squibs
squibs

 

Obliteration of the
Month

News stories in local press-
es and tv listings touted the
return of new episodes of

r s ‘ metaphor is a way  .
usingwords to help us

  

- understand one thing»
better by comparing itto anoth-
er thing we already understand
— at least somewhat. I keep try-
ing to make the garden
metaphor fit our community, but
I admit, there are limits to how
far the comparison can be
pushed. '

Maybe some things are
similar. if we understand a gar-
den as a community of plants,
then yes, we might be a gar-
den. Gardens need tending to
thrive, and so does our com- '
munity. One part of “tending”
involves building up the soil by
adding compost and aged '
manure — but not too much all
at once, and it needs to have
mellowed a bit. In our commu-
nity, maybe the experiences

‘ and knowledge of those who've

lived through the Stonewall and
civil rights era are the nourish-
ing compost that helps tender
young shoots grow tall and
strong. Maybe; some of us have
experiences that are more like

‘manure, shitty, messy, sloppy,

but somehow important to add
to the mix when it's aged
enough to lose the burning
pungency that can damage
new growth. V

But then what do we do
with the weeds? Well, l don’t
know about you, but my garden
always has plenty of weeds. I
heard from a terminally cheer-
ful new-age gardener once that
“weeds are just flowers we
haven’t figured out the right
use for yet.” Maybe. The biodi-
versity folks would say that
weeds and wild varieties are
really important to survival.

They preserve the genesfthat

domesticated varieties. And

yeah, in a don’t-push-it-too-far _

way, our community has its

weeds, its obnoxious wild ones.

And yeah, our communi-
ty needs them for our survival.
They lend us strength, they
drive us to do more, they
remind us that it hasn’t been
very long since all of us were
out there in the woods, being
tromped on by society, and that
some of us are still out there.

Tending our gardens to
me means supporting each
other, being in each other’s
lives, and not looking away
when someone is being hurt,
regardless of whether the per-
son doing the hurting is some
homophobic straight person or
some emotionally damaged
member of our own community.

Throughout the
AIDS/HIV crisis, the civil unions

struggle, and the establishment,» A

of‘Safe Space for victimsof
same-gender relationship vio-
lence, a lot of us have tended a

' lot of gardens.

Tendingour gardens A A
means sharing when we have

extra, whether it's extra ‘time,
extra energy, or extra money to T

plow back into the community

  

     
   

  
     
    

_ 1 organizations that serve our
- we might need someday when »
pests or diseases wipe out the _*

community, taking responsibility

-for the directions and actions of

our institutions. Those organi-
zations and institutions can
only grow whenthey are open
to (“absorb”) the information
and suggestions (“water and
compost”) provided from out-
side their organizational
sphere.

Gardens grow, our com-
munity grows. We grow our
community by communicating,
by finding out what we’re
about, what matters to us and
why. We nourish our communi-
ty by caring, by sharing our
experiences and our strengths,
by not letting the world trample
or poison the habitats of our
wild cousins. We tend our gar-
dens when we make allies
wherever possible among
coworkers and neighbors. We
need to tend our gardens and
grow our community organiza-
tions to survive and enrich our
lives.

Euan Bear,
Editor

that however well or poorly has ' i

tried to support us,to make our
lives better. Gardening is at
least three—quarters grunt labor
— building pads, raking soil, T
watering, shoveling manure
and compost. So is community
building. Community building
means being on boards of
directors, going to meetings,
taking leadership roles in

the HBO series Six Feet
Under. Somehow none
mentioned that one of the
main plots involves the gay
son who has taken over his
family's mortuary, and his
struggle with coming out,
along with his relationship
with his partner.

Gosh, where’d we
go? How could they have
missed us?

We Do Date

The Boston Globe is running
a series following singles on
their quests for dates. One
of the three whose stories
were included is a gay man
(the other two were a
woman and a man, both
looking for opposite-gender
dates).

“Chris, 37, Dorches-

ter, systems manager. For
weeks, Chris hadn't heard
back from the man he went
to a play with. Just as he'd

given up hope, he got a call.

‘Hope springs eternal,’ he
says. He returned relaxed
from a gay cruise. ‘One
doesn't go on a gay cruise
expecting to meet a future
ex, but one can't help but
hope. I met one guy that

had me wanting to stay in
touch and another that left
me wanting mor_e on the
deck. However, most of the
men I met were more inter-
ested in a quick encounter
than in a romantic evening.’
He met one man locally
through online personals
(planetout.com). Report:
nice guy, no sparks. V