50th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The American Football League

Fifty years ago today an event occurred which changed the face of professional football forever in the United States.

On August 14, 1959 Lamar Hunt, after several futile attempts to purchase the Chicago Cardinals (now the Arizona Cardinals) or get an NFL expansion franchise for Dallas, held an organizational meeting in Chicago that led to the founding of the American Football League. It was on this date that they chose the official name of the league.

The original AFL franchises granted were the Dallas Texans, the Denver Broncos, the Houston Oilers, the New York Titans, the Los Angeles Chargers and a team for Minneapolis-St Paul.

The 'Foolish Club', as the initial AFL principal owners were derisively called was now complete.

The then 12 team NFL, now realizing its mistake in stubbornly refusing to grant the AFL founders franchises, reversed themselves on expansion and extended an offer for the Minneapolis-St. Paul group to join the NFL. The ownership group promptly withdrew from the AFL and started play in 1961 as the Minnesota Vikings.

The Minneapolis-St Paul group was replaced in the AFL by the Oakland Raiders. The Buffalo Bills and the Boston (New England) Patriots joined later to round out the initial eight team AFL line up.

The AFL eventually added expansion teams in Miami and Cincinnati, while the NFL countered by adding teams in Dallas, New Orleans and Atlanta and allowing the transfer of the Chicago Cardinals to St. Louis.

The AFL started play in 1960 with my beloved Oilers, thanks to signing 1959 Heisman Trophy winner Billy Cannon and George Blanda, playing in the first three AFL title games and winning the first two. The Oilers bid to threepeat in 1962 was spoiled by the Dallas Texans in a championship game that spanned two overtime periods.

The AFL spawned many innovations that modern football is based on. They adopted the two point conversion, had more colorful uniforms and creative team logos, began keeping the official game time on the stadium clock, put names on the back of player jerseys, a 14 game schedule and the first professional soccer style kicker.

The AFL invested heavily in recruiting and signing African-American players from HBCUs and had scouts tasked to find the best players.

The AFL also pioneered the practice of sharing gate receipts and a cooperative television plan. The AFL league office negotiated the initial five year ABC-TV contract, and divided the proceeds equally between the league and AFL member clubs.

Instead of two TV cameras parked on the 50 yard line as was the practice for CBS broadcasts of NFL games, the AFL television broadcasts employed multiple television cameras covering the game, a roving sideline camera and miked players,

While none of the AFL teams folded, there was franchise movement and ownership changes in the early years of the league.

The Los Angeles Chargers moved to San Diego after the 1960 season. The Dallas Texans, fighting the Dallas Cowboys for fans departed for Kansas City in 1963 despite being more successful on the field than their NFL expansion rivals.

The Oakland Raiders lost $500,000 the first season battling the San Francisco 49ers for fans but stayed afloat thanks to a personal loan from Bills owner Ralph Wilson. After a new ownership group bought the New York Titans, they changed the team colors and the name to the Jets.

After a while NFL fans, GM's, players, media and their supporters were forced to stop sneering at the upstart league and realize that it was eating their lunch.

AFL attendance increased as fans became attracted to the league's wide open, pass happy offensive style of play. It was a marked contrast to the three yards and a cloud of dust conservative NFL style of play.

The AFL from its earliest days made a serious dent in signing collegiate talent and free agents as witnessed by the AFL New York Jets winning the bidding war for Joe Namath. Earlier college signees such as John Hadl, Billy Cannon and Lance Alworth amongst others became stars in the league. So-called 'NFL rejects' such as Jack Kemp, George Blanda, Cookie Gilchrist, Babe Parilli, Frank Tripucka and Len Dawson became AFL stars as well.

When the AFL signed a new $36 million TV contract with NBC in 1964 it acquired the cash to seriously go toe to toe with the NFL and did. Combined with the earlier ABC contract, the proceeds from those contracts stabilized the league and gave it time to establish itself as a worthy rival and alternative to the NFL.

Al Davis becoming AFL commissioner in 1966 and aggressively going after established NFL stars, combined with escalating player salaries led to secret talks between Lamar Hunt and Tex Schramm initiated by the NFL to merge the two leagues. The AFL-NFL Championship Game, which later became the Super Bowl was a result of those talks.

The AFL even had their own civil rights controversy as well.

In January 1965 the AFL All-Star Game was slated to be played in New Orleans. On the eve of the game, several African-American players visited the French Quarter. They were refused admittance to two clubs, several restaurants and had problems getting taxis.

The incensed players attended a five hour meeting organized by AFL icon Cookie Gilchrist. It resulted in 21 African-American players leaving town and an ultimatum backed up by future vice presidential candidate and Gilchrist's Buffalo Bills teammate Jack Kemp. They demanded that the game either be moved from New Orleans or face a player boycott. The AFL All-Star Game ended up being moved and subsequently played in Houston.

Any post about the AFL wouldn't be complete without mentioning the 'Heidi Game'.

It was a November 17, 1968 game played in Oakland between the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders. Both teams were leading their respective divisions at the time with identical 7-2 records and the game was a slugfest.

The Jets were up 32-29 with only 1:05 left in the game, so NBC programmers, in their zeal to maintain their television programming schedule, switched off the ostensibly-decided game at 7 PM in the Eastern and Central time zones in order to start the movie Heidi on time.

Unfortunately for NBC they did so as the Raiders were executing the game winning drive. The Raiders eventually scored 14 points in that final 1:05 to win 43-32.

Fans who missed the comeback were so irate the switchboard ceased to function after blowing out 25 circuits. NBC was forced to apologize for the blunder several days later.

As a result of the 'Heidi Game' NFL television contracts include a stipulation stating local games must be aired to their completion regardless of the score. The 'Heidi Phone', a direct line from game producers to network execs also exists to ensure it doesn't happen again.

The decade of AFL competition came to an end in 1970 with the merger of the two leagues into a 26 team NFL. The two leagues were split into 13 team conferences, the American and National with three divisions.

Three NFL teams, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Cleveland Browns and the Baltimore Colts joined the ten teams of the AFL to form the AFC Conference, with the remaining NFL teams forming the NFC Conference.

The last official AFL game played was the AFL All-Star Game played in the Astrodome on January 17, 1970. The Western All-Stars, led by Chargers quarterback and AFL All-Star Game MVP John Hadl, defeated the Eastern All-Stars 26-3.

The legacy of the AFL is still strong in the NFL today. Many current or legendary NFL coaches have ties to Charger coach Sid Gillman. The long down field bomb that is a weapon in NFL offensive arsenals today was a play popularized by AFL teams.

The 50th anniversary of the AFL will be recognized with Legacy Weekends in which NFL games matching up former AFL teams will be contested with the players wearing throwback uniforms.

This year's NFL Pro Football Hall of Fame game that took place August 9 featured the Buffalo Bills and Tennessee Traitors playing in throwback uniforms.

And no, I'm never going to let it go. forgive, or forget that Bud moved my team to Nashville.

At least I'll have the pleasure of watching several Traitors games this season in which they'll have to wear the old Oilers uniforms.

But it's a testament to the success of the AFL that not only did all of its teams get absorbed into the NFL, the bigger league adopted, with the exception of the two point conversion that it resisted until 1995, many of the innovations spawned by the younger one.

Giving The 'Purple One' His Props

Some peeps in the transgender community have a longstanding love-hate relationship with Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA). He has been at times a major impediment to transpeople being included in ENDA.

Many of us, myself included still haven't forgotten and are still pissed about the 2007 ENDA debacle in which he was a major player.

So I was a little taken aback when I heard that the Democratic congressmember who smacked down conservaidiocy at his recent health care town hall meeting was none other than the 'Purple One' himself.



I've been one of his more vehement critics here at TransGriot and elsewhere over the last decade because of the ENDA debate.

I have to give Rep. Barney Frank his props on this one. This is the way that ALL Democrats should have been calling out the conservafools when this faux outrage at their town hall meetings first started.

Shut Up Fool! Awards-Dissing Sistah Athletes Edition

August 19 marked the 75th birthday of Dr. Renee Richards, the transsexual tennis player of the 70's who fought the USTA for the right to play professional tennis on the women's tour during my teen years.

Dr. Richards comes to mind because I've been monitoring the situation with South African runner Caster Semenya, who ran the fifth fastest 800m time in history to capture the gold at the IAAF World Track and Field Championships being held in Berlin.

But because she doesn't look stereotypically female, the IAAF is insisting she take a gender test. I wonder what would have happened if she'd been European with blonde hair and ran that same time?

Now that I've gotten that mild rant off my C cup chest, it's time to segue into this week's Shut Up Fool! Awards.

What individual or group let their inner fools out and earned this week's award?

As always, there were many worthy candidates. It would be too easy to give Rush Limbaugh this award, seeing he says something stupid every week. Germaine Greer was in the running for her obligatory trans bashing while commenting on the Semenya story in the Guardian. Glenn Beck, Tom DeLay and Michele Bachmann (R-MN) were some of the finalists for this week as well.

But this week's Shut Up Fool! Award goes to People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals or PETA.

While their cause is a good one, I have been turned off by their unrepentant racist, sexist and boorish behavior in their advocacy. Whether it's posting fat shaming billboards, throwing paint on people's fur coats, wearing Klan garb outside the Westminster Dog Show, or making asses of themselves hounding Michael Vick, PETA never fails to piss somebody off.

I'm made it a point that every time they engage in racist, sexist...you get the drift behavior, I stop at my nearest KFC (one of their protest targets) and drop them some cash.

PETA, shut up fools!

19.19

Usain 'Lightning' Bolt strikes again.

He wore a practice t-shirt with the words 'Ich bin ein Berliner' on it, and he wasn't joking. Berlin has definitely been his town over the last few days.

Fresh off of breaking his own world record in the 100m final a few days ago, he set his sights on eradicating his one year old record in the 200m that he set during last year's Beijing Games.

And just like in the 100m meter final, he lowered the record by .11 seconds.

This may have been the stadium in which Jesse Owens triumphantly won four gold medals in 1936, but Usain Bolt and his Jamaican track teammates are turning it and these World Track and Field Championships into their own personal playground.

In addition to setting five world records in his last five major races, Bolt is the first and only track athlete to simultaneously hold the Olympic and world records in the 100m and 200m.

The only question left for the world now is whether he'll win the 100m and 200m in the same record breaking fashion in London two years from now.

Black Female Athlete Dominates Competition-Gets Gender Identity Questioned

One of the depressingly tired memes of elite level athletic competition is that almost every time a Black woman rises to become the best at her sport, she is either dissed, suspected of cheating or has her gender identity questioned.

The latest episode of this sorry meme is evolving right now in the wake of Caster Semenya winning the 800m world championship in Berlin with the fifth fastest run of all time.

Since she doesn't look stereotypically female, has short cropped hair and a deep, raspy voice, that's enough 'evidence' for the IAAF gender police to haul her in for gender testing.

Wonder if Caster had been a blonde haired blue eyed European runner who ran that same time? Would the IAAF react the same way?

Probably not.

Semenya's best revenge should she pass the gender test will be to keep kicking their asses until she's standing on the top step of the 800m run victory platform at the 2012 London Games. She and her family can smile while they're putting a gold medal around her neck and playing the South African national anthem.

But this crap has played itself out over and over again throughout my lifetime. The Williams sisters have battled that BS in addition to being insultingly called transwomen as they spent the 2K's merrily dominating the women's professional tennis tour.

WNBA and college basketball players constantly battle this meme as well.

Ice skater Debi Thomas was described by commentators during her competitive rivalry with Germany's Katarina Witt in the 80's as 'athletic and powerful'. Conversely, Witt was described as 'artistic and graceful'.

The same crap was said about France's Surya Bonaly a few short years later. She was a world champion gymnast who was the only figure skater in the world who could perform a back flip and land on one skate. But that athletic ability probably cost her a world figure skating championships as well in 1994.

Even Florence Griffith-Joyner, the woman who brought fashion and glamour to the track world had her problems with that meme.

Flo Jo ran world record times in the 100m and 200m meters that haven't been matched by any current female runner enroute to her four medal winning performance at the 1988 Seoul Games.

Because of Flo Jo's slightly muscular frame and her running style, she dealt with rumors throughout her career that followed her to the grave she was on steroids. This despite the fact she never failed a post race drug test.

After Brazilian runner Joaquim Cruz held a press conference accusing her of precisely that, a reporter famously remarked, "If Flo Jo's on steroids I'm buying some for my girlfriend."

As the Nigerian Super Falcon womens soccer team proved last year, women will even cattily throw the 'that's a man' shade at each other to cover up their own lousy performance.

In the 2008 African Women's Cup Tournament they spent more time complaining and questioning the gender of two of Equatorial Guinea's players than handling their own business. The Super Falcons eventually lost to Equatorial Guinea 1-0 in the semifinals and finished third in a tournament they up until that point had never lost.

But this plays into a larger meme of ignorance and preconceived notions about what is and isn't feminine. The fact that Black women have historically been saddled with the baggage of being considered less than female vis a vis the vanilla flavored beauty standard only adds to this drama.

Add archaic and stereotypical notions about what athletic feats a woman is capable of producing, throw in a little borderline racism and you have a recipe for negative behavior and judgmental commentary to come out of people's mouths.

If it coincides with what the 'experts' consider as 'too rapid' athletic performance for a woman, she may find herself being subjected to a battery of embarrassing and invasive tests just to prove to cynical skeptics that she's 'woman enough' to compete in elite sports with other women.

Reclaiming My Inner Diva

Many times we women become so wrapped up in doing things for others that we sometimes forget to take time out to do something for ourselves.

One of the things I love to do is hit my local nail shop for a manicure and pedicure at least once a month.

Because of the recession and hour cutbacks at work it was one of the first things I did to cut the fat out of my personal budget.

But what I failed to realize in doing so was that the nail and hair salon trips were a little noticed but important part of the psychological maintenance of my femininity.

When I step out of that nail shop (and the beauty shop), it's a piece of the myriad things I do as part of projecting my feminine image to the world and a part of maintaining healthy self esteem.

Granted after 15 years of toil and struggle and having the slings and arrows of numerous haters hurled at me, you have to have a diva's attitude and serious intestinal fortitude just to survive transition and operating in the world as a transperson.

But cultivating your inner diva is an important part of maintaining your femininity in a marginalized body.

In a world in which whiteness thrives and the beauty ideal for women is a petite, thin, hourglass waisted, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, slim buttocked and narrow hipped body, women of color, and especially Black women are constantly positioned as the unwomen.

You see it when Black female athletes who dominate their sports such as the late Florence Griffith-Joyner and the Williams sisters have their femininity questioned at international events or are challenged to take gender tests to 'prove' their femininity.

Sometimes the shade is cattily thrown by other women who lost because of their own piss poor sporting performances or failures to work as hard as the person who defeated them.

If they are tall and excel in their sport, they have 'that's a man' shade derisively spat at them.

In many cases as a Black woman, you don't even have to be an athlete or an entertainer to have your gender identity questioned.

If you are a Black transwoman, you get even more negativity hurled at you by society as well both inside and outside the race. That negativity can make it challenging at times to have a positive attitude about being the best person you can be.


So because of that heightened negativity, it's important for me as a transwoman of African descent to remind myself at regular intervals that I love me some Monica, I'm a Phenomenal Woman, a proud Transwoman and I'm a beautiful, spiritual person both inside and out.

When I apply my makeup, do my hair, put on my clothes, slip on my heels, and after checking myself out in my full length mirror, I have to feel and believe that I'm the sexiest woman alive.

I have to have the attitude as I interact with the world at large that I can hang with the best supermodels in the world and blow them off the catwalk.

I have to develop and have the self confidence to believe that I could walk onto a Miss Universe pageant stage and walk away with the crown.

Yes, there are times like any woman I feel 'unpretty'. But as long I as do the hard solid thinking about the type of woman I want to project to the word, pray about it, spend the time and effort into reclaiming my inner diva and making it happen, those unpretty days don't seem to last long.

How Close Are We To Building Cylons?

TransGriot Note: My latest piece for Global Comment


I am an unabashed sci-fi fan.

I loved Star Trek and even tried to get into Enterprise. I have watched all six Star Wars movies and Blade Runner in the theaters during their first weekend of release. I loved Battlestar Galactica, old and reimagined series.

As a science fiction aficionado I am well aware of the axiom that today's science fiction is tomorrow's science fact.

We have seen that happen numerous times in terms of Jules Verne's classic vision of a moon landing becoming our reality 40 years ago on July 20. Scientists are even reporting that warp drive is theoretically possible as well.

One of the interesting backstories that emerged from the reimagined Battlestar Galactica series is that the Cylons, the cybernetic tormentors of humans in the series, were originally created by humans.

They fought humanity wars, and did humanity's work in the Twelve Colonies before they rebelled and nearly wiped their creators out. Unfortunately Dr. Daniel Greystone, the creator of the Cylons, hadn't heard of Isaac Asimov's Three Laws Of Robotics.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Now I've recently begun to wonder how close are we to actually producing our own Cylons?

If we eventually create Cylon-like robots, they'll probably speak Japanese and have a 'made in Japan' label. While robotic technology development is ongoing in several nations, Japan has really pushed the robot development envelope.

One-fifth of the Japanese population is 65 or older, so the country is investing heavily in research and development efforts designed to produce robots that will replenish the work force and care for the elderly.

Over the last ten years they have been creating advanced humanoid looking robots that can talk, mimic a limited range of human emotions, move effortlessly and interact with humans as well.

Robots have long been part of Japanese factories and culture. They can serve as receptionists, vacuum office corridors, spoon feed the elderly and plant rice.

It's also interesting to note that thanks to the 2003 completion of the Human Genome Project, discoveries are being made almost every day in terms of what section of the DNA strand controls what aspect of human development.

We are also learning that deficiencies in certain parts of the DNA strand trigger certain diseases and are creating gene based medicines to target those diseases. This knowledge should also aid us in creating robots that more closely resemble us.

Read the rest of the post at Global Comment.

Happy 75th Birthday Dr. Renee Richards

While watching MSNBC's Countdown Keith Olbermann made me aware of a milestone birthday occurring for a woman that happened to be his ophthalmologist.

Dr. Renee Richards turned 75 today.

This woman happened to be one of the transgender newsmakers during the 70's. She was one of the transpeople I was following news wise nationally, internationally and locally as I struggled to make sense of and deal with my own gender issues.

She fought for her right to play professional tennis when the USTA established a woman-born-woman policy back in the day that the New York Supreme Court overturned.

She ended up ranked as high as number 20 in the world before retiring as a player in 1981, and was Martina Navratilova's coach when Martina was dominating the women's tennis scene during the 80's.

She's still practicing medicine, and she has become less than popular in some transpeople's eyes with her increasingly conservative views and public regrets about transition.

She openly criticized the 2004 IOC decision to allow transpeople to compete in the Olympic games, calling it 'stupid'.

I disagree, but just like I speak my mind and some people don't like what I have to say, I respect her right to articulate her opinions on that subject and many others.

I need to point out to the peeps criticizing her that just as I reflect the attitudes of someone who grew up in the 60's and 70's, she is a product of her generation. She grew up in a time that was far more rigid and repressive about gender and she reflects those attitudes.

Happy birthday Dr. Richards. I hope that your remaining days on the planet are filled with whatever happiness and peace you can find.

Fear Of A Black America

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest."

Thomas Jefferson called it didn't he?

In Notes on Virginia he was expressing a colonial era fear which has consequences in our time.

White Americans believed that one day, Black resentment of them because of the inhumane treatment our ancestors received from them during slavery would become so great that we would rise up en masse and slaughter them.

That fear was especially acute in South Carolina, in which the slave population outnumbered the white population of the state at the time.

That fear has persisted through several centuries, a civil war and is an undercurrent feeding current attitudes of White Americans today, especially those on the conservative side.

Any wonder why Whites have an almost fetishistic attachment to guns and are always relentlessly bleating on about the Second Amendment right to bear arms?

Did you note the rhetoric coming from vanilla flavored fundamentalist churches exhorting women to stay at home and have babies?

Did you note the insistent calls from the GOP sheeple opposing the health care plan that we need to take 'my America' back?

Did you note the fear and panic in rural white people's eyes when Sen. Barack Obama overtook Sen. John McCain down the stretch and was elected our president by an electoral vote landslide on November 4?

Have you noted the racist, almost pathological hatred of President Obama, combined with the rise of the birthers and other conspiracy nuts who are in severe denial about the facts that our president was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA?

All of this has an underlying narrative. Fear of a Black America.

So why are y'all so 'scurred'? If you and your ancestors had done the right thing over the last two hundred years you'd have nothing to be scared of.

But no, y'all had to deny slavery reparations, put Jim Crow segregation laws in place, lynch us, deny us political representation, use the police as your segregation stormtroopers, and start riots in our neighborhoods to destroy them any time we started pulling ourselves up by our own bootstrps and started overtaking you economically a la Tulsa 1921.

And you wonder why we get pissed?

It's six months later into President Obama's term, and the national anthem is still The Star Spangled Banner, not Lift Evry Voice and Sing.

The flag is still red, white and blue with red and white stripes and 50 white stars on a blue field. The Republican Party hasn't been abolished, although you're doing a damned good job on your own of making yourselves irrelevant.

The country has begun to climb out of the hole that your Resident in Thief and his reverse Robin Hoods put it in.

Within 24 hours of President Obama's election on November 4, it erased 8 years of negativity and enmity the world had built up for us thanks to Bush misadministration misguided foreign policies.

So chill out. You haters lost fair and square. We didn't need the Supreme Court, Diebold electronic voting machine chicanery, massive voter suppression tactics or faked riots to beat you either.

So relax and enjoy it as our cum laude Ivy league 'ejumacated' president, a Dem congressional majority and progressive peeps clean up your mess.

Watch as we provide the leadership, reality based programs and problem solving initiatives that have not materialized under greed-is-good failed conservative leadership. And watch the country improve before the 2012 election cycle.

MP Hedy Fry Says Canadian Transpeople Aren't Getting Medical Needs Served

Seems as though my Canadian transbrothers and transisters may have another friend in Parliament besides NDP MP Bill Siksay.

Dr. Hedy Fry, a physician and the Liberal MP for the Vancouver-Centre riding said Monday in Saskatoon that transgender people are not being fully served under the Canada Health Act.

"I feel like it's the last piece of discrimination under medicare,"

Fry hosted the nationally televised CBC series Doctor Doctor and served as president of the British Columbia and Vancouver medical associations before becoming an MP in 1993.

She is attending the annual Canadian Medical Association meeting being held there from August 16-19 to hear concerns from a number of groups in the city including seniors' groups, the GLBT community and city officials.

MP Fry, the Official Opposition Critic for Canadian Heritage, is also taking the time to participate in a multiculturalism round table.

Fry also met on Monday with University of Saskatchewan Students' Union president Warren Kirkland to discuss concerns of the GLBT community as well as the dearth of young people in politics.

The lack of access and equality for transgender people is a huge issue across the country, said Fry, whose medical practice served a high number of GLBT patients at the time she was first elected to Parliament.

"I found out that the suicide rates were high. I was seeing patients who didn't want anybody to know that they were teachers or public servants."

Dr. Fry is now serving her sixth term in Parliament after succeeding Kim Campbell, who became the first Canadian female prime minister. Fry herself was in the running for the Liberal party leadership before bowing out of the race eventually won by Michael Ignatieff.

Though much has changed since she was elected, Dr. Fry feels transgender people are still being discriminated against.

"There have to be legislative changes to make sure that the Canada Health Act is being observed," she said.

While being transgender is defined as a medical condition, Fry said it is still difficult for people to receive proper care. Care across the country is "spotty" at best.

"Transgender patients do not have access under medicare to the things that they need," she said. "It discriminates against an identifiable group who are not just wanting to do something, but are clearly a medical diagnosis. It's a clear diagnosis."

You're Welcome, Leona!

TransGriot Note: Received an e-mail recently from my sis in Singapore that she asked me to post to the blog. It has a commentary concerning her wildly successful Ah Kua Show that sold out its three night run there.

And without further ado, here's Leona.

The show was a great success with lots of support from the local media. In a way, it was like the dawn of a new era. The show and the media coverage would not have been possible five years ago.

Could you give me your address please? I would like to send the programme booklet to you.

Thank you for your fabulous support!

Cheers!
Leona

***

Done sis.

It was an honor for me to write the commentary for it. I'm looking forward to perusing the program once I receive it. I'll let you (and my TransGriot readers) know when the program finally reaches my mailbox.

I'm also looking forward to the day when we finally get the opportunity to meet in person.