Adventures with Dr. Lady Cutie Troublemaker

Chris and E.J. (fellow Memphis bloggers) have posted about Zach, a 16 year-old local boy whose parents have sent him to a place called the Refuge. It’s one of those places where they try to cure you of your homosexuality. I read much of his blog, and it sounds like he’s going through absolute hell.

If you want to send Zach a message (and I hope you will… something supportive and hopeful and normalizing), send it to zach.inbartlett@gmail.com. (I promise this e-mail address is legit, because I created it for him myself. I did it so people not on MySpace can write to him.)

Please take a minute to write to Zach. He needs a little hope. Seriously. These places are so messed up. He’s got about 2 weeks when he won’t have any access to Internet, but once he’s out, I’d like him to come home to a nice full inbox of well wishes.

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Update: There’s a protest going on, if you want to take a stand in person. From EJ: People who are planning to visit from outside Memphis, please send an email to fighting.homophobia@gmail.com to contact the organizers.

Dad write a lot of letters to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Here’s one for Memorial Day:

What am I to remember on Memorial Day?  My own service during the Viet Nam War was in a non-combat area.  I remember it like any other time. But as a child, I recall the heros:  Eisenhower, McArthur, the men of Iwo Jima.  In my adult life, we’ve had Viet Nam, the Gulf War, and this current debacle.  I don’t look at them the same way.  I feel sorry for the young people who have fought in them. Very sorry that so
many have died.

I guess the Iraqi War is the final straw in the dissolution of any heroic memories.  We entered this war based on a lie.  We entered it unprovoked.  It’s now justified by saying that Hussein was a bad, dangerous man, his soldiers committed atrocities.  I now see our president as a bad, dangerous  man, and read about our soldiers commiting atrocities.  America is just another country with the foolish notion that only power can prevail in the world – power without principles.

What am I to remember on Memorial Day?  What I feel is shame.

A Boing Boing link brought me to this panorama of the Star Wars fans at the wrong theatre, and I’m guessing the telephone in the picture is the one I called. There are so many other fascinating panoramas that mean something to me.

• The 37th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assasination at the National Civil Rights Museum here in Memphis
• The Eyes Wide Open Memorial, commemorating those soldiers killed in Iraq
• This is the huge anti-war protest in London that happened last year. The war began when I was in London in 2003, and I went to the first march. It was huge and looked a lot like this one a year later.
• The Tribute in light to honor the victims of the 9/11 attacks. I saw this quite by accident. I was in NYC in April of 2002. Things in my marriage has just turned suddenly wrong, and I took off to see some close friends. I had been out and about by myself for the day, it was now night, and I was planning to meet some friends for drinks. I got off the subway, walked up to street level, and called my parents because I hadn’t spoken to them in a while. I noticed several people crowded around several pictures on a fence. Talking to my parents, I suddently realized that I was at the church next to ground zero. I looked up, and the tribute was still there. It was a cloudy night, but I could make out the lights. I found out later that it was one of the last nights the tribute was in place.

I recently got a cameraphone, and so I recently created a moblog. The idea is that I can document interesting things I see during the regular course of a day and immediately upload them online.

So today, I’m driving along Poplar Avenue in Memphis, and I spot my first “interesting thing.” Actually, what I first saw was a TV camera filming from one corner of an intersection to the other. My eyes followed the direction in which the lens was pointing to a woman dressed in military fatigues, holding a sign that said, “Join the U.S. Army. Get Raped.” Quite a provocative sign to be holding, wouldn’t you say?

After I finished my short errand in the next block, I turned the car around and readied my cameraphone. Sadly, the woman was facing the other direction when I got to the red light, so I couldn’t take a picture. I decided to pull into the next entrance on the right and just ask if I could take her picture.

She was very pleasant and basically explained that she was a one-woman political action protesting the silencing of women in the military who are raped. She explained that the uniform she was wearing was her own and that she had been raped in the military, then suffered many negative consequences for trying to report the rape. She had been fighting the fight with the support of her husband. She said she was a performer and that she wanted to get herself heard. I wonder what got her inspired to go out there today.

I took two pictures, then got into my car to try and send them to my moblog. They weren’t there! The cameraphone is new, and I haven’t quite gotten the hang of using it. I got back out of the car to ask to take another picture, just as the woman and a man who she said was her bodyguard (but maybe was her husband, too – I’m not sure) were walking away. She graciously let me try again. (I learned I hadn’t hit “Save” after taking each picture. It’s hard to see that screen when it’s bright out!) I got two successful pictures. The man with her handed me a postcard and a CD:

a.g. Blue, NEW ALBUM APRIL 2005

N-cluding the smash club hitmaps”50/50” featuring NOID

Listen live @ XtaticRadio.com!

a.g. blue

Not really what I was expecting! I listened to the CD. It’s good, really political, in the hip-hop/dance/spoken word area. I’m not sure if she’s doing the mixes or just the vocals, but I’m not surprised she’s coming out with an album in April. You have to check out her web site. It’s got a great main page graphic, and within the site are several downloadable MP3s and WMA files. She seems a fascinating combination of soldier/activist/performance artist/whistleblower. You have to see it for yourself. I can’t believe the woman I saw on Poplar is the woman on this site, but that’s her!

It seems that every day is more interesting than the next.

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Some info I’ve learned:

• Memphis has the highest infant mortality rate among the nation’s 60 largest cities, with babies dying at twice the rate of the national average. Link.
• Memphis was ranked second among the 100 "most challenging places to live for asthmatics" in a national study. Link 1. Link 2.
• According to Men’s Fitness Magazine, Memphis is the 4th fattest city in the nation, and we got an F rating in the categories of Exercise/Sports Participation, TV Watching, Overweight/Sedentary, and Air Quality. Link 1. Link 2.
• The percentage of school-aged children is really high. Link.
• Sperling’s Best Places says Memphis is the second worst large city for crime (after Tuscon, Arizona… apparently Jo Jo left there for some California grass). Link.
• Out of 200 cities rated, Self Magazine ranked Memphis 200th for Healthiest Places for Women. Link.
• Not to mention the gang problems in the schools, the fact that we have an extremely high percentage of children in our population that we can’t afford, and the "inevitable" earthquake.

I don’t usually use my blog to seek out opinions, but tell me this… What happened here? What’s your theory? Is it the legacy of MLK being shot here? Is it related to its location on the Mississippi? Did freed slaves get stuck here? I mean really… I’d love to know what you think, because things here are statistically quite bad – way worse than average.

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