Out in the Mountains

Community Center
Moving from
Dream to Reality,
(But Only with Support)

Rob Roach and John Olson

Regular meetings have been held each of
the last several months to establish a
community center in the Burlington area
for lesbians, gay men, bisexual people
and their supporters. Discussions to date
have centered around a presence at Pride
Day in Montpelier, a statewide com-
munity survey, and several fundraising
events.

There is a lot of enthusiasm and mo-
mentum for this center, and it is going to
make Burlington — and the rest of Ver-
mont — an even better place for our com-
munity to live and flourish.

With recent passage of the civil rights
legislation (YES!!), this center is a great
next step for affirming who we are as in-
dividuals and as a community. We need
your enthusiasm, ideas, involvement and
your financial support to make this hap-
pen for all of us.

Possibilities for our community center are
endless. Some ideas so far include: a cof-
fee house, writers’ groups, perfonnance
space, workshops, office and retail space,
pool tables, pingpong, separate space for
women and men, etc. Your ideas are wel-
come, and we’d like to hear them!

Community surveys were sent with the
last issue of Out in the Mountains, and
have been available at Pearl’s, the Bur-
lington Women’s Council, the Peace &
Justice Center, and Outright Vermont.
Response has been good, and we still
want to hear your ideas. Please return
your survey as soon as possible to PO
Box 5122, Burlington, VT 05402-5122.
Donations to support our work can also
be sent to this address, payable to Out in
the Mountains.

We need your involvement and help. We
meet on the second Tuesday each month
from 7:30 to 9:00 pm at Outright Ver-
mont’s offices at 109 So. Winooski Ave.
in Burlington. Please join us. If you
would like information about planning
for the center, contact John Olson at Ver-
mont C.A.R.E.S., 863-2437.

Watch for us at PRIDE on June 6th. V

How About Those Cats!

Dot Brauer

The UVM women’s basketball season
concluded with a mostly glorious and only
slightly sad ending on March 18th. Within
an hour of the end of the final game
against George Washington University, I
heard people saying, “Now what will we
do with our spare time?” Every woman I
know, no, make that every lesbian I know,
has followed the progress of the team for
months. I attended almost every game
starting halfway through the season, in-
cluding a road trip to Boston. At the first
game I attended I saw dozens of familiar
facesinthecrowd. Bytheendofthesea-
son there were hundreds of lesbians among
the capacity crowds cheering on Cathy In-
glese and her wild and wonderful athletes.
Last Thursday a friend described to me
how she rented a hotel room so they could
get cable and invited over a group of
friends to see that last game against
George Washington University. Another
friend suggested that we start a post-season

support group to help deal with the with-
drawal.

With the excitement over for this year, we
are turning our thoughts to next year’s sea-
son, wondering if the UVM Athletic De-
partment will be able to pay Cathy lnglese
enough to make it possible and worthwhile
for her to stay at UVM. We talk about the
attributes of our favorite players: Jen Nie-
bling’s intense scrappiness, Sue Mars-
land’s quiet leadership, Sharon Bay’s
graceful command, Sheri Turnbu1l’s stal-
wart strength, Missy Kelsen’s fluid agility,
Kari Greenbaum’s loping swiftness, Carrie
I.aPine’s mature artistry, Maureen
McCarthy's reassuring stability. Even the
players we have seen less of are talked
about. We all express our gratitude that as
we sadly bid goodbye to Missy, Mo and
Sue, we can turn to a bench that includes
the strength and potential shown by Betsy
Brothers, Jackie Demaris, Crissy Sears and
Carrie McKuin.

Cathy lnglese and her players have become
celebrities among many people in the Bur-
lington area. Much of the flurry in the les-
bian community comes from the same kind
of admiration for hard work and brilliant
accomplishment, and appreciation of pre
cision and teamwork that is felt and ex-
pressed by the wider communitye. The
“right ingredients,” of this team includea
solid and unified coaching staff, a friendly
and articulate head coach, and a sense of
unpretentious modesty among players and
coaches alike. All of these things, not to
mention a 29-1 season, make it easy to get
excited these days about women’s bas-
ketball.

There is also something different about the
admiration felt by the lesbians I know. Our
conversations about the Wonder Cats in-
evitably turn to wondering who on the team
or on the staff might be a lesbian. We also
talk about which ones we think are es-
pecially cute or beautiful. When I overhear
and participate in these conversations, I al-
ways wince a little about the double stan-
dard that I know is applied to lgb people
concerning our love and admiration from a
distance. For lesbians and gays, it is as-
sumed that admiration of same sex people
is a sign of our lascivious natures or our
maliciousness, or even immaturity. All
around us movie and television industries
are built on the creation of screen heros and
love objects, men and women whose role is
first and foremost to be attractive to the op-
posite sex and to portray ideals that are
“universally” desirable. When the Cats play
“Let’s Talk About Sex Baby, Let’s Talk
About Sex,” as their warm-up song, no one
thinks this is shameful or immoral; they are
just being healthy, normal young adults,
that is, as long as the sex they are singing
about is sex with the opposite sex. What is
normal for heterosexual people is seen as
sick, bad or wrong for homosexual people.

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