The Provincetown holiday break was lovely. Especially since after initial losses, I won our in-house vacation Scrabble tourney in a close final day best-of smackdown. The whole town is still agog over the transformation of our former soviet era Grand Union into the modern, spic and span Stop and Shop. There’s a cold cuts concierge in the deli! I have always thought that in the dead of winter there should be afternoon tea dances in the produce department. They’ve got an intercom. The S&S management might be amenable.
And as if that were not enough mind-blowing news, there is new dog park just past the Temple of Cumberland Farms. Shankpainter Road is where it’s happening! The recently completed Bark Park is a new gathering spot where even in the teeth of a New Year’s gale dogs were seen romping while owners huddled kvelling about the S&S. It’s so much fun, non-dog owners have brought toy stuffed dog animals, set them down and tried to pass. The dog park has cut down on the numbers of dogs off the leash out on town trails. No more “He won’t hurt you!” shouts as a chocolate lab does a wild card tackle.
We took great walks, despite my Indian girlfriend’s grousing, “Winter is not part of my culture.” We had great dinners with hardy year-rounder friends and holiday visitors. Every dinner conversation featured the inevitable dissection of the Rick “the P is silent” Warren inaugural invite and biotch slap. That topic followed the how-did-we-lose-Prop-Eight discussion. I would point out that CA is on the verge of bankruptcy. My message is more cautionary than causal: mess with the gays and your economy could suffer.
Despite Melissa Etheridge’s best Bono for the Homos effort, gay people and our straight friends and families are still not hopping on the Saddleback. We will not be appeased, not even if Rick Warren officiated at the wedding of Oprah and Gayle in the Oval Office. That might do it for me. Nah. Not even that.
Due to forty mile an hour winds and drifting snow we had to cancel our annual New Year’s beach fire. Each new year at sunset we have a beach fire and anyone can write down things they want to get rid of from the old year and toss them in the fire. For the first time this year we had even added an internet component to our ritual. Out of town friends emailed me their lists of disposables and, without looking at them shooting out of the printer, swear, I quickly origamied them into fire balls.
On a calm January 2, Urvashi and I took all the lists out on the jetty and burned them up. Black ash filigree danced and sizzled on the white snow. It’s back to work and school! Happy New Year.

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Just got word of another piece of coal from Benedict the Pope for our gay stockings this holiday season. I heard if from the smoky voiced Sylvia Polgolla in Rome, so it must be true. To review: as far as the Vatican is concerned, homosexuality is a deviation, an irregularity, a wound. In his cheery holiday message, the unmarried Pope said saving heterosexuality from gay marriage is as critical as saving the rainforest. No word yet on whether he will be sharing his papal PowerPoint with Rick Warren for his inaugural invocation.
That a two thousand year old Christian identity movement is so threatened by a forty-year-old gay identity movement indicates to me that we must be doing something right.
One group doing things right is the Victory Fund. In early December I had the privilege of working at their Gay and Lesbian Leadership Institute in Washington, DC. The conference is designed to train and support LGBT candidates across the country. In addition to meeting gay elected officials, attendees heard from strategists and practitioners about the post-election political landscape. Representative Barney Frank, Chair of the Finance Committee took time from his work on the auto bailout to speak to conference attendees. He assessed the LGBT progress and was optimistic about passage of several LGBT civil rights bills.
Of course Barney Frank made his remarks before Barack Obama’s Rick Warren announcement. Among the things we learned from the Bush years is that when homophobia continues to be sanctioned at the highest level of government, it is an excuse for bad behavior among the very rank and file.
In crises like these, I’ve learned to just keep doing my job, which I am grateful for every day. I just finished a CD recording of my third book, presciently titled, if I do say so myself, I Told You So. The book and CD will be out in spring, 2009. It was nice to be in a sound proofed booth wearing a giant sound-canceling headset. I wanted to stay forever. They finally had to ask me to leave because the booth was booked for another recording session.
When you’re down and troubled and you need a helping hand, go to the Apollo for the reunion of Labelle. That’s what we did. In the middle of a snowstorm. Whoopi Goldberg brought the outrageously styling Sarah Dash, Nona Hendryx, and Patti Labelle to the stage to thunderous welcome. They had kicked out six songs when the storm caused a power surge that shut down the sound system. So they said. I think Nona caused it when she took her jacket off and flexed her 64-year-old biceps. Or it could have been a sustained Patti note. After two hours of Con Ed trying and pleasant milling fueled by free drinks, the Apollo management rescheduled for the next night. We cancelled everything to be there.
An hour before we were going to make the trek again to Harlem, Nona called and said that Whoopi could not make it to introduce them again. Nona Hendryx asked me, moi, Kate Clinton, to introduce them. Um. Yes. The Apollo was packed again, and I got to step out on that historic stage, welcome everybody back, and introduce Labelle. Pinch me and funk the pope. What a great way to end my 2008 tour.

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It is two weeks since the election of Barack Obama. It is still true. It makes me smile every morning. Then I read the paper about the Armageddon that is our financial system and it harshes my mellow. But after CA, AZ, FL Prop Hates, it has been a shallow mellow.
Nothing like a little road trip to get the spirits up. The night before I left, I joined 16,000 of my closest, maddest friends at a protest at the Mormon Church near Lincoln Center in Manhattan. The Morons had spent 25 million in support of Prop Hate. Teamed with the Catholic Church, they are like the Hate Fed, bailing out immoral ballot initiatives. My sign said, “Tax This Church.” Another witty sign said, “Et tu Donnie and Marie?” My favorite was, “Joseph Smith had 20 wives and I can’t have one.” It felt good to scream. I saw old friends, but the crowd was mostly young. And they were ripping mad.
I flew on a tiny plane in our unregulated airline industry, to Pittsburgh, the football craziest town I’ve ever been in, and did a show at the University sponsored by the Rainbow Alliance. The students were still high from election night. They told stories of the spontaneous partying in the streets on election night and they too were ripping mad about the anti-gay wins.
The next night I performed in Alexandria, in the newly blue state of Virginia. The Group of 20 was in DC and traffic was at a standstill for people trying to get to the show. The summit had been hastily assembled by our Lame Fuck who welcomed the participating countries with a feeble speech about free trade. The principles of our economy are sound. Could he leave now? I had hoped that Carla Bruni, the breathy gorgeous new wife of France’s President Sarkozy would steal away and come to the show. Mais non.
Tant pis. The Birchmere is a big sprawling roadhouse of a club and it was wild. For the last eight years DC residents have been under house arrest. That night they were free and raucous and ready to party. The show was a pure joy. They are past ready for a new administration and are planning to party with millions on Inauguration Day.
They too experienced the kick in the gut that was Prop Hate, but seemed cautiously optimistic about not having an avowed homophobe in chief. Like many other cities they were planning big gay protests for the next day.
Like General MacArthur, but much cuter, I promised them I would return. I reminded them, as I remind you now, that the night before the Inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama we are going to meet at the Ellipse at 6pm to sage the bad spirits out of the White House. Be there or be square.

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My friend Sally had a special request for her birthday party – fondu! Get your sticks out, that pot of cheese soup is making a comeback. During the party, I noticed some scary double dipping. It’s the beginning of flu season, but I said nothing. Gals were yacking and dipping bread squares, meat cubes, veggies and I didn’t want to bring them down. I dipped my napkin once by mistake. I was waiting for the pot of chocolate at the end of the rainbow. More dipping of marshmellowish squares and fruit, though I would have been happy to pick the pot off the sterno flame, drop my head back and chug it.
How perfect that the day after the fondu fete, I would fly to Wisconsin, proud home of, you guessed it, the Cheesheads! I flew into Madison, Wisconsin and was picked up there by the director of the Young Theater at The University of Wisconsin, Whitewater campus. Ken Kohberger has produced me in Western Illinois and Keene, New Hampshire. We caught up as we drove through a beautiful fall landscape that reminded me of my upstate New York home. Minus the cheese.
That afternoon I met several LGBT student activists from Impulse, the LGBT student organization and the Pride Center. We chatted about their activism, coming out, campus tolerance and my ancient history. The audience at the show that night in their gorgeous theater was a lovely mix of students, subscription series patrons, faculty and LGBTers from all over Wisconsin. Never say anything less than a flat out rave for Bret Favre, former Green Bay Packers QB. We learn and grow.
The next day it was off to dear old Detroit for a show at the wonderful new LGBT Center in Ferndale, MI. The center is about a year old, a huge improvement over the former space and ably directed by Leslie Thompson. MI has the nation’s highest unemployment rate and is really hurting. Fundraising, a challenge any time, is especially difficult now. But the crowd crammed into the performance space at the center, after taking tours of the many wonderful floors of the building and we squeezed some more money out of them for the Center. I met more of the community of center-supporters at an after-party at a local brewery. I missed the cheese fondu, but met lots of long-time and new followers.
I just wrapped up a month of Super-Tuesdays at the Gotham Comedy Club here in New York. It’s been a month of bad to worse on Wall Street, so it was good to see people come out to the club for a few laughs. It was good to be together.
After twenty months and a billion dollars, it’s finally on to Election Eay. My adrenal system is shot and I don’t think it’s all the fondu! Vote early! Not often. That would make those anti-Acorn nutjobs blow up. Be positive! And plan a Fondu Victory party! Think Yes-Vember. We can.

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In between two of my monthlong October run of Super-Tuesday shows at the Gotham Comedy Club in New York, I happily headed off to Massachusetts. No not to get married, silly. For Women’s Week! After four glorious days of being in Provincetown, it is tough to get back to New York City. After being with all those thousands of lesbians, I do enjoy presuming that every woman I see here in NYC is a lesbian. We like to think the best of people.
It is probably just as well I left Ptown when I did. The weeping and wailing is upon the Red Sox land after they lost to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Does Sarah Palin’s pastor know about the devil thing?
I arrived in Ptown on Wednesday evening, just in time to stop in and meet LA producer, Andrea Meyerson’s gang of gals on a Women on a Roll field trip. They were dining at the glorious Red Inn overlooking the bay, dappled silver by a full moon. It was great to meet the LA gals and some of the wonderful new lesbian comics.
Thursday was my 184th Annual Kate Clinton touch football game at the park at the base of the Pilgrim Monument. We had a spirited game, no one was injured, though the next day a gimpy lesbian limped by, while her femme partner glowered at me. We had excellent color commentary by roving bands of lesbo-comics. They all used the bullhorn my girlfriend gave me for my birthday. She thinks of it as a sexual device.
We had a brief half-time show by NYC’s Dykes on Mikes and a visit from MIchelle Clunie (Queer As Folk) and Erin Daniels (The L Word), stars of the locally produced play Last Summer at Bluefish Cove They were gracious, signed autographs and raised money for breast cancer awareness not only at our game but also at events throughout the weekend.
Though the weather turned unseasonably cold, the weekend was a giant warm success with shows and parties all over town. It was good to be together. It felt like circling up the wagons and hunkering down with friends around a campfire while all around us winds of financial stress and campaign uncertainty buffeted our tiny bivouac of comity.
I left, not necessarily rested, but refreshed and ready for the final push of the campaign, grateful I have a job in this economy and hopeful about the change to come.
Happy Vernal Equinox!

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On Labor Day, after finishing my summer run of shows, and before one quarter of my tomatoes had turned red, I had to pack up, leave Provincetown and head back to New York. Next summer I either have to plant earlier or find an early ripening tomato. Or not leave.
I loved watching the progress of my tomatoes during our very short New England growing season. I tell my girlfriend I am going off the grid, going to live off the land. She says it will take more than two tomato plants. I’ll keep chickens and pigs. The pigs don’t have to wear lipstick. Maybe a little Covergirl Porcine Glow blusher. Ellen Degeneres is the new face of Covergirl! A real lipstick lesbian! Progress!
Within a few days I was back in the swing of New York City, catching up with friends, seeing movies I’d missed [Burn After Reading – great cast, don’t bother], and ordering Indian takeout. The weather in New York that week after Labor Day was glorious and I was not a happy cabined, cribbed, confined camper. I tried to be gracious, but based on my unconvincing performance, my girlfriend agrees that next fall I should extend in Ptown.
That week I felt like a war correspondent keeping up on dispatches about the Palin bombshell and monitoring the progress of Ike as I got ready to go to Austin, Texas for the Out and Equal Workplace Summit. The annual gathering of LGBT corporate, dare I say it, “community organizers” is getting larger and they are doing amazing work to transform workplaces into safe and thus creative environments for LGBT employees.
The sad irony of the weekend gathering of workplace optimists is that in the next week, their newly diversified workplaces at AIG, Lehman, Hewlett-Packard and Fannie Mae, to name a few, were to be bankrupted, shuttered and sold off, big enough to fail and bail. The riotous spirit of the dinner I emceed had a fin du siecle hysteria about it.
New York, the former financial capital of the world, has lost 20,000 jobs. Each time I ride the elevator in my building during the day, I see more and more unfamiliar faces. They are young men, young fathers on the way on an errand or young women, moms with their own small kids in the middle of the day. Every day is casual day.
It was good to leave New York and do a series of shows at the new RAZZ Room at the newly remodeled Nikko Hotel in San Francisco. The city has been through its share of booms and busts from the gold rush days, to the war years, to the closing of three military bases and loss of jobs, to the dot com bubble and bust. They go on. The city is bustling with life-saving tourists. The US is not a melting pot anymore. We are an outlet mall.
The crowds at my show have the exhausted feel of a warriors fighting on two fronts. Not only are they fighting for the election of Barack Obama, but they are also fighting the insulting nuisance of ballot initiative #8 which will take away the right of gay people to marry. They are organizing, phone-banking, going door to door, volunteering, raising unseemly amounts of money to fight the right.
A couple of people from my San Fransister’s audience told me after my show that I had gone too easy on Sarah Palin. After all the justifiable complaining I did about the sexism in Hillary Clinton’s primary bid, it’s true, I’m having a hard time being hard on Sarah Palin. She is so beside the point. The venal cynicism of McCain’s choice of the inexperienced Palin is on a par with the boldfaced vetting of Clarence Uncle Thomas as supremely qualified for the high Court.
We haven’t got time for Sarah “Operation Distraction” Palin. John McCain, or as we call him in our house, God Forbid, answered a question about Spain with all the loopiness of Miss Teen South Carolina when asked why one fifth of Americans could not locate the U.S. on a map. Such as.
We don’t have time for chain emails about white privilege, or goodbye to all that part three or Palin as Obama’s psychic shadow or crying about polar bear vaginas. We can think all those big thoughts later, when we’re sobering up from the Democratic victory parties. Right now, it’s time to volunteer, send money, fight with undecided voters, vote and win.

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I am pleased to announce, I have accrued no frequent flier miles this month of August. I have filled my 1998 Jeep’s gas tank once and that was because there is something wrong with the gas gauge and John, my mechanic’s fix was, “Aw, just don’t let it go under half a tank and you’ll be fine.” I have enough frequent biker miles to get new flip-flops. But mine are perfectly grooved to my feet. I have a very small carbon footprint.
My road most traveled is from my house in the mid-west end of old Provincetown either to work, to the post office, to the beach, to the dunes. I bought my bike years ago at a year end Ptown Bikes sale. It is still labeled #10 for their rental records. It has big sturdy handlebars, a big bike seat that absorbs all rain. It has one speed – me. The brakes are in the pedals. I share the bike with my neighbor. Sometimes he sprays WD40 on the rusting chain. He rides it all winter. Old Number Ten we call it. It has outlasted two other fancy schmantzy over-geared bikes, ruined by salt air and sand.
My un-mapquested route to work, takes me by my neighbor Gordon, the town barber sitting on his deck. “Hi, Katie,” he says, “have a good show, dahlin.” I’m Katie to all the old Ptown Portuguese guys. I ride by my favorite Tips for Tops’n restaurant/commissary where his wife is the cashier, and breathe in the fried scallops as I pass.
With the gorgeous bay glinting with less and less light each evening, I turn onto Commercial Street. Past late caffeine crowds at Joe’s Coffee; the West End Salon bubble machine doing its Lawrence Welk best; nearly naked boys doing last minute flyering outside the thumping music from the Boat-slip t-dance; past Spiritus with returning, starving beach bunnies carbo-loading pizza just to get to their guest houses; past early birders at Front Street; past little kids in the tiniest crocs picking through intriguing sale bins outside the Army/Navy Store; past the barkers for shows at the Unitarian Church and on into the entertainment complex of The Crown and Anchor. It takes me five minutes to get to work, if I don’t stop to talk with anyone.
Now when I come out from my shows, the sun has already set. The sky is often pyrotechnically pastel on the Pilgrim monument. We are heading into the big Carnival and Labor Day weeks, two weeks of flat out fun for tourists and the last laps for tired workers. Back to school ads have been out for weeks. The nights are cool. I am experiencing that unnatural fondness for knee socks that just the word September brings.

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One of the big controversies in Provincetown this summer involves complaints by fifty-third generation descendants of Puritan about nudity and public sex in the far reaches of the Herring Cove Dunes. The good news is that my worry that gay marriage is a straight conspiracy to stop gay sex is apparently and happily unfounded.
For those of you who would, of course like to know the exact coordinates of the sexual activity, check your GPS, Gay People Sex. And don’t forget: if it’s three, let it be. The poison ivy, not the ménages. The poison ivy leaves are just turning a very helpful red alert.
The National Park Rangers can divert giant over sand motor home behemoths just by putting up the flimsiest of strings and posting “Piping Plover Nesting Area” signs. People honor those areas. My suggestion is that the over-worked and underpaid civil servants rope off sexually active areas of the dunes and put up “Gay Sex Frolicking Area” signage. After the initial posting, there would be no need for time consuming beach patrols.
Everybody sing: [to the tune of “Oh, the farmers and the ranchers must be friends] “Oh the gay folks and the Puritans must be friends.”
The rangers have better things to do with their time. On a recent high tide, made higher by the pull of a full moon, an elderly woman was stranded on a spit of sand and called for help. One man called the Park Rangers, who said they were not in the business of rescue. He found another man, with a small rubber dinghy who was ready to row out to the woman. At that moment, the Coast Guard arrived and would not allow the attempted rescue, because the man did not have enough life-jackets on board.
If only the elderly woman on that tiny strip of sand had stripped naked and done a suggestive hoochee-koo. She would not have had to wait for the ebb tide or suffer from hypothermia.
In international news, Angelina Jolie gave birth to her twins. Mother and children are doing well. Seconds after they were born, the twins were handed to Brad Pitt, who reportedly hugged them to his naked chest. Into the world through Angelina’s legs and then placed on Brad’s chest! What a charmed life those children already lead! I am happy for them, and yes, just a little jealous.
The Jolie/Pitt blessed event augers well for the beginning of Gay Family Week here in the town of P. We are just coming to the end of the first ever Girlsplash! Week. Organizer hopes that it will grow as big as October’s Women’s Week. Lynette Molnar says, “In a few more years, it will be like Women’s Week but without the Polartech.” Pool parties, whale watches, and dance parties were some of the highlights.
I am all set for Family Week. After the big GLAD summer party at the Pilgrim Monument, where I will be their honorary auctioneer, I will go pick up the two zip kids I have rented for the week. I am on a waiting list for what they tell me is a “babe-magnet” adorable six month old girl named Karla. I’ve already got a double wide stroller fully loaded. For me it also doubles as a walker.
The most wonderful part of the week is the tons of teen kids of gay parents. They are feisty, smart, political, very fashionable and they love being with each other. This summer is my 84th season performing in Ptown. Thanks to their gay parents, the way these kids are maturing, I can retire happily in a few seasons.

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After my Memorial Day run at the Crown and Anchor in Ptown, I took a lovely local nine-seater CapeAir plane into Boston for the 27th Annual MA Bill of Rights dinner. The pilot was in training and kept reading the laminated instruction list. It was a quaint reminder of early flight.
But if you want to meet some real risk-takers, look no further than the honorees at the ACLU dinner. The founder of Boston’s Wainright Bank, committed to progressive lending and minority ideals, disproves the real current mantra, “When banks compete, you lose.” While Errol Morris’s film Standard Operating Procedure is certainly not what you’d call a date movie, he deserved the recognition for telling the back story of Abu Ghraib. Ironically, on the same day of the release Scott McClellan’s belated tell-all book What Happened, Watergate’s John Dean, was honored for his work. I asked him to please thank his son, Howard, for his good job rebuilding the Democratic Party.
MA ACLU also honored the twenty years of work of their legislative director, Norma Shapiro. The diminutive, Jewish grandmother strong-armed the Catholic boys of the Legislature into passing gay marriage in MA. Talk about a vein of iron. Lots of attendees got me aside and whispered, “She knows where the bodies are buried.” I bet she knows the whereabouts of fugitive Whitey Bulger.
And then it was off to San Fransisters and the NCLR Gala Dinner. And more about gay marriage They were partying and celebrating the lifting of the ban on gay marriage in CA before they go off to fight yet another costly ballot initiative. I wondered why we can’t sue the fundamentalists for harassment. The NCLR lawyers told me they couldn’t and that you can’t initiate a ballot to get rid of ballot initiatives. Dang.
Two of the marriage plaintiffs, and my good friends, Jeanne Rizzo and Pali Cooper took me to a Giants Game at their lovely in-town stadium. It was Until There’s a Cure Night at the park and the SF Gay Men’s Chorus did a mini-concert before the game. The crowd cheered them and long time city pol, and comic, Tom Ammiano who read a declaration from Mayor Gavin Newsom. We’ve come a long way since 1981. The Giants lost in extra innings, but we were long gone because it was a gusty 42 degrees and I did not have on my stadium hot pants.
I kicked off Gay Pride Month, by appearing in the True Colors Tour lineup at Radio City Music Hall: The Cliks, the Indigo Girls, Regina Spector, Rosie O’Donnell, the B52s and finally Cyndi Lauper still kicking her eight octave range. I pinch myself.
After the craziness of CA, and I must say there was some flaunting and taunting – “So when are you and yours coming out her to get married?”- it was great to be back in New York, where Gov. David Patterson issued an executive order that NY State must recognize out-of-state, same-sex marriages. After Gov. Spitzer and Patterson’s own revelations about his marital excursions, it might be that NY doesn’t actually recognize in-state, same-old-sex marriage.
Nonetheless it was a proud moment. Patterson said that when he was little, whenever his parents went out, they would leave him with his uncles Stanley and Rodney. They played cards with him and helped him with his homework. Because of that early and formative familiarity, though legally blind, he sees gay people.

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May I Just Say?
It’s been quite the month. From a wonderful Gender-PAC benefit cook-off with celebrity chefs in New York, to a great show for Equality Ohio’s Third Annual Lobby Days in Columbus, to a sold-out benefit dinner for choreographer Elizabeth Streb’s Action Maverick Awards in Brooklyn, to a wildly raucous Astraea 30th Anniversary Dinner in New York City, to Memorial Day weekend shows at the Crown and Anchor in Ptown – darlings, I’ve been around more than Ryan Seacrest on speed.
From chef hats to emcee hats to backward Kangol snap caps in honor of the gangs of gangsta-styling young gals partying in Ptown, darlings, I’ve been wearing some different hats.
I’m off to perform at the 27th Annual ACLU Bill of Rights Dinner in Boston and will round out the month emceeing the NCLR galas with gaga gals ready to celebrate the CA Supreme Court overturning the four year ban on gay marriage.
Then it’s time for Gay Pride Month, the month formerly known as June – the True Colors Tour stop at Radio City Music Hall and the NY LGBT Center’s Garden Party on Chelsea Piers.
Have I told you lately how much I love my job? I do. Not only am I honored to be asked to participate, I am revitalized at each event by the extraordinary work that so many ordinary people are doing for the human rights of all people. Okay, maybe not yet the gal gangs in Ptown – but if they eventually work for justice as hard as they party, watch out!

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