‘Cause today is Belgian Pride Parade day in Brussels!
From Johan Rooryck (in Brussels) to Facebook today:
So what do you do when you have misjudged the size of sprinkles containers you ordered online, and have come to own more sprinkles than you can eat in a lifetime? You just make a load of cakes for Belgian Pride Day, is what you do. Andrea did, that is.
This is the day. It’s the 2nd Monday of October: Indigenous Peoples’ Day / Columbus Day in the U.S.; and Thanksgiving in Canada. And it’s October 11th: National Coming Out Day; and Jacques and Arnold’s Anniversary (celebrated) — the actual moment would be 45 years in December.
Mostly this posting will be about J&A Day, with affection, silliness, and a certain amount of playful raunchiness (just to warn you, there will be tiny chocolate penises, in Pride Flag rainbow wrappings). I will have a few words on Columbus Day, Thanksgiving holidays, and NCOD, before the main event. But to establish the main context, here’s the Robert Emery Smith photograph of Jacques and me after having been declared domestic partners by the city of Palo Alto on Valentine’s Day in 1996:
(#1) The two husband-equivalents, in their cymbidium garden (the plants themselves being gifts of love)
The third, and most emotionally significant, of our domestic partnerships. The first two were administrative procedures, at Ohio State and Stanford, while this one, though entirely symbolic, was designed to be as much like a conventional wedding as possible: there was a public ceremony and a celebration in front of City Hall, with friends and family in attendance; people wept with happiness; and the city issued a certificate. More below.
One more rainbow for the season, in my USPS mail yesterday: from Stanford QUESTer Ryan Tamares, wishing me Happy Pride Month, this LGBT Lives Matter postcard (with the “LGBT Lives Matter” legend abstracted away from the postcard):
(#1) Logo designed and sold by AthleticHeroes on redbubble.com
Note the POW, or PUNCH, lines surrounding the central image, a drawing of a raised clenched fist, with a long (presumably polished) thumbnail — either female, or gender-nonconforming male.
On Facebook yesterday, from Aric Olnes, following up on my “Sacrilegious puns for Pride Month” posting that day:
Below your [“Sacrilegious puns”] post on my newsfeed: rainbows 🌈 & penguins 🐧!!
(#1) ORIGINAL PENGUIN: A FULL LIFESTYLE CLOTHING BRAND (from Munsingwear, featuring the Munsingwear penguin mascot, Pete)
A cute, jokey, très gay guy in his simple rainbow stripes tank top (from the Original Penguin line of clothing), deliriously savoring a slice of rainbow cake (sold separately); still more little rainbow penguins on his shorts.
The setting: this Søciety6 Penguin Snuggles design by KiraKiraDoodles on a bathroom shower curtain (71″ by 74″) — found for me by Kim Darnell:
(#1) The fancifully named designer KiraKiraDoodles (whose actual identity I do not know): “I like cute stuff so I make cute stuff” — in this case, really cute rainbow penguins
An assemblage of recent appreciative gifts, mostly collected in this photo:
(#1) Objects of appreciation (in front of a wall mostly devoted to William Haefeli gay-themed cartoons from the New Yorker)
I do not disguise the fact that this photo is in part a demonstration of my mastering (slowly but successfully) yet another skill in posting to my blog: taking photos with my iPad, sending them to my Stanford account, and editing them there for publication. (As an example of the photographer’s art, it’s not much, but the point is that I can do it at all.)
In very difficult times — my list of physical afflictions has expanded considerably (you don’t really want to hear the details), leaving me little time in the day to write postings on my blog — friends and family have given me presents to comfort me. Three recently (with an advance notice of a fourth to come in the mail in a surprise package).
The fourth installment in the story of my 80th birthday. The core of the story:
The day itself was quiet but pleasant (though I refused to go out of the house for any purpose, since it was a goddamn oven out there). Kim Darnell brought me a large assortment of salmon-based sushi, plus a collection of tartlets, mostly with fruit — enough for two substantial meals, the second of which was my breakfast today. Mostly I spent yesterday responding to birthday wishes, of which there were many hundreds. I know an awful lot of people.
A surprising development was that for this birthday I got not one, but three (different) Jacquie Lawson ecards (charming brief animations developing a scene or story, accompanied by music, usually classical music). Details below.
They are the (rainbow) penguins on a face mask from the Monterey Bay Aquarium — a gift to me from Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky, brought to me this morning by Opal Armstrong Zwicky (providing me with, oh fabulous delight, an actual visit from my grand-daughter, in my own house, where we could chat at length before she goes back to some version of her senior year in high school in western Massachusetts):
(#1)
From Facebook friends, hot herpetological news. From Reptiles magazine, the story “Rainbow Snake Seen In Florida’s Ocala National Forest For First Time Since 1969” by John Virata on 2/20/20:
quoting from a Fish and Wildlife Research Institute posting from 2/19:
A Rare Sighting! Tracey Cauthen recently reported stumbling upon a ~4 ft Rainbow Snake, Farancia erytrogramma, while hiking in the Ocala National Forest.
