Friday, February 29, 2008

Harvey Milk Memorial, Washington, D.C.

I guess there were suggestions that a memorial to Harvey Milk be built in Washington, D.C. I don't know if anything has come of that. Yet my friend Robert Minichiello came up with plans for one that I have just uncovered -- as I will probably be uncovering things by him for years...


As it reads on the plans: "Exterior Frieze of Metal Letters: FRIEND, I AM NEITHER MAN NOR WOMAN, I AM LOVE THAT IS MORE THAN WORDS." - Paul Claudel, 2nd Ode.




"...an open-air pavilion from which both nature and history can be contemplated..."



"The columns made of green-colored stone such as granite or serpentine marble, sitting on a floor of polished blue-black granite, and supporting a frieze and cap of bronze, structured steel pipe and ring-beam, and a reinforced concrete foundation..."



"An Interior Frieze of Bronze Panels: Six Scenes from a History of the Struggle for Individual Rights," depicting (1) Rosa Parks Rides in the Front of the Bus; (2) 1965 Voting Rights Act Signed; (3) Martin Luther King and the Washington D.C. Rally: We Shall Overcome; (4) Harvey Milk Elected First Gay Supervisor; (5) Dianne Feinstein Tells Press of Double Murders; (6) Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day, Autumn 1987, Washington.


Monday, February 25, 2008

The Tragedy of Lawrence King


Perhaps you have heard of Lawrence King, shot at age 15 by a classmate at their junior high school in Oxnard, California. A vigil was held here, and there is a memorial for him in the LGBT Center where people may record their response to his death.


King took his seat on the morning of 12 February in the computer lab of his Junior High. "Two gunshots were fired into the back of his head, ending his life. He was kept on life support in order to have his organs donated..."


"King," living at a center for abused and neglected children, was "self-identifed as gay and sometimes wore make-up and feminine jewelry to school." While he was subjected to bullying and ridicule, the school did nothing to protect his rights. He was shot by 14-year-old Brandon McInerney.
29 February: Since making this entry, I have learned, from an impassioned plea Ellen DeGeneris made on her show, that Larry was killed because he had asked Brandon to be his valentine (I suppose it was one of this printed cards: Will You Be My Valentine?)


Wednesday, February 20, 2008

The Evening of 15 February 2008

How delightful on my way to a discussion at the LBGT Historical Society on Mission Street to see and hear this wonderful man playing electric violin:



A panel had been arranged to lead a discussion about how gay life has differed for older and younger men.




To my mind, at age 70, the young gay men did emanate the difference of those who have grown up since gay life has emerged from its hidden, underground existence previous to gay liberation -- the knowledge that gay people exist was at large in their world; they seemed confident young men accustomed to assuming political responsibility.  So many changes in the world, including the Internet, have changed the process of "coming out."
 
The older gay men described a more tortured process of coming out, decades ago when we grew up being taught that being gay was criminal, subject to imprisonment, or it was defined as a mental illness.  All of the older men on the panel were frank about their personal confusions and dead-end searches in their first days as gay men.  

Harry Britt was the last on the panel to speak.  He is a venerable figure in gay history, of course, as he was appointed to Harvey Milk's position on the San Francisco Board of Supervisor when Milk was assassinated, along with Mayor George Moscone, by Supervisor Dan White.  Harvey's cohort, said Britt, included the effeminate men and the butch women because they "fit in" society least, and so they were the most ready for revolutionary change.  


Britt was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 1980, 1984, and 1988, and served as President of the Board from 1989-90.  He ran unsuccessfully for the 5th Congressional District of California in 1987, narrowly losing to Nancy Pelosi, and was also unsuccessful in his race against Mark Leno for the California Assembly in 2002.  Currently he teaches at New College, San Francisco, which is in financial troubles in 2008.  

No matter what the differences for the young or the older gay man, Britt said, "What we have in common is our alienation.  What makes us different is how we process that alienation."  In his own case, confronting the fact of his homosexuality, "I thought I needed to learn a new [political] language.  Then I realized that language did not exist, that we would have to create it."

For a moment I dipped into one of those useless questions, as Harry spoke, thinking:  Why should gays have to NOT be alienated from other gay people?  Are "straight" people concerned with NOT being alienated from all other "straight" people?  But minority groups are always caught in strange nets like that, which cannot be avoided, although it is very odd.  


Harry did a brief review of the three decades of gay life ending the last century; how, after Stonewall officially launched what had just been an idea before then -- Gay Liberation -- the Castro became one big long party. One of the older men on the panel had come to the San Francisco just before then as a political activist but saw that there was no choice but to join in the party or watch it, as politics was not on anyone's mind--everyone supposing that "freedom," as a final state, had arrived. Then Britt described how the party ended, with the devastating effect of HIV/AIDS, leading to the more moderate style that seemed evident in the young gay men on the panel.

I felt that Harry missed an opportunity when asked how gay men and lesbians had traveled on separate paths, and it reminded me that I have wanted to contact Tom Ammiano to ask him to make some proclamation of the heroism of lesbians during the AIDS crisis. I heard plenty of anti-women comments among gay men in the days before AIDS, but lesbians became an army of supportive caretakers as their gay brothers sickened and died. Their support has not been properly celebrated.

One question that was floating through the discussions was how the older gay men had had great difficulty finding mentors in their youth to guide them, and where do young gay people find mentors now? (Are they better off without them?)

As discussion was opened to the audience, it was a little disappointing to hear the old oppositions between older and younger gay men, and how each side found it difficult to bridge that difference. The older ones, of course, felt the history they represent is not respected by the young, while the younger men said they supposed the older men just want to have sex with them. Historical struggles were recalled that the older men felt were being forgotten, invoking the names of brave crusaders (who suffered for their struggles, but endured), such as Harry Hay. Britt mentioned Hal Call who published the periodicals of the Mattachine Society; he was one of those who created one of the various collections of books and materials now congregated on the shelves and in boxes in the Historical Society's rooms behind us.

One of the older men seemed bitter not for social or political problems but from his own psychological problems that made him condemn any efforts to communicate, saying that no younger gays share his interest in a particular activity. Although older gay men are apt to discount younger gay men complaining that older gay men are only interested in them sexually, one young man gave a convincing speech about not feeling respected as a person, and certainly there are enough older men (of any sexual persuasion) who are apt to become obnoxious in their attraction to younger men or women. An older man expressed difficulty with getting younger people to attend his group that is intended to promote intergenerational contact. Some young men said they preferred to hang out with other young men as they have the common interests and concerns of their generation.

I was feeling frustrated at hearing the same stances I had heard over the years, and it was the last half hour before they would break into a social time, while I had to take off for an event at El Rio restaurant, so I wanted to say a few things that had been building up in me, and finally got my turn in the audience to speak: "I have several things I would like to say. I would like to say that when I first came to San Francisco [1959] I used to go to the building at the end of this block [I don't know if anyone there knew the actual location] and walk up a few floors where I could sample the library Hal Call had created there. But I would also like to say that I don't see how you can have a group to create, self-consciously, communication between the generations. I have been in an intergenerational writing group for a couple decades now, and I think you just have to follow your interests and there you will meet others of different generations who follow that interest. Also, for older guys who feel their history is being ignored. I used to feel annoyed because I was part of a gay liberation movement in the 1960s -- Does anyone know about Sherwood Forest [headquarters of those early days of gay liberation] in Berkeley? -- We had kiss-in's and were chased around by the police and did a lot of the groundwork for Gay Liberation -- but Stonewall obliterated that history. But why waste time being resentful about a forgotten past? If you feel your history has been neglected, write it up, and give it to the Historical Society. Why go on living in the past?... Ah...there was something else I wanted to say, but I can't remember what it was."

"That's all right," said someone on the panel, "there will be time."

But I had to leave for El Rio soon after that. A man standing by the door said, "I like what you had to say." Then I remembered the other thing I wanted to say: "And I wish young men would stop hitting on me."

But I have missed so many of Elisa Welsh's performance, and I like her singing and the songs she writes, and tonight it was to be a benefit for Code Pink. I managed to get to El Rio on Mission by the middle of the first song of their set. I am glad that there was this reason finally to go to El Rio. It held that wonderful new generation that I first recognized as something new at a grand "Power to the Peaceful" concert in Golden Gate Park last summer -- They look to me like a new and different kind of human, and I could tell that there was no division between heterosexual and homosexual (and bisexual) young people in El Rio in the first room alongside the long bar; it was clearly their celebratory Friday night. Beyond that was a large back patio where someone was cooking over a grill. I could not see anyone I knew from Code Pink, and finally I realized that in this maze of rooms, I had to go further to the room with a stage where Elisa and her cohort were performing.
A lot better photographs than mine were taken by a professional:
http://bryanharrison.net/photos/pages/index.htm/

Jim McLaren and Bryan Harrison performing



Elisa Welch sang some wonderful old songs, but also some of her own, including one she wrote for those camped out at Camp Pelosi (outside Nancy Pelosi's home, resisting her stance that "the question of impeachment is tabled") to sing during their vigils there, and I hope it will also be sung in peace marches:  WAKE UP.  She gave me permission to print the words here (at the end of this entry), but it will not have the same power as when Elisa and her friends are singing it to Elisa's tune; then you cannot help but join in.*


Renay Davis had a chance to take a break from political action...



Nancy Mancias looked so cute dancing (This is sounding too much like society column chatter), and I was glad to have the opportunity to tell her that the most delightful moment in recent political events was when, shouting against the war at Huckleberry's -- that is, Huckabee's -- appearance in San Francisco, and she was carried off, draped over some guy's shoulder, still facing the crowd, and she was still shouting against the war...



*WAKE UP
  [Words & Music by Elisa M. Welch, copyright August 2007]
[Chorus]
[Call]:  Wake up!
     [Response]:  Wake up!
[Call]:  Wake up!
[Response]:  Wake up!
[Call]:  Wake up!
[Response]:  Wake up!
[Call]:  Wake up!
[Response]:  Wake up!

[Verse]: Wake up and smell the coffee my friends
Shake up the status quo and put this madness to an end
We have let it go too far it's time to stop this stupid war
[Call]:  It's up to you.
[Response]:  It's up to you.
[Call]:  It's up to me.
[Response]:  It's up to me.
[Chorus]
[Call]:  Wake up!
[Response]:  Wake up!
[Call]:  Wake up!
[Response]:  Wake up!
[Call]:  Wake up!
[Response]:  Wake up!
[Call]:  Wake up!
[Verse]:


Take up the olive branch and drop the sword
Make up and stop your fighting and you'll reap the right reward
We must learn to live together in this little world, you see
[Call]:  It's up to you.
[Response]:  It's up to you.
[Call]:  It's up to me.


[Response]:  It's up to me.
[Chorus]:
[Call]:  Wake up!
[Response]:  Wake up!
[Call]:  Wake up!
[Response]:  Wake up!
[Call]:  Wake up!
[Response]:  Wake up!
[Call]:  Wake up!
[Response]:  Wake up!


[Bridge]:
What's it gonna take?  Do I really need to scream?
What will finally wake you from this endless dream


[Verse]:
How can you let this lunacy go on?
There's a junta in the White House and it's time to get them gone
Yes the answer's in our reach and the answer is IMIPEACH
[Call]:  It's up to you
[Response]:  It's up to you
[Call]:  It's up to me
[Response]:  It's up to me
[Call]:  It's up to you
[Response]:  It's up to you
[Call]:  It's up to me
[Response]:  It's up to me

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

HONOR, WAR, AND...HOPE?

HONOR
[with some of Martha's signs, in Martha's front window,
and the little man in the de Young Museum]

How do you talk about a universe without God when most of the humans on the planet feel they cannot live without a God? I am not alone in pondering that dilemma. Where can I turn to discuss eliminating the word “honor” when so many feel that is such an essential concept?

Although the addiction of humans to violence leads to a toll of human suffering and death so tragic to the fully human as to be maddening, your average fighting human does not see it. Judging from those who mourn fallen soldiers, most of those fighters do not even fight for some political problem; their purpose and their sacrifice may be for nothing or for something completely wrong-headed, but they feel fulfilled if they are commended for “Honor," the crown bestowed on them by their family and their nation. These men and women of Honor are living in a medieval fantasy; they are not conscious participants in a political strategy. How sad that survivors find consolation in their child or husband or themselves having won the mythical gold coin of honor (represented by military medals or folded flags – I remember the cousin who came to a family reunion on leave from World War II, bitter and certain that he had made a good bargain by exchanging his Purple Heart for a bottle of whiskey). And it would also seem from what they say that the majority of those who become involved in violent actions against other humans do it not for any political reasons, but with an adolescent hunger for adventure and for this movie and fairytale prize of Honor. What is this terrible ignorance called Honor?



I live in fear of the Honorable. Am I going to ask any U.S. Marine if it is truly honorable for them to carry out the orders of a mad man because he has a title, such as President? Or to follow orders to kill “enemies” and civilians with a general sweep of their machine guns because they faithfully follow orders? I wold not question the Honor of any of the warriors unless I had a gang of 8 people around me – for those who love Honor know that their Honor gives them free licence to resort to violence without question. Honor seems to be the bully’s way of saying, “I have a god-given right to be violent because I myself can expose myself to violence without flinching” (the way Gordon Liddy would put out burning cigarettes on the back of his hand to prove his “manhood”—not, let it be noted, his “humanhood”). I suppose Honor has mostly to do with males (and some females seeking equality on all fronts?), wanting to prove they have courage, and they don’t realize that society long ago devised this way to deal with their testosterone-driven urges and anxieties.

Where is the athletic field for the men seeking Honor – war. It may be as old as the human race, but surely Honor is a false sense of integrity based on a man baptizing himself with blood drawn from another man’s body, or by sacrificing his own blood. Surely, this is a relic of the more primitive part of the human brain, the pre-conscious nature of someone who does not know that the human nature (our “better angel,” the evolved person) is achieved only through a searching doubt and questioning consciousness, not blind obedience or possession by some fantasy.



It is unfortunate that there is not an outcry against violent video games and the multitude of other devices for training males to think they "need" violence -- the latest manifestations of the prehuman gone hogwild. It is difficult to watch all the violent entertainments of the so-called heterosexual man – and that is a question: Just what kind of “sexual” are they? If you can bear to watch the average war-as-entertainment-movie, there is something that is very transparent. One man is pursuing another, then the one who is captured is tortured by his conqueror: Watch the writhing (playacting, after all) as the one tortured squirms while the torturer talks to him, asking, in effect, "How does it feel?" -- not asking "Is it good for you?" yet, similarly, asking, "Is it bad for you?" It is so transparent that most male-directed entertainments are sado-masochistic love stories. What is the meaning of that? Is it the way heterosexual men express a repressed homosexuality: We can show love for each other so long as we punish each other at the same time -- a caress disguised as the slice of a knife? I am truly asking this question: How else can I interpret those movies? SAVING PRIVATE RYAN was especially loathsome when at the end a Nazi stabs an American Jewish soldier in a way that is purely sexual, presented as a cruel intimacy. What is it with these violence-addicted males?



But back to Honor – Try this: Any time you think that Honor may be an appropriate word to use (so vague a term, something having to do with knights and chivalry, surely), try substituting one of these words: Rather than “That was very honorable of you,” try some word that has a clear definition: “That was very honest of you.” Other words that would be more appropriate, besides Honesty: Integrity, Dignity, Character, Respect, Credibility, Authenticity, Respect for Others, Fair, Just, etc. Can anyone give me a good argument in favor of using the word "Honor"? Can anyone suggest a way to undermine its use in the world in general?!



“From the viewpoint of anthropology, cultures of honour typically appear among nomadic peoples and herdsmen who carry their most valuable property with them and risk having it stolen, without having recourse to law enforcement or government. In this situation, inspiring fear forms a better strategy than promoting friendship; and cultivating a reputation for swift and disproportionate revenge increases the safety of one’s person and property. Thinkers ranging from Montesquieu to Steven Pinker have remarked upon the mindset needed for a culture of honour….Cultures of honour also flourish in criminal underworlds and gangs, whose members carry large amounts of cash and contraband and cannot complain to the law if it is stolen. Once a culture of honor exists, it is difficult for its members to make the transition to a culture of law; this requires that people become willing to back down and refuse to immediately retaliate, and from the viewpoint of the culture of honour, this tends to appear to be an unwise act reflecting weakness.” – Wikipedia.

“…During the time that the aristocracy was dominant, the concepts of honour, loyalty, etc., were dominant; during the dominance of the bourgeoisie the concepts freedom, equality, etc.” – Marx and Engles, THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY, quoted on Wikipedia.



Although I am tempted to keep the word when I read Sophocles: “Rather fail with honour than succeed by fraud” we can replace honor there with “self-respect.” So many things have to be rewritten to convert the word “God” to “Love,” or, depending on the context, to “Law” or some other meaning.
Here’s a hard one to translate – Want to provide a substitution? “Peace is a precious and a desirable thing. Our generation, bloodied in wars, certainly deserves peace. But peace, like almost all things of this world, has its price, a high but measureable one. We in Poland do not know the concept of peace at any price. There is only one thing in the lives of man, nations, and countries that is without price. That thing is honor.” – Jozef Beck.

Mmm, maybe I will submit this to some local magazine -- Will anyone be brave enough to accept a denunciation of Honor?

Meanwhile, will he really help change our sick nation? He is even being stenciled on the sidewalks of San Francisco....

Thank you, Gail Horvath

After receiving their company's valentine, which included a beautiful photograph of the moon by Gail Horvaith, and a selection from a Chinese poet, I wanted to respond to Gail Horvath and Dan and Meredith Beam [www.beaminc.com] with a verse by the Chinese poet Tu Fu (Du Fu), but could not find that verse, and so I sent them a few of my favorite Japanese haiku, and Gail responded by superimposing one of the haiku on another of her photographs. Is there anything more wonderful than creative collaboration?

YOU PROBABLY WON'T NEED TO, BUT CLICK ON
THE PHOTO IF YOU WANT TO ENLARGE IT:



That list of haiku I gave them...plus a few more:

Oh do not swat them...
Unhappy flies forever
Wringing their thin hands.
-- Issa

Moon-in-the-water
Turned a white somersault...yes
And went floating off.
-- Ryota

Oh you bawdy breeze...
Thatcher working on the roof
I see your bottom.
-- Issa

Look at the candle!
What a hungry wind it is...
Hunting in the snow.
-- Issa

Dead my old fine hopes
And dry my dreaming but still...
Iris, blue each spring.
-- Shushiki

The turnip farmer
Rose and with a fresh-pulled turnip
...pointed to my road.
-- Issa

Paper-weights protect
Gay picture-books in the shop...
Inquisitive breeze.
-- Kito

A childless housewife...
How tenderly she touches
Little dolls for sale.
-- Ransetsu

Here is the dark tree
Denuded now of leafage...
But a million stars.
-- Shiki

I scooped up the moon
In my water bucket...and spill
It on the grass.
-- Ryuho

Arise from sleep, old cat,
And with great yawns and stretching...
Amble out for love.
-- Issa

Oh do not swat them...
Unhappy flies forever
Wringing their thin hands.
-- Issa

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Two Slide Shows

Veterans for Peace, Courage to Resist
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLLEYBaF1Dw

It's a Woman's Choice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6AwVFWGCG0