Kitty Lee Thomas Sweets

One of the pleasures of yesterday's family wedding was getting to talk with my late sister's daughter (pictured at left with her boyfriend) and getting to meet her boyfriend. They live in New York City where she left a career in investment banking to follow her true love - cooking and baking - that I think she inherited from my sister.
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She completed the French Culinary School last year and while working in her new profession in New York, she is also working to launch her own company. The newly established website which showcases a few of her products is here. The "About" section of the website which references her late parents brought me close to tears. Her products are wonderful - beautiful to look at and even more amazing to eat. She sent us a box of the Christmas goodies, so we know first hand the quality of the products. I hope readers in New York and elsewhere will give her a try.
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She's an amazingly talented and bright young woman. Looks wise, she looks much like my late sister and my late mother. I hope her business is a huge success!

Family Airs and Pretensions

My mother's obituary has finally been published in both the Virginian Pilot and the Daily Progress in Charlottesville. It was clearly written word by word - and shall we say "embellished" - by my brother. My mother was modest, never sought to promote herself or put on airs and she never forgot the less fortunate and donated to numerous charities. Sadly, these traits are not exemplified some of her children, particularly when it comes to being modest and unassuming. It's also noteworthy that while almost every other possible relative is mentioned, no reference whatsoever is made to my partner - a man my mother cared for deeply. Heaven forbid that readers might learn that my mother had a gay son. Here's the obituary:
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Marion Hibben Phelps Hamar of Charlottesville died on January 5, 2011.
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Marion was born on October 30, 1927, in Puerto Castilla, Honduras, the third daughter of Dr. Marion "Bruce" and Azelie Hibben Phelps of Lowville, New York. Marion was predeceased by her husband of 57 years, George David Hamar; and her daughter, Kathryn Hamar Godburn.
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She is survived by four children, Michael B. Hamar of Norfolk, Virginia, Suzanne H. Cassidy of Charlottesville, Virginia, Janie H. Roy of Virginia Beach, Virginia, and G. David Phelps Hamar of Keswick, Virginia; and 10 grandchildren including Lauren, Peter and Victoria Hamar, Kristin and Matthew Godburn, Eric and Kelly Roy, Tyler and Andrew Cassidy, and Kate Hamar. Marion is also survived by two sisters, Mary Alice Isachsen of Troy, New York, and Ann Lopushinsky of Syracuse, New York; three nieces and nephews; a daughter-in-law, Leila Fiery Hamar; two sons-in-law, James Cassidy and Gary Roy; and one granddaughter-in-law, Jenny Roy.
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Marion, whose father was the medical director for United Fruit Company, spent her idealic childhood in a virtual adventure novel, filled with tales of life aboard steam ships and in the jungles of Central America. After being tutored in the Tropics, Marion graduated from Lowville Academy in 1945 and from Syracuse University in 1949, where she met her future husband. Marion then pursued graduate work at Cornell University.
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Marion was married on June 3, 1950, in Lowville, New York, and settled on a farm outside Syracuse, New York, where she raised her family and an extensive array of pets including dogs, cats, horses and a variety of other animals, to which her devotion was legendary. She and her family later moved to Virginia Beach before most recently moving to Charlottesville, Virginia. Marion's summer home on Brantingham Lake in the Adirondacks always held a special place in her heart and she enjoyed her last happy stay there in summer of 2010.
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While principally devoted to her family and children, Marion also pursued an active and dedicated professional life in Cytopathology where she was known for both her very high technical standards as well as her kind interpersonal skills with colleagues. Marion also diligently maintained her family's business interests in Honduras and Panama, with the family's interest in Cerveceria Hondurena, S.A., now in its 101st year.
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Always active, Marion enjoyed many outdoor activities including water and snow skiing, boating and gardening as well as walking her dogs on the beach. She was a voracious reader who rarely could be found without a book in her hand.
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Descended from old Connecticut Yankee and New Orleans families, Marion was a wonderful combination of all the best characteristics associated with both regions. While Marion enjoyed relative privilege, she was modest and never forgot the less fortunate, supporting numerous charities for children, animals and the environment and she embodied the ideal in civility, kindness and Christian values often strived for, but very rarely achieved. She was quietly, but very deeply devoted to her Catholic faith. Marion was quite simply extraordinarily kind, fair, empathetic and considerate and her calmness and gentleness could always brighten the day of her family, friends, colleagues, pets and others. Marion's complete devotion to her children and grandchildren was also extraordinary.
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A funeral mass will be held 1 p.m. Saturday January 15, 2011, at Saint Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church, Charlottesville, Virginia. A reception will follow.

Interment will be 11 a.m. Sunday, January 16, 2011, at Princess Anne Memorial Gardens in Virginia Beach.
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Memorial contributions may be made to the Lewis County Humane Society, 6388 Pine Grove Road, Glenfield, NY 13343 or Hospice of the Piedmont.
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Friends may send condolences to the family at http://www.hillandwood.com/index.cfm.

Honoring Our Straight Allies - Colin Farrell

As many people have said, the LGBT community cannot change hearts and minds without assistance from our straight allies who have the courage to stand with us and speak out on our behalf. Some are celebrities and others are everyday people like this past year's Legends Gala honoree, Cindy Cutler. Everyone matters, but celebrities are uniquely positioned since the media will report on the actions while most of us go unnoticed and under the media's radar. One such celebrity is Colin Farrell who has a gay brother for who he acted as best man when his brother married his partner. Now, Farrell has issued a statement in support of Youth Service’s STAND UP! Campaign, a program of BeLonG To Youth Services, Ireland’s national youth service for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender young people. He makes the damage done by homophobia and religious based discrimination against gays personal as he recounts his memories of the bigotry faced by his brother. Here are some highlights:
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"I can't remember much about the years of physical and emotional abuse my brother Eamon suffered. I was very small. The thing I do remember though, quite literally, is blood on his school shirt when he came home in the afternoon. The beatings and taunting were very frequent for him and a constant part of his school years. I didn't understand at that time the concept of 'difference'. Back then, as now, he was just my big brother.
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People are often afraid of difference. They feel that anything that causes fear, should be turned away from. My brother represented fear for so many people, but caused joy in my life. From a very young age he made me laugh with his intelligence and wit, made me aspire to his strength and goodness. He was to be embraced. To many of the students of his school however he was to be feared. He was to be turned away from. I didn't understand it then, and I still don't now.
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Hate is a disease. It is fear's messenger and it makes us do terrible things in a shadow of our better selves, of what we could be. Intolerance is not genetically encoded - it is taught. It is learned at home. It is learned in the classrooms and it is learned anywhere else we gather as a group. But it is usually learned early and added onto from there. If there is nothing to feared, there is nothing to hate. If there is nothing to hate there is no pain. My brother was so forceful in standing up for who he was, and for the good that he knew was inside of him.
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Bullying is torture, it is another betrayal of basic human decency and its scars reach way into the future of its survivors. But the saddest truth is that not all children survive it. It is a potentially fatal societal illness and must be respected and not feared. Respected and dealt with as a very real problem and as an adversary of a potentially harmonious world, that should have no place for bullies or bullying."
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Kudos to Colin. Would that more of our false Christians had his abilities of empathy and understanding rather than hearts controlled by hate.

Rita Mae Brown

Time Magazine has an interview with Rita Mae Brown which is worth a read. I have enjoyed a number of her books – including High Hearts which is set during the Civil War with much of the action taking place within a 70 to 80 mile radius of Charlottesville- and also books involving fox hunting since my brother and his wife are part of that set in Charlottesville. Moreover, one of my brother’s sisters-in-law had an affair with Rita Mae some years back (my brother and his wife are “in society” (http://avenue.org/party/year2001.html - see Vienna Waltz and http://www.timeslice.ca/hss/Keswick/KeswickSpring2008.pdf) so it caused a bit of a scandal. Unfortunately, my brother finds having an openly gay brother an embarrassment and avoids me while my sister-in-law is wonderful). But I digress. Overall, I have always enjoyed Rita Mae’s spirit and sense of being her own person. Here are a few highlights:

Tell me about your experience in the early days of NOW (the National Organization for Women). Did you resign in protest?
Hell no. They threw me out. Here I am, a southern country girl, so I was easy to write off as a stupid kid. I still had my accent — I have it when I go home, but I hadn't learned how to disguise it. I raised the issue of class differences between women and racial differences. At this point this was really quite an important band of women in America, but not necessarily representative of all women's concerns. Then, of course, I raised the issue of gay women. That was all it took. [Betty Friedan] got rid of me in a hurry.

You didn't go quietly at the time though, did you?
Hell no. I fought. I wrote in the newsletter and I fought. It didn't do any good because everybody was scared sh--less of her. But I'll give Betty credit. I don't know if you ever met her. Bombastic, rude, self-centered. Brilliant. And you know what? Fundamentally a moral person and about 20 years later she apologized to me in public. It took a lot. She said, I was wrong.

Do you feel as though things have changed a lot for lesbians and for gays?
Yes, I think so. I think you can judge the level of success for any group of people by the reaction against it. And given the reaction of the so-called Christian Right — I would put that in quotes because I don't believe they're Christians at all — I would have to say that people have been wildly successful.