It's PRIDE month!!

All over, it is Pride month. I honor my LBGTQ friends by posting this photo from blog friend Kelly and calling everyone's attention to all the Pride activities going on. Portland had their big parade this past weekend and my friend Jen took her GSA club to join in. Way to go, Jen!
Bend is celebrating Pride all month long, but the Pride Day will be the 27th - across from McMenamins.
Here is a poem from Goodreads that I think speaks to the issue of acceptance quite well.


To the Observant Motorist Who Called Me Faggot
by James Davis

We have names for things we don't even understand.
The Doppler Effect, for instance. You have no idea

how it works, and neither do I, but I'm sure we both
can appreciate the way it splits

words into two clean syllables—
the fag from got, the it from fag.

I like to think of myself as a hyphen.
And as for what you think, well...

There's only so much I can learn
from these kinds of conversations.

Maybe to you I'm a pinata—gaily colored, filled with sugar,
battered open by blindfolded children.

Maybe in your life's game of Tag,
I am, perpetually, It.

Or maybe after all, I am nothing, something
approached, named, and sublimated.

I've thought of names for you—
several, in fact—but without a name,

you become a pair of taillights fizzling just beyond 8th Avenue,
and I remain forever in your past,

which, of the three available options,
is my first and only choice.

Here's to you, my friends!!