Millions of children and families across the US are deeply entrenched in the seasonal rituals associated with the return to school. From K-4 through college, young people are on the move. In more affluent school districts parents are filling exhaustive lists of expected school supplies and child demands for the right sneakers. Many, many more…
During the mayhem we call election season, US political parties — at least the two big ones — drag out their gay cousins and use us shamelessly. One party is more likely to look at us and tout what they have done for us, from marriage equality to insurance coverage. This party will point to…
Lub, Dub. Nearly 50 years ago I went to a party wearing flip flops, fishnet stockings, and grapes. Period. Lub. Because it was very cold the night of that New Years Eve costume party, my thin trench coat did little to keep me warm as I knelt in the back of a car on the…
Restoring order to my city after an evening of disruption appears to be the call of the day. It is the call from civic leaders, clergy, and community leaders. I do not advocate violence. I do not support destruction. But I do wholeheartedly support disruption of our collective comfort. We must take time away from…
In the mid-1980s, the AIDS epidemic prompted me to take the pulse of rooms for a different reason than I had as a pre-teen before I first came out or as a young adult when I first went out as a gay man. I had earlier tested spaces to decide if I could come out and…
River Queen, Castaways, Circus-Circus, The Factory — these were the names of bars I went to when I first started socializing as a gay young adult. They were not the first gay bars I went to, however. Oddly, my first encounter with one of these was with my mother who was naive to the fact that…
By age 10 I had become pretty adept at taking the pulse of a room. I knew when my dad had too much to drink, when a holiday was in danger of being cancelled, when the cake would go uneaten, when my mom was fed-up and overwhelmed. Most of the time I tested a space…
You have served many, many freshman and sophomore students with warm, personal, and solid advice about their academic programs, just as you served many generations of English majors before your retirement. Advising is an essential, though usually unheralded, form of teaching. By continuing to advise students, you have continued to teach; and the College is…
Commit themselves to their own, each other’s, and the group’s well-being. An important mentor in my life used to talk about how essential it is for a leader to be able to think about a goal, the individuals in the group working toward it, and the group as a whole. Over the years I have…
Commit themselves to their own, each other’s, and the group’s well-being. Last week I saw James on Friday, having looked for him daily over the earlier part of the week. Just like the first time we met, James was wearing a cardboard sign hung by a string around his neck. It announced that he needs…
Creating Community for Everyone 