Upcoming Family Cruise

In the past I have blogged about the travels my husband and I have enjoyed both on cruises and trips to various parts of Europe, often from an LGBT travel perspective. Now, we are embarking on a new travel experience: we are taking my two daughters, their husbands and the five grandchildren - ranging in age from 3 and a half to 10 - on a family cruise.  We sail out of Norfolk on Monday to The Bahamas for six nights aboard the Carnival Sunrise.  Our wonderful friend Jenny will be staying at our home and house sitting and dog sitting our Chihuahua. 

Between now and then, I will be working through much of the weekend getting things ready for a large commercial closing while I am away.  As has been the norm, I will blog about our experiences and reflections on this new episode of family travel.  The take away for the vacation and cruise industry is that the pink dollar also includes family travel. 

Thanksgiving Reflections - 2017

It has been ten years since my first Thanksgiving post.  I want to say "Thank you" to my readers who have been along with me for all those years. Much has changed in the last decade.  I met my husband, I reconciled with my children, I lost my parents (actually, my dad passed away eleven years ago), and I gained five grandchildren. I also have become fully comfortable with who I am.  It seems with each passing Thanksgiving, however, that even as I remember all the good in my life I think more and more about those who are no longer with me: grandparents, parents, my sister, and many others - I learned this past week that a friend from my magical teen years at Brantingham Lake left us.   The top image in a photo of a pencil drawing of my parents home of 30 years in Virginia Beach where we had so many Thanksgiving.  It was a Christmas gift to them and was done by a local artist based on a photo that we gave her.  When my mother passed away, the framed drawing came back to me.  It now hangs adjacent to photos of my parents on their wedding day. 

On a happier note and looking forward, the husband and I are hosting one of his nieces and her husband (they have hosted us in the past) and four friends )the table is set as shown above.   We will be joined by our niece's daughter and her husband and new baby for dessert along with another couple.  I've already baked three pies - my grandmother's pumpkin pie recipe, pecan and an apple/raspberry pie.  The husband has been busy as well.  It should be a fun afternoon.  On Saturday we will get together with my two daughter and the five grandchildren - it will be another fun time that we are looking forward to.

I wish a Happy Thanksgiving to all my Facebook friends and my readers who celebrate the holiday -  thanks for visiting the blog.  May all enjoy this special day of family and friends.

Happy to Welcome a New Grandson

On Wednesday a new grandson was born to me and the husband.  He came far ahead of schedule, but is doing well and making great progress.  Hopefully, he will soon be off of oxygen and in not too long be able to go home.  Words do not express the joy and happiness his birth gives us.  We now have three grandchildren (two are boys), one step granddaughter, and we will have another granddaughter in July.  Our family definitely doesn't fit the image that hater merchants like Tony Perkins and Victoria Cobb like to disseminate. 

They other positive is that these children and more and more of their friends will grow up believing that same sex couples are a normal part of life.  Better yet, should any of them turn out to be LGBT, they will know that they can be themselves and have a wonderful future ahead of them without the shame and torment I and so many suffered growing up. 

Similarly, more and more people are coming to realize that, contrary to the image with which anti-gay hate groups like to depict gays, many of us in the LGBT community have families - children and even grandchildren.  We are very much just like everyone else other than who we love.  Indeed, we are far more that the sorry image "ex-gays for pay" talk about as they parade around and whine about the "gay lifestyle" as one of promiscuous sex and constant drug use (in my view, most of these charlatans suffered from psychological damage stemming from religious brainwashing that screwed up their lives rather than their sexual orientation).  There is no "gay lifestyle." We are all just people.

Social Overload Weekend

Posting has been down today because our social life has been crazy starting yesterday morning and continuing through this evening.  Highlights so far have been "Breakfast with Santa" at the Hampton Yacht Club where the husband and I hosted my daughter and here family (photos are above).  Yes, Santa arrived via boat, not a sleigh, but what would one expect at a yacht club.  It was a fun event and was an opportunity to once again show that gay couples are really no different that other couples and have families too.

The bellinis are wonderful!

The second highlight so far was Drag Brunch at Croc's Bistro in Virginia Beach where a friend of ours performed today (see photo above).  Some consider Virginia Beach one of the more conservative cities in Hampton Roads, but Croc's Bistro has been have two drag shows every Sunday for six years and they are always sold out.  We will definitely go again and perhaps take some of the husband's clients with us - they will love it!

Now, I am about to dress for the Hampton Yacht Club holiday party.  It's always packed and pretty lively.  Our club as one friend says is "a bunch of hard sailors and even harder drinkers."   We naturally fit right in. :) 

Bus Driver Tells Teenager His Gay Dads Will Go to Hell

All three of my children - who are within the so-called Millennial generation - have walked away from organized religion, in particular the Roman Catholic Church.  Most of their cousins and many of friends have done likewise.  Why?  It's actually very simple: the rabid homophobia of many supposed Christian denominations and for those who are Catholic, the sex abuse scandal.   The two combine to make the hypocrisy of the Pharisees in the Gospels pale in comparison.  That's not to say that many Millennials aren't spiritual.  They simply want nothing to do with denominations best defined by their hatred towards others.  And I suspect the number of those who will walk away from religion in my grand children's generation will be even higher.  As a piece in LGBTQ Nation makes clear, there is no better reason to leave Christianity than the godly Christians.  (Note the fact that coming out is not a one time process.  It is ongoing and often involves standing up to bigots and changing hearts and minds).  Here are article excerpts:

My husband and I live with our twin sons in rural New Jersey — the garden of the Garden State. We moved there shortly after we adopted them in 2001. We don’t live in the mythic “gay community.” We live in a community. A fully integrated community. We attend the kids’ sporting events, drive the kids to and from basically everywhere a teenager would need to go (indeed the ol’ “sometimes I feel like I’m running a car service” applies). I’ve even ascended through the cutthroat ranks to become president of the PTA. Along the way, my husband and I have needed to constantly educate other non-LGBT people around us about our family, and we are happy to do it — to better the lives of our children.

We may not be throwing bottles and bricks in a bar in Greenwich Village, but we are on our own front line advocating for change right here, in suburban America. Simple, small battles, year after year, like meeting with the superintendent ensuring all school forms from our district read “Parent and Parent” and not “Mother and Father.”

Always the ten-second feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach as we “educate” and “integrate” our family into the community around us.

Just this week our 15-year-old son’s bus driver was listening to her “Christian” radio station while driving the school bus, giving him religious propaganda — in the form of a comic book — with Jesus as Superman and the rest of us poor citizens of Gotham living a dark dreary life until we accept the Man of Steel as our Lord and savior. Why has she taken it upon herself to volunteer this information? He already subscribes to all the teenage angst: attempting to fit in, questioning his parents’ beliefs and doubting his self confidence. As my son listened to the religious Sermon on the Mount…or rather the Sermon on the Bus, he discussed with the driver that he had two fathers. She imparted her wisdom unto him; she doesn’t have a problem with homosexuals, but “they are not blessed, and they will go to hell.”

So again — I had to “rouse rabble,” teach and advocate for change. Our son’s bus driver has been swapped out, and she was given a slap on the wrist. The very kind and helpful woman from the bus company told us, “She is not to listen to religious programming on the bus, discuss her religious views or talk about people’s lifestyle.”

Lifestyle?

Next battle: Umm, It’s not a “lifestyle.” It’s not some choice like jetting off to Napa (maybe we have), baking like Martha Stewart (possibly we do) or keeping a regular yoga practice (definitely guilty). But I’ll save that “opportunity to teach” for next week.

I am a lapsed damaged Catholic. I was raised Catholic: Sunday School, Stations of the Cross, altar boy. At 14, when I mentioned to my pastor that I was having certain strong feelings (it was way more than feelings, but I only told him it was “feelings”) about men, he told me not to worry. “You’re just starting high school. This can be normal at this age. If you were starting college, then we might consider it a problem.”
LGBT people and our families cannot allow the Catholic church to willingly escort us to the back of the bus as second-class citizens. “Love the sinner, but not the sin” is not even a little bit acceptable. It also makes it difficult for me to make the kids clean up their rooms when the Catholic church is telling them they won’t see me in the afterlife.

And to anyone — whether a Pope, bus driver, butcher, baker or candlestick maker — who wants to begin a conversation where I or my family are second class citizens, My inner Dad voice says “go fuck yourself,” then I remember: this is an “opportunity to teach” right here. Pull this bus over.

Folks like this brain dead bus driver will be the death of Christianity.  Thankfully, my grandchildren are growing up seeing gay granddads as normal - just this weekend the husband and I baby sat my grand daughter overnight - and those who condemn us as abnormal.  Time truly is on our side.  Meanwhile, we need to live our lives openly and with pride, taking opportunities that present themselves to "educate" anti-gay bigots and those who are to lazy to question the status quo. 

New Evidence That Football Destroys Players' Brains

Charles Rex Arbogast/AP

I will confess at the outset that I am NOT a fan of football, especially at the pro-level for a number of reasons.  First, I see pro-football as the current incarnation of the Roman gladiatorial games of old.  In my view, the wider public should not get sport and entertainment out of seeing others injure one another.  And then there are the obscene salaries that pro-football players make that are totally out of any relation to their positive contributions to society.  Adding to my aggravation is the fact that many members of the public pay not attention to world events, politics and other things that really matter in where society and the globe are headed, yet they know every detail about dumb lug football players some of whom strike  me as having the same intellect as a Percheron or a  Clydesdale (maybe even less).  Now, with a grandson, I worry the he - or more likely his father - may want him to play football when he gets older.  Therefore, I am happy that more and more studies are revealing that the sport is inherently injurious to players. Mother Jones looks at new study findings:

A new joint study by the US Department of Veterans Affairs and Boston University found that 87 out of 91 former NFL players who donated their brains for examination showed signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease also known as CTE. The report out of the nation's largest brain bank, which received a $1 million research grant from the NFL in 2010, supports prior research suggesting that playing football could have long-lasting neurological effects over the course of an athlete's life.

As reported first by Frontline:

In total, the [Boston University] lab has found CTE in the brain tissue in 131 out of 165 individuals who, before their deaths, played football either professionally, semi-professionally, in college or in high school.

Forty percent of those who tested positive were the offensive and defensive linemen who come into contact with one another on every play of a game, according to numbers shared by the brain bank with FRONTLINE. That finding supports past research suggesting that it's the repeat, more minor head trauma that occurs regularly in football that may pose the greatest risk to players, as opposed to just the sometimes violent collisions that cause concussions.

CTE can only be accurately identified posthumously, and it's important to remember that many of the ex-players who donated their brains to BU did so because they thought they might have the disease. Still, the results are more bad news for the NFL, which for years has been criticized over its handling of concussions and brain research. The league has long denied a link between the sport and long-term brain disease . . . but in April it gained approval for a $1 billion settlement with about 5,000 retired players, resolving concussion-related lawsuits.

Dr. Ann McKee, who is the chief neuropathologist at the brain bank, told Frontline: "People think that we're blowing this out of proportion, that this is a very rare disease and that we're sensationalizing it. My response is that where I sit, this is a very real disease. We have had no problem identifying it in hundreds of players."

Christmas in New York!!

After much delayed travel, the husband and I arrived in New York City where we will spend the holiday weekend.  One of the husband's brothers is staying at our home and dog sitting the two Chihuahuas, so all is safe on the home front.  We are staying at a friend's apartment on Christopher Street in the West Village (he uses it two nights a week and we have the place to ourselves). The location is wonderful and is just down the block from the Stonewall Inn and The Monster Bar.

This afternoon we are having Christmas dinner with my brother and one of my nieces and one of my nephews and possibly some of their friends at my brother's place near 48th and Third Avenue.  On our way over, the husband wants to hit Rockefeller Center and some of the beautifully decorated stores.   Tomorrow evening we are going to "Beautiful" compliments of some of the husband's amazing clients who bought us tickets when they were in the City earlier this month.  Saturday night we will be going to the new restaurant where my niece is a chef which should be great fun too.   The rest of the weekend, we will visit out usual haunts and some wonderful vintage clothing shops on Greenwich Avenue and 14th Street.

As for my children, we had a wonderful Christmas Eve eve dinner with my daughters and their families and did an early gift exchange (the grandson and granddaughter are below).  My son is in Olympia, Washington and hopefully received his FedEx package on time for today. 

Wedding Clebration - Phase I

The husband and I got married back in April in Washington, DC, but put off having a wedding celebration/reception until later.  Yesterday was the first celebration focused on family and a few closest friends who include us as members of their extended family.  The weather was absolutely perfect - much of the party was in the back yard - and all seem to have had a good time, especially the little grandchildren and nieces and nephews.  Lest other friends feel slighted, we will be having two more "celebrations" where we will include friends and neighbors.  Our goal was to keep the size of the gatherings smaller and more intimate, although with 60 some guests it still was a whirlwind. The first part of the morning today was packing away all the chairs and tables in the shed until the next event.  I've posted a few photos.

I truly think the kids had the best time of anyone.  It was the first time that my family members other than my youngest daughter met most of the husband's family.  It was a good time. :)  To the gay haters, my message is that we gays do have families and thankfully the younger generations are not accepting your hate and misogamy.