The Heart Of The Matter: Adding insult to injury for transgender murder victim

Last week, Cleveland’s Plain Dealer newspaper ran a story about a person who had been murdered. A body had been found in a pond in Olmstead Township, a small southwestern suburb of Cleveland.

What made the coverage of this story stand out was that the body found was of a transgender woman, Cernia “Ce Ce” Acoff.

I’m a member of the LGBT community. I’m also a journalist.

I’ve got a few fistfuls of bylines, and I’m also in the unique position of being back in college.

I’ve been studying the art of journalism – an art I’ve already practiced. I’m digging deeper into the finer points of reporting and writing.

And I can say, unequivocally, that the Plain Dealer has repeatedly dropped the ball on its coverage of Acoff’s death.

Ubiquitous End of Year Best Of List, 2012 Edition

Yes, it’s that time of year again. And since I’ve had a very leisurely holiday, which included a trip back to my home state of Pennsylvania, I’m late posting this list. I’m sure most lists have favorite films, books and TV shows, but I’ve been so busy as a student that I haven’t absorbed much in the way of culture and content outside of music. And so, the 2012 list is music, music, music.

TOP ALBUMS

RUNNER UP: I’ve been a fan of Bettye LaVette for a few years now. I learned about her from a few music blogs, then saw clips of her majestic Kennedy Center Honors performance and an appearance on Austin City Limits.

Her albums have had great tunes on them, mostly remakes – a cover of Lucinda Williams’ “Joy” stands out – but in some cases on the previous albums, the song choices kind of blurred into each other. This was especially true of her British songbook CD.

Her new album, “Thoughtful and Thankful,” is perfect from beginning to end.

LaVette also reworks an old song, “Dirty Old Town,” written by Ewen MacColl (who, in addition to being the famed songwriter of songs like “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,”, is also the father of the late Kirsty MacColl).

In any other year, “Thankful and Thoughtful” would have been my number one, for its amazing songs and the way LaVette lays bare her emotions on every track. But one album featured an even more transcendent performance.

NUMBER ONE: My number one choice has been a constant on my playlists since I first fell in love with her music in 1989 and 1990. Songs like “Troy” were the soundtrack of my college days. And in 1990, she took a Prince-penned song – “Nothing Compares 2 U” – and made it her own.

I’ve followed Sinead O’Connor’s music since, and though she’s had several great albums since – “Faith and Courage,” “Theology,” – but her 2012 album, “How About I Be Me (And You Be You)” is every bit as amazing as her initial music. The themes of her music – faith, love and the loss of love, and her own struggles with mental illness – make this my favorite album of the year. In a year of pop tarts and Autotune, O’Connor’s authenticity is like a cool drink of water in the desert for me.

TOP SONGS: 

A number of other songs caught my ears:

Aimee Mann: I love Mann’s music, and on several new songs from “Charmer,” she injected some different sounds and a lot of levity.

I also liked “Labrador”, “Crazytown,” and “Living A Lie.” Check them out.

Miguel Migs: I’ve gone down the electronica/chill tracks road, and one of the new songs released this year that I loved came from an album produced and compiled by notable DJ Miguel Migs. This Me’shell Ndegeocello collaboration is among my favorites.

Frank Ocean: He’s on every Top 2012 list invented, and for good reason. Though I didn’t love every song on his debut album, there are several amazing tracks. And for his first public performance to be as arresting and amazing as this one? We’ll be seeing much, much more of him. Again, a true treat of unique talent and authenticity in a cesspool of corporate copycats.

Gossip: Every time The Gossip puts out music, they land on my list – and my playlist!

The Cherry Thing: I can’t wait for a new Neneh Cherry solo CD – rumored to be coming out in 2013 – but her vocals floating over the moody jazz/electronica of The Thing made for some fun beats.

Defending the press

In the eyes of the public, being a journalist used to be cool. Rumpled fedoras, lots of vodka, foreign excursions and living on the edge. Not every kid wanted to be Edward R. Murrow, but to some of us, it looked like a very cool job.

These days, the reputation of journalists is reminding me of that old joke about lawyers. You know the one: “What do you call ten lawyers at the bottom of a lake? A good start.”

I get it – like bad ambulance-chasing lawyers, there are newspapers and TV networks who do an abysmal job practicing the art of journalism.

And even a journalist with the best of intention can make a bad call. Since Friday’s horrific school shootings, we’ve heard a great deal of criticism about the media covering the story.

That criticism includes some very valid comments. Several journalists showed questionable judgement interviewing young children.

A few recent events have driven home that public sentiment for me. Last week, I saw an article about a Navy SEAL from my hometown who was killed in Afghanistan. The comments on the article expressed dismay and disgust that “the media” had contacted the dead Navy SEAL’s family.

I am here today not to bury journalism, but to praise it.

I’m admittedly biased – I’m a journalist, for one, and I’ve been a news nerd since I was a kid. I was watching Watergate hearings when I was four or five.

In fourth grade, our class had a project where we wrote about ourselves. The other boys in the class wrote about their bikes or model airplanes. I wrote that I was following the news about the Jonestown massacre. (One of many reasons that my teachers thought I was odd!)

For me, knowledge has always meant reassurance. I was never good at fighting with my fists, but as they say, knowledge is power. I fight, when needed, with words.

And I’ve always found comfort in knowing all that I could. I also looked up to and respected the people who told the stories of other people.

Younger people might be mystified by the hero worship of journalists like Walter Cronkite or Peter Jennings, but there was a calmness in their presence that announced to the audience: This is happening. And this, too, shall pass.

What I can tell you is this: As imperfect as our press might be, it is a free press. It may be clogged with the sediment of public relations fluff and infotainment tripe, but its heart still beats.

Just today, news that NBC News reporter Richard Engel was free from being captured in Syria was made public. People are still working on your behalf, putting their lives on the line to find out what’s happening in the world.

I understand in the case of the Navy SEAL from my hometown that his family didn’t want to speak to the press, and certainly their wishes (and anyone’s wishes in that situation) should be respected.

A friend of mine has faced the media recently as a result of the Connecticut shootings, and I’m reminded that it’s an intense spotlight to be in, particularly at a time of such loss and sorrow.

But in the case of war casualties, for example, many families WANT to tell the story of their loved one, and talk about a loss in a war that, to them, feels like it’s been vastly underreported. Many families want all of us to know what their loved one lost, or what they lost, and want us to clearly understand the cost.

What a private person might see as hounding, though, is a habit of persistence that we developed in the face of a lot of closed doors in political chambers, legal chambers and corporate boardrooms. We dig deeper to try to keep you as informed as possible.

I know a lot of the things we dig up aren’t pleasant. They don’t fit simply into neat piles. They don’t end like a sitcom, with all the loose ends tied up in twenty-three minutes.

They defy simplification, and while some opinion-based news programs will try to make the news black or white, us versus them…very little in news, and in life, breaks down that way.

And when your own life is filled with challenges, or work, or drudgery, or sadness, or is packed wall to wall with life itself that keeps you too busy to stop and take a breath, absorbing bad news is the last thing in the world many of us want to do.

We’d collectively rather read Us Weekly, or watch Honey Boo Boo, or something equally ridiculous that lets us hang up our brain, and breathe, and laugh.

I understand that. I totally get it.

But I’m here to tell you we shouldn’t lose sight of the value of our press.

It is a right spelled out for us in the FIRST Amendment, after all. There’s been a great deal of rhetoric in recent years about our Constitution, and freedom of the press is a cornerstone of the rights we so clearly value as Americans.

And if you’ve been taking that right for granted, understand that in many places, we’re in danger of losing the voices that make a free press.

Technology and the Web has brought massive changes to the ways information is shared, and while it’s made access more immediate in some ways, it’s also devastated some media platforms – especially the ones who do long-form, deep, thorough and thoughtful journalism.

The list of cities that have lost a daily newspaper includes some substantial U.S. cities: Baltimore, Cincinnati, Albuquerque, Honolulu and Denver, to name a few.

Detroit and New Orleans have newspapers that print less frequently. The Plain Dealer, long Cleveland’s voice of the people, is potentially facing the same reduction in publication.

You may think that it’s the nature of our corporate world today, that mergers lead to those exciting buzzwords like “synergy” and “economies of scale,” and hey, if it means a couple of jobs are lost, then journalists are just like the next guy (or woman) and have to suck it up.

Except that when you lose reporters, you lose the eyes and ears that can find out that your city council spent your taxpayer money on trips to the Bahamas.

You lose the experienced researchers who can tell you not only that something IS happening, but provide the context of WHY it is happening.

And what you have in its absence is something like The Huffington Post – a collection of language without any real structure. You end up with a snippet of a story that tells readers only the basic facts, and leaves the readers to fill in the blanks by themselves.

That isn’t really news – it’s a big vat of misinformation, and it feeds on itself.

Journalists have a responsibility to the public, and we have an ethical responsibility to do our jobs in the best, kindest, most transparent way we can. I agree with that, and I know some of my fellow journalists need to do a better job.

But I’d argue that all of us need to value the work that journalists do for our readers and viewers — and our country. If you’re finding the fluff, the opinion channels, and the tabloids lacking, then dig around for more news sources.

Find a newspaper that has longer, more in-depth articles. Listen to NPR or any TV or radio source that takes more than 30 seconds to explore an issue. If you want better journalism, value the great work that’s being done.

As a journalism (and a recent returning student), I have a dog-eared copy of a book called The Elements of Journalism in my library. It’s a fantastic book that talks not so much about the work of doing journalism – the editing and the arrangement – as it does the reasons WHY we do what we do.

There are ten commandments, so to speak, about what journalists are obligated to do. We are bound to truth. Our obligation is to citizens and our readers. We are disciplined to be objective researchers, avoiding conflicts of interest with those we cover and verifying all we see and say.

The last “commandment” is important to the work that we do, too. It says, “Citizens, too, have rights and responsibilities when it comes to the news.”

And the biggest one is to decide, as a culture, whether we collectively value truth, value information and value the fine art of journalism – even when the results make us angry, challenges norms, or makes us feel uncomfortable.

We are in an age where corporate interests drive newspapers, and television, and the Internet. And it’s up to the public to be clear about what you value. As with politics and politicians, involvement is crucial, and it’s quite frankly what all of us owe our democracy.

We will collectively end up, as they say, with the journalism we ask for — and the journalism we deserve.

Christmas greetings

Every year, it’s the same thing: I send out a bunch of Christmas cards. And every year, I get about four cards in return.

OK, that’s a slight exaggeration. Maybe eight. Hey, I get it: People are busy. I appreciate electronic greetings just as much as paper ones. It’s a lot easier to send an online card or a message that says “OMG MERRY XMAS” on Facebook.

I’ve been feeling stupid for the last few years, wondering why I still send cards. Am I being an old traditionalist? I do seem to be edging closer all the time to the HEY YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN mindset.

Is it obligation? Old habits? I used to be the earliest sender among my friends and family, mostly stemming from a habit of my retail days — either you wrote your cards on Thanksgiving night or they never got sent!

But this year, I figured out why I still send out Christmas cards.

Thanks, Mom, for reminding me.

My mother loved Christmas. And looking back at our Christmases as kids, I realize it was her spirit that filled the house at Christmas.

My dad was always a part of the festivities and liked the holidays too — he held the position of Official Cursing-At-Christmas-Lights-To-Get-Them-To-Untangle Supervisor — but Mom in particular loved giving presents and surprising people, and I’ve inherited that from her — I love the giving of presents way more than getting them (yes, really!)

I remember all of our Christmas cards taped to our front hallway wall, and I can remember just sitting in our darkened living room, watching the Christmas lights and our decoration lights.

And since it was Pennsylvania in December, we usually had snow on the ground, too.

I still send cards because it’s a ritual, and because it reminds me of my mom, who left us a few years ago.

My partner and I are still trying to figure out our rituals, and while I love my partner very much, he tests my patience by being a total Scrooge when it comes to decorations and the fuss over Christmas.

So here I am, with red and black pens and Christmas music in the background, writing my list and checking it twice…and making out those cards. And I hope that your Christmases past, present and future are peaceful and bright.

Music Monday: Faith, God and rock and roll

Music speaks to a wide range of human passions and human experiences – whether it’s rock and roll, country twang, rap music or a symphony. And people who are passionate about faith and about God have used music to express that passion.

Let’s be honest, though: the genre known as “Christian rock” has produced some profoundly awful music – particularly back in the 80s and 90s, when the attempt to merge those two ideas was executed quite poorly by some major record labels.

But there’s been some really great, thoughtful music in the last five to ten years from artists that we’d consider ‘mainstream rock artists, and that music has come forth in a very organic way. They explore their faith and their God in their songs. I think by avoiding that “Christian Music” label  (which is, as all sales of music are, 98% about PR and where the music fits in a sales environment), it allows people to just hear the songs and experience them.

A few of the mainstream artists that have mentioned faith in their music:

Sufjan Stevens is one of my favorite artists. He’s got some inventive takes on rock and folk and I love his arrangements. His faith was a subject in a lot of the initial interviews he gave, and he was reluctant to speak about it. His attitude was that his music said it all. “Casimir Pulaski Day” is one of the more heartfelt songs where Stevens tackles a religious theme.

The Innocence Mission has been around for over twenty years, and their music has always referred to their faith, in ways both subtle and obvious. Without directly mentioning God, lead singer Keren Paris draws from religious imagery in the song “Now In This Hush.”

Prefab Sprout has been around for even longer – about 30 years – and band leader and lead singer Paddy McAloon is critically acclaimed for being the Irving Berlin/Cole Porter of contemporary pop music. But McAloon has always worn his faith on his sleeve. The band’s most famous album, Jordan: The Comeback is about God. Or Jesus. Or Elvis. Possibly all three. McAloon’s output has been diminished significantly in recent years as he’s lost a significant amount of vision and hearing from health ailments (including severe tinnitus), but a few years ago the band released Let’s Change The World With Music, which has several songs with vivid religious imagery.

I can think of no pop song as deeply vested with Biblical imagery than Prefab Sprout’s song “One Of The Broken,” one of my favorite songs of all time.

And perhaps the most controversial person I’ll mention here: Sinead O’Connor.

I know people remember her ripping the photo of the Pope on Saturday Night Live – a topic I addressed in an earlier post – but this is a person who is still actively exploring and  questioning her faith and the meaning of it in her life. Which I think makes for some very compelling music. And no one in contemporary pop music is exploring faith in their music as often and as thoroughly as O’Connor.

“I Don’t Know How to Love Him” may be a number from a Broadway song, but it takes on many more layers when O’Connor, who’s herself been a clergywoman, sings it.

Her latest album ends with the stunning “VIP,” which questions crass commercialism and celebrity culture and designates God as her VIP.

Sinead’s songs always make me really think about matters of faith and about how she examines those ideas. She’s a controversial figure and has a very messy public narrative, with her comments on religion and sexuality and her open struggles with mental health issues. It’s interesting that she’s often judged so harshly for her imperfections. What, I wonder, would Jesus say?

The warmth of the sun

It was four years ago that I met him, the man who became my partner.

A few weeks before, I’d just tossed my entire life into the air, like a set of puzzle pieces. Again, as I’d done so often. I’d moved to Chicago to take a job – a writing job! People were paying me to write!

It may have been a sunny August afternoon, but when this tall man walked into Caribou Coffee, with his goofy smile and his crooked bike helmet, it felt like I’d come from a thousand miles of frozen tundra into the warmth of the sun.

It may sound like a dusty Hallmark card cliche, but he’s the best thing that ever happened to me.

We know how lucky we are to have each other, and how it feels like we wasted years before we met each other. So much of that relationship drama that happens in your twenties simply doesn’t exist, replaced with curiosity and gratitude.

When we see each other after a long day of work (and school), we embrace, and stay close for a long, long time. Neither one of us wants to let go. We are very, very lucky.

*

It was a rough week for me last week. The debate over That Restaurant Which Shall Not Be Named brought everyone’s feelings and beliefs to the forefront. I know everyone is tired of hearing about it.

I felt very schizophrenic. On the one hand, I wanted to be respectful of other people, their differences in opinion, their faith. But I’d swing, manically, to rage and anger when I saw little of that respect in return.

Not only were people utterly cavalier in making grand pronouncements and decisions for people they didn’t know and lives they didn’t understand, but a number of people had the utter gall to complain that we, as LGBT people, shouldn’t be complaining, picketing or fighting back. Apparently, we weren’t being polite and thankful enough to them(!).

Of course you can get married, they say. Just marry a woman. Write a Power of Attorney for Health Care, they say, and of course they’ll let you in the hospital to see him if he’s hurt or injured. (This, when hospitals are refusing rape patients care based on the physician’s personal beliefs – a scenario that would easily happen – and HAS happened – to partners even with a POA.)

After that exhausting debate, it’s tempting to let off steam and joke about the topic. It’s a lot easier for people to protest an idea when it’s just an idea, a vague notion. And for a majority of people in this country, that’s all it is – something happening to someone else.

*

My partner has a name. He doesn’t have any online profiles, and on social media, for  privacy reasons, I jokingly call him The German.

In three weeks he will go back to Germany, where he was born and raised and where his citizenship is still held, for renewal of a visa. That visa will allow him to live here for several more years. He’s waited for years for a green card, but post-9/11 processing times means it will likely be over a DECADE from his arrival before he is granted one.

It’s incredibly likely that the whole process will flow evenly and without incident. But I’ll be sitting on pins and needles, waiting for him to come back, because no matter what groundwork we do, his new visa and re-entry is in the hands of some person at Customs and Immigration, and it comes down to praying that he or she doesn’t have a bad day.

Yes, seriously. And it’s not just us – this affects thousands of people. (I just learned that a friend of mine and his Canadian partner have to go through this every year.)

Illinois granted some limited rights last year when it approved civil unions, but there were no real changes regarding immigration (and only limited rights in other categories).

We’ve invested so much here. Our lives. Our jobs, and my education. We work hard and bought a home last year. And all of it – our future, our well being – rests on the thinnest of eggshells.

And all this because some of our neighbors would prefer we remain invisible, or inaudible.

*

My mother died in 2007.  We had the best conversations about life and about people, and she taught me so much. I’d love to hear what she thought of the world today.

Mom was the kind of Christian I always wanted to be and strived to be. She treated everyone with kindness and warmth. She spent thousands of hours volunteering for a thrift shop and did so much for the customers and her fellow volunteers.

She was also the least judgmental person I’ve ever met. She wanted to give everyone a hand. Helping others and building community was her idea of church. So many people loved her because of her warmth.

I hear her voice in my head, telling me to be understanding about the motivations of the people who disagree with me, advising me to just be the best that I can be in my life and be an example – of tolerance, of acceptance, of warmth.

I’m a worrier, and I don’t cope very well with the unknown. I just want to KNOW. Know why so many people are so invested in affecting the lives of people they’ve never met. Know that he returns without incident. I’m probably silly to worry, but we should be able to walk on firmer ground.

ich liebe dich, spatzi. 

The great Madison debate

Don’t you have the feeling sometimes that all the fun stuff happens after you leave a party? I swear, my timing is off.

I lived in Madison, Wisconsin for five years. It was peaceful and tranquil – but once I leave? All hell broke loose!

First, the election of Scott Walker and the subsequent political controversy shakes Madison to its core and brings thousands of people to the Capitol grounds for months. I’m not sure it that was really “fun,” but it was certainly eventful.

More recently, there’s been a spirited debate happening about the pros and cons of life in Madison.

The catalyst was an article in a newly launched magazine (with a primary focus on Minneapolis and the surrounding region). Writer Frank Bures, a Madison expat, wrote an article for the magazine Thirty Two, about Professor Richard Florida’s ideas about the “creative class” and how that new cultural class is reshaping our economy and our cities.

Before I go any farther, let me be clear about a few things: Madison is an acquired taste, and I definitely acquired it in my time there. There is much I like about the city. The people can be ridiculously kind and polite to each other. Clerks in the grocery stores and shops were so warm and friendly I was half-convinced they were flirting with me. The outdoor spaces in the area are magnificent.

Professor Florida included Madison in his list of creative class strongholds. And that’s what much of Bures’ article is about – that while conceptually Madison should have had a vibrant economic and artistic culture, attracting new people and new energy, the reality of Madison was quite different.

A new flow of students and newly elected politicians may bring energy to the polar ends of State Street, but much of the rest of Madison is a very traditional town and a very insular one. Many of the people I worked with had grown up in and around Madison, attended high school and college there, met and married their spouses there, and were raising children there – and so had their parents and grandparents. Those are great things, but substantially different than what Bures expected – and what I’d expected, too.

How insular of a town? Hell, I’m a self-confessed introvert and I had connections to almost everyone mentioned in Bures’ article. Including Bures himself.

• I was in a class Bures taught about how to market your freelance work. (It was part of the University of Wisconsin’s continuing education class offerings and ran for two weeks.)
• One of the first people I ever interviewed as a freelance writer in Madison? Penelope Trunk. I talked to her by phone on an article about Madison. My editor killed her comments as she was, at that time, a contributing writer to a competitor’s site. She was a memorable interview.
• I’d even – for a whole two seconds – met Jamie Peck, the former UW professor mentioned in the article. (A friend of mine was a professor as well and had a neighboring office in the science hall.)
• Look to the left of this post – see the blogroll? You’ll see two names – Bures and Trunk – that have been part of this blogroll pretty much since I launched this back in 2009 (though I haven’t spoken with or corresponded with either in years).

One of the best things about Madison – the Farmer’s Market

Those are not unusual connections in Madison. It’s a tightly knit community and that’s true for all professions.

All the artists and writers know each other. Before a lot of outside money and outside influence came into Wisconsin politics, those folks also  had known each other for years.

I never felt unwelcome in Madison, but I was also never part of the inner circle, and never spoke the shorthand that everyone already knew. And that does make a difference. It made it very challenging to make friends. Bures’ descriptions of some of the people he met in Madison are very accurate.

Madison claims to appreciate diversity on paper, but in many cases it’s less a true appreciation of differences and more of a celebration (but not necessarily acceptance) of eccentricity. There are many colorful street people and musicians in Madison and people acknowledge them – but they’re not quite welcoming them into their homes, or breaking bread with, say, the Piccolo Man.

And for a town that celebrates diversity on paper, it’s unwelcoming to many African-Americans; I’ve seen the body language of people on State Street when an African-American is present and it speaks volumes. The segregation in Madison is just as vivid as it is in Chicago.

One of the biggest challenges for me when I lived there was that Madison was not a very fun place to be single. As a member of the LGBT community, it was even more challenging, but the reasons that Madison’s single scene was such an uphill battle are pretty universal – the dating pool is remarkably small and many good candidates in any age range are usually married and raising a family. Those strong family ties also meant that many people are caring for – and living with – their parents, which doesn’t always make for a positive in the dating world!

Bures makes a number of points in his essay (worth a read at the link above) but in essence, he says Florida’s theory about cause and effect of the creative class being the economic engine of any city (including Madison) just isn’t so.

I’m just starting to explore urban studies as a field, so I can’t speak to theory with any authority. And I found a great deal of thought provoking content when I read Professor Florida’s book Rise of the Creative Class several years ago. I look forward to exploring these ideas much more in my studies this years. (NOTE: Florida responded to this article in an in-depth letter, which prompted a counter response by Bures.)

Yeah…I don’t quite get it, either.

There’s a whole other realm of discussion about Madison in the context of urban studies – and I could fill a whole separate blog post with that debate.

There’s much to discuss about Madison’s growing suburban sprawl, as well as the lack of sensible public transit options and the utter failure that happened when previous attempts were made to have a discussion about those options.

Transit planning isn’t happening when a major artery in and out of the city still has an active and busy rail crossing running on it, blocking traffic for up to a half an hour some mornings. (They’ve redone and rebuilt the road a number of times but apparently never thought to put a bridge or tunnel on the road or the tracks so that the east side didn’t come to a complete halt.)

And while the height limit for buildings close to the Capitol is appreciated to maintain a view of the Square, density is desperately needed, particularly as the east side of Madison starts to evolve.

But I will say that I believe Bures’ essay is spot on in many ways. One of his more stinging comments is that Madison is a “giant suburb with a university in the middle.” I’d say that Madison’s biggest strength is State Street, bordered by Capitol Square to the east and the university to the west.

Both the university and the state jobs bring in college-educated workers, many with PhD’s, and an economic engine that attracts new infusions of capital – monetary capital and human capital – all the time. The influx of students and their energy and enthusiasm in pursuing a degree and a profession add fuel to that formula. Much of the rest of Madison is, in many ways, a cluster of suburbs sprouting up around the isthmus.

The reaction to Bures’ essay has been mixed. I never saw it as an indictment of Madison as a place or of its people – more as a critique of Florida’s theory vs. the reality of the city – but nonetheless some Madisonians are taking it personally.

When I first read the response of Brennan Nardi, an editor at Madison Magazine, I felt that her narrative came across as patronizing, and her knee-jerk response was utterly predictable, topped off by the dismissive comment, “Unless you are extraordinary, you have to actively pursue the good life, not passively expect it to find you.” Thanks, Mom!

But Nardi makes some solid points in her rebuttal, and the main one is one that has been overlooked by just about everyone: Madison isn’t that flush economically. It’s still a mid-sized town in a state that, like every other state, is facing budget shortfalls. Madison is an affordable place, but many of the best neighborhoods to live in thrive on their offbeat charm and old housing stock. Fresh financial investment is more rare than people think in Madison.

Overestimating the wealth, the need and the growth potential of Madison is a pitfall that the city’s fallen into twice now, with the building of Monona Terrace and the Overture Center. They’re great buildings in great spaces, but questions exist about their sustainability and whether Madison will ever have enough need to fill the cavernous space of those halls – or enough business to sustain them for the long run.

And the local job market can, at times, be as tranquil and sedate as the city itself. Nardi notes (correctly) that many in cultural fields can max out on opportunities or salary. Jobs are just not that plentiful in Madison, for any industry. State jobs and university jobs are rare and it’s a super-competitive process to land one. And if a professor is hired at UW, their spouse has to find a job in Madison too, and so on.

Madison is an interesting, unique space, and I still cherish my time living there. But it’s not Nirvana. Then again, there are pros and cons about every city I’ve ever lived in. Textbook theory may be a useful tool, but in the end you have to dig deeper to find out what place works for you.

EDITED TO ADD: Bures wrote another related essay here. To me, this relates in many ways to much of what I’ve posted about recently, including the career and job searching posts I’ve written and the recent debate about the value of music and downloading, and how musicians make a sustainable living. There’s a definite change and evolution happening in how we look at where we live and how we make a living.

Harpo, Oprah and the West Loop

It’s been a year and a half since Oprah Winfrey’s daily talk show ended.

I’m sure many viewers miss the show, but for viewers, the main impact is that the show no longer beams into their living rooms. Fans of Winfrey’s work still have her brand new network (OWN) where they can get their Oprah fix.

From this back in the day…..

I’m seeing a few more tangible repercussions of the end of Winfrey’s show up close. Why? Well, I live a stone’s throw from Harpo Studios here in Chicago.

And those studios? They’re virtually empty, and that worries me.

There’s been almost no activity there, save for the period when Rosie O’Donnell’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it talk show was in production there for five months. Hundreds of former Harpo staffers have been laid off.

Listen, businesses change and grow and relocate and are born and die all the time. I get it. And to be very clear: I do not have a chip on my shoulder about Oprah. I like her. I have some mixed feelings about how her show evolved over the years, but it had some great moments and affected a lot of people in very positive ways. I watched many episodes of Oprah and have no shame in my game about doing so.

This isn’t about her. It’s all about my ‘hood, you see.

When my partner and I first moved to the West Loop (a few blocks away) we were renters. Now we are homeowners. We’re invested in our home, our street and our neighborhood.

This sign was up for about a minute last year.

The fact that one of our neighbors’ homes, so to speak, is primarily a big empty shell is cause for concern, if not alarm.

It’s not just the actual Harpo Studios building, which used to be an armory and takes up a whole city block with Washington on its south, Aberdeen to its west, Randolph to its north and Carpenter at its east. There are also other buildings adjacent to the studio that are used by Harpo – I can count at least three other buildings in the same vicinity where Harpo staffers are located.

I hope Harpo has a long, sustainable life, but if it folds – or moves completely to California, where Winfrey herself is headquartered – that’s a huge chunk of our neighborhood to lose what was a solid economic engine.

Oprah’s arrival is often heralded as the beginning of the renaissance for the West Loop, but the neighborhood would probably survive a drastic change if Harpo leaves. Restaurant Row is a bustling thoroughfare, with restaurants by Stephanie Izard and Graham Elliot Bowles dotting the Randolph Street landscape. And in just the last few years, the Fulton Market neighborhood has exploded.

Farewell, Le Peep – directly affected by the loss of Harpo employees

But it’s foolish to think there will be no impact. Already Washington Avenue east of the studio has seen several businesses (including Le Peep) close due to the loss of Harpo-related business. I’ve seen a small spike in vandalism in those blocks, and it’s hard to tell at this point whether that’s just a summer-related spike or a more long term effect, but it’s troubling.

More puzzling is why Harpo hasn’t actively marketed the space as a usable, turnkey-ready studio space. I posted about the possibilities of this space for a film or TV show recently.

Steve Harvey’s new talk show was announced, but instead of using the Harpo space, a huge new studio has been built for him. I can understand a talk show host not wanting to follow in Winfrey’s shadow, but there’s been radio silence as to whether any other productions might use the space.

Winfrey is known for holding her cards close to her vest and limiting information about her plans (three words: employee non-disclosure agreement), but I wish that she or her team would take a moment to sit down with residents and tell us what their plans are. Or if they have any long term plans at ALL for the space.

I’m a good neighbor – I’ll come by and pay a courtesy call. (A tour of the studio would be nice, but I won’t be greedy.)

Gay fatigue and the road to reconciliation

NOTE: This post is, in part, inspired by a recent post on The Cynical Girl blog, written by Laurie Ruettimann, who’s funny and blunt and just a great writer. Check out the post, and the blog. 

It’s been a very gay summer, so to speak, and a very gay year, overall.

How so? A number of public figures have come out publicly as gay – from astronauts to Anderson Cooper. We’ve had a Secretary of State and our President make unprecedented statements about LGBT rights here and around the world. Gay marriage has been a part of the presidential campaigns, and even institutions like The Muppets and the Boy Scouts of America have been part of the conversations and debates.

A little sandwich – fuel for a huge controversy.

There’s been little in the news in recent weeks as controversial and divisive as the debate over fast food restaurant Chick-Fil-A.

The company’s CEO made statements about gay marriage that offended some people, and CFA’s charity foundation has made donations to some organizations with questionable intentions toward LGBT people.

And you know what? I’m sick of hearing about it all. I’m sick of gay people in the news. I’m having gay fatigue. And I AM gay.

Part of my frustration? We are living in a highly politicized world right now, and a very polarized one, too. I can’t see from the middle of this battle whether people are just taking to one extreme or the other – or whether all the more subtle, nuanced points of view just aren’t being talked about.

It just seems like a lot of bread and circuses to me – and a whole lot of people being asked to weigh in with the last word on the matter.

And somewhere in the midst of that, I want to say, quietly but forcefully: Hey, that’s my life you’re talking about. 

I wish the need to have this debate was past all of us. I wish that my partner and I could just quietly live our lives, loving each other. Caring for each other emotionally, spiritually, financially – and legally, through legal recognition.

It’s amusing to me to be thought of as a radical when the most ‘radical’ thing we ponder most days is what’s for dinner, or what bills we’ll pay this week. I’m as tired of people discussing this as others are of hearing about it.

Trying to strike a balance between American citizens with different, conflicting ideas and beliefs is an enormous challenge. And I actually think that the Chick-Fil-A (CFA) controversy is a great illustration of just how complicated and complex it can be.

CFA serves all customers and to my knowledge, has never declined to serve an LGBT person. Their board and CEO are certainly entitled to run their company as they see fit. And people who disagree – as I do – are clearly entitled to boycott the chain or not give them their dollars – and I have chosen not to spend my money there for some time now.

The more complicated questions arise in terms of employment law. There may be legal complications if local or state laws listed sexual orientation in their non-discrimination clauses for employment and the company was denying LGBT people employment. (Sadly, there are no national laws to protect LGBT employees.)

Was it right for lawmakers in Chicago and New York to state their intent to deny CFA permission to open a restaurant? I have mixed feelings about that. As much as I appreciate the message those lawmakers were sending on behalf of the LGBT community, I think it overstepped legal boundaries. (EDITED TO ADD: If we ask people not to let their religious rights encroach on the legal rights of LGBT people, then the reserve should also be true, too.)

And somehow, we need to strike a balance between respecting deeply held religious beliefs and ensuring fair legal protections for the LGBT community. I have to admit, it’s complicated. I have no solutions and no ideas, just an admission that it’s way more complex and involves a great deal more than the “us vs. them” media blare would have you believe.

And I also want to protect myself, my partner and my community, because these things aren’t just concepts or news stories to me.

• I HAVE been fired from a job for being gay – twice.
• I HAVE been evicted from an apartment for being gay.
• I HAVE experienced abusive treatment from a police officer when I was reporting a crime (a minor theft) and was told that I deserved to have everything taken from me.
• I HAVE experienced issues at school, too – I almost didn’t graduate high school because one of my instructors told everyone he could how much he wanted to “flunk that faggot.”

These aren’t just perceptions that I dreamt from whole cloth. There was no subtlety in these events – the reasons were made crystal clear to me. And it’s devastating to know that you can have even the basics in life taken from you. Most of those things happened   years ago, but there are still places in this country – and the world – where they still happen.

Faith in the LGBT community.

I’ve spent most of my life trying to figure out how to break down walls and broker peace, if not acceptance, among others. And yes, I am really, really tired of doing that.

As others are. That’s undoubtedly added fuel to the fire and the debate. We’re tired and we’re fighting. It is a war, no doubt about it, and it’s become Us vs. Them.

So, where do we go from here? I still don’t have any answers.

I think of someone who inspires me. His name is Patrick Farabaugh and several years ago, he created a magazine called Our Lives.

And that’s exactly what the stories in the magazine do – tell the stories of LGBT people, in a way that I think has opened the eyes of many. We ARE gay men and lesbians and trans people. And farmers, and bankers, and hockey players and writers and….

….and people of faith. I wrote much of the content in the cover story (seen above) about LGBT people of faith in the community, and it was wonderful to reconcile those two parts of my life.

Reconcilation. Bringing things into balance. It’s challenging and it’s complicated. But it can be done. At the very least, it’s a process that we can begin – if we want to. It means sitting down together, dropping our masks and the predetermined scripts from political parties and cable news channels, and just talking, face to face, to one another about who we really are. Sharing who we are – sharing our lives. That’s all I have in terms of ideas as to where we can start, folks.

Me? I’m a writer. The youngest child (and, my siblings would say, a spoiled brat). Wary of people but warm and loyal once the ice is broken. I have a wicked sense of humor and a soft spot for dogs and cats. I love the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, which I’ll always think of as home. I’ve been researching my family tree and hoping to build and strengthen ties with newly-found relatives. Religion and faith is a personal and, in some ways, private matter for me, but let me be clear: I know God and have felt His presence in my life. I love my partner with a depth and pureness I didn’t think was possible, and would do anything to protect him, sustain him, and be a source of light and joy in his life. I can’t cook worth a damn and I kill plants just by looking at them, but hey, let’s not focus on the negatives……

Lights, camera, action: where we make media

A few weeks ago, the Urbanophile – one of my favorite blogs and one that covers urban studies, cities and economics – featured a guest post that discussed Manchester, England and some of the changes to the city’s economy after the steel industry and other manufacturing collapsed.

It’s worth a complete read (linked above) but let me give you the Cliff Notes version: Manchester developed some sustainable alternate industries in the arts and entertainment sector, including music, film and television production.

Manchester, in many ways, is very similar to Pittsburgh, my hometown.

Pittsburgh has been active to a certain degree in film. The Pittsburgh Film Office has been working with Hollywood productions for over twenty years, and they’ve managed to attract really amazing films to be partly or completely shot in the ‘Burgh.

The latest Batman film, The Dark Knight Rises, may be the largest in scope, but it’s not the only one: films as varied as Silence Of The Lambs, Wonder Boys, and Abduction have been filmed in Pittsburgh. (The movie I Am Number Four was filmed at my old high school.)

Pittsburgh has a lot of amazing vistas and a diversity of scenery in its neighborhoods that makes it an ideal place to film.

But hosting a film for a few weeks is different than having a dedicated film or television studio where ongoing work can be done.

For a few years, I wrote a blog about daytime soap operas. Initially, it was an analysis of the content of those shows. But I found myself also writing a great deal about the economics of making those shows. They’d become expensive to produce. Set storage alone in an intensely dense space like Manhattan was a massive strain on production budgets.

One show in particular, the now-cancelled Guiding Light, had a very public battle with economics that showed on air. In order to reduce production costs, the show’s executive producer and production company tried some inventive ideas, including filming on permanent sets, renting a large house in rural New Jersey for filming, and switching to digital cameras.

One thought struck me then, and it’s just as true of any TV show (or film) as it is for a soap opera. If New York City and Los Angeles are the two more expensive places in the country – for real estate, for cost of living, for everything – then why are we almost exclusively producing entertainment there? 

I can understand the pluses of Southern California weather, and the cluster of Broadway talent in New York City. But it seems like a no-brainer to me to diversify – significantly – where we produce entertainment so it can be done in a more cost-effective way.

We aren’t using coaxial cable to relay TV programs any more, folks. Digital cameras can go anywhere, be anywhere and film anything at any time.

Where else should shows be made? Well, there’s probably a lot of places that a sustainable industry could take root.

Take Chicago, my current city. There’s a host of talented actors here, enough to fill several shows. (Heck, the members of Steppenwolf alone are hardly strangers – John Malkovich, Terry Kinney, and Laurie Metcalf – also known as Jackie from Roseanne – just to name a few.)

There’s a studio sitting empty here – perhaps you’ve heard of Oprah Winfrey and Harpo Studios? – with lots of ready-to-roll space for a film or TV production.

And a production that isn’t made in NYC or LA might have the unintended side effect of – gasp – not having the everyone-lives-in-NYC-or-LA tunnel vision that so many shows seem to have.

Pittsburgh doesn’t have the ready-to-go space yet, and I wish that infrastructure would happen.  I’ve had an idea where it could happen for years.

There’s a small city adjacent to Pittsburgh called Braddock, an area that was hit hardest when the steel industry collapsed. The mayor of Braddock, John Fetterman, has been on TV and in the New York Times trying to find a new lease on life for Braddock. It’s already gained a reputation as an artists’ community.

Braddock has – and I intend no offense by saying this – a substantial level of decay, and has wide swaths of land where existing buildings could be razed or renovated into a large studio production space.

And then, if I wanted to be really super-crazy, I’d suggest that a program could be set up to help unemployed or challenged young men and women learn trades (like sound, lighting, or production) that could be parlayed into steady work.

Music, television, newspapers, books, and films – all of these media platforms have changed drastically in the last few decades. I think in order for these platforms to survive, the people who create and the people who deliver them will have to explore new methods of making them, and new methods of getting them in front of an audience.

EDITED AUGUST 7, 2012 TO ADD: I was incorrect in saying Pittsburgh does NOT have substantial studio space. According to a CNNMoney article, there’s a studio with 300,000 square foot of space. My apologies.