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Silverfoxesclub-digest In this issue:
-Re: The DC Area
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2000 18:11:06 -0000
Subject: Re: The DC Area
If there are, I haven't heard of them.
Pewit
Subject: With this ring.....
Ben Boxer notes: There was a time when a guy
offered me a ring, I knew where he wanted me
to put it -- on my cock! These days, I ain't so sure.
Headline:
Text:
The reason for the new, beneficial law derives
from a Vermont Supreme Court ruling in
December 1999 that requires same-sex couples
to be treated the same as opposite-sex couples
by the State. The ruling gave the
Legislature two options either provide legal
marriage, or a nearly identical form of domestic
partnership.
Rather than offer legal marriage the same
procedure to protect families as is offered to
opposite-sex couples the Vermont legislature
created a new law labeled Civil Union.
By designing a totally separate form of marriage,
which could rightly be called marriage light,
they created an apartheid. As the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled regarding segregation, there is no
such thing as separate and equal.
Civil Unions do not have any legal weight in the
Federal sphere, and it is highly unlikely that any
other state will honor the new almost, but not quite, marital license.
In spite of there being no benefits to
non-Vermonters, as of October 18, 2000, some
702 same-sex couples from more than 40 states
and several nations have gone to Vermont to be
registered. The numbers of Vermonters that have
obtained a Union are 258.
The new status offers a vastly improved range of
protection for same-sex couples who live in
Vermont never before available in the United
States. Once signed up, a civilly unionized couple
can say they are no longer legal strangers
they are finally next-of-kin.
Procedures:
The Civil Union license is obtained from town
clerks.
There is a $20 fee.
The Unions are certified either by justices of
the peace, a judge, or a willing member of the
clergy.
Civil Union couples also have the right to dissolve
their unions through a dissolution process in
Family Court.
To dissolve the Union, you would need to reside
in Vermont for a year.
Subject: Re: Our wishes for your safety in the U.K.
Ben:
Subject: Re: Our wishes for your safety in the U.K.
I also believe that the flood/fire...natural disaster insurance is partly
subsidized by the federal govt.
Were the insurance at market rates, it would be prohibitive &, no doubt,
folks would relocate. The rich folks can probably write the loss off on
their taxes.
Subject: The unsighted Bocelli
This evening, I enjoyed a re-run on Public Television of a concert by my
favorite singer these days, Andrea Bocelli, the unsighted Italian tenor. It
was his Statue of Liberty concert, taped in July 2000.
His voice is maturing fast. He is truly earning the title accorded him by
One of my favorite Bocelli stories is of his "discovery" by Sara Brightman,
ex-wife of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, whom Webber starred in his
magnificent "The Phantom of the Opera," which it was my privilege to see in
San Francisco when the it was on the road. I would have preferred to see the
London production, but c'est la vie!
"Phantom" is a story that captivated me in childhood in a silent film
version which made me pee in my theater seat I was so frightened of the
grotesque character portrayed by Lon Chaney.
A later adaptation (1943) of Gaston Leroux's 19th-century novel in
Technicolor gave me a different thrill. Claude Rains played the role of the
Phantom, a wronged composer who is scarred by acid and hides
beneath the Paris Opera House, beginning his reign of terror. I was
captivated by the beauty of its female star, Susanna Foster, and her
exquisite lyric soprano voice. She and co-singing star Nelson Eddy helped to
fill my childhood with music, which was my great mainstay in those very
troubled years.
I have set foot many times in the Paris Opera House, the setting for
"Phantom." I was privileged to be present during part of the installation of
the works of Marc Chagall in the dome, which covered older, somewhat dismal
classical art with the vivid colors of Chagall. Never have I entered the
Opera House without thinking of the lake which Webber's set designer
recreated so eerily and so masterfully on the stage. It is really there, the
lake, deep underneath the building, an integral part of the design. The
water level acts as a ballast, raised or lowered, depending on the weight of
the stage, seven storeys above it.
Back to Sara Brightman and Andrea Bocelli: After her divorce from Webber,
she took on a affair with Germany's leading boxer. Dining with him in a
Munich restaurant, she heard a recording of Bocelli singing "Time to Say
Good-bye" and demanded to know the singer's name. She invited him to join
her in a duet of that number with backing by the London Symphony. The
recording blasted through the top of the charts all over Europe and elevated
Bocelli to international stardom. It is included on his album "Romanza,"
both as a solo and in the version with Brightman.
For those unacquainted with Helen Keller (deaf as well as unsighted) of two
generations ago, Bocelli has shown in that being unsighted can be an elastic
limitation rather than a debilitating handicap. Fellow musicians Stevie
Wonder and Ray Charles likewise demonstrate the principle.
Our fellow subscriber Bob, who is also unsighted, and his guide dog Harley,
are, like Bocelli, living lessons for all of us to more profoundly
appreciate the ability to enjoy the wonders of the human experience no
matter how many strikes we accumulate against us, if not in toto, then in
large enough measure to make the living worthwhile. Our Bob travels, in the
body, as well as in the mind. Bocelli tours the world, singing to it,
sharing the grandeur of his voice with the rest of us, and it can only get
better.
I love the credo by which Bocelli lives his life. Ever optimistic, he has
understood the essence of a quote by one of my favorite authors, French
novelist Antoine de Saint-Exupery, in his masterpiece,"The Little Prince":
"Here is my secret. It is very simple: one does not see well except with the
heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes." (Voici mon secret. Il est
trhs simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisible
pour les yeux.)
After the Bocelli concert this evening, my partner and I segued into the
second week of Showtime's "Queer As Folk." I still like it, even more. One
of our subscribers wrote last week to tell me that he disliked it. "I have
to say," he wrote, "that I was very disappointed by QUEER AS FOLK. I thought
the writing was very poor, and predictable. I saw it with a group of
friends, and we were saying the next line before the actors said them over
and over again. The acting was very bad. With the exception of the young
actor playing Justin, none of them were genuine. All in all, there is no
one in the entire cast that I would like to meet in real life." I asked him
to submit his comments to the list, but he didn't. I am wondering how many
of you also don't like it. There is ample time to find out as it will
continue for several months.
My partner, who gets off on watching football and basketball infinitely more
than I do, has found no fault with "Queer As Folk." We took a shower
together afterward, which is part of our pattern, and he groused while he
scrubbed me down: "No silverfoxes in it. Too bad." I reminded him that he
has me, and that ought to be enough silverfox for anybody. That got me a
kiss, although I prolly deserved a kick because I told him next that I
thought all the young guys in it were HOT!
I had to laugh. I thought of my friend George back east. I believe someone
is recording the series for him so he prolly hasn't seen any of it yet. But
when he does, I suspect it will take him back to the glory days when we were
young and behaved a lot like those "Queer As Folk" guys, but not at the
"Babylon" in Pittsburgh. We never ran into each other then, but I bet we
were dancing in the same crowd at the "Punch Bowl" in Boston! It's not there
anymore, but we are, and to tell the truth, I'd rather be a silverfox facing
the vicissitudes of old age with my sweet lover at my side than to be an
addle-headed young guy playing the field and looking for love in every
crotch that passes by.
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End of silverfoxesclub-digest V1 #73
|
many as "the young Pavarotti." I can't go anywhere in the car without his
"Romanza" CD ringing in my ears on the open road. Fortunately, my partner --
whose tastes in music hover in the 80s as much as in the 90s and are not
related to classical or operatic genres -- likes him, too.