45th Anniversary of School House Rock

Back in 1973 as my brother and I, and later my sisters watched Saturday morning cartoons on ABC, some of the advertising breaks were taken up by the Emmy Award winning educational cartoons that later became known as Schoolhouse Rock.

It ran on ABC from 1973-1985, and then was revived for a second run from 1993-1999. 

Those musical education cartoons that dropped knowledge on math, science, grammar and history have become so beloved that I and a lot of peeps own them on DVD.

I bought the 30th Anniversary DVD in 2009 when I lived in Louisville, and when I purchased it, Dawn Wilson and I spent several hours watching them and singing along to our fave ones like 'Conjunction Junction', 'Interplanet Janet',' Suffering Until Suffrage', 'Three Is A Magic Number' , 'Interjections! ' , A Noun Is A Person Place or Thing  and 'Hey Little Twelvetoes'  as the rest of our roommates and friends watched us with bemused looks on their faces .

Of course, as you probably guessed, the political junkie in me loves 'I'm Just A Bill'  which explains the legislative process an has been parodied by Saturday Night Live to lampoon 45.. 

But I was also in love with the 'Verb; That's What's Happening' one as well because it was one of the few in the original series of School House Rock videos in which the main protagonist looked like me.



So happy 45th Anniversary School House Rock!.   Those videos helped a lot of kids get to math, science, grammar and history tests. 

Coretta Scott King's 1986 Letter About Jeff Sessions

US Senate Rule 19 doesn't affect me.   Here's the letter that Senator/Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)tried to read in the Senate chambers last night about Jeff Sessions that the Republican majority was 'scurred' of her doing and censured her for doing so, but allowed three white male Democratic senators to read.

Thus continuing the long tradition of racist Republicans suppressing the voices of Black women.

Hmm, wonder if McConnell would have used Rule 19 on Sen Cory Booker or Sen. Kamala Harris had they tried to read it?

Here's the text of Coretta Scott King's letter in opposition to Sessions getting a federal judgeship.

***

The introduction:.
Dear Senator Thurmond:I write to express my sincere opposition to the confirmation of Jefferson B. Sessions as a federal district court judge for the Southern District of Alabama. My professional and personal roots in Alabama are deep and lasting.

Anyone who has used the power of his office as United States Attorney to intimidate and chill the free exercise of the ballot by citizens should not be elevated to our courts.

Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters.

For this reprehensible conduct, he should not be rewarded with a federal judgeship.

I regret that a long-standing commitment prevents me from appearing in person to testify against this nominee. However, I have attached a copy of my statement opposing Mr. Sessions’ confirmation and I request that my statement as well as this letter ‘be made a part of the’ hearing record.

          I do sincerely urge you to oppose the confirmation of Mr. Sessions.

Sincerely,Coretta Scott King

Here's the text of Coretta Scott King's letter about Sessions.

Statement of Coretta Scott King on the Nomination of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III for the United States District Court Southern District of AlabamaSenate Judiciary CommitteeThursday, March 13, 1986

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

 Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to express my strong opposition to the nomination of Jefferson Sessions for a federal district judgeship for the Southern District of Alabama. My longstanding commitment which I shared with my husband, Martin, to protect and enhance the rights of Black Americans, rights which include equal access to the democratic process, compels me to testify today.Civil rights leaders, including my husband and Albert Turner, have fought long and hard to achieve free and unfettered access to the ballot box. Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge. This simply cannot be allowed to happen. Mr. Sessions’ conduct as U.S. Attorney, from his politically motivated voting fraud prosecutions to his indifference toward criminal violations of civil rights laws, indicates that he lacks the temperament, fairness and judgment to be a federal judge.

The Voting Rights Act was, and still is, vitally important to the future of democracy in the United States. I was privileged to join Martin and many others during the Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights in 1965. Martin was particularly impressed by the determination to get the franchise of blacks in Selma and neighboring Perry County. As he wrote, “Certainly no community in the history of the Negro struggle has responded with the enthusiasm of Selma and her neighboring town of Marion. Where Birmingham depended largely upon students and unemployed adults (to participate in non-violent protest of the denial of the franchise), Selma has involved fully 10 percent of the Negro population in active demonstrations, and at least half the Negro population of Marion was arrested on one day.” Martin was referring of course to a group that included the defendants recently prosecuted for assisting elderly and illiterate blacks to exercise that franchise. ln fact, Martin anticipated from the depth of their commitment twenty years ago, that a united political organization would remain in Perry County long after the other marchers had left. This organization, the Perry County Civic League, started by Mr. Turner, Mr. Hogue, and others as Martin predicted, continued “to direct the drive for votes and other rights.” In the years since the Voting Rights Act was passed, Black Americans in Marion, Selma and elsewhere have made important strides in their struggle to participate actively in the electoral process. The number of Blacks registered to vote in key Southern states has doubled since 1965. This would not have been possible without the Voting Rights Act.
However, Blacks still fall far short of having equal participation in the electoral process. Particularly in the South, efforts continue to be made to deny Blacks access to the polls, even where Blacks constitute the majority of the voters. It has been a long up-hill struggle to keep alive the vital legislation that protects the most fundamental right to vote. A person who has exhibited so much hostility to the enforcement of those laws, and thus, to the exercise of those rights by Black people should not be elevated to the federal bench.
The irony of Mr. Sessions’ nomination is that, if confirmed, he will be given life tenure for doing with a federal prosecution what the local sheriffs accomplished twenty years ago with clubs and cattle prods. Twenty years ago, when we marched from Selma to Montgomery, the fear of voting was real, as the broken bones and bloody heads in Selma and Marion bore witness. As my husband wrote at the time, “it was not just a sick imagination that conjured up the vision of a public official, sworn to uphold the law, who forced an inhuman march upon hundreds of Negro children; who ordered the Rev. James Bevel to be chained to his sickbed; who clubbed a Negro woman registrant, and who callously inflicted repeated brutalities and indignities upon nonviolent Negroes peacefully petitioning for their constitutional right to vote.”
Free exercise of voting rights is so fundamental to American democracy that we can not tolerate any form of infringement of those rights. Of all the groups who have been disenfranchised in our nation’s history, none has struggled longer or suffered more in the attempt to win the vote than Black citizens. No group has had access to the ballot box denied so persistently and intently. Over the past century, a broad array of schemes have been used in attempts to block the Black vote. The range of techniques developed with the purpose of repressing black voting rights run the gamut from the — straightforward application of brutality against black citizens who tried to vote to such legalized frauds as “grandfather clause” exclusions and rigged literacy tests. The actions taken by Mr. Sessions in regard to the 1984 voting fraud prosecutions represent just one more technique used to intimidate Black voters and thus deny them this most precious franchise. The investigations into the absentee voting process were conducted only in the Black Belt counties where blacks had finally achieved political power in the local government. Whites had been using the absentee process to their advantage for years, without incident. Then, when Blacks realizing its strength, began to use it with success, criminal investigations were begun.
In these investigations, Mr. Sessions, as U.S. Attorney, exhibited an eagerness to bring to trial and convict three leaders of the Perry County Civic League including Albert Turner despite evidence clearly demonstrating their innocence of any wrongdoing. Furthermore, in initiating the case, Mr. Sessions ignored allegations of similar behavior by whites, choosing instead to chill the exercise of the franchise by blacks by his misguided investigation. In fact, Mr. Sessions sought to punish older black civil rights activists, advisors and colleagues of my husband, who had been key figures in the civil rights movement in the 1960’s. These were persons who, realizing the potential of the absentee vote among Blacks, had learned to use the process within the bounds of legality and had taught others to do the same. The only sin they committed was being too successful in gaining votes.
The scope and character of the investigations conducted by Mr. Sessions also warrant grave concern. Witnesses were selectively chosen in accordance with the favorability of their testimony to the government’s case. Also, the prosecution illegally withheld from the defense critical statements made by witnesses. Witnesses who did testify were pressured and intimidated into submitting the “correct” testimony. Many elderly blacks were visited multiple times by the FBI who then hauled them over 180 miles by bus to a grand jury in Mobile when they could more easily have testified at a grand jury twenty miles away in Selma. These voters, and others, have announced they are now never going to vote again.
I urge you to consider carefully Mr. Sessions’ conduct in these matters. Such a review, I believe, raises serious questions about his commitment to the protection of the voting rights of all American citizens and consequently his fair and unbiased judgment regarding this fundamental right. When the circumstances and facts surrounding the indictments of Al Turner, his wife, Evelyn, and Spencer Hogue are analyzed, it becomes clear that the motivation was political, and the result frightening — the wide-scale chill of the exercise of the ballot for blacks, who suffered so much to receive that right in the first place. Therefore, it is my strongly-held view that the appointment of Jefferson Sessions to the federal bench would irreparably damage the work of my husband, Al Turner, and countless others who risked their lives and freedom over the past twenty years to ensure equal participation in our democratic system.
The exercise of the franchise is an essential means by which our citizens ensure that those who are governing will be responsible. My husband called it the number one civil right. The denial of access to the ballot box ultimately results in the denial of other fundamental rights. For, it ‘ is only when the poor and disadvantaged are empowered that they are able to participate actively in the solutions to their own problems.
We still have a long way to go before we can say that minorities no longer need be concerned about discrimination at the polls. Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans and Asian Americans are grossly underrepresented at every level of government in America. If we are going to make our timeless dream of justice through democracy a reality, we must take every possible step to ensure that the spirit and intent of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution is honored.
The federal courts hold a unique position in our constitutional system, ensuring that minorities and other citizens without political power have a forum in which to vindicate their rights. Because of his unique role, it is essential that the people selected to be federal judges respect the basic tenets of our legal system: respect for individual rights and a commitment to equal justice for all. The integrity of the Courts, and thus the rights they protect, can only be maintained if citizens feel confident that those selected as federal judges will be able to judge with fairness others holding differing views.
I do not believe Jefferson Sessions possesses the requisite judgment, competence, and sensitivity to the rights guaranteed by the federal civil rights laws to qualify for appointment to the federal district court. Based on his record, I believe his confirmation would have a devastating effect on not only the judicial system in Alabama, but also on the progress we have made everywhere toward fulfilling my husband’s dream that he envisioned over twenty years ago. I therefore urge the Senate Judiciary Committee to deny his confirmation.
I thank you for allowing me to share my views.

Unfortunately this racist man was nominated by 45 to become the next Attorney General of the United States and was just confirmed in a straight party line vote.

And you Bernie or Busters and third party voters in swing states greased the skids for this to happen..

Texas Trans Pioneer Linda Phillips Passes Away

Was sad to hear the news via Gordene MacKenzie's Facebook page that pioneering Texas trans woman Linda Phillips has passed away suddenly at age 81 on Monday

Linda Phillips had been crossdressing since age 3,  and had the epiphany that she was trans,and transitioned later in her life.   She married Cynthia on January 10, 1958 in Dallas.

 Linda and Cynthia  were well known figures in many of the Central and South Texas transgender organizations in the late 80's and 1990's , and joined the Boulton and Park Society shortly after its 1986 founding

Linda was the past editor of the Heart of Texas Gender Association newsletter Cross Currents, and Gender Euphoria, the Boulton and Park Society newsletter. in addition to serving as the organization's Secretary and Treasurer.  As one of the principal organizers for the Texas T Party, Linda also served as the Secretary and President of the Texas T Party conference.

The Texas 'T' Party that started in the late 80's was the Texas based trans themed convention held in San Antonio that grew to become the largest trans themed conference on the planet at the time before it ended in 1996.  

That Texas T Party conference was also important in not only connecting the national trans community of that time to each other, but also led to the start of the series of Houston based ICTLEP trans policy conferences from 1992-1996 that became the foundation of the modern trans rights advocacy movement.

The couple also spent the 1990's discussing their longtime transgender-cisgender relationship on talk show television, at colleges and universities and serving on the board of the International Foundation For Gender Education (IFGE).  Their papers are archived at the University of Texas -San Antonio

My condolences to her wife Cynthia, and I thank them both for being pioneering possibility models for my generation of trans people to follow.   I'm even prouder to note that they were fom my home state and setting the leadership bar high for future Texas trans leaders to emulate.

We have lost another trans pioneer, and while she will be missed, Linda Phillips will not be forgotten.

TransGriot Note: Linda's in the white cowboy hat in the first  photo on the left, and on the right in the second one with her spouse Cynthia. 

As of yet haven't heard any information concerning a date or location for either the funeral or memorial service.  I will pass that info along as soon as I receive it.

Moni's First Gay Bar Experience

In the wake of the Pride Orlando shooting, we've had a few celebrity TBLG people talk about their first time visiting a gay bar in a New York Times article..  I thought that was a great story idea, so I'll talk about mine.

It was June 1980, a mere two weeks after I'd graduated from high school.   The pull to become me was becoming stronger but I was still living at my parents house and prepping to go to college.  I still had quietly put together a stash of femme clothing I kept hidden along with a growing collection of clipped Houston Chronicle and other newspaper articles about trans people I stuck in an unmarked manila envelope.

One day I stumbled across a Houston Defender newspaper with an article written about legendary female illusionist Tommie Ross, who would later become Miss Continental in 2000.  She was based in Houston at the time and performing at the only Black oriented gay club on Lower Westheimer at the time called Studio 13.

It probably got its name because of its address at 1318 Westheimer Rd, and I decided to check it out and the Sunday Studio 13 divas show that she was one of the performers for,

As I entered the split level converted house that Sunday night, it became the portal to another exciting and interesting world I would continue to visit until I moved to Louisville in 2001.

There was a sunken dance floor that led to the stage and dressing rooms in the back for the showgirls, along with two bars on the lower level and the DJ booth on the east side of the club where the DJ would spin his music. Upstairs was another bar and pool table, with windows facing the McDonalds next door and south to Westheimer. In the back there was a high walled patio with a hot tub, but it stayed covered, and especially after Houston started experiencing the first wave of AIDS deaths in 1981.

In the front on the Westheimer side of the club was an enclosed patio with a high fence so no vehicles passing by Studio 13 could spot you.  It allowed you to get away from the crowds and noise inside and enjoy a somewhat quiet conversation.  It became one of my fave spots when I got tired of the crowd inside.

But the thing that immediately caught my attention was all the female illusionists, drag queens and trans women who looked like me.

Some were early in their transitions, while others were drop dead gorgeous as they elegantly glided through the club.

I met one tall trans sister who I struck up a conversation with.  She introduced me to several people and put me so much at ease that I came back on Thursday for Studio 13's Talent Night amateur drag show and met Cookie LaCook, the 'Mouth of the South' and longtime emcee of that show until she passed away in 2007,

One of the reasons I love amaretto sours to this day is because she introduced me to them.




I eventually made my first public foray out en femme at Studio 13, and started hitting the other Montrose area trans friendly clubs like the Boobie Rock that later became Chances, EJ's, QT's, Cousins, and the gay owned 24 hour restaurant a few blocks up Westheimer close to Waugh Drive called Charlie's.

It was Studio 13 where I had some memorable times during the 80's and 90's.  It also brings a twinge of sadness when I think about it because many of the peeps I met during my first foray into Studio 13 would be dead by the end of the decade from AIDS.  Some of the peeps I met moved elsewhere because of the hostility that was stirred up by Steven Hotze and his evil minions in the wake of the vicious 1985 repeal of the Houston non discrimination ordinance that passed in August 1984 with sexual orientation only language in it.

Carla, one of my trans homegirls I met during those Studio 13 trips died in 1990 when she broke her neck after she was shoved down some apartment stairs during a heated argument with her boyfriend. She used to rub it in when we hung out about being a petite 5'2" size seven pump wearing sistah and used to tell me that I was going to transition.

Too bad she didn't get to see me do so.

Studio 13 allowed me to get comfortable being out and dressed in public as Moni, and I even met a few people that are still my friends to this day.  I discovered that me and Nikki Araguz Loyd's late teens-early 20's self actually crossed paths there since from time to time she would either do Talent Night or just hang out with a friend there.  I eventually met Tommie Ross, and discovered to my dismay one night she plays a mean game of pool.

Unfortunately in large part due to the gentrification of Montrose, many of those gay bars closed down or were bought out, and Studio 13 eventually became a casualty of that gentrification push.  Studio 13 became Rascals in the late 90's, and was eventually sold after I moved to Louisville in 2001 to become what is now the Royal Oak Bar and Grill.  

Studio 13 may be ancient Houston TBLG history, but I still have the memories from those times my twenty something-thirty something self wandered through its doors.

I'll always remember DJ Tony Powell spinning house music until the club closed.  Cookie LaCook hosting Talent Night and making her 'f*****g great audience' laugh.

I'll remember the pageants, the talent nights and the one Studio 13 Talent Night in which there were 12 contestants and eight of them performed to Anita Baker's 'No More Tears' to the point I hated that song for a while.

I still call that Anita Baker song to this day 'The Houston Drag Queen National Anthem'.

I'll remember hanging out in Studio 13's cramped parking lot after its 2 AM closing and watching peeps trying to pick somebody up to go home with.  The hilarious night in 1983 I watched the entertaining spectacle of some suburban jerk calling himself trying to do some trans bashing and unfortunately for him picking on a Latina trans girl who fought in Golden Gloves before transition. She whipped that jerk's azz while in heels and without breaking a nail as we stood by laughing.

But it all started because I wanted to see Tommie Ross perform.

The 'Venus Envy' Village Voice Article

By the time I was in the late 80's I was becoming more cognizant of the fact that I wasn't happy not living as my true self, I was starting to come to the conclusion I was trans, and being in the frustrating position of not having the info readily available to make informed decisions on how to transition was becoming a heavy psychic burden on my soul

So because this was the pre-Internet days, news about trans issues and people was hard to find and come by, and when i stumbled across an article about a trans person openly living their life, it was like a a life preserver being thrown to a person drowning in misery.  Seeing those articles also gave me hope that it would one day happen for me.

I was perusing magazines at a newsstand one day back in May 1988 and noted that month's issue of the Village Voice had an article about the New York ballroom community that featured Carmen Xtravaganza.

The article was entitled 'Venus Envy: The Drag Balls Of Harlem' by Donald Snuggs.  It was the first mainstream publication article about the Harlem based ballroom community and featured Carmen in the interview.   It was also several years before the Paris Is Burning documentary would take movie theaters by storm and become an iconic film for our community.

I was fascinated by Sylvia Plachy's photo's of my trans sisters and the ballroom action, and bought it.

I was now 13 months into my airline career and had the ability to jet off anywhere in the US at that time. Fascinated by what I'd just read in that Village voice article, I resolved to go see a ball and meet Carmen one day.

After several moves I lost the magazine and the manila folder that had my trans news story clippings, so I'm happy to see this article in digital form.

While one part of that resolution came true in terms of meeting Carmen, doing a TransGriot Ten Questions interview with her and getting to chat with her from time to time, still have yet to see a New York ball.

Prince, His Royal Badness Is Dead

Just heard the sad and shocking news that Prince has died at his Paisley Park estate at age 57.

According to local and multiple news sources, a medical response call coming from Prince's Paisley Park compound in Chanhassen, MN was received at 9:43 AM CDT.  After attempts to revive him by first responders failed, he was declared dead at 10:07 AM CDT.

He has been having health issues recently, and reportedly was hospitalized in Moline, Illinois after his plane was diverted while flying back to Minneapolis from a concert in Atlanta Friday night that was blamed on flu-like symptoms

Cause of death has not been determined at the time I write this..

The enigmatic Grammy and Oscar Award winning Prince was acclaimed as one of the most gifted and inventive musicians of our era   You could see the James Brown, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Little Richard and other influences in his music and stage performances that fused R&B, soul and funk with rock, and the Minneapolis Sound as it grew to be called was heard in groups and artists like The Time, Vanity/Appolonia 6, Mint Condition, Alexander O'Neal, Cherrelle, Sheila E and because of super producers Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis who were The Time members, Janet Jackson and New Edition.  .

He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004, and much of the music soundtrack of my late teens and twenties is dominated by Prince songs. I still chuckle when I think about my late high school friend Joel Anderson who resembled the late 70's Prince complete with the big Afro he was rocking then, bristling when me and my godbrother Brent Warren teased him about it.

Some of my fondest concert memories involve going to his Dirty Mind, Controversy, 1999, and Purple Rain tours at  Hofheinz Pavilion and The Summit in the early 80's.  I stood in line at the Almeda 8 with my brother and other Prince fans in my 1999 concert T-shirt to buy tickets for the opening weekend of the movie Purple Rain when it.came out.  And when a Prince album or CD came out, I was at Soundwaves and Sound Warehouse eagerly snatching them up.

I knew that with many of my fave musical artists being in their late 50's, 60's and 70's that 2016 could be one of those years where we witnessed many of them leave this plane of existence for various reasons.  But I can't help thinking after hearing today's news that another musical piece of my childhood, my life and the lives my Baby Boomer and Gen X peers is gone.

His Royal Badness may be gone, but his towering musical legacy will endure forever.

Rest in power and peace, Prince.   The concerts in Heaven just got a little more funkier.  

Denise 'Vanity' Matthews Has Died

Like most people in the 80's I was a huge Prince fan and loved Vanity 6, the girl group he started that was fronted by Canadian born model, actress and singer Denise Katrina Matthews.

I humorously had happen after I wrote a 50th birthday post to her, someone erroneously thinking that TransGriot was her blog.  I wrote two clarification posts breaking it to those peeps it was mine and not then Evangelist Denise K. Matthews' site.

I was surprised and saddened to hear as a huge fan of hers that she passed away today at age 57 in a Fremont, CA hospital after battling inflammation of her small intestines.

It was the latest in a series of health challenges including a 1994 overdose that so damaged her kidneys that she required regular dialysis.

She was born in Niagara Falls, ON on January 4, 1959, the child of a Polish-Jewish mother born in Germany and an African-American, Hawaiian and native American father and a a teen began entering local beauty pageants. She won the Miss Niagara Hospitality title in 1977 and competed in Miss Canada in 1978 before moving to Toronto and at 17 to New York to begin a modeling career.

She was also the cover model for Cameo's 1982 album Alligator Woman and posed for Playboy magazine twice in May 1985 and April 1988

She met Prince during the 1980 American Music Awards, and after discovering she could sing, he offered her the lead singer spot in Vanity 6 and christened her with her stage name Vanity.

'Nasty Girl' became the group's breakout hit, and she and Vanity 6 along with The Time toured with Prince during his 1999 tour in 1982-83

But as the breakout star of Vanity 6, while she lost the role in Purple Rain that Prince had created for her after she went solo and signed with Motown in 1984, she parlayed those looks into a stream of movie and television acting roles that included The Last Dragon, 52 Pick-up and Action Jackson.




She eventually turned away from Hollywood and became a born-again Christian evangelist after nearly dying of renal failure during that 1994 overdose. After a 1997 kidney transplant, she began touring the country and the world as a traveling evangelist and released her autobiography in 2010 entitled \Blame It on Vanity.

But once again, another oe of our music stars has joined the ancestors.   Rest in power and peace Denise Matthews.

30th Anniversary Of Challenger Disaster

Today is the 30th anniversary of the space shuttle Challenger disaster.   It ,exploded 73 seconds after it was launched from Cape Canaveral on a chilly January 28, 1986 winter day with a large live TV audience of schoolchildren looking on in horror.

One of the people who was part of that Challenger crew on that STS-51L mission was Sharon Christa McAuliffe, a Concord, NH schoolteacher who was set to become the first civilian launched into space and was going to once the shuttle got into orbit do some teaching from space.

But that broadcast never happened.  The collapse of the external fuel tank caused an explosion that broke the shuttle apart and sent the crew cabin in a fall from 46,000 feet altitude to the Atlantic Ocean below that killed all seven crew members.

The mission crew that perished that day were Mission Specialist Ellison Onizuka, Teacher In Space Christa McAuliffe, Payload Specialist Greg Jarvis, Mission Specialist Judy Resnik, Pilot Mike Smith, Mission commander Dick Scobee, and Mission Specialist Ron McNair.

Like the 1963 Kennedy assassination or the September 2001 terror attacks, people of my generation and who were kids watching the launch in their classrooms across the nation remember what they were doing when it happened at 10:39 AM CST.

I was getting ready for a job interview, and my space junkie self had forgotten for a moment that the launch was happening after two prior postponements.   So I flipped the TV on CNN and was listening to the commentary as I got dressed.

The CNN commentators hadn't mentioned the explosion at the time I turned on the television, and I said to myself, "'Damn, the way they're talking, something must have happened to the Challenger."

A few minutes later I would see the horrific video of that shuttle launch gone horribly wrong.  The shuttles were grounded for nearly three years as NASA and the Rogers Commission sought to find out what happened and make the necessary corrections to the shuttle's design to make it safer.

It was later determined that the cold snap that affected the Cape Canaveral area plus a design flaw in one of the solid rocket boosters combined with violations of NASA launch procedures and protocols caused the accident.

As President Ronald Reagan said in his speech to the nation that night, "The future doesn't belong to the faint-hearted; it belongs to the brave.  The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future and we'll continue to follow them."

And may the souls of the Challenger 7 continue to rest in power and peace, and inspire this generation and future ones to continue to look to the stars.

.      

RIP Natalie Cole

Another iconic singer from my childhood has gone.   Was shocked to hear that iconic singer Natalie Cole joined the ancestors last night at age 65 die to persistent health complications.

I remember when I first heard her breakout hit from her debut gold album Inseparable.  The Top Ten hit 'This Will Be' from that album was dominating my radio in May 1975 and I recall being surprised to hear that it was Nat King Cole's daughter singing it.  

She was born on February 6, 1950 in Los Angeles to musical royalty.  In addition to her father being one of the iconic singers of the post World War II era, her mother Maria sang with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.  She was singing on her father's Christmas album at age 6 and began performing at age 11.  But after her father's untimely death in 1965, she turned away from music and graduated with a degree in child psychology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1972.
 
Cole was soon after graduation singing in small clubs with her band Black Magic, but refused to do her father's material.  She was discovered by Chicago based music producers Marvin Yancy and Chuck Jackson who wrote many of her early songs.

Cole would become an instant star, winning the first two of her nine career Grammys in 1976, when she won the Best New Artist Grammy and another one for Best R&B Vocal Performance Female for 'This Will Be'.    Her subsequent albums Natalie (1976) and Unpredictable (1977) hit gold and platinum status respectively and she was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1979.




Serious drug addition problems derailed that early success to the point Cole entered rehab in 1983, but she reemerged in 1987 with the comeback album Everlasting.  The success of that album, with three number one singles, set her up for the monster 1991 success of Unforgettable..With Love. 

That album featured the technology assisted duet with her late father singing 'Unforgettable' that helped her sweep the three major Grammy categories in 1992 and sold seven million copies in the US.




She's had persistent health problems due to a kidney transplant and battling hepatitis C, and had canceled several December 2015 events due to illness.

But like her father, Natalie Cole will be an unforgettable music icon to me and all the people who loved her music, and may she rest in power and peace.

     

Moni's Thoughts On The 35th Anniversary Of The Houston Anti-Crossdressing Ordinance Repeal

I, wanted to post this on the anniversary date, but with all the breaking news that week, slipped my mind I needed to finish my thoughts about what this August 12, 1980 anniversary date meant to me as a trans Houstonian who graduated from high school three months before the odious ordinance died 

This ordinance was hated not only by the Houston trans community but by the Houston lesbian community and the drag community as well.

Little did I know that when I stepped outside dressed as moi in June 1980, anytime I stepped inside Studio 13 and sat in the audience watching a show or was just hanging out in Montrose en femme prior to that date, I was violating Section 28-42.4 of the city’s Code of Ordinances, AKA the Houston Anti-Crossdressing Ordinance that was the harassment weapon of choice for HPD their aimed at the Houston TBLG community at the time.

I'd seen Anne Mayes and coverage of her fight in the early 70's to not be harassed by Herman Short's HPD oppressors on the local news, and it was my first inkling that there was a name for what I was feeling at the time as a pre-teenager. 

Anne after her genital surgery and a 1978 Houston Chronicle interview dropped out of sight in the Houston trans community.  I wish I could tell her thank you for standing up for me and future generations of trans Houstonians who received the blessing of not knowing what it was like to go to jail for simply wanting to put on the clothes that matched who we are as people.

I would also love to talk to her simply to get a taste of what the late 60's- early 70's were like for trans historical purposes.

I wouldn't meet Judge Phyllis Frye until a decade and a half later, but she at that time had been working for three and a half years to kill that ordinance to make it easier for hers, mine and future generations of trans Houstonians to be able to walk the streets without being messed with by HPD.

I also wasn't aware of it until much later that our paths crossed while I was a UH freshman and she was at the UH law school working on her law degree. 

When she accomplished that on August 12, 1980 I was still working on my census enumerator summer job and wasn't aware that the lobbying work she was doing at City Hall would have such a ginormous impact.

It's also fitting to revisit this seeing that we have an ongoing attempt by a transphobe to inject anti-trans hatred into our city charter.

So Houston trans younglings, the next time y'all go out, you drag artists get or stage, or you lesbians decide you wish to wear a pair of jeans while out and about, say thank you to Phyllis, Anne and Rita Wanstrom   who enabled you to do so.

Hour Magazine 1980 Trans Interview

While looking for something to watch on YouTube stumbled across this video of a 1980 Hour Magazine host Gary Collins interviewing trans women Heather Fontaine, Amanda Winters and Shalei Latrelle

Hour Magazine was one of the first national talk shows that discussed transsexuality, and Collins would later interview on his show Caroline 'Tula' Cossey and Christine Jorgensen.

This show also featured a few moments of their performances at the Queen Mary drag club in Studio City, CA.

It was a professional but very Trans 101 interview by Collins in what has a feel to be a conversational style.  And yes, some questions from the studio audience.

And I'm feeling old watching this.disco-era video.

But this show was a godsend to peeps like me in the pre-Internet era.


Part 1


Part 2

25th Anniversary Of The Fall Of The Berlin Wall

Like the Cold War and Jim Crow segregation, the Berlin Wall was a part of the world when I was born in 1962.   It was erected in August 1961 to stop the flow of East Germans fleeing their 'worker's paradise' to West Germany and came down in dramatic fashion on November 9, 1989.

For something that seemed like it was going to have a permanent place during my time on Earth to the point it was a tourist attraction and two US presidents made speeches near it, the stunning way events unfolded 25 years ago that brought The Wall down and several months later on October 3, 1990 led to the reunification of Germany are still mindboggling at times to me as a Cold War baby.

The Berlin Wall was such a reality in my world that I used it as a visual example of my determination NOT to do something.   I would say to peeps, "That will happen when the Berlin Wall falls."

And now, within my lifetime, before the close of the 20th century, it was beginning to happen before my very eyes.   The official dismantling of the Wall didn't start until the summer of 1990 and was completed in 1992

But happen it did, and the process got started 25 years ago on this date.

Today's The 25th Anniversary Of A Massacre..

The world will never forget.   

It's the 25th anniversary of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in which it is estimated that up to 1000 people died after PLA troops and tanks were called in to brutally crush a five week old democracy demonstration by students in the square. 

Never forget that day.   Also never forget that freedom require eternal vigilance to maintain it from the external and internal enemies determined to crush it.

Spike Lee Confirms 'School Daze' Sequel On The Way!

School Daze has always been one of my favorite Spike Lee movies and I still pull out my DVD to watch it from time to time even though the movie was first released 25 years ago back in 1988.

It was still an encapsulation of many of the issues college students of the 80's were talking about from South African divestment to fraternity hazing.

And with a cast that featured Laurence Fishburne, Giancarlo Esposito, Tisha Campbell Martin, Samuel L. Jackson and Jasmine Guy who was then lighting up the small screen on A Different World, that Spike Lee joint had us packing the multiplexes and made $14 million. 

With the $71 million success of The Best Man Holiday, the sequel to the 1999 The Best Man movie his cousin Malcolm Lee wrote, produced and directed, now that we (hopefully) have Hollywood's fiscal attention, I wasn't surprised that renewed attention has now been focused on classic African-American movies hat should have been made into sequels a long time ago. 

Spike Lee recently confirmed in a Black&Sexy TV interview that he has completed a script for a sequel to School Daze that takes us back to the Mission College campus 25 years later. 

“I had the script for ‘School Daze,” said Lee in a recent interview.  “But, what people have to understand is that it’s a contemporary version. So it’s the same school, Mission College, 25 years later,” explained Lee. “Hopefully I can get Laurence Fishburne to play Dap. He’ll be the president now of the school. And we would deal with issues around Historically Black Colleges today.”

He says he would not only tackle some of the issues Black college students deal with in 21st century college life, he would also tackle the subjects of pledging and homophobia

I hope you can get Fishburne to reprise his Dap Dunlap role and even better, get this sequel filmed.   
  

30th Anniversary of Able Archer 83

I wrote last year about the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis that nearly led to a global nuclear war.   Today is the 30th anniversary of the start of the ten day 1983 NATO Able Archer nuclear exercise that almost triggered another one. 

According to a 1997 CIA analysis by Benjamin Fischer, the incident had its roots in Soviet anxiety over the US defense buildup that began during the Carter Administration. The Russians knew they couldn't compete spending and technology wise and feared they would soon be outgunned. 

The USSR was also spooked by stepped-up probes of their early-warning intelligence system and other mind games played by the American military starting shortly after Ronald Reagan took office in January 1981.

Whatever the impetus, the Soviet leaders persuaded themselves the US was planning a sneak nuclear attack on the USSR and in 1981 under then KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov ordered their spies to look for evidence in an effort incongruously code-named RYAN, the Russian acronym for "nuclear missile attack."

Soviet nuclear first strike fears were heightened a few more levels in February 1983.  The US prepared to counter the Warsaw Pact conventional arms numerical superiority in Europe augmented by deployment of the mobile Soviet SS-20 intermediate range missiles against NATO by stepping up their conventional military readiness in the region and deploying their own next-generation mobile Pershing II intermediate range nuclear missiles in West Germany.  

From their West German bases the Pershing II missiles could reach hardened targets in the Soviet Union in just four to ten minutes.

It also didn't help during this period of heightened tension and deteriorating relations between the two superpowers President Reagan was also ratcheting up the anti-Soviet rhetoric by denouncing the USSR in March as an "evil empire" and shortly afterward announced the SDI "Star Wars" missile-defense initiative designed to create a missile defense shield to make the US invulnerable to Russian nukes.  The mere thought of American military R&D being put to work to make that a reality put the Soviets aging leadership team now headed by a gravely ill Yuri Andropov and their military and Strategic Rocket Forces commanders in freak out mode.

On September 1 Soviet air defense military units in the Far East, under pressure from their upper echelon political and military leadership for responding lackadaisically to previous US military air incursions during Fleet Ex 83 conducted in the North Pacific Ocean, shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, which had strayed into Russian airspace and been misidentified as a spy plane.  All 269 passengers and crew aboard the flight were killed, including US congressman Lawrence McDonald who was headed to South Korea.  Former president Richard Nixon was supposed to be on that flight seated next to McDonald but decided not to go on that trip at the last moment. 

The US condemned the attack as evidence of Soviet barbarism and the increased worldwide anti-Soviet attitudes and revulsion for the attack on KAL 007 greased the political and public opinion skids to begin the European deployment of the Pershing II's.

Soviet leaders were making the counterargument (and to some extent believed) that the KAL 007 incident was an intentional US provocation and declared that accommodation with the US was impossible.

We also didn't know at the time that in the early morning hours of September 26 if it hadn't been for the cool headed thinking of duty officer Stanislav Petrov, we would have plunged that day into a accidental nuclear war. 

Lieutenant Colonel Petrov, who was fortuitously on duty doing an extra shift in the air defense bunker in the Moscow area that day was faced with malfunctioning computers and blaring alarms all over his control bunker telling him five missiles had been launched from US territory.   He knew that if the real thing were happening, the US wouldn't be launching just one to five Minuteman III missiles at the USSR.  Petrov correctly dismissed it as a false alarm and didn't report it to his superiors in breach of Soviet military protocols.  If he'd wanted to play it safe, Petrov would have informed the higher authority immediately. 

Had he done so, knowing that Soviet armed forces policy was launch on warning, it probably would have resulted in a first strike attack that killed millions of people based on the mentality of the senior Soviet leadership at the time believing the US was already making preparations to do so and Reagan would order it. Subsequent investigations proved Petrov was correct and the false alarms were caused by a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds and the Molniya satellites' orbits.

Further complicating matters and adding to the tense and worsening diplomatic relations between the superpowers was the October 25 invasion of Grenada by US forces in the wake of a Marxist coup in that island nation that led to the Cubans building a military aircraft capable airstrip on the island that concerned the US.   The invasion of Grenada took place two days after the suicide bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon that killed 241 American military personnel there.

With tensions between the superpowers at code-red levels and especially in the USSR, NATO launched Able Archer 83.   This was an annual military exercise simulating the outbreak of hostilities between NATO and the Warsaw Pact nations that the Warsaw Pact was aware was happening.

But this year's version of Able Archer involved an unusually realistic buildup to a simulated NATO nuclear strike involving the NATO senior political leadership like British PM Margaret Thatcher, West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and command and control levels of NATO that was scheduled to last ten days. President Reagan and Vice President Bush were supposed to take part in it but decided not to.

The Soviets knew Able Archer was happening but wondered if something else was afoot, having long planned to use war games as a cover for launching a first strike themselves and suspecting the US might do likewise.  The Soviets also had the attitude the only way to preempt a first strike if that is what the US and NATO were gearing up for was to beat them to it and launch their own.  They raised their own state of alert to a wartime footing in order to be in a better position to do so if the attack confirmation intel came from the RYAN protocol. 

The increased coded traffic picked up by the KGB between Washington and London in reality was chippy diplomatic chatter being generated because Great Britain was pissed about the Grenada invasion but was being read by RYAN analysts as coordination communication prior to launching an attack. 

But the coded traffic combined with NATO forces simulating during the Able Archer 83 exercises the moves and communications necessary to transition from a conventional to nuclear conflict through all alert phases, from DEFCON 5 to DEFCON 1 led alarmist KGB agents to mistakenly report them as part of the Soviet RYAN intel gathering protocols as actual preparations for a NATO first strike on the USSR.


The result was the Baltic Military District in the USSR being placed on alert status along with units in Czechoslovakia, nuclear capable aircraft units in Poland and East Germany being activated and prepped for action and Strategic Rocket Forces ICBM silos and units prepped for launch as the Soviet leadership frantically sent high-priority telegrams from Moscow to its KGB stations in Western Europe on November 8 demanding information about the feared surprise NATO nuclear first strike attack on the USSR.   

The CIA picked up on the increased military and civilian leadership communications activity on the Soviet side, but didn't connect it to Able Archer.  Neither did they pick up on the USSR leadership's paranoid national beliefs since 1982 that it was backed into a global strategic military corner and their only way out of it was to launch a first strike. 

Granted, the most recent example being World War II of Russia being surprise attacked gave them a reason to be wary, but the USSR's 'America's Going To Nuke Us' paranoia almost ended up triggering World War III. 

It's also interesting to note that there were several broadcasts, songs and movies released that year with accidental war (WarGames), Men At Work's 'It's A Mistake' and Nena's '99 Luftballons' and nuclear holocaust (The Day After) reflected the public anxiousness about nuclear war.  

Little did we realize at the time how prophetic those songs and movies almost became. 

Those anxieties eased a bit with the end of the Able Archer exercise, the subsequent death of Yuri Andropov in February 1984 and the restarting of INF treaty talks with the USSR.  But it's sobering and scary to think about the fact the world once again by the slimmest of margins barely escaped nuclear annihilation.

Happy 55th Birthday, Cherrelle!

I had the pleasure of meeting her while working an LAX flight in the late 90's.   She was traveling under her birth name, but I knew who she was the millisecond she walked up to gate C-14. 

It also worked out than on this particular LAX departure it was swapped to one of the widebody aircraft that had an expanded first class.  I got the opportunity to improve the seating assignments of one of my fave singers and have an enjoyable chat with her for a few minutes before she boarded.

I'm going down Moni's airline memory lane for a moment because today is the 55th birthday of Cheryl Anne Norton, known to the rest of the music world as Cherrelle.  
She was born in Los Angeles on this date in 1958 and is another one of the talented group of singers that Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis produced into R&B stardom in the 80's and early 90's.

She is also the cousin of Perri 'Pebbles' Reid, who is a Grammy nominated singer who had a few hits herself. in the late 80's early 90's.  You can hear Cherrelle's voice on her her cousin's song 'Always'.

Her signature hits like 'I Didn't Mean To Turn You On'   (yes people, she recorded it first, NOT Robert Palmer), 'Everything I Miss At Home', and her 'Saturday Love' and 'Never Knew Love Like This' duets with Alexander O'Neal.  

She's still touring and pooping up at various events like the BET Honors in which she sang 'Saturday Love with her back in the day duet partner.
 
Happy birthday Cherrelle!  May you have many more..

Naw China, We STILL Haven't Forgotten What Today Is

June 4, 1989, the 24th anniversary of the crushing of the Tiananmen Square student led protests with PLA tanks and troops. 

Since somebody thought it would be a cute stunt to remove the link to the original TransGriot June 4, 1989 post and reroute it to some game site, bad move.  All you did was piss me off and ensure I'd circle the date on the calendar to make sure I'd write another post reminding my readers here in the States and around the world about the day Chinese tanks and troops slaughtered their own citizens participating in a peaceful protest.  

Besides, I don't ever forget that June 4 date because it happens to be my late grandmother Tama's birthday. 

It was a five week protest by students and concerned citizens simply asking for government reform and an end to corruption in their government that captured the world's attention.




The Chinese government answer to those demands came in the late evening of June 3 and the early morning hours of June 4.  The plug was pulled on the television feed for the international foreign news networks broadcasting the event and PLA troops backed up by tanks began firing on and running over the people in the square to break up the demonstration.    Casualties were estimated between 200-1000 people dead. 


As I said in last year's post, those PLA tanks and troops may have crushed the demonstration, and the Chinese government may continue to try to erase and deny what happened, but the video, photographic and written evidence is still out there and it's always going to be a part of world history. 

Neither can you crush the root of freedom from which democracy will inevitably flower once it has taken root.

So on this day international community, remember the people who died in the name of freedom and democracy in their homeland's capitol city.


We also need to on this day in the United States, remember that freedom requires eternal vigilance from the enemies inside and outside our borders who seek to exterminate it.