Everyone Talks About the Weather
The mid-term auction kicked my ass. The gushers of money, the belly-up Dems, the betadyned Reps, the gloating media, my bummin’ friends. At first I tried to be cheery but the jowly seditious Mitch McConnell, Sarah Palin’s Alaska, Michele Bachman’s pretzel logs of thought, the face of W on his book tour and the fact that people are buying it, kicked me to the curb.
Then this morning I read that NY’s jolly old rabid anti-choice, anti-gay marriage Bishop Dolan got picked to head the US Conference of Bishops.
My inner Pollyanna was having a hard time.
Then I remembered that my Dad would have been 99 years old today.
My Dad lived through the Depression and World War II. Because of bad eyesight and extended family obligations, he received a military deferment. His friends all served and he took care of the young wives and families they left behind. He lived through the revelation of the Holocaust, McCarthyism, the 1960s, Nixon, Watergate, Reagan. He worried about the Reagan deficits and never trusted the Clinton surplus. His senile dementia prevented him from understanding the Bush stolen election, 9.11 and he died before our reckless entry into two wars.
He was a humble Golden Rule, just-do-it kind of guy who would have been embarrassed by all the Greatest Generation talk. He died seven years ago. I still reach for the phone to call him, though toward the end of his life we mostly talked about the weather. I miss him. There’s a front coming and I need to talk.
November 18, 2010 @ 2:34 am
Beautiful tribute, Kate.
Kudos to your Dad & Mom for producing such a brilliant comedian.
November 18, 2010 @ 11:35 pm
My dad,Alan A Smith, died 7 years ago as well; Dec
7. He was an outdoor and weather guy( taught us storms, clouds, meanings of skies and all things natural as well as how to be out in it and enjoy it and resection it. He was my hero. My m left him when I was 6 but I senty life trying to be with him and like him. He taught me the stars. He is Orion watching over me. He never accepted his queer eldest daughter. Maybe our dads are all together somewhere cheering us on!
November 19, 2010 @ 9:55 pm
Hey, Kate, it’s not all bad out here.
In Houston, Texas, the 4th largest city in America, right smack in the heart of Republican-land, where I’ve lived and been an activist for about 30 yrs now, we have a Democrat for Mayor, which is not new, but the fact that she is Lesbian and in a committed relationship, and has adopted kids with her lover Kathy, is! And, day before yesterday, our Mayor Annise Parker, appointed the first transgender municipal judge in the state of Texas:
Transgender Person Appointed Judge
Phyllis Randolf Frye Will Mainly Hear Traffic Cases
POSTED: Thursday, November 18, 2010
HOUSTON — The first transgender municipal judge was appointed on Wednesday.
Transgender Person Appointed Judge Phyllis Randolf Frye will mainly hear misdemeanor traffic cases.
“I’m very proud, extremely proud of what happened today,” Frye said. “I start to weep because 31 years ago I was illegal and subject to arrest.”
Three decades ago, the city of Houston had an ordinance allowing police to arrest cross-dressers. Frye fought to repeal the law, which she called degrading to transgender people like herself.
“Every day has been a struggle in my life,” Frye said.
“I’m very proud that I was able to nominate her and she agreed to serve,” Mayor Annise Parker said.
Frye has been in the headlines as an attorney recently. She represents Nikki Araguz, the transgender widow of a Wharton firefighter who died in the line of duty.
Frye said she wants to be seen as a role model for her community.
“I want to be seen as an honest person of integrity, and a person who won’t back away from a fight,” Frye said.
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Plus (from their newsletter):
The ACLU of Texas Is Moving Out and Across the State
November 12, 2010:
Following the end of the legislative session that begins in January, we will make our most dramatic move … and we want you to be among the first to know. Mid-summer 2011, we are moving our headquarters staff to Houston. Of course, we will maintain a core group in Austin for legislative, Capitol and Central Texas work.
Why are we doing this? To make the bold statement that the ACLU of Texas is the state’s most far-reaching and effective protector of individual freedom as well as Texas’ ever-vigilant guardian against over-reaching government influence. Our message must be that an intrusive government is a danger to any and all philosophies, conservative as well as liberal. Why Houston? The Bayou City is the nation’s fourth largest and most visible city in Texas. Such a move will be both symbolic and functional. It is symbolic because Houston is regarded as smart, sophisticated, and international, thus an organization headquartered there becomes integral to the mix. It is a functional move because Houston is home to the largest existing and potential donor base for the ACLU of Texas. Most important, the 10-county metropolitan area is simultaneously a laboratory for every imaginable civil rights violation that occurs in Texas.
As the New York Times described it recently, Houston is an “increasingly diverse city, with whites now barely making up half the population and one in four people foreign born. Yet on the western end and in the suburbs, some of the most conservative and white Congressional districts in the country, politicians win votes with vocal opposition to efforts to grant citizenship to illegal immigrants.”
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And:
Sharing space, sharing faith
7,000 copies of Hindu text join Christian Bibles in area hotel rooms
By KATE SHELLNUTT
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Nov. 18, 2010, 5:06PM
A Christian Bible and the Bhagavad Gita share space in a nightstand at the Best Western Windsor Suites in Houston.
The nationwide motel Gita project has a goal of distributing 1 million copies of the text.
Pull open a drawer in some Houston hotel rooms, and beside your room-service menu and Gideons Bible, you might find a copy of the Bhagavad Gita.
The sacred Hindu text is making its way into nightstands across the country through a campaign to spread the scripture and awareness about Lord Krishna, the deity believed to have spoken the philosophical teachings millennia ago.
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And, just so you don’t think I’m only bragging about Houston, lookee here at how Oklahoma handled the Rev Phelps’ idiot group at a recent funeral there:
Westboro protesters face jeers and slashed tires
by: MANNY GAMALLO World Staff Writer
Sunday, November 14, 2010
11/14/2010 8:12:18 AM
McALESTER – Members of a Kansas church that protests at military funerals may have found themselves in the wrong town Saturday.
Shortly after finishing their protest at the funeral of Army Sgt. Jason James McCluskey of McAlester, a half-dozen protesters from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., headed to their minivan, only to discover that its front and rear passenger-side tires had been slashed.
To make matters worse, as their minivan slowly hobbled away on two flat tires, with a McAlester police car following behind, the protesters were unable to find anyone in town who would repair their vehicle, according to police.
The minivan finally pulled over several blocks away in a shopping center parking lot, where AAA was called. A flatbed service truck arrived and loaded up the minivan. Assistant Police Chief Darrell Miller said the minivan was taken to Walmart for repairs.
Even before the protesters discovered their damaged tires, they faced off with a massive crowd of jeering and taunting counterprotesters at Third Street and Washington Avenue, two blocks from the First Baptist Church, where the soldier’s funeral was held.
Miller estimated that crowd to number nearly 1,000 people, and they not only drowned out the Westboro protesters with jeers, but with raucous chants of “USA, USA.”
A few motorcyclists interspersed among the crowd also revved up their engines to muffle the protests.
More than two dozen law-enforcement officers – state troopers, sheriff’s deputies and city police – formed a security cordon around the Westboro protesters.
“We’re here to protect everyone,” Miller said.
Westboro members picket military funerals across the country, spreading their message that “God hates America” because it tolerates homosexuality.
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Oh hell no, it ain’t easy living in Texas: as a white, disabled and now way-overweight, old(er) lesbian activist in love with a little Hispanic spitfire of a gal, I am one of the right-wing nut-jobs’ worst nightmares. And that helps to warm the cockles of my heart! Hope these “Tidbits from Texas” helps your front to pass.
Love you, and love your work. Keep your chin up, but not so high that when it rains, you drown!
Jennifer
p.s. Oh, and baby Bush’s book-signing day-before-yesterday was a snoozefest, it was at Barnes & Noble 15 blocks from me, and there wasn’t even a traffic jam.
p.s.s. Say hi to Vash – I used to run Bill Scott’s offices(and the Montrose Counseling Center & helped Marion run Kindred Spirits) for years, and, decades ago, when Bill stepped down as President of the NLGHF, your gal pal took over. I remember we all thought she was so tiny, but had great big ideas, and boy, were we right or what?!?!?