some crazy driver runs through my neighborhood and others running over pedestrians.

in case you weren't sure just how childish bush is...
U.S. New & World Reports’ Paul Bedard says [bush] “loves flatulence jokes . . . can’t get enough of fart jokes. He’s also known to cut a few for laughs, especially when greeting new young aides.” see the link for more disturbing details

my 12yo niece is going through a punk phase with her hair right now

i don't talk a lot about my personal life on here, but just as an update for my readers:

the boyfriend broke it off with me this week. he wants to go back to the straight life.

i miss him. i love him. and i'm around should he ever want to talk.

but i also can't hold someone who doesn't want to be held. while there's no doubting our deep bond and love for each other, sometimes love just isn't enough for some.

i do love him

new column

Legacies
(An Ode to My Grandmother)
My grandmother passed away this last week. She was 98 and had been living in a nursing home for the last many years. It was unfortunately her time. Her death has reminded me of old memories and haunted me with stories past in my family and life in Missouri.

I’ve been thinking a great deal about what kind of impact we make in the world. Her passing reminds me that perhaps we make a greater impact upon all around us than we sometimes think. Often it’s easy to think that we are alone in the world and no one is really paying attention. Often it’s easy to pretend we live in isolation from the rest of the world. Often it’s easy to not notice the impact we each have upon the world in our own way.

Her life was about her family and her faith. And her legacy will live on with the continued vibrancy of that family and faith. Hers are spread all over the country, all over the world; living separate lives, but connected by blood and bonds of old. That history and connection is still there whether paid attention to or not. And her legacy continues in bringing us all back together once again as a family for her passing.

But what is our own legacy? Do we know or care about what we leave behind? Do we leave traces and legacies of our own?

I think of this because of another thing that happened this month that made me cry.

Several weeks ago I received an email from some friends who have a shared Kansas City history along with me. They mentioned that my alma mater, UMKC, had just been listed as one of the top 100 colleges in the country for LGBT students. I looked at the article in the Kansas City Star and I sat stunned to disbelief.

And then a wave of emotion overtook me and I wept for several minutes into my hands.

You see, in 1990, when I attended UMKC, there was nothing for LGBT students. Nothing. And I felt scared and alone and did not know what to do upon Coming Out. Eventually I formed a new student group called the Gay & Lesbian Student Alliance. In doing so, I learned that there had actually been a U.S. Supreme Court case back in the late 1970’s that said that a then-LGBT student group could form at UMKC and that landmark case gave birth to the LGBT college student groups around the country. That 70’s group lived a short life and then passed away.

In 1990, I began that new student group that continued the legacy of LGBT awareness at UMKC. I was just one person and our group had its ups and downs over the years, but eventually, today, there is a vibrant group on campus and a full-fledged LGBT campus office and coordinator of programs and services. My own legacy, and the legacy of those LGBT students at UMKC in the 70’s, have greatly impacted the lives of all those around them—students, faculty, staff, the greater community, and beyond—even if we may not have realized the full impact we were having.

It may seem strange to bring the story of my grandmother’s death together with the UMKC LGBT history, but both issues came together this month to illustrate a point to me. We are larger than we may think we are. Our legacy continues on, even when we may not realize it. And that legacy can have a real and lasting positive impact on the world.

Robert Kennedy once said, “It is from a numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring these ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

We are all ripples that create legacies. We can choose to be a ripple of hope and courage and love and peace, or we can choose differently. When we serve together as ripples of change for a better world, and stronger ideals, and finding commonalities and support, and love among our families and peoples, we create a legacy that rushes forth and can strengthen our lives and those around us, currently and in generations to come.

The impact of my grandmother’s life, and that of my former small student group, is still felt even after their passing. We each have the power to make a current and lasting change in the world. Let us resolve to continue to do so for the good of all that is and that will be.

Jessie's waiting for the bus

Jessie's waiting for the bus

it's been a pretty wild week work-wise. i was briefly mentioned in this article which sort of describes a major debate this week of which i was an integral part. see for yourself, but there's much more involved than even this article portrays... anyway, pretty wild work-week

my grandma on my dad's side, my father's mother, passed away today at 98 years old. the family was around her side at the nursing home while she passed. the doctor's were told not to do any life support. she was 98 and she had had a long full life.

i was never that close with her, other than through family visits once or twice a year. but i always felt we had so much familial language in common. when we were around her and my father's family, my twang would get strong and deep and words that had no definition in the english language suddenly made so much sense to us all. she and my father's family were from jonesboro, arkansas, deep in ozark bible belt rustic poor-white rural folk world. the language was always still there even after moving up to the city-life of the outskirts of kansas city.

there are small things i remember. i remember that she had the largest wall-covering-photo of jesus hanging on the wall next to her bed. i remember the halo-ed sun behind his head and the sheep in the photo. it was one of those old black velvet type pieces, but it was brownish and beautiful in its tackiness and in the way it symbolized her religion for herself. i remember her house was full of religious iconography and jesus paintings and statements from jesus and prayerful hands and, well, as i used to say, she's probably the most religious person i'd ever met. i'm not sure that's true exactly, as there are different ways to express religion, but she certainly had her way of expressing her religion with fixtures and discussion topics and activities and family-ways and everything.

i remember her old house, the one my father and his siblings were raised in. it wasn't nothing but a very small home with barely one bedroom and barely another that was sort of there and barely an attic that served as a third. but it was full of her life and her family and when we would visit we could see the history all around us. and my father and his family would regale us would stories of how they all slept together huddled in one bed and how they all would run all over the house and how they would get warmth from the wood-burning stove in the living room, and how just how the old times were.

my grandma was a link to my father's history and now that she's gone, and now that one of his brother's is gone, i wonder where the history of a family goes once it goes continually on. do we pass it on and/or do we live it each day? do we hold it close to us or do we release it and let it go its own way?

as i write all of this i feel my twang and my old language habits etch in my brain right now. i think of how giddy we would all be when we could talk like that with each other and laugh about it and love that we all got it together and had the same language and loved each other in commonality and personality and vibrancy. i know now that my twang is not just a dialect, but a gift from my family's history. my twang is my family and i shall have my history continue to live on in my speech. my grandma, my father's mother, will live on in my father, and in me, and in my family everyday, continually. history never ends and family carries on.

The j men

The j men

i had the wildest experience at the chiropractor today

i went in this morning with my usual neck-ache/head-ache. and i laid on the usual heating table and the usual back roller and then got the usual adjustment and slight massage. and then he had me fall backwards into his arms and adjusted my back that way. the first time he did that to me a week or so ago it was perfect. and then this morning it went also really well, but for some reason it really threw me physically for a loop.

it knocked something hard and strong inside my right armpit and it was incredibly sore for a minute. all of the sudden i was sweating profusely and i went incredibly weak. i was sitting in the chair in the front room paying my bill and i could barely hold my credit card in my hand. i then asked to lie down and they kindly put me back on the back-roller piece and had me rest and drink water. it helped a great deal and my headache was completely relieved.

he started telling me about how sometimes when you get adjusted just right, you release a lot of the bad toxins inside and it almost feels like incredibly light-headed. anyway, i had to lay there for about 5-10 minutes and just get my composure back. eventually i was ok to stand and walk again but i was still very light-headed for another hour or so. i really think it was very helpful and offered a release for my body. but it definitely threw me for a loop.

my kansas city congressman is just the best. read this excerpt from his newsletter:

I am currently leading a delegation of six other ministers to Turkey to promote interfaith relations. This, my friends, is certainly a time when it is needed.
We have spent time talking to Muslim leaders here, in an attempt to build some trust and understanding at a time when there is far too little of both.
We are learning so much on this trip. Talking, touring and praying with the people and clerics of Turkey. My wife Dianne is trying to adjust to covering her head when we worship in Mosques.
I will say that I thought it could not be hotter than it was when we left Kansas City. I was wrong. We had to cancel one of our stops because the temperature had reached 115 degrees.
I may not return next week rested, but I know I will return refreshed and rejuvenated in my belief that people, regardless of their faith, are by their very nature good and decent. The world should celebrate the many things that unite us instead of concentrating on the very few differences that divide us.

(emphasis mine)

i have my computer back! ugh, finally. it was away for a week. you forget how much you rely on it for everything once it's gone from your life...

Sister's hotel room door

Sister's hotel room door

Sister's hotel ceiling

Sister's hotel ceiling

Sister's hotel bed

Sister's hotel bed

...they're acting like such children

so my computer died... again...

not sure what happened but i came home to a crazed non-working computer on saturday and have been living without again since the weekend. my friend phil helped me take it in to the repair shop this morning. maybe i'll get it back from them tomorrow. maybe it won't cost me money i don't have. maybe a lot. maybe maybe maybe

in the meantime, i'm living off the laptop and the cell phone and hoping for the best. i must say i love both and i love wifi. thank god for wifi

and a lot is going on in the world lately

a neighbor of mine, just around the corner, has been transforming a tired-old regular apartment building into something unique, quaint, floral, and all-too-beautiful for the last several years. he's always out there painting and putting together potted flowers and plants and just completely transformed the block. today he was profiled in the chronicle with some great photos of what he's done. good4him!

he once said to me that one of the things that prompted him to beautify the place was that he was near death many years ago and couldn't leave his apartment building. he decided then that once he got better he would fix it up because if he was ever near death again and couldn't leave the apartment he at least wanted everything to look beautiful around him. smart and really nice guy

i'll have more to say about this later, but this headline "Gay-friendly campuses: UMKC on ‘100 best’ list" made my day. to think that back in 1990 when i started the glbt group on campus to now the campus being so welcoming is just very heartening. almost makes me feel like i helped make a difference...

i go through phases with music often, listening to some types or musicians regularly over and over without pause for quite a while. right now i can't break out of a chet baker jazz phase. i love his voice and music. it's so relaxing and comforting...

i've had a wild, wild, wonderful, strange set of career discussions and adventures this week. it also looks like i'm about to start another small consulting project on the side with potential other opportunities coming soon too. been quite interesting lately. when it rains, it pours...

"Lieberman Loses"

what a great headline this morning. love it!

also, from kansas city, the first open-lesbian just won the democratic primary in a democratic city from the city for the state senate-- the first time an open-lesbian will be in the state senate of missouri. what a great turn of events! check out this piece from the kansas city star: Never estimate the power of a well-organized, committed voting bloc. Jolie Justus turned in a powerhouse performance, winning by 3 points in the highly competitive 10th District state Senate race over Jason Klumb. Justus' bloc: The Kansas City gay community that turned out in droves for their candidate. what amazing words and a change in the body politic of missouri!

yeah, i know, i haven't posted in a while. haven't felt like posting much. even with a lot going on. so here's a few bits and pieces of things i've been wanting to post about but haven't:

joe lieberman sucks. hate him. always hated him. i hope he loses tonight in connecticut and it's looking like he will. by the time you read this we'll probably know. the point is, he's always sucked. when i was in dc in the 90's every liberal democrat hated him all the time because he was always making us look bad and making republicans look good. he was always bad on stuff for my old office of americans united for separation of church and state and he was always bad on education matters and he was always bad on everything. but no one could ever do anything about him. and now finally someone is running against him for being the republican he always was and good for them. now, yeah, he was on the 2000 presidential ticket, but you know what, we the voters never had a say in that. when president gore decided to pick him as vp, i immediately screamed at the headlines. i hated him. i only supported him in that race because he was chosen as the vp for gore. otherwise, never would have supported him. i hope he loses tonight. he sucks.

mel gibson sucks. hate him. always hated him. i hope he goes down in flames with all the recent media and public outcry about how anti-semitic and bigoted he really is. the thing is: he's always been a bigot. always. just hollywood has let him do whatever he wants because he makes big movies. but he's never shied away from his bigoted past. and if you think he's only anti-semitic, you're fooling yourself. he's bad on everything and everyone. he's said the worst, most egregious stuff about women and gays and everyone. he's called gays 'abominations' and everything else. he's said horrible things about everyone. and now he's gotten caught saying terrible stuff to the police and he should go down in flames. let him fall. he's horrible and he sucks.

now, there, don't we all feel better.

and with that, here's some nice photos jessie took during our trip down south in may. enjoy.

my brother's artistic take on his new girlfriend

another photo from my mom's collection:

p.s. she took those great photos of my niece below

my niece is getting so big, and even more beautiful everyday!

the august edition of the young dems newsletter, with my 'adieu' column, is public now. my final farewell to the club. off to new adventures, or actually 'old' ones...

here's a teaser; more great vacation photos via my friend's camera are coming!