The election comes to me

I was on the North Shore for an appointment and stopped in Highbury where I ran into an old friend, Shanan Halbert, the Labour candidate for Northcote Electorate. Actually, he'll be the MP for Northcote if everyone votes! #letsdothis #nzvotes #nzvotes2017 #nzlabourparty #auckland

A post shared by arthur_amerinz (@arthur_amerinz) on Sep 12, 2017 at 8:29pm PDT

Today two different parts of the election popped up in front of me. Because New Zealand is a small country, it’s not surprising how, well, inescapable the general election becomes. This suits me, of course, because I’m a political junkie whose passion is everything to do with electoral politics, campaigns, the election process, and how policies are put into action by elected representatives. Today all of that came together for me, and I wasn’t even looking for it.

I was on the North Shore for an appointment today, and I decided to swing by Highbury, the village and shopping precinct in Birkenhead (also known as "Birkenhead Village"). I mainly wanted to go to The Warehouse and the Countdown supermarket there, and as I was walking through the shopping centre, I ran in to the chair of the local Labour Electorate Committee, who told me the Labour campaign team had a marquee out on the street, and that I should go say hi.

So, off I went and as I walked closer I saw someone I didn’t know taking the marquee down, and then I also saw Shanan Halbert was there, too (Michael had told me he’d left). It was a nice surprise. I met Shanan in the 2014 campaign, where we were at many of the same events and got to have some good chats. I ran into him around the community over the years since, including even the grocery store.

Shanan is running an awesome campaign to be the MP for Northcote, which has been fun to watch from afar, but I haven’t run into him until today. I was about to leave, then I remembered we’re in the social media age, so I went back and grabbed a selfie with him (photo above; not that it matters, but this is the version I shared to Instagram, since my personal Facebook is not public, so I can't share posts here).

The selfie was a bit of a comedy, really. For a long time now, I’ve been posting photos to Facebook using Instagram, so when I switched phones I never gave Facebook access to my phone’s camera. Add to that the fact the Facebook App has changed since I last posted a photo directly, and it took me a minute to get it all set up. Fortunately I DID know what I was doing, but for a moment I could feel what an older person must feel when confronting unfamiliar technology. The humour in the situation, together with my relief at solving the problem, is actually in my face.

Shanan was a good sport about it all, of course.

I had the trip to the grocery store next, then on to a second grocery store (because the two sell different products) before heading out on the drive home.

Once I got home, I checked the mail and found that our Easy Vote Packs had been delivered (photo below). Easy Vote is a card a voter hands to the folks working at the polling station to make it easier and quicker for them to find your name to cross off the list. However, a voter doesn’t have to bring the card in order to vote (or anything else, for that matter).

I knew that the Easy Vote Packs were being delivered to New Zealanders this week, so it wasn’t unexpected, but I had no idea I’d be getting it today. And while I knew that Labour volunteers had been out in Highbury, I didn’t know that Shanan was there. So, two different parts of the election popped up in front of me today. That was unexpected, but very welcome. My passion really is everything to do with electoral politics.

When I got home, our Easy Vote Packs were in the letterbox. The Easy Vote cards aren't absolutely necessary, but they do make voting quick and easy. #nzvotes #nzvotes2017 #lifeinnz #letsdothis

A post shared by arthur_amerinz (@arthur_amerinz) on Sep 12, 2017 at 8:33pm PDT

Arthur Answers, Part 1: Viel vergnügen beim Tanz

Today I start answering the questions posed in this month’s Ask Arthur series. Just like every other time I’ve done one of these, I’ll group questions that are related thematically, by subject, etc. Today is a good example of that.

The first question today comes from long-time friend, Sherry, who asked: “Do you remember a school dance we went to together?”

I absolutely do! These days, it seems, my long-term memory is better than remembering, say, what I had for lunch. Be that as it may, that was a significant event for me because it was one of a handful of dates I ever went on with a girl, and the only high school dance I ever went to.

The dance was, as far as I can remember, near Christmastime, and it was a “turnabout dance” in which the girls asked the boys. Sherry and I knew each other through church, but I can’t remember if we had any classes together. I’m also not entirely certain what year the dance was: I think it was in December of our sophomore year of high school (second of four years). That would make it the end of 1974, when I was 15.

When I was a teenager, it was common for young gay boys to date girls in high school and at university. My first-ever date (tenpin bowling) was with a girl from church, and that would have been in eighth grade (when I was about 13 or 14). In those days, with no real social acceptance, no gay-straight alliances, and no positive role models, most of us just never thought that we could live open, happy, authentic lives. Instead, most of us, including me, just assumed that one day we’d marry a girl, have kids, and that was that. That wasn’t denial—it was more like resignation, with a fair dose of delusion thrown in.

I doubt that many of us ever thought through the implications of living out a life that wasn’t true to who we were, but I came up with a complicated strategy to try and have the “happily ever after” everyone else got to have, something I wrote about several years ago.

As a teen, aware of who I was, but also believing I could never live a true and authentic life, I knew I had to learn how to function in “their” world; I had to learn how to seem to be one of them. I realise how sad that may sound, but it was actually quite useful for keeping me safe for many years afterward. However, it had an even odder way of helping me: When I moved to a new country and had to fit in, it was easier for me because I’d already learned how to do that, how to observe how other people acted and what behaviour was appropriate and what wasn’t.

When I was a teenager, none of the boy-girl stuff came naturally to me, so I had to be coached. For example, my mother had to teach me how to slow dance, something that never even occurred to me until she mentioned it. It was a “you don’t know what you don’t know” sort of thing.

I don’t remember a lot about the dance—it was a very long time ago—but I remember it was a nice time. Male fashion in the mid-1970s was awful, as we all know, and I if I was wearing what I think I was wearing, it was bad. I do remember that Sherry was very pretty, though, and I certainly enjoyed her company.

Some weeks later, the German Club at our high school was planning a trip to Zum Deutschen Eck, a German restaurant that was located at Southport and Oakdale in Chicago from 1956 to 2000. However, there was a huge winter storm at the time of the trip and the trip was cancelled. It turned out to be the last time I ever asked a girl out.

Some five or six years later, I was at university and a girl I knew asked me out to dinner and a play. I agreed, though I was pretty sure she saw it as a date, not just friends out for an evening, and that made me uncomfortable. By that time, I was starting to come out, though hardly anyone knew it. I ended up coming out to a mutual friend, who would have told her. Not the best ending to that story, and had I known what to do, and felt safe to do so, I’d have handled it differently. Neither was the case at that time.

A few weeks/months later, I went to a gay bar for the first time, danced with other guys, and then met my first boyfriend. I was 22. The rest, as they say, is history. I found out I could have a true and authentic life, that I could live happily every after, just like everyone else. And, things are so much better for gay teens now than when I was young.

Both Sherry and the other girl from church also found happiness, and both now have great families—and I’m friends with both on Facebook. So, all’s well that ends well, and all that: We all found our way into happy adult lives, and that’s the important part.

Next up, Roger Green asks: “You asked the reverse question to your straight male readers, who is your big female crush?”

What Roger’s referring to is a question I once posed on one of his “Ask Roger Anything” posts, one I borrowed from Rove McManus, an Australian TV presenter who hosted a talk show called Rove Live. He often asked guests he was interviewing a series of rapid-fire questions, one of which was, “Who would you turn gay for?”

It was tongue-in-cheek, since, as we all know, that’s not how people work, but the larger point was which person of the same gender people could see as attractive “in that way”, so to speak. I remember when then-Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was on, he was asked the question and answered something about his wife was the only person for him. I rolled my eyes. At the time, Rudd was an opponent of marriage equality (though he later evolved).

For me, the answer to the question is even more complicated.

Over the years there have been a few women who I’ve seen as attractive “in that way”, mostly actresses, and none of whom I can remember the names of. However, Roger’s question was broader, about crushes. Even that’s a little problematic.

The truth is, I don’t remember having any crushes on a female at any age, though I definitely had crushes on other boys. When I was in sixth grade (roughly ages 11 and 12), all the boys were fixated on one girl who seemed older than we were because her development was a bit more advanced than ours, or that of the other girls. In retrospect, I think the boys all thought she was easy, even though I don’t think that was the case, and, anyway, none of the boys would have known what to do if they were right. I didn’t share their fascination, of course, but I did try to pretend I did, since that seemed to be the appropriate behaviour for boys. She was never a crush for me.

If I loosen the boundary of the question even more, I do remember being fascinated by some women, including Karen Carpenter, Linda Ronstadt, newswomen Linda Ellerbee and Jessica Savitch, along with some girls and women I knew in real life, but none of them were actual “crushes”.

What both these questions get at is the fact that I’m a Kinsey 6 (someone who is a six on the Kinsey Scale of sexual responses). In practice, that means that I’m drawn to women for their minds, talents, and spirit—the kind of people they are, in other words, not their “attractiveness” (which is relative, anyway). This is true for most of the men I’ve known, too, of course, but the difference is that whenever I was single, there was still never any possibility of an attraction to a woman, no matter how wonderful (in any sense) she was, while there could have been that possibility toward a man.

This is just the way I’m wired. Even though teenage me thought I had to learn to act and pretend to be straight, it didn’t change the reality of who I was—and am. This is why I was never any good at dating girls, and it’s also why I don’t think I ever had a crush on a female.

And so it goes.

The title of this post is one of the phrases we had to memorise in high school German class. It means, basically, “have a good time at the dance” (not a literal translation, though). I still remember that phrase and the only high school dance I went to, and that’s not a coincidence.

Internet Wading for November 2016 – Looking and listening

I like sharing things I find on the Internet that I think are interesting for whatever reason, and that’s the point of these Internet Wading posts. One might think that since I missed doing one of these posts last month, I’d have a whole lot of links to share this month. Turns out, that would be an incorrect assumption.

Still, what I have this month is a typically mixed bag—a small bag, but mixed, nevertheless, beginning with the video above from Wired: “The Psychology Behind the World's Most Recognizable Sounds”. The YouTube description sums it up well:

Two sonic branding experts explain the thinking behind some of the world's most recognizable sounds. Featuring: Andrew Stafford - Co-Founder & Director at Big Sync Music. Steve Milton - Founding Partner at Listen.

Well, that’s a bit of sound, about some vision? “17 stunning photos of black Victorians show how history really looked”. It says:

All too often, the movies and media and books that retell the stories of our past err on the side of all-white casting unless it's something that's explicitly about race. And all too often, they use "historical accuracy" as an excuse for that same whitewashing — regardless of the easy-to-find evidence presented above.

They say that "history is written by the winners." But I think it might be time to set the record straight.

I haven’t shared anything from Upworthy on this blog, I don’t think, and I stopped sharing anything on Facebook quite some time ago because it was all clickbait with no substance (typical headlines often ended with “…and you won’t believe what happened next”). But the site started to post more substantive things and began focusing on video. As part of that, not only were posts bylined, they were also dated—previously one of my pet peeves about the site. In any case, this post was interesting—maybe others will be, too.

How about something that crosses the Pacific? “Faith Fraud: the story of Arthur Worthington” tells the story of Arthur Worthington, who was “a con artist who travelled the USA, marrying rich women then abandoning them and stealing all their money.” He fled to New Zealand, started a religion, and when the law started to catch up with him again, caused a riot in New Zealand. The Radio New Zealand podcast available at the link asks not only why he did it, but also “Was he a common crook? Was he psychopathic? Was he a true believer?”

Part of the reason I didn’t do an Internet Wading post last month is that I was posting a lot about the election, including a series of posts that are similar in some ways to these posts—but a bit more serious and completely political. This posts are called “Political Notebook”, and I’ve decided to keep doing them, though I don’t know if they’ll be on any sort of schedule or not.

In any case, the election didn’t go well, and it took some time to decompress. Maybe something otherworldly would help? Roger Green tells us about being hypnotised and a realisation he just had about the experience. I have a small mention in that post; full disclosure and all that.

Maybe some pretty pictures would help. Jason shares fall colours and the last of summer flowers, which I appreciate even though it’s Spring here. It was another nice distraction from the election unpleasantness.

Okay that’s enough Internet Wading for this month. Even that short dip was making my skin pruney.

Worth Quoting: Richard Hills

Yesterday, my friend Richard Hills made his maiden speech as the newly elected Councillor for Auckland’s North Shore Ward (the other Councillor, Chris Darby, with whom he ran as a team, was re-elected). It was a good speech, and I wanted to share it, so why not make this the first “Worth Quoting” post featuring someone I actually know?

The video above is the entire first part of the day, and the start of his speech is at 11:41. Or, the video's on YouTube, and the link will go to the correct spot. Richard also posted his speech on Medium, where it be read in its entirety.

But I wanted to share part of it here:

I’m committed to working for better more efficient public transport, Shore Rail, more safe cycling and walking connections including Skypath, addressing climate change, the housing crisis and homelessness, protecting our parks, beaches, reserves and native bush, putting more effort into youth engagement and initiatives and making sure council is seen in a more positive light with increased community input to become a more people focused organisation.

By becoming more people focused, our community might feel more positive about us. We need to talk about people more.

Public transport isn’t about buses or trains, it is about people, how they get to work or around our city in a faster, less stressful, more efficient way.

Cycle ways aren’t about cyclists they’re about people who want to ride bikes safely and make room on the roads for other people.

Young people are just people that happen to be younger than us. I have worked closely with young people across our city for years. They have hopes and dreams, they have a lot more experience than we give them credit for, they love living here too, so let’s respect their ideas and thoughts and plan a city with them for their future not just short term fixes for today.

There’s much more of course, and is well worth reading or watching.

It’s always nice when a friend does well, and I know that Richard will be a good Councillor, and his speech is a good indicator of why I know that: It expresses who he really is, what his values are, and how he sees the world. As I’ve said many times, he’s the real deal.

All of which definitely makes him worth quoting.

After the visit ended

Earlier this month, I posted about the tenth anniversary of my friend Jason’s visit to New Zealand. His visit ended ten years ago today—technically: By date, it was yesterday, but October 26 was a Thursday in 2006, so I chose today to mark the end of that visit. This has been a nostalgic reminiscence for me, of course, but also tinged with a bit of melancholy: It’s been a reminder of how hard it can be to be an expat.

When Jason entered the departure area at Auckland International Airport (the photo at left was taken just before he walked through the gate), it started the clock ticking until I next saw him. That clock is still running. He hasn’t made it back to New Zealand, and we haven’t made it back to the USA over the past ten years.

Of course, I went alone for a short trip in December 2007, but I only went to Illinois, and, anyway, I’d seen Jason only some 14 months earlier. I assumed we’d be back soon, or maybe he’d come to visit us, but neither happened.

In fact, very few people have come to visit us in the two decades I’ve lived in New Zealand. Friends have visited us from the USA four times, and three of those trips were within the first five years after I moved to New Zealand. Only Jason’s visit was later, just before my eleventh anniversary here. No one has visited us since, and no one from my family has ever visited.

Since 2006, we've met other visitors to New Zealand, people who it seems a little dismissive to describe as merely people I’ve met through the Internet (chiefly through podcasting), though that really is how I know them. But they were visiting New Zealand, not us specifically. So, in a sense, those visits were similar to me meeting Tom of the Ramble Redhead podcast when I was in Chicago in 2007: I was in Illinois for other reasons, and met up with him.

In those same 20 years, Nigel and I have visited the USA twice, the last time we visited together was 17 years ago, and my solo visit was nearly nine years ago. I visited my family on all three trips. Clearly the lack of visits works in both directions.

The reality is that when someone moves so very far away, it takes a lot of time and money to visit, and having both at the same time can be difficult. A trip in either direction can easily cost more than $10,000 (in either currency). We’re not part of any airpoints scheme, so we pay for our airfare to and from the USA. Flights within the USA are expensive, and then there’s accommodation, food, and sightseeing to add in. That’s also not including shopping, especially for things we can’t get in New Zealand.

For people visiting us specifically, there are somewhat lower costs, particularly if they’re part of an airpoints scheme. If they’re visiting us, they have no accommodation costs, obviously, and their sightseeing costs depend on what they want to see, and where. So, even people visiting us, as opposed to the country, may have costs every bit as high as we do when visiting the USA.

This is something that many people don’t fully appreciate until they move far away from their homeland: In a very real sense, they may be cut off from friends and family back in their homeland. Skype, Facebook, and email are nice but they’re not the same thing as an in-person visit.

On the other hand, those things DO exist, and they’re better than nothing. When I moved to New Zealand, Skype didn't exist, Facebook didn’t exist, and only a couple friends used email. So, my options were very slow letters posted back to America, or expensive international phone calls. I felt quite cut off back then. Things are definitely FAR better now than when I first arrived.

And yet, I wish it were possible to see and visit with people from my homeland—here or there—more often and more easily than it actually is. But, it isn’t, so I treasure the memories from the visits I’ve been lucky to experience, use the Internet as a “better than nothing” option, and continue to try and find a way to organise actual visits.

So, that’s why these memories have been a bit a melancholy. I can, when I think too much about it, get quite sad about the people I don’t see. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but over the past couple years several friends I very much wanted to visit with again, died. The older we get, the more that will happen. That’s life.

Earlier this month, I wrote:

In my early years in New Zealand—maybe even for as much as a decade—it sometimes bothered me how family and friends in the USA didn’t come to visit. It also sometimes bothered me that we couldn’t go back to the USA as often as I would have liked. But time marches on. I don’t know that one ever gets used to the reality of the scarcity of visits, but, out of necessity, one certainly learns to cope. That has to be enough.

It does have to be enough. It’s one of the hardest things about being an expat. And that’s precisely why remembering things like Jason’s visit matter so much.

A bit like all happy memories, really.

Footnote: Jason and I have been friends since 1969, which is truly amazing because obviously we weren't born until a decade later…

Jason and I in Aotea Square, Auckland, October 26, 2006. Auckland's Town Hall is behind us.

Related: All Jason’s 2006 posts on his trip to New Zealand share a tag to make them easier to find. Oddly, I never tagged mine; I really should fix that.

Ten years ago the visit began

Ten years ago today, my long-time friend Jason arrived in New Zealand for a visit, his first to this part of the world. He was also the last overseas visitor to stay with us (so far). All of which makes today a special day.

We saw and did a lot over the three weeks he was here, including some things I hadn’t seen in the decade I’d been living in New Zealand. So, it was a great sightseeing trip for me, too. I haven’t been back to most of those places since.

Jason planned on a return trip to New Zealand, but so far hasn’t been back. Similarly, Nigel and I also haven't been back to the USA in the years since. So, the rarity of visits in either direction is another thing that makes that trip ten years ago so special.

In my early years in New Zealand—maybe even for as much as a decade—it sometimes bothered me how family and friends in the USA didn’t come to visit. It also sometimes bothered me that we couldn’t go back to the USA as often as I would have liked. But time marches on. I don’t know that one ever gets used to the reality of the scarcity of visits, but, out of necessity, one certainly learns to cope. That has to be enough.

It would be nice if the time, distance and cost of travel weren’t so great, or if they could hurry up and invent Star Trek-style transporters. But it seems unlikely that anything will change the reality that living on the other side of the world from one’s homeland means separation.

And that’s why visits like Jason’s ten years ago are something to be treasured and remembered fondly, not just for their rarity, but mainly for their importance. And so I remember that day ten years ago, and the rest of the days over that three-week visit and I celebrate them.

And, I always will.

I took the photo above ten years ago today, and used it the blog post I linked to. It may look somewhat familiar, since I've used it a lot over the years.

Endorsing around

Most of the time, it seems, we only get to vote for a political candidate who’s merely “okay”, or maybe just “not as bad” as the other one. But, if we’re lucky, sometimes we get to support a candidate enthusiastically. Most of the time, that’s probably from a distance, a politician we don’t actually know. This year, I get the chance to support people I actually know and can enthusiastically support.

Nominations for our local government elections closed on Friday, and among the candidates running for Auckland Council from our ward is my good friend, Richard Hills, who I’ve mentioned a few times in the past. Here’s what I said on Facebook:

I've known Richard for several years now, and I can honestly say he's the Real Deal: Honest, hard working, committed to and passionate about making things better for our communities, and he's relentlessly positive. Those may be rare things in many politicians, but they all describe Richard. I've worked with him on political campaigns and projects in our local community, so I've personally seen all this in action. I'm honoured to count him as a friend, and I couldn't possibly be more enthusiastic about endorsing him for Council.

I hope everyone in North Shore Ward will join in me in helping to elect Richard Hills to Council!

I shared a post Richard had made on Facebook that included the graphic above. He wrote:

Big news. After a lot of discussions and encouragement from across our community, I have decided to stand for the North Shore Ward. I love this place and I want to be a part of positive change for our region, I will continue to advocate for more efficient and affordable public transport, walking and cycling initiatives and Rail to the Shore, parks, sports field and reserve upgrades, and making sure young people have just as much say as everyone else in the decisions for our future. I am excited but I do need your help. Please like my page https://www.facebook.com/RichardHillsCouncil/ and please donate here, anything big or little will make a huge difference. Each billboard costs $40 and $30 is 1000 pamphlets. I would appreciate your support.

I’ve taken part in political campaigns for 40 years this year, and I supported candidates even before that. But most of the times I’ve been able to cast a vote for a friend, it’s been here in New Zealand.

Richard’s also seeking re-election to the Kaipātiki Local Board (campaign graphic at right), a position he’ll have to forfeit if he is elected to Council, and two of his running mates on the Kaipātiki Voice ticket this year (Ann Hartley and Lindsay Waugh) are also friends I can enthusiastically support, so I’m really lucky. I said on Facebook about them: “The entire team has done a great job, and I'm sure the five of them will do even more great things for the Kaipātiki community in the next term,” though, as I said, if Richard is elected to Council, he can’t serve on the Local Board, so there will be four of them.

Here in New Zealand, with politics that are far less detached and formal than in the USA, it’s not hard for someone to get to know a politician personally, or to become friends with them—even politicians with a national profile. It’s one of the things I truly love about this country.

And so, because of the informal nature of New Zealand politics, when I used the word “endorsing” in my Facebook post, I was really being a bit playful, not just because ordinary people like me making “endorsements” is kind of unimportant, but especially because that’s not really a thing in New Zealand. In the USA, who does (or does not) endorse a candidate is treated like news, with journalists turning in numerous stories about politicians not endorsing other politicians, or not rescinding such endorsements when they’re provoked.

In the USA, it’s expected that high-profile politicians will receive endorsements from politicians and famous people, including celebrities, all of whom may be transferring some of their aura onto their chosen candidate—though some clearly want to get some of the politician’s. We just don’t have that in New Zealand.

In this country, newspapers don’t make political endorsements, and it’s a given that national politicians support others of their party (or remain silent) because of party discipline central to the Westminster-style system of parliamentary democracy. In local races, where the national parties barely compete (if at all), prominent members of a community will sometimes band together as supporters of a candidate, but even that’s pretty rare.

In New Zealand, politics on the local level is mainly personal—who voters know or, at the very least, have heard of. Personal recommendations can matter, but real endorsements of the type Americans are so familiar with are pretty rare.

So, by using an unusual word, I was kind of hoping to subtly underscore my message. Because this year, I get the chance to support folks I actually know and can enthusiastically support. I hope my fellow voters will join me in voting for my friends, because they truly deserve our votes.

5 Signs You're Getting Older

This is the third video by my friend Paul Armstrong that I’ve shared—and this one isn’t about food! Actually, most of his videos aren’t about food, but the other two I shared were because they gave me a starting point to talk about something. This one does, too.

The video is about, as the title says, “5 Signs You're Getting Older”. I exhibit some of these signs, but not all of them (and I’m older than Paul, I might add…). There are two in particular he mentioned that I’ve heard plenty of other people talk about, too, but that I don’t experience. The first is that I don’t have any trouble sleeping/staying asleep, and the other is that I almost never have to get up in the middle of the night for a pee.

Some of the others are only partly true, or have been true in one form or another for a very long time, and he didn’t even mention some of the other things I experience. Maybe I need to do my own video on the topic. Well, not this week.

I think it’s great to see people who are, say, 45+ making YouTube videos, and for many of the same reasons I like seeing so many young people making videos: It provides a shared sense of community, and an awareness that one isn’t alone in facing particular life challenges.

Last year, I wrote about “All the young dudes” on YouTube, and how their success was due, in part, to demographics: Older people tend to use YouTube less than younger people, so that audience is smaller, and so, the older voices are rarer. It really shouldn't be like that.

Paul’s videos are about his experiences and adventures (some of which are about food…), are just a reflection of the life of gay guys our age. In other words, it’s the same as for the young dudes and dudettes of YouTube, but our experiences and concerns are very different because we’re at a different point in our lives. So, just as the young ones do for their age peers, Paul and a few other older YouTubers are providing a voice for older folks, which is awesome.

I think there’s a particular social good that comes from all this. The young gay dudes can help other young gay dudes to find the strength and courage to come out and live open, authentic lives, and to help them feel less alone. Similarly, older gay YouTubers can do the same for our age peers, many of whom are dealing with the mirror problems of young gay men: Ageing in a society which doesn’t acknowledge there are older gay people, preparing for retirement, and doing all that carrying with us the memory of what it was like to live in more hostile times. I’ve seen this play out in podcasting, so I’m sure it must be even more pronounced among older YouTube viewers.

One of the things I love about YouTube is the wide diversity of voices. I just want to see them be a bit more diverse, particularly with respect to age. I’m glad that Paul is there, providing a sense of belonging for our age peers—along with the occasional video about food, of course.

Cheesy

My friend Paul Armstrong has made another food video, this one demonstrating how to make a grilled cheese sandwich. And, just like last time, I was launched into the food differences of two countries. Plus a bit more.

First, the more: Who cuts crusts off bread?! Aside from Paul, I mean (and he got some teasing about that). The lady who I sometimes called my “adopted grandmother” used to make lunch for me on Fridays while my mother ran errands and such. She told me to eat my crusts. “It’ll make your hair curly,” she said. I had no idea why she thought I wanted curly hair, but I ate my crusts, anyway, because I liked them.

So, apart from the crust removal, another thing I noticed is the white bread. I’ve rarely had white bread since I was a little kid, and now nearly always have some sort of multigrain bread because I now prefer bread with something to it. But, that’s all about preference and taste.

The thing that captured my stares was the cheese. “Ya know," I commented on the video, “after all these years I'm now surprised every time I see American cheese and how orange it is—ours is a pale yellow (and our butter is a deeper yellow than American butter). Interesting how different such things are.”

But I realised as a result that I had no idea why American cheddar is so orange in colour. A New Zealand cheesemaker once told me that New Zealand cheddar was the colour it is—a yellow ranging from pale to golden—because dairy cows in this country are grass fed. He said that's the same reason that New Zealand butter is a pale yellow and US butter is nearly white (American cows get dry feed).

He was right about why New Zealand cheddar is yellow, but it didn’t answer the question as to why American cheddar is that shocking orange colour. Turns out, that’s complicated.

The orange colour comes from ground Annatto seeds, which are tasteless and used as a colouring agent. On this point all the sources I found agreed, but there’s some disagreement as to WHY they do it.

The consensus is that the colour was added to standardise the colour of cheese from batch to batch, particularly because cheese produced at different times of the year will have a different colour due to the different diets of cows. NPR said it may even have come about because of what they called a “17th Century Fraud”.

A less sinister reason was offered by Jeanne Carpenter of Cheese Underground, who speculates it was a marketing move to distinguish Wisconsin cheddar from that made in the East of the USA. New England in particular didn’t use colouring.

Kiwis often ask me about the USA’s “orange cheese”, usually with a screwed up nose and general grimace. “What’s THAT about?!” they often add. Now I know, and you do, too.

Tonight I made us grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner (photo below). I used multigrain bread (crusts intact) and New Zealand Edam cheese, which is a pale yellow colour, a bit paler than Tasty, the medium variety of factory-made cheddar we sometimes buy, and it has about 20% less fat than Tasty cheese, too—which I promptly ruined by frying the sandwiches in butter.

That brings me to my final question: Why is it called “grilled cheese” when it’s actually fried? It turns out: “Grilling usually involves a significant amount of direct, radiant heat, and tends to be used for cooking… quickly”. It differs from frying in the higher heat and the shortness of the cooking. Apparently. A “grilled cheese” sandwich would typically be made on a griddle, though most people—me, my mother, Paul in the video—use a fry pan.

And all that is because a friend made a tongue-in-cheek video about making a grilled cheese sandwich. I love the Internet.

Bon appétit!

It’s never just a PBJ

The video above is from an actual friend of mine, not just some random YouTuber, but I’m sharing it for the same reason I include all the others on this blog: It gives me a starting point for a larger topic, in this case, food and being a binational.

The video is by Paul Armstrong, who I met many years ago through podcasting, and who has been one of my inspirations for that medium as well as my own currently paused creation of YouTube videos. It’s precisely because I actually know him that it never occurred to me to share or mention his YouTube Channel, though I should have.

Paul makes all sorts of videos, some of them kind of tongue-in-cheek instructionals like this one, others are out in the world doing things, along with many other topics. Several of the videos also feature his husband, which is a nice bonus.

I like Paul’s videos, not just because he’s a friend or because I like his camera work or whatever (though all that’s true), but also because there aren’t that nearly enough active personal YouTubers who are much above 30. Earlier this year, I wrote about the cute young dudes who make YouTube videos and noted in passing that I was in an under-represented YouTube age demographic, so I appreciate seeing videos made by folks who reflect more of my life and reality.

Which brings me to this video. Paul shows how he makes a “peanut butter and jelly sandwich,” which led me to comment on the video:

My mother always buttered the bread for my PBJ sandwiches, so I do, too. My mother also cut the sandwich on the diagonal, but THAT I don't usually do—no idea why.

In New Zealand, "jelly" means gelatine dessert (like Jello brand in the USA). So when I used to talk about a "peanut butter and jelly sandwich", Kiwis got kind of grossed out—I don't blame them! So, now I always talk about a "peanut butter and jam sandwich", but to be honest, most of the Kiwis I know think even that sounds weird.

In a reply, Paul said, “You mean she put butter on the bread before the peanut butter??? Why?” and the short answer is, I have no idea. However, it was butter out of the fridge, which meant there were often chunks of butter under my peanut butter, and I loved it! I remember that with bologna sandwiches (or other sandwich meat), too.

But there’s no getting around deviation in different countries’ cuisine, and talking about it raises another: New Zealand doesn’t have US-style bologna, but has luncheon (also called “luncheon sausage” or even sometimes “devon”, though I seldom see that name in the store). It looks like bologna, and tastes somewhat similar, though I think it’s quite different.

So, as a newly arrived immigrant, I had to negotiate linguistic minefields around food: Always referring to jam, not jelly (even now, I sometimes slip), and being confused by different names for the same thing (luncheon and devon). And all of that was stirred up by watching a video that wasn’t even about food differences.

Being binational, as I often say, sometimes means being between countries, caught between the familiar and the foreign, the comfort of our past and the excitement of our future. It still amazes me how the simplest things can stir up that awareness.

So, to me, that video was more than just a tongue-in-cheek explanation of how to make a PBJ sandwich: It was a brief stop in that space between my two countries.

Remembering Kit Duffy

Kit Duffy in April.

This morning, I was working on a new post and decided to go to the original source, which was on Facebook. I arrived just minutes after the official announcement that a dear friend and former colleague from my activist days, Kit Duffy, had died. I was frozen for quite a few minutes.

This post is a revised and extended version of what I posted on my personal Facebook.

Kit had recently had heart surgery and had several complications. One of her friends visited her in hospital and posted updates to Kit’s timeline, which meant all her friends could be kept up to date. Things didn’t seem to be going well, and I feared that she might not make it. She apparently died peacefully, which is what we all hope for when our time comes.

I met Kit when Chicago's Mayor Harold Washington appointed her as his liaison to the city's LGBT communities, and through her work she practically copyrighted the term "straight ally". Since I was a grassroots LGBT activist at the time, our paths crossed MANY times. We had a lot of wonderful chats during those years, and I learned so much from her: She wasn't just a friend, she was an important mentor, as she was for so many activists in that era.

More recently, we reconnected on Facebook, as I have with so many old friends, and we shared a lot of fun and laughs along the way. I am so very grateful for that, and so sad that we never had the chance to meet up again in real life.

She was a very important part of the struggle for the civil and human rights of LGBT Chicagoans, and throughout the state. "Kit's fingerprints are on almost everything we have in the gay community in Illinois today," another former activist colleague, Rick Garcia, said for Kit’s obituary in Windy City Times. "I really think that she is the midwife of the successes we have in Illinois,” he added. I agree.

She was a friend to so many, and she was respected even by people who disagreed with her politics, which is a testament to her, I think, and so very rare these days. She was one of a kind, and I honestly don't think we'll see someone like her again.

I'll miss Kit terribly, but I'm happy that she didn't suffer.

Farewell, my friend—and thank you for everything.

The photo of Kit above is a cropped version of a photo she posted on Facebook last April, as she took part of Chicago’s mayoral election. She remained true to her progressive politics and values to the very end.

See also: “Kit Duffy, liaison for change”, part of Windy City Times’ AIDS@30 series.

TEDx: Riva Lehrer

I simply cannot believe I didn’t post this video months ago! The only person I’ve ever known personally who’s done a TEDx, and I forgot to post the video—this is inexcusable. I adore the speaker, and always have, and there’s a story there, of course.

This video is of a TEDx Grand Rapids talk called ‪”Valuable Bodies” by artist Riva Lehrer. I’ve known her since the mid-1980s when we worked for the same company. I immediately saw that she was a kindred spirit. One year for my birthday she made me a 3D fluorescent dragon on fluorescent card stock with an impossibly bright stone for an eye. I kept it for many years, and lost it only when I moved to New Zealand. Much to my regret!

‬She’s gone on to far bigger and better things since we worked together, and has done what I think is amazing work. I also think the YouTube description talks of her work pretty well:

Portraits are power struggles that take place on either side of the easel. They answer the question of whose life, and therefore whose death, matters. Disabled people have rarely been portrait subjects, and have largely been absent from the the walls of art museums. Riva Lehrer discusses how her work takes on this history of invisibility, and why portraits of stigmatized people have a real effect on who does, in fact, live or die in our contemporary world.

Riva Lehrer is an instructor in medical humanities at Northwestern University, and an artist/writer focusing on issues of physical identity and the socially challenged body. Her work has been presented across the nation, including at the United Nations, Smithsonian Museum and the Chicago Cultural Center, and featured in numerous documentaries, including The Paper Mirror and Self Preservation: The Art of Riva Lehrer. Her writing and art have also been included in publications such as Criptiques and Sex and Disability.

TEDx events are independently organised by a local community, expanding on TED, and bringing it local. There have been a lot of really great TEDx talks, and this is only one of them.

Riva is an amazing person, an amazing artist, and one of the best people I’ve ever known. In addition to TEDx, she’s also one of the handful of people I’ve known who have a Wikipedia entry. But, all that’s beside the point: Her work and her vision are all awesome in their own right. But, I met her before all that, and her humanity and presence shone even beyond all that, and even way back then.

I simply cannot speak highly enough of her or her work. Which is why I'm so embarrassed to realise I didn't share this video months ago.

Static Era: ‘Sleeping Dogs’

The music video above is the newest from Static Era, whose lead singer, Emma G., became an online friend when we had conversation on Twitter when I was working on my NZ Music Month posts last year. She’s a pretty awesome person, actually.

The “Sleeping Dogs” music video was written, directed and edited by Mike Kumagai at Ruth and Jimby Media. The full credits, along with the song lyrics, are in the video’s YouTube description.

The song is part of Static Era's debut album Fit To Fight, which available through their online store, as well as iTunes, Google Play, or Spotify.

Now, it’s safe to say that hard rock is not actually my “thing”, but I’ve liked quite a lot of their songs, including this one. I also really like this video. As Emma said on Facebook, “it's a bit of a different style video to ANYTHING we've ever done (thank you Mike Kumagai for the nudge) but I'm stoked with how everything turned out.” She also pointed out, “Oh, and for the record, it's not ACTUALLY based on true events… the worst I do is write songs, not… this.”

Emma is soon off to the USA to take up a new job, which sounds very exciting for her. Well done, and good luck!

When a friend leaves

This morning when I logged on to Facebook, there was a message waiting. My friend Grant wanted to let me and a mutual friend of ours, Vernon, know that a woman who had been one of our activist colleagues in Chicago had died. Bad way to start a day.

Ninure Saunders lost her battle with cancer that morning (Chicago time), apparently, after what had been a valiant, though long and tiring, struggle. When I didn’t see any new posts on Facebook for quite some time, I suspected that she might not be doing well, though I had no idea who to contact to ask.

Ninure and I met more than 30 years ago—in 1982—when we both worked at a telemarketing firm. We became friends, and she and I, and another guy we worked with and became friends with, would sometimes get together for drinks after work. At the time, I really didn’t know many other people in the city.

She’d been plagued by health problems her whole life, including arthritis that gave her a lot of pain and eventually led to her needing a walking stick. She also had bad eyesight, and was pretty much legally blind, though she did have sight.

One night after work, she and our friend and I were hanging out at my tiny apartment. We were drinking vodka and Kool-Aid (hey—don’t judge: I was in my early 20s!). For some reason I still don’t really understand, we thought it would be a good idea for her to mix the drinks for us. The euphemism “over served” was a bit of an understatement, and it was the only time in my life when I was drinking and lost time. We laughed about that for years afterward.

Sometime later, we both volunteered for the Illinois Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the grassroots organisation I gave many years to and have mentioned before. We eventually both became officers—me treasurer, then secretary, she was membership director then female co-chair.

There are many stories from those days, not all of them pleasant, of course—war stories never are all positive—but I think another friend from that era, Tim, summed it up well on Facebook:

“Our old Illinois Gay & Lesbian Task Force group from the 70s & 80s keeps getting smaller. When we, all of us, weren't driving each other nuts, we could unite and battle like nothing you've ever seen. Not bad for a rag tag bunch of volunteers. Wonderful memories. What a fighter she was. RIP.”

And she WAS a fighter—and an effective one. She contributed to far too many victories to count, and was passionate about justice and fairness. She had a quick wit, a warm openness (she loved hugs) and was a great person to have in-depth political discussions with.

She was also a devout Christian, one of the areas where we diverged, even then. I was still a Christian in the early years of our friendship, but not like she was. More importantly, she also lived her Christianity to the best of her abilities, and it informed her commitment to social justice.

One time around the mid-1980s, I was complaining about some religious right person saying or doing something awful against LGBT people (some things don’t change…), and I said that the guy clearly wasn’t a real Christian. She gently chided me: “You can’t know what’s in his heart,” she said, adding that he might come right, basically. I took that advice to heart for decades, and really only changed in recent times when I noticed that radical right folks who called themselves Christian were condemning mainline Christians (my own background) as being “fake”. Times change.

We changed, too, and drifted apart in the very late 1980s, though we eventually became friendly again in the 1990s, then even later, friends on Facebook. So, I was aware of her declining health, though she clearly didn’t want to dwell on it.

I miss those early days, and especially the early days of our activism. It was all still fun and exciting back then, even if we tended to lose more battles than we won. Tim’s right: We really COULD “unite and battle like nothing you've ever seen”, and also laugh about it all. It kept us from despair.

So, goodbye, Ninure. I’m sorry we never got the chance to have one last hug, but at least your pain and suffering have ended. I’m grateful for the fun times we had together, and I thank you for making my life better. I may not share your religious beliefs, but I’ll say the closest appropriate thing I can sincerely say, quoting from the late Irish comedian Dave Allen: "Thank you, goodnight and may your God go with you." She would have appreciated that.

The photo of Ninure up top is from Facebook, though I have no idea who took it. I'd use one of my own, but I'm not sure where my photos from those days are at the moment. If I find them, I'll probably change the photo to one of my own.

A post for Roger

Anyone who’s read the comments on this blog or listened to either of my podcasts knows of Roger Owen Green, and how much respect I have for him. His comments, whether here, on another site or on his own blog are always thoughtful, and the topics he writes about on his blog are as varied—and interesting—as you’ll find anywhere. He’s one of the bloggers I would most like to meet in real life.

Real life: Sometimes it just catches up with you. This past week, Roger’s mother passed away after suffering a massive stroke.

I wanted to post something here, but frankly I wasn’t sure if it was a proper thing to do, but—thanks to Roger—I see that at least one blogger has done that. So I will join him, and the commenters on Rogers site, in extending my condolences to Roger and his family.

The largely artificial Internet life is all too often detached from real life, and we lose sight of the real-life humans we’re interacting with. Yet the Internet can also deliver connections we’d never have had otherwise. I hope that the support and aroha Roger is receiving from around the world helps comfort him in this sad time.