DECEMBER 2006 (LIVEJOURNAL)

-
-
77945
2006-12-03 19:44:00
2006-12-04 01:44:52
Pre-Holiday 1996 vs. Pre-Holiday 2006: Reflections
Lately I've been going back and reading my journals from 10 years ago to compare where I am now with where I was then, what's changed; what hasn't...what I've learned and how I m living my life now to prove that. The good news is I think I have learned to stop running - or stop constantly looking for someplace else (or someone else) to run to, when that is not a long term solution...I know that you need to find those things within yourself, but I am still trying to figure out how to do that. In 1996 I was having a very tough time. After Jeff moved out, he moved IN to the YWCA, where I was working at the front desk. So now, not only were we not speaking to each other, but I had to watch him walk in and out of the building acting like he didn't know who I was - that was very hurtful to me and I don't think I ever really got over that. To this day I still find myself wanting to contact him to find out why he treated me this way, but as time goes on I have slowly let go of things like that. Back then I really panicked because I wanted a relationship, I wanted the quick fix but I had no options - Jeff was all I knew - and it became more clear to me that he was never coming back into my life again, yet I had to deal with him on a daily basis. I felt so empty. Today. I have done so much looking back at what choices I've made and some dumb choices I continue to make, the good news is I got treated for my depression and have found some other outlets for feeling better about life...the downside is that I have pretty much given up on this whole gay thing because nothing ever seems to work, the guys who are gay never seem to be what I want, and we have nothing in common besides the fact that we are both gay. There has got to be other common variables there in order for anything to work; and in 10+ years I have not found one gay person who I am attracted to or would be able to get along with for a relationship. And I don't know what to make of that. In some ways, I lose my motivation to do things like look for a great job or care about school, because if it's just going to be me, then why rush? I have nothing to hurry up for. I have no kids to worry about, no partner to worry about, if it's just me, I can move at my own pace, and do whatever I want. I've become so used to that...I'm not sure if I could handle someone else interfering with my life. I also do not want to have another experience like Jeff where I get so close to someone, get so comfortable, and suddenly they leave - it chips away at your sense that people can be good and people outside of your family can be trusted to stay in your life for a long time. The more I experience life the more I am losing faith in that.
public
0



-
78183
2006-12-04 18:00:00
2006-12-05 00:00:31
Winter Is Back
It officially feels like the holiday season downtown...
public
0



-
78490
2006-12-29 20:31:00
2006-12-30 02:31:41
Ugly Betty - Best of
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxyE8clSwYk
public
0



-
78599
2006-12-30 16:42:00
2006-12-30 22:42:17
Jody Watley Megamix
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TDy1VhE2WU
One compilation from one of my favorite artists...
public
0



-
79032
2006-12-31 16:05:00
2006-12-31 22:05:06
Absolutely Fabulous Megamix 1/1/97
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Daijz8tvNfk
10 year anniversary of my favorite show!! This is a megamix that was made on New Years Day 1997!
public
0

NOVEMBER 2006 (LIVEJOURNAL)

-
-
75806
2006-11-05 17:52:00
2006-11-05 23:52:23
After a long break...
I'm back! It's been a crazy few months. It's literally taken everything out of me with my life changing, things changing, stress, everything else...my sister, who is 40, and hasn't lived in Duluth since 1986, returned on September 12, 2006. I'm still not sure of the specifics in terms of what happened in Illinois, but I do know there was a divorce, it was bad, she lost everything financially, and has returned to Duluth with my nephew Giovani (Vani) who turned 4 on October 22nd. I have instantly become very attached to him and we are regulars on Skyline Drive with me pushing him in a stroller-runner - good thing that those hold up to 100 pounds. He loves it, I get a great work out, and I have taken some great photos (and feel a lot less lonely). I also have become very empathetic towards what being a single parent is like - it's VERY stressful, it's very costly, and there are days that go by so fast that you don't even know what month it is. I really think I was meant to experience this at this point in my life to learn how to live with this...it's very stressful to watch him sometimes but usually it's nothing too serious - my sister has found a good job within two months of being here - which NEVER happens in Duluth if you have a Masters' or higher education, because those jobs are always taken and you're damn lucky if someone happens to be leaving at the time you apply. So she's been there for two weeks now, she seems to like the job, but it's going to be a while yet before daycare or preschool is arranged so until then I'm full time daycare provider. Which, again, I really don't mind. There are two downsides...one thing is that I was looking so forward to this apartment building that had been renovated downtown on 1st st (http://www.bridgemanrussell.com) which is at 16 West First Street - in the heart of downtown - there was a studio apartment there (#305) which was just FANTASTIC - everything I wanted, great view, $650 a month (high for downtown Duluth; I know) - here's a picture of the building: so I toured the building which was completely restored and set to open on December 1; fell in LOVE with this apartment and everything, but financially there's no WAY I would be able to pay $650 a month because I'm shouldering so much of the cost with Vani...but being downtown would have been so much more convenient for us because the YMCA programs are only a block away, the daycare center is downtown, and I'm more of a downtown person anyways. So my heart sinks every time I pass the building especially because I was approved for the apartment and I had to say 'no' for now. That was really hard to do - at the same time, even though I love the apartment, it dawned on me that I would be living in it alone, and how much fun would that be, really? When Jeff and I lived at the Y it was fun because of Jeff, not really because of the building. Being by myself at the end of the day would get pretty boring after a while and I just can't believe that $650 a month would be worth it when I can live at home for free, and have extra money for fun things and still be within a few miles of downtown. Then my classes - a subject I hate talking about. With all this added responsbility, it's been hard to keep up with school and some of my classes have suffered, and I'm afraid to even talk to my instructors. Vani is a LOT of work (any 4 year old is) and sometimes it's just not possible to study, and when I do get a break I'm just too damn tired. This is Giovani during one of our hikes along Skyline Drive:
public
0



-
76060
2006-11-05 19:04:00
2006-11-06 01:04:53
Another photo of Giovani
We were on one of our hikes along Skyline and I found the perfect place to get this shot of him with the city in the background...
public
0



-
76367
2006-11-06 16:37:00
2006-11-06 22:37:17
Summing up 2006 - so far.
I know it's a little early to wrap up the year as there are still six weeks or so left; I guess I learned a lot and I experienced things that I hadn't expected, but did well with and I think I am gaining confidence in myself through these things. My parents heart scan and angioplasty back in March was the scariest thing for me thus far - the feeling that my parents are not invincible, that even more people I love more than anything can be taken away from me and I have no control over that. After that experience I learned to let some things go, to stop worrying about little things and let some things happen because they were meant to happen. My sister coming back in September with Vani was also a very interesting experience, as it continues to be, I learn about how people change, how people continue to move on, and how to care for a child basically...it changes so many things. The hard part of not being a legal parent is that you have no say in that child's future really, you can be the care taker, you can be the one who brings him places and buys him things, but when decisions need to be made, you don't hold a lot of power in that area. Which might be a good thing, because it's a huge responsibility that I don't think many people are ready for - or cut out for - until much later in life. And of course being gay puts a lot of this into perspective, because before they got here, my life was very, very empty and lonely; I have not met anyone for years - there are no eligible, single, young gay men anywhere in this area to even talk to...and while I have pretty much given up on the chance of ever meeting someone again, having my sister and my nephew in Duluth has taken some of that off my shoulders - because I have different priorities now, at least for time time being. I don't know if my sister and nephew will still be here in six months. I don't know how any of this will turn out. But I am learning a lot about kids first hand, and I'm still not sure if that is something I would want for myself someday. Especially as a single person, you have to give up so many things that you would like to do mainly because there is no partner to share the responsibility or give you a break. It's you, you can't get sick, everything revolves around that child. I really don't know if people consider that when they're going to have kids...of course with straight people it just happens, with gay people we have major hoops and obstacles to jump through in order to even be considered to adopt a baby permanently. So in some ways that leaves me with what's next...graduate school is fine, it's expected of me, it's become something that everyone 'has to have' now, but somedays I still look back at 1996 and think about Jeff and how much I long for another companion...another gay person where there is mutual attraction who wants to be around for more than 20 minutes...who has the capability and emotional ability to be that person...and it's not looking good. All this time I have not seen one person who would be like that and it's very depressing to think that my life is going to either be sexless or the only sex I can hope for is at the sauna. Real intimacy and love is something that - in my lifetime - i see as a rare occurrence between two men. We just are not conditioned to be there for other men, and in recent years it's as if it's gotten even more extreme. I never see any new gay faces because everyone is hiding at home now with their computers, which is fine because I've done that also, but nobody's 'out there' - nobody is exploring...that odd conversation that you might strike up someplace doesn't happen anymore because everyone has this list online of what his expectations and criteria are, and if you do not meet those, he won't even speak to you. In person, you discover that many of those things don't matter because the person you are talking to becomes human, you start to relate to him, and that feeling is good. You fall in love because of how he makes you feel and that connection, not because of his age or what he looks like or what brand of socks he wears.
public
0



-
76606
2006-11-08 18:14:00
2006-11-09 00:14:20
Another sign of trouble in the West End
Police make arrest in Spur robbery Duluth News Tribune - 11/07/2006 BY MARK STODGHILL NEWS TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER Duluth police this afternoon arrested a juvenile boy in connection with the shooting of two employees of a Lincoln Park gas station Monday night. The arrest was made in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. No other information about the arrest was released. Police Chief Tim Hanson is expected to provide more information during a press conference Wednesday morning. Daniel Lee Warner, 22, and Christopher Steven Davis, 24, both of Duluth, were each shot three times with a small-caliber handgun about 9 p.m. Monday while working at the Interstate Spur gas station at 27th Avenue West and Michigan Street. Both men are employees of the station, police said. Warner was listed in fair condition at St. Luke’s hospital. No medical information on Davis was available today. Police said they had no information that the victims resisted or fought the robber and believe the shooting to be unprovoked. “They were simply fired on,” Hanson said. The suspect fled with cash taken during the robbery. Witnesses said he ran north on 27th Avenue West. Police said it wasn’t known if the shooter was acting alone. Police officers and Minnesota State Patrol troopers searched for the suspect all night Monday with officers on foot, in vehicles and with canine. Monday was a busy night for Duluth police. A strong-arm robbery was reported in front of Mr. D’s Bar, 5622 Grand Ave., about 9:15 p.m. A woman reported that she had been forced to the ground by a white man, 40-50 years old, 6-feet-tall and weighing about 200 pounds. She was robbed of cash and her coat. Just before midnight, officers responded to the Fitger’s Brewery Complex, 600 E. Superior St., to the report of another armed robbery. A man said he had been inside a restroom in the complex when he was approached by a man with a knife and robbed of cash. A second suspect was involved in the robbery, police said. Anyone who has information about any of the crimes is asked to contact the Duluth police Violent Crimes Unit at 730-5050. On 110606, at approximately 2101 hours, Duluth Police Officers were dispatched to the report of a shooting which was found to have occurred inside the interstate Spur at 2702 West Michigan Street. The report indicated that a shooting victim was currently inside the Quiznoís restaurant located inside the same building as the convenience store. Officers located a victim inside the restaurant who had taken refuge there after being shot during an armed robbery at the convenience store. A short time later, a second shooting victim was reported to be at the Holiday gas station located across the Avenue from the Interstate spur. The second victim had also been shot during the Spur robbery and had fled to the Holiday station. Both parties received multiple gunshot wounds. Both victims were employees of the Spur. The victims were transported by ambulance to local hospitals where they received treatment. Both parties were reported to be in serious condition. Cash was taken during the robbery. The suspect fled the scene on foot North on 27th Avenue West. The suspect was not located by responding officers. The suspect is described as a black male in his mid to late teens, 5-07 in height, and approximately 140 pounds in weight, The suspect had younger looking facial features with no facial hair and a medium complexion. The suspect was wearing a black quilted jacket, long white t-shirt, black denim pants, black tennis shoes, and a baseball cap. At approximately 2118 hours, as officers were investigating the first robbery, a West Duluth resident reported a strong arm robbery that had occurred in front of Mr. Dís Bar. The victim reported that she had been physically forced to the ground by a white male, 6-00 in height, approximately 200 pounds, 40-50 years of age and robbed of cash and her coat. The victim did not report being injured during the incident. At approximately 2350 hours, Officers responded to the Fitgerís Complex at 600 East Superior Street to the report of another armed robbery. The victim in this incident reported that he had been inside a restroom in the complex when he was approached by a suspect with a knife and robbed of cash. The victim was not injured. Two suspects were involved in this incident, one described as a white male in his late teens to early twenties and the second as a light skinned black male in his late teens to early twenties wearing a red shirt. Persons with information related to any of these incidents are asked to contact the Duluth Police Department Violent Crimes Unit at 218-730-5050. On 10-29-06 at approximately 0707 Hrs. the SuperAmerica convenience store was robbed by a male suspect who threatened with a handgun. The suspect walked into the store and asked the clerk for a carton of Newport brand cigarettes. When the clerk turned around to get the cigarettes the suspect walked around the counter and confronted the clerk. The suspect fled the store on foot with an undisclosed amount of money. No one was injured in this armed robbery. The suspectís description is as follows: Black male, approx. 6' tall, large build, wearing a green or grey colored jacket, tan pants and a black colored stocking cap that had extended ear flaps. The stocking cap had the word, "BRAVES" written on it in white color and two thin yellow colored stripes around the entire stocking cap. The stocking cap also had two draw strings that extended from the ear flaps. The suspect may be associated with a white colored Dodge or Plymouth mini-van possibly model years between 1991 and 1995. If anyone has any information on this armed robbery they are asked to call the Duluth Police Departmentís Violent Crimes Unit at 730-5050 or 730-5400. And yet another CITY OF DULUTH DULUTH POLICE DEPARTMENT NEWS RELEASE DATE: November 20, 2006 CASE #: 06342699 INCIDENT DATE: November 20, 2006 INCIDENT TIME: 1427 hours INCIDENT LOCATION: 103 W. 4 ST. NATURE OF INCIDENT: Robbery at knife point BY: Sgt. Jazdzewski On November 20, 2006 at 1427 hours Duluth Police Squads were sent to103 W. 4 St. reference a male reporting he was robbed at knife point. A Duluth man said he was robbed by 3 black males, #1 descibed as a light skinned black male, 5'11" 170 lbs., wearing a black baseball cap, black shirt and blue jeans, about 17 yrs. old, #2 also a light skinned black male, 5'9", 145 lbs., wearing a white and grey shirt and black pants, about 20 years of age, and #3 a black male, 5'6" 130 lbs., wearing a grey shirt with the letters "JZ" on the front of it, black pants and about 20 years old. The victim was not injured. Preliminary information received is the suspects may be from the Twin Cities area. No arrests have been made at this time. If anyone has information on this incident please call the Duluth Police Violent Crimes Unit at 730-5050.
public
0



-
76913
2006-11-17 19:14:00
2006-11-18 01:14:59
What's happened in the last week
This past week or so has been getting back to normal...my sister and Vani both left and moved out after a big blowout at the house last week which was probably bound to happen. I think it was a combination of things...for one, my sister had been lying to us about a number of things (which we chose not to confront her about hoping she was just stressed out)...but it just got worse and worse. She claimed to be coming back here to escape an abusive relationship in which the guy was arrested for domestic violence. My parents and I were under the impression that she was coming back here with her son to start over and seek some kind of safety as this guy was in IL. So the week she arrives here I notice she is writing letters to this guy - now in jail - and even wanting him to move up here after he gets out (to hell if that's happening)! So I told my dad that it's 'happening again' - Missy is giving us all very different stories, none of which seem to be adding up. At the same time, she tried to pit me against my parents, making up all kinds of stories about them (Missy is 9 years older than me; she's pulled this before and saying that I wouldn't have remembered the incidents etc). I think about two months of this, along with watching Vani full time while my grades in class started to fall, pushed me to my limit. My dad was sick of paying to put gas in her car all the time. And my mom, who held her tongue the whole time...her patience was wearing thin too. So I guess we all got sick of the lying, the...where is this going, what else is she lying about, I just got a bad feeling about everything as the weeks went by. I kept feeling like, why are we doing this? If this is the kind of lying that is going on now, if she is just using us for free day care and whatever else until her boyfriend gets out of jail so she can move him up here to support him, then what the hell are we doing? If she doesn't want to do this honestly, and since she did not have any intentions of 'starting over' here, then she needed to go. Last Wednesday night, after everything went off, after I yelled at her for being selfish, for lying to my parents, for fucking her life up (at 40!) and Vani's, she has no retirement, no nothing and she pretty much blew her one chance to regroup. my dad lost it with her also. And after that, she got mad like she always does, started packing up her stuff, and the next day she was gone. It brought back really icky memories of Jeff when he did that same thing 10 years ago. Except this time, with my sister, I did not lower myself to her level of manipulation and game playing...she was making these choices for the past two months to lie to us, not follow through on her part; she was choosing this for herself. This time, I did nothing to stand in the way or plead with her to stay. With Jeff it was this 'you CAN'T leave me - what will I do without you' thing; with my sister it's more of a 'you've been pulling this shit with our family for the past 25 years...if this is the person you still are, get out and don't come back'. My parents both have heart conditions, they don't need this; I am working on my masters degree, I don't need this either, she is almost 41 and she should have some idea of how to live her life. At some point enough is enough.
public
0



-
77239
2006-11-19 17:56:00
2006-11-19 23:56:03
Finally - a break from a sea of gray skies
So after about two weeks of nothing but gray skies and no sun in sight, the sun finally appeared today. And I had to get out and get some photos of the city before the snow came and prevented me from climbing high. I'm tempted to get some good climbing boots for winter so I can keep up my photography and long walks, but my left achilles tendon has been really bothering me lately, and I am not sure if I want to risk anything by getting new boots (well over $200 by the way) and not being able to take them back. It felt good to get out again and do some of the things I had been doing prior to my sister being here. In a way I feel like things are returning to normal, even though I wasn't all together happy with that before - I am much more thankful for what I've got now. My problem now is going to be figuring out how to salvage these two classes I managed to fuck up this fall because of my volunteering to be a full time daycare person - which was my own fault for saying yes - but that wore me out. Because Vani would poke at the dogs all the time, I would take him out for strolls, pushing him in one of those fitness runner things all the time so I ended up walking or running about 12 miles a day for two months. Great workout, but I was otherwise fried. No wonder my heel is killing me. So I lost even more weight over the fall, which everyone's telling me I look way too thin, and I have to work on eating more and all that, which I will do. Part of what I have learned is how important it is to take care of myself from now on. Watching my sister and how much she doesn't care for herself really woke me up...do I want to be her in 9 years? NO. Lesson one is about men - I have watched her chase after men who simply do not want to be chased, are not available, and never will be. I have some of those same patterns but it took being around her to see them within myself. There are good looking people out there but not always good for you - and the lesson has to do with looking for a partner who shares the same values, is looking at a similar future, and has the same goals that I do. If you put out that you are dishonest and into game playing, then that's what you will attract. I do not want that. Number two is owning up to your shit -no matter how awful it is - and dealing with it then and there. She has walked away from things that were her responsibility - and not that it was all her fault because it takes two to tango, but I am learning that the quicker you get help - whether it's Legal Aid or some other financial group - the faster you will get your life back. Her financial disaster (having to walk away from a house in her name, no money, no retirement plan) will mean no credit for probably the next ten years. The most important thing I've learned is not to burn out people who are trying to help you, especially your family... **That is something I realized yesterday when I was thinking about this**...I kind of wonder, had Jeff reappeared in my life again, would it have been similar to my experience with my sister? Is the reason why his family has nothing to do with him because he is gay, or is that too easy of an assumption to make? Maybe he burned his family out too - he certainly treated me pretty badly. Maybe they had enough of him the same way my parents had enough of my sister. There is only so much you can do for someone who wants to sabotage their life. You can offer your help in the beginning, but if someone is dead set on dragging you down with them, you must have the wisdom to protect yourself first. I think in that sense I matured a lot over these past few months.
public
0



-
77544
2006-11-23 19:39:00
2006-11-24 01:39:10
Thanksgiving 2006
This has been a good Thanksgiving...doesn't really feel like it though; the weather has been great today and I ran a 5k race downtown (the first annual 'Gobble Gallop' sponsored by the Duluth Running Company). So the weather was perfect for that, and I went for a long walk this afternoon also. Not bad for a day that can either be cold and snowy/rainy or be a day like today where the sun is out, and there's still no snow downtown. Another month from now I'm sure it will be a different story, but for now, this is cool. Summer is only another six months away, and before I know it, Grandma's Marathon will be here again. Time goes by fast.
public
0



-
77817
2006-11-28 16:48:00
2006-11-28 22:48:35
City Journal article: Heralds of a Brighter Black Future
I found this article very interesting for discussion... Heralds of a Brighter Black Future Heather Mac Donald When Bill Cosby, in a speech to the NAACP last May, let fly a merciless condemnation of black illegitimacy, educational apathy, and the idea that white racism causes black social problems, political commentators dropped their jaws. They remained stunned when he vented similar frustration to audiences across the country over the next six months. Sure, “civil rights” advocates have been known, on rare occasions, to criticize self-defeating black behavior, but convention requires that after briefly denouncing, say, black-on-black crime (as if black-on-white crime would be okay), the “leader” should turn his attention to the racial injustice that allegedly causes such crime and harp on that for the next year or so. This Cosby refused to do. “It’s not what [the white man] is doing to you; it’s what you’re not doing,” he thundered in Detroit. The reaction of black audiences was just as unexpected. Rather than take offense, they waited hours in line, in blistering heat and freezing cold, to hear Cosby deliver his impassioned plea for bourgeois behavior. Cosby’s tough-love campaign foundered in January, when a woman accused him of sexually assaulting her the previous year; he denied the charge, but has not been heard from since. No need to wait for him to find his voice again, however. Dozens of grassroots black conservatives have been delivering the same message of personal responsibility—in as electrifying a fashion—for years without generating a glimmer of interest from the press. Routinely denounced as pariahs and race-traitors, they nevertheless believe that they are speaking for the silent majority of blacks. Now that Cosby has exposed the untapped audience for straight talk, maybe the media will finally pay attention to these unknown iconoclasts. Nothing would help black Americans more than for the mainstream press to give such honesty and hard-won wisdom the respect it deserves. How can anyone in their right mind accept reparations?” asks Rapheal Adams incredulously. “I would never accept them,” he says, pressing his hands to his chest. “I don’t have shackles.” Suddenly solemn, Adams intones melodramatically: “ ‘Four hundred years ago, they brought us here!’ ” He squints skeptically: “Yeah? You’re lookin’ pretty good for 400 years old. Guess what? The slaves have been dead a long time. Show me where the ‘Colored Only–Whites Only’ signs are in this country . . . anywhere. Everyone agrees slavery was horrific, but you have to look at what people did to end it. I’m sorry, you’re not owed one damn dime.” Rapheal Adams is a dissenter in Cincinnati, seat of the country’s most vicious race politics. Until recently, the ebullient 43-year-old fought the city’s racial arsonists as a host on black talk radio, working the night shift at a General Electric jet-engine plant in order to promote his views during the day. When race riots erupted in 2001, Adams, as the sole pro-police counter-demonstrator at an anti-cop rally, barely escaped assault. The hatred directed at him by Cincinnati’s race-baiters has had no effect on his high spirits. Over bacon and pancakes in an outlying Cincinnati shopping plaza, he parodied black victocrat dogma and countered it with his own exasperated common sense. Despite his hip exterior—shaved head, tiny retro glasses, and sleek black turtleneck over a slender frame—Adams is remarkably old-fashioned. When a classmate handed him a joint in the seventh grade, he handed it back, because his mother had never mentioned such things to him. His filial respect remains unwavering today. “My parents are the most important people in my life,” the air force vet explained in a heartfelt letter he sent before we met. “They instilled in me a very important lesson about the value of right vs. wrong.” As for his grandparents, “They’re deceased, but I carry them with me every second of my life. My grandfather grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, at a time when black men were not allowed onto the sidewalks. He gave me this lesson: ‘You can’t condemn someone for his skin color. If you can’t be nice to people, there’s something wrong with you,’ ” Adams urges emphatically, pointing for emphasis. “My grandfather never gave me hand-me-down misery.” By contrast, the anointed civil rights leaders, Adams says, constantly manufacture racial resentment to stay in power. “Conyers, Mfume, Sharpton, Jackson—these people can’t go before a camera, they can’t go to sleep, without pushing the ‘get-whitey’ syndrome. There was Jackson down in Florida in 2000, talking about ‘dis-en-franchise-ment,’ ” Adams rolls out the syllables portentously. “Oh, really? Go to Dade County and check out the educational level of the population. The Democrats were taking U-Hauls and vans to cart anyone they could find to the polls. ‘But I’ve never voted in my life!’ their captives said. ‘Don’t worry, you just get in there and press the lever for Gore.’ But these people couldn’t read, they didn’t know what the hell was going on. Why doesn’t anyone talk about voter irresponsibility?” The “get-whitey” syndrome now permeates black culture, Adams observes, destroying the spirit of self-help. “It’s so disheartening for black people to try to pin blame on every white person.” Adams recalls Jesse Jackson’s 1999 lawsuit against the Decatur, Illinois, school district for having expelled six ninth-graders for a vicious football-stadium brawl. “Now we call school discipline ‘disciplinary profiling.’ See how twisted that is!” He shakes his head incredulously. “People say: ‘We’re more boisterous; that’s our culture.’ No. You can’t just stand up and shout at your teacher; you’re embracing behavior that others see as wrong.” The flip side of the “get-whitey” syndrome is the “acting-white” syndrome. “Anything of value, that’s ‘white,’ ” observes Adams. “Standing with your pregnant girlfriend, that’s ‘white.’ Staying away from gangs, ‘white.’ Wearing pants where they’re supposed to be—on your waist—‘white.’ ‘We wear our pants below our butt line.’ It is so sick. If you’re not acting out in school, you’re an Uncle Tom, you’re ‘white.’ ” Adams’s parents watched the romanticization of underclass culture in the 1970s with alarm and predicted that it would spell the black community’s downfall. “In 1970, 1972, you had the start of the Superfly period,” Adams recalls. “Do you know the things that we celebrated? Pimping, drugs—they all showed up in Blaxploitation movies. It destroyed the advances of the civil rights movement. Medgar Evers, in his suit, tie, and white shirt—it all got stripped out. People said: ‘Man, we’re done with that; it’s time to let our hair down,’ ” Adams says in a lilting, super-cool glide. “We glorified street life, the projects. The Superfly period morphed into the gangsta culture of the mid-eighties, and now we’re glorifying violent criminals.” Today’s self-designated “civil rights” leaders are cowards, Adams charges, because they refuse to challenge dysfunctional black behavior. “The battle that really should be going on is against the enemy that looks like you—the father who abandons his children or rapes women or sells drugs. Those are the people you need to fight, but you’re scared. Because they look like you, you don’t want to get your hands bloody.” Adams shares no such reluctance for the necessary fight. David A. Clarke, the towering sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, electrified Milwaukee in 2003 with his candid expression of disgust at the scapegoating of police. Lamarr Nash, a 24-year-old criminal, had stolen a truck and then led the police on a 17-mile high-speed highway chase, ending when he crashed into a deputy’s squad car. Nash exited the truck with his hands up and lay down on the asphalt. The deputies surrounded him, and for a brief moment, one put his foot on Nash’s neck, without causing any injury. Predictably, the black civil rights establishment erupted in rage at this instance of police “brutality.” The NAACP called a meeting to denounce the police. At the meeting, Sheriff Clarke asked the crowd if they thought the offending deputy was a racist. The verdict was yes. Interesting, said Clarke; here’s his picture. The deputy was black. Afterward, Clarke fired off an e-mail to a local talk-show host, Charlie Sykes, which Sykes read on the air. It was a classic Clarkean counterthrust. “I sat at the community meeting held at the NAACP on Saturday in utter disbelief and disgust at another failed opportunity for leadership. . . . Like sheep, the black legislators marched up to the microphone criticizing law enforcement, using words such as oppression [and] racism. . . . They spoke about Nash as if he was some sort of icon in the struggle to achieve equality and deserving to be mentioned in the same breath as people like Rosa Parks. I, for the world, cannot figure out why someone engaged in felonious conduct, conduct that used to meet with condemnation and shame among blacks, was exalted into folk-hero status. Not one of these elected officials did the hard thing, which would have been to speak of the conduct of Mr. Nash as reprehensible, abhorrent, and unacceptable.” Clarke’s e-mail set off a firestorm. Like Cosby, he was condemned for airing dirty laundry in public. A municipal judge accused him of pandering to the “right-wing conservative . . . reactionary crowd.” A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist accused Clarke—not the NAACP—of playing the “race card.” Standard behavior for the victimologists, Clarke wrote. These apologists adopt “victimhood as an identity and exaggerate it. They give failure, lack of effort, and even criminality a tacit stamp of approval. This is done not with a view toward forging solutions but to foster and nurture an unfocused brand of resentment and sense of alienation from the mainstream.” The 48-year-old sheriff exudes a dignified command presence, which does not prevent him from hitting back hard, sarcastically, and often against his critics in Milwaukee and his ideological foes nationally. Learning of an ACLU attorney’s statement that he “hated the sheriff’s office,” Clarke responded: “I take great pride in it. The feelings are mutual.” He regularly pens op-eds about the bankrupt civil rights “leadership,” which the local press, including black newspapers, just as regularly refuses to publish. Clarke then gives them to Charlie Sykes to read on the radio. One such op-ed, “Herd Mentality,” scoffed at Al Sharpton’s presumption to speak for all blacks and said of the Democratic Party: “A wise man once told me that if the horse is dead—dismount.” “Plantation Politics” likened the attacks on Bill Cosby to the punishment of blacks who dared to run away from slavery. Where does Sheriff Clarke get his self-possession? “I was raised to think independently and for myself,” he explains in his deep voice. His father is responsible for his indifference to racial appeals. The elder Clarke joined the army rangers at 16 and fought in Korea in a segregated unit. “You’d think he’d become resentful, but when he came out, he had learned how to become a man and harbored no ill will.” As a result, Clarke says, he didn’t grow up “hating white people.” When someone called him a nigger, his father told him to get over it. “I grew up not dwelling on our blackness. We knew we were black, but we didn’t see it as being different.” Instead, his parents emphasized the cultivation of personal virtue. Clarke went through a black radical period in his twenties, complete with a big Afro, he recounts matter-of-factly, but he grew out of it. Today, Clarke says, “I refuse to view everything through a racial lens.” That refusal puts him in the minority in talking about black crime, where the usual drill requires immediately changing the topic from a criminal’s act to his race, a free pass to exculpatory victimhood. Like every police chief in the country, Clarke regularly faces charges of “racial profiling.” But unlike many other police chiefs, he gives unwavering support to his officers, when merited. While he would never excuse brutality, Clarke said in his e-mail to Charlie Sykes, he backed the deputies in the Lamarr Nash arrest because they risked their lives to protect innocent motorists in an incident “started not by law enforcement, but by Lamarr Nash.” With typical feistiness, Clarke declared: “I will not play Pontius Pilate and offer a member of this organization up as a sacrificial lamb just to remain popular in the black community.” Clarke’s indifference to specious “racial-profiling” allegations underlies his support for consent searches, a vital law enforcement tool and prime target of anti-police agitation. An officer, observing suspicious behavior, can ask the individual, often a motorist, for consent to search his person or property. Such searches regularly turn up guns and other contraband. The ACLU calls them a racist tool. In response, less fearless police commanders have banned the practice; Clarke couldn’t care less. The welfare-industrial complex is none too happy with Clarke, either, since he insists that taxpayer-funded social programs show results. He opposed Milwaukee’s continuing award of federal block-grant money to an “anti-gang” program that could not account for the public funds that it had already gobbled up. With typical take-no-prisoners aggressiveness, Clarke demanded from the city all documentation relating to the program and answers to rigorous questions about how the city evaluates grantees. He then alerted the local U.S. attorney and Wisconsin’s congressional and senatorial delegations to his concerns. The program was funded again anyway. Clarke’s reaction? “It makes me sick.” Even though the director is, in Clarke’s words, “a fraud,” the liberal elite, he says, “are more than happy to look the other way, because continued funding of black social-services agencies ensures the monolithic pattern of black votes.” His battle against the grievance machine would seem a poor prescription for political advancement, but Clarke is hardly a conventional politician. Though he lost a bid for Milwaukee mayor in 2004, he will certainly run for office again. He is eager to speak on broader issues of personal responsibility: teen pregnancy and fatherless families, he says, are surely the most dire consequence of the 1960s counterculture. “No government program will be able to fix that until we face it in the black community,” he warns. Not one for false modesty, Clarke argues—plausibly—that President Bush should give him and other black conservatives a platform to boost their credibility and exposure. Black ministers call him furtively to express support but explain that they can’t do so publicly. “People are watching what will happen to me; they want assurance that they can survive. It’s going to require individuals to develop courage to buck the plantation politics, because it’s not fun to be ostracized by one’s own people.” Given Don Scoggins’s august Republican lineage, his close involvement in the War on Poverty would have been hard to predict. Scoggins’s grandfather, president of a historic black college in Richmond, was the sort of gentleman who would not dream of appearing in his own home without a coat and tie. The straight-arrow grandson, head of the ROTC at Virginia’s Hampton University in the 1960s, admired Republicans’ support for personal investment and wealth creation. But the optimism of the 1960s civil rights era inspired Scoggins to seek an M.A. in urban planning, which landed him a job as a community-development planner for the District of Columbia in 1972. “That’s when my real education began,” he notes dryly. The 59-year-old, with the courtly manner of the southern black gentry, shrinks from criticizing others. But when it comes to misguided social schemes, his polite restraint loosens. Scoggins’s Washington, D.C., development office gave out grants to bring District houses up to code. Without accountability, the renovation contractors did shoddy work and fleeced the government. “I’ve never seen so much waste in my life,” he recalls. “I was just mind-boggled by the inertia of these programs.” Yet blacks look to them as guaranteed employment, he laments. Equally unaccountable, the D.C. government “was throwing money at problems hand over fist,” Scoggins marvels. “The more problems the bureaucrats found, the more money they got.” Disgusted, Scoggins resigned in 1978 and became a residential landlord in the District. Again, he had high hopes for doing good. Though other middle-class blacks were moving out, Scoggins stayed put, determined to be a pillar of the community. Nevertheless, he ended up a typical slum landlord, paralyzed by local rent regulations. Tenants would fight his every effort to collect rent in housing court. In response to their trumped-up complaints, city officials would come to inspect his property and would inevitably find some housing-code infraction. Judgment: the tenants stay rent-free. “I got to the point where I didn’t want to spend money doing anything, because it was all going down the drain.” Then the crack epidemic hit, further debasing Washington’s black neighborhoods. A dealer assaulted Scoggins in one of his own buildings. Landlords could rent their property only by entering the federal government’s noxious Section 8 housing voucher program. This was the last straw. “If your tenants are on Section 8, you’re on Section 8, too,” Scoggins realized. He had become a welfare recipient. He sold his properties and got out of the real-estate business. Scoggins’s experiences with government intervention confirmed his political heritage. At age ten, he had helped his family campaign for Eisenhower in the 1956 election, carrying the basket from which they sold chicken sandwiches up and down Tulsa’s historic black business district. “You had every last thing you wanted there. Welfare was not even thought of,” Scoggins says. Businessmen represented the black community, not a “bunch of ministers or poverty pimps, like today,” Scoggins recalls. But once the government started its anti-poverty crusade, those viable black businesses were doomed. “A private housing provider can’t compete with the government. Socialism destroyed the black community. We went where the money was, and that was in the welfare state.” Scoggins’s recipe for black advancement? “Someone should pool the great minds and figure out how to get blacks back into the private sector.” Right now, he says, a market-based society almost doesn’t exist in the black community. “Everything is Section 8, welfare, and make-work jobs programs. I’ve seen other ethnic groups start out without a dime in their pocket, and they thrive.” As part of his own contribution to revitalizing black entrepreneurship, Scoggins labors tirelessly to bring blacks into the Republican Party. He says with his usual diplomacy: “If I had one complaint—and I don’t want to call it a complaint—the party is not working fast enough to get us into the hierarchy.” So Scoggins decided, “If it’s going to be, it’s up to me.” Besides working constantly on Republican campaigns, he formed the Frederick Douglass Republican Forum in Virginia’s Fairfax County in 2003 to bring conservative speakers to black audiences. He regularly communicates with the handful of other local black Republican clubs across the country and predicts that younger middle-class blacks will be increasingly skeptical about government social programs: “They’ll see that these programs only perpetuate the problem.” Jesse Lee Peterson is one of the more flamboyant scourges of the civil rights establishment. He holds the “National Day of Repudiation of Jesse Jackson” on Martin Luther King Day (to contrast “King’s dream and Jesse’s nightmare”), and he lectures on such topics as “We Shall Overcome Civil Rights Leaders.” He leads a national boycott of the NAACP, listing ten reasons, including: “Absent Fathers: 70 percent of black babies are born out of wedlock. Where are the fathers, and where is the NAACP?” and “Education: 44 percent of black Americans over the age of fourteen cannot read. Calling the NAACP!” Tact is not one of Peterson’s defining traits. The sharp-chinned, goateed 55-year-old is too impatient with black stagnation to mince words, though he softens his more provocative statements with a disarming chuckle. At a recent conference on black leadership that he organized with the Heritage Foundation, Peterson fairly burst with exasperation, his eyebrows rising in a fervent exclamation point: “What is wrong with black folks that they let themselves be represented by” the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton? he asked plaintively. “You have cities run by blacks—the mayor, the police chief, the city council are black; everybody and his mama, black—and I’m afraid to go out at night. Yet these cities’ leaders are still able to blame white racism for their problems. Help me on this. Why don’t blacks say: ‘You’re in control; do something’? Why do black folks continue to accept” the racism excuse? Peterson answered himself: “I believe it’s because black people have been brainwashed, dumbed-down, and demoralized”—above all, by the destruction of the black family. “Am I right or wrong on that?” he asked insistently. Whites come in for equal rebuke. “Tell me this,” he asked the Heritage panel. “Why are white folks so afraid, why do they cower down at the charge of racism?” A few minutes later he threw out, laughing: “Don’t be scared, white folks!” Peterson’s nonstop attacks have not escaped the notice of the black establishment. Michael Eric Dyson, the University of Pennsylvania’s tenured white-basher, perfectly summed up the victocrat reaction in a Chicago Sun-Times op-ed. Dyson had debated reparations with Peterson at the 2002 National Association of Black Journalists conference and concluded: “If you’ve ever wondered what a self-hating black man who despises black culture and worships at the altar of whiteness looks like, take a gander at the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson.” Even some grassroots black conservatives, while rejecting Dyson’s silly “self-hating” charge, find Peterson too acerbic. But he’s not going to change his style, especially when “feel-your-pain” emoting has become the Democratic machine’s signature attitude. He was raised on an Alabama plantation, where the laws were all against blacks, he says, but where people still had their self-respect. Work and family were fundamental; it never occurred to anyone that there was any alternative. After he moved to California as a teen, however, the welfare-industrial complex found him. He started running with a bad crowd and smoking marijuana. He learned that for his marijuana addiction, the federal government would send him a monthly Supplemental Security Income check, essentially paying him to keep using drugs. “I didn’t know anything about welfare until white folks told me about it. They said America owed us something.” At the same time, Peterson was inhaling racial animosity from one of the most prominent Los Angeles black churches, the Crenshaw Christian Center. By harping constantly on racism, “the church taught me to hate the white man,” Peterson recalls. His welfare and drug habits took away his self-esteem. “I just partied for years, until I realized my life had gone to hell. I was desperate to overcome.” Eventually, Peterson got hold of himself and started working again ferociously. That experience of liberal paternalism fuels his candor. “One reason the black community is so screwed up is too much government involvement. Most black folks—not all, not all, not all, not all,” he quickly adds, his hands preemptively trying to tamp down what he knows will be a furious reaction—“are not suffering because of racism but because of lack of moral character.” Today, Peterson is trying to build that character in troubled boys. His Los Angeles boys’ home, called the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND), fights the passive victim mentality of the inner city. “We show the boys how to stop blaming others and take control of their lives,” he says. “White folks are not waking up at the breakfast table every morning figuring out how to keep the Negro down.” BOND refuses public money. “Government programs aren’t the solution to the personal-responsibility crisis,” Peterson insists. “Families are.” No Amens for the GOP’s Clergy Strategy What do grassroots black conservative organizers think of the Republican leadership’s court-the-clergy strategy for bringing blacks into the Republican Party? Not much. A political strategist for President Bush recently explained the GOP’s rationale: “The minister is the No. 1 influence in the African-American community,” said Matthew Dowd. The president’s faith-based initiative, which directs government social-services funds to churches, has been the White House’s primary—and successful—tool for bringing black ministers into its ambit. But the black conservatives with whom I spoke expressed little enthusiasm for this strategy. The black church is in some respects part of the problem, not the solution, they caution. “I’m tired of hearing ‘we have to rally the black ministers,’ ” sighs Don Scoggins. “Quite frankly, black ministers ushered us into the welfare state in the 1960s. I’m not against what the Republicans are doing, but I wish they’d do something with black business.” And the success of the faith-based initiative may be less than meets the eye, these conservatives worry. “A lot of these black preachers are on board with Bush this year,” acknowledges Jesse Lee Peterson. “But I’m concerned how their hearts have changed toward white America. I’ve had preachers tell me they’re with the Republicans only because of the money.” Black preachers have been missing in action or affirmatively toxic on key social problems. They jump on the anti-cop bandwagon far more often than not. Rather than condemn black criminals, they are much more likely to protest against the police in any disputed arrest or shooting. This February, when a Los Angeles police officer fatally shot a 13-year-old car thief who had tried to run him over after a wild 3 am chase, the Los Angeles black clergy blamed the cop. As Pastor Frank Stewart of the Zoe Christian Fellowship in Los Angeles told me, “I wouldn’t doubt it if that officer said, ‘I’m gonna kill this nigger.’ ” Moreover, the black church has made little effort to fight the greatest problem in the black population: the collapse of marriage. Mainstream preachers have told Jesse Lee Peterson that they don’t focus on illegitimacy because their members live that way. Cecil B. Murray, the most prominent minister in Los Angeles, called Peterson a troublemaker for opposing the distribution of condoms in church. But God is self-control, not condom control, Peterson responded. I asked Pastor Stewart of the Zoe Christian Fellowship if he condemns out-of-wedlock childbearing in his church. “You know how I deal with it?” Pastor Stewart responded. “I have a five-minute radio spot in which I talk about what blacks have to do to take responsibility for themselves. People don’t come to church to hear me talk about some social message.” Yet Stewart has wholeheartedly embraced a recent effort spearheaded by a Virginia minister, Bishop Harry Jackson, to rally black preachers against gay marriage. Jackson is promoting what he calls the Black Contract with America on Moral Values, whose primary plank is opposition to gay marriage. Republican operatives are undoubtedly thanking their lucky stars for this turn of events, because the anti-gay-marriage movement has enormous potential to move black Democrats into the Republican camp. A huge proportion of the signatories at the kickoff event for the Black Contract in Los Angeles were liberal Democrats, including Pastor Stewart. Stewart may be exquisitely cautious in broaching marital childbearing, but about homosexual unions, he is clarion-clear: “This black doesn’t believe that gay rights and black civil rights are the same at all,” he told me. “This movement is going to be a big thing, I’m gonna be a big voice.” Stewart says that he is being called an Uncle Tom by gay blacks. “I welcome it. That is very fine, just fine.” The irony will be considerable if the movement catches on. The near-total breakdown of heterosexual marriage poses a far greater risk to black children than homosexual marriage. Gay marriage could be banned tomorrow, but if the out-of-wedlock birthrate among blacks continues at 70 percent, there will be absolutely no change in child outcomes. Nevertheless, if, in opposing gay marriage, ministers find themselves arguing for the value of heterosexual marriage in raising children, this seemingly irrelevant detour into the culture wars could have a positive effect. It also could further weaken the traditional civil rights leadership, which overwhelmingly opposes the fight against gay marriage, despite the black public’s 60 percent disapproval of gay marital unions. Eddie Huff, a real-estate agent in Tulsa and conservative blogger, argues that this conflict will lead to a greater skepticism toward conventional liberal wisdom: “Once you open yourself to one aspect of conservative ideology, more and more makes sense. Especially when you start getting attacked by liberals.” Olgen Williams sees opportunity everywhere—this is, after all, America. “What I would love to do more of is to tell people: you can change your destiny. You can send your kids to college or turn your neighborhood around,” he says. Williams knows whereof he speaks. He returned to Indianapolis from the Vietnam War a white-hating, marijuana-smoking militant, who celebrated each urban riot as revenge on the Man. He tried LSD with hippies, and soon added heroin addiction and larceny to his resumé. He stole from the post office, where he worked as a clerk during the day, while dreaming up schemes to “off the pigs” with his black Muslim friends at night. A conversion to Christianity stopped the slide. After starting a lawn-care business (which he ended after breaking both wrists by falling off a pruning ladder), he became the premier anti-crime organizer in Indianapolis’s troubled Haughville district. Today, his office is plastered with the Ten Commandments, accolades from successive governors and mayors, glowing press tributes to the “Heart of Haughville,” commendations from Justice Clarence Thomas and former attorney general Janet Reno, and a presidential pardon for his larceny conviction from George W. Bush. Where Jesse Lee Peterson is hot, Olgen Williams is cool and watchful. A double-chinned, slow-talking “ol’ boy from Tennessee”—who, when asked about his hard-to-decipher accent, retorts evenly: “I’m not going to try to change my diction”—Williams mixes a deeply traditional Christian morality with an ironic skepticism about both left-wing and right-wing schemes for black redemption. Every important change, he believes, has to take place in the family. How can we create more people like you, who reject racial victimology? I ask. “I start in my own household. That’s where the cycle has to be broken,” he replies slowly. “My sons”—six of them, plus two daughters—“don’t got no girlfriends. They’re not laying about with every girl they see. It’s about what you put in ’em. I treat their mother with respect. I don’t want no tattooed, dope-smoking, shacked-up athlete to be their hero.” If individuals don’t have values, Williams says, social anarchy results—though, he adds, “I’m not talking about forcing morality on anyone.” Instead, he has extended his moral influence into his neighborhood through example. Nineteen-year-old boys affiliated with his community-service center accompany him to local jails. They get up in front of 200 young inmates and announce: “ ‘Guys, I’m not fornicating. I’ve never smoked no cigarettes or marijuana.’ ” And the convicts, Williams says, break out in applause. “ ‘Yeah, brother, you’re right,’ they say.” I asked Williams how he found such boys. “They’re here, all around you,” he tells me. “When you give them a chance, you’d be surprised.” Popular culture, however, puts them at risk, in Williams’s view. For example, a recent article in Ebony on the top ten black couples featured only one married pair, he notes contemptuously. “I’d rather see a custodian raising his kids and sending them to college than a $1 million entertainer. What entertainer promotes the sanctity of marriage?” The Black History Month website contained just “basketball players, tattoos, dancers, and buffoonery,” Williams says. “What about hardworking, blue collar people?” Would more youth programs help foster traditional values in kids? I ask. Not a chance, at least without accountability. “We spent $7 trillion on poverty and lost that war a long time ago,” he says. “I don’t have no silver-bullet program,” he adds with typical realism. There is one government initiative, however, that has immediate and certain effects on urban communities: crime-fighting. Without safety, Williams says, neighborhoods collapse. “All the people with economic power will be gone; all that’s left are poor people.” Economic development can occur only where crime is under control, because “people spend money only where they feel safe.” To prove his theory, Williams forged an unprecedented alliance with the police in Haughville, a neighborhood previously accustomed to protesting law enforcement, not working with it. “We told the police: we want you to arrest the criminals; we’ve got your back. In 1995 we started kicking it hard,” he says. Drug dealing and murder dropped markedly, and Indianapolis cops began requesting assignment to Haughville because of the community support. Businesses moved in, and economic activity picked up. But getting local residents to take advantage of those new opportuni- ties isn’t easy. “We’re in serious jeopardy as a people,” Williams argues. Immigrants are starting businesses where the victimologists claimed that only government spending could spark economic activity. And then, rather than finding out how the new entrepreneurs did it, Williams observes, many blacks just get resentful. “I hate to hear how mad people get at immigrants because of their success. We’re good at that, black people. We think government is giving immigrants something. I tell people: ‘Ask them. Ask them to teach you how to run a business.’ But we don’t want to, because it means sacrifice.” To fight the entitlement mentality, Williams runs Christamore House, his community agency, with a radical twist: it doesn’t hook people up to welfare. “There are no excuses here. I have no checks to give out. Our thing is: get a job. I don’t use the term, ‘McDonald’s job.’ Five dollars is better than zero. That’s better than you coming here and asking me for a handout.” Despite Christianity’s all-important role in his own life, Williams rejects the idea that religious faith is the key to urban reclamation. It is the American dream that he is fighting for. “We have greater opportunities in this country than anyplace in the world,” Williams says. “Notice, I said ‘opportunities,’ not ‘panaceas.’ I want to stand for American values. I tell my kids: ‘There ain’t no other place to live, honey; you don’t want to go there.’ There’s nothing wrong with saying: ‘I love America, I support the American dream,’ ” he says. “I’m an American. I don’t want to be anything else.” Many black conservatives are banking on time to bring about a more widespread change in thinking. The older generation remains wedded to what U.S. Civil Rights Commissioner Peter Kirsanow calls the “grievance-legislative model” of politics. For many who were close to segregation, America will always be racist, and only government social programs can possibly offset the effects of white prejudice. “Their mentality is frozen like Japanese soldiers in World War II in Burma, who weren’t aware that the war was over,” observes Los Angeles–based talk-show host Larry Elder. It’s a hopeful sign that the younger generation, by contrast, is distancing itself from the previous norm on several key social issues, and that younger blacks are increasingly likely to identify themselves as conservative and moderate, according to polling done by the Democrat-aligned Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. The most hopeful sign, however, comes in the courage and eloquence of individual black conservatives who are willing to withstand hatred to defend their beliefs. They are radically committed to color-blindness and, for that reason, reject the idea that a new black leader is necessary to give legitimacy to conservative thought. “We have a ‘leadership,’ ” argued journalist Mychal Massie at the recent Heritage Foundation conference. “He’s George W. Bush.” The president would do well to take Sheriff Clarke’s advice and invite these brave men over to the White House. More and more, African-American iconoclasts reject victimology and embrace American possibility.
public
0

AUGUST 2006 (LIVEJOURNAL)

-
-
74321
2006-08-01 21:37:00
2006-08-02 02:46:00
I can't believe it's August
As much as people complained about how hot it was here last month, we had a REAL summer - and I loved every second of it. Shorts only - no pants for a whole month, no long sleeved shirts, bright sun, good moods, good tans, How often does Duluth get weather like this? Not very! I'll take every moment of it that we have left. Because as excited as I was for summer to begin three months ago, I realize that three months from now will be November, and that's what sucks about August - it's officially the beginning of the end if you like warm weather. Not that I don't like fall, or winter even...it's just the length of the wait between November and May that seems to take so long. Especially that time right after New Year's Day when everything settles down and gets back to normal. Who knows what kind of winter we are going to have this time around. If we are lucky, we will have one like the past year, which was barely memorable - I don't think we really had any big storms to speak of. This summer, we've had little rain, except for the past two days it seems to have all come at once. Today has been a drag because it's been one of those typical early August cloudy, is it gonna rain or isn't it days. Which reminds me of fall, which reminds me of the beginning of the school year, which is coming up in less than a month. The time goes by way too fast. And I have to admit I've had a good time this summer. I've gotten a chance to get out and do the things I want, no, of course I haven't met anyone but at the same time, I think to myself, I have my own schedule that I can go shoot pictures or work out or play basketball and do whatever I want. I don't have to answer to anyone, nor do I have to check in or deal with someone else's moods.
public
0



-
74538
2006-08-03 20:51:00
2006-08-04 02:19:53
8/2/66-8/2/06 = my 40 year old sister.
My sister Missy turned 40 yesterday. I haven't talked much about her becuase my family's relationship with her over the past ten years or so has been very rocky. She has entered a series of very bad relationships, three of which she had children from. None of these guys have been in her life for more than two years or so. I think that my parents got so frustrated with her inability to learn from some of her choices, combined with how quickly she would enter a new relationship - this time with kids - that they stopped trying to talk to her and just let her do whatever she wanted, because she's going to do what she wants anyways. The problem is that, at 40, she hasn't seemed to learn from these choices. Their discussions always have ended in a fight, a phone slamming down, voices getting higher, my parents arguing afterwards about where they went wrong with her; Missy is a subject that I do not bring up around my parents. She lives outside of Chicago now, which is over 400 miles away, so we rarely discuss her. WHenever the discussion moves in the direction of Missy, it is almost always a bad one and I try to steer away from it. I remember being about 6 ot 7 (my sisters are 7 and 8 years older than me) and my sisters were teenagers. Both Missy and Steph were great at certain things, but Missy excelled at almost everything she tried at. She always made the honor roll. She was pretty and got all the attention a girl could ever want. She always had boyfriends. She was popular at school. Whatever she put her energy towards, she always did well at. Steph, on the other hand, had to really work hard to do well at things, and Missy knew it. There were times that Missy would see that Steph was trying to do well at something (drawing was one of them), and Missy took up drawing just to upstage Steph. That's how competitive Missy was. It drove Steph crazy. When Missy was going to East High School, she was a great sport - she lettered in volleyball, basketball and softball. We went to all the games, she was on the first East teams to go to the state high school tournaments...she was the first generation of female athletes at East who were smart, pretty, competitive, and could still beat the boys at basketball. Growing up, I idolized Missy like you wouldn't believe. She was so good at everything she did, I wanted to be around her and I thought her friends were so cool also. Those were good times for me. I didn't realize the heighr or pain of competition that affected my other sister, or even my mom, when it came to Missy. But as I sit here as an adult, I know that those were very hard years. Missy and Steph rarely got along. Both of them would try to pit my mom against my dad, and many times that was the start of some pretty loud arguments in this house. Then after they moved out, I got to listen to my parents argue about why they didn't stick up for each other when the girls were pulling this stuff - thanks a lot Missy and Steph! I'm not even sure what Missy's number is now. It's been so long since I've really talked to her because she has three kids now, and I think she met a new guy about six months ago who she now lives with. I choose not to get involved in that right now. I feel bad for saying nothing and doing nothing, but I have tried in the past and the insanity of dealing with it is too much for me. She's got to find her own way out of this. Right now I remember her as the big sister I used to really admire. I will always love her. Happy birthday, Mis. Here's some of my favorite pictures of Missy over the years...
public
0



-
74831
2006-08-04 23:36:00
2006-08-05 04:36:25
For all of my photos...
http://www.kodakgallery.com/duluthmn
public
0



-
75167
2006-08-15 20:57:00
2006-08-16 01:57:58

CITY OF DULUTH POLICE DEPARTMENT PRESS RELEASE 411 W. 1st Street Duluth, MN 55803 218-730-5400 This is an official City of Duluth Police Department press release. Copies of all press releases can be accessed through our web site at: www.ci.duluth.mn.us/city/pressreleases/index.htm Todayís Date: 8/14/06 Location: 2001 W. Superior Street Incident: Robbery of the Seaway Hotel Incident Date: 8/14/06 Incident Time: 1917 hrs. Case Number: 06-297649 Author: Lt. Kerry Kolodge Details On 8-14-06 at approximately 1917 hrs., Duluth Police responded to the Seaway Hotel at 2001 W. Superior Street, in reference to a robbery. Initial information was that an unknown male entered the Hotel wearing a ski mask, went behind the counter, grabbed the female clerk and demanded money. The clerk complied with the robberís demand and was unhurt. The suspect fled the scene with an undisclosed amount of cash. He was last seen running west in the alley behind the Seaway Hotel, in the area of Curlyís Bar. No weapon was seen and none was mentioned. The suspect was described as a slender black male, 5'5" to 5'9", wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt and unknown colored pants or shorts. Anyone with information on this robbery is asked to contact the Duluth Police Department Violent Crimes Unit at 218-730-5050.
public
0



-
75356
2006-08-19 18:09:00
2006-08-19 23:13:31
Something to think about
My original letter to Lavender Magazine, which I can't find right now, had to do with the overemphasis on convincing society to accept gay marriage but I don't even see gay people convinced that this can work. This is one of the responses that was in this week's magazine, it was interesting: Letter to the editor in Lavender Magazine (8-18-06) Singled Out Thank you, Jonathan Lund and Managing Editor E.B. Boatner, for bringing up the issue of how many gay men struggle to find an appropriate life partner year after year with no success [“Letters to the Editor” and “A Word in Edgewise,” Lavender, July 21]. Several years ago, a study in The Advocate stated that about 60 percent of adult gay men would not experience a long-term relationship in their lifetime. Realizing I am a part of this 60 percent was a revelation that sent me on a personal quest to find out why. The core problem, as I see it, is one of gender behavior. We may be gay, but we are male first. To make a statement that part of the problem is two men trying to forge a union is seen by the current gay culture as a homophobic statement, but if you look at the way we are raised as boys, we are conditioned to compete with other boys, our friends, our brothers, and even our fathers. We don’t really trust one another, because we are always assuming that other guys want to get one up on us, and we’re angry when another man becomes more successful than we are. Also, we are very uncomfortable with the idea of giving up our personal power to another man. To approach a man and tell him we need and want him is to render oneself completely at his mercy. Most gay men find this so degrading that they would rather go home alone with their dignity intact than risk humiliation, especially in front of other men. When we do manage to couple, this male power struggle within the relationship often begins to tear at the fabric of what was forged in the process of falling in love. We as a movement have become so concerned with not giving our opposition any ammunition that we disallow the self-criticism crucial for the GLBT liberation movement to evolve to a more mature stage. We have come such a long way in such a short time. But we need to come together and ask: Where are we now? What are the problems? How can we find a way to reach out to each other? Where are our leaders? We are all in this together. Let’s be kinder to one another, and not just on Gay Pride. Andre S. Gambino
public
0



-
75653
2006-08-19 20:21:00
2006-08-20 01:21:15
Flickr
This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.
public
0

JULY 2006 (LIVEJOURNAL)

-
-
68146
2006-07-01 20:52:00
2006-07-02 01:55:10
More Overdose Information - Public Health Warnings
Most fentanyl victims older Records detail deaths, show many male, white BY JIM SCHAEFER, JOE SWICKARD and BEN SCHMITT FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS July 1, 2006 How to get help For more information on drug abuse, go to www.drugfreedetroit.org or www.semca.org. A statewide substance abuse hotline is available at 888-736-0253. The victims of a powerful painkiller blamed in scores of deaths in metro Detroit were most often middle-age, most frequently men and typically white. It struck equally among those living in the suburbs and the city. Records released Friday by the Wayne County Medical Examiner's office on 110 deaths related to the drug fentanyl from September 2005 to the beginning of June painted a more vivid picture of the victims, many of whom died when the drug was mixed with heroin or cocaine to produce a more intense high. According to case summaries, autopsies and toxicology reports reviewed by the Free Press, the victims ranged in age from 19 to 60 and lived in 21 communities, including Detroit. But more than half were between the ages of 41 and 55. And in 82 records where hometowns were clearly identifiable, as many people who died claimed homes in the suburbs as in the city. White people accounted for two-thirds of those who died during the period. Of the 110, 75 were men. The records, sought by the newspaper under the Freedom of Information Act, were incomplete: Many details, including names, addresses and other vital information, were removed by authorities, who claimed the release of those details would hamper ongoing criminal investigations. Hometowns were indicated in 82 of the case summaries, however. The picture drawn from the documents is an accurate one, officials said. "Drug abuse is an equal opportunity destroyer," Dr. Michele Reid, chairwoman of the Wayne County Fentanyl Work Group, said Friday. "This just goes to show you the general vulnerability of the population." Fentanyl deaths have swept several cities across the nation this year. In Wayne County alone, authorities have blamed at least 130 deaths on the drug since the beginning of 2005. The records released Friday accounted for fewer deaths because some cases were not released pending lab reports. The 110 deaths reviewed by the Free Press also did not include fentanyl-related suicides or natural deaths where the drug showed up in testing but was taken for legitimate medical uses. The victims in the cases reviewed died from injecting, snorting and smoking fentanyl or using fentanyl with other drugs. A few ate a gel containing the drug from patches typically prescribed to give regulated doses of the painkiller through the skin. The records provided a glimpse of the ways in which the drug claimed its victims. Bodies were found on floors, on stairways and on porches; they were found sitting on toilets. Frequently, they were found frothing from the mouth and nose. Several victims were found with underwear around their ankles after apparently injecting themselves in the groin. Two were found dumped along city streets and one on a freeway service drive. Many were found dead in bed. In one case in April, three young users were found dead together in a car in Detroit. Two of them apparently died while having sex in the front seat. All told, fentanyl played a role in the deaths of 71 white people, 38 African Americans and one Hispanic. Male victims outnumbered women 75 to 35. While authorities made public warnings about fentanyl this May, numbers began spiking last November, when deaths associated with the drug jumped to 16 from seven a month earlier. The death toll ran in double digits through February, dropped in March and April, and soared to 24, the peak month, in May. But as early as January, the medical examiner's office was hearing concerns. One report details how the daughter of a 52-year-old woman who overdosed called shortly after her mother's death and said two more drug users in their neighborhood had died. The document does not indicate whether the official who took that call shared the information. Still, Reid said Friday, "there wasn't enough evidence to go public with it any earlier. There just was not a critical mass before May." That's when local officials warned that fentanyl was showing up in dangerous quantities, mixed with heroin and cocaine. Police said dealers have capitalized on the scourge, branding their goods in packages named Drop Dead and Suicide Packets. At least one user wasn't scared by the warnings: Records show a 27-year-old Detroiter discussed with his girlfriend a "new mix of drugs and that it was killing people in the Detroit area." He was dead within hours. Wayne County Health Services 640 Temple 8th Floor Detroit, Michigan 48202 Phone: (313) 833-2500 Fax: (313) 833-2156 TDD: (800) 630-1044 RR TDD: (888) 339-5588 Substance Abuse Health Alert: Fatal Mix of Heroin with Fentanyl The Wayne County Medical Examiner is reporting an increase in the number of deaths due to drug use. Most of these drug deaths have been associated with heroin that is combined with another drug named fentanyl. Fentanyl is a drug that is related to heroin and morphine, but is much more potent, especially when used in combination with heroin. The Medical Examiner has also seen fentanyl mixed with cocaine. People who use street drugs should be made aware that they may come in contact with drugs that are much more powerful than what they are used to, and that these drugs may result in death. Help is available! Substance Abuse Treatment Services: Statewide Substance Abuse Hotline (888) 736-0253 DETROIT 24-Hour Hotline - (800) 467-2452 www.drugfreedetroit.org Wayne County COMMUNITIES Outside Detroit 24-Hour Hotline - (800) 686-6543 TDD (800) 649-3777 www.semca.org www.semcaprevention.org Office of Communications and Community Collaboration – May 2006
public
0



-
68412
2006-07-02 18:48:00
2006-07-02 23:48:40












public
0



-
68610
2006-07-02 18:50:00
2006-07-02 23:50:19
87 degreees downtown today - let's go for a walk





































public
0



-
68941
2006-07-03 19:07:00
2006-07-04 00:07:03
Another walk - East Duluth's newest homes, etc.
Today's walk went through the most exclusive part of Duluth; 34th Ave E - 40th Ave E from the higher to the lower streets.







Entrance to the NCC and the outdoor pool, 38th Ave E & Superior St.

Northland Country Club Estates

Ordean Junior High School, 40th Ave E & Superior St.

One of the $2.5 million homes on top of the Northland Country Club Estates

These homes were just built by Hawk's Ridge...very $$$$$
public
0



-
69247
2006-07-04 17:08:00
2006-07-04 22:08:58
Perfect 4th of July afternoon in Canal Park





































public
0



-
69411
2006-07-05 21:14:00
2006-07-06 02:14:07
Today's photos


The Best Western Edgewater's New Themepark

The Marshall School, private school grades 5-12

Central High School, where I went...

the 'commons' at Central

We raised the money for this sign

the new condos on Mesaba Ave (www.superiorvista.com)

Years ago this was the Duluth Orphanage...today it's an apartment building on 15th Ave E & 5th St.

Temple Israel, 16th Ave E & 2nd St.



Endion School, 18th Ave E & 1st St; now a community center.

Alternative bookstore, 19th Ave E & Superior St. The apartments above are really cool.
public
0



-
69859
2006-07-06 12:49:00
2006-07-06 17:49:12
At 32


It's my 32nd birthday today. After I turned 30, which was the WORST birthday of my life, I had a few life changing experiences emotionally and physically that inspired me to, now, feel better about myself than I did when I was 15. I'm in the best shape of my life, I am more active than I ever was (I was up and playing basketball the day after Grandma's Marathon!) and the only thing I have to continue to work on is my depression and self-centered depression which occassionally gets bad. Otherwise, I'm having a good day. My dad just took this picture about 20 minutes ago =). Happy 32nd birthday to me, even if I don't have anyone to romantically share it with.
public
0



-
70126
2006-07-07 19:03:00
2006-07-08 00:31:26
The Day After My Birthday
At 32 This birthday was like most every birthday I've had since 21 - uneventful, nobody to do anything with, and noplace to really go. I stayed home and worked in the yard and later played 2 hours of basketball in the driveway. The weather has been so great, and I don't want to miss a minute of it. I've never been this tan in my life. This year, however, has been different. My parents could tell that I wasn't in the best mood last night...and for the first time in a long time I told them why. There is a reason why I've never 'gone there' with them, and I'll explain that in a minute. 2006 has been a special year for me. Most importantly, it's marked 10 years since I was in the one and only relationship as of yet, with a very wonderful guy named Jeff. I met him by accident - I was in Minneapolis for the Twin Cities Marathon in October 1995, and the night before the run, I decided to go out, which turned out to be the luckiest decision I ever made. When I got there, I saw a very striking latin guy my age watching the dance floor. Our eyes met, and he smiled at me - time stood still. This is what I had been waiting for, someone who I felt an attraction towards and sensed had a good heart. I couldn't let him slip away. So we talked - for four hours. I learned he was born in Colombia, raised in an orphanage until age 5, and then adopted by a family in Apple Valley. He liked a lot of the same things I did. He liked sports, didn't smoke, and didn't do drugs. My kind of guy. So the marathon came and went, and the cards, letters and phone calls with Jeff intensified. By January 1996, he was headed to Duluth on a Greyhound Bus on the night that the windchill was -55. Being impulsive, we decided to make the visit permanent. I had never been happier in my life - finally I had everything I wanted. My family was here, Jeff was here, and I had a reason to succeed - I had someone in my life now. Unfortunately, I slowly learned that Jeff was not doing well emotionally. Later, his sister told me about the abuse he endured at the orphanage, the anger he had about losing his parents, and how his coping mechanism was to just get up and leave a situation that became too hard to deal with. By September 1996, I came home one day to find him gone, along with his belongings. No warning, no note, no closure. Ten years later, I've decided to do a lot of reflection and ponder what I've learned since then, and where this will bring me next.. I'm still learning about who I am - within the realm of everyone else's problems, a society that has gone nuts, and people who trust each other less and less. I am finding that you have to let those things go at some point and refocus on who you are and ask yourself what will really make you happy. For a long time, I wanted a relationship because I was, and still am, incredibly lonely. I want touch, I want companionship, I want to feel like I'm a part of something. But I also want to feel a sense of belonging, and I am realizing this is a huge amount of pressure to place on another person. Because if the relationship doesn't work, you've lost your sense of self - giving that person the power to control and validate you. I will not allow that to happen to me again. However, my problem as a gay man concerns choices. It's very frustrating to have learned so much about yourself and know what you want, only to have nobody to share it with. One of the best things about being gay, though, is that we must gain knowledge about ourselves and become independent - we do not have the option of defining our lives through children or marriages. It's us, often alone, which means accepting all those things that other people get to forget about because their kids need a ride to the Y or their spouse needs them to come along to a company dinner. Our lives aren't as complicated, and we have the ability to reflect on things that most straight people don't get to do until they retire or lose their spouse. Then there are times where the old me comes back hoping that sometime during summer 2006 I would have the luck of a romantic movie moment where there was a phone call and reconciliation; or I was playing basketball some evening and Jeff walks up the driveway out of nowhere and my life has changed. But, since he probably lives 165 miles away, and he isn't that kind of person, I know deep down those things will never happen. Not with him anyways. Even though I knew not to expect much, my heart still hurts. I had hoped that he would have found something within himself to get in touch with me and at least wonder how I'm doing. Because more than anything I want to know that he is okay. I was never angry at him for what he did, because meeting him opened so many doors for me and allowed me to explore a relationship for the first time. Had I not met him, maybe I wouldn't have experienced that at all. I explained to my dad that this summer has been extremely hard for me. At 32, I've now waited 10 years to find someone who is special, attractive, has something in common, and wants the same things that I do. I have moved to Minneapolis, I've gotten jobs at different places, I've gone to places where single gay men hang out; I've placed personal ads, I've gone for long walks, I've pretty much done everything within my power to put myself out there to get into contact with someone. And nothing has happened. While I understand that even in the largest, gayest cities, we still make up a very small percentage of people, I continue to feel like a failure or useless because I can not attract the kind of man I seek. I feel that there is nothing else I can do - that I haven't already done before - to change that. When you've tried so many things, so many times, over so many years, you do lose hope. You do start to believe that this just isn't going to happen. You don't get excited to go on trips anymore. You don't tear through the employment ads seeking a great new job. You aren't looking for that perfect apartment someplace. Because you've done all these things before, and the end result has always been the same: at the end of the day, you come home to an empty space. Everyone else at work goes on and on about their spouses, kids, new relationships, whatever; and you have absolutely nothing to add to the conversation. I hate that the most. And while I'm glad that many of my straight friends try to understand, they need to know that it takes more than two guys being gay to match them up. That would be no different than assuming that two black people are going to form a relationship on the basis of blackness alone. There has to be common interests, attraction, values and goals. When you have such a small percentage of people to begin with, finding someone in this mix is like searching for them in the dark. After a while it gets hard to hang on to hope. It no longer has much to do with 'getting a boyfriend' but rather it has to do with everything you had once believed about being gay. This is where I got my parents involved. Unless you are gay, and know intimately what it's like to be this alone for this long, and tried this hard to change that, there is very little a parent can say or do to help. Because it's not their reality, and it's a very complicated situation. No other group has this problem that gay men do. Because we only make up 2% of the population, our selection base can literally be 15 people in one city. And that's not factoring in mutual attraction, interests, hobbies, interest in relationships, etc. So my dad, wanting to help, begins to offer suggestions on how to fix this. Maybe I should start throwing myself into applying for new jobs. Maybe I'll meet someone in graduate school. He said these same things after Jeff left. Nothing happened. At this point, I don't believe it anymore, so that advice no longer works on me. The bottom line is that there is nothing else I can do that I haven't already done. This is a situation that is so out of my control, and out of my reach, that it has literally driven me crazy because of that impossibility to change it. I can not control who is gay and who is not. I also can't do anything about the fact that the people who are gay tend to be people I've already met, already seen, or already talked to and there's a reason why I didn't want to pursue anything (no attraction, or I have no tolerance for addictions, lying, bizarre behavior, etc). And when you see those same guys over and over, yes, it's likely that they're the only choices here. How do you feel good about that, and how do you explain to a straight person that the way they tend to meet each other is generally not how it works for us (just happening to meet someone at work, or school) - my experience has been that people are more closeted around each other in those settings because there's a lot at stake if they offend the wrong person. While I wasn't looking for an answer from my dad (I think I just wanted validation)...it was hard at the end of the conversation when he had nothing really to say. Just that this was not what he had expected for me and he knows that I did not ask for this to happen. My mom gets too emotional about this whole thing. They are both understanding and supportive about my being gay, but it's a little more complicated than that. The things that go with being gay are as difficult as the initial acceptance of a gay child. This happens about 10-15 years after coming out. Parents begin to notice things about their gay child that really do make them stand out, like being alone and unable to find someone special. While most straight people who are your child's age are meeting someone, getting married and having kids, your gay kid might not be meeting anyone - at all. To watch this happen, for a parent, who had much different ideas on how this child's life would be when he was born, this must be very upsetting. I can tell because my parents continue to avoid the heart of what hurts so much - so they tell me to start applying for jobs and get out of the house more. The same thing they told me 10 years ago. The same advice that made no difference. That is why I don't even bring this up to them anymore. I love them for trying to understand, but at the same time it makes me so angry that they shut themselves out by just saying 'numb your feelings by drowning yourself in work or school'. That is not an answer...that's putting your problems on hold for another 10-20 years. I am not angry at my parents, don't get me wrong. It's because of them that I had the luxury of coming out while I was a 9th grader at Washington Junior High School. By the time I got to Central, we had no secrets. They knew I was writing to different guys (none local, of course) and wanting to learn more about who I was. They were always very supportive of that, and I will always appreciate how lucky I was to have them in my life. I know many gay folks who were told to pack their bags and get out - at 16- the moment their sexuality was discovered. Many of those people are no longer alive today. I credit my parents, who are my supporters, my best friends, and role models, for teaching me to hang in there the best way they know how. What I am learning it that all of these experiences are learning tools for all of us. As my life continues, they learn more about me. As they get older, I learn more about their relationship and how their lives change while they still work things out as a couple. Those are lessons I have gained the most knowledge from and am lucky to be able to observe at this point in my life. I love them for trying to help. I love them for wanting me to be happy. So the summer continues, uneventful for the most part. I still hang on to my memories of summer 1996, but I also have taken my parents advice which is essentially to realize that I have a gift of strength and courage that has kept me going this long. Life is about uncertainty; being able to accept that while not allowing the world to stop is so important. And whether or not I meet someone again isn't my main focus anymore; as I continue to mature emotionally and spiritually I appreciate those who have always been by my side no matter what: my family. Those are my family values.
public
0



-
70193
2006-07-09 19:21:00
2006-07-10 00:21:50
Hot weekend!
When I have nothing to talk about I talk about what I know, which is my city. Here's some recent pictures:

me again on my birthday

The new condos in Canal Park. These are the most expensive ones, I think.

You can see the sign for the Sauna here (www.duluthsauna.com)

Again a picture looking up 1st Avenue East

County Courthouse

The Board of Trade Building. Louie Anderson used this building as the opening for the intro for his short-lived sitcom.

Here's the YWCA. I worked here for a long, long time at the front desk from 3-11 pm.

I live in the room with the air conditioner

Alworth, Torrey, Medical Arts and Meierhoff Buildings, 300 block of W Superior St.

Close up of the condos at 411 W 1st St. It's going to be a while before they're ready.

This is another building that's becoming condos. I want to live at this place, 411 W 1st St. It's in the center of everything.

Until 1995 this was Duluth's jail. The new one is literally in the middle of nowhere, 15 miles from downtown by the airport.

Duluth Police car parked outside the DPD offices.

sign across from Washington Jr High

I went to school here; Washington Junior High School, 315 N Lake Ave.
public
0



-
70829
2006-07-11 21:16:00
2006-07-12 02:16:59
Tonight's photos!


The new sculpture at the University of Minnesota - Duluth (UMD)

Washburn Elementary School, where I went from K-6th grades. I hated this place. It's very eerie to come back here as an adult and recall the memories I had at this school.

This is the new Olive Garden that was built by the Miller Hill Mall. They put a lot of money into building it into the side of the hill. People who live around there fought that development tooth and nail.

Stanbrook Hall High School (all girls private school). My mom went to high school here.

Another photo of Stanbrook Hall Girls' H.S.

The College of St. Scholastica, which shares the campus with Stanbrook Hall.

UMD's new library.

UMD's new student center and transportation hub.

UMD's Swenson Science Building, completed January 2006



Woodland Junior High School, where my sisters went to school.

Mount Royal Manor, one of the 'nicer' apartment buildings with a desirable (East) address. The penthouse at the top rents for $2000 a month and has its own rooftop pool and garden!
public
0



-
71127
2006-07-12 20:18:00
2006-07-13 01:18:55
Going WEST
It was 88 degrees today, and after working in the yard all afternoon I took a drive out to the other side of the city then over the hill. I got some photos: This is the new St. Louis County (Duluth) Jail that I have never actually seen before because it's so far off the road in the middle of nowhere, past the mall. Tonight I decided to look at it. It's really not much of anything, huh?





Off to the west end:

Duluth Denfeld High School, 44th Ave W & 4th St.

One block away from Denfeld, the Greyhound Bus Depot; 44th Ave W & Grand Ave.

The old National Bank Building; 2000 W Superior St.

This is the city's WORST property in terms of drugs, assaults, even a DPD officer was killed here: the Seaway Hotel, 2001 W Superior St.

Again, the worst intersection in the city, 20th Ave W & Superior St.

Kind of a cool building, now apartments...1915 W Superior St
public
0



-
71627
2006-07-14 20:18:00
2006-07-16 01:18:35
Long Walk & Vista King Night...
I've decided to take the initiative this summer and go do things that I've been waiting to do (if I met someone) and just do them myself. One of the things I've wanted to do for a while is tour the city through the Vista King which goes out onto Lake Superior. Of course I was the only person who was alone on the cruise, everyone else was with a spouse or boy/girlfriend...but I got so into taking photos that after a while I didn't mind. I had a good time. Here's some photos of the walk down to the lake from the house, and photos from the boat:

view of downtown from the lakewalk on 15th Ave E

The Vet that Misty goes to (and all our other precious pets =)

Right by our house is Dunn Bros Coffee, 24th Ave E & London Road

The official beginning of Interstate 35, at 26th Ave E in Duluth.

this is a huge luxury housing development along the lakeshore at 28th Ave East

Classic Congdon home on 24th Ave E & 2nd St

Holy Rosary Church, 29th Ave E & 4th St

This is the bridge that connects Duluth with Superior, WI

western edge of downtown

downtown



Central Hillside






public
0



-
71381
2006-07-15 15:38:00
2006-07-15 20:38:58
You will only see this once in Duluth
The same city that brings you -55 degree windchills in January is now the same place that registered at 106 degrees downtown today. It's damn hot. And I hate to say it, but it's a challenge and I love it. If you're trying to contact me from my article in the Reader, my email is DuluthJon@mac.com Here's my downtown photos for today!





































I went for a ride on the Vista King last night for the first time; see last night's entry!
public
0



-
72363
2006-07-16 16:54:00
2006-07-16 21:54:41
A photo tour of two states and a walk in between them
Temperatures were much more comfortable today, so i embarked on my longest journey as of yet: a trip to Superior, and a 6 mile walk across the Bong Bridge back towards West Duluth. I got some great shots, however, there's only so much to shoot in Superior, WI. There was hardly anyone on the sidewalks downtwon. One thing you'll notice right away about Superior is the amount of bars. Over in Wisconsin:

The bridge that links Duluth and Superior

Superior, the most northwestern city in Wisconsin (Superior - Milwaukee = 395 miles)

Unsuccessful Asian restaurant turned tanning salon?



The Main Club, 916 Tower Ave, Superior, WI

Androy Hotel. This place has a neat history.

Another shot of the Androy Hotel, notice the area's gay bar to the left - the Main Club. Along with the Sauna in Duluth, these are the two main gay spaces in Duluth/Superior.

Who's Bar and the Androy Hotel

Another bar on the main street, Tower Avenue

One of a couple new buildings downtown in Superior, the library.

I used to come to this place to get the Milwaukee newspaper on Sundays - the Globe News, Tower and Belknap Back in Minnesota:

Officially in Duluth and Minnesota.

Interstate 35; traffic with its tailights are likely headed on the 165 mile trip back to Minneapolis - notice the steep s-shaped, winding hill ahead to climb - in the winter this is a hell of a hike for the semis.

Duluth Denfeld High School, 44th Ave W & 4th St; the jewel of West Duluth

The welcome to Minnesota sign

long ways to downtown (1st Ave W) looking from 46th Ave W

back downtown near the Voyageur Lakewalk Inn, 4th Ave E & Superior St

the most popular malt shop near downtown and the hillside, Portland Malt Shop, 8th Ave E & Superior St

Kitchi Gammi Club

Northland Medical Clinic a block from St. Luke's.

St. Luke's new building

I was born here - St. Luke's Hospital, 915 E 1st St



The most expensive hotel in Duluth (so far); Fitger's Inn, 600 E Superior St



Later, far away from downtown up by the Miller Hill Mall:

The front entrance to the Miller Hill Mall

Lake Superior College (LSC) where I went for 2 years (and Jeff went here for a while)

LSC

LSC

The main entrance to LSC

Miller Hill Manor Apartments, directly across from the Mall. This is my favorite apartment building in Duluth...it's right by everything and it has a great pool.

Olive Garden, just completed

Caribou Coffee
public
0



-
73150
2006-07-17 19:24:00
2006-07-18 01:01:27
Anniversaries and such
Today was my parents' wedding anniversary. July 17, 1965. They've been married 41 years now, which to me is something I can't even imagine. I'm trying to imagine someone to go out to coffee with, or someone to even find interest in. Someone even on the horizon out there for me. Not happening. So tonight, my parents and I went out to dinner, which was a perfect evening. The weather was great, we had a great meal, but we didn't get to do what I had planned. I wanted to go down to that church on Park Point where they got married and get some pictures of them outside the church. It was getting late, and so I didn't get to take any photos. We still had a good time tonight and that's more important anyways. The weather here has been just amazing. It was over 100 degrees on Saturday, and I was downtown to catch all the photos and scenes. The rooms at the YWCA just looked hot - everyone had their windows open and had fans blowing - what little good that did because it just blew around hot air. There were a lot of people just hanging around outside, which was fun because so often people don't leave their rooms or apartments, and it was fun to see just who's out there sometimes. Before the internet, before telephones, before all this technology people had homes with a wraparound porch, and people in the neighborhood would walk around and talk to anyone sitting on the porch in the evening. As much as I love my privacy, and as much as I like talking to people online from all over the world, there is something to be said for having local connections. We've lost so much of that today. It is fun to get to know people from different places online, but it's much different talking to real people in real life, watching their expressions, listening to the change in their voice as they tell you about their day. Someone was commenting on how Duluth has changed so much in the last 20 years and I think it's not necessarily Duluth, but a common thing seen throughout society - people don't know their neighbors anymore, because people are overextended in their lives. They do their thing at work, have some extra time to do something else on the weekends, and with other committments, there just isn't that much time left over. So people don't get very involved in their communities, or if they work a low-wage job, they don't make enough to invest much in their community. That's why people move around so much now, and the homeownership has dropped. West Duluth is a prime example. West Duluth has always been a blue-collar part of town. Call it a cross between 'Grace Under Fire' and 'Roseanne'. It has always been a white, working class part of town where most people worked at factories or mills; over the past 30 years all of those places have closed. So what happened was, the families who made just enough to afford a modest home had to move because suddenly they couldn't make the house payment (and there's no jobs left for middle aged men without a college degree), and since nobody bought the house, it turned into what it is today: rental properties that look like hell. Some people stay six months, other stay longer and utilize the house for selling drugs, harboring felons, and who knows what else. There are some people who really are trying to start over and make a new life for themselves, but most of them get scared off by the people who don't want to be responsible and instead just let their kids roam the neighborhood and throw rocks at cars. So over the past ten years, West Duluth has gone from being on the fringes of middle to low income, and now it's almost all very low income people - about half are minorities now. That shouldn't be important, but if you grew up in Duluth and knew how resistant people in West Duluth were to blacks in particular, you'd be shocked to see how many black kids are at Denfeld High School. It's just a place where there was so much hostility between lower class whites and people of color, that you thought they would never coexist in the same neighborhood. Today, they do. I'm not sure if people became more accepting, or if they had no choice (and still feel the same way as before - but don't say anything). But is it more about race or is it about income and class? There are people of color who live in the eastern part of the city who aren't looked at or seen in the same light. But these are the people of color who are doctors, UMD professors, chemists, etc. They are a visible minority but have the education and material wealth that does not put them in the same category as the people of color downtown or out west. So it's a complicated discussion: do we have more unsolved issues with race, or with social status? I think there are a lot of assumptions that we all make, for example, about people of any color who have no money and a lot of kids. We also make assumptions about people with a lot of education, a lot of wealth, and a lot of ambition. We assume that one made a lot of bad choices while the other had drive and motivation to do well. But within communities - whether it's race or sexual orientation, there are social structures that make things more complicated. With gay people (I'm talking in big cities), in order to live among other gay people in 'the neighborhood', you have to have money. 'Gay neighborhoods' are always trendy, upscale, clean, sophisticated, artsy and the center of everything. Because there are generally few to no kids around, the marketplace can be much different than other places. But because it's assumed that gay people have a lot of money and no kids, the rents and prices of homes are jacked up so high that if those homes were in any other neighborhood, you wouldn't pay half the amount you would in a gay one. So there is this association with gay people and wealth - that we tend to look like we have money (although a lot of times we don't) - it's assumed that we do. On the other hand, a neighborhood with a lot of immigrants or people of color suggests poverty or crime - whether that's the case or not - it's another assumption that people tend to make. It's interesting that nobody else has picked up on that and then asked the question - why is it okay to openly despise gay people, but not any other group? It's because we have what other people want - money and education. It's assumed that we have lots of it, and we have the luxury of no kids to support. I think that some people envy that in the worst way...if only they didn't get drunk that night and have sex...if only they didn't have the extra kid in hopes of saving their marriage...if only they would have waited another five years to have those kids, etc. Gay people don't have to worry about getting each other pregnant (we just have the huge issue of HIV!). I think the difference is that, when a group is seen as a burden onto society - one that has to be supported or one that is economically unstable - it's not okay to say bad things about them or demonize them. When the group is seen as being wealthy, having a lot of higher education (therefore 'knowing better'), then they don't get any pity or support because who the hell are they to complain? They live a life so free of responsibility and committment that anyone would jump at the chance to be in their shoes, right? Maybe. I think that is a great possibility for why it's still okay to hate gay people.
public
0



-
73327
2006-07-18 18:26:00
2006-07-18 23:33:43
Not so sure about this one
According to the Duluth News-Tribune today: UMD among 100 best campuses for LGBT students NEWS TRIBUNE The University of Minnesota Duluth has been recognized as one of the 100 best campuses for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students by Campus PrideNet. It will be included in the August 1 issue of "The Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students." The publication profiles 100 colleges and universities across the country that offer resources and create a positive living and learning environment for LGBT students. The 100 campuses listed were selected from 680 that were nominated based on institutional policies, commitment and support, academic life, housing, student life, counseling and health services, campus safety, and recruitment and retention efforts. As someone who went to UMD for three years, I would have to say that it was not this way at all. And I'm someone who has been out for a while, knows where and who to contact regarding gay stuff, I can get the sense of the attitude on campus, etc., and I did not get a good feeling at UMD. In fact, I never met anyone gay besides the person who staffed the LGBT student center. I did, however, talk to a few people on gay.com who went to UMD and would never come out, would never meet another gay person in public, nor would they attend any of the groups on campus. And this is a campus where 80-90% of the students come from Minneapolis/St. Paul, one of the most gay friendly metro areas in the United States. So either hardly anyone gay comes here, or the ones who do are deeply closeted and say/do nothing until they get home. I don't know. I think there are many instances where your experience is what you make it, but in this case, it's very difficult when you feel alright about being gay, but none of the other students do; in turn the attitude on campus seemed to be that gay people hide, which means gay is a bad thing. There were many columns in the UMD Statesman that were very adolescent in nature that made fun of gay men in particular, had they said these types of comments about anyone else they would have been thrown out of school. Or their lives would have been made a living hell. But gay people aren't a force to be reckoned with, and since most of us are too isolated at home on gay.com, nobody is going to go outside and start a revolution to fight to be treated with dignity and respect. We can't even treat other gay people that way. We can't even treat ourselves that way. So why should anyone else?
public
0



-
73717
2006-07-21 21:44:00
2006-07-22 02:44:49
I Ran The Park Point 5 Miler
Here are some pictures taken yesterday and today. Last night, I walked along Skyline Drive to the West End; today I walked through our neighborhood and took some photos of classic Congdon Park homes, and finally to Park Point where I ran the 35th annual Park Point Five Mile Run - and had a great time!! Seen this evening on Park Point:



Congdon Park Homes (22nd-29th Ave East_





















Skyline/photos of downtown Duluth from Skyline Drive:












public
0



-
74001
2006-07-31 19:46:00
2006-08-01 00:47:47
July heat to go down in city history
Warmest month ever recorded in Duluth BY JOHN MYERS NEWS TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER Duluthians have almost made it through the hottest month in recorded history. The average monthly temperature should hit 71.8 Fahrenheit by day's end, thanks to one last surge of blistering hot air, surpassing the previous record high of 71.7 degrees set in 1881. The heat wave had enveloped much of the nation's heartland, with electric utilities, including Duluth-based Minnesota Power, asking customers to conserve power whenever possible. Hayward hit 103 degrees at 3 p.m., the second time in four days, and it hit 100 at Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport for the first time in 11 years. "It's hot. When you walk outside it's like a furnace out there," said Walker Van Dixhorn of the Hayward Area Chamber of Commerce. "We've got a lot of beaches around here.... But I think people are just staying in their cabins and waiting it out. It's too hot to be outside doing anything." In Duluth, where the temperature sat at 91 at 3 p.m., there have been months that had more 90 and even 100-degree days, but never a month that was as consistently warm, day and night. "Records like this just aren't broken very often. It's very uncommon," said Sam Standfield, climate expert for the National Weather Service in Duluth. Oddly, January 2006 also was the warmest January ever recorded in the city. Standfield said the warm record is a lock -- unless thunderstorms this evening bring in an unusual well of cold air. If temperatures remain at 64 or higher through Midnight, the record is set. The weather service figures the average monthly temperature this way: Total all 31 daily high temperatures, then divide by 31. Add up all the daily lows and total them, then divide by 31. That gives you the average high and low. Combine them and divide by two to get the monthly average. Duluth International Airport officially never hit 100 during the month, although it hit 102 Friday at Sky Harbor Airport on Park Point. But the month saw three days officially in the 90s. Duluth usually only records two days in the 90s all summer. Only two record daily highs were set. But nearly every day was well into the 80s, with low temperatures in the upper 60s, which pushed the average up. There were 23 days when the high reached at least 80. Predictions of a big cooldown now appear unfounded. While it may not hit the 90s anytime soon, temperatures will remain above average, with highs in the 80s through the weekend, forecasters said Monday. Duluth officially received 1.9 inches of rain over the weekend and some National Weather Service spotters in the region recorded more than 4 inches of rain. Nearly all of the Northland saw an inch or more, helping lawns and gardens, but soil moisture in some areas remains critically low.
public
0