Archive for September, 2010

what’s going on?

September 30th, 2010

Thanks to the folks on here who have already linked to Dan Savage’s YouTube channel “It Gets Better.” Dan started this a week or two ago, in response to news of a gay teenager who hanged himself in Indiana earlier this month. Dan says in this recent Savage Love column, “I wish I could’ve talked to this kid for five minutes.” Then he realized that there is a way for LGBT adults to talk to the kids whose lives are being made miserable by the people at their schools. YouTube. He’s inviting people to send in videos telling LGBT kids who are being harrassed that life gets better, so they should stick around for it.

I know this stuff goes on all the time, but it seems unusually bad lately, with today’s news about the Rutgers student who killed himself. There’s also this story about bullies breaking a boy’s arm, and this story about a man telling a 14 year old girl with a rainbow flag to move to a country where they will hang people like her.

Anyhow, the videos people are sending in are very moving. I hope kids are watching. It seems to me like an unusually brilliant use of the web.

24 hour comics day draws nigh

September 26th, 2010

Have you heard about this event? Where people produce a comic book in 24 straight hours? It sounds really fun, but not quite so fun that I plan on doing it myself, although it would probably be good for me.

Anyhow, it starts this Saturday, October 2. I know there are a couple places near me in Vermont where it’ll be happening. The Trees and Hills Comics Group is organizing an event at the public library in Montpelier, and Artists Mediums is hosting it in Williston.

I suppose you can also do it at home alone.

Lesbian Nation, R.I.P

September 20th, 2010

Just heard that Jill Johnston died two days ago. There’s a very respectful piece on the HuffPo.

I recently organized my whole library. Fiction was easy, just putting stuff in alphabetical order. But when I got to my huge stash of books on gay and lesbian topics, I was confused about how to arrange them. Finally it became clear that the only meaningful order was chronological. So I put them all on the shelf by publication date. And quite accidentally the first one was Lesbian Nation, and eight feet further down the shelf was my latest acquisition, When Gay People Get Married. A fitting summation, I felt, of the past 40 years.

RIP, Jill Johnston.