The Most Precious Holiday in My Calendar - Thanksgiving

I appreciate a grocery store being opened in the morning for those of us who forgot an essential ingredient.  I have stopped by a restaurant chain with employees who volunteered for the shifts.  Not to mention that to get to grandmothers house, which is over the river and through the woods, you certainly need to make sure a gas station is available for refueling.  No, I will not be shopping on Thanksgiving beyond the bare essentials.

Thanksgiving is a most sacred day.  Consumerism is ignored though it may scratch at the edges.  This Thursday each year is the one day when all Americans cherish each other.  It is people over profits.  I consider it the one day of the year when everyone has an opportunity to feel a sense of warmth toward those who they call family, even if it is not with someone blood related.

Thanksgiving is certainly an event of magnificent proportions.  There are the many pounds of turkey, gallons of gravy, bowls of stuffing, and the many styles of vegetables concoctions.  Secretly each person may judge another’s green bean casseroles or cranberry sauces, but each is special in its own way.  It is a day where each person hopes to belong and where others purpose to be inclusive.  It is one day where the term family is stretched, like so many waist lines, to the limits, undaunted by blood, marriage, or any form of discriminatory exclusion.  It is one day where few are turned away and hopefully no one is forgotten.

Truly resourceful Thanksgiving revelers take advantage of the abundance of terminology on the fourth Thursday of the November.  They appreciate that “family” is inclusively expanded.  True revelers also passionately rejoice at the Thanksgiving expansion of the dinner and dessert options.  The truly creative multiply the families they must visit. 

I cherish Thanksgiving.  It is the day when all are invited to belong.  Each person is able to reflect on what they have or have experienced and spend time reflecting on what and who they have.  It also is the beginning of a season when many reflect on events, experiences, friends, and loves who are no more.  Yet, most, if not all, would not change those cherished experiences, no matter the feelings of loss.

Thanksgiving is not simply a day, but perhaps a weekend of events where extended family reconnects, revisit old stories, review achievements, reflect on old passions, and recommits to forgotten secrets.  If consumerism is at all discussed, let it be well after dinner.  Use it as a game.  Consider bringing the newspaper with all its ads to a cleared off table.  Let each person peruse and develop their own strategy for accumulating gifts.  Yet, leave the execution of the plan for another day.  Stay together and laugh on Thanksgiving.  

In my family, Thanksgiving has become the most important holiday where we obey the rules of peace and truce.  Thanksgiving is about joy and plenty, not politics or position.  It is an exhausting yet exhilarating day.  Each participant functions in a form of service to all.  Each is challenged to serve in ways they may not normally function. 

In years past, we did not have these rules.  Yet, we developed them to assure that all were welcomed.  No matter the interpersonal issues, Thanksgiving has always drawn me to my family.  And, while the pies Mom makes were certainly incentive on their own, it was the belonging that demanded answering.  And, as we expanded our invitations to others, our family Thanksgiving flourished, too.

In many homes, there will be conflict.  In many homes, someone’s feelings will be hurt.  Family is not perfect.  Thanksgiving is so immense in its concept that the holiday experience manages to address these experiences, too.  For it is having those painful moments that allows us to be thankful for where we live now, who we love, and why we make those types of choices.  Thanksgiving provides opportunities to create new families or add additional families to visit throughout the day.

In past years, when my personal interaction with my dad was not spectacular, I developed a three hour rule.  Much like Gilligan’s Island’s three hour tour, I started with family optimism.  Yet, if storms developed into tsunamis of destruction, after three hours, a graceful exit could be made to seek families of creation or invitation.  While I would mourn the loss of pie creations by mom, the change in weather at another home did not bring the same focused attention.

No Thanksgiving is without its challenge or reward.  And Thanksgiving is certainly the one day when all relationships are cherished no matter how poorly another communicates its value.

Thanksgiving is perhaps the last stronghold of community and the last holy day of connection.  It encourages me to belong, to love, to connect, to pursue moments of reflection, to laugh, to be in the presence of others who love.  It is a powerful time to spend time appreciating what is, rather than what will be or what was. 
 
No matter your circumstance, no matter how you feel, I hope if you have no plans tomorrow, you will call and join with others.  For Thanksgiving is not powerful when you are alone.  It is when we join together and give thanks that its power is demonstrated.  Make this Thanksgiving a wonderful time of belonging.   Each Thanksgiving is so powerful, you can make a tradition after only one! 

An Apology Is Necessary

Recently, the LGBT Weekly has published two articles related to my leadership and changes that were necessary at the GSDBA.  Though I attempted ad nauseum to correct a myriad of suppositions, errors, inaccuracies, lies, character assassinations, and violations of confidentiality, the reporter was intent on creating divisiveness.

I will not address this poorly written or "investigated" article to correct its myriad of inaccuracies.  The entire GSDBA Board, as always, will choose how to do so, with consideration for membership, staff, and stakeholders, as we always do, together.

Yet, there is one thing that must be said, by me, toward someone, from a public forum.  When reporters make insinuations about staff of non-profits without merit, simply suggesting, creating innuendo, or creating the illusion they are providing information, I find these reporters to be of the scum sucking variety and should be banned from any LGBT resource or information source in journalism.

Take your pot shots at decision makers.  Attempt to question or ridicule volunteer leaders for their decisions.  Create doubt where you feel you must for your own selfish need to get published.  But, when you attack staff, their loyalty, their purpose, their contribution, or their integrity, you simply have gone too far.  Staff who have done nothing but what has been asked of them from executive directors, CEOs, and Board Members should be off limits as targets for reporters and their mud slinging.

Today, as Chair of GSDBA, I felt it necessary to personally apologize for LGBT Weekly and their totally inappropriate articles related to GSDBA when the reporter included a character assassination of one of our employees, Sue Sneeringer.  Her decision to resign was a personal one based on  her values.  When she was sought after by me, and the GSDBA Board, to be rehired, to help our organization in a truly necessary role, she accepted after careful consideration.

Sue Sneeringer is a true asset of GSDBA, a gem of organization and clarity, and a soft, caring voice for our LGBT Chamber that encourages members, is respected in our community, and is devoted to our mission of Equality for All.  Her integrity should not be questioned by a reporter who does not have access to information, is only intent on seeing division where there is none, and in questioning Sue's character, indicts his very own integrity in the process.

Relevance is a GSDBA Value

The ACA - It is worth being patient

The Affordable Care Act is an excellent concept which pools most Americans into the health care system.  Yet, only if it follows basic insurance theory will it be successful (theories and rules which republicans do not mention).  The primary theory is that it is best to pool risk amongst the largest group available.  Secondarily, you must make sure that pool is not encouraged through "adverse risk", the idea that those who may persevere are those most likely to be "at risk".  This secondary theory now threatens Obama's implementation of the ACA.

Bureaucrats, in the rush to meet the ACA deadlines, along with delayed pursuit by States, Insurance Companies, funding from Congress, debating in Congress and amongst bureaucrats, and delaying tactics employed elsewhere likely has impacted backend testing of the highly complex system proposed in the "Website" and "Back End" systems necessary to include Health Insurance Companies with various premium rates X the number of states X gender X Age X Income X premium support X various other values in a complicated matrix. 

I would urge everyone to take a breath.  Few people, initially, could ever correctly answer a complex mathematical question the first time around.  Certainly, rushing to market was not a wise choice, however it was necessitated by those who would prefer the ACA never see the light of day.  Yet, it is important that those who believe Affordable Access to Health Care is important to encourage others that without the ACA, health premium increases would be growing substantially faster than it currently is.

Without ACA, we would have not have a solution for 45 million uninsured Americans except emergency room visits at 300% of the regular costs. 

In the next few years, without the ACA, internationally, American companies would be at an increasingly distinct disadvantage in economic competitiveness due to rapidly rising health care costs from those 45 million uninsured.  Hospitals simply spread that cost to the paying public.  America is the only country in the developed world where companies bear significant health care costs for their employees.  In every other country, it is borne across the breadth of its citizenry. 
The ACA provides a framework of inclusion, a method of managing rising health care costs, it assists to mitigate disease through normative care programs, it saves jobs, helps our companies remain competitive in the global economy, while helping those who did not have access to health care. 

All in all, a very good law.  The technology just has to catch up to the concepts.

It's been two months, Carleton. I'm adjusting but it is not fun.

Carleton,

I went to the LGBT Center Gala last night.  The one you and I had hoped to attend together.  It was a festive night.  Everyone asked how I was doing.  I told them I was okay.  Yet, every now and again, I noticed someone watching me to make sure I was.  There are pictures from it.  You would have said I was handsome.  I wish you had been there.  I helped sponsor a table and promised Delores that I was still raising money in your name to assist other young men with support services.  The Carleton Cannon Memorial Fund has raised over $1,500 for services to men like you. 

It has been two months since the day when you and I made the decision that you would surrender and depart this world.  I did get angry I didn't get more time that day just to hug you, but you took me at my word and worked so hard to encourage others that day.  While angry I did not get more time, I was proud of how you faced your end.  I can only hope that I will be so brave.

Your brother reached out to me last week, your mother a couple weeks before that.  I have checked in with Sean and with your Aunt.  My office watches me.  Rene stops by nearly every day.  The first two weeks were debilitating.  The weeks following were frustratingly hindered with shadows of regret, loneliness, frustration, and the pain.

 The GSDBA board is just relieved my brain started functioning two weeks back after the grief hiatus.  At least I can function in leadership capacities again for my volunteer work and for my clients as well.

You know I am not incapacitated, but every day there is always something that reminds me that you are not here, that you died, that I must face that reality.  I returned a few weeks ago from Palm Springs.  It was shocking to realize that I expected to see you as I opened the door to the apartment, as I have done so many other times.  I simply was stunned as it seemed voices in my head were in shock and just then realized you were gone, for good.  Even a trip to the grocery store impacted the loss.  Small and big thing cause me to pause, think of you, grieve, tear up, stop a moment, before I push forward.  Whether it is forgetting the mail you always picked up, the notes left different place, your hand writing, or the last two voice mails on my phone I cannot erase yet.

While it has been two months, at times it seems so much longer.  Perhaps that is how it feels to be tortured.  It is daily, yet the moments stand still as we become stuck in those individual seconds in that moment.  And, with each of those seconds, it takes energy and strength to move past them to return to the present.

At times, it feels like it was just yesterday that we sat around and laughed, walked, and worried.  I just changed the sheets on the bed.  I have only your things in the wallet to go through.  It lies on the table in the bedroom.  Truly, I am unable to go through it.  I wonder how long it will be before I address it.  I have photos for your Dad and Mom to deliver.  I still need to shut off your phone number.  I can't bring myself to use your phone for some reason even though it performs way better than mine.  I can't even bring myself to watch Elementary or NCIS Los Angeles, because we always promised to watch it together.  Silly, I know.  But, we did keep our promises.

The last two months have been easier and harder than I ever imagined.  Thank you for communicating to others that you worried I would not do well without you.  It made me laugh, but made them respond.  Both reactions I welcomed and it has been helpful.

I wish you were still here.  But, with the amount of pain you had, the struggles we had in the last 6 months, I would continue to make the same decision we made together August 20th.  And, I am glad your mom, Linda, made it with us.

Peace, my love, enjoy the new time you can spend with your grandpa.  I know he was the first face you saw after God.  Though, I fear my Dad may have been the second.

I miss you and so do your friends and family.  We will not fill the space you created in our hearts.  So we do what we can to live with that space, stirring those memories so that the space in that emptiness does not become stale.

Peace,
Eric

The Muse of Music and My Visit to the Dark Area of My Mind

Today, as most days, songs occupy the inner region of my mind.  A chorus will spring up, a trio, a soloist, a rythmn.  Numerous times it can be one song repeated over again until it is sung.  Other times, it is a thematic display represented by many forms of our diverse musical repetoire.

Tonight, at the crux of reliving some recent memories, Peter Paul and Mary started to sing.  Yet, instead of the usual movement of poignant love, somehow the tune threw me into a swirling mix of emotion as Mary and I changed perspective, Carleton came face to face with me, and sang one verse, then I another.  Quickly, reality met loved loss, with my barriers of responsibility crumbling and those pang of hurt and disorder being held back joined with the fragments of regret and anger.

The discordant music clashed, causing poised cords to clash in calamity, jarring my control and eliciting anguish as memories accused me and begged me to connect.

Usually, I find the depths of my memory and the vast music repetoire ensconced in my soul assists me to cope with the vagaries of others and the circumstances life can throw my way.   Usually music is capable of moving me past hurts, quickly through terrors, and rescues me from that area, that prison where pain, loneliness, worry and depression are confined in my being.  Those dark thoughts are restrained and left starved in that small space.  Those feelings, the dark history is banished there along with past harmful thoughts. 

Yet, when I am at my weariest, or when I venture too close to that restricted prison where regret reigns, or an event throws me near to the lair of mistakes and the morose, the Muse of Music acknowledges their presence.  While they speak, Music stirs the survivors of those imprisoned terrorists of my inner strength and peace into a chorus of morose communication, a choir of terrible consequence, which can rob me of my pride and my strength, bending my knees into a sobbing grief.  The Muse can communicate a wealth of emotion through any songs which once brought joy to clearly communicate the true costs of those dalliances with darkness. 

These dark forces, while contained, still are empowered to remind me of realities most in humanity would prefer to ignore are no on their own, evil.  Their whispers do not lie, they simply confirm the worst imaginable, test our sanity, prepare us for possibilities, and balance our fantasies.  They can freeze us in our failures, force us to live out our rejection, even examine our resulting pain.  Music reluctantly submits to their cries, providing a complex harmony sometimes in minor keys to focus their intent to subject me to their intensity and invasion.

Fortunately, while the examination of past crimes is in full swing, the Muse changes the key, moves minor to major, and with a complexity of chorus, can rescue my very Soul, at its darkest, most overwhelmed, and rush me back to the joy of life for me to recover from the taste of Death itself.  The cost may be the loss temporarily of strength, yet Hope quickly responds bringing powerful cords of communion to reenergize the husk.  And, while the horror of grief recedes once more, the last of drying tears are wiped from my cheek, the cathartic release of that visit resonates with the memories of Loves.  I can rest as I have not rested in nights after a nightmarish hour or two of reliving lost contacts, having greeted their specters without appropriate supervision.  Music, having been subject to reality, rescued me once more, after an awful wrong turn had cast me at the doorstep of Darkness.

Tonight, as the song list of my mind played, some of those songs and the words therein touched the dark areas of my mind.  Be careful what you carve into your memory.  You might identify with me if you have an area of your memory where the morose and the painful are imprisoned.  Music takes you where you must go.  Fortunately, for me, it continues to rescue me from the places where I find myself lost, bringing me back to safety.

Happy National Coming Out Day

Happy National Coming Out Day!

For those who have always wondered, yes, I am gay.  If you need to seek therapy, call a therapist.  If you just feel the beginnings of a heart attack, please dial 911.   If you weren't shocked, well, welcome to my world.

In the spirit of Coming Out, I thought I would share other tidbits that might provide more inclusion, more insight, and more entertaining fodder for future discussions and judgments.

1. I played violin since I was in fourth grade.  I haven’t touched it for three years.  Carleton asked weekly for me to play.  I did once.  I regret that I didn’t do it since.  I opened it today.
2. I enjoy ballroom dancing.  I can waltz, two step, fox trot, cha-cha.  I can lead and follow.  Yet, I have only been on the floor once since moving to San Diego.
3. I believe Cheetos is its own food group.
4. I am a Vodka snob.
5. I only drink Coke when offered soda.
6. I yearn for an electric car with the power of BMW and the comfort of Cadillac.
7. I love lesbians.
8. I coined the phrase “flannel wearing ninja lesbians”.  It makes lesbians laugh and straight people worry that they exist.  It is a concept like Santa.  I haven’t met one, but I love the ideal.
9. I once led republican organizations.
10. I consider a great fantasy or sci-fi novel a vacation.
11. I was a competitive swimmer growing up in La Grande.
12. I have had 71 friends die of AIDS related diseases.  I miss at least one of them daily.
13. I have a committee of voices in my head.  Most of what they say is entertaining, wise, or insightful.  Usually the comments are one liners.  Yet, fortunately, it is rare that they take control of my vocal cords.  One, I am certain, is a drag queen  (It just may be Lady Elaine Peacock).  My family is well represented on the committee (Dad, Cindy, Mom, Marc, Grandpa).  Fortunately, they normally sing in harmony, allowing me to assign tasks, enjoy the chorus.  During major grief, the committee adjourns.  They have recently came back into session.   No, I'm not crazy.  I think its ADHD and my ability to manage the competing
14. The time I spent as a pastor for 3 1/2 years to an LGBT congregation was a time of great learning and growth.
15. I am a professional worrier.  Yet, in my private life I merely enjoy the individual moments I have when I am with friends.
16. I believe that all my business rules were developed by watching Disney animated movies.
17. Of course, I love musicals.  Didn't you know I'm gay?
18. My first gay date was in Missoula, MT.
19. I fought my first bully when I was in third grade.  A friend, James Hawthorne, came to my defense.
20. I fought my second bully in 7th grade.  My third in 8th grade. 
21. The most humorous comment that I ever heard was that due to rumors that I partied while I was an exchange student in Brazil as a junior in High School, students who had harrassed me for years in La Grande, Oregon, determined I wasn't gay.  Apparently, gays don't know how to party, right?
22. The first board of directors I joined was the Gay Pride Board in Portland, 1991.
23. I considered I was gay at 8 years of age.  That was either shortly before or shortly after some classmates either informed or confirmed it by harrassing me.
24. I love blankets.
25. I really want the next President of the US to be a woman.