TSU Headed To SWAC Title Game!

I used to spend a lot of fall Saturday nights in the Astrodome and Rice University press boxes as a kid enjoying my bottomless soda cups and watching the Texas Southern University Tigers take on their SWAC competition. 

My father was the play by play man for TSU football back in the day, so in addition to the first rate press box cuisine at the Dome I got to see a lot of outstanding future NFL players such as Hall of Famers Walter Payton and Doug Williams, and TSU stars such as Oilers wide receiver Ken Burrough and Julius Adams .

While TSU has had 60 players make it to the NFL, onee thing I didn't see a lot of was TSU winning the SWAC or a lot of football games.    Those were the days of Eddie Robinson and his Grambling Tigers dominating the league.

TSU's most recent SWAC title in football was one they shared with two schools in 1968.  I sat through a lot of games in which the only thing I could brag about was the halftime performance of the Ocean of Soul marching band. 

The 2010 edition of the Texas Southern University Tigers shook off a 1-3 start under TSU alum and current head coach Johnnie Cole who was their quarterback back in the day. 

The Tigers have ripped off seven straight wins, including a 41-34 overtime victory over long time pain in the butt Grambling to capture the SWAC Western Division Crown.


They did so last night by beating Arkansas-Pine Bluff 20-13 and punched their ticket for a trip to Birmingham to attempt to win TSU's first ever SWAC outright championship.   They will take on SWAC Eastern Division champ Alabama State on December 11.

They will also be ending their recent nomadic search for a football home by moving next year to the new downtown stadium being built for the MLS Houston Dynamo.

But I'm happy to finally see TSU have some success on the football field and so are all my family members who are TSU alums.


Good luck at the SWAC Championship game Tigers and beat the ASU Hornets!

Houston 2010 TDOR Wrap Up

Bounced back onto the UH campus and the AD Bruce Religion Center for the TDOR ceremony Houston style.

Wine and cheese reception at the 7 PM start of the evening along with some of the artifacts in the TG Center's history collection.    Ran into many of the people I met at the TTNS and other community events I've been able to attend and had long chats with them.    

One person I was surprised to run into was my old roommate Rochelle.

The well attended ceremony  (130 people) in the AD Bruce chapel started at 8 PM and one of the speakers besides Judge Phyllis Frye was Houston city councilmember and fellow Cougar alum Jolanda Jones..

Did end up after the event talking to some of the member of a GLBT sorority on campus before heading over to the TG center in Montrose for a few hours. 

The TDOR's may be coming to a close around the world, but never forgetting or trans angels is a 365 day a year job for all of us, not just Ethan St. Pierre's who does the tough job of keeping track of all the stats.

If your locale or college campus didn't have a TDOR this year, consider starting one.    It's one surefire way that you can do something that shows the trans community you support it and care about it.

And unfortunately, we'll probably be doing this again on November 20, 2011

My Happiness Is An Inside Job

TransGriot Note:  More  words of wisdom from Rev. Joshua Holiday

Often we think that if we had a better childhood or lived in another town, if we had more money, the ideal relationship, a better job, a better home-then we would be happy.  Happiness doesn't come from a change in our circumstance.  Happiness is an inside job.  We are responsible for our own happiness.  If we are dependent on outside forces to make us happy, then we are leaving our happiness and joy to chance.  We can be happy each and every day by focusing on Spirit and the many blessings that Spirit provides for us.

I am responsible for my happiness.  I have what I need to be happy.  There is nothing outside of me to make me happy.  My happiness is an inside job and comes from Spirit.  With Spirit I have everything I need to be happy.  With Spirit as the center of my reality, I am at peace.  I live in joy.

Thank you, God-in me, through me, as me, around me, in the name of all that is good.  And so it is.

"For you shall eat the labour of your hands; happy shall you be and it shall be well with you."  Psalm 128:2 (Lamsa's Aramaic Translation)

TDOR 2010 Events List

If you're looking for an International Transgender Day of Remembrance Event to attend, here's the list  from the TDOR website.

For those of you in Da Ville, miss y'all.. 

For those of you in the Houston area, will see you at 7 PM CST at the AD Bruce Religion Center on the University of Houston campus later tonight for our 2010 TDOR memorial event..

TDOR 2010 People We're Remembering

Will be in fashion forward business attire at the AD Bruce Religion Center on the UH campus in a few hours to pay my respects to the people we lost due to anti trans violence.

Here's the 2010 list of people we'll be lighting candles for at this year's TDOR.

There's also another list circulating that is a research project of the TGEU that stated there were 179 trans people killed worldwide between last year's TDOR date and this year's.

Sadly, one of those people will be lighting a candle for is one of our own Houston area transpeeps, Myra Chanel Ical.

Rest in peace trans angels past and present.    We'll never forget you. 

TDOR Lives So The Trans Community Never Forgets The People Who Died

TransGriot Note:  This is the TDOR essay I wrote for Renee of Womanist Musings.


It's here.  The 12th annual International Transgender Day of Remembrance.     I can remember when it was just a great idea that Gwen Smith organized in the wake of our pissivity over Rita Hester's 1998 death and  our alarm that we were already starting to forget about the deaths of transpeople such as Debra Forte and Chanelle Pickett.that happened in 1995.

Thanks to Gwen's and Ethan St. Pierre's efforts and a cast of thousands around the world, it has grown to become an event embraced by the international trans community and our allies.   

As someone who was around and part of the local and national trans leadership when the TDOR started in 1999, as time inexorably marches on I have seen eleven previous TDOR's come and go.  I have that intimate understanding of why we have them and militantly resist the calls from some transpeople to change the focus from a memorial ceremony to a happy-happy joy-joy event because it's in their words 'morbid and depressing'

Fighting lynching and advocating for an anti-lynching law was 'morbid and depressing' for my African descended peeps as well for most of the early 20th century but they took on that grim task along with the NAACP.   Even though the bill got filibustered to death by the Dixiecrats,  they kept fighting for that goal of eliminating lynching deaths and filed that anti-lynching bill in Congress every year without fail for over 40 years.

70% of the transpeople we memorialize are people of color.  I don't want people forgetting that salient point either as we read this year's list of names..   Until anti-trans violence is reduced to nothing and the people who perpetrate it get properly punished for doing so, there will continue to be a need for the 'morbid and depressing' TDOR.

We also need to remind our allies that this is an important day for us as well.   Just as you in the GL community have certain events that you treat with reverence such as the upcoming World AIDS Day, do the same for our TDOR.


It has also been a part of my evolution as an activist as well.  I've gone from being a part of the audience to helping plan and being the keynote speaker for the first two events ever held in Louisville in 2002 and 2003 and being honored to be the keynote speaker at the LITDOR last year.

But no matter what my role is from year to year, and this year back in my hometown I'll be just one of the attendees sitting in the AD Bruce Religion Center, I never forget why I'm at whatever venue we are holding a TDOR.

One, it's to remember the people who didn't make it through the year.   Hell, Brenda Paes, one of the people on the list that we are memorializing in this year's ceremonies didn't even live to see the dawning of 2010    She was found dead in her Italian apartment on November 20, 2009, the very day we were mourning 122 transpeople who were killed last year due to anti-trans violence.   

Two, it's to remind myself that there but for the grace of God go I.   If my life circumstances were different, a little bad luck or a few wrong decisions were made here or there, I could have been one of those names people are reading off the TDOR lists

Three, it's so that I as an activist never forget one of the three groups of people we are fighting to gain trans human rights for.   The trans kids, the people who are here on the planet and the trans angels whose lives were taken away from us for no other reason other than somebody had a problem with them living on Planet Earth because they are trans. 

And finally, it's so I and others don't forget the names of Tyra Hunter, Ebony Whitaker, Angie Zapata, Gwen Araujo, Lateisha Green, Leslie RaJeanne Pink, Amanda Milan and the 400 plus people that are listed on the Remembering our Dead website..

The TDOR lives so that I and the international trans community and our allies never forget the trans people who died.