The Quotable Queer

After a number of email discussions regardingPBS’s “Postcards from Buster” shelving of a gay-related episode, a much more effective means was developed for expressing discontent and creating positive change.

We must target our effort towards contacting local PBS affiliates. Write, call, and/or email the Viewer Services and simply tell them you want the “Sugartime!” episode produced by WGBH in Boston to air in its entirety.

Affiliates that opt in and order the episode should be recognized and rewarded with our funding dollars for their programming. On the other hand, supportive viewers in areas where the affiliates choose not to order the episode should consider heavily where their donations go to in the future. Including this “consider heavily” in your contacts with your local PBS affiliate will also make them consider heavily the costs of giving into the religious right and ultra-conservative.

To find your local affiliate, go to PBS Station Finder and select Viewer Services. Contact information for your local PBS affiliate will be available by connecting through their website.

By rewarding stations, like WBGH which produced the now controversial episode of “Postcards from Buster”, and considering placing your donations from non-supportive stations into more supportive ones, should effect a great change if enough respond to the call.
And you can Quote me on that. The Quotable Queer

A large majority of people places much significance in birthdays and age, I have found. I find this to be a limiting feature of life. Why is so much stock put into the anniversary of the departure of our bodies from the womb of our mother? It is something that defies all that I have experienced over the years, as I have met some very “young” older people and very “old” young people.

It truly is an affliction of heart and mind that can lead one to making assumptions and limitations involving not only others but yourself as well. This issue is rather present in my current life as a number of close family members birthdays are taking place as I head off to my other family in San Francisco. I do realize the importance that they can place in these birthdays and try my best to remember to honor that importance as best as I can. It is an amazing struggle attempting to do this without stomping all over people’s personal feelings.

Not only is my mind not set up to remember dates of birthdays of important people in my life, my life isn’t set up for it either. A few years I had to be reminded it was my own birthday by others.

How have I managed to escape the commercial and emotional attachments to these anniversaries? My focus is what is different. I focus on inner change, as opposed to outward changes, even though the two are definitely intertwined at times. My barometer of where I am in life derives from this inner focus. Also, it helps me not attempt to measure where other people might find themselves on their own life journeys. How am I to judge anyone for what they experience and believe?

What ridding my self of these corporeal afflictions has accomplished for me is a great deal, at least on my own personal barometric scale. Once we become less linked to our physical presence on earth, the links to our emotional and spiritual presence is allowed to increase. It is, after all, quite easy, comparatively, to know where one is physically than it is to know where one is on the emotional and spiritual planes. Those are much more subjective and open to interpretation.

Examining the motives we have in where our focus is aimed at in our lives will lead to a greater understanding of where we have been and where we have set ourselves up to be heading towards in the future. This examination may lead to your own emergence out of the corporeal lifestyle that so many people live.

And you can Quote me on that. The Quotable Queer a>

The first elections held in Iraq for over two decades began amazingly enough outside of Iraqi borders first. Of course, these polling places scattered around the world in places like Syria, Australia, the United States and many more are not mired in the hour-by-hour violence that Iraq has become since the U.S.-led invasion two years ago.

It is with hope that these elections take place and that many more Iraqi, American, and other lives will not be lost in the process. The likelihood of that being a reality is quite another thing entirely. The bloodshed in that country has grown to a feverish pitch where the death toll, and the soldiers killed have taken a backseat to other stories. Have we really become that accustomed to the relentless death waged in Iraq? Or, is it the U.S. media that attempts to shield the public from the true horrors of this wrong war gone terribly wrong.

With the end of the elections, which are sure to have many Iraqis confused and bewildered as many of the people they are voting for are nameless on the lengthy ballots, the violence is sure to continue onward. What amazes me is that the shutdown of the borders took this long to take place. That should have been protected the minute the U.S. and British invaded two years ago to avoid the obvious move by insurgents to bring blood, pain, and anguish to Iraq.

Sorting out the results of the election, I predict, will be quite difficult. It is going to be confusing when immediate results of the election won’t be seen or felt by the average Iraqi for quite sometime. However, there is always an opportunity for a change in strategy. If change is allowed to happen, life may someday return to normal for the Iraqis. After decades of Saddam and years of insurgency, what’s most astounding is that most Iraqis probably don’t even know what normal is anymore. May their experience of normal come quickly and be met with better lives and far less violence.

And you can Quote me on that. The Quotable Queer