I told that story many times over the years and several times on social media. I decided to record it this fall. I realized that something has happened that changed the reason I felt I needed to share it. Right now I feel that need again. No one will give you permission.
No one will tell you that now you can do what you know you must do. You have to just do it. I am sorry to be telling you this because I’m afraid that one day when you say “I can not” (“Nu pot”) you will realize you could have...but you didn’t.
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I grew up on Fire Island. My family ran a local newspaper, begun by my father when he was 16 years old in 1956 until we sold it in 1996. Fire Island includes two primarily gay communities.
I would often go with my mother, who was executive editor from 1976-1996, when she would be covering a story or attending an event. I remember the AIDS crises through the eyes of a child.
I remember seeing men I looked up to adored carrying their lovers, to weak to walk, in their arms and the look of desperation and terror and love in their eyes.
Governor Cuomo is responsible for the deaths of over 15k NYers. Nothing we could have done could have prevented that; not the closed businesses, closed doctor’s offices, missed funerals, missed opportunities to fall in love, shut down performances, closed museums, not even
the deliberate loss of the soul of our amazing city could have saved them. Do not let this be forgotten. These lives were people. They were treated like they were nothing. They were someones; someone’s mother, father, grandparent, sibling, child, friend.
New York hasn’t forgotten. He and the other governors who did this are criminals and our memory is long.
A verse from this poem came to mind; the final verse in the third stanza.
With Mercy for the Greedy
BY ANNE SEXTON
For my friend, Ruth, who urges me to make an appointment for the Sacrament of Confession
Concerning your letter in which you ask
me to call a priest and in which you ask
me to wear The Cross that you enclose;
your own cross,
your dog-bitten cross,
no larger than a thumb,
small and wooden, no thorns, this rose—
I pray to its shadow,
that gray place
where it lies on your letter ... deep, deep.
I detest my sins and I try to believe
in The Cross. I touch its tender hips, its dark jawed face,
its solid neck, its brown sleep.
@jaywwalker1@mxtaliajane@peoplesmedianyc I find it absolutely telling that people who claim to be anti fascist in this city of all places are constantly calling anyone who doesn’t conform into what they deem as acceptable fascist, supremacists etc etc. Liberalism is messy and what the protests across *the world* were
@jaywwalker1@mxtaliajane@peoplesmedianyc about included the freedom of expression and assembly. You may take it for granted and look to belittle anything that you deem “problematic”, but it doesn’t make you right. It makes you exactly what you are claiming you stand against. NYC has always been a place full of weirdos
@jaywwalker1@mxtaliajane@peoplesmedianyc eccentrics, people on the fringe, the performative, the unusual, the uncomfortable and REAL diversity. The trend that seems to have overtaken our home may be loud, it may claim to value free expression, but I see only one thing repeated over and over again. You’ve made other
“I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations.
Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.
This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed;
Or maybe it was that it should, but should never be shared, or maybe it was a bus timetable and fares – muddled became a story (as the mind is oft to do) of a graveyard, a mass grave with no markers or names where
people, piled twelve deep and miles across are splayed criss cross and tongue tied around each other.