Skip to main content

Just born that way

I had a lot of fun browsing this photo blog tonight. We all had at least one of these guys or gals in our school (or maybe you were one of them!). I remember my friend James in first through sixth grade who was way into Barry Manilow. He always wore an impeccably ironed shirts to school and always sported the nicest haircuts among the boys. I'd go over to his house after school and all he wanted to do was stage piano recitals for me, singing Mandy or some such.

I didn't know he was gay then, and I can't be 100% certain now. But then again, looking back...with some people, you know, right? I really hope James is as fabulous now as he was back then.

Some of my favorites from the blog:


Colby Brumit, age 9
Door County, WI (1988)

"All that summer we listened to George Michael's Faith album on cassette endlessly, and I was mesmerized by how cool it was...Looking at it now, I feel so, so lucky that my parents let me fruit out as much as I wanted to."

---------------------

South Texas (1976)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

back-talk begins

me: "owen, come here. it's time to get a new diaper" him, sprinting down the hall with no pants on: "forget about it!" he's quoting benny the rabbit, a short-lived sesame street character who happens to be in his favorite "count with me" video. i'm turning my head, trying not to let him see me laugh, because his use and tone with the phrase are so spot-on.

The Long Con

Hiding in Plain Sight ESPN has a series of sports documentaries called 30 For 30. One of my favorites is called Broke  which is about how professional athletes often make tens of millions of dollars in their careers yet retire with nothing. One of the major "leaks" turns out to be con artists, who lure athletes into elaborate real estate schemes or business ventures. This naturally raises the question: In a tightly-knit social structure that is a sports team, how can con artists operate so effectively and extensively? The answer is quite simple: very few people taken in by con artists ever tell anyone what happened. Thus, con artists can operate out in the open with little fear of consequences because they are shielded by the collective silence of their victims. I can empathize with this. I've lost money in two different con schemes. One was when I was in college, and I received a phone call that I had won an all-expenses-paid trip to the Bahamas. All I needed to d

Reader Feedback: Whither Kanake in (white) Astronomy?

Watching the way that the debate about the TMT has come into our field has angered and saddened me so much. Outward blatant racism and then deflecting and defending. I don't want to post this because I am a chicken and fairly vulnerable given my status as a postdoc (Editor's note: How sad is it that our young astronomers feel afraid to speak out on this issue? This should make clear the power dynamics at play in this debate) .  But I thought the number crunching I did might be useful for those on the fence. I wanted to see how badly astronomy itself is failing Native Hawaiians. I'm not trying to get into all of the racist infrastructure that has created an underclass on Hawaii, but if we are going to argue about "well it wasn't astronomers who did it," we should be able to back that assertion with numbers. Having tried to do so, well I think the argument has no standing. At all.  Based on my research, it looks like there are about 1400 jobs in Hawaii r