Apr 04 2015
On this, my 67th birthday, I found a tear wrenching letter to transgender old people at the Advocate.
Now the letter was not so much aimed at me personally. I did not transition in my 60s. I transitioned 2/3 of my life ago, at the age of 44. That was enough of a problem in itself.
How did you do it? How did you keep yourself going all those decades in the wrong gender? You must be the toughest person alive.
–Marlo Mack
Marlo, there just a wasn’t a lot of choice. Survival is a strong motivation.
Mar 31 2012
Supporters of Anchorage Proposition 5 have expressed outrage at an offensive cartoon ads opponents have been using to gin up opposition to the passage of the measure, which would protect LGBT people from discrimination in Anchorage. The most outrageous of the ads is this one:
May 14 2011
Last week I prepared an essay about LGBT aging, entitled Avoiding becoming part of Gen Silent. Tonight’s dairy continues on that theme.
Interspersed with some other news about LGBT seniors will be some videos of some of us. History has proved that the way to get people interested in a cause is to put faces on the cause.
So the diary is video-heavy. Be forewarned. I divided the different stories, which come from Portland, New York City, San Diego, Philadelphia and Iowa City, from each other by use of the videos.
May 07 2011
On Thursday I went to a retirement party for the woman with whom I have been co-coordinating the Bloomfield College Gay/Non-Gay Alliance since I started working full-time here in 2001. It got me thinking about my own impending retirement and what will happen as I grow older.
Together with that, there was a news item about a film festival in Canada, called the Fairy Tales Queer Film Festival in Calgary, which is showing, among many other films, Gen Silent, a film about elderly GLBT people who fear they will have to go back in the closet in their last years to be treated as they wish to be. Below is the trailer for this documentary.
Aug 14 2010
To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went to the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee, and the other was a despised tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men–robbers, evildoers, adulterers–or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, and I give a tenth of my entire income.’
“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Mar 20 2010
It’s always encouraging to know that the insurance industry is looking out for our welfare.
In this case, the Metlife Mature Market Institute has done a study of GLBT boomers and our needs. The study is called Still Out, Still Aging (pdf) and was done in conjunction with the American Society on Aging (ASA) and the LGBT Aging Issues Network (LAIN). It is a follow-up to the 2006 study, Out and Aging (pdf).
Technical support was provided by Harris Interactive which sampled its GLBT Specialty Panel and as well as a general population online sample. 1206 LGBT 45-64 year olds were sampled and compared to approximately 1200 people of the same age drawn from the general population. Four out of every five members of the comparison group knew at least one GLBT person.
A baby boomer was defined as someone born between 1946 and 1964.
Sep 19 2009
I had an alternate title: Frienemies with Aging. This could be part two of a very slow-moving series: On Aging was published March 7, 2008.
When we got home from teaching last night, and with Debbie not having to teach at City Tech this morning because classes were canceled for Rosh Hashanah, I decided to use the fact that we had no classes this morning to do something to make the place slightly more livable.
Like assemble the cat tree we had purchased online and that arrived via UPS on Wednesday. Photos of the finished project will be interspersed among this story of pain and fatigue and just growing old. Now I didn’t have the camera with me last night when I was stuck on the floor, so I went the extra mile for verisimilitude and got back down on the floor in order to show the view from there and during the struggle to rise up against my oppressor: gravity.
May 29 2009
This is a true story. Almost. And it’s almost a work of fiction, but not quite. I should know. I was there.
Jan 21 2008
Yep. I’m “Over The Hill.”
And happy as hell about it.
I think it’s hilarious (now, that is!) to walk the Birthday aisles full of black banners and black balloons with screaming white letters shouting “Over the Hill”, as if that’s as close to hell as one can GET while still on earth. On my 50th birthday, my staff literally FILLED my office with black balloons!
But think about it: we spend all our time and energy for decades, laboring to climb our hills and mountains. We all know time marches on, so did we really think there was some hilltop or mountain top we’d finally reach, * and then get to STAY THERE FOREVER? And would we’d even WANT to stay there forever? We’re creatures of great curiosity. We like to keep moving to see what’s next. Even mountain tops get boring.
