The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.
Two Singers I'd Never Have Known Otherwise
This evening, Stevie Wonder's "Golden Lady," U2's "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," Soul II Soul's "Get a Life," America's "Ventura Highway," Chaka Khan's "Papillon," Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus" and more accompanied my 2.5-hour soil-shoveling in service to our newest, emerging garden in our backyard.
Before reading Tonéx's story in "The New Yorker" some months ago, and then reading excerpts of Chely Wright's interview and story in "Curve," I had never heard of either, though in their genres, they were super-popular, and then both of them came out as gay and lesbian respectively.
Tonéx's tale touched me, especially after I saw this hit of his. I watched it over and over, marveling at his sexiness, voice, the beat, and the theme ("He won't fail you...")....
Similarly, I saw Chely Wright as exciting when I watched her hit, "Single White Female." Typically, I'm not a Country music fan, other than Dolly Parton's music, like "Hard Candy Christmas" and "Travelin' Through," but I was thrilled to see that someone so apparently different was like me after all. That's the name of her newly-published memoir: *Like Me*.
Chely Wright mentioned that she knew of her lesbianism by 3rd grade. She beat me; I wasn't fully self-aware till 6th grade. In Chely Wright's case, she was ready to kill herself just four years ago, when she was 35, tired as she was of her closet. In my case, beginning at age 36, I tried to have a baby, having been too internally-homophobic to try prior; I worried about the baby, having two mothers. By the time I got over that concern, as I've written here before, I was unable to conceive after nine tries, and gave up ultimately, figuring that God had other plans.
Now, Chely Wright says she's ready to be an ambassador for the gay, lesbian, bi and trans (GLBT) community, no matter what happens to her singing career. Tonéx got to that point, too. Their stories remind me of a recent invitation:
At work, those of us who are openly G, L, B or T, have been called to serve by writing letters to our younger selves, to be published on the front page of our company's internal web site on June 1st, in honor of GLBT Pride Month. I've been hesitant to be so public about my life-story within our official company web site. Here, I don't mind being so at all, as this is my blog, not my company's.
Will I feel even more free, like Chely Wright and Tonéx, if I write and submit the letter?
Showing posts with label The New Yorker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The New Yorker. Show all posts
Friday, May 21, 2010
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Still a New Jersey Outlaw
The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies.
Meditations on Marriage
The two boys/men with whom I was most intimate, but didn't marry, both have wives and children. One of the guys is a gorgeous, athletic Leukemia researcher, who went through high school and his undergraduate years at Harvard in six years, rather than eight. The other is a handsome, musical business mogul who can do innumerable push-ups on his knuckles -- or could when we were 20 -- and who sold his business for US$150M, and now, is the CEO of a global green energy company.
The person with whom I have chosen to share my life -- for nearly 18 years so far -- is beautiful, as well as the funniest person I've ever met, and is kind and graceful, with nearly a photographic memory for anything she has ever read, and she has three Masters degrees and a Doctorate.
In not being allowed to marry, Pat and I have a good problem compared to people of any sexual orientation who've not found the love of their life and who have no marriage prospects at all. Ahhh, that's the gratitude I was hunting for in the midst of the shameful news that New Jersey's Senate voted against same-sex marriage.
This morning, I heard an interview of Elizabeth Gilbert on NPR. She was discussing her "champagne problem" of trying to follow her mega-bestselling book with another. Apparently, she wrote the bestseller about getting divorced and liberated in the process, and the new book was about how she needed to marry her boyfriend in order for him not to be deported.
*That's* your champagne problem, I thought bitterly, listening to her. She has no appreciation of her freedom to marry her boyfriend in order to stay united. Bi-national, same-sex couples have not got that similar right. For that matter, neither do same-national, same-sex couples.
It is doubtful that I will read either book, but I did prize Ariel Levy's recent review of the second one, especially this paragraph:
Why the paragraph appealed to me: It was written by an openly-lesbian journalist, who in this article wrote, referring to an old-school lesbian separatist, "If I weren’t female and gay, I doubt very much that she would have spoken to me." And I might be projecting, but I want to believe that Levy felt the same impatience as I did about Gilbert's actual champagne problem -- of having the freedom to marry the person she wanted to marry, but just being tiresomely expressive of her fear to do so.
During low points like today, as I have time to feel hurt and righteously-indignant about the New Jersey Senate's inhumane decision, I fall prey to what-if-ing.
What if I had married the doctor? What if I had married the green CEO? Well, my partner is a doctor, too (in Education), and as an active Master Gardener, she couldn't be any greener.
Meditations on Marriage
The two boys/men with whom I was most intimate, but didn't marry, both have wives and children. One of the guys is a gorgeous, athletic Leukemia researcher, who went through high school and his undergraduate years at Harvard in six years, rather than eight. The other is a handsome, musical business mogul who can do innumerable push-ups on his knuckles -- or could when we were 20 -- and who sold his business for US$150M, and now, is the CEO of a global green energy company.
The person with whom I have chosen to share my life -- for nearly 18 years so far -- is beautiful, as well as the funniest person I've ever met, and is kind and graceful, with nearly a photographic memory for anything she has ever read, and she has three Masters degrees and a Doctorate.
In not being allowed to marry, Pat and I have a good problem compared to people of any sexual orientation who've not found the love of their life and who have no marriage prospects at all. Ahhh, that's the gratitude I was hunting for in the midst of the shameful news that New Jersey's Senate voted against same-sex marriage.
This morning, I heard an interview of Elizabeth Gilbert on NPR. She was discussing her "champagne problem" of trying to follow her mega-bestselling book with another. Apparently, she wrote the bestseller about getting divorced and liberated in the process, and the new book was about how she needed to marry her boyfriend in order for him not to be deported.
*That's* your champagne problem, I thought bitterly, listening to her. She has no appreciation of her freedom to marry her boyfriend in order to stay united. Bi-national, same-sex couples have not got that similar right. For that matter, neither do same-national, same-sex couples.
It is doubtful that I will read either book, but I did prize Ariel Levy's recent review of the second one, especially this paragraph:
“Committed” is an unfurling of Gilbert’s profound anxiety about reëntering a legally binding arrangement that she does not really believe in. All this ambivalence, expressed in her high-drama prose, can be a lot to handle. (One generally doesn’t indulge another person’s emotional processing at this length unless the jabbering is likely to conclude with sex.)
Why the paragraph appealed to me: It was written by an openly-lesbian journalist, who in this article wrote, referring to an old-school lesbian separatist, "If I weren’t female and gay, I doubt very much that she would have spoken to me." And I might be projecting, but I want to believe that Levy felt the same impatience as I did about Gilbert's actual champagne problem -- of having the freedom to marry the person she wanted to marry, but just being tiresomely expressive of her fear to do so.
During low points like today, as I have time to feel hurt and righteously-indignant about the New Jersey Senate's inhumane decision, I fall prey to what-if-ing.
What if I had married the doctor? What if I had married the green CEO? Well, my partner is a doctor, too (in Education), and as an active Master Gardener, she couldn't be any greener.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Art in Tough Times
The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.
These Are Boom-times for Art
On October 19th, I went to Twitter and tweeted, "Thinking that art of all sorts, including comedy, will become more interesting during this tumultuous time." Some of the best music I ever loved emerged when my dad was unemployed during the recession in the '70s. "Saturday Night Live" was at its peak then, too, and rose like a phoenix during this unparalleled election season.
What a huge consolation-prize for having less money in our pockets or 401Ks -- to have artists be inspired by the calamities of this cash-crunch. (A colleague of mine created a Facebook group about his "201K," which I almost joined, but I became a Facebook fan of Suze Orman instead.)
This morning, I read about a "New Yorker" cartoon exhibit on money based on the collection of Melvin R. Seiden. The critic loved it, but wished the collection of cartoons had not ended with those of two years ago. The critic reminded readers of the hilarious/tragic cartoons that have been emerging in the magazine lately, including a recent favorite of mine, where a teacher tells the class that since the school can't afford Halloween pumpkins, the students will be carving raisins this year."
Gorging Won't Be an Option, But Feasting Selectively, Surely
Don't hard times beg for laughter? For escape from self-absorption, whether into transformative or easy entertainment? From an art standpoint -- including works like those of my friends Aimee Hertog or Allan Chapman or Saydi Kaufman or Riva Lehrer or Amanda Mathews -- during this period of economic famine, I think we're in for a treat for which we hunger!
Coincidentally, exactly a month after I first tweeted about art as a topic, I tweeted again: "Wondering who buys art in challenging times like these. Does art give comfort, and so more people buy it, or is it seen as a luxury?"
More of the people who follow me on Twitter responded to that tweet than to any other so far. The consensus was that they buy less volume, but that art, above all in times like these, gives them comfort and pleasure that they need to survive.
These Are Boom-times for Art
On October 19th, I went to Twitter and tweeted, "Thinking that art of all sorts, including comedy, will become more interesting during this tumultuous time." Some of the best music I ever loved emerged when my dad was unemployed during the recession in the '70s. "Saturday Night Live" was at its peak then, too, and rose like a phoenix during this unparalleled election season.
What a huge consolation-prize for having less money in our pockets or 401Ks -- to have artists be inspired by the calamities of this cash-crunch. (A colleague of mine created a Facebook group about his "201K," which I almost joined, but I became a Facebook fan of Suze Orman instead.)
This morning, I read about a "New Yorker" cartoon exhibit on money based on the collection of Melvin R. Seiden. The critic loved it, but wished the collection of cartoons had not ended with those of two years ago. The critic reminded readers of the hilarious/tragic cartoons that have been emerging in the magazine lately, including a recent favorite of mine, where a teacher tells the class that since the school can't afford Halloween pumpkins, the students will be carving raisins this year."
Gorging Won't Be an Option, But Feasting Selectively, Surely
Don't hard times beg for laughter? For escape from self-absorption, whether into transformative or easy entertainment? From an art standpoint -- including works like those of my friends Aimee Hertog or Allan Chapman or Saydi Kaufman or Riva Lehrer or Amanda Mathews -- during this period of economic famine, I think we're in for a treat for which we hunger!
Coincidentally, exactly a month after I first tweeted about art as a topic, I tweeted again: "Wondering who buys art in challenging times like these. Does art give comfort, and so more people buy it, or is it seen as a luxury?"
More of the people who follow me on Twitter responded to that tweet than to any other so far. The consensus was that they buy less volume, but that art, above all in times like these, gives them comfort and pleasure that they need to survive.
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