In an odd twist of irony Earl and I are spending the night at my sister and brother in law’s house outside of Toronto tonight whilst she is spending the night at our house in the states. Earl and I are in Toronto for the weekend.
It should be a very intriguing weekend. We are looking forward to meeting up with some friends.
Earl and I just finished watching “Bear Run: The Movie”. Since we are both bears and attend several bear events throughout the year, it was “Must See TV” in our merry little home. It showed on Logo tonight.
“Bear Run: The Movie” is about the bear community, a sub-culture of the GLBT community. The movie partially features the guys from Bear Albany. Earl and I recognized several of our friends in the documentary. About five minutes into the movie I remarked to Earl that it felt like a surreal experience, because I was watching a movie about our friends.
For anyone that is not familiar with the bear community (or even if you’re a bear yourself), I highly recommend this documentary. It’s showing on Logo (check your local listings for the specific channel), and will run again on 04 August at 6 p.m. and 24 August at 8 p.m. I think it shows just how inclusive the gay bear community can be. I enjoyed it very much.
Here is a link to the website for the movie. If you enjoy the movie, please drop a note to Logo and let them know that you enjoy bear oriented programming on their network.
Earl and I have spent much of the day on Church Street today visiting the various vendors and hanging out with our friends: Dan from Buffalo, Sean and Jeffrey from Albany and new found friends from Toronto. The day is flying by, we are having a great time and there are a LOT of people here.
The beer gardens have REALLY loud music pumped up of various genres, most of it is familiar. Earl has said frequently, “Hey, you play that!” My ego is still in check. I’m so arrogant.
The streets are really crowded with people from all walks of life. I’m loving the energy. I’m loving the vibe.
Tonight it’s the Beef Ball. I’m looking forward to it, I’ll have to share pictures.
As an older college student I am in the interesting position to make silent observations about what goes on in schools these days. There are things that many students are hesitant to say around their professors, teachers and such that they otherwise share with their fellow students. Since I reside on the student side of the fence, I hear and see many of these things directed toward or about other students.
I am fortunate in that I realised my sexual orientation very early in life and pretty much came to terms with it while I was still in high school. The last half of my senior year it was pretty much a given that I was batting for the smaller team, though I never told anyone (other than myself) until after graduation. I was picked on once in a while (actually, that was mostly before I came to terms with it myself) but it wasn’t anything that I couldn’t handle for the most part. During my current time in school I don’t run around screaming “I’m gay! I’m gay! Look at me I’m gay!” with my hands waving in the air but I don’t deny or mislead in anyway and I correct people who assume that my wedding band represents a heterosexual marriage. I, for the most part, have the respect of my fellow students and am able to “hang with the guys”. I attribute most of this to my age.
Like me so many years ago, today there are many teens coming to terms with their sexuality early in life. The atmosphere is seemingly more accepting, but in a way this can be a little deceiving. There’s television shows that show openly gay people all over the place. You can not go a day without hearing something about gay rights or gay marriage or whatever on the news. Almost everyone knows at least one openly gay person. So in many ways the atmosphere seems more relaxed than ever before.
On the other hand, there’s still a lot of hate towards gay people out there. Like the witch hunts of hundreds of years ago, I believe there are people out there that would become alarmingly gleeful at the thought of hanging a gay man or lesbian, simply because they are different from themselves. The old ways of intolerance are handed down from generation to generation and the intensity of the hate seems to increase in the process. In February, 15 year old Lawrence King was shot and killed by a 14-year old classmate simply because he was gay. There wasn’t a lot of media coverage about the murder, apparently the latest display of Britney Spears’ vagina is more important. Perhaps the lack of coverage is indicative of a true lack of progress in the acceptance of the differences amongst us.
Today is the National Day of Silence (click link for more information)1. To show my support to this cause (and taking a cue from fellow Tweeter ‘robocub’), I am completely silent on Twitter today.
But you can bet that I’ll be outspoken at school.
1 (from dayofsilence.org): What is the Day of Silence®?
The Day of Silence, a project of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), is a student-led day of action when concerned students, from middle school to college, take some form of a vow of silence to bring attention to the name-calling, bullying and harassment — in effect, the silencing — experienced by LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) students and their allies. This year’s Day of Silence will be held in memory of Lawrence King.
Today is National Coming Out Day. I know it’s a little late in the season for reruns, but here’s my story.
So Earl and I spent last night in Buffalo. It was their annual bear run, fittingly called “Bear Trap” and it had been nearly a year since we were in Buffalo last.
It’s amazing how time flies when you’re not even thinking about it.
Having arrived too late to join the crowd of bears for the dinner at Century Grill, we opted to go it alone at the Pearl Street Grill and Brewery. Earl had been there before and knew that the place was right up my alley and he was absolutely right. I have to admit that I had a few fleeting moments of worry as we were driving to the restaurant, as I have recently decided to give up drinking alcohol completely. I’ve never been much of a drinker, in fact, I really only started drinking beer and such when I started at the telephone company a couple of years ago. However, the experience of going back and reading a couple of blog entries I had written while drunk and a conversation that Earl and I had while driving home from a dinner in which I was going to be the designated driver, and then ended up drinking, persuaded me that I definitely don’t need to incorporate alcohol into my future social plans. All the heavy stuff aside, the Pearl Street Grill and Brewery is a great place to go if you’re in the Buffalo area. Like so many other buildings in Downtown Buffalo, it’s an old brick building with that feeling of the industrial revolution of the early 20th century. So many cities have opted to tear these places down and build something in stunning concrete in their place; I admire when a business takes an existing space and turns it into something special. I wish more places would learn to do this.
The food is great too.
After dinner we freshened up a bit at the hotel and headed to the Town Ballroom for the evening’s festivities. All of the Buffalo Bears were gracious as always as we shared many hugs and kisses with those we hadn’t seen in so long. Earl and I both got a little tearful when we saw the two guys we consider to be our closest friends walk into the club. Here’s a picture from a camping excursion from a couple years ago of our friends Tim and Steve.
We used to see Tim and Steve quite a bit when Earl was traveling to Buffalo on a weekly basis, but now that his work locations have moved around, coupled with my school responsibilities and general life chaos, it’s been entirely too long since we’ve seen these guys. God bless them both, it was like we had seen them just yesterday.
The Buffalo Bears traditionally held all of their events at a local club, first Buddies and then it’s successor Buddies II. However, Buddies II recently closed so they were forced to the Town Ballroom, which is an absolutely fabulous space. It has had several incarnations; a casino, a dinner club (think Ricky Ricardo), a gay bar and now an entertainment venue. The Bears utilized a couple of the rooms well; one room was the dance floor (and Karl the DJ [skabear] played the extended disco mix of the theme from “Wonder Woman”!), the “Leopard Lounge” was used as a quieter space for conversation and in the middle lobby was a huge circular bar. Again, this is another old space in Buffalo that they continue to breathe life in.
Afterwards we went to the after hours party where we stayed until the closing of the room at 4 a.m. There was a lot of giggling in the hallway; it’s a good thing that we had the whole floor of the hotel.
This morning we joined our friends for brunch before heading out. Again, more tears and hugs as we made our way to the door.
All in all it was a wonderful weekend in many ways for us, and it was great to reconnect with our friends. We’ve always found the boys in Buffalo to be quite hospitable and this weekend was no exception. We look forward to going out there again soon.
Earl and I are stationed in Buffalo tonight for their annual bear run. The festivities started up yesterday and continue through late tomorow. We just got in and will do some exploring and catching up with old friends. It should be fun.
Earl and I went for a ride today. That in itself is not unusual. He took the afternoon off from work and I had no scholarly obligations, so we went for a ride into the beautiful Adirondacks.
What makes this ride into the Adirondacks special is that it is relatively close to 11 years since we made a similar journey. On October 13, 1996, Earl and I climbed what we thought was Bald Mountain (turns out it’s Rocky Mountain) near Inlet. At the top of the that mountain, overlooking the Fulton Chain of Lakes and in front of 30 or so other mountain climbing enthusiasts, I got down on my knee and proposed to Earl.
We haven’t been to the top of that mountain since. Today we climbed it again. At nearly 2300 feet above sea level (impressive for this part of the country) and near the peak of leaf peeping season, the scenery was impressive. The trail is around a 1/2 mile long and fairly steep. It was a pretty good workout getting to where we had stood over a decade ago. The scenery along the trail was beautiful.
Once at Rocky Point, we sat down on a rock together, reminisced about our life together, cried a bit, laughed a lot, made a little video and took lots of pictures. Previous visitors had left a discarded Triscuit, so a chipmunk joined us and ate the one hor d’oeurve we had to celebrate the occasion. The sky was a brilliant blue, the lakes were beautiful and the leaves are turning all sorts of autumn colors in magnificent brilliance.
[MEDIA=35]Just for the heck of it, I put photos from our two climbs side by side. I think we’re holding up pretty well.
Feeling a little cocky and being in a particularly jovial mood, I thought it was time to be a comment whore and flash a little skin.
Earl and I are situated at site 23 at Hillside Campgrounds. We are here until Sunday. Mother Nature is currently treating us to a spectacular lightning show, complete with thunderous accompaniment, but she’s decided not to rain on us. The light show is breathtaking, especially sitting in the middle of the woods in a popup camper.
There’s much that could be said about these escapism weekends we love so much here at Hillside, but I’ll save that for another time. Tonight we’re just going to hang with friends and more importantly, relax.
After all, Frankie says RELAX.
Just a guy with a husband. We’ve been together 28 years and he still makes me see fireworks on a daily basis. Hiker. Storm Chaser. Private Pilot. Tech Guy. Hackerish.
Weird? Eccentric!
