Leoht’s “tech” handbag is one of those things you won’t necessarily need, but may really (really) want. As you might have guessed, it’s a purse for modern times. The bag’s simple, black leather exterior is stylish, but it’s what’s on the inside that’…
It’s been a huge week for marriage equality. Florida became the 36th state with the freedom to marry, judges in three southern states heard oral arguments, and the Supreme Court considered cases from five states. Plus a lawmaker in Texas is wasting everyone’s time with a new anti-gay law that would make life difficult for everyone.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral argument in several cases last Friday. That includes a crucial case from Louisiana. In September, Judge Martin Feldman upheld the state’s marriage ban — one of the only federal judges to rule against gay couples in the last year. Now that that the couples have appealed that anti-gay ruling, it’s looking good for the Fifth Circuit to reverse it. At Friday’s argument before a panel of three judges, only one seemed interested in upholding the ban. The other two were intensely skeptical. We could have a ruling there any day now, along with decisions in Texas and Mississippi.
For the last few weeks, anti-gay groups have been putting forth their best efforts to stop marriage from starting in Florida. But as luck would have it, their best efforts just weren’t very good. With marriage starting last week in Florida, about 70 percent of the country now enjoys the freedom to marry. There are still several lawsuits in Florida that need to be worked out. But state attorneys are suddenly a lot less eager than they were a few weeks ago to stand in the way of marriage. In fact, last week the state quietly told a federal court that they’re not even going to bother submitting a reply in the case responsible for the legalization for marriage. Attorney General Pam Bondi hasn’t had anything useful to say about her ongoing litigation for several weeks. And at this point it seems like the only organization actively fighting marriage is Florida Family Action, a fringe group that’s filed a few nuisance lawsuits that were almost immediately thrown out of court.
But there’s still plenty of work to do in Florida. Besides those remaining lawsuits that need to be resolved, the state still needs to bolster its non-discrimination protections, particularly for trans people. It’s still legal to fire someone for sexual orientation or gender expression in Florida. In fact, now that we’re close to winning national marriage equality, it’s likely that our opponents will start giving up on marriage, and instead focus on passing laws that make it easier for them to discriminate.
In Indiana, for example, Republican state Senator Scott Schnieder may introduce a bill this week that would allow businesses to refuse service to gay couples. And there’s an even crazier law under consideration in Texas. It was introduced by Representative Cecil Bell Jr., and it would force Texas courts to dismiss all marriage cases and exempt Texas from having to obey the U.S. Constitution when it comes to marriage for gay and lesbian couples. So, can Texas actually do that? No, obviously not. This law will probably never pass — and if by some miracle it actually did, there would be instant lawsuits to overturn it. Bell knows that, and he’s only sponsoring this bill because he also knows that someone else — taxpayers — will have to shoulder the cost of settling that litigation. If Bell was actually held personally responsible for the consequences of his own pointless laws, he would probably suddenly be a lot less eager to put them forward.
In other news this week, Idaho Governor Butch Otter asked the Supreme Court to take one more look at undoing marriage equality. A new survey from the Rand Corporation shows public support for marriage equality at an all-time high: 62 percent. A judge in Georgia has allowed a marriage case to move forward.
The hierarchy-organized business is declining in importance. Senior business CEOs, as board members and senior managers, are now blogging or tweeting messages directly to staff. The two founders of Google have frequent company-wide forums that personally or electronically allow every employee to address direct questions to the founders.
While these changes are new in business environments, informal and formal relationships between nonprofit boards and staffs have been in place for decades. It’s an important factor in the success of a nonprofit because the staff must understand the board’s depth of commitment to the nonprofit’s mission, vision and values. Also the staff may only be one or two organizational levels away from the board.
Most importantly, many of the staffs are directly motivated by their commitments to the nonprofit’s mission. One highly able nonprofit staff person I know, dedicated to helping foster children, stayed with her nonprofit job–supporting her daughter in medical school while her husband was unemployed for 18 months.
Following are what board members need to do to keep this motivational benefit at a high level:
• They need to participate in celebrations of organization successes and other social events, in order to show appreciation for what the staff has accomplished.
• While the CEO must be the nexus of communications between the two groups, it should not be unusual for board members to meet informally with senior staff members or other key staff personnel. Of course, the CEO must be apprised of these meetings and their outcomes. There is always the inherent danger that some staff members will try an “end-run” to the board, circumventing the CEO, when they are dissatisfied with a salary or position. For an able CEO, it is a danger that comes with the territory and has to be anticipated with new board members ahead of time.
• Staff input is crucial for major decisions, and staff members need to interact with board groups in conducting major program reviews. The CEO needs to strive to create an atmosphere in which staff members feel free to express opinions in these reviews. At the university level, the process is called “shared governance.”
• When confronted with a particularly difficult issue, an excellent means of communication is a board/staff workshop. Such a workshop brings board and staff members together in a more relaxed setting. The interaction between the two groups enhances the quality of decision-making.
• There are also secondary benefits, as a workshop enhances professional communications between board and staff and engages board members in meaningful hand-on projects.
BTW: Nonprofit organizations need to share their experiences with small and medium sized businesses. Many of these are new to the relationship between board and staff. For example, board members of a chemical firm might want to personally interact with senior chemists developing a new product that has a significant investment behind it. This is a for-profit relationship that a board member would never have considered prior to the experiences of Enron, et.al., and then subsequently suggested by Sarbanes-Oxley.
QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — A Pakistani official says gunmen have attacked a checkpoint in southwestern Baluchistan province, killing seven paramilitary soldiers.
Abdul Haleem says the attack took place early Monday in the mountainous Mekhtar region in Lorali district. Lorali is 250 kilometers (155 miles) northeast of Quetta, the provincial capital.
Haleem says the checkpoint started taking fire after midnight, which continued for hours. The official said he did not know who was behind the attack.
The province is home to Baluch separatists as well as various al-Qaida linked militant groups.
Years ago I told myself not to worry about a devil…that it’s all in my mind. Then I realized that’s the worst place it could possibly be.
I don’t think there’s an external devil stalking the planet for men’s souls, but I do believe there’s a point of consciousness in all of us – whether we call it shadow, dark side, devil, or whatever – that is not a beautiful thing. When this aspect is allowed to drive our thoughts and behavior – whether as an individual or as a group — it isn’t just neurotic. It is beastly.
We can pretend all we want to that this doesn’t exist. We can insist that reason, civilized behavior, international law, and civic institutions have the upper hand; we can be grateful for the fact that any group psychosis is over there somewhere and surely can’t affect our daily lives. We can believe those things, but more and more now we know they aren’t true. Today, the beast is stalking the planet and it’s way too close to the barricades.
And how do we fight a collective psychosis, spreading like cancer and beginning to attack the major organs of our civilization? Whether it’s ISIS in the Middle East, lone crazy people taking up the cause, foreign fighters or domestic jihadists…the question on everyone’s mind is, what do we do now?
Americans are very good with a to-do list. Just tell us what to do, and our national character is such that we can usually do it. We can liken the Nazis as well as the Japanese Imperial Army during WW2 to operable tumors that were brilliantly and surgically removed by Allied forces. But today’s terrorist threat is not an operable tumor; it’s more like a cancer that’s already metastasized. It is wrapped around vital organs, constantly multiplying its hideous malformations. Invasive measures and surgical removal are not enough to handle this one. We’re going to have to boost our immune system … we need to deal with cause and not just effects … and it would be a very good idea to pray for a miracle.
A holistic model of healing does not just apply to a physical body; it applies to a social body as well. Right now, our primary mode of fighting terrorism is allopathic, focused on suppressing and eradicating external symptoms. Clearly those symptoms are deadly, and the most powerful allopathic treatment is called for.
But the holistic paradigm emphasizes mind and spirit as healing modalities too. Internal powers should not be seen as the weaker step-sister of brute force. In fact, at this point the use of brute force in fighting terrorism is doing as much to create enemies we don’t have yet as to kill the ones we do. No one knows this better than those who are applying the brute force, yet we’re caught in the inescapable bind of having to apply it nevertheless.
So what are the internal powers that need to be identified, how do we harness them, and what strategies best put them to use?
In seeking to answer these questions, we are confronted by challenges more difficult than one might imagine. On an external level, our problems involve strategy, police, and military. On an internal level, our problems are no less difficult – not because they’re complicated so much as because they challenge the very notion of what it means to be a civilized society in the 21st Century. We need to ask a deeper question than, “What should we do?” We need to ask, “Who should we be?” And even more importantly, “Who should we be to each other?
A rally of 2 million people on the streets of Paris is a beautiful show of solidarity, ultimately even more so if it becomes a template for how we live our lives each day. We need to join as brothers and sisters now, not just as a reaction to tragedies, but as a way of preventing tragedies. Every decent man, woman and child at that rally felt like they belonged to something, felt they were part of something, felt they were standing for something meaningful that day….and that is the answer. What could be a more horrific irony than that jihadists say they feel a sense of community. Only one thing is more powerful than a brotherhood based on hate, and that is a brotherhood based on love.
Humanity needs to understand this: it won’t be enough to only express our love for each other after a horrific event has occurred. We are challenged, if we are to survive as a species, to change the very bones of our civilization – to shift from an economic to a humanitarian model — in order to even come close to diminishing the presence and decreasing the rise of monsters in our midst.
That is the only way we will adequately counter not just acts of terror, but even more importantly the radical, hate-filled philosophy that inspires them. As any expert will tell you, there is no way to track down and stop anyone who has ever been radicalized by a hateful cleric. A dark consciousness is the root of the problem, and our biggest difficulty in addressing it is our refusal to give consciousness any credence at all. A purely materialist perspective is inadequate to the task of formulating an effective strategy to combat terrorism, for that very reason. We will not create an effective way to win this contest until we are willing to acknowledge the ground on which it’s being played. And to play back on that level.
When it comes to terrorism – and when it comes to defeating it — feelings do matter, clerics do matter, and philosophy does matter. This battle is being waged on deep subconscious levels. The force now tapping into the darkest corners of the human psyche will only be defeated from the most light-filled corners of the human heart. Terrorism is hatred turned into a political force, and the only thing powerful enough to fundamentally override it is to turn love into a political force. But that, we will not be able to do until we are willing to make love more important than money, and others more important than ourselves.
First let’s look at money, and then let’s look at us.
Money runs politics in America today, which means financial interests determine the allocation of resources to everything from military to education to humanitarian expenditures. On a geo-political level this is devastating in its effects, at home and abroad, because it leaves untended such dangerously high levels of human despair. Large groups of desperate people anywhere in the world should be considered a national security risk, because desperate people are far more vulnerable to ideological capture by genuinely psychotic forces. Until America deals with the fundamental issue of the corporate takeover of the U.S. Government, there is no reason to think that the driving force in our foreign policy will ever be a true desire for peace. When our leaders talk about protecting “America’s vital national interests” around the world, they’re more likely to mean protection of Halliburton, Shell, Monsanto and Exxon, than protection of the the 17,000 children who starve each day, or the billion human beings on the planet who live on less than $1.25 a day. There is so much unnecessary desperation, poverty, alienation, and hopelessness that the Western world has allowed to fester, and so many points of hypocrisy in our own international actions for which we owe atonement and amends. At this point, America’s problem is not just that some people hate us; it’s that a lot of people who don’t actually hate us, don’t like us either. Those who don’t actually hate us have become more and more easy to radicalize by people who genuinely do.
Actually, though, the problem today is not radicalism but a lack of radicalism. We lack the radicalism of love. By this I mean the deliberate, intentional, spiritual, transcendent, devoted, courageous, committed, proactive love of people who have awakened to the absolute necessity – if we are to survive as a species — of seeing every hungry child in the world as a child we must feed; each transgression against the earth as a limiting of our grandchildren’s chances to survive on the planet; every uneducated child as a security risk; and every thought or action of love as a contribution to the field of energy that alone has the power to drive the monstrous scourge of terrorism back to the nothingness from whence it came.
Some people seem more willing to die than to change their minds, and that is the question before us today: are we really willing to die rather than evolve beyond the obsolete, unsustainable principles that currently organize our civilization? This is the revolution now to be waged: a revolution of consciousness, as we change our thoughts and thus our behavior and thus our institutions and thus our voting patterns and thus our government and thus find in time that we have changed ourselves.
Any conversation less radical than that simply plays into the hands of those who despise us. Terrorism is a manifestation of the accumulated moments when humanity has chosen not to love; but we still have the opportunity to choose again. We have the power to override the heinous efforts of those who terrorize, to overrule them and nullify their malevolence. First, however, we have to override our resistance to doing so. We must overrule our ego-based reticence about surrendering to love and making our lives its instrument. That is the contest which matters the most. Are we willing to rally to the cause, not just one day in Paris, but to the best of our ability every hour of every day of every year, not only when it’s easy but also when it’s difficult? Any moment when we don’t, is an inch of ground we cede to the terrorists. Any moment when we do, is a moment when we gain the upper hand, turn on the light that casts out darkness, and do the work of transforming our civilization into the sustainable, beautiful, and wondrous thing it is meant to be.
Guns alone can’t do it. Bombs alone can’t do it. Surveillance alone can’t do. But with God’s help, we can.
Marianne Williamson is a best-selling author and activist. www.marianne.com
When’s the last time you listened to Spotify on your PC? It might have been a while, according to the company’s latest stats. The streaming music service says that 52 percent of listening now takes place on phones (42 percent) or tablets (10 percent)…
The late Joan Rivers was famous for pushing the envelope as hard and as far as possible. One of her signature lines (“Can we talk?”) may disappear from the vernacular in years to come.
In recent years, the phrase “That’s so gay!” has come under fire for its pejorative use by younger generations. But for those who lived through the Stonewall riots, the Castro clone subculture, and the darkest days of the AIDS crisis, “That’s so gay!” often had quite another meaning. Whether used to describe performance art or fashion, “That’s so gay!” indicated recognition and approval of someone’s effort to stand out from the crowd.
From Stewie Griffin to Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple In All The World; from The Ambiguously Gay Duo to Queer Duck, some characters and popular entertainers are so flamboyantly gay that there is simply no point in arguing about it.
The Bay area’s oldest and largest gay theatre companies scored strongly last fall with shows that were custom made for gay audiences. One had previously been presented in 2012 at DIVAFest; the other was a raucous world premiere that made the most of a limited budget and the playwright’s fertile imagination.
* * * * * * * * * *
Although I’m allergic to cats and have absolutely no appetite for cunnilingus, I fell head over heels in love with Pussy. Maura Halloran’s insightful and often hilarious monologue allows her to do a tidy bit of shapeshifting as she transforms herself from the feline mistress of her owner’s apartment into the following three women:
Halloran’s idea for building a monologue around pussy came from real life:
“Originally inspired by a lesbian couple I knew in Vancouver whose insane indoor cat loved one woman and hunted the other as prey, this piece grew to explore ‘outsider’ identities in queer community, mixing my own narratives of faith, divorce, and abusive relationships and generous interviews with queer friends and artists. Very loosely based on true events, this piece is a tribute to the tribulations of trying to find your groove when you don’t like the music. It’s a tale of love, sex, love-sex, hate-sex, vampires, unicorns, softball, faith, and three outsiders whose fates triangulate around one spectacular cat. “
Maura Halloran in Pussy (Photo by: Claire Rice)
Beautifully directed by Claire Rice, Halloran’s 60-minute performance piece is an absolute delight. Whether slithering around her owner’s apartment, stalking and destroying household objects on a whim, or portraying the three conflicted women whose interests in each other are more than merely sexual, Halloran delivers a mischievous performance filled with feline feistiness, a dictionary listing of the various types of dykes, direct challenges to Jesus, and some bitchy moments of betrayal.
Maura Halloran in Pussy (Photo by: George Rand)
Cat lovers will love Pussy. Lesbians will love Pussy. If you’re a fan of the Simon’s Cat series of animated shorts on YouTube and have yearned to see how a jealous cat might undermine a lesbian relationship, then you’re in dire need of some Pussy. Ordinary theatregoers will find themselves laughing at more pussy jokes than they remember hearing from Mrs. Slocombe on Are You Being Served?
Last, but not least, Halloran’s writing is exceptional. As Leslie calmly explains to her priest: “It is not clear in the Bible what Jesus thinks about lesbians, but it is pretty clear that he is okay with prostitutes.”
* * * * * * * * * *
Over the years, John Fisher has developed a reputation for being able to create a spectacle on an extremely tight budget. The artistic director of Theatre Rhinoceros recently wrote, produced, and performed in the world premiere of The Battle of Midway! Live! Onstage! at A.C.T.’s Costume Shop (a black box theater on Market Street). With music by Don Seaver (who accompanied the show on piano), this was one of the most delightfully tacky musicals to come down the pike in a long, long time.
If you’ve ever clapped your hands to show Tinker Bell that you believe in fairies, Fisher’s latest opus could be just your kind of thing. As he explains in his production note:
“The Battle of Midway! Live! Onstage! is a work of fiction based on fact. It is also a musical comedy. As history, it therefore should be taken with a bucket of salt. For the facts, the best books on the subject are Dan Van der Vat’s The Pacific Campaign, Walter Lord’s Incredible Victory: The Battle of Midway, and Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully’s Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway. And then there are the movies with Charlton Heston and John Wayne. I grew up loving all those loud war movies and ended up a pacificist, so what I’m left with is a love for all the campy posturing of the old flicks. This is my tribute to that genre. And I do think war is bad.”
Poster art for The Battle of Midway: Live! Onstage!
The show begins as Donald Currie totters out before the audience clad in a bathrobe and clutching a tiny American flag in one hand as he leans on his walker. Reminding the audience that, back in the good old days, people fought in a different kind of war — the kind where you had respect for your enemy — he barks: “Pay attention, you young whippersnappers!”
Currie later appears in drag as Martha — the wife of Admiral Fletch (John Fisher) — and dressed in a hilariously cheap costume as Midway Island.
John Fisher (Admiral Fletch) and Donald Currie (Martha) sing
“We’re Fifty” in The Battle of Midway! Live! Onstage!
(Photo by David Wilson.)
In between his constant admonishments warning the stuttering Admiral Fletch not to fuck things up, Currie’s Admiral Nim (short for Nimitz) continually locks horns with the sexy and successful young Admiral Bull (Justin Lucas), who has a tendency to rip off his shirt and start dancing or performing one-armed push-ups.
Admiral Bull (Justin Lucas) and Admiral Nim (Donald Currie) disagree
in The Battle of Midway! Live! Onstage! (Photo by: David Wilson)
When he’s not flying a Navy bomber or impersonating a board member of a gay nonprofit theatre, Lucas also appears in drag as Michiko (a Japanese girl in love with one of Emperor Hirohito’s brave pilots). At various points in the evening, he also appears with Katina Letheule as two snotty arts patrons. Yes, Virginia, it’s that kind of a show!
Kirsten Peacock (Hiro) and Justin Lucas (Michiko) sing “Young Love”
in The Battle of Midway! Live! Onstage! (Photo by David Wilson).
In between tossing barbs at foundations that are stingy with arts grants, the “other” gay theatre company down the street, and mocking his own reputation within San Francisco’s arts community as a character named “Jack,” Fisher is performing energetically as an incompetent Navy admiral. He is aided immensely by JD Scalzo in a variety of supporting roles. Special kudos go to props designer Gilbert Johnson (whose inventiveness has given the company a way to sink cardboard cutouts of ships using pencils to represent torpedoes).
Lacking an official choreographer, Fisher’s low-budget 2-1/2 hour mini-extravaganza wages air-and-sea battles that reflect the fevered imagination of a nine-year-old boy who sat in front of his family’s television watching Victory at Sea a few too many times. So let’s be brutally honest: When a musical comedy features a song entitled “Rosie The Riveter Was A Big Dyke,” an audience is fully justified in saying “OMG, That’s SO Gay!”
Naomi Evans (Rosie) and Kirsten Peacock (Posie) in
The Battle of Midway! Live! Onstage! (Photo by David Wilson)
To read more of George Heymont go to My Cultural Landscape
I’m a sucker for classic films, for the days when CGI was pure fiction, and films had to work with technological limitations and rely on, you know, like acting and cinematography and stuff. Call me crazy!
On the eve of the Detroit Auto Show, Chevrolet is finally ready to reveal details about the second generation of its groundbreaking plug-in hybrid vehicle. The 2016 Volt is new in pretty much every way, with a refined exterior and interior design, pl…
Author J.K. Rowling took to Twitter on Sunday to slam Rupert Murdoch for saying all Muslims “must be held responsible” for extremist violence such as last week’s deadly attack on the headquarters of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
On Friday, the News Corp boss said via Twitter that even peaceful Muslims are responsible for the “jihadist cancer.”
Maybe most Moslems peaceful, but until they recognize and destroy their growing jihadist cancer they must be held responsible.
— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) January 10, 2015
On Sunday, the “Harry Potter” author linked to an article about Murdoch’s comments and unleashed a verbal stinging jinx:
I was born Christian. If that makes Rupert Murdoch my responsibility, I’ll auto-excommunicate. http://t.co/Atw1wNk8UX
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) January 11, 2015
She didn’t stop there. She also pointed out that the faith of her birth had a few flaws of its own and (sarcastically) took responsibility:
.@dom209 The Spanish Inquisition was my fault, as is all Christian fundamentalist violence. Oh, and Jim Bakker.
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) January 11, 2015
After the two zingers, she completed a Twitter hat trick by working some numbers into the argument:
.@peeyushmalhotra Eight times more Muslims have been killed by so-called Islamic terrorists than non-Muslims. http://t.co/JXLfZOmcKl
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) January 11, 2015
If Murdoch has seen the tweets, he hasn’t responded. However, on Sunday he tweeted in remembrance of a Muslim hero — and victim — in last week’s attack:
Extraordinary scenes in Paris today, but do not forget the heroic sacrifice of Ahmed Merabet, Muslim police officer whose funeral was today.
— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) January 11, 2015
(h/t WMUR)
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.