In reality my shirt is a salmon pink and my skin is flesh colored but I wanted to push the envelope a bit with my editing tools :-) I am not sure if I like that pink hair line looks like my makeup wore off or some such mess but I love that very pink shirt after the retouch.
Nice today on Martin Luther King Jr. Day here in my Brookland neighborhood. Streets are quiet and the gray sky is offering peeks of sunshine and massive white snowflakes fill the air now and then. I am a little sad because it looks like Obama and his transition team decided to hide all the gays yesterday during the internationally televised concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson gave an opening prayer that vanished from TV and radio media coverage of the concert and because the sound system wasn't functioning when he spoke his prayer twice most of the crowd didn't even know he was there. Then during the concert the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington DC sang back ups and were never named in the bold titles that labeled all the other performers. Somehow it seems like we gays are being deliberately papered over. I was reading blogs about the gay censoring when I heard these muffled grunting sounds over and over and discovered the Turkey Thicket and Brookland Elementary school play grounds in front of my apartment are being used as to stage national guard troops for security detail. We noticed a red cross van was parked at Turkey Thicket Community Center a few days ago. Today the troops arrived they are wearing riot gear over uniforms. Big wooden batons, plastic body shields, face shields, hard helmets and knee/shin guards are all part of the crowd control costume they wear. Charter Buses are parked in the lots and now starting to leave with these guards men. I wonder what they will be doing today. Maybe they are part of the security perimeter that the Secret Service is putting in place on the entire downtown of Washington DC. I took a walk after hearing these guys yelling to see better what is going on out there and to get a few pictures. Now about 150 national guards men are doing practice maneuvers on the tennis courts it is like a sort of all male ballet. They have portable toilets and shower trucks over there and on my walk I discovered military police hummers and unmarked vans filling the school teachers parking lot with other support vehicles. Pretty exciting to see but a little scary as my neighbor noted. I think closing all the bridges and main highways into DC from Virginia and putting up concrete barriers with guardsmen and police from around the nation seems a bit heavy handed on the security detail but we residents of Washington with no vote in Congress are getting used to the fact that the Federal Government runs this town regardless of how it impacts the people who live here. The white house security perimeter is getting bigger and bigger closing streets they think protect that special house and as I often joke it won't be long before all the downtown will be off limits to anyone not wearing a ID card around their neck. I chose not to go to the inauguration because they have blocked easy access to the mall. On Metro they warn there will be hours of waiting to go and to come back home. No cars, bicycles or other way to get downtown except walk and 4 miles each way is too much for me in this weather. Hyper security has blocked my joining in the fun and celebration of an event I never thought was going to happen. I remember when DC burned after Martin Luther King was killed. I lived in many of the areas that were destroyed by those fires and watched it slowly be rebuilt. Progress is slow for civil rights. I am waiting on mine to come and I think we are closer than ever before to GLBT people being normalized in our society. We are moving forward but don't forget that with every leap forward there are always a couple steps back.
My ex-partner Don Callahan sent me an invite to join him and others around the world wearing pink today to support diversity. International Day of Pink started in Canada when a boy was bullied for wearing a pink shirt to school and hundreds of his classmates decided to show there support by returning to school all wearing pink! Gay Straight alliances in schools do amazing things for todays kids.
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