I remember I was just beginning to stir, preparing for work as Steve had just arrived home a short while earlier. In those days he worked graveyards and we'd have just a few short minutes between my leaving for work and him returning home to see one another, cuddle a bit on the couch, and get on with our days.

The phone rang, just a little after 7am, it was my mother who declared no sooner had I said hello, "Get your cars gassed up, our stock markets are crashing, Washington's evacuated, we're under attack!" I had Steve turn on the news and we watched as moments later the second tower was struck and they both collapsed.
We held one another, transfixed to the TV for the next few hours as the reports came in from the Pentagon and from Pennsylvania. I remember feeling my soul shake in horror and disbelief when the counts of those killed began to come in and the scope of the attack became known. I remember praying that rational, reasonable, justice would come to those who committed these atrocities. I remember knowing that this was a continuation of the efforts begin with the first World Trade Center attack in 1993. Then as the month progressed I watched the world rise up aside us in support and a President and his puppet masters that squandered that support any chance of effective response.

Instead of doing what was right and using that moment to bring the world together against these heinous and cowardly acts. That administration capitalized on the terror themselves and used fear of anything less than the appearance of a unified American stance to take away our rights as citizens and chase down a previously U.S.-supported dictator in Iraq embroiling us in an undeclared war for nearly 10 years and at the cost of thousands of U.S. and Iraqi lives. Meanwhile the true mastermind, Osama Bin Laden and his cohorts would go largely ignored as they border-hopped between Afghanistan and Pakistan and thousands more American and ally lives were lost in another undeclared and poorly supported warfront.

Instead that administration left this boogeyman to run free so that we would be distracted by the knowledge that he was still out there and that the 'Terror Alert' would never move. They had us where they wanted us so they could run roughshod over our rights and make us question everyone, including ourselves. They became the masters at wielding that terror against their own people so that folks like the Carlyle Group, Haliburton, and nearly Bush's entire cabinet could benefit as war profiteers and criminals. In true Orwellian fashion torture became 'enhanced interrogation' and habeas corpus was eliminated and anyone could be held indefinitely for any reason. There are still dozens of 'persons of interest' and 'foreign sympathsizers' being held in secret CIA prisons and the base at Guantanamo who have never been formally charged or received any form of due process.

It would take nearly 10 years before President Barack Hussein Obama was able to complete that job intentionally ignored by Bush & Co. who flippantly stated "I just don't spend that much time on it (finding Bin Laden)" when it became very apparent that the focus of bringing true closure and justice for the attacks on 9/11/01 was not their ‘bigger mission.’ Obama made good on his campaign promise of finding and bringing to justice Bin Laden even 'if he was in Pakistan' followed by the discovery of a treasure trove of intelligence of the previous decade of activity of these religious radical that had gone largely unchecked. Unable to attack the U.S. effectively and with the damage there already done and its affectiveness spreading due to ignorance, greed, and avarice on the part of the Bush Administration and a Congress that remained cowed and impotent to stand for its citizenry, Al Qaeda instead attacked targets in Asia and Europe costing thousands of additional lives and enhancing the efficacy of their spectral presence in the U.S.

I’ve watched our country responding precisely like an abused spouse, living in fear of any form of change least we be traumatized again by those in power to do so. In that state of power and control, wielded not by some foreign entity but by our very own government, we’ve turned upon ourselves and rationalized the most irrational movements made by our supposed representatives and courts as being part of keeping that potential trauma at bay.

We’ve turned our backs on the poor, sick, disabled, and homeless. We’ve given elections to the unelected. We’ve made corporations, even those owned or operated by foreign nationals into super-people able to influence our elections without check. We’ve acknowledged and given endless market-value to our elected officials as a commodity that can be purchased for whatever political gain is desired. We’ve shown that the power-elite who make up only 5% of the population (or less) and control over 90% of the wealth in this country are outside the law and expect the remaining 95% to continue to make them rich beyond believe while they pay virtually none of their fair share.

Saddest still I’ve seen how beaten-down we’ve become such that even when people examine the whole of the impact of 9/11 and connect the lines of money and power to those who benefitted the most and how they’ve continued to terrorize and abuse us they don’t feel empowered to do anything about it. I’ve watched pundit-styled politicians and politically-charged celebrity replace any rational response to the needs of the country and its people. I’ve watched soundbites replace policy, I’ve watched the demonization of anyone with a skin color, name, or faith that’s not Caucasian or Christian in origin while we ignored Christ's teachings and commandments. I’ve watched the wedge issue of civil rights be used as a means of corralling a base of support turn into teabaggers and their ilk showing up with automatic weapons, figures hung in effigy, and direct threats held high on posterboard, within shooting distance of our President.

Congress ignorned the power of their elected majority to undo the damage of the ‘Patriot Act’ and put in place true protections and guidance to prevent these obscene abuses of power squandered that window out of fear and conditioning as the marginalized partner. I was reminded again and again of the stories I’ve heard of a spouse who had everything in their means to leave an abusive relationship but froze because they were certain true change and escape was impossible, so assured by their abuser of their omnipotence and so terrorized by the violence they’d already experienced.

Ten.

Years.

It is 1/7th of an average lifetime.

It is a generational bridge.

It was yesterday.

It is today.

If the nearly 3,000 individuals who died on that day in September 2001 had value to their lives we must stop what we’re doing to ourselves and allowing to be done to us and take a stand. The firefighters and police who rushed to the World Trade Center knew this. The private citizens who pulled strangers to their safety knew this. The passengers and crew on Flight 93 knew this perhaps the most intensely.

We know this and have known this for ten years.

This is our country and it is ours to sustain and nurture or ours to lose.

I choose to own my piece of it, to talk rationally with all sides of all issues to find solutions.

I choose to focus on fairness, logic, and empowerment, not terror, abuse, and vilification.

I choose to make changes for the better where I can.

I choose to hold accountable my representatives and never squander my vote.

I choose to seek wisdom and help from those who have my true interests at heart.

I choose to share that wisdom and offer my support to anyone who needs it.

I choose to move forward.

I choose to heal.

This is my entry to the 'It Gets Better Project'.

Fifteen years ago today,

I saw you for the second time

as we floated down a cool

Arizona river.

When I drifted near you

I became more entranced.

You Viking with burnished beard,

the sun in your eyes,

and laughter that could not

be contained.

When the current pulled me

away from your side

I tacked and swept my arms,

asking the flow

to bring me back to you.

And here we are,

fifteen tours on a celestial stream,

through torrent, trickle, and rapid,

together still,

enjoying the company,

enjoying the ride.

I love you Steven Leon Finch.

Happy Anniversary, My Husband.

- Your Kevin Garrett Jackson

(August 2010)


It was fifteen years ago today that Steve and I met for the second time on the second tubing trip to the Salt River arranged by the Bears of the Old Pueblo in as many months.

After the first trip we'd lost contact with one another due to Steve moving and changing his hours at work and my propensity to misplace even the most precious scrap of paper.

But God and the universe have a way of making sure that things work out the way they should and there he was, unannounced on that second trip, and this time we grabbed hold and held on tight.

Later this afternoon Steve goes in for a sinus surgery to remove polyps and tissue that have blocked over 90% of his sinus cavities. They say it's routine, that it'll be over within a couple of hours, and he'll be home tonight. Still, it's the first time he's ever gone through a surgical procedure since we've been together and we're both a bit nervous.

I'll be there, holding his hand until they force me to let go but I may not breathe until I see his sparkling eyes in the recovery room.

Confession, they say, is good for the soul. So here's my daily confessional.

I'm a pretty confident guy. I can accomplish pretty much anything in my personal and professional task list that I set my mind upon.

I can walk up to the most defiant/off-putting street youth and strike up a conversation.

I can stand before an audience of several hundred people and speak on a subject that is within my area of expertise or passion.

I've even talked-down a gun-toting mugger in a dark stairwell.

Those piece of evidence, however, don't portray the full truth. Put me on a phone and ask me to talk to a total stranger whose face I'll never see, whose person I will never meet, who is at minimum several hundred miles away, about even the most trivial of personal banking items and, I, freeze.

Other phone usage? I'm golden; work calls, social calls, hell even telemarketers get graceful attention from me!

I'm at a lack to explain it; maybe it's the lack of direct feedback from the other party, maybe it's an old self-esteem bogeyman from the past, maybe it's just not feeling confident on the subject of finances, or maybe it's having been raised in a household where money was always a source of high-stress?

Whatever it is, it really can paralyze me.

I've sat on-hold three separate occasions this week trying to get someone from Bank of America to send me a confirmation of the end-of-lien/loan for my car. I've actually managed to speak to two representatives and a branch manager who were courteous but wholly unhelpful and after a sum-total of about 90 minutes of being shuffled around I'm kinda done with it.

But I know I'm not, really. I have to get this documentation so I can get the AZ MVD to put Steve on my title so that Allstate can honor our joint coverage on my vehicle so I can drive my very own car.

Maybe a bit of this lack of patience is also due to the fact that this is yet another reminder of the ridiculous number of inequalities that exist for same-sex couples in this country. I have heard from friends and associates that there are competitors on the market that don't require joint-ownership in order to provide coverage but with all our other insurance (minus my life insurance policy) going through Allstate it's daunting to consider moving it all and the discounts we'll be getting are pretty sweet.

Still.. this isn't getting me any closer to solving the documentation problem with B of A and truth be told while examining the root of this telephone anxiousness is somewhat helpful as a release it's still me putting off making call number 4.

*picks up phone - sighs*

1, 8, 0, 0...

(subtitled: "Because it can't all be navel-gazing and mortality.")

When you're stuck at home with a head/chest cold there's certain modes of self care you can undertake that are immediately gratifiying; amongst them is cooking something tasty, soothing, and healthy!

I'd had a spaghetti squash sitting in the fruit and veggie bowl on our counter for the past three months (don't judge). I'd been tending to it, making sure it was rotated occasionally, that it was free of signs of spoilage, heck I even wiped it down with a moist cloth when I would clean the bowl itself monthly.

I'll admit, I was sort of conducting an accidental experiment in both the hardiness of the vegetable and in denial that this beautiful squash that I bought with the intent of making into a pasta-substitute meal had lost my attention.

Then I remembered this wonderful cannellini bean sauce that my brother David taught me last spring when we were in Spearfish visiting my family.

Suddenly the thought of complex carbs, squash, garlic, olive oil, and red chili combined and I found myself making this late last night. The aging of the squash reduced the moisture by probably half and intensified the flavor deeply. The 'strands' had a just-past-al dente texture. Enjoy!

Spaghetti Squash with Cannellini Bean Ragout

Ingredients:
1 Large spaghetti squash - steamed and 'pulled' (approx. 3 pounds)
3 Cups cannellini beans (canned, freshly cooked, or frozen)
2 Cups water
2 Large Roma tomatoes (seeded and finely diced)
4 Large cloves of garlic (very thinly sliced)
1 Cup white wine (Pinot Grigio or a semi-dry Riesling work well).
1/2 Cup Extra virgin olive oil
1/8 Cup Italian parsley (finely chopped)
1/4 Teaspoon red chili flake (the hotter the better)
Salt & Pepper

Hardware:
1 Large skillet or sauté pan (12" or greater in diameter)
1 Large microwaveable pan or bowl (big enough to fit the two halves of the squash)
Plastic food wrap

Process:
1. Split the squash in half length-wise and place cut side down in the bowl or pan in about an inch of water and cover tightly with the food wrap.
2. Microwave the squash on high for 15-20 minutes or until the flesh 'pulls' away in pasta-like threads.
3. Save the steaming water that remains.
4. Meanwhile, preheat the sauté pan over very low heat - add the olive oil and garlic slices and allow them to very gently cook. If you see any sizzle turn the heat down. The garlic will begin to become slightly translucent (15-20 minutes).
5. Add the cannellini beans and tomatoes (drained of most all their liquid) and turn the heat up very slightly and stir occasionally until heated thoroughly and they have begun to breakdown slightly (10-15 minutes).
6. Add the wine and about a half-cup of the steaming water to the beans and tomatoes and bring back to heat.
7. Add Salt, Pepper, and Red Chili to taste.
8. Add the spaghetti squash and sauté until combined and heated thoroughly.
9. Add the chopped parsley and combine.
10. Serve immediately with a good crusty bread and some of the wine used in cooking.

Yield: 6-8 Servings

Notes:
1. Cook time ~35 minutes - Prep time ~15 minutes.
2. Be careful when pulling the squash and use a thick towel or silicone mitt to hold the halves as they're very hot and a little unwieldy.
3. While I aged my squash you certainly don't have to at all.

One of the reasons I stepped away from journaling as often during the past four years was due to the near-overwhelming depression I faced following first the death of our dear friend Bob Sporrong and then the building stress of my work with my previous employer which culminated in my layoff last spring.

I was a fresh 40 year old, queer, bearish male, married to the most amazingly loving and giving man I've ever could have dreamed to know, I owned a house, a car, and had a constellation of dear family and friends around me. Those blessings and the help of both medications and talk-therapy allowed me to work through the worst of the grief and loss and the stressors of my career. Amongst those were the ever-decreasing financial support for runaway and homeless youth outreach services. This was coupled with an ever-higher demand and ever more severe trauma and crises amongst the youth we served. Coming out of the other side of all that I found myself in an emotional space where I was open to whatever the future brought me.

What it brought me was back to my roots. I spent a lot of time during those four years pondering the sweet and short preciousness of life and my place in it. For the first three years I also pulled way in, turtling away in my shell as I watched 2006 and 2007 take friend after friend away due to illness, accident, or genetic predisposition. During that time of self-protection I didn't allow myself to be as close as I wanted to be to some of the stalwart friends and family members who gave nothing but love and understanding. I also found myself being very reactionary and harsh towards some that deserved more patience. More unfortunate still, before I got the outside help I needed, I pulled back from Steve, my husband and light of my life.

I tend to over analyse everything. It's in my nature as the child of two brilliant scientists to examine everything in an effort to see what makes it tick. I wanted quantitative reasons for how I was feeling, how Joe, Bob's partner was responding to his loss, and how Steve was responding to Bob's passing and those answers were few and far between. I found myself beginning to dwell on the unanswered questions and spinning around in that dusky space meant that often those who reached out to help found me unable to accept it. Know though that everyone who sent me a note, email, CD, card, or called that I truly appreciated it and absolutely needed your love and compassion, I just didn't know how to show it at the time.

I also tend to be very impatient with my own healing. When my body or mind is in a recovery mode I want it to just be done with and dispense with the process. If I could activate some subroutine or jump into a replacement unit I would do so in a heartbeat, word.

But nuggets of wisdom like 'time heals all wounds' didn't come about because they were rooted in fallacy. No, they came into being because they hold a piece of the truth. With time, love, and professional help I found the patience and space to emerge from it.

What it allowed me to avail myself to was the chance to work once again with homeless youth but this time on a smaller, more reasonable scale in keeping with my limitations and those of the program. I was hired by Wingspan - Southern Arizona's LGBT Community Center to be first an Outreach Specialist and then the Homeless Youth Project Coordinator in the incredible Eon Youth Center. I gush constantly about how much I love my job so indulge me while I do it again; to say that these beautiful, strong, powerful young people help me as much as I help them would be a gross understatement. Whenever I'm able to offer an iota of help to one of them and know that they understand that the Eon team truly cares and will be by their side while they triumph over the ignorance and oppression around them, my heart soars.

So it's two-thousand-mother-lovin'-ten and the world is no less a confusing, hurtful, unjust place. In some ways perhaps it's more volatile than ever before. But for me, the difference is in my own resolve to move forward and do good where I can coupled with the strength of loved ones and community around me.

Right now, I see that combination in all its mightiness and am so glad to be exactly where I am.

11am on a Thursday morning in June.

I've long used journaling as a way of capturing my thoughts and emotions and then, 9 years ago James Sharer introduced me to LiveJournal and along with a means of keeping a digital diary came this amazing hybrid community.

I've met so many wonderful people through this medium and as I limit my use of other social networking sites (facebook specifically) to interactions with friends, family, and professional associates this was the one venue where a stranger was really a friend you hadn't met yet.

I've missed that delightful randomness in my life and other than some paper journaling and moleskines I haven't really kept up with the habit in the past four years.

Today that changes.

To those that are still tuned in here - Howdy!

To those that I've yet to interact with - I look forward to meeting you!

41 trips around the sun, a 42nd trip just begun.

It was at 11:20am on November 2, 1968 - El Dia de Los Muertos that I entered this world. My parents had only half an hours notice as my adopted mom's OB-GYN was covering for a vacationing friend of his at Tucson Medical Center when my biological mother went into labor. My mom had miscarried twice in the past year and a half and she, my dad, and their doctor weren't sure she could bear children so when Dr. Cole came upon a scared 20 year old girl from Safford who couldn't provide for me and wanted a loving family to have me as theirs he jumped on the phone and my parents came running.

15 mintues to reach the hospital from their first home together, 15 minutes to decide upon my name.

They barely made it, I was delivered minutes after they arrived and with my birth mother's blessing my name was chosen for the birth certificate. I missed being 'Garrett Kevin' by what must have been a coinflip. A few days later after a a lawyer drew up the private adoption agreement I came home with two of the most wonderful people on the face of the Earth. In their home, surrounded by love, wisdom, and knowledge I grew strong and inquisitive and in a short time my parents brought into the world my brother and sister.

My 40th year hurtling away, thousands of miles behind me now.

This past year saw so many changes, some hard, some easy, but overwhelmingly they were all good. I married the man I've loved for 14 years and became his husband. I lost a job that I also had loved for 14 years but was chosen to fulfill another that I grow fonder of by the minute. And all the while, I knew that my life is truly blessed by the 350+ of you out there that are my friends, my family, and my associates.

Happy Birthday to me and thank you, to you!

I haven't been journaling at all for the past six months while I adapted to my new job and began exploring social networking via facebook. I really missed the process and benefit of taking the time to document my thoughts and capture portions of my life so this is to serve as a reboot of that habit.

For the past six months I've been employed by the wonderful people at Wingspan, Southern Arizona's LGBT Community Center as a Youth Outreach Specialist working with the 13-23 year old participants in their Eon Youth Center. It has been absolutely wonderful, inspiring, invigorating, and reassuring that often when you step into the dark of the unknown that you won't be failed by gravity and the earth beneath you.

There's been so many amazing moments in the past six months. Many of these revolve around the incredible strength and resiliency of the youth themselves. Watching them proudly and confidently establish their identities and creating a presence in their communities is an absolute joy to behold. To be involved in helping create those moments is an absolute honor.

To say that I work with the most principled, hard-working, committed, and positive professionals in my career doesn't begin to cover the depth of their knowledge, wisdom, and dedication. While participating in our staff retreat last Friday it suddenly struck me that in that room was perhaps the broadest swath of experience, culture, passion, and diversity amongst any organization I've ever seen. Together we represent and reflect a substantial portion of our communities and all of us come to the table with our passions and knowledge intertwined with a strident activist spirit that springs from those diverse roots.

Every day I head into the center I am struck by how very 'right' it feels for me to be here. That last time I experienced such a profound confirmation of a choice well made was when I was accepted as a volunteer at an agency that would become my employer for nearly 15 years. I remember knowing that I had something to offer and I that along with what I could give I would also take away invaluable exposure and direct knowledge.

There's some exciting news that forthcoming which only serves to confirm my enthusiasm for my work and my future at Wingspan but for tonight I have to hold off on documenting that until it's been made public. Meanwhile I need to get to bed, I have a big week ahead of me.

About six weeks back I was laid off from an agency that I'd worked for as a volunteer and staff for nearly 15 years.

Three weeks ago I interviewed for a Youth Outreach Specialist position with our LGBT community center (Wingspan) and their Eon Youth Center.

A week ago I interviewed for a second time with their Executive Director, a former participant in the Wingspan youth programs when he was coming out while going to the University of Arizona.

Last Friday I was offered and accepted the Youth Outreach Specialist position!

Tomorrow morning I start at 8am going through a variety of new-hire paperwork, some orientation, and an all-agency staff meeting where I'll get to reacquaint myself with a lot of folks that I've worked alongside of for years and many new faces that I'm sure will become familiar in no time. Then, later in the afternoon I head across the street to the great little youth center space and start to introduce myself to the kids.



A friend caught me online this past weekend and asked "Where was my hottie bear advocate when I was a confused kid coming out?" and it really resonated with me.

I've worked with LGBT youth throughout my career and am proud to say that as one of the first two staff to be out at my former agency that I was instrumental in helping to sculpt the policies and practices that ensured that every youth or family that came through out door was treated with the exact same level of compassion, understanding, respect, and advocacy. I've never done direct service to solely LGBT youth/young adults though and this milieu is not solely at-risk, runaway, homeless, and street youth but a whole range from youth just starting to explore questioning and coming out, to those who are out and accepted by their families, and sadly those that haven't been embraced by those they love, and sadder still the ones who have been thrown out of their homes.

While I know I can say with absolute certainty that I'm able to work with anyone, anywhere, at anytime, I am expecting some challenges. The younger queer culture is quite different than my own narrow experience amongst the adult LGBT population and especially amongst the Bears of Tucson. It'll be fascinating to see how the various social strata within the youth center interact with one another. I suspect that their Venn overlap is rather large in that when I've done outreach to the Eon center (for Our Family) I found that the kids possessed a sense of ownership and family there. There is a unity and a vitality that is contagious and invigorating to be around that springs from young people thriving within a safe, accepting, nurturing environment.

I know that 20+ years ago, as I was struggling with my own identity I would have given anything to know that I wasn't alone, wasn't a freak, and wasn't unloveable. Now I'm a married man who will celebrate his 14th anniversary this summer, who figured out where to find joy in his life, and was blessed with so much happiness and success. I'm not perfect, but I'm comfortable and capable and I hope that I can lend my experience, skills, and admiration to the lives of these beautiful and resilient youth.

More to follow..