The brilliant, funny, creative, inventive, courageous, wicked, strong, heroic lives

I finished the book Gay Like Me, A Father Writes to His Son by Ritchie Jackson. When that son turned 18 and about to head off to college he said he was gay. In response, Jackson wrote this book to describe the delights and dangers of being gay. A couple quotes, first from page 10:

I am so happy you are gay. There is so much about being gay that I am eager for you to experience. The amazingly diverse community that you are now a part of and that is now a part of you – the brilliant, funny, creative, inventive, courageous, wicked, strong, heroic lives you are among. The chance to love and to be lived by an extraordinary individual. The creativity that will permeate your day because there is no set course you must follow. I am thrilled for the flight ahead of you; I am wary of the fight ahead of you. When I rejoiced that you were gay, I was really wishing for the good parts – the community, the camaraderie, the creativity. The incredible beings who populate our community, who against all odds are themselves. But you can’t be gay with just the good parts: your life daily will be touched by all the difficult parts too. The fight, the struggle, the challenges, will make it even more valuable, even more worthy.

And from pages 59-60:

Whether you feel it as acutely as I did, and still do, you are other. And the way to deal with your otherness is not to soften the edge, not to find the ways to fit in or to pass. It is to double down, to exploit and to expose all those parts of you that are other. Those elements of your otherness are your deep well of creativity and divinity. Your answers reside in your singularity and difference. By amplifying your otherness you unlock your promise and potential. It is there that you will find your way of loving and being loved.

Some of the other things Jackson discusses in 150 pages: We gay people need a double consciousness. We do all the things Americans do, but America doesn’t want us and tries to erase us. We need clarity of ourselves and of what America thinks of us. Gay life in the 1990s was quite different than gay life in the 2010s. Don’t take those differences for granted. The gains we’ve made may be taken from us. So to be a part of this diverse community we must be vigilant and active about protecting it. The complicated life of LGBTQ people is worth it. Never diminish your essence. Learn your gay history. AIDS is not over. It’s still a straight man’s world. Coming out happens every day – people will assume you’re straight and at times letting them think that may be the safe thing to do. One must be a good gay citizen in helping future LGBTQ people lead rich and safe lives. Jackson includes his own history. Long before he was out his mother took him to see Torch Song Trilogy starring Harvey Fierstein in a theater. This is a very gay show and ends with the main character demanding respect from his mother and the mother walking away. Jackson wondered why his mother took him to see it. Afterwards his mother said, “If you ever came home and said you were gay, I would never react like the mother in the play.” He took that to mean I know you are gay and I’m helping you come out. Even with that invitation he couldn’t at that time. When he was off to college he had gay friends. However, his first three gay trysts involved men who felt shame over having sex with a man. Even though he didn’t feel shame from his mother (his dad took a little work) he internalized the shame from these men. This son was the product of surrogacy when his partner was BD. The birth came three months early. One of the twin boys didn’t survive and the other was in NICU for three months. Jackson’s relationship to BD fell apart a couple years later and in the year after that he met and fell in love with Jordan. When marriage became legal they were married. It was only then I learned that BD was actor BD Wong. That’s when I realized I had heard of the birth and hospital stay. Wong had written the book Following Foo: The Electronic Adventures of the Chestnut Man. The boy was named Jackson Foo Wong. That book had been on my to-buy list until I heard Wong and Jackson has split up. It is now back on my to-buy list. I highly recommend this book. Sigh... on to news of Ukraine. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos again discussed the Russian tactic of not engaging on the battlefield, but instead of pulverizing cities. Another example of this is in the city of Chernihiv, northeast of Kyiv. There is a bridge on the south side of the city that Russia would need to cross on its way to taking Kyiv. But Russia destroyed that bridge. Part of that means Russia isn’t going to send troops from Chernihiv to Kyiv. But the other part means they’ve destroyed the way for supplies to get in and for refugees to get out. Now they can sit back and lob missiles. Dartagnan of the Kos community has said Biden, Harris, and other Western leaders have started saying they will protect “every inch” of NATO territory. That phrase is a way of annoying Putin. The story begins back when the Soviet Union was dissolving and Russian leaders were anxious about NATO expansion. During preliminary discussions with Gorbachev Secretary of State James Baker used the phrase that perhaps NATO would expand “not one inch to the east.” That would be difficult to pull off because it would mean Germany could not reunify. Its use also earned Baker a scolding from Bush I. Baker never said the phrase again and it doesn’t appear in any official signed documents. But as recently as last December Putin has been making the claim that “not one inch” was official and that the West cheated on whatever treaty by admitting Poland, the Baltic states, and other Soviet states into NATO. So for Biden to now say that he will protect “every inch” of NATO territory will sting. Which is good. More of this story is told in the book “Not One Inch” by M.E. Sarotte. Kos of Kos discussed why so many Russian generals have been killed in Ukraine. The US military has professional officers who went to college and enlisted men who usually stick around for a 3-4 year term. Those enlisted men who re-enlist can be noncommissioned officers or NCOs. These are the mid level guys with years of experience who actually make things happen. But the Russian military doesn’t have this middle layer of leadership with years of experience. And that means two things (at least): First, the people training the fresh conscripts don’t have years of experience, which leads to vastly insufficient training. Second, it means the generals have to be in the field to make sure things happen. Where they can get killed. Russia is really proud of its Navy and considers the Black Sea to be its domain. So it is a big surprise to see a ship blown up in the Sea of Azov port of Berdyansk. A munitions warehouse exploded too. It is also a big victory for Ukraine. Watchers aren’t sure how (or if) Ukraine did it. Videos show no sign of an incoming missile. About the same time the Ukrainian flag was raised on the Kherson city hall. And that happened about the time Zelenskyy addressed the leaders of NATO saying:

Never, please, never tell us again that our army does not meet NATO standards. We have shown what our standards are capable of. And how much we can give to the common security in Europe and the world.

In another post Sumner wrote:

On Wednesday, Russia reportedly issued a demand that its oil, and the gas it ships into Western Europe at a price of over $700 million, be purchased in rubles and only rubles. This would require that nations seeking to buy Russian fossil fuels first purchase rubles with dollars, then buy the oil or gas with rubles. In terms more familiar to the average person—Russia is only going to accept payment in Chuck E. Cheese tokens, so you have to buy tokens first. The immediate goal of this is that it should help prop up the price of the near-worthless ruble. In fact, just the announcement has the ruble halfway back to the 0.014 dollars it was selling for before the invasion got rolling. But it could also have an effect in terms of chipping into the dollars role as the one and only international petrocurrency.

That could lead to destabilizing the global economy. Sumner discussed a thread by Levi Westerveld who pointed out the progression of maps that the New York Times used over the weeks of the war. The first one showed the areas Russia held in strong colors with Russian troop movements in red thrusting arrows. No sign of Ukraine resistance A week later the NYT map muted the color of the held areas and reduced the size of the arrows. Still no sign of resistance. In the third week the Ukrainian resistance is finally shown. Wrote Sumner:

Those New York Times maps tell a story — but it’s not the story that the Times graphics department set out to tell. They give a visual approximation of the way pundits, both in the pages of the NYT and elsewhere, have treated Putin’s war from the outset. First as an inevitable Russian walkover, then with snide assurances about Russia’s inevitable victory, and finally with a grudging admittance that Ukraine is actually playing a role in its own future.

Also in this post Sumner mentioned that almost all of Russia’s oil and gas production is already under contract to be paid in dollars or euros. So that demand to be paid in rubles won’t happen for a while. Also, Poland is refusing to pay future contracts in rubles.