Amuse Bouche
Those gals from Boston know how to throw a party! It’s not just about tea anymore. Oh it hasn’t been for years. Have you been to a Red Sox World Series Parade? The Annual Women’s Dinner to benefit the Fenway Community Health Center was held in the Westin Copley and the ladies were out!!
At the special donor cocktail party before dinner, I ran into lots of wonderful galpals. Byllye Avery and Ngina Lythcott, New York pals who have moved to Boston, and pioneers in black women’s health were there, giving me a hard time about Hillary. Dr. Jane Petro, just back with lots of dish from Dubai later bid to have lunch with me this summer at Ptown’s Karoo Café. We’ll catch up especially on her strategy of going to work in Bermuda shorts under her burkha. Alix Ritchie and Marty Davis, longtime supporters of women and women in journalism brought stories of Ptown transplants to Fort Lauderdale. It was also great to meet new supporters of the historical work of Fenway. Especially the dames from Southie who offered to be my bodyguards if the jokes didn’t go well.
Again, I was honored to be the amuse bouche, the ordained emcee for the evening’s dinner and reminded everyone that this was the last supper – under the Bush Regime.
Boston Mayor Tom Menino and his great wife Angela came to the dinner as they always have. Denise Simmons, a long and strong supporter of Fenway was there too – but this time as the first African-American, out lesbian Mayor of the city of Cambridge! I want her to run for president.
Through the hard work of co-chairs and table captains, a not-very-silent auction, a pledge drive with a match from Dr. Susan Love, a pioneer in women and breast cancer, [who told me once she used my “Thanks for the Mammaries” story on an early record for her lesbian patients] and a live auction, lots more money was raised to reach the capital campaign goals.
One fabulous table captain had made goodie bags filled with favors for the friends she’d wrangled into coming to the dinner. One table had made an actual captain’s hat for their friend. As I was passing a table of Fenway revelers, one woman waved me over and handed me photos of me from the Jamesville-Dewitt H.S. yearbook of 1977! And thus I met a former student!
The fun of the evening helped me get through and over my mourning for my Rutgers Scarlet Knights.
