Sunday, June 26, 2011

SPECIAL ENCORE FOR A SPECIAL PRIDE DAY: The Lionesses Rule The Pride

Posted while Florence was declining, I was in touch with the woman she had been in love with, involved with and in war with since they were teenagers. Today, with gay marriage now legalized, I wonder what their life would have been like if only the world had loved their love as they had.

**


1982
All the other gay seniors rode. In the convertible, on the bus, in wheelchairs.

But not Florence.

She walked.

She was in her 60s. She had waited her entire life to walk down a street as who she really was. And she wasn't going to give up that walk for anybody or anything.

Sunday Memories: Reading, Writing and Arithmatic

Middle row, third from the left.



Yvon went to some school in Queens. I went to PS 110. We both can read and write, but I can't spell. Sometimes I can add. Subtraction, a bit more iffy.

Hanging out one windy afternoon on the benches by St. Marks Church, him sick of everyone on the MTA, me sick of my writing block, and both of us sick of his smoking, we started chatting with the occupant on the next bench over.

She went from school to school, teaching teachers to teach which meant kids were being taught. When did learning become fun?, I wondered. How come they didn't teach us that way? Why couldn't I go back in time and learn to learn all over again? All I remember was dread and well, more dread.

Except one time.

Mrs. Fass, who lived in the neighborhood, was my first grade teacher. I was out sick the day the first-graders got the first grade readers. Everyone started reading that day. When I came back to school, unable to decipher the words in this new book, I dove straight into misery and got more and more lost. Finally, Mrs. Fass sat with me and, other than the word 'squirrel', unlocked the mystery of reading to me.

For the next week, every day after school ended, I would walk up to Mrs. Fass's desk and thank her for teaching me to read.