fflo | The heat's broken, and it feels like a good day.

I just came in from gathering half a pint of berries from the patch out by the road---didn't mean to let that patch grow, but I did, and it's easier to get to than whatever goes on with the ones in the back these days. Have to shut some of my cross-ventilation efforts, on accounta another rumbling bunch of rain is coming, after the downburst that brought the cooling (to the low 70s). It won't get wonderfully cool overnight tonight, but tomorrow night will be close.

Moved the laundry and saw that TCM is airing both Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt and The Celluloid Closet tonight. I haven't seen the former in years (I have it on now), and it's been a while on the latter, which I loved when it came out. I'll skip The Times of Harvey Milk, which they show next, as I saw it again earlier this year. Just cuz I wanted to hear the speech about coming out.

In '89, when the quilt was laid out in its entirety for the march on DC that year, I was there. A weird thing happened when you got to the quilt. You got quiet. And everybody else there was quiet. All the chatty, party-protesting wild queers --- and none of them pointing at details and talking to their friends about them, or saying anything. And it was really big. It was a really big lot of quiet in a really big space in the middle of a loud queer uprising.

That was before HRC and the mainstream butt-kissing part of the movement came along, steering the political effort toward moneyed people who wanted gay marriage and the right to be in the military. Not that we shouldn't have demanded those things. Just what I wanted was employment and housing protections, parental protections, rights to adoption, visitation rights, etc. And sure, if health insurance still had to be connected to employment and one's relationships, then give us that, while we try to free it up from relationships and jobs.

But I digress.

Before I stop, though, lemme just say that it's weird how mainstream Pride is this year. Past coupla years, but especially this year. I'm not crazy about it, although I guess it's good that the homos are sort of okay now. Not that it's necessarily gonna stay that way. And there's just something smarmy and gross about companies trying to look queer-positive. It was one thing when it was daring for them to do that. Now it's --- well, it's like the cultural thing is that LGBTQ stuff can just join the mainstream, somewhat anyway. But the problem wasn't that we weren't part of the dominant group. The problem wasn't that we got our place at the table. Sure, I smiled when I saw the Pride section at Target, if only to've lived so long to see it--- the dominant culture sure likes the "Pride" term and the rainbows. But our oppression wasn't about not being part of the club, and an open marketing target, and welcomed as normal enough, to whatever extent we're welcomed as normal.

That's enough for now.

Earlier today, I went to the SOS, which is Michigan for MVA, which is Maryland for DOV, which (I think) is Kansas for what most states call the DMV, or the MVD. I got my picture took for a new license. They show you the pic now & let you say yea or nay, and mine looked goofy, but I said yay, cuz why put too fine a point on it. Then 5 years later, you can renew by mail and have them use the same picture again, if you live in the same place, so you can go 10 years without a new pic. So it hit me that this may very well be the last driver's license picture I get taken. In 10 years I'd have outlived the lifespan of either of my folks, and, I dunno, all these people dying, and all the messaging I get all the time, and of course I'm thinking that way.

Geez, if I do live that long, I could maybe make it to retirement age. I wonder if I possibly could retire. It's always seemed like i couldn't. But I put together a long stretch of decent financial management.

It's very weird to think you're quite possibly if not likely in your last chunk of years.

It's also very weird to think how long ago it was that we started hearing about that virus they were soon calling HTLV-III.

So much is very weird, so really, how weird is it? It's not weird at all, at the same time it is.