For Kim’s son

I met her at a meeting probably eleven or twelve years ago. We instantly connected because of our shared status as HIV-positive people in recovery. I adopted the runt of a litter of kittens. Emma is with me to this day.

During a subsequent relapse Kim became pregnant but quickly came back to our fold determined to give birth to a healthy child. Many of us experienced the anticipation of new life as the months rolled along. Kim shared of her gratitude to be carrying a baby, clean and sober.

She knew the best option, to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, was a caesarean section. All was made ready at Women’s College Hospital and the time soon came for the big event.

Pictures in my mind have Kim and her partner at the top of the bed holding their little boy with godparents, grandmothers and friends all around awaiting their turn to hold him.

Fast forward several years. Kim, using again, gave up custody of her son to her now ex-partner. I saw her, I’m not sure how long ago, walking up Church Street with telltale saucer-shaped eyes. “Hey buddy”, she said looking into my eyes – knowing that I knew how she was. She didn’t stop to talk.

This past Friday night I arrived home to an email from a friend of Kim’s, her son’s godmother in fact. Kim had died of an overdose.

Can any of us say we are shocked? No. Angry at Kim? Sure. Yet we could see it coming. How sad that her own need to get high came before anything else – knowing, however difficult, that there was proven help available. (That’s a lament that is heard time and again, knowing that different circumstances might have had similar outcomes for us.)

My most vivid memories are of a Kim who was courageous in speaking out about her story of life on the streets, agitating for more research on how HIV impacts women differently, and of her effusive joy as a young expectant mother who was so grateful for her baby’s safe arrival. Those are the memories I would want to share with her beautiful ten-year old son. He’s experiencing enough darkness, probably more internally than otherwise, as Tuesday’s farewell approaches.

PM cuts through the stigma of depression, suicide

The text of the Prime Minister’s remarks at the funeral of Member of Parliament Dave Batters in Regina Saturday.

Denise, members of the Batters family, ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered together today to remember Dave, to lament his passing, and to comfort each other.

Dave held a place in all our hearts.

To his wife and family, he was a loving and beloved husband, son and brother. To his friends, he was unfailingly loyal, generous and caring. And among his colleagues in parliament, myself included, he was greatly admired for his dedication to his constituents, our party, and our country.

In my experience, no one, on either side of the aisle ever had a bad word to say about Dave.

His passion for the causes he embraced was combined with respect for his opponents. Dave was always excited about whatever issue or initiative he was working on. His energy and enthusiasm were infectious. He had a good sense of humour. He lifted spirits and inspired others. In fact, I used to tell my staff that I wished I could match Dave Batters’ liveliness and optimism.

However, some months before his political career ended I became aware that beneath this veneer of optimism Dave struggled with severe anxiety and depression. And in the end Dave lost the fight against his illness.

While we cannot understand why a loved one would act with such sudden finality, we need to know that Dave is not alone.

Each year, nearly 4,000 Canadians make this same choice. Mostly, the experts tell us, it is a decision to end their burden of depression. Fighting their illness, their minds drawing them ever further inward, they have grown weary of life.

However, this we know: in his struggle Dave achieved a life worth living, a simple but profound truth, a goal we all aspire to, and he reached it. Dave’s family can take great pride in this.

For Dave made a significant contribution to the lives of others. Another great goal in life, and one he achieved so ably.

When he ran for public office, Dave did not do so for selfish reasons. He responded to the tragedy of another, the murder of his friend Michelle. He heard, and answered a call to service and he did so with conviction, distinction and success.

Depression didn’t stop that. It was his decency that drove him forward, that defined him in life, that will define him in death.

Dave was a very human politician. He opened himself to others. It strengthened his hand in representing his constituents, but it rendered him vulnerable to depression as it can to any of us.

Dave was an idealist but he was also a realist. When he decided not to offer again for re-election, he made the right choice: to re-build his health. And he spoke openly about his illness. In doing so, he performed a great public service.

We need to know that mental illness like Dave’s is shockingly common in our society. It affects the great and the small alike despite the stigma that still too often surrounds it.

Other politicians have carried the same burden. In fact, perhaps the two greatest English-speaking politicians in history, Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill struggled with depression. And one of Canada’s most admired and successful statesmen, Ontario premier John Robarts, served the country with great distinction before finally succumbing to his illness.

Dave’s friends in caucus gave him their support. I encourage them to reach out to other colleagues. Parliament is a human institution, and depression is a human experience, none of us are exempt.

The science has progressed but we still don’t know enough about depression, and less about suicide.

But we know this much: depression can strike the sturdiest of souls. It cares not how much you have achieved nor how much you have to live for.

Severe anxiety and depression are concentrated among men and women in their primary working years, and, most sadly, in their adolescent children.

Unlike its myth, depression is not a function of character except that to fight it summons a strength of character and a great strength of character like Dave’s to fight it as long as he did. Dave dealt with his illness head-on. That takes courage.

To Dave’s family, we mourn and share your loss. But so too do we share your pride in Dave’s life and in the greater good he served through elected office and through his public battle with depression from which we can all learn.

For this, we honour his memory and celebrate his life.

In Dave’s name, to all Canadians who struggle with depression, and to all families who have lost loved ones to depression and suicide, I say that you are not alone. And I commend Dave’s legacy of distinction, courage and resolve both in Parliament and in life.

The richness of life with friends

It was, as I said on my facebook page, an amazing night of remembering, crying and healing at the 25th Annual Candlelight AIDS Vigil. A true sign of the richness of my life is that I didn’t get the chance to hug everybody that I knew there.

Maybe it was the fact that it was the 25th annual vigil or the fact that it’s been 20 years since I’ve known definitively that I have HIV/AIDS – and have lived to tell about it. I don’t need to know why tonight’s ceremony was extra special.

But as I fill in the details you’ll get the picture.

I sat mere steps away from the AIDS Memorial with a group of friends who have steadfastly supported me in my return to the recovery fold. Later, after several of them held me as I completely shuddered with tears, a total stranger introduced herself, asked if she could also hug me, and quickly became a found soul-mate – a friend I hadn’t met yet – as we began to share about people we both knew.

The evening started with the reading of a message from Cleve Jones, particularly to mark the 25th anniversary. The significance was lost on no one who had seen “Milk” in the past year or so, or those of us who know of him as one of the founders of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.

Three co-hosts masterfully presided over the ceremonies – multiple-Juno Award winner Billy Newton-Davis, himself a long-term survivor of HIV/AIDS, another long-timer Shari Margolese, and 16-year old Quinn Johnston, Shari’s completely healthy son – the first time a mother and child had shared these ceremonial duties at the vigil.

The music throughout the hour was fantastic. I know these vigils have always touched me but there was something about the music and the stories tonight that really hit home. Several references to long-term survivors (and I’d be in that group) were also very meaningful.

25 more names were added to the memorial, bringing the total to something over 2600. Candles were lit, the light passing from person to person, until the entire crowd was bathed in the glow.

I cried plenty of tears during the live music which included Nathalie Nadon singing “La Vie en Rose” by Edith Piaf, a song – “Can You See Me” – commissioned for this 25th anniversary composed and sung by Glenn Marais, and the nineteen voices of “Guys Like Us” singing “I Believe”. As we placed our candles around the site the Regent Park School of Music String Ensemble performed the always evocative Pachelbel Canon.

That’s when the silence was broken as we hugged and cried, and cried and hugged, met old friends, made new ones and just tried to take in the gratitude we felt for such a touching community event in the early hours of Pride weekend.

A huge thank you to all who were responsible for such an important evening.

At the entrance to the Memorial is this poem:

Cry

Morning through a city garden widens

its swath. Shiny eyes of cinquefoil,

azure eyes of myosotis, bruised lobelia

refuse to blink. Intruders trapped in the cross-

stare harden, crumble into fine

dustings because our sympathies

will not adapt to sun and cinquefoil: our world

steel and concrete, oil and song.

We hoist our lives high over the drone

of traffic and screwing gulls, hoist bags

of soil to terraces at the setbacks; set out

cinquefoil, watch its leavings, count

its days. Some days we doze in the sun

and dream we too are cinquefoil or lobelia,

blowing and blanching without demur.

Then pneumocystis breaks.

We open our eyes to that skyline we incised

and know as a jet cuts through cloud that

cities are our gardens, with their stench

and contagion and rage, our memory, our

sepals that will not endure

these waves of dying friends

without a cry.

Michael Lynch

1944-1991

(whose name is on the AIDS Memorial)

And this, too:

CIRCLES OF STONE:
To Those Unnamed

We stand at this place; among earth and stone, branch and birch -
In darkness and in light, through sun and storm, rain and trees,
leaves and breeze: Life and Death.
Our strength, though withered and sapped, regenerates here.

Each name on each standing stone remarks thousandfold
upon those unmarked from sea to sea; pole to pole.
The earth would quake with the strength of our memories,
flood with the loss of our tears, and in tandem; We exist.

How tall will these stones have to grow?
How wide, how all-encompassing, how awesome?
To announce this radical interruption of humanity.
These standing stones might sprout like high-rises,
watered by lovers left behind.
Further stones planted, the last meets the first; A circle is formed.
Its volume gains inhabitants; Admitting entrance without discrimination.

The world mourns while we embrace the lives and the times.
Whether a name is engraved in steel or in sand, in heart or in mind;
In flesh or in form; we will remember.
And mark the day we have no further need for such
Circles of Stone.

Shoshanna Jey Addley

Stonewall, Judy Garland “myth understood?”, and the birth of a movement

An interesting look back at the Stonewall Riots in New York 40 years ago – what would become known as the start of the gay liberation movement. And, having come out of the closet myself in a highly-politicized time in Toronto, I enjoyed
this look back at the year after Stonewall – courtesy of The Lesbian Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in NYC.

You say Appalachia, I say Argentina…

Mark Sanford, it turns out, did not get his hiking boots dusty along the Appalachian Trail – as his staff had been telling the media while he was AWOL. He was doing the dirty down in South America. Hiking? Yes, hiking a skirt.

The Republicans and their ‘family values’ have another poster boy for their hypocrisy – this while both they and the Democratic White House defend the indefensible “Defense of Marriage Act”, thwarting gay marriage.

Jon Stewart just will not be able to have a summer vacation because the only way to avoid being sick over such hypocrisy is to satirize it.

Here is The Huffington Post’s coverage of this “developing story” to use a newsism.

Then there’s Sanford and Sin

More from Huffington Post

…and Sanford’s Penis Resigns From Republican Governors Association

Lovelorn SC Governor Admits to Just About Everything

Sanford wants ‘zone of privacy’ after going AWOL on SC and destroying the sanctity of his marriage

The question they should ask Gov. Sanford

Gov. Sanford tangos alone

S.C. Luv Gov. Is Antigay

Earlier this month Sanford reiterated his stand against anything but heterosexual marriage.

With thanks to a reply*** to this post from “Ajax”, who referred me here I have removed an earlier reference to Daily Kos and the Ted Haggard affair.

***“Sad to see My Journey with AIDS repeating this from DailyKos. It was a humor piece, the story it gave was not true — that should be clear from the opening note at DailyKos; see also footnote at So and so sucks , viz: ‘**UPDATE: After reading this article again, with my eyes open this time, it has come to my attention that this is a joke and completely untrue. Although hilarious, we are adding this disclaimer so we don’t get sued.‘”

This all calls for a re-post of a “Little Britain” sketch:

From About.com: Bipolar disorder – Called manic depression or bipolar disorder stigma persists

An article arrived in my “in” box today which underlined for me one of the persistent difficulties in living with mental illness – stigma.

Stigma interests me a great deal, living as I am with HIV/AIDS, too.

I almost feel defensive in talking about my bipolar II condition, particularly around some other recovering alcoholics who look skeptical when I tell them I was diagnosed before I stopped drinking. The implication seems to be that, now that I’m stopped, the bipolar should be less of a problem. Indeed it has been but I’ve been taking medications of one kind or another for it all along!

Another friend has had terrible experiences with psychiatrists and meds and so expresses the same sort of skepticism but also sincere worry about me. I wonder if someone else’s experience is being projected on me.

I guess I just have to pick and choose who I confide in. After giving up Seroquel, because of elevated blood sugars, old-fashioned lithium has kept me stable – and I don’t want to fight that!

Here is the article.

Bonne fête Québec!

It used to be called la Fête de Saint Jean-Baptiste, back when the people of Québec were much more loyal to the Roman Catholic Church, John the Baptist being the province’s patron saint.

As a youngster, I’d guess six years old or less, I remember seeing a lot of nuns around (Salaberry-de-) Valleyfield, dressed in the blacks and whites of The Sound of Music convent. Although the large seminary building has been a junior college for a few decades there was, and still is, a beautiful cathedral, convent, and countless other parish churches around the city whose giant bells announcing mass were like time-keepers – as was the 3 pm whistle at Montreal Cottons for that matter. These were the early days of the so-called Quiet Revolution, a welcome relief to the oppressive regime of Premier Maurice Duplessis and just in time for the revolution of every other sort in the 1960s.

The holiday took on the more secular (and political) Fête nationale as the sovereignty movement began to flourish.

A year before the election of the province’s first nationalist government in 1976 Québec folksinger Gilles Vigneault performed at Fête nationale celebrations on Mont-Royal. He sang a song for the first time, a song that has since become known as the unofficial national anthem of Québec.

(English translation follows)
Gens du pays

Le temps qu’on a pris pour se dire : « Je t’aime »
C’est le seul qui reste au bout de nos jours
Les vœux que l’on fait, les fleurs que l’on sème
Chacun les récolte en soi-même
Aux beaux jardins du temps qui court

(refrain)
Gens du pays, c’est votre tour
De vous laisser parler d’amour
Gens du pays, c’est votre tour
De vous laisser parler d’amour

Le temps de s’aimer, le jour de le dire
Fond comme la neige aux doigts du printemps
Fêtons de nos joies, fêtons de nos rires
Ces yeux ou nos regards se mirent
C’est demain que j’avais vingt ans

refrain

Le ruisseau des jours aujourd’hui s’arrête
Et forme un étang ou chacun peut voir
Comme en un miroir, l’amour qu’il reflète
Pour ces cœurs à qui je souhaite
Le temps de vivre nos espoirs

refrain

(repeat until every last candle has burnt out) KC

English translation by Prem Srajano

People of my Country

The time that we take, saying “I love you”
Is all that remains at the end of our days
The vows that we make
The flowers that we sow
The harvest is within our heart
Through the splendid gardens of time’s changes.

People of my country, your turn has come
To let love speak to you
People of my country, your turn has come
To let love speak to you

The time to love each other, and the day we say it,
Melt like the snow caressed by the spring.
Celebrate our joys, celebrate our laughter
Our eyes meeting in embrace
Tomorrow I was only twenty.

People of my country, your turn has come
To let love speak to you
People of my country, your turn has come
To let love speak to you

The stream of our days today comes to a pause
And forms into a pool where everyone can see
As if it were a mirror, the love that it reflects,
For those hearts to whom I wish
The time to live out all our hopes.

People of my country, your turn has come
To let love speak to you

Ever conscious of my English-speaking minority status, trying to be understood (yes in defiance of St. Francis’ prayer), I believe that I have always been able to understand, to a great extent, the aspirations of the people of Québec.

So I love this song (and the tune can be quite hypnotic, depending on the setting).

I see that Salaberry-de-Valleyfield, like every small town and big city across the province, has the usual array of activities planned for the holiday, beginning today and ending late tomorrow – a parade (this will be where some holdouts from the Chevaliers de Colomb will march), musical entertainment at parc Sauvé and fireworks over Baie St-François downtown.

Bonne fête Québec!

Not the Niagara of my youth (and that’s a relief!)

l have been waxing somewhat less than nostalgic as I’ve learned how much progress has been made in the LGBTTQQ2S community in Niagara, where I went to college and worked through the 1980s.

It began as I read the profile of a remarkable young guy, Matthew Cutler, being honoured by Pride Toronto for “excellence in youth leadership”. (Follow the link and you’ll see why.) OUTNiagara, as well as Niagara Pride Support Services seem to be community organizations that we could only have dreamed about in the 80s, when Gay Outreach Niagara managed only a few dances and a community forum on HIV/AIDS.

Brock University’s radio station CFBU hosts “OUTspoken” Sundays at 4 p.m. I’d have been in there like a dirty shirt had this been going when I was working at a St. Catharines radio station and was a part-time Politics student there!

AIDS Niagara has flourished since the early days when we met as AIDS Committee of Niagara, a creature of the Regional Niagara Health Department.

With rainbow flag-raising ceremonies at St. Catharines City Hall, picnics in the park and even a bike tour nowadays, an indication of much wider community support, clearly things have come a long way since the days when the only community meeting place was a restaurant-tavern on St. Paul Street between a Canadian Forces recruitment centre and a then-seedy Leonard Hotel, followed by a short-lived gay-managed bar on the edge of downtown. Oh and a cruising area under a bridge. Lovely.

So congratulations to Matthew Cutler and all who have contributed to making Niagara what it is today – from campus groups, PFLAG and more. It’s a rationalization, I know, but I used to say, “If you were gay and lived in St. Catharines you’d drink too much, too!” I clearly would not have that excuse today.

Remembering with pride my Pride and Remembrance Run

From the 2001 run stats I lift the following:

390 28:44.6 5:45 601 CHAPLIN, KENN TORONTO 282/330 56/63 Men 40 – 49

Translation: I placed 390th overall with a time of 28 minutes, 44.6 seconds, a 5:45 pace. My bib number was 601. There were 48 in my class behind me (at least I think that’s what that means) and I was 56th of 63 in something or other.

After training for a couple of months in the spring of 2001 I had the opportunity for a dry run “fun run” in New York’s Central Park on Memorial Day weekend. I finished in under half an hour, exceeding my goal of just finishing.

I bested that in the Pride Run in Toronto and then set my sights on a 10 k. Did I incrementally increase my distance towards 10? No. I ran from one end of the Toronto Islands to the other and back. Having thus gone completely overboard I managed to flatten the arches of my feet and I haven’t run since. Breaking my femur when hit by a cab sealed that deal in 2003.

I think I did pretty damn well just to have entered the run, considering the state of my health – although I felt much more nimble back then, I must say.

So good luck to all Pride & Remembrance Run participants. I’d say I’ll be there to cheer you on but now just getting there on time may be too early a call for me!

Something that’ll make you smile

Thanks to my friend Karen for sending this! And folks it’s not the Find Matt Lauer game from the Today Show.

It’s much, much richer than that. Enjoy!

So now it may be the lame-duck phase before Obama moves. Pat Robertson will like the duck tie-in. Shame on you Obama!

It seems as if even the worst whispers from the Clinton presidential campaign last year, concerning Barack Obama and LGBT rights, may not be too far off the mark. Shame!

Obama’s highest-ranking gay official says DOMA and the military gay ban currently have no chance of being repealed

Windigo

Ripples lick the rocks
As the pines and birch politely applaud
Gulls catching their petits dejeuners
In the waking lake.

Sky’s amethyst shroud cascades
Toward the western shore
And the water’s silky blue
Becomes the pewter and emerald of armour.

The fleeting storm rumbles to the west and north
Dragging a chair across a distant wooden floor
But our only thunder is from a train
Rolling to market behind its mournful whistle.

The winds shift, the shroud – like a chameleon -
Becomes soft pillows of gray and white.
Simcoe’s armour is but a duvet.
The white top-sheets being turned down toward Windigo.

Once here, and with dusk approaching,
The sheets are smoothed, the pillows fluffed
And the sun sinks past the foot of the bed
Leaving colours of peace and wonder.

No sooner are distant pinks orange, and oranges purple,
Then a star pierces the darkening blue
And the trees begin to sigh, knowing the moon’s glow
Over Windigo will keep watch another night.

Hope you’re keeping well Sue.

© Copyright 1993 Kenn Chaplin. All rights reserved.

A Stranger in New York

A misadventure in 2001 I’m still ribbed about today! The 40th anniversary of Stonewall has me thinking back to this vacation.

“Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep.” A garbage truck tipped a dumpster’s contents into the truck’s bin.

Gray light peeked through the curtains.

Behind me, in the next bed, I heard snoring.

“Oh, right,” I remembered, “I’m in New York with my friend David; here at the Hilton.” It was Memorial Day weekend, 2001.

I got up and peered between the drapes. The streetscape below was shrouded in gray, but I suspected it was too early to tell whether that was due to the weather or the hour. I checked my watch. It was 5:10.

“Well I’m up,” I thought “and this is my first full day in New York so I might as well get to it!”

I had read that the best time to go to the Brooklyn Bridge for pictures was at sunrise. I quickly got dressed, left David a note, then set off for the subway. (I remembered that Rockefeller Center Station was just down the street.)

The pink neon of Radio City Music Hall quickened my pace as did every turn of the head where another legendary landmark came into view.

“Oh my God, I am really in New York,” I nearly yelled out loud with excitement.

I got my bearings quickly as I looked around, recalling the previous night’s long walk through the light drizzle to Times Square, down to the library, over to the Chrysler Building, then into Grand Central Station. I could hardly wait to get my films printed. I was particularly interested in seeing how the ones I tried to discreetly take of all the sailors, in town for Fleet Week, turned out!

I ran down the stairs into the subway, bought a weekly Metro Card, then stopped and turned around to ask the station attendant for directions.

“Where in Brooklyn?” was her first response, amplified through the speaker like some announcement at Yankee Stadium.

“Well I want to take the pedestrian path on the bridge back over to this side,” I said.

She pulled out a map, passed it part way through the slot then pointed with her pen.

“Take any train to West Fourth, here,” she circled in the air over the map.

“Any train?” I double-checked.

“Uh huh,” she nodded, “then take either the ‘A’ or ‘C’ train to High Street,” she said, again tracing the route in the air above the map.

Satisfied that I could follow those directions, and not wanting to seem like too much of a tourist, I thanked her, then walked downstairs to the train platform.

It was very quiet. I was the only person waiting.

A train soon rumbled, squealed and banged its way into the station. I walked on, then sat down. Across from me was a woman sleeping, I supposed, her face hidden in her bosom. At the far end of the car a young man listened to music through headphones, tapping his shoes on the seat in front of him.

Changing trains at 4th Street, this turned out to be less than the halfway point of the trip, I began to wonder if walking back to the hotel might not have been an overly ambitious goal. “Oh well,” I thought, “I can always change my mind later.”

Thinking I wanted every possible angle of photograph I went past High Street to Jay. Once off the second train I again asked for directions and was told to follow signs out on the street. It took me a few moments to figure out that most of the signs were for cars, not pedestrians, but I eventually saw the familiar stone arches of the bridge and watched to see how an in-line skater came down to street level.

My head was spinning as my eyes took in the rough edges of Brooklyn. The drumbeats of “NYPD Blue” (coming back from commercials) ran through my mind. Before I knew I was on the bridge, above the traffic, looking toward Manhattan. What I had hoped would be a picture-perfect view was, instead, quite gray and foggy. I was not deterred, snapping pictures wastefully the way a newspaper photographer might – first of those impressive stone arches on the bridge, then of the cityscape ahead. The music in my head had changed to Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” as I thought of any number of scenes from Woody Allen’s “Manhattan.”

I asked someone if the only skyscraper I could see, just because it was closest, was the Empire State Building. Chalk that up to being a dumb tourist.

“Naw”, the man scoffed. “Dat dere is just the Woolworth’s headquarters.”

The World Trade Center towers, which I did recognize, were almost completely shrouded in mist and fog. I couldn’t see much above ten storeys.

I followed the signs to City Hall, where I took a few more pictures, walked up Broadway, through Soho, and found myself around some familiar street names or at least streets I had read about like Canal and Bleecker. I snapped a shot at a building as close to 85 Bleecker as I could find, that being my address back home. Another corner caught my fancy Christopher and Gay Streets. Again, I took a picture. I walked up Christopher and found the Oscar Wilde Book Shop. (I had ordered a few things from there back in my “coming out” days so, of course, needed a picture of that.)

Nearby I came upon Christopher Park where a plaque commemorated the Stonewall Riots and where there’s what I would call a living sculpture depicting two men standing and talking, one’s hand on the other’s shoulder, and two women sitting on a park bench, the loving hand of one on the thigh of the other. I took several photos. As I plucked a new cartridge into the camera, a voice called out, “Would you like me to take your picture there?”

“Oh,” I said, glancing around to see the man who was calling, “Sure” I said, “that would be great!” appreciating the karmic return of a favour I had often offered tourists across Canada.

“You’re from out of town?” the man asked rhetorically, as I stood there with a red, white and blue cotton image of “Lady Liberty” covering my chest.

“Yes, Toronto” I replied, handing him my camera. I sat down on the bench beside the concrete lesbians.

“Really?” asked the man, by this time snapping the first of several pictures. “So you’re just out taking a few pictures of the Village, huh?”

“You been to any of the clubs around here yet?” he asked. He paused. “You are gay, right?” He lined up another shot.

“Yep, I’m gay,” I said. “But, no, I haven’t been to any of the bars yet. I just got into town yesterday.”

“Well I’d be glad to show you around,” the guy said.

I began to suspect he was a hustler.

“Oh, that’s fine, thanks. I’ve got a pretty busy weekend planned with friends,” I said.

“Cool” the man said. “Say,” he began, “how much will you give me for doing this?”

The guy seemed high-strung and his fingers were dirty, too, although he was dressed in clean, casual clothes.

Suddenly recalling that – even after all that walking – it was still quite early in the morning, on a holiday weekend with very few people around, my heart sank as I realized the guy was looking for money and was probably a drug addict “player”.

“Oh,” I said, “well,” I paused again, “all I have is this five,” I lied, pulling a bill out of my pocket, hoping that would get rid of him.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” he said, plucking the five from between my fingers, and backing up rather quickly as he took some more pictures.

“No, now come on,” I said, half begging, “please give me my camera!”

It was too late. He turned on his heel and raced up towards Sixth Avenue.

I yelled after him but he was already out of sight.

Thanks to David, and other friends I was with that weekend, I’m often reminded of this incident. All that needs to be said is, “Kenn, let me take your picture!”

© Copyright 2001 Kenn Chaplin. All rights reserved.

Daily Kos: Flashback – Obama campaigned on pro-equality agenda, elected after supporting civil rights for GLBT Americans

I’ve posted on Rachel Maddow’s coverage of this here, and many others have been weighing in.

Now Jed Lewison of Daily Kos has put together some video evidence of President Obama’s promises to LGBT voters and supporters.

Click here to view the video.

These are urgent matters, Mr. Obama. Stop taking LGBT votes for granted and patronizing us. Proposition 8 in California showed you the tightrope you walk. Many who voted against Prop 8 voted for you. We all know that.

Proclaiming Pride Month was a nice gesture but you have the political capital, and lots of time before future elections, to live up to your campaign promises with integrity – particularly when the courts hand opportunities to you on a platter.

Don’t disappoint any longer.

Please.

There are many things you can get to work on that cost little or nothing.

If necessary, your Secretary of State could lend a hand as she brought many LGBT supporters over to you last November, after you began courting them big-time a year ago.

Summer fun writing blitz

No cottage? No vacation? Want something different to do this summer? Linda Dawn Pettigrew and I will be offering three writing events at Trinity-St. Paul’s Centre (427 Bloor St. W., west of Spadina, Toronto.)

The first, July 14, will introduce short, enjoyable writing activities on the topic of Identity. The second will explore Gratitude, on 28 July, and the third, Hope, will end the series on 11 August. Join us for one or all three evenings from 7-9 p.m.

This free-writing program engages all of you – mind, body, emotions and spirit – and gets your authentic writer going while you have fun in a group. Writing is healing. It helps you discover who you are, what you think and feel. Writing builds self-esteem, confidence and develops voice. It is empowering. Writing with others also builds community.

Everyone is welcome, including writers with minimal literacy skills. No experience or materials are required, and there will be no pressure! Space limits us to 30 participants. Please register with Linda Dawn or Kenn at linda.pettigrew3ATsympatico.ca or kenngcATsympatico.ca. Please put “Writing Blitz” in the subject line.

Fall Writing Group

In the fall we will be co-facilitating a writing group, on most Tuesday evenings, rooted in the genre of memoir writing and based on the theme of writing as healing on various topics e.g. Simple Pleasures, Compassion, Faith, Loss, Grief and Condolence. You can sign up for this now too.