AMovement

I do not know how orchestrated this was; and I do not know how calculated it is. What I know is that, absorbing the news, I was uncharacteristically at a loss for words for a while, didn’t know what to write, and, like many Dish readers, there are tears in my eyes.
So let me simply say: I think of all the gay kids out there who now know they have their president on their side. I think of Maurice Sendak, who just died, whose decades-long relationship was never given the respect it deserved. I think of the centuries and decades in which gay people found it impossible to believe that marriage and inclusion in their own families was possible for them, so crushed were they by the weight of social and religious pressure. I think of all those in the plague years shut out of hospital rooms, thrown out of apartments, written out of wills, treated like human garbage because they loved another human being. I think of Frank Kameny. I think of the gay parents who now feel their president is behind their sacrifices and their love for their children.
The interview changes no laws; it has no tangible effect. But it reaffirms for me the integrity of this man we are immensely lucky to have in the White House. Obama’s journey on this has been like that of many other Americans, when faced with the actual reality of gay lives and gay relationships. Yes, there was politics in a lot of it. But not all of it. I was in the room long before the 2008 primaries when Obama spoke to the mother of a gay son about marriage equality. He said he was for equality, but not marriage. Five years later, he sees - as we all see - that you cannot have one without the other. But even then, you knew he saw that woman’s son as his equal as a citizen. It was a moment - way off the record at the time - that clinched my support for him.
Today Obama did more than make a logical step. He let go of fear. He is clearly prepared to let the political chips fall as they may. That’s why we elected him. That’s the change we believed in. The contrast with a candidate who wants to abolish all rights for gay couples by amending the federal constitution, and who has donated to organizations that seek to “cure” gays, who bowed to pressure from bigots who demanded the head of a spokesman on foreign policy solely because he was gay: how much starker can it get?
My view politically is that this will help Obama. He will be looking to the future generations as his opponent panders to the past. The clearer the choice this year the likelier his victory. And after the darkness of last night, this feels like a widening dawn.
-Andrew Sullivan 

There is a cracked sidewalk on the corner of this neighborhood,
and everybody has huddled up around it in desperate attempts to figure out just what might mend it.

Some men, after many a squatted brainstorm, have thought to destroy it so that a new one may be built in its place.
But when the sledgehammer, the jackhammer, and all the other hammers broke upon the first strike, they realized this would not work.

Some women felt that perhaps if the cracks were filled with sand and water, they would, upon merging and settling, be just the thing the sidewalk needed in order to be whole again.
But this, too, did not work, since the sand and water were pushed out of each and every crack, as if by a forceful hand of wind within the sidewalk’s channels.

Once the men and women grew tired of putting their brains together for this effort, they began to disperse, each to his or her house.

The children then poured out of the houses and went to the sidewalk, and they began to dance upon it. Drawing lines on the concrete with colored chalk, they played a game of hopscotch, taking turns and making sure not to fall out of the blocks.
Some played with marbles upon the biggest slabs of concrete, and others sat down with crossed legs, and cards in hand, playing goldfish as a group.
The children did not take notice when the sidewalk, slowly, joined its cracked pieces together. But the parents, amazed by the sight that they beheld either from their kitchen windows, or their front doors, noticed this grand and unexpected regeneration, and they understood, finally, that sometimes a kiss not given heals best.

I want my body to succumb to the day,
to crumble beneath rock,
I want to let water wash over each pore.
I want my heart to inhale until it almost bursts,
until it cracks as if from a long-needed stretch:
I want it to hiccup with strong, deep pulses that beat my chest like a drum.

I want my eyes to open,
my mouth to gasp,
my arms to reach out into the sky as if I have escaped the hands of Death himself.
I want to feel alive with the sweat and the breaths of youth under the sunset, next to the steps of an old apartment, hearing my name from the corner of the street, YELLED as if I were being called to life, YELLED as if it were the last sunset I get to see before my own expiration at sunDOWN, YELLED as if my own father were calling, as if he were naming me this very instant with the blood and the vigor it took for him to know that it was indeed me he created, that I was to reflect his own strengths and repudiate his own weaknesses, that I am a fruit of my mother’s womb, YELLED as if it were the last time he said it for my own good, YELLED as if for higher purpose, YELLED as if there were no other way to say it.

I want to yell my own name in the hopes that it will bring back to life something that died within me long ago:
my youth, my childhood,
my worry-less years. 

Looking into the dying heart of a star, you see that only the old things remain:
the girls who were beautiful in middle school are still beautiful,
the girls who were hot are wearing too much make up now,
the guys that always bagged the girl, are now faithful to just one of them,
or caught up in their own self-image,
the nice guys are still nice guys,
the pretty people are with pretty people,
and the people that were constantly soul searching
are still doing just that.

Everyone is smiling…
I like that.

Even in the midst of all the concealer, the sweat, the dyed hair, the flexed muscles, the protein shakes, the infidelity, the break-ups, the make-ups, the make-outs, the disappointments, the depression, the bounce-back, the shots, the hangovers, the finding-of-your-self, the awakening, the conflicts, the fights, the crying, the anguish, the hopelessness….even in the midst of all this chaos, we all managed a smile before the shutter closed.

I think that might be the modern-day miracle.

Amen to the past.

And high hopes for the future. 

There comes a time when my eyes can droop and burn no more,
and so I must rest.
There comes a time when the aching and the soreness hold me back too severely,
and so I must rest.
There comes a time when the news is too tragic, the duties too dull, the rewards too few, and the problems too many,
and so I must rest.
There comes a time when those whose hearts I put my own in betray me in too grave a way, or slap my wrist too briskly, when my trust is thrown into the shambles of others’ selfish pursuits, or when the angelic image of loved ones is tarnished by their own ignorance and impositions, there comes a time when the insults bang the eardrum far too loudly, when criticisms are more biting than constructive, when politics proceeds as usual instead of unusually so, when there is more conflict than unity, more racism than humanism, and more war than love…
and so…
I must rest
with a mind that is too worried to sit still,
and a heart far too sad to weep:
instead it breaks into the shards of a million crystal pieces
that prick, pinch, and puncture me here,
there,
and everywhere.
Until those who have drawn my blood
gather once again to heal the wounds that they have caused
and we are together
once again.
And then I can finally be at peace. 

At least 35 staff employees at UF are slated to lose their jobs if the new “Shared Services Model” for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is imposed as planned.

As outlined in the “Shared Service Summary” document, the plan would cut approximately 30% of CLAS office staff.

The positions targeted for layoff are primarily long-term, local office staff who earn in the neighborhood of $35,000/yr. Many have worked at UF for decades, some are only a few years from retirement.

To learn more about how can you help, please visit facebook.com/stopthelayoffsgainesville

Here are a few simple steps you can take to help:

1. Submit a letter to the Gainesville Sun at

http://www.gainesville.com/article/99999999/MULTIMEDIA/69514377?template=art_plain

2. Call the Sun’s Sound Off column at (352) 337-0368

3. Discuss these concerns with your local clergy-person, neighborhood group, or social organization. Ask local groups and individuals to oppose the layoffs.

4. Use social media to share information and ask others to help save these jobs.

5. LIKE the Facebook page to receive updates and information about efforts to stop the layoffs. 

We’re not always a young black male,
or an asian young woman,
or a white chick
or a hispanic dude
or an indian guy………

we’re not always a lesbian,
or a promiscuous bi-sexual man or woman,
or a transsexual,
or a pansexual,
or even ______sexual for that matter……….

sometimes we forget,
as a matter of fact, more often than NOT, we forget
that sometimes…..

we’re just human.