, and began to wonder, what makes a thing iconic to, or expressively representative of a particular culture - especially America? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With this idea in mind, I started listening to music. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Opera is European and not an American art form. This is a firmly held notion, yet there have been the few rare exceptions (Barber, Thomson, Gershwin, Kern) when this idea has been turned on its head. In Douglas Moore's 1956 opera, "The Ballad of Baby Doe," opera and Americana mix so organically, you can almost hear patchwork quilts, and smell apple pies cooling on windowsills as Norman Rockwell's brush hits his canvas. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Set in the silver-mining state of Colorado, the opera tells the tragic and true story of a young girl who stakes everything on love, taking a successful 19th century prospector and business man, Horace Tabor, away from his wife, only to see him die a ruined man, and then to die in poverty herself. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For those of us who may mainly remember Beverly Sills as, "Bubbles" the orange-haired, smiling hostess of PBS pledge drives, or narrator to Live from Lincoln Center telecasts, this is a good reminder that her celebrity was founded in extraordinary singing and breakthrough performances. At the risk of overusing superlatives, these few minutes contain some of the most haunting and beautiful singing ever. </span><br />
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-72962954335265522032015-02-02T08:32:00.003-05:002015-02-02T08:36:48.770-05:00d'amore al dolce impero<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 19.3199996948242px;">It has been more than two weeks, and I cannot stop listening to this.</span><br style="line-height: 19.3199996948242px;" /><span style="line-height: 19.3199996948242px;">Originally released on the RCA LP "Rossini Rarities" in 1967, Spanish soprano, Montserrat Caballe is not only in peak vocal condition here, but shows a musicality and vocal elasticity, the likes of which are virtually impossible to come by today (or ever?). I've listened to other recordings of this piece, and usually the results are that someone has barely managed to get through a very difficult aria (notable</span><span class="text_exposed_show" style="display: inline; line-height: 19.3199996948242px;"> exceptions go to Cristina Deutekom and Maria Callas), but no one comes close to the seemingly effortless musicality and joy that Caballe brings to this performance. Not only does she toss off the most difficult coloratura with ease, but she makes this devil of a piece sound musical and even fun. The extended run of triplets (1:34) is astounding, and when the tempo increases for faster and more extended runs (3:04), it is simply mind-boggling. I understand this will only interest a few of you, who fall into a rather small "specialty market" category of music listeners, but if you are at all interested in great singing, this is really well worth a listen:</span></span><br />
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-5555218118131793222014-12-31T14:38:00.000-05:002017-03-22T10:42:19.720-04:00once upon a time<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Warning: spoilers ahead!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">In 1987, I was an ambitious, undereducated, oversexed, too-smart-for-my-own-good, 24 year old. </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Ronald Reagan was President, Ed Koch was the Mayor of New York City, and AIDS was ravaging both coasts of the country. To those who weren't there, it's difficult to explain how extreme the levels of fear and anger permeating nearly everything in New York City, especially the world of the performing arts. Rock Hudson and Liberace were the highest visibility celebrity casualties of the epidemic (Hudson died in '85, and Liberace in '87), but the worlds of fashion, opera, ballet, and Broadway saw daily losses. Casting directors were actively overlooking gay men for less talented heterosexual actors for fear of illness or death, and in social circles, friends would get sick and return to their childhood homes to wither away with their families, or they'd simply disappear. On the dance floor Saturday night, gone by Monday. These were very scary times.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Amid the horror and tragedy, Stephen Sondheim, who is both openly gay and arguably the father of the modern American musical (that particular torch having been passed to him from Oscar Hammerstein), opened his eagerly awaited Broadway musical parable, "Into the Woods," which featured a cast of characters straight from the pages of familiar fairy tales. Incongruous? More ingenious, really. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">He's never said so, but to those cognoscenti-New York-theater-goers who were lucky enough to have seen those first run of performances at the Martin Beck Theater on West 45th Street (renamed the Al Hirshfeld Theater in 2003), it was clear that Sondheim was using the murderous, and in that production, unseen giant as an allegory for AIDS. In the play's second act, characters we'd grown up with, known all our lives, and felt a deep kinship to were inexplicably taken from us; violently snatched away, some as retribution for personal transgressions, others completely randomly. The Happily Ever After at the end of the play's first act proved a fallacious construct that couldn't be realized no matter how much we wished for it </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">(I wish...). </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Robert Westenberg as the Wolf</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Despite its fancy-free, fairy tale facade, "Into the Woods" was a dark piece of theater, one that dared to address and even push the public's comfort boundaries on topics that rarely see the light of day, at least not in musical theater. The original scenes between Little Red as a sexually curious teenager and the Wolf as an insatiable sexual predator deliciously teetered on inappropriate. So much so that when I saw the original production in previews, the wolf appeared on stage wearing just a motorcycle jacket and a huge, hairy, prosthetic cock and balls. I understand that after many complaints from theater patrons who'd brought children to the show expecting a family-friendly fairy tale musical, the Wolf's costume was changed, and he got a pair of pants for the opening.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The Disney-fied film version completely avoids addressing any sexual content within Little Red's story line by casting the prepubescent Lila Crawford. While the young Ms Crawford's performance shone for me in the film, of course, none of the vital and electric topics (childhood sexuality, </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">female sexuality,</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">sexual curiosity and experimentation) that made her story line in the stage production so compelling were able to be addressed. And given the cartoon phoning-in of Johnny Depp's, Wolf (more like Pirate Jack Sparrow in a kitty-cat costume), it would be preposterous if he'd had any sexual appeal at all. Though Little Red's lyrics remain unchanged, what I remember in the theater as clearly indicating newfound sexual knowledge and loss of virginity, read as hollow in relation to her bizarre encounter with the Wolf in the film. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">There are numerous other vital happenings that were in the stage production that have been scrubbed from the film. Perhaps most notable, and most mentioned in nearly every review I've seen (which is admittedly, not many), is the absence of the Narrator; an important role whose song, "No More," a partial duet with the Baker (his son), was not only beautiful and poignant, but important to the trajectory of the story. The Narrator also served as a go-between from audience to action, and when he was brutally killed in the second act, the delineation between audience and on-stage action was symbolically eliminated, making the tragedy of the second act that much more real for the audience. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Also sadly departed, and I feel equally important, is the reprise of the song "Agony." The Princes sing this song in the first act when they're longing to be united with their Princesses. The reprise of the song in the second act (missing from the Disney version), comes "happily ever after," when the Princes have already been united with their Princesses, who are now waiting for them at home. In the reprise, however, the Princes are not only bored with their Princess wives, but long to stray with, respectively, a sleeping girl as white as snow encased in a glass casket (there's a dwarf standing guard), and a sleeping beauty isolated in a castle surrounded by brambles and thorns. The song sets up Cinderella's Prince's adulterous encounter with the Baker's Wife, and also highlights the piece's overarching moral, "be careful what you wish for." Those who saw it will remember that in the original stage production, the Wolf and Cinderella's Prince were played by the same actor. This, of course, is harder to pull off on film than it is on stage where the audience's suspension of belief is heightened, but it was a very successful device, which helped to suggest that perhaps there is a little bit of Wolf in even the most charming of princes. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The theme of death and disillusionment remains in the film, but seems so watered down so as to not offend or challenge Disney's target demographic. In the stage production, for example, when Milky White (the cow, and Jack's friend) dies, Jack's loss (Jack, simple-minded and also played by a teen on stage) is deep and poignant, yet Milky White's screen death seems to pass with no mention at all, save how the cow might help resolve the Witch's spell.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Also absent was the vital struggle of the Baker's Wife to be seen as an equal by her husband. The action of the film seems to start with both Baker and Wife on equal footing, seemingly eliminating any need for this feminist subplot. And while that may be a good indication of how far we've come in the past 27 years, the urgency of the Baker's Wife's struggle to be seen as an equal in breaking the spell (a struggle which won Joanna Gleason a Tony award for Best Actress in a musical) was missed by this viewer. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Perhaps most intrinsic in the film's not working for me is the Witch. There are two points related to the Witch where I feel the film goes astray. The first is that, in the original, Repunzel is killed by the Giant. This, of course, helps explain the Witch's urgent and extreme descent into madness and her disappearance. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">*note*</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">There is certainly more to be gleaned from the Witch's character that I may be missing or am glossing over simply for the sake of time and space - notably that the Witch's love for Repunzel indicates that "Witches can be good," among other things. This piece is very complex and rich with plenty of room for analysis. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The second problem for me with the Witch in the film, and I know I may get some flak for this, is the casting. Yes, Meryl Streep is an amazing actor; a magician who can do no wrong. She can conquer any accent, time period; she can sing, dance - we love her, really, we do, but, forgive me, she is just too old for this role. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">In 1987, when Bernadette Peters, as the Witch, was freed from the spell that turned her into a crooked-nosed, wart-covered, hump-backed old crone, she transformed into, well, Bernadette Peters! And not just any Bernadette Peters, but a sparkling, voluptuous, 38 year old Bernadette Peters, whose snowy-white breasts were spilling from atop her silken curvy hourglass silhouette. A transformation that made the audience gasp as one - we all suddenly realized how unfair and cruel the spell was to hide this glorious beauty behind the mask of an old shriveled gorgon. When Meryl Streep's Witch, by comparison, breaks the evil spell, she is transformed from a disheveled old woman, to a very well-put together old woman. Again, she's terrific! I love her, but no amount of cinematic movie-magic is going to transform a 65 year old Meryl Streep into a 30-something year old knockout. She gets transformed into a great-looking 60-something year old Meryl Streep.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Some of this may read as petty and nit-picky, and I apologize for that, but as I watched the film, I actually wept remembering what was going on in my world when I'd first seen the show, and how deeply it had effected me. Watching the film, I also felt cheated that such an important and richly textured piece of musical theater had been robbed of its dark and prophetic messages, and turned saccharin for Disney's</span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> box office, family-friendly purposes. While perhaps understandable that the celluloid version be sweetened up for its Christmas day release, it's also, unfortunately been stripped of its psychological complexities and much of its emotional content.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">In light of what was happening at the time of its premiere; Right-wing religious fanatics claiming that homosexuals had brought a pestilence upon themselves, FDA regulations refusing life-saving drugs to dying young men, hospitals denying humane treatment to patients, and a President who hadn't mentioned AIDS until that very year (compare Reagan's response to more than 20,000 dead Americans with how the press treated Obama when 1 American was diagnosed with Ebola), </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">I continue to hold the show's original messages close; not only that I must continue to be careful for what I wish for, but that someone is on my side, and that no one is alone. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">That damaged and beaten small community; that nontraditional family of those frightened and traumatized few that remain at the closing of the show promise to rebuild, and that is just what we have done, and continue to do. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Isn't it nice to know a lot?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">... and a little bit not.</span><br />
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-83599725268007796182014-10-08T19:15:00.002-04:002014-11-12T11:15:08.653-05:00cola cola granola ebola <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What was going to finally inspire me to return from my extended blogging hiatus? I'd barely scratched the surface of my impressions of Dominica; its lush beautiful Caribbean landscape, the friendly people, those joyful and frolicsome children, and the disturbing lack of African culture in a Black nation that's been culturally and historically regulated by Christian missionary doctrine. I pondered my experience long and hard, but, for some reason, didn't turn to the blog as an avenue of expression.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Certainly years of bottled-up emotions had been dislodged and rattled by watching the HBO presentation of Larry Kramer's, "The Normal Heart," but apparently that wasn't enough to motivate a blog post either. Likewise, the recent overabundance of violent police overreach, the cold-blooded murder of unarmed Black children in the streets of America by those sworn to serve and protect. I've thought about pouring my emotional response about that onto the internet, but what could I possibly write that wasn't being said more eloquently by people and communities more directly affected than me? Instead, I simply turned away in disgust and tried not to engage in the media minefield of tragedy and bad news, or the embarrassing and shameful debate about the law's just/unjust use of force in such cases.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Gun control, climate change, Truvada... there's certainly no shortage of news items or political stories to get my attention or to fire me up. However, I'm trying to limit my media consumption lately, and am simply attempting to practice more detachment and acceptance these days. Of course, this might not help my radical, community organizing, one-voice-can-make-a-difference protesting inner child, but it does allow more room for serenity and detailed attention to the small stuff of daily living. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">So what brings me here now? </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRHuhN7J6Oi9lNQQxkCuKvWiMOGk6qzJW6E7-yfb1mQvVT1qzcCJeNb7ICYKT1Hcb_wGR6pBBmBQ2bDt6zTyVQ3Bino8bR3NS8V9s6UQej8_TfpYRFupsC5FOKM9MDrmF9tf2H9UEi2bmZ/s1600/about-ebola.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRHuhN7J6Oi9lNQQxkCuKvWiMOGk6qzJW6E7-yfb1mQvVT1qzcCJeNb7ICYKT1Hcb_wGR6pBBmBQ2bDt6zTyVQ3Bino8bR3NS8V9s6UQej8_TfpYRFupsC5FOKM9MDrmF9tf2H9UEi2bmZ/s1600/about-ebola.jpg" height="93" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I've become disturbed by a trend I see on my Facebook feed and on some Internet news sources encouraging hysteria with over-the-top fear-mongering regarding Ebola. Sure, I expect science-free bullshit from FOX "news" and other ignorant right-wing propaganda machines, but not necessarily from individual people on my Facebook feed. Frankly, the people I see stirring up a ballyhoo about Ebola are more likely to be taken down by heart disease, diabetes, or random gun violence than a West African virus. Perhaps they'd be better off exhibiting some of the same urgency in regards to donuts or fried food. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And am I the only one to notice the distressing parallel between these initial Ebola reactions and what happened in the early days of AIDS? A deadly virus runs unrestrained in communities that are seen as expendable, and the majority of the world looks away. Suddenly, Western white professionals (doctors, people seen as important or as having value) are infected and the world press takes note; right-wing pundits begin to promote fear and irrational, restrictive measures against the virus' most likely potential carriers, who are, after all, people who always seemed suspicious and dangerous anyway. Politicians and certain media outlets, of course, benefit by stoking these fires of fear. Lack of treatment and the documented tragedy and horror of those infected become conflated with fears of transmission, and it's all too familiar and all too infuriating. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Thomas Eric Duncan, the 42 year old Liberian, and the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S. died this morning at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. Why, I'm wondering, were the two white, American missionaries, who contracted the almost-always fatal virus, and who have been recovering in an Atlanta hospital since August, given the experimental serum ZMapp and Duncan not? Why, for that matter, has the serum not been given to the almost 4000 other people who have died from the fatal virus in other West African nations?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Just like in the 80s when I saw elders in my community and some of my own friends dying; when I was an emotionally overwhelmed, dumbstruck kid wondering what was happening, I wanted to believe that the negligence of the U.S. government had nothing to do with the orientation of who was most being affected by a killer virus. I wanted to believe that I could trust the healthcare system, trust my country, trust the United States because life mattered. Life was sacred. I grew up fast, and I learned.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Funny how certain factions are calling out Obama for not taking fast enough action to combat this potential epidemic. I would like to take this opportunity to point out that there have been no American deaths due to this virus: none. Zero. Zip! Yet shrill cries of the President's negligence and ineptitude are being sounded from televisions and Waffle Houses from sea to shining sea. Cries from the same folks who've shot down his nomination for Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, because the man dared tell the truth that gun violence in the U.S. is a national health threat. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I would also like to remind those same strident anti-Obama-Ebola's-gonna-get-cha shrieking chicken littles that president Reagan, their very own hallowed Ronnie the Great, didn't even mention AIDS until there had been more than 20,000 dead Americans. And in the event that you've forgotten just how the Reagan administration handled that health crisis, you can read this <a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/times-the-reagan-white-house-press-briefing-erupted-with#25bzmmi" target="_blank">1982 detailed account</a> of Reagan's Press Secretary, Larry Speakes responding to questions about the burgeoning epidemic. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Now, here we are in 2014, and I'd like to believe that we live in a post-racial world, but I'm not blind and I'm not stupid. I'd like to believe that race has nothing to do with saving lives, or with police shooting unarmed children, or with anti-Obama vitriol, or housing, or employment, or crime, or education, or infant mortality... </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">but like I said, I'm not blind and I'm not stupid.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Wake up America! Wake up world! Our responses are being documented. The rest of the world is watching and taking note. African lives matter. Asian lives matter. Black lives matter. </span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Life matters, and life is short. So do the right thing; be just, be kind - the alternative is simply too costly and too terrible. </span><br />
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-56725580194515316632014-03-12T18:15:00.001-04:002014-03-13T06:38:45.505-04:00purple turtle beach<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbSSewLI-LXCdKuxz7CgsmapBEx-6MfatinQ8CX2QfgYaF_PN0yj-65vhl20p9Q_91-7pPUOfPg2KVvkbpfX8pS0OIS43d2BKqaKov2ETD-XFuF7OKph8XSqTZUS9P1bXr72XYEr2Mxq3p/s1600/beachwalk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbSSewLI-LXCdKuxz7CgsmapBEx-6MfatinQ8CX2QfgYaF_PN0yj-65vhl20p9Q_91-7pPUOfPg2KVvkbpfX8pS0OIS43d2BKqaKov2ETD-XFuF7OKph8XSqTZUS9P1bXr72XYEr2Mxq3p/s1600/beachwalk.jpg" height="213" width="320" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I feel as if I should be gushing with endless details of the natural beauty of this island. It is astonishingly beautiful, at times breathtaking; lush, green, covered in flowers that don't look real, with vistas that look like painted backdrops, waterfalls, sulphur springs, natural pools, black sand beaches, and rain forest-covered mountains that jut straight out of the sea.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Yesterday, my cousin Rebecca and I took a bus from Roseau to Portsmouth. When we reached the Indian River, we hired a dreadlocked guy with a boat, Stevenson, to row us up the river; peaceful, lush, thick mangroves growing from brackish water alive with fish (apparently a scene from <i>Pirates of the Caribbean</i> was filmed there - I haven't seen it, but I'll watch it when I get home). Then we visited David, a friend of Rebecca's and a Peace Corps worker in the vocational school where he works with teenage kids - woodworking, sewing, computers, school rooms, and a nursery for a few of the babies of the kids. We walked up to and around Fort Shirley in the hot midday sun. The three of us sat for a while marveling at the spectacular view from beneath the protective shade of a huge mango tree at the fort before we walked back down the hill to Purple Turtle Beach. I changed into my swimming trunks at the side of the road, and floated in the water. I can't explain how delightful the water felt. The beach is separated from the street by a strip of almond trees, and the water is blue, calm, and so salty that one just floats.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As I floated, thoughts of loved ones rushed over me. I often feel that because I'm on vacation, I should be carefree, and only have happy thoughts. There is, however, something about the magnitude and hypnotic cadence of a calm sea that creates a melancholy in me; the endless and timeless rhythm of the tides that evokes thoughts of those no longer here. Perhaps it's the excitement of being in a faraway and exotic land, the magical power of nature, or the vast expanse of something much more powerful than I am that resonates backward and forward into infinite time and coaxes out of me memories of lost loves, broken connections; that allows me to feel them, to love them again as if they were still here.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I lay on the shore and felt the warm sun on my body and on my face. Gentle tides washed over me, up and down, repeat and repeat. I smiled, my back and shoulders braced in the warm black sand, tears rolled down the side of my face and mingled with the salty Caribbean Sea. I was silently weeping, not dramatic, just a sensation of being simply overwhelmed with deep loss as gentle waves washed over me. I felt simultaneously fortunate to have loved so deeply; happy, trying to take time with each memory, each beloved friend, the beating of my heart, the rhythmic movement of the waves: Greg, Tom, Johhny... I was momentarily carried through time and space as the remembered essence of each held me in the cool water.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As pleasant and transportive as my experience was, I understood that I needed to pull myself out of my reverie if I were to continue to socialize. I dove from the shore back into the water, and slowly made my way up the beach, pulled my t-shirt over my wet self, and the three of us, Rebecca, David, and I, walked down Purple Turtle Beach to an open bar in the shade where I drank a sweet and refreshing, ginger Quenchi. </span><br />
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-59652851294862664092014-03-06T17:13:00.000-05:002014-03-21T09:31:42.573-04:00on this island<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The day before yesterday, I was awakened by the sound of my phone. I'd foolishly set my alarm for the wrong day. I'd barely slept. My good friend, George was texting, "eta 5 mins." Uh oh!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Luckily, I had packed everything the night before. I double checked around the house and ran downstairs to find George waiting in front of my building. It was 12 degrees that morning. I climbed into the passenger seat, and George whisked me off to Newark airport, a completely unnecessary yet greatly appreciated kindness. I got through security and arrived at my gate where I boarded a flight.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I'm now in a small hillside village called, Eggleston. It is nestled in the hills above Roseau (pronounced Rose-oh</span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">), the capital of Dominica (pronounced Domin-eekah, yes, like the Singing Nun). Eggleston is hardly what you'd call a village, there are no shops, or gas stations (though there is a rum shack on the side of the road), it's more an extended cluster of houses built alongside a steeply raked hillside. What Eggleston lacks in businesses it more than makes up for in chickens, roosters, dogs, goats, cats, children, and some of the most dense and lush flora I've seen anywhere. Overgrown bamboo bends down alongside the road and falls against huge avocado trees with thick, gnarled bases and twisting branches. Ginger, Anthurium, Caladium, African Tulip Trees, and Heliconia add shocking specks of color to the deep variegated green backdrop, while the sound of Calypso and neighbors' patois add a constant rhythmic soundtrack. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I'm visiting my cousin, who has been here for the last year working with the Dominican National Council of Women through the Peace Corps. Dominica is a poor country, not the Caribbean of the yacht-owning one-percenters like many of the other Caribbean islands. It is called The Nature Island of the Caribbean, as it is the least built on; covered with rain forests and rivers, falls and volcanic hot springs. The local people take great pride in the natural beauty of their Island. I've only been here two days, but the Dominicans are colorful, loud, and friendly people. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">A former British colony (clearly evidenced by names like Salisbury, Great King George Street, and Princess Margaret Hospital), Dominica was only granted independence from UK rule in 1978. In terms of architecture and businesses, downtown Roseau is crowded with small brightly colored cement houses, rusted corrugated tin roofs, clothing stores, and vegetable stands lining narrow streets. The people are relaxed, friendly, colorful, and it seems everyone knows everyone else. And why shouldn't they? With a population of 17,000 for Roseau and its surrounding towns, it is comparatively small. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Yesterday a HUGE cruise ship was docked in the port, literally towering over the harbor and the town, taller than any building in Roseau, and in the time it took them to disembark, the town more than doubled in size. Because I've been walking around with a camera (and because I'm white), everyone assumed I was off the boat for a day trip. I watched the boat pull out to sea last night, from atop the hill, at dusk. Today, not only was the town much less crowded, about half of the businesses were closed as well. And even though I was one of few white people in town, I wasn't treated the same way I had been yesterday. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The Old Market, just one block from the waterfront in town, is where slave auctions used to take place. Of course, the Caribbean is rich with this kind of disturbing history. It was disquieting walking through it this morning before the businesses were set up. Then, about a half hour later, stalls were up selling the usual tourist crap: Rasta hats, T-shirts, coconut monkeys, etc.. While there is an historical commemorative marker, one would think The Old Market might be treated as a more somber, hallowed spot, but with a deficit of tourists, save the intermittent cruise ships, and few local industries, the Dominicans want whatever revenue they can get. Hard to blame them. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhuyLw24vjByos2TAvOJoBIoHVmYJlXyYMsJn2RVc_WXw7XvLMl9QY1KN-rcn2Kf3G_XQF1JN7FwMt9ZWqHA-V8HdJzCptWdSG0XAXts_NsXz-hRE-4j82FsxRoUomwYpSOwy60bquoRKL/s1600/IMG_5908.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhuyLw24vjByos2TAvOJoBIoHVmYJlXyYMsJn2RVc_WXw7XvLMl9QY1KN-rcn2Kf3G_XQF1JN7FwMt9ZWqHA-V8HdJzCptWdSG0XAXts_NsXz-hRE-4j82FsxRoUomwYpSOwy60bquoRKL/s1600/IMG_5908.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a><br />
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-30965809212160643852014-02-06T12:19:00.000-05:002014-02-07T15:53:24.537-05:00eleven <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sunday Afternoon, I'd arrived early to meet a friend in The Village, and as I stood waiting on the cold and windy street corner, I mindlessly scrolled through friends' updates on my phone. Several updates were expressing shock or sadness at the loss of some celebrity. Finally, someone used his initials, and after doing a Google search, I learned that only blocks from where I was standing, Philip Seymour Hoffman had overdosed and died. Right there, I burst into tears.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hoffman was
undeniably a great actor – an unlikely movie star with a doughy body and a big
strawberry face that could be either warm and comforting, or menacing and cruel
in equal measure – an awkward sidekick with enough internal emotional intensity
to make him a compelling front man. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Praised and loved by audiences, critics, and
colleagues alike, now he’s gone. Of course, I liked his work, (how could one
not admire his brave and improbable performances?), but it wasn’t the loss of a
great talent that struck me so sharply when I learned of his passing. It was
that, once again, one of my own had succumbed. With such a body of
work, so much success – family, career, money, fame, and prestige – why would
someone as fortunate and gifted as this guy use drugs? Addicts use. Simple. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This coming Sunday
I will have been without a drink or a drug for eleven years. My sobriety hasn’t
come easy and it’s certainly not something that I take lightly. Getting sober
is a treacherous and oftentimes soul-crushing challenge. Staying sober is
painstaking and tricky. One unfortunate truth is that life happens, and sometimes
it just plain sucks. Wouldn’t it be nice to “take the edge off” with a
glass of cabernet or a cocktail? How bad could that be, really? How dangerous is recreational marijuana use if it’s being legalized across the country? Not very is my guess. And
for a normal person those choices make perfect sense.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But for someone like me, or someone like
Hoffman, once ignited, that ravenous and urgent inner need for relief and
comfort becomes paramount to all else, and can never be satisfied by simply
“taking the edge off.” I’m usually thinking about the third one before I’m
finished with the first. Whether or not one concedes with the theory that the alcoholic suffers from an allergy, this is my experience. Personal history has shown me that having momentary relief
leads me to seek oblivion – something “normal” people just don’t get, and this
unexplainable internal demand remains what makes addicts and alcoholics
different from other people. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don’t think it
was part of his press packet, but I don’t think it was a well kept secret
either that Hoffman had been in recovery for more than two decades. So when
I learned of his death, I wept. I wept for him, for others I've known who've been lost to the disease, for those yet to be taken, for those yet to be saved, and for myself. I wept and I heard the message loud and clear:
long-term abstinence is not equivalent to a cure. I have a daily reprieve, that’s
all. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I’m grateful and
proud of my eleven years. They were painful, joyous, and hard-fought – I've earned
my place at the recovery table and I don’t ever want to lose it. So today I
will do what I did when I was new, and tomorrow I will do what I did when I was
new, and I’ll help others when I can, and if I’m lucky, I’ll continue to walk
in Grace. I am not a movie star, or a family man. I don’t have money, prestige,
fame, or a list of glistening credits to my name, but I understand who that man
was, and I understand him because I AM him. And by some Grace that I will never
understand, I have another chance to live in remission. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Just for today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-78833217640728725582013-12-08T09:04:00.000-05:002013-12-10T09:33:09.187-05:00tom<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU70j3WxCy08PKQSuoSFMKSq74LNQqhymV1rC5rXQQmhQRddD0ZXfmNjARp1eLMRyA5BS1AAkoI92askKacJ4FiZR1r9l97SuvR3bP9ZGtC5JnJZj-sOYt-797uytDRB4TfG8MZdnEbPYF/s1600/cala.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU70j3WxCy08PKQSuoSFMKSq74LNQqhymV1rC5rXQQmhQRddD0ZXfmNjARp1eLMRyA5BS1AAkoI92askKacJ4FiZR1r9l97SuvR3bP9ZGtC5JnJZj-sOYt-797uytDRB4TfG8MZdnEbPYF/s200/cala.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">December 1st was World AIDS day. It has been since 1988. This day usually rolls around every year with little notice. I saw mentions of it as I scrolled down my Facebook news feed. I noted that some of my friends had changed their profile pictures to pictures of red ribbons for the day, and I even read a few stories and articles about the early years of the epidemic. Other than that, there was little fanfare; no television specials about the history of the epidemic - how far we've come in 30 years in treatment and awareness, no televised news stories about how infection rates continue to climb in young people and in gay communities - just the regular suspects doing the same things that they did last year, and the year before that... choristers preaching to the choir.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Monday night, I was going from the East Village to Gramercy, and even though it was raining and cold, I decided to walk. I crossed 18th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. I hadn't necessarily been avoiding this block, at least not purposely, but even with as much time as I've spent in that neighborhood, I hadn't walked down that block in years. On the south side of the street, towards the center of the block is a string of nearly identical townhouses; brownstone staircases leading up to an old-New York style grandeur of years gone by - big windows revealing high ceilings with ornate moldings and chandeliers. Each of these houses has small entrances underneath and to the side of their front stairs. One of these entrances led to the apartment that my boyfriend Tom used to live in back in the eighties. I couldn't be sure which was the one he lived in, but as I walked back and forth a couple of times trying to isolate which house it was, I remembered times I'd spent inside one of those buildings years ago; young, excited, in love, hopeful, not yet cynical, not spoiled; a </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span class="st">naïve</span> and innocent me, a deceptively simpler time. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I didn't see many examples of healthy, loving relationships growing up. My grandparents had been married for decades, certainly they had loved each other, been dependent on each other, but I don't recall them showing affection for each other. My parents divorced when I was four, my mother went on to date and then marry domineering and abusive men, a model I knew I didn't want to repeat. And my father pretty much went through women as one might go through a seasonal wardrobe. It was the 70s, the sexual revolution, and while there were a couple of gals who stayed around for a while, when those relationships lost their luster, their newness, he'd call it off and move on to the next. Any negotiations or particulars of a day-to-day supportive and loving partnership were, and to some extent still are a remote and distant concept - one that I might grasp in theory, but have had no first-hand experience of in practice. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Tom and I were young and we were foolish, carefree and uninhibited. The two of us, bundles of raw hormones set loose on each other (and the world) in an increasingly scary and uncertain time. Tom became HIV positive. Impending fear hung over our young lives as friends and acquaintances would get sick and then quickly vanish. I have no recollection of our even talking about our fear. I do remember Tom being tenacious and uncompromising in taking precautions to keep me safe. This often resulted in his withholding of sex - a gesture I can now see as loving, but as a young man raging with desire, was unable to accept. </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Even so, we managed to
stay together through a number of tumultuous years, the fondness and
physical attraction of each for the other outweighing the difficulties of our fear and our sero-discordance.</span> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">At the time, friends, justifiably enraged by the lack of HIV/AIDS services or treatment, Mayor Koch's lax response, and the Reagan administration's negligence harnessed their anger and joined ACT UP. I volunteered at GMHC (at the time, still a two room office above a restaurant on 18th Street and 8th Avenue) and the PWA Coalition, a small organization located in a donated apartment off of a courtyard on West 12th Street that helped people with AIDS acquire experimental drugs and acted as a support center for a community that was quickly being slaughtered by an invisible monster. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I admired those brave warriors who threw themselves wholeheartedly into battle, educating themselves and their community through civil disobedience and community organizing; changing the trajectory of HIV/AIDS treatment and legislation for generations to come. I cheered them on; stayed on the periphery. I didn't possess the tools to focus or hold my resolve in the face of such loss or the fear of my own mortality. I turned my concentration to pursuing what then looked like a promising career in the arts, meeting people with similar interests and turning my attention away from the overwhelming health crisis and away from Tom. Tom, whose health was declining as he quietly slipped into depression and secret drug abuse. Of course, now, with hindsight and some adult critical thinking skills, these turn of events all make perfect sense, but at the time, I didn't know what was going on; I simply couldn't process what was happening in my world. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">For a few years, I excelled in my nascent career. I traveled, was lauded for my talents, met new and exciting people, and began to quietly immerse myself in drink and drugs - perhaps to quiet the guilt I'd felt for abandoning this love, for abandoning Tom, or maybe even the guilt of being an unlikely survivor when all that remained of handfuls of friends were memories of beautiful young men, no longer there to share my journey with; opportunity ripped from them. I was actively constructing protective walls all around me. Drugs, alcohol, and denial make for sturdy building blocks when creating an impenetrable barrier against the world. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I learned that Tom had died after the fact. I hadn't seen or spoken with him in some time. Estranged from his family and with few friends, the young man who may have been the great love of my life had died a lonely and unnoticed death while I was off chasing childish ambitions. An adult, but really little more than a boy, with no emotional coping tools, it was too much for me to even consider. My alcoholism and drug addiction blossomed, my life would become a demoralizing whirlwind of unmanageability and shame that lasted the next ten years. I'd opted for ignorance of my own HIV status, understanding that a positive test result would likely mean death. In 1996, at a doctor's insistence, I took an HIV test and the results came back positive; just in time for the first generation of the life-saving "cocktail." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I walked 18th Street last Monday, and it was rainy, and it was cold. Certainly self-indulgent, perhaps even maudlin, I imagined all that might have been if circumstances had been different, if I'd been able to respond differently. Even if Tom couldn't have survived his illness (he died in 1990 or 91, five or six years before protease inhibitors were available), maybe facing my fears and my feelings, maybe being able to communicate openly with him could have saved him those final years of drug use and isolation, could have given us both a genuine, if all-too-brief partnership. Only now, more than a decade into my own recovery, am I beginning to unpack my feelings of such devastating loss - and of my love for Tom. </span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Tom</span></span></div>
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-62395787118690096032013-11-09T09:01:00.000-05:002013-11-10T10:47:40.603-05:00update: <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Pope Continues to Shock World with Surprising Awesomeness</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">In the past couple of weeks, Pope Francis has continued to make international headlines with his decidedly un-Popelike behavior. In late October, during a Mass at St Peter's Square, he allowed himself to be upstaged by a little boy who refused to leave the stage, instead clinging to Francis' leg and eventually seating himself in the Pope's chair. Just this last week, pictures of the Pope kissing a severely disfigured man have gone viral. And now this!</span><br />
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-56435973595887616882013-09-20T09:51:00.000-04:002013-09-20T21:45:17.932-04:00beneficence<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">This past March, when Argentine Cardinal, Jorge Mario Bergoglio was chosen as head of the Catholic Church, I was quick to join in grumbling about the institution's cast-iron conservatism, dogmatism, and lack of progress. Directly following Benedict's (Ratzinger's) retirement; a career ecclesiastic whose tenure as Most Holy Father was plagued with scandal and hypocrisy, skepticism and disillusionment with the Catholic Church was at an all-time high. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Notwithstanding the encouraging possibilities of Bergoglio's being the first non-European to be chosen as Pontiff in 1200 years, as well as the first Jesuit ever, feelings of discontentment and doubt were escalated. Even as the world was rapidly progressing into the 21st century, it seemed the Catholic Church was preparing itself to demonstrate an even more rigid parochialism and dogmatic intolerance. So in July, when Pope Francis was asked about gay priests, and he responded, "Who am I to judge?," the trajectory of the church took a surprising and heartening shift.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Could this quiet and simple man single-handedly catapult the Church into a new direction? Unguarded and personal responses from this unassuming Pontiff seem to be doing just that. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Pope Francis has done away with the protective-domed "Popemobile." He walks among the crowds kissing babies and shaking hands; he speaks of the poor and of service, and he has washed the feet of women (an act that outraged traditionalists), of prisoners, and of Muslims! As the planet's most highly-appointed ecclesiastic, he's brought new-found and unexpected humility and humanity to his title. Whether this can be attributed to his life and work as a Jesuit (an all-male order of the Roman Catholic Church whose mission focuses on education, ministering to the sick and impoverished, intellectual research, promoting social justice and ecumenical dialogue) or to the spiritual life and commitment of one man placed in the most iconic and powerful role of the Church will remain a mystery. Yet yesterday, <a href="http://www.americamagazine.org/pope-interview" target="_blank">a series of talks with The Pope was published</a>, and the world got more of a glimpse into the man behind the title, and the Church's trajectory shifted even further.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">In the extensive interview, Pope Francis candidly discusses homosexuality, women, contraception, and abortion. He reveals a surprisingly gentle and compassionate character while dealing with topics that have traditionally drawn acrimonious responses from high-ranking officials in the Church.</span><i> </i><br />
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<i>"We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and
the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not
spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when
we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context.
The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of
the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the
time. </i><br />
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The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent.
The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission
of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently … </i></div>
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We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the
church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and
fragrance of the Gospel. The proposal of the Gospel must be more
simple, profound, radiant. It is from this proposition that the moral
consequences then flow. </i></div>
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<i>I say this also thinking about the preaching and content of our preaching." </i></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Frances' implication that the Church's continued "obsession" with specific social issues, and his prophetic warning that keeping those obsessions within the content of the Church's preaching will result in its ultimate destruction are prescient and sound. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">In an auspicious and ambitious turn, when asked specifically about gay people, the Pope said: </span><br />
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<i>“A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of
homosexuality, I replied with another
question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the
existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’
We must always consider the person.” </i><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">It is enlightening to learn that the Pope's favorite film is Fellini's "La Strada," that he loves Mozart, and that he reads Dostoyevsky. All this new and personal information lends him an air of a kindly professor, or of a wise uncle (or use your own analogy). He comes across as intensely human, a trait not often associated with His Holiness. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Unlike the chain of events that occurred in the </span><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">legendary </span>land of Oz, the Church's curtain has been drawn back to reveal not a fumbling and self-serving fraud, but rather a humble and farsighted leader; a spiritual teacher who speaks of moving the Church beyond dogma and refocusing it on people. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I am not Catholic, and I continue, with good reason, to be skeptical of the body that Pope Francis represents. Still, it is refreshing to have been proved wrong in my pre-judgement of him upon his selection. And how unsuspected to discover that the iconic head of a behemoth, world-wide, doctrinal institution might act as a personal pastor. </span><br />
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-78714141218611208942013-09-07T16:53:00.000-04:002013-09-09T10:55:33.543-04:00september song<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">Last weekend, Labor Day weekend, officially marked the end of the summer season. Sure, the farmer's markets are still bounteous with tomatoes, corn, peaches, okra, and other flavorful end-of-summer produce, but kids are back to school, college campuses are bustling, and one can just tell that folks are anxious to start dressing in layers with their new sweaters and boots. My morning walks have been getting a little more brisk than I'm used to; very soon I'll have to break out the hoodies. Many people love autumn, but my experience is that any season change hits me hard - this one in particular. I love summer; the heat, the humidity, the late-evening sunsets, the empty streets on weekends, I just love it. So the impending months of cold grey weather and darkening afternoons hold no sweet promise for me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I've been remiss (really more lazy) in keeping up with my blog posts over the summer. While I'd like to rattle off a list of enviable weekend spots I've visited or smart events I've attended, the truth is this season has been much more about quiet reflection, contemplation, and personal learning than about anything else. Balancing personal goals and family obligations. Showing up for my aging parents and my extended recovery community while balancing self-care and my spiritual life has proved to be no small order. Add to that the seemingly behemoth task of walking forward into the next chapter of my life as a newly college-graduated middle aged man, and things seem particularly daunting. For the moment, at least, I seem to be balancing these challenges with relatively little complaint. I have my fingers in a lot of pies. There's a lot on my plate. I have a number of balls in the air. Use whatever metaphor you wish - a whole bunch of stuff is coming down the pike, and more than anything, I'm excited. Scared, but excited. I'm not going to give much by way of specifics right now, but I'm juggling some charged propositions of what might propel me into the next few chapters. So while I haven't done a lot this summer, I'm entering fall hopeful. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">I'll keep you posted. </span></div>
Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-80763711484636551762013-08-28T18:06:00.001-04:002013-08-28T18:06:17.743-04:00what kind of new york do you want?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Groovybeanshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13795184873766343786noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2442052506407287479.post-89299216796685336192013-06-06T12:30:00.001-04:002013-06-18T17:46:24.282-04:00shady lady / slush puppy<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">New York City is one of the greatest cities in the world. It's where I live - it's where I come from. I am challenged by it, I struggle through it, it's
what makes me what I am, and I love it. I've enjoyed using this
blog as a space to examine art, media, culture; museum and gallery
reviews, etc., but in response to what I feel is the very real and
impending threat of Manhattan, my hometown, becoming an exclusive island
of behemoth bank accounts, luxury living glass towers, and corporate
franchised chains, I'd like to weigh in on the state of the city and the
upcoming Mayoral election. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Only
a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable that I would not be
supporting a female candidate for the Mayor of New York. Even more
unimaginable still is that I'd not be supporting an openly lesbian
candidate. I believe that the presence of women and LGBT people in
elected positions or holding high office is essential to civil rights,
equality, and fair representation. If I'm to be truly interested in
equality, however, I need to honestly measure the candidates on their records,
or, if you will, the content of their character.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As I watch the emerging media firestorm begin to swirl in anticipation of the upcoming Mayoral election; reading about each candidate's momentum, contributions, and endorsements as well as the media's rehashing of issues already present in most New Yorkers' consciousness: public education, stop and frisk, hospitals, public transportation, affordable housing, neighborhood safety, etc., I try to remain mindful that my immediate personal response to a candidate's personality may not necessarily be founded in a firm foundation of solid information. So I've tried to objectively assess my position on the candidates' records and positions, and it is that starting point from which I base my disapproval of Quinn. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There has already been quite a bit of noisy and divisive rhetoric coming from the Quinn detractors: "anybody but Quinn," "New York is not for sale," etc. While I may agree with the positions of these detractors, pushing pejorative phrases, or reducing the disapproval of a particular candidate to a placard or soundbite may not be the most useful way to educate a voting public on where a candidate stands on issues. In fact, pushing forward a brash and negative tone might actually alienate some constituents; constituents who might otherwise have agreed with that particular position. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In Christine Quinn, New Yorkers have been dealt a significantly hard to overlook double whammy; she is a woman, and she is openly lesbian. These two facts indicate that she immediately has the support of certain local and national organizations whose primary purpose it is to ensure support for female and LGBT candidates around the country. Similarly, there are large portions of the electorate who will vote for her simply based on the fact that she is either female or lesbian. Early on in Quinn's campaign, as a lesbian, she received endorsements from the <a href="http://www.hrc.org/press-releases/entry/hrc-endorses-christine-quinn-for-new-york-city-mayor" target="_blank">HRC</a>, the <a href="http://www.gaypolitics.com/2013/01/24/victory-fund-endorses-quinn-for-mayor-of-new-york-city/" target="_blank">Victory Fund</a>, <a href="http://www.prideagenda.org/" target="_blank">Empire State Pride Agenda</a>, and the <a href="http://sdnyc.org/" target="_blank">Stonewall Democratic Club</a> of New York City. As a female candidate, she's been endorsed by <a href="http://emilyslist.org/" target="_blank">EMILY's List</a>, and the <a href="http://www.wcfonline.org/" target="_blank">Women's Campaign Fund</a>. These endorsements are deceptive. How can the Women's Campaign Fund endorse candidates as disparate as Olympia Snow, Elizabeth Warren, and Christine Quinn? Can they not see the glaring differences between these women? One need only look at the list of Quinn's top campaign contributors to notice that many of them are the same big businesses and corporate conglomerates that Warren would like to see prosecuted for tanking the economy and throwing working class Americans under the bus. Yet these national organizations cannot, or choose not to see it because their primary motivation is to identify and promote the gender, or orientation similarities of candidates. Most national women's political organizations support female candidates, period. And how about the good folks at HRC and the Victory Fund? Do you think they realize that Quinn has repeatedly and consistently turned her back on New York's LGBT community in favor of corporate investors and major developers? Have they considered how she used her short time at the LGBT Anti Violence Project as a personal political springboard for her own career and agenda? No, they seem only to see an openly lesbian Democratic candidate who supports marriage equality, and for their purposes, they need look no further. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Assuming that a candidate is progressive because she is lesbian is as foolish as assuming that a candidate supports a woman's right to choose simply because she is female. Like many who came before me, I belong to a particular generation of gay people who've had to struggle for any recognition, many of whom may still believe that having an openly gay person in high office trumps any disagreements they may have with his or her record or positions - visibility at any cost. I disagree. In this instance, that cost is too high. That such a large number of LGBT people don't support Quinn is a refreshing indicator that we really have come a long way and are moving toward an environment of equality. We're entering an era where identity politics has permission to take a back seat to the nuts and bolts issues that face all New Yorkers. Considering that what is up for grabs is the most powerful office in New York, I'm less concerned with a candidate's orientation than I am with his or her vindictive nature or plethora of <a href="http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/christine_shady_iZNjHHL0iGJBsWhPQ84tdO?utm_source=SFnewyorkpost&utm_medium=SFnewyorkpost" target="_blank">questionable campaign contributors</a>. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">My local bagel store is now a Verizon Wireless center. My neighborhood discount drug store is a Bank of America. If you are like me, you may have noticed that there is scarcely a spot you can stand on the island of Manhattan where you are not more than three blocks from a Duane Reade. <a href="http://no7eleven.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">7-elevens</a>, once a suburban and rural phenomonon to New Yorkers, are now popping up around downtown Manhattan, willy-nilly, like so many pimples on an adolescent's forehead. Of course, Quinn is not single-handedly responsible for these changes, but her history of kowtowing to corporate interests, developers, and tourist revenue would indicate that these sorts of changes would continue unabated. If this homogenizing and strip-mining of neighborhood uniqueness isn't enough to convince you of the kind of catastrophe that would likely result from a Quinn administration, perhaps you might consider how Quinn has stashed City Coucil funds in phantom accounts to later be doled out for her pet projects; aka <a href="http://christine-quinn-sold-out.blogspot.com/2010/12/quinn-slush-funds-continue.html" target="_blank">slush funds</a>; her questionable position on "<a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/speaker-quinn-oppose-bill-allowing-stop-and-frisk-lawsuits-article-1.1326788" target="_blank">Stop and Frisk</a>," or the use of her office to advance the interests of <a href="http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2013/06/christine_quinn_15.php" target="_blank">real estate developer donors</a>. There is also her position on carriage horses and <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/13/nyregion/animal-rights-becomes-surprise-topic-in-new-york-mayoral-race.html?pagewanted=all" target="_blank">animal rights</a> to consider, as well as how she is the lone candidate in the field who will not promise an educator as <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2013/05/alone-among-democrats-christine-quinn-wont-promise-educator-as-schools-chancel" target="_blank">public school chancellor</a> (think <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bloomberg-abused-power-cathie-black-appointment-schools-chancellor-uft-boss-article-1.453629" target="_blank">Cathie Black</a>). There are no shortage of issues to examine where Christine Quinn's involvement and voting record are not questionable (secrecy, cronyism, slush funds, vindictive withholding or allocating of public funds, overturning term limits, etc.). Perhaps, not least of all, the recent string of hospital <a href="http://politicker.com/2012/03/protesters-removed-from-council-gallery-during-st-vincents-vote/" target="_blank">closings</a>, most notably Saint Vincent's.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It is plain that Quinn's motivations lie in keeping closely in cahoots with corporate interests, large and powerful real estate developers, and fostering continued record tourist revenue. One only need attempt to drive through midtown to notice that seemingly every third intersection is now a mini-park with lushly-packed planters, lounge chairs, and picnic tables. These mini-parks are lovely urban oases, to be sure, but they can also be frustrating obstacles for commuting New Yorkers. And what of the sudden surfeit of corporate branded Citibikes? Easy affordable bike-shares for working New Yorkers? That has yet to be seen, but once families of tourists start running amok on Manhattan streets atop those 45 lb cycles... Well, that's a whole other post in itself.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Quinn is a self-proclaimed "fierce advocate for gay rights." She claims paramount concern for issues facing the LGBT community. In that light, I can't be the only one to have noticed the irony of her participating in a protesting march to draw attention to the rise in violence against LGBT people. The march and protest was held in immediate response to the fatal shooting of 32 year old <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/gunman-shoots-32-year-old-man-dead-greenwich-village-bias-attack-officials-article-1.1347776" target="_blank">Mark Carson</a>. It is not farfetched to speculate that Carson's life might well have been saved had there still been a hospital (St. Vincent's) just two blocks from the shooting, rather than having to wait for an ambulance and then make the trip across town to Beth Israel Hospital. The march, it should be noted, took place in the shadow of the skeleton of what once was an historic hospital that served the gay community for generations, and was the nerve center of treatment during the early years of the AIDS crisis. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Truth: eliminating a hospital and emergency center that serviced gay people <u>is</u> violence to gay people.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In another move that reads as shockingly antithetical to the interests of gay and lesbian people, Quinn's strong-arming of City Council to rename the Queensboro Bridge after Ed Koch, in spite of overwhelming public opposition, is indeed questionable. Josh Isay, Quinn's chief strategist has said that "<a href="http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/kochs-sister-to-give-new-voice-to-his-support-for-quinn/?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y" target="_blank">Ed Koch was an incredible leader for the city</a>." Isay, and by default, Quinn seem to have forgotten that Koch (How'm I Doin'?) who was in the closet, ignored the gay community in the early years of AIDS as tens of thousands of gay men died - most probably out of fear of calling attention to his own questionable orientation. In what appears to be pandering for endorsements from beyond the grave, now the Quinn campaign is courting Koch's surviving sister to amplify what would have purportedly been his support for Quinn's candidacy.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In an interesting turn of media attention, presumably in response to a flurry of bad press, especially a very <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/26/nyregion/in-private-quinn-displays-a-volatile-side.html?pagewanted=all" target="_blank">unflattering New York Times piece</a>, Quinn came out publicly as a recovering alcoholic and bulimic. In an <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/14/nyregion/council-speaker-opens-up-about-her-struggles-against-bulimia-and-alcoholism.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" target="_blank">interview</a> for the New York Times, she talks about her mother dying of breast cancer, and the sadness and loneliness that ensued after her mother's death, which led her to alcohol. It may read as overly cynical, but one can't help question whether the timing of the decision to go public with this information might have been calculated to make her appear more human in light of press reports that have painted her as a volatile and vindictive political animal. May she have the best of luck and good fortune on her journey in recovery, however, the move to come out at that particular time seems devilishly shady.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Hopefully more unsavory truths about Quinn will be revealed as we get closer to the election, and hopefully, New Yorker's won't be fooled by her political savvy, as they were with Guiliani or with Bloomberg. Suffice it to say, this lady looks to be one nasty piece of work, and having her as Mayor would be an utter catastrophe for New York City. </span></span><br />
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