Month: June 2008

Chicago Pride 2008

On By SarahIn Community, Fun & EntertainmentLeave a comment


Dyke March Chicago 2008

Originally uploaded by TheFemGeek

We had a blast during our first Pride weekend in Chicago. Here we are at the Dyke March on Saturday, courtesy of TheFemGeek (thank you!), sitting on the sidelines watching the dykes go by. By San Francisco standards, this was a much smaller event than what we’re used to. We were laughing at the “tiny Dyke March,” but make no mistake, it was charming and fun. We do have to adjust our expectations when we say things like “if boys were here, there would be a DJ and a disco ball suspended from a crane.” I love the grass-rootsyness of this event, the drumming on plastic bins, the hand painted signs, all of the women just amazed by the large crowd…it’s all so fun.

The next day we went to the parade, and it was pretty crazy. I forgot how ferklemt I can get at Gay Pride, and I really almost lost it when the veterans marched by. There was another contingent that was fantastic, though I don’t know who they were. It was and all African-American group clad in brightly colored clothing, many twirling enormous bright flags and rifles. There must have been over one hundred of them, and they were so amazing. I also loved the two-steppers and the cheer leaders.

The parade stopped for a long time at one point. After about half an hour, folks in the crowd started talking and getting a little impatient. It was all fine for a while. Boys on top of the building across the street from us were entertaining the crowd by throwing Mardi Gras beads. Gillian caught a strand of each color for me. When a couple of cops walked by, Gillian stopped them (beer in a paper bag in hand — that’s how they do it in Chicago) and asked what the hold-up was. They told her someone’s foot got run over. It was all good, but I was just starting to get a little nervous by the time the parade got going again. People were starting to get agitated. I don’t know why they would think that it would be safer to hold up the parade for 45 minutes to an hour as opposed to getting the injured person out of there as fast as possible. This just tells me that the safety monitors don’t have it together for this event yet.

We then somehow made our way up the street (salmon swimming upstream — it was a little stressful for a moment) to the Anne Sather’s parking lot for the Girl Blast, which we heard was the place to be after the parade. The moment we got there, it started to pour. We held out, made some new friends huddled under our umbrellas, and got soaked anyway. It didn’t matter. We knew it would blow over, and sure enough, it did and more people showed up.

After a while, our new friends got a little too friendly, so we decided it was time to move on. We then hit the dance floor. The music was great, but for some reason we were the only people dancing. We didn’t care. We were having so much fun, and it had been so long since we’d been out and about, we just let go our inhibitions and cut a rug in the parking lot. Eventually others joined us.

At the height of the party, it was time to go home. It was about 5:00 and we were exhausted. For the rest of the evening I was pasted to the couch. All in all, a very satisfying weekend.

Midsommarfest

On By SarahIn Community, Fun & Entertainment, Opinion1 Comment

Here we are enjoying some kabobs at Andersonville’s Midsommarfest.

At the Midsommarfest in Andersonville

You can see my new purse, and the pig t-shirt I got for Gillian’s birthday. We had a great time, wandering around, checking out the music and food and the art, chatting with folks from neighborhood.

However, I could have sword that I read on the website the day before that the festival was officially green. I carried my empties around in my purse all day because the only recycling bins I could find were teeny tiny little ones right at the entrance. Not very green friendly, it seems to me.

However, we had fun, and we look forward to going back next year. I hope they are able to acquire more recycling bins and get serious about promoting green living in Chicago. And perhaps other street fairs in the city will take heed.

Happy Loving Day!

On By SarahIn Friends & Family, Opinion, PoliticsLeave a comment

Gillian & Sarah, June 2004

Today is Loving Day, the 41st anniversary of the Supreme Court Decision of Loving v. Virginia, which made all miscegenation laws (banning interracial marriage) unconstitutional. Mildred Loving died on May 2nd this year, just two weeks before the California Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples had the right to marry in that state, making that decision and the anniversary of Loving v. Virginia all the more poignant. In recent years, Mildred Loving was an outspoken supporter of the same-sex marriage, seeing the connection to her and her husband’s case forty years prior.

I think it is wonderful that people celebrate this day. I hope that someday soon the organizers of the Loving Day celebration will see the opportunity and clearly articulate the civil rights connection between the marriage equality movement and the Loving decision, as Mildred Loving did.

Meanwhile, I hope anyone reading this blog acknowledges this day with love in some way, our greatest gift to the world.

American Family Association Finally Comes Out

On By SarahIn Opinion, Politics, SpiritualityLeave a comment

The AFA today sent out an “Action Alert” email to their constituency about energy costs. They are blaming environmentalists for the rising price of gas, saying that:

We have abundant energy reserves, but the environmentalists won’t let us use them. All efforts to provide for our needs end up in court because of the environmentalists! A handful of environmentalists are forcing all Americans to pay outrageous amounts for gas!

They are lobbying the American people to support the “exploration of energy sources” saying that this “would not materially effect our environment.” Spreading this misinformation is immoral and dangerous.

And I might add, not Christian. Even Pat Robertson appeared in those ridiculous ads with Al Sharpton saying that we have to protect the environment. What would Jesus do? He would want us to protect and be stewards of God’s creation. I am grateful that there is an Evangelical Christian movement that recognizes the responsibility that we all have to protect the environment.

The American (anti)Family Association has finally come clean and shown their opposition to the environmental movement. This organization that supposedly clings to Christian values spews hate-speech and intolerance, and is now encouraging the American people to believe that they should be able to consume as much gas and oil as they want without regard to their impact on climate change. I can’t say that I’m surprised, but I am perplexed. The values just don’t match up.

I like to use the AFA script pages to write my representatives. Go to this link and type in your zip code, and it will take you to a page where you can fill in the blanks. Here is what I wrote:

Dear Senator/Representative:

The rising price of gasoline is hurting nearly every family in America.  But I believe that every one of us has a responsibility to live in a more environmentally sustainable manner.

It is time for Congress to get serious about making green living a priority in this country. We need to curtail our dependency on oil and to curb our consumption of gasoline and our contributions to greenhouse gases that are contributing to global warming.

We need to develop green-color jobs, create public transportation systems that work, build sustainable communities where people can walk or bike easily from home to work to buy groceries, etc. We need to make recycling easier, and we need to outlaw the use of plastic shopping bags. We need to work to change our culture so that people can live more sustainably. We need to stop consuming goods that only end up in a land fill after two years. We need to set national standards for decreasing carbon emissions.  We need to protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from Big Oil.

As one of our Nation’s leaders, you have a responsibility to help find solutions to the climate change problem. The future of our planet, of our children, our families depends on it.

National Conference for Media Reform

On By SarahIn Community, Opinion, Politics5 Comments

I’m not entirely sure how I stumbled onto these guys, but I sure am glad I did. This weekend Free Press hosted a the National Conference for Media Reform (NCMR) in St. Paul (St. Paul has got it going on these days!). Since discovering Twitter, I have been looking for cool feeds to follow, and I have become aware of a few folks who started following me. Pretty neat.

I found Free Press website and book marked them in Ma.gnolia back in April, but didn’t think about it much again after that. Admittedly, I get kind of lazy about the websites I save there, just kind of harding them for future reference. And I do refer back to them, but some times it takes me a while. But I digress.

I didn’t think about Free Press again until this weekend when the Twittersphere just lit up with activity from the NCMR conference. I had no idea it was going on, but I started seeing lots of posts with the #ncmr hash tag, and the tweets included interesting quotes from the speeches and panels they were watching, and there was a post for the live feed of the conference, so I decided to check it out.

It was amazing! The likes of Bill Moyers, Dan Rather, Ariana Huffington, Amy Goodman, and Van Jones were all there talking about media’s responsibility to help the public hold politicians accountable, and the necessity of media to stay independent in order to accomplish this.

It was all so inspiring. I’ve been tuning in as I can this entire weekend, in between chores and errands. Bill Moyers address is a must-see, and there is another video of him being accosted by a Fox News reporter that makes me just love Moyers more than I did before. The video is going viral, which is very exciting. Word is getting out!

I highly recommend checking out any of these videos. Lawrence Lessig’s is really good. Van Jones had me clapping and cheering here in my living room (I’ll post later when its uploaded). Dan Rather is just a cool guy. I missed Amy Goodman, but I hope they’ll post her speech soon.

I hope the few friends who read this blog and any who stumble upon it will check some of these out. It made me feel inspired to keep blogging, to keep doing my small part of expressing myself, spreading the encouragement to others to do the same, and to use the new media tools to build a progressive movement and community.