pantoum's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UNITED STATES OF STUPIDS' DAY WITHOUT IMMIGRANTS (No. 332 � Brooklyn) Irregular Girl has a Flickr photo of a graffitied wall that reads �pay your own way.� I am trying to parse this with our country�s resistance to illegal immigrants, who point out that they are working people who recognize that today's businesses cannot survive without their sweat and underpaid labor. I�m in Brooklyn, but we�re heading to PS1 to see Jessica Stockholder�s gallery show soon. Then we�ll head over to Dietch Project�s Garden Party. Then we�ll eat something green because Filmgrrl and I are both craving a salad, and then we�ll head over to Union Square for the big immigration rally. The East Village is weird to Filmgrrl because the Second Avenue Deli, a real institution, recently closed and there�s just a big empty building where it used to be. Yesterday was too beautiful to be indoors, so we walked all over the city. Met Lourdes and Bets at a polish diner (nothing green), then went over to Shulie�s to check on her cat. Took thirty minutes, but we finally coaxed it out from behind some of Shulie�s paintings. Filmgrrl and I will probably stay at Shulie�s place Tuesday night after we see Guardian off off Broadway, since I will need to hop the bus from Grand Central Station to LaGuardia in the wee hours of the morning. I got up early and stared at the water from the roof. Our lady of the harbor was standing tall with her arm raised and, beyond that, New Jersey sat in a haze of smog and I kept thinking how wonderful it would be to wake up in Seattle and have coffee on my deck while staring across the water at the snow-capped mountains. If Filmgrrl and Nina stay in Montana, then there is a good chance that I will wind up in Seattle sometime after summer 2007. Met Zulu for an impromptu evening together Friday night. She was awarded a two-week stay at a nearby writing retreat and chose the first two weeks of August, and she wants me to apply for the same grant, same time, same place, since we get so much done when we go on retreat together. I�ll deal with that as soon as I return to the southland though. Anyone keeping up with the King and King controversy�not to be confused with the Rodney King controversy, in which actual people were harmed�knows all about the uproar in Massachusetts over a teacher reading this tale of a crown prince who rejected one beautiful princess after another until he fell in love with a handsome prince. Then he and his prince married and sealed their commitment with a kis before living happily ever just as the imaginary het couples do in fairy-tale land ... except, well, parents� so-called rights group are now threatening to sue the Massachusetts public school system because Massachusetts teachers used this book in a lesson about different kinds of weddings. (And this in a state where gay people can legally wed!) Meanwhile fundie Christian(ist) doctors in California are claiming that their religious beliefs give them the right to treat lesbians differently than other patients and are refusing fertility treatments to us. And this case was actually thrown out of lower court three years ago! My understanding is that doctors are professionally obliged to treat patients while doing no harm and that they must follow our nation�s antidiscrimination laws. Hence, they are supposed to treat all patients, not make moral or religious judgments about some of us. (But hey just read Pottergrrrl�s letter for a fine example of a medical professional assuming the right to make moral judgments. Or listen to so-called Christian pharmacists who insist that they don�t have to dispense the morning after pill because they don�t believe in birth control.) And y�all do know about Jason Johnson, the twenty-year-old gay boy who was expelled from University of Cumberland (Kentucky) because he refers to himself as gay on his personal webpage, right? Yes, it�s happening right here folks. But now I must jump in the shower and get cracking, so more on this topic later. 11:00 a.m. - 2006-5-1 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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