And in the News
"Teen Lesbian Sues School" and "Lesbian Student Couple Signals School Change" are two headlines I came across this week on CNN.com. It's wonderful to see teen lesbians out there making names for themselves. In other gay news, although not specifically lesbian, a school board in Philadelphia has decided to name a high school after Bayard Rustin, a gay, black male civil rights worker. The story refers to his homosexuality, as well as the fact that he was the actual mastermind behind the 1963 March on Washington where King delivered his impassioned "I Have a Dream" speech. The news item also mentions that Rustin had to work behind the scenes because the Civil Rights movement would have been unable to deal with a gay man in its corner (one social movement at a time, please). However, and unfortunately, what CNN.com failed to reveal was that Rustin was pushed out of his involvement with the March on Washington. He was told that rumors would be spread about his sexual relationship with King. But, they probably didn't have enough space for all that. But they did have enough space for this: "If every one of the 16 million men and women of the armed forces refused to serve our country, we would be speaking German and Japanese," area resident Marvin Baughman said at the board meeting. This eloquent quote followed the reasoning from those who "objected to naming it after a man who was gay, briefly a member of a Communist youth group in the 1930s and who was a conscientious objector during World War II." Enough of the gays.
It's been a while since I've written. The reason is that I've been working on this bloody paper on whiteness. I was so excited about it a couple of months ago. Had I actually started it a couple of months ago, I wouldn't have been in this position now. I've got to write the conclusion yet and make 75% of it sound much better than it does after the thrashing it got in the last two days by carefully chosen editors. I'm headed to L.A. on Monday. Then Sacramento on Thursday. Or Friday morning. And I can't believe I failed to mention the Czech-Italian La Trattoria. Sausage and tortellini. I can taste it. I'll need to be hitting that place, too. Because there's absolutely no reason for me to still be awake right now, I'm going to close. Even though I'll be on the west coast, I might try to post some entries. Try to keep the writing fresh. Although it hasn't helped so far.
