In honor of World AIDS Day...

... I criticize the president.

Obama is not scoring well among AIDS activists.

Subway music

I heard this guy singing on 42nd Street platform of the N and R today. The song he was singing was very pretty. But watching people watch him was also one of those lovely New York things: when someone does something great and people see it and recognize it and take flyers and buy cd's and give their kids a dollar to put in the guitar case.

If you can see it

I went to see Disturbing the Universe tonight. It is about William Kunstler, the radical civil rights lawyer, made by his two daughters. It's very interesting look at his representation of the Freedom Riders, the Chicago 7, the American Indian Movements leaders at Wounded Knee, as well as his more reviled clients, like the defendants in the Central Park jogger rape case and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. It doesn't gloss over his inconsistancies or his flaws, but does document his pivotal role in countless important civil rights moments.

If you are interested in finding out if it is playing in your area, you can find screening info here.

Like finding that long lost mix tape you loved so much in 1993

In a year dominated by conversation about sources of unrestricted revenue and hospital productivity, I forgot about the wonderfulness that is The Poor Man. Here he discusses the recent improvements to Facebook.

"I don’t understand this Facebook. There’s like all these people, and there’s a “News” feed and a “Live” feed, and they’re different, but hell if I know what the difference is, let alone what’s so newsy or lively about them. And I have a “Wall” for some reason, which I guess I’m writing on? Or something? Am I writing on a wall? Is this news? Am I live? Don’t anybody try to explain it to me, because I’m not listening, and I refuse to RTFM. This is supposed to be a web-site, and web-sites aren’t supposed to have FMs."

Cocooned

It's a raining autumn morning, during the first week when most of the leaves have fallen off the trees. I am happily ensconsed in cotton jersey sheets (the stretchy kind) drinking coffee, answering email. Later I will go to the office to do work, certain things requiring large of amounts of concentration eluded me this week. Jane went out of town for a meeting. It's one of those days where there is nothing too bad, nothing too serious.

My friend Erik wrote a book

My pal Erik wrote this book. I finished it this morning on the bus, and it's a lovely novel about a teenager whose father takes off to save the world, turning his world upside down. It deals with bullies, girls, bicycles, racism, warring parents, and also manages to tackle a conversation about right and wrong and good and evil. It's funny and sweet at times, but doesn't shie away from how grisly and violent the world can be. You can buy it here.

On my watch

During the last five or six months of my Mom's life, she wore this white watch with a rubber band that I unsuccessfully tried to convince her to not wear. It was ringed with plastic diamond things. The watch band had some sort of basket pattern, with silver retro numbers. It was hideous but she was very attached to it. I rescued it from her bag the week of her funeral and wore it to New York. It was one of those moments of unadulterated grief when finding one of her quirky, idosyncratic possessions and putting it on brought such relief for the feelings caused by her absence that I didn't care how it looked. As grief abated, I realized that I wasn't going to start wearing her watch, it would be too hard to explain to anyone else.

What happened after made me miss her in a different way. Jane went to a meeting at a large hospital where a wealthy supporter of a research initiative was present. In the meeting, Jane was speaking to the woman and looked down at her wrist and realized that this society lady was wearing the high-end version of the watch that my Mom's had been imitating. Instead of fake plastic diamonds, it had real ones.

My mom would have thought it was hilarious that there was a fancy version of it. The absurdity of the watch to begin with, the fact that there is a high priced iteration of her ten dollar drug store one, and the fact that Jane encountered an east side society lady wearing it would have elicited some wry and self-effacing comment about her brush with the well-to-do. I miss talking about things like this with her more than anything else.

Tanto tiempo

It's been forever since I wrote. In the absence of actual posts from me, people sometimes find their way to Jane's blog and are keeping up on recent events that way. For those of you who haven't followed the parts of my story there, I should explain that my mother passed away on August 14, 2009. It was sudden, completely unexpected and all happened while I was on vacation in Ecuador. We were at the top of the Teleferico in Quito when I got the phone call, killing time before going to the airport to catch a hurriedly changed flight.

This isn't meant as an excuse for not writing, the last post was after all two months before that. It is actually missing her that brings me back here again, I think. She was my most loyal reader and although the feelings of immediate shock have passed, her absence leaves a gaping hole in my day. She was one of my loyal readers and it seems a good space to talk a bit about the roller coaster.

Things that happen these days:

In my cell phone address book, the phone number still reads "Robert and Doris Calhoon." When my father calls me, I invariably think for a split second that she is finally returning my call, after so many weeks.

My June 14 post is now bittersweet, since it was about seeing Up. I recommended this movie to my parents, it is about aging and life changes, after all. It's the last movie she saw in the theater. When I cleaned out her purse, I found the 3-D glasses from the movie.

Here is the obituary.

Arriba

I wanted to see Away We Go, but Jane wasn't having any of the bittersweet socially awkward indie comedy and so we went see Up yesterday, which I have to admit was a much better use of a Sunday afternoon at the movies. We saw it in 3D, which was TOTALLY worth it as well, since the animation is really spectacular. It works in aging and loneliness and failure and evil (in the form of an aged Lindberghish Christopher Plummer, with herds of talking dogs) and how we resolve the loss of the things we always meant to do but never did. And yes, I did cry. Just at the beginning though.

That time of year

Summer in New York has come. There are barbecues, outdoor concerts, cafes serving salad, and girls in sandals everywhere. It rains almost every day, making the sandals a little inconvenient, but we are hoping for clearer skies soon.

Big Buses

I walked in front of one of those double decker tourist buses last night, and dashed back to the traffic island in the middle of the broad street. He was turning left onto Delancy from Chrystie, and we both had a green light. He actually stopped and leaned out the window to ask me why I went back, and I yelled back at him that is was because he was coming right for me. When a double decker bus is coming right at you, abstract concepts like the pedestrian right of way becomes kind of beside the point.

Nostalgia

Tonight is the inauguration of Cine de La Diferencia in Cuenca, the gay and lesbian film festival I helped plan last year. I can see the Teatro Sucre, right across from the Parque Calderon and imagine the flurry of costume emergencies, cash box preparations, one person asking the other "where the hell is the champagne for the toast," and everyone dressed up in Sunday best.

The pictures are from last year, when the kids I worked with put together these beautiful dance combinations, these amazing artistic expressions about sexuality. The organization was totally lacking, there were countless juvenile conflicts, we didn't get the tickets sales we wanted, the publicity happened late, the press we got was totally homophobic. But we freaking did it. All sorts of people came watched films and talked about sexuality. Almost a year out, back in New York, with my head full of details about a new all-consuming job, the finer points of what went right and wrong are so much less important than the fact that we pulled it off at all.

Congratulations to Cuenca Diversa! Como me gustaría estar allá con ustedes hoy.

Sustainability

My Peace Corps Project is plugging along with this years' iteration of Cine de la Diferencia. Thanks to everyone who contributed to support this so generously.

That awkward conversation

You know when you have a fight with someone you are very fond of and several months go by where you don't really talk, but in the end you decide that you remember all the things that are great about about the person and you start to make little overtures and then suddenly there you are having coffee and its exciting and uncomfortable all at the same time?

That is how I think this post might be. Not that I had a fight with my blog, or anyone who reads it, but after so many months its difficult to just pick up and act like everything has been all hunky-dory this whole time.

I mean, everything has been fine, it is just that I have been very neglectful. This has to do with having a job which sucks up way too much time in front of the computer, and way too much of the energy that makes blogging fun. But I fear that Jane will take me off her blogroll if I no longer post and so here is a commitment to getting back into to the rhythm of documenting my New York life.

Saint Valentine

Jane and I went to Philadelphia for Valentine's Day. It was the only city accessible by bus where we didn't know anyone we would feel obligated to see, and being as it was Valentine's Day, we decided to try and make it a romantic retreat. It was a very lovely weekend, with a seven course Moroccan meal on Saturday and a visit to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where we watched tourist after tourist imitating Rocky Marciano at the top of the steps. Yesterday, when we were wandering over towards the Italian Market, we stumbled across the Magic Garden a massive mosaic work installation. It is right next to an AME Zion church and while we wandered around, we could hear the gospel choir and the percussion from next door.

Living out of boxes

When I went to the Peace Corps, my father fearlessly agreed to keep my files, receive mail for me and generally trouble shoot any urgent financial or legal issues that emerged. Fortunately, everything was pretty well under control when I left and as I slowly assumed responsibility for my life again I schlepped all my things between North Carolina and New York, a little bit at the time. The boxes with all my papers (tax returns, bank statements, etc.) posed more of a problem. It was in a relatively contained plastic files box, but it was really too heavy to carry as a carry-on on the airplane. Getting things delivered in New York is one of those things that should be easy but in fact always poses some unforeseen challenge. So when my father sent this important box of files, Priority Mail, announcing that it should arrive on Saturday, I thought the surest thing would be to leave a note for the mailman, telling him to just leave the box in the mail room. I would be around Saturday evening at some point to grab it and all would be well. The thing is, the box didn't come. And the next day it didn't come. Nor the next. Usually the USPS leaves you a little beige ticket saying that you have a package and please come and get it, but there was no beige ticket. At this point, I started to haunt the mail room and harass my super with plaintive inquiries and incredulous looks. It occurred to me that this box was an identity theft starter kit, with my tax returns from the last three years, several complete sets of billing statements and all my bank statements, providing all sorts of relevant data about my spending patterns and whereabouts. My living will and my medical proxy form were even in there. Jane helpfully pointed out that this this was the last thing anyone was likely to make use of, but I imagined the worst. For 2-3 days, I was convinced that the box had been left in the building and had fallen into the hands of some interloper who even as I spoke was planning to become me, start several credit cards in my name, buy several plane tickets, and generally create a mess which would take, at the very least, lots of time on the phone with unkind people in call centers to clean up. At this point I hid my blog profile and changed my security settings on facebook.

Fortunately Pop had sent it insured which meant there was a tracking number and when I presented the fax copy of the insurance slip, they produced the box forthwith. I didn't even ask why there had been no beige slip. I have never been so happy to lug a 20 lb. box cross town.

Meeting of friends

I have been introduced to several of Jane's friends in the last week or so and she has been introduced to several of mine, including virtual email introductions in which Jane didn't actually have to utter a word. As far as we know, we both passed our respective tests. I mean, I might be understating it a little bit, (as one tends to do in the blog format.) It's all gone very well.

Office space

After yesterday's celebration, today was back to the grind and me staring at the to-do list I wrote Monday, unable to decipher my handwriting. Does that post it say "board" or "band?" And what could either one of those have meant?

Today on this day we will always remember

At my church on Sunday we heard excerpts from A Letter from a Birmingham Jail, The Strength to Love, one the speeches written about Vietnam and several of Martin Luther King's sermons. It was much more moving (and as a history geek, more entertaining) than a sermon might have been. The timing Obama's inauguration and MLK's birthday lends itself to the sense of history, the solemnity, as my mom says, the historicicity of it all. King's speech on Vietnam reminded me of how not only did he speak out with regard to the domestic policy but also what he said about how the United States engages with the world, and how much it speaks to where we have been over the last six years in Iraq. We sang Lift Every Voice and Sing, also sometimes called the Black National Anthem, which often chokes me up. We also sung it on the Sunday following the election, when my minister prefaced it by saying, "Let's think about all the people who gave their lives to come to 'a place for which our fathers sighed.'" And that was when I wept, wept about the election.

And so today, when Obama made a speech which I believe has the capacity to get control of the frame of domestic and foreign policy at least for the outset of his presidency and the benediction began with a recitation of Lift Every Voice and Sing, I feel like we are in a very good place, and that it is a very important day.

Can you say "The girl I am going out with?"

I spoke to my mother last night, and she asked me, "Now have you been seeing your Good Friend?"

This is my mother's way of asking me if I had a date with Jane this weekend.

Many years ago, my friend Elliott came to the house for coffee with us and mentioned he had plans to see a young man that we had known in high school. "Now" my mother asked, "Is that your Very Good Friend?" Elliott burst out laughing and caught right on. "No, that is my ex-Very Good Friend."

Inflections indicating capitalized letters. This is how she refers to homosexual love interests. Friend would mean someone a person is casually dating. Good Friend, I take it, mean somewhat seriously dating. Very Good Friend means someone with who are in a committed relationship.

I find the southern gentility of it sweet and amusing, but the euphemistic aspect of it kind of grates on my nerves, even though I know she means well. Its a little bit too love-that-dare-not-speak-its-name-ish for my tastes.

So so distracted

I have checking account statements to dig up for an end of year IRS deadline, an organizational chart to design, bills to pay, a site visit with a funder to get ready for, and oh fifteen other terrifying administrative projects to get ready for in the new year.

And all I want to do is read blog's and leave silly notes on facebook, and send dumb text messages.