rm | sundries

When I was a pre-teen, the Atlanta Child Murders were happening, and when I found a green ribbon, as people wore then to say this must be stopped and this must be solved, I pinned it to my uniform at school. I then forgot to take it off before I got home, and was severely chastised by my parents. It won't make a difference, they said. And, You are a child, and with ribbons you never know what you're supporting. It's a memory from over 25 years ago, but one that remains vivid for me, and is still a source of confusion. I don't know what I did wrong.

Not long after, of course, AIDS entered the general public's consciousness. All us twelve-year-old girls talked about how we should all find virgin boys to fuck while something in the world was still safe, and one of the wealthy parents hired the preeminent AIDS researcher at the time to give a lecture for the frightened parents (and here we were, twelve and at a single-sex school) at their townhouse.

And there were, in addition to lessons on how to put a condom on a cucumber, ribbons I did not wear, lest my parents tell me again I was a child, both bad and ineffectual. I remember watching the Oscars and looking at those lapels with such suspicion. All those famous actors, they were bad children too.

I am wearing purple today. It is better to, than not. But no one else seems to be in my moving about the city so far today. I imagine they didn't hear about it. I imagine they don't care about it. I imagine they are like me and not, but certainly, better at defending themselves from shame.

Treble Entendre now has its own fan page on Facebook. So enter that in the search box; find us; join us, if you are so inclined.

In setting that up, I got into a conversation with someone who has an off-off Broadway theater space available in NYC for Halloween weekend. They've cast nine actors so far for a play festival of 60 - 120 second Halloween-themed plays. However, they need more material and are looking to partner with an existing company with actors and writers; they are also happy to receive plays directly from writers working independently. The theater seats 50 - 60 people, and the actors are committed to a 2PM performance on Oct. 30 and a 6:30PM performance on Oct. 31. If you are a writer ANYWHERE and have material for them, or, if you have a team of NYC-local actors and writers, you can contact glorzilla [AT] gmail [DOT] com. Make stuff happen!

Dogboy & Justine started to experience the infamous Kickstarter U -- that is, when you get a lot of donations at the beginning, and presumably the end, but things are slow and nervewracking in the middle. That said, we continue to be on target and moving along. As of this writing, we're up to $1,320 and need to raise at least $55 more today to stay on the current trajectory of slow and steady wins the race.

Thank you all SO MUCH. We don't get contact info to send personal thanks until after pledging closes and the project is successful. While we recognize some names as pledges come in, we actually don't always know who people are, so the big personal thank yous will largely be happening elsewhere down the line.

Check out this cool house in Cambodia.

Sea glass collecting: I love the story about the cache of tiny doll parts. Someone should do something with that in a fiction sense.

None of the 25 most dangerous neighborhoods in the US are in New York. This sure isn't news to me, but I am damn sick of it being news to everyone else.

In the news, the judge in the DADT case has refused to issue a stay on her ruling. Military recruiters have been informed they can accept openly gay applicants, but must warn them that the ruling could be reversed at any time. Several visible public figures in the DADT fight have sought to re-enlist in the military, including Lt. Dan Choi and at least one participant in the case brought by the Log Cabin Republicans. Additionally, the Prop 8 fight continues.

Hopefully, you already caught all that DADT news on your own. Because despite having a degree in journalism and having a long track record doing work both in and about the news media: I am not comfortable being your primary source of news. I aggregate links based on what I find interesting, outrageous, clever, or fascinating. I put them together quickly, while multitasking, and often not having had time to read full articles before I post them. This would be bad journalistic practice, if this link-blogging were an act of journalism. But it's not. However, it's increasingly being perceived as such, which is bad for me and bad for you.

Does that mean no more news links? I doubt it. I'm not that self-disciplined, and I'm grateful that if people aren't seeking out news in other ways, at least they're getting something about how some of the world works here. But, it's not a responsibility I want, nor, increasingly, an obligation I enjoy.

So can we make a deal? I'll spend 5 minutes more a day trying to bring more precision to my links, if you spend 5 minutes more a day exposing yourself to more news that you're not getting from here. Cool?

Good. So now that we've got that resolved, Patty has some pictures of Cardiff to show you. And none of them have anything to do with Doctor Who, Torchwood or Ianto Jones.

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Having experienced different ends of the scale of domicile privilege - I prefer living in less luxury with more friends.

I'm entirely unsurprised that Chicago is in there twice, and I'm not even surprised that it's #1, but wow, I would not have pegged 60612 as the most dangerous neighborhood in America. I may have to rummage and see how neighborhoodscout works -- and if they have any stake in declaring that area dangerous, since they do seem tied to some kind of realty organisation.

Mind you, it might very well be and I'm just oblivious, but I've been in that area and never felt unsafe before...

I've been pleasantly surprised both by how many people on my campus have been wearing purple today and by how much our Gender & Sexual Minorities League has raised for The Trevor Project by making purple ribbons available for a suggested donation of $1. We're at about $200 right now and given that faculty & staff get paid tomorrow and have said they'd like to donate then, that should go up. We had thought we'd be lucky to get close to $100.

I remembered, at the last moment, as I was packing for my trip to Atlanta, and deciding which clothes would go into the bag and which would stay out to be worn to the airport today. So, wearing a purple t-shirt and panties, and calling that good enough --the only purple bottom I own is a fairly heavyweight skirt, and inappropriate to my week.

I don't know if I'll have other things to say about this later.

~Sor

I'm happy to say that I've seen loads of people in purple today at work, even though I haven't heard anyone there mention anything about Spirit Day or other QUILTBAG issues.
I haven't read anything about it in any of the major news sites I frequent, though, and that's been disappointing. But that's why I like getting my news from many different sources, including aggregates of various and sundry interesting links like yours, rm - there's bound to be something important and/or thought-provoking that the others have missed out on.

SO MANY THINGS I want to comment on here. Tomorrow. So tired! But this is a great post.

I'm wearing purple today, as well. Unfortunately, like you, I haven't seen anyone else in my area doing so. It's kind of a shame. I know that sometimes the internet can make it seem like more people are doing something than there really are, but I still hoped to see some.

I agree that it's better to do something like this than to not. I don't really understand the argument that it's not worth doing because it doesn't accomplish anything tangible, or because some people will do it but then not do anything more substantial. I don't think efforts like this [i]detract[/i] from other efforts. I think they can be valuable for increasing visible support.

I was actually really pleased and somewhat surprised at how many people nodded and generally agreed with me today when I explained that, well, yes I'm wearing purple because duh I'm queer and visibility is important, but I didn't really like how the event was publicized. And for all the that the queer student group at my school did a crap job of publicizing it (in terms of /not/ publicizing it, as opposed to doing it badly) I saw a good number of people wearing purple. Yay, hope.

Thank you for reminding us of the fundraising for D&J! I kept forgetting, but now I've chipped in. :D

Also, Patty's photos are super pretty!

I am wearing purple today. I'm a middle school teacher.

At lunch today, one of my students asked me if the student body could hold its own Spirit Day next Wednesday, because many of the students didn't know about it or didn't have a free dress pass (we're a uniform school). And, with the full support of the vice principal and head of school, we will.

I'm amused that with all the hype around the Triangle about how Dangerous and Criminal Durham is, it's not even on that list, while Charlotte and Winston-friggin-Salem, of all places, are.

The issue I'd take with your parents is that they addressed the "wearing a ribbon != activism" part, without putting anything else (like "volunteer" or "come out" or "vandalise anti-gay billboards" or whatever) in its place.

Sadly, I don't think my parents were trying to be pro-activist. Among other wacky childhood narratives was DON'T JOIN A CULT and WHITE SLAVERY IS COMING TO GET YOU. So participating in any sort of group anything was really suspect.

Bah, in forming my comment, I took out and forgot to put back in the "I could be wrong" part. :P

Nah, it's totally okay. My childhood had a lot of bizarre elements in it, and reasonable guesses don't usually make a lot of sense with stuff that actually happened.

There are days when I happen to read your news links first, because I would rather check up on my friends than the state of the world, but I read a lot of headlines and a fair number of articles, and try to read the whole _Economist_ each week.

I'm also tempted to revive a friend's old community which predated a lot of news feed services, to which several of us used to post news ink roundups, particularly on subjects we followed - I often posted science and medical summaries or international issues, and enjoyed having other armchair experts post legal, regional and other areas of focus.

Our local news channell did a story on why lots of people were wearing purple today. But I'm in queer Mecca. I didn't go out today, but my partner wore purple to work and several other people have said they did and saw other wearing it.

I own nothing purple these days - I sort of hate it. I was going to wear black and pride beads if I did go out. (Okay, I own some pale mauve lavender, but come on.)

My friend and sometime performance partner and I were around downtown SF all day and didn't see any obvious purple-wearers. We sported purple ourselves, though we did get kind of stymied at one point about what we'd say if anyone asked about our matchy-matchy. "We're wearing purple to remember the kids who were gay-bullied to death" seemed accurate but not a conversation-starter (which we decided not to care about.)

I'm unsure what to make of the fact that there are no San Fransisco or Oakland neighborhoods listed, since SF has a few very specific high-crime areas and Oakland has such a rep as having a terribly high murder and other crime rate (which we do, though we have areas with little going on other than low-level property crime for the most part as well.)

That's really cool, thanks!

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