I had intended my site’s first blog post to be a reflection on the phenomenon of sexual nostalgia, currently under research by social scientists at New York University, according to a piece in the February issue of Psychology Today. However, in light of recent events, a topic on negotiating my own penchant to romanticize past partners at the expense of a current partnership seems ill-timed.
Reading about and secondhand witnessing the fatal Capitol police shooting of a Trump loyalist and QAnon devotee during Wednesday’s near-overthrow of a democratically sound presidential election shifts my focus to another strand of nostalgia. …
As the Omaha-bred rockers of alternative radio fame commemorate three decades of music making, this 311 Head reflects on growing up with the best band in the land
According to its etymology, which is the same as that of mission, a message is always composed of truths sent (missus) to a person, a group, a period in time, to satisfy an expectation and sometimes to answer a call for help. — Jean Leclerq, O.S.B. in the introduction to Thomas Merton’s Contemplation in a World of Action (1971)
Can you get with / a melding of two minds? / What’s the worst thing you could find? / A paper trail / that prevails / in demystification? / People / want to believe / in mysteries / Is the truth so bad? …
A recent study suggests unsheltered are twice as likely to die. What can we do before it’s too late?
As of the time of this writing there were 1.7 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 recorded internationally with a death toll nearing 106,000, according to the World Health Organization. The United States, NBC News reports, now has the lead globally in total deaths caused by the virus with over 20,000 dead. …
As accusations of witch hunting, lynching and inquisition fly among Trump and his Republicans, it is high time white men think more seriously about our whiteness and how we use it
While House Democrats sift through witness testimony to build an impeachment case against Donald Trump, his Republican cronies are rallying with thanatophobic desperation, calling the investigation an “inquisition” and recently interrupting a closed-door inquiry under the purported aim of upholding government transparency.
Keeping in mind Ambassador William Taylor’s bombshell report to House investigators, the irony is striking.
President Trump, true to form, is playing the mouthpiece for his political party’s collective death anxiety, going so far as to call the inquiry “the greatest Witch Hunt in American History” and equating the impeachment inquiry to a “lynching.”
The victimizer is suddenly the victim — a gendered and racialized one at that. His plight no less pressing than the plunder to which American blacks have been historically subjected by whites, or women of all races by white men. …
As the meaning of Title VII comes under review, queer visibility is our greatest defense
I was called into the assistant principal’s office of the all-boys Catholic high school where I taught in my mid-20s for a scheduled meeting with two pompous officials from the diocese. They wanted to “discuss” a request for permission I made to host a guest speaker for a schoolwide assembly on the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
At the time, around 10 years ago now, I was the moderator of a student-led human rights awareness group on campus and had made a connection with a local chapter of the American Friends Service Committee. Through this contact I was given the opportunity to schedule a keynote address from a U.N. representative and member of the AFSC. …
He is 26 years older than me. We have been going together since June.
He is not the first person with whom I’ve been intimate who could be mistaken for my father. This is how it has always been for me. While not the rule, my sexual preference — whether by brain chemistry or cultural conditioning or both — tends toward men with silver-specked hair or none at all who’ve grown up a generation or two before me.
I know there are plenty others, past and present, just like me (and you). Yet we seem rare breed. Popular depictions of gay romance typically prioritize culturally acceptable pairings between men of equal age with statuesque bodies. Very little do we get glimpses into gay male life as it exists for “May-December” couplings in part because these relationships are often deemed predatory — even within the gay community. One is trying to suck the lifeblood of the other — be it in terms of youth or money or status or … . …
