Gay me in high school. (With super supportive Jeanie.)

Having come out when I was in high school 25 years ago, it has been a long time since I have felt much emotional pain over being gay. As the tragedy of all of the recent suicides by gay teens came to light in the media I was angry and upset. But I was also surprised. Surprised that 25 years after my own struggle with isolation and fear–with all the positive baby steps and giant leaps for gay civil rights and gay visibility during that time–the darkness remains for the most vulnerable in our society.

It shouldn’t have been much of a surprise. With the very loud voices of hate often drowning out those who are supportive, it really should be no surprise that some LGBT youth feel just as isolated now as I did in 1985.

I hope every parent out there who has a feeling deep in their gut that their child is different–and trust me, most parents know before the really know–I hope those parents stop and think about what they may be conveying to their child. Do your words and attitude make them feel worse then they already do? Does your fear or embarrassment overwhelm you when you think about your own child being “one of them”? So much so that you forget about the fact that you love your child? To you I say “wake up!” Deal with your own issues and don’t make them your child’s issues. Do it before it is too late. Give your gay child a hug, don’t wait to cry over his dead body. My parents struggled just like I did, maybe for different reasons. But I always knew that they loved me. 
The parents of  the bullies have a responsibility as well. Saying “boys will be boys” isn’t good enough. You don’t care about the loser queer kids? You don’t need to. Think about yourself and your own kid. Do you want your bully of a child to go through his life knowing that he was responsible for someones death? Like it or not, the march for gay rights and inclusion is inexorable. There may be set backs, but I can guarantee that by the time your child is an adult he will be ashamed of his actions or be in the minority. So you too need to think about what you are conveying to your children.

Some have criticized the “It Gets Better” campaign for putting the responsibility onto the shoulders of the gay kid and leaving the bullies alone. Well we don’t have time for the bullies to change. We need to let gay youth know that their lives will get better if they are only around to see it unfold.

As I said, I got over my issues with being gay 25 years ago, but seeing all of these It Gets Better videos has not only reminded me of the pain and isolation I felt back then, but it has also been incredibly life affirming. The gay movement has been many things over the years. There were the brave, righteous days of post-Stonewall gay rights in the 1970s, and the brave, righteous fight against hate and apathy in the early days of AIDS in the 1980s. There has also been the mainstreaming of gay in every day life. From being out at work, to seeing gay faces in popular culture, to the rise of gay couples and their gaybies, to, what seemed like science fiction just 10 years ago, gay marriage.

Out of these terrible tragedies there is a real opportunity for gays and straights alike. Faced with the prospect of having blood on our hands, we all need to stand up do the right thing.  Do we stand silent on the side of darkness or do we choose to affirm the value of every child?

This is a watershed moment for straights to get off the fence and pick a side, but it is also a watershed moment for the LGBT community. Many of us have become so comfortable with our own status quo we have forgotten the struggle. And I know I personally have stayed clear of issues related to gay youth. So worried that I might be seen to be “recruiting”. The result was to leave it solely up to supportive straights to take on the responsibility of safeguarding gay kids. The plethora of It Gets Better videos has shown me that we in the LGBT community owe these kids more. We not only need to be advocates but we need to share our stories. And one thing these videos do so amazingly well, is show that we  are up to the challenge.

So many of these videos bring tears to my eyes, not just over the sad stories, but over the joys of making it through the struggle. Over the realization of the universality of what we have gone through. And this makes me proud. I think many of us in the gay community have shied away from those in the community who didn’t look like the rest of society. We have discounted diversity and been afraid of the oddballs. With these videos I feel the last vestiges of my own internal homophobia break apart and slip away. The oddballs, the fairies, the freaks are not to be feared. I am them and they are me. If they don’t deserve a place in society, why should I?

Maybe I am projecting my own feelings onto a mythic gay community. But I really feel like these videos show a LGBT community that is no longer afraid of itself. No longer worried about fitting in. No longer confined to the gay pride parade or a gay bar. Showing every gay kid the incredible array of possibilities is powerful. And I hope they all live to see what great things are in store for them.

So here is a selection of my favorite videos. There is something for everyone here. Clergy, opera stars, farmers, and a whole lot more.

And a link to the official It Gets Better website.

    
When I am not reading, watching TV, or otherwise mentally occupied, I tend to fantasize about all kinds of arcane things. One fantasy that has been popping into my head lately is about seeing a Barbara Pym novel turned into a film. As far as I can tell it hasn’t happened yet.

I think my first choice would be to see Some Tame Gazelle brought to life, with Excellent Women coming in second.

The fantasy extends to who might play various characters.  In general I think the following actresses would make great Pym characters.

As I was hunting around for pictures of Sophie Thompson I found out that she is Emma Thompson’s sister! How could I not know that until now? Emma would make a good Pym character as well.

And why is Greg Wise (Mr. Emma Thompson) here? Do I need a reason?

What do you think he is reading?

The fabulous Mrs. B over at The Literary Stew and new friend Honey at Coffeespoons are hosting a New York Review Books reading week November 7-13, 2010. And the best part is there are no rules.

If you haven’t checked out any of the generally fantastic books from the NYRB, now is the perfect time. Read one or two (or ten), write about them during the week of November 7th, and then see what others are up to. Signing up is no frills and easy over at The Literary Stew.  Join us!

Here is my stack. Now I just need to figure out which ones to read for NYRB Reading Week.

  
I chose today’s Sunday Painting for three reasons:

1. It shows a cozy, book-filled room.

2. It is a local scene. You can see the Washington Monument in the distance out the window.

3. My blog friend Amanda at the Fig and Thistle is pregnant with a boy she has named Atticus. And something tells me that she would be pleased to see the name applied to a cat.

Visiting Annie and Atticus Ingrid Groller Lane Touchstone Gallery

I can’t find much of anything about Ingrid Groller Lane on the Google which I find very odd. She doesn’t appear to be represented anymore by Touchstone Gallery who produced this postcard. I can find a few references here and there to shows that included her in the past, and it looks like she may have been an arts writer for The Washington Post back in the early 1990s, but that is it. Where are you Ingrid?
  

   
I feel like writing a post tonight but I know that I don’t have the mental stamina to do any one topic much justice. So I am going to do the blog equivalent of a flashback episode on [insert name of your favorite TV sitcom].

Cranfordilicious
This week on Masterpiece Theatre they aired Return to Cranford. When they showed the first Cranford series on PBS, I watched them all back-to-back one Saturday afternoon. On Wednesday night I ended up watching part of RTC, but decided to save the rest for sometime this weekend. Something didn’t feel right about watching it at night. There is something about this kind of show that I much prefer watching in the afternoon. Maybe because I think weekend afternoons are the coziest time of the week.

What I did see so far in RTC was delightful. All the wonderful actresses are back and in top form. I think the thing I like most about this adaptation is how wonderfully formal the language is. I haven’t read any of the books, so I don’t have that to compare it to, but the language seems so much more precise and over-the-top antiquated that it makes Jane Austen’s dialogue sound contemporary. Or is it just me?

More of Lessing
Before I embarked upon 1,358 pages of War and Peace, I was about 200 pages into Doris Lessing’s 628-page magnum opus The Golden Notebook. It had been so long since I last picked up the Lessing that I forgot that I was reading it and have finished four other books since W&P. The long gap in reading The Golden Notebook made it a little difficult to pick up again  But with just under 200 pages left, I find the book fascinating for so many reasons. I have been plastering the book with stickies so I remember all of the things I want to comment on when I get around to writing the review.

Sawdust Smorgasbord
You may remember the giant tree we had taken out of our front yard. Well, it left behind a giant stump that is too close to the house to be chipped out by a stump chipper. So I bought this product that is supposed to help speed the decomposition of the stump. But in order to use it, you are supposed to drill holes in the stump. I actually had a lot of fun drilling the holes, and was amazed at the different shades of sawdust produced by the stump of this now departed tulip poplar.

Making a Molehill out of Mahler
Gustav Mahler’s 8th Symphony is nicknamed the Symphony of a Thousand for good reason. While most performances don’t come near to having 1,000 performers, the fact that it calls for a very large orchestra, two large adult choruses, a children’s chorus, and 8 soloists means that there are usually a lot of folks practically falling off the stage.

The work is monumental to say the least and this review should be talking about the mountains of Mahler I heard this week. But alas, in this week’s performance of the work at the Kennedy Center by the Mariinsky Orchestra with Valery Gergiev conducting, there just weren’t enough singers on stage. With only about 120 adult singers on stage they could have used about 100 more. I am glad I went, but it was underwhelming to say the least. Check out this clip of the truly monumental forces gathered at the Proms this year who really gave the piece a work out. This is just the first part of the first part. If it is new to you, just imagine hearing it in person. Talk about a wall of sound.

  
For those not so interested in art (say it ain’t so) you might be more interested in:

My review of The Provincial Lady in London by E.M. Delafield
My review of Requiem for a Wren by Nevil Shute
A particularly popular post on what might constitute American cozy.

Now, on to the paintings. The brilliant German painter Gerhard Richter has an amazing range of technique and style. The first one below shows his amazing abilities in photo realism. The other three are from what I refer to as his fuzzy photo realist period.

Lesende  (Reader) San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Woman Descending the Staircase The Art Institute of Chicago

Blumen Carre d’Art-Musee d’Art contemporain de Nimes

Zwei Kerzen

  

As the weather has gone delightfully chilly and I snuggle up in the library in my pajamas with candles burning and music playing, my thoughts turn to cozy. Many of you kindred spirits who read My Porch share my interest in the occasional cozy read. You know what that means, something that is comforting and enjoyable to read. It, doesn’t mean they are always happy books, and it certainly doesn’t mean that they are necessarily light weight either. But they do induce a certain amount of calm. They feel like friends or a literary snuggle.

Of course definitions of cozy can be pretty broad and varied. I can think of many different authors that could be considered cozy

Fundamentally Cozy
E.F. Bensen
E.M. Delafield
Joyce Dennis
Paul Gallico
P.G. Wodehouse (?)

Complex Cozy
Anita Brookner
Barbara Pym
Most things from Persephone

Youthful Cozy
Anne of Green Gables
Heidi
The Secret Garden

Old Fashion Cozy
Jane Austen
Anthony Trollope
Perhaps Wilkie Collins and even Dickens for those that like him

With the exception of L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables series (Canadian) and Heidi (Swiss) my idea of cozy is decidedly British. (I should be spelling it ‘cosy’ I guess, but the My Porch Manual of Style won’t allow it.)

American Cozy
Hmm…what about…no…maybe…mmm not really. What could be considered American Cozy? Is there American Cozy?

Let me try again…

Maybe Laura Engalls Wilder?
May Sarton could be complex cozy, especially her journals.
I know Miss Read fans would put her on the list. UPDATE: D’oh! Michelle Ann pointed out that Miss Read is English. What was I thinking?! I have read about four of her books. Maybe it is because American blogger Book Psmith is so into them. But she is also into Wodehouse and he sure isn’t American. Sheesh. I guess my brain melted a bit.

There is some temptation to overlap with chick-lit, but while those may be highly enjoyable, I don’t think I would put them in the cozy camp.

Books on books can be hugely cozy. In fact Helene Hanff’s 84, Charing Cross Road is like the Empress of Cozy. But, although Hanff was an American and half the book takes place in America, the focus seems a little too Anglocentric to truly be American Cozy. Anne Fadiman’s Ex Libris could though.

Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s The Home Maker is definitely American Cozy. Of course it took British publisher Persephone to revive this gem.

I think I could put American food writer Ruth Reichl on the cozy list. Her three volumes of memoirs are delightfully cozy. Just make sure you have something delicious to eat near to hand.

Edith Wharton would fall into the Traditional American Cozy, and to some degree Henry James as well. I think a case could be made for Willa Cather as well.

But all this feels a bit like stretching. Is the cozy read uniquely British? Which authors or books would you consider to be American Cozy?

  
Let’s just say that Salome is troubled child in a broken, abusive family situation. Here she is holding the head of John the Baptist right before she makes out with it. The severed head was a present from her stepfather. Salome had requested the head as a reward for stripping naked for her stepfather (Herod) while her mother watched.



Deborah Voigt as Salome


I went to the Washington National Opera tonight to hear Voigt sing the role in this Strauss opera based on the play by Oscar Wilde. I have heard Voigt sing on several ocassions in other places but this was her first time singing with the WNO.  Her she is when she is not playing a twisted necrophiliac.

Deborah Voigt Photo copyright Dario Acosta

And she was fantastic tonight. I once drove for five hours to West Virginia to hear her sing. Based on tonight, I would do it again. Such a voice.

The performance was at the Kennedy Center which is a presidential memorial in the guise of a performing arts center. These are fairly bad photos I took on my phone. They mainly show the views from the terraces.

That’s the Washington Monument in the distance and the Peace Institute in the right of the mid-ground.

Looking up the Potomac toward Georgetown. That is the National Cathedral you see up on St. Alban’s Hill.

Lincoln Memorial from the roof terrace.

The lower terrace.

This giant bust of Kennedy is kind of growing on me. When I first saw it in 1993 I thought it looked like chopped liver and kept looking for a giant cracker.

      

Random Readathon Thoughts

This is my first readathon.

I am very exicted.

Last night I wanted to (but didn’t) start reading from my readathon pile.

I doubt I will do any of the memes. I like them for the readathon but I get too disctracted. I would spend too much time on them.

I don’t start until 10:00 AM EDT.

Just going around and looking at blogs of folks participating has made it clear that if I check up on others progress during the readathon I will be hopelessly distracted and not get any reading done. So, I love you all but I may not be checking out your blogs again much until after this  is over. I am sure I will at some point, but if I make it a habit I won’t get anything read.

I posted my ground rules earlier.

I posted my reading list earlier.

I turned off my word verification so as not to confound the cheerleaders.

I only have seven minutes before I start. Must. Brush. Teeth.

I will probably post every hour or so.

Yay!

      

Ash over at English Major’s Junk Food had an absolutely fantastic idea. She is going to donate three cents for every page she reads. And she has chosen The Trevor Project as the recipient of her great idea. The Trevor Project helps at risk LGBT youth and seems like a perfect choice given the recent spate of gay teens committing suicide.

So readers, I will donate five cents for every page I read AND five cents for every page that Ash reads to The Trevor Project as well.

I think some others have also made their readathon a charitible event. Have you ever thought of doing it? Not too late.