Lucky Day

Today I woke up at 7 am when my alarm went off.
Over the past weekend I didn't get much sleep,
so I was highly considering going back to bed,
but instead I got up, beckoned by my laziness
to get dressed and take a walk.

For most of the summer I was getting up in the
morning and taking a walk, but since getting
back home from the World Gathering of Young
Friends in England and with the decreasing
amount of daylight in the northern hemisphere,
I haven't been sticking to getting up to take
my daily walk. I'm still eating about the same
amount as I was during the summer, but with less
exercise, which has obvious results.
I'm really glad after the fact that I didn't got
bak to bed this morning. Today became my lucky
day when I got outside to start my walk.

My regular walking route now is: walking to the
end of Wood St. (it's one way so I walk down,
facing traffic), turn left onto Main St., turn left
left ono Center St., turn right at Jefferson St.
(near where I used to live from ages 4-12), turn
left and go down Oak St., turn right onto Brunwswick
St., turn left onto Bowdoin St., turn left onto Main
St., go to end of Main St., turn onto other end of
Brunswick St. and then turn left onto Wood St.

Somewhere less than halfway down Main St. I found a
twenty dollar bill sitting on the side of the road,
wet and dirty from the melting snow and road sand.
Ipicked it up and dried a little bit of the water
and dirt off it and stuck it in my sweatshirt pocket.
Yes, it's warm enough for just a sweatshirt here in
Maine right now.

I can tell already that today is going to be a good
day for me. Now I know there was a reason, because
getting exercise, to go on a walk this morning
before breakfast and my internship. Praise God!
Amen.

Rent

Somewhere I still have my ticket stub from when I went
to see Rent in New York City at the Nederlander Theater
208 W. 41st St., between 7th and 8th Avenues. I was in
New York City for an exchange that Orono High School
had started with Walton High School, in the Bronx. I
was staying with Milagros, who at the time was a
senior in high school as I was also. Since neither of
us knew how to get to the theater, but had the address
of where it was, we set out early from her family's
apartment up on University Ave. All we had was the
street it was on, and knew that it was between 7th and
8th Aves. To get to midtown Manhattan from her apartment,
we had to take both the 4 and D on the subway and got
off at the 42nd St./Times Square stop. Once we figured
out where we were going, we got to the theater just fine,
an we were early, being the first ones in our large
goup, a mix of students and chaperones from Orono and
students from Walton.
I had some background information about the play before
we went to NYC, but not too much. I knew that seeing it
would change me, and it did. It was the first Broadway
type play that I had seen with a compilation of topics
ranging from poverty and homelessness, to drugs, AIDS,
and homeosexuality (a shunned, feared, and purposely
avoided topic in American society, but still ever prevalent).
One of my favorite scenes from the movie is when they are
all in the cafe after going to Maureen's protest to raise
awareness about homelessness. They go in hoping to relax
after seeing and talking to Benny at the protest, but
they discover that he is also in the cafe, at a table
beside them. Through this they are dancing on the tables,
singing and having a jolly good time. At first the seating
host doesn't want to let them in, because they have had
a reputation for coming in and ordering nothing, or
ordering and then not paying because of having no money.
They get let in really quickly when Angel flashes him a
$100 dollar bill. During that part, when I was at the
movie theater, I was laughing so hard that I was crying.
It's kind of hard to deny the hilarity of the situation
at the cafe and the events that unfold.
One of the saddest parts, as with the musical, is when
Angel is dying and then eventually dies from AIDS. It's
like the scenes from Angels in America: Millenium Approaches
when Louis visits Prior after the physical symptoms of
AIDS begin to show on his body, the dark reddish lesions
all over him. Collins, being his most recent boyfriend,
is with him in the hospital and on the subway when he is
going through the cold sweats and fevers and trying to
comfort him the best way he knows how, all the while
knowing that the inevitable is drawing closer and closer.
My favorite line of Angel's is actually heard after he
has already died: "I'm more of a man than you'll ever be
and more of a woman than you'll ever get."

My First Funeral --- for a high school classmate

This weekend I will be attending my first funeral ever.
Ironically, it happens to be for a high school classmate,
and someone who went to University College of Bangor with
me, though not in any of my classes or my degree program.
The really weird thing about this is that I just saw her
at school about three weeks ago. Since then, she has
gotten into a bad car accident and died from severe brain
trauma. She was one of the several people who was nice
to me in middle school while others either made fun of
me, or ignored me. We played basketball on the same team
in middle school too. Even though we were never on each
other's list of friends, I'm going to miss her. I'll
miss seeing her at class reunions and on the University
College campus.

Pendle Hill

This is what Pendle Hill looks like from a distance. Up close,
at the base, it is very intimidating and large.
We took four coach buses up to Pendle Hill, leaving from
the courtyard at Lancaster University that sits about halfway
between where our accomedations were, and where the dining hall
and Great Hall (where we met for daily worship, and had the
international dance) were. It took about an hour to get there
from where we were staying in Lancaster. On the way there we
passed dozens of pastures filled with cattle, sheep, horses
and some pigs. As we proceeded closer, the buses made a
gradual ascent up the terrain, which after a while turned
to very steep ground. By the time we emptied the buses,
we were upon a quite high altitude (for England anyways).

As we began the climb, it wasn't too hard. There were
Quakers from local meetings there leading the way for us,
and upon meeting them, we could shake their hand if we wished.
It was pasture-ish still in this area that we were in starting
out, but the path after a little while turned to rock. (No,
it didn't morph like that in front of our eyes, it was made
that way!) During the part where it started getting really
steep, I was feeling like I was dying, because I couldn't
breath, as the result that my exercise-induced asthma has
on my lungs when put under such stress as hiking, swimming,
or running. Of course I didn't have an inhaler with me,
and the one I still had from my previous prescription was
sitting at home, empty. I did take short breaks, as others
did, but didn't stop for too long because I didn't want to
give up.
I have done this before with the not giving up stuff,
like when I was on the track team my senior year in high
school and was at a track meet. I had just finished my
running event, the 1600 (aka the mile), and then was
whisked quickly off to the long jump (my other event),
still out of breath in the meantime. I was the last one
to do my jumps, and that day, despite being out of breath
and exhausted, I got my best distances that I ever had for
the long jump that season.
Back to more about Pendle Hill. I was wheezing the whole
way up, but didn't stop for more than a few seconds,
before proceeding on again. The feeling of relief and
accomplishment was so great when I finally got to the top.
I felt like Atlas lifting the world on his shoulder. On
the other hand, my outcome of this wasn't quite like the
one George Fox had many years before on this exact
location.
We got to the top and were greeted by about a dozen or so
mountain sheep. The sheep chased some of us, while some
of them ate the lunches of others. These weren't generic
sheep...they were armed with horns, so I don't think that
they were Quaker sheep. Oh well! Not every creature in
the world can be a Quaker, but wouldn't it be nice if
they could!

The Laramie Project and my tribute to Matthew Shepard

The Laramie Project is a play based on over 200
interviews. It chronicles life in Laramie, Wyoming
after the brutal killing of Matthew Shepard, a young
gay college student, who died bound to a fence in
the hills outside the town.

Quoted from Time Magazine (Oct 26, 1998): What people
mean when they say Matthew Shepard's murder was a
lynching is that he was killed to make a point. When
he was 21 years old, the world's arguments reached him
with deadly force and printed their worst conclusions
across him. So he was stretched along a Wyoming fence
not just as a dying young man but as a signpost. "When
push comes to shove," it says, "this is what we have
in mind for gays."

Three days after Shepard died, a crowd of around 5,000
gathered in the night on the steps of the Capitol in
Washington, in a candlelight vigil that struggled to
make another argument and extract another message from
his death. Ellen DeGeneres, Ted Kennedy and Barney
Frank, the openly gay Massachusetts Congressman --
all the expected speakers took the microphone. What
was less expected was the sheer turnout of lawmakers at
a moment when Congress was embroiled in the crazy
closing hours of the budget deal. So many members
showed up to voice their grief and anger that House
minority leader Dick Gephardt had time only to read
their names. "It speaks volumes about how much progress
we've made," says Winnie Stachelberg, lobbyist for the
Human Rights Campaign, the nation's biggest gay-rights
group. "Yet Matthew's death shows how much farther we
have to go."
Jeff Korhonen, 27, can explain the situation as well as
anyone else. He was raised in Cheyenne, his father a
career military man, his mother a Mormon, his grandfather
a First Assembly of God minister, and there was no dinner
conversation long enough for Korhonen to slip in the news
that he was a different kind of cowboy. Not until his
early 20s, as an exchange student in Florida, did he
come out, and there is something to be learned about
diversity in Wyoming when you hear Korhonen say,
"Orlando was like a gay Mecca to me."

The program done in Orlando, he went back home and began
his coming out. He moved to Denver for a while, which for
him was heaven on earth, but he wanted to finish college,
and the only way he could afford it was to go to Laramie.
His family by then had dealt with who he was and accepted
him.

"When I left Cheyenne for Laramie," Korhonen remembers,
"my father said, 'I know you're very proud of who you are,
but please, please watch yourself because there are people
who will want to destroy you simply because of who you are.'
I gave him a big hug and said, 'I know.' And then the first
thing I saw when I got to Laramie was a bumper sticker that
said HATRED IS A FAMILY VIRTUE."

Travis Brin, a 24-year-old welder, remembers being at parties
with Aaron McKinney, who was like a lot of people who talk a
lot. He had nothing to say.

"A total redneck," says Brin. "He'd say crazy, stupid stuff
about black people and gay people... One time he said we
ought to get all these people with AIDS, stick them in an
airplane and blow it up. But if you got up in his face, he'd
back down, because he was a punk, like any other young punk
you see on the street."

Police say it was McKinney, 22, and his quiet-man pal Russell
Henderson, 21, both high school dropouts, who met Shepard in
Laramie's Fireside Lounge. "After Mr. Shepard confided he was
gay, the subjects deceived Mr. Shepard into leaving with them
in their vehicle," reads the Albany County court filing of
first-degree murder, kidnapping and aggravated robbery charges
against McKinney and Henderson.

In addition to being an unspeakably gruesome crime, it was a
profoundly dumb one. After allegedly leaving Shepard hanging
on the fence on that rocky ridge just outside of town, McKinney
and Henderson drew attention to themselves by getting into a
fight with two other men. It was then, police say, that they
found a bloody .357 Magnum in the pickup truck, and Shepard's
wallet in McKinney's house. McKinney, by the way, was awaiting
sentencing for burglarizing a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Those who squirm over Shepard's life-style might have felt
more righteous last week when it was reported that he'd made
a pass at a bartender in Cody last summer, got punched in the
face and falsely reported to police that he'd been raped.
(No charges were filed.) If only a punch in the face were the
stiffest penalty for making a pass.

There's a touch of homophobia in the Wyoming legislature,
state representative Mike Massie of Laramie tells you. It's
a religious thing, he says. God has apparently channeled his
thoughts on gays through a few good ole boys in Cheyenne.

Four times this decade, Massie has co-sponsored antibias
bills; four times they've died. There's no problem with
enhanced penalties for crimes against race, religion or
ethnicity, he's been told, but if he doesn't drop sexual
orientation from the list, there's not a chance in hell.
Other opponents argue against special legislation for any
group or contend that existing laws are sufficient.

"I am so angry over the fact that it never passed," Massie
says, because now the nation can wonder whether, "gee, maybe
Wyoming tolerates this kind of thing."

And that, for all the legalistic hand wringing, is the most
compelling reason for such a bill. The symbolism. Politics
is at least half symbolism anyway.

"You know the quote: The only prerequisite for the triumph
of evil is that good men do nothing," said Graham Baxendale,
an Englishman who came to America in August to study, of all
things, hate groups. He teaches a University of Wyoming class
on "the implications and ramifications of hate crimes."
"Unfortunately," he said at a teach-in last week, "my job
just got easier." There's no telling how long it will last,
Baxendale says, but there is a dialogue in Laramie where
there wasn't one before, and it has spread through Wyoming
and beyond.

Shepard's body was taken home last week to Casper, where he
once played Little League and acted in local theater and was
always the littlest kid. Annie Spitzer, a Shepard family
friend known as Sister Annie at a Pentecostal ministry,
remembers a trip downtown with Matt when he was in elementary
school. "He saw a flag at half-staff, and he asked me, 'What's
wrong with that flag? Why isn't it all the way up?'" And she
told him, "Oh, that means that someone very important has died."
As she explained mourning, Matt hugged her legs.

Snow fell Friday at Shepard's funeral in Casper, where the
flags flew at half-staff and hate groups demonstrated not
far from St. Mark's Episcopal Church. Winter, beautiful and
wicked, is coming to Wyoming.