SoHo, February 2007

Peace on Earth.
Love is all you need.
War is over.
Love thy neighbor.

(This is a magnet, so please spread the message.)

West End Avenue, February 2007

Our bitter cold spell persisted yesterday. I left work just after lunch to go to the post office, and even then - at the height of what should have been the warmest part of the day - I felt like the wind was flaying my skin. Face-numbing, brain-piercing cold.

Ironic, then, that I huffed and puffed my way to the Friars Club last night for an alumni reception for my subtropical alma mater, the University of South Florida in Tampa. (The reception was held in the Milton Berle room, where the chairs all bore the names of dead celebs. The one nearest me memorialized Dinah Shore.)


Met some nice people, including a woman who had some of the same classes and professors as I did, though in later years. I also met the university’s current president, and only belatedly realized I spent our few minutes together talking almost entirely about myself. (In my defense, she kept asking!)

I guess most people have a nostalgic affection for their colleges. Mine goes really deep, since my parents both taught at USF and I pretty much grew up on the campus. I did my junior high book reports in the college library and spent sick days off from school in my Mom’s office. I ate my first yogurt - Dannon boysenberry - in the USF cafeteria.


Anyway, after comparing notes with my fellow alumni about our experiences at USF and in Tampa, I came away thinking about hometowns.

You can really share a hometown with another person in name only. Their experiences of that town are so different - different streets, employers, neighborhoods. For example, the woman I talked to worked in a part of St. Petersburg that I always found incredibly confusing, and it made me realize that her perception of the Tampa area is entirely different from mine. Deep down, your hometown is yours alone.

El Jobean, Florida, March 2007

I was driving along in my rental car on Sunday when I saw this shadow on the wall of the Frosted Mug restaurant in El Jobean, a wide place in the road between Englewood and Port Charlotte. I pulled right over to take a picture, much to the amusement of a woman yakking on her cell phone in the parking lot.

I almost never ride in a car - not even taxis, because they're expensive - and until this weekend I hadn't driven in months. I'm amazed at the ease with which car rental agencies willingly give me a car! But once I get behind the wheel, all the driving skills come right back. It's pretty amazing how the brain works - all those reflexive motions are stored up in my neurons somewhere, and everything fires just right so I remember to signal and watch my blind spots. (Well, as much as any of us can ever see our blind spots!)

I don't miss owning a car, but they do feel wildly luxurious to me now. The fact that you can get in and go ANYWHERE, door to door, just blows this subway traveler's mind. So I had a lot of fun with my little rental, stopping whenever I wanted for whatever photos struck my fancy.

And now, back in New York, we actually had a snowstorm yesterday! It was the weirdest snowstorm I'd ever seen - heavy flurries whitened the sky, and then suddenly it was clear and sunny, and then we had MORE flurries. Now it's incredibly windy and 14 degrees. Which makes the photo all the more appealing.

Boca Grande, Florida, March 2007

I was in Boca Grande over the weekend, visiting a friend who is hugely pregnant and about to have a baby daughter. She had a baby shower, and several mutual friends attended, so for me the event was a combination baby-welcoming, reunion and vacation in the sunshine!

My friend's family has a beautiful house near the southern tip of Boca Grande, a barrier island that separates Charlotte Harbor from the Gulf of Mexico. My room overlooked the wide beach and a state park that includes an old, historic lighthouse at the very end of the island. I could lie in bed at night with the sliding door open, listening to the sound of the waves, and looking out every once in a while at the distant light's gentle strobe. Pretty amazing!

These photos show one of my favorite streets on Boca Grande, Banyan Street. It's lined with huge old trees that form a dark canopy, a merciful relief from the insistent Florida sun.


Until recently, Boca Grande was overrun by feral iguanas. You used to see them everywhere, flashing in and out of the undergrowth and sunning themselves on the footpath that runs up the center of the island. They were exotics, introduced, I suppose, by a pet owner who released them into the wild, and they were a nuisance. The town has recently been trapping them, and during this visit I only saw three. Most of the time, I saw native lizards like this little anole, sunning itself on a banyan's trunk.

It was a terrific trip. I'm happy for my friend Tricia and her soon-to-be-born daughter, whose name is still kind of up in the air. And it was great to see my friends Cherie (who's just turning 40...I mean, um, 35) and Jay as well.

I always love Florida so much when I visit, particularly under ideal circumstances such as these. The palm trees, the seashells on the beach, the smell of the salty, marshy air, the heavy morning dew. I can see why people flock there in droves. Fortunately, as remote as it is, Boca Grande has retained a lot of its charm.

Chelsea, February 2007

This is actually a self-portrait, but you have to look kind of hard to see me. (Blogs are SO narcissistic!) I took this outside the Empire Diner on 10th Avenue in Chelsea. I liked the round pattern of the tables and the round window, and inside that window on the far wall there's a round mirror, which is where you see my reflection. (I have my scarf over my head because it was COLD that day.)

Went out last night with some friends in Chelsea to watch "The Best of Everything" on the big screen. What a hoot. I don't know how I missed this movie in years past, but if you like late-'50s technicolor melodramas, it's, well, the best of everything! And I went with the same guys from my Poconos trip in January, so they know how to watch a corny old movie, with the proper combination of reverence and scorn.

I'm going to be away from my blog for a few days, until Monday morning. Have a good weekend!

E. 30th Street, February 2007

As I was walking to work yesterday, I kept noticing the quality of the light. It was brighter, warmer and deeper than it's been in weeks past. I noticed it several times during the day, sitting at my window in my office. Spring is definitely on its way.

So here's a parting shot of winter, taken just two or three weeks ago. I always like the way handrails throw their shadows on nearby steps, and in this case, a tree had also dropped a long, dried seed pod into the shot. (I think it's from a locust tree, but I'm no expert.)

Anita Bryant

I’ve been reading “The Mayor of Castro Street,” by Randy Shilts, about Harvey Milk and his political career in San Francisco in the 1970s. I’ve been thinking a lot about the ‘70s, and what it meant to be gay at that time.

I was 13 at the dawn of the ‘80s, so I was too young to know much about earlier gay consciousness. I remember Milk’s assassination, and I remember news accounts about the growing gay scene in San Francisco, from mustachioed guys with their arms around each other to the zany Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

But most of all, I remember Anita Bryant.

I guess that’s not surprising, since I grew up in Florida. As the pitchwoman for Florida orange juice, Anita was one of the most famous people in the state. A former beauty queen with a few hit records, she was repeatedly named the most admired woman in America by Good Housekeeping magazine. She was on TV all the time, singing about the Florida Sunshine Tree, with her big brown eyes and bouffant-ish hair.

I thought she was beautiful.

And then, to my young mind, she seemingly went nuts. In 1977, the newscasts were suddenly full of images of Anita being forceful, even angry, about “homosexuals.” She said “homosexuals” were out to convert children and subvert society and do all sorts of terrible things to our country. Her tirades were sparked by a new Miami law protecting gays from discrimination.

Did I even know I was gay in 1977 or ‘78? I was certainly attracted to boys in my class, and I certainly felt defensive when I saw mocking gay characters on TV shows like “Barney Miller.” I hadn’t embraced “gay” as an identity, but yeah, I knew.

When Anita railed against “homosexuals,” I knew she was talking about me. I felt a huge sense of betrayal by this paragon of Florida wholesomeness who always smiled and sang about orange juice. She was like a friendly aunt who suddenly and inexplicably turned vicious.

As soon became apparent, I wasn’t the only person who felt that way. Carried away on the tide of her own extremism, Anita lost everything. Her marriage fell apart. Her orange juice contract dried up. Her singing career went up in smoke. She got a pie in the face, and then vanished from television.

She won a reversal of the law in Miami, but her victory has been eclipsed by time and tolerance; Dade County once again protects gay residents from discrimination.

Anita has been both credited and reviled for helping to launch the religious right as a political force. Activists blame her for the standing Florida law that prevents gay parents from adopting children.

But she also galvanized the gay rights movement even more. And though the fight goes on, the movement is winning. With every generation that grows up in a more diverse world, and with every person who comes out of the closet, tolerance grows.

Even now, I have a soft spot for Anita.

I know, I know. In the gay community, and even in much of middle America, that’s only slightly less extreme than saying you have a soft spot for Adolf Hitler.

But really, Anita is merely a woman whose delusions took her down a path of destruction. She believed she was doing the right thing, and her religious fervor and close-mindedness blinded her. She destroyed others, and in the process destroyed herself. Which is how destruction works: You throw the snowball and get buried in the avalanche.

I’m not naive enough to believe she’s seen the error of her ways. And I don’t mean to downplay any of the hurt she inflicted, or the homophobic climate she helped foster.

But I also feel bad for her. Her efforts to find an audience since her downfall have left her performing for auditoriums that are 3/4 empty, and forced her into bankruptcy twice. As of 2002, she lived in Tennessee, where she apparently owed a lot of people money.

Probably the last thing she wants are conciliatory words from me. But I hope she remembers the days of the Florida Sunshine Tree as fondly as I do, and odd as it may seem, I hope she’s happy.