My first book 'reading'....to be continued

I'm thrilled I get to present at the event at the LGBT Center. It is housed in a nice building, railroad style with a large entry room followed by a long middle hall with offices on either side to the back room which is a little smaller than the entry room, set up with chairs - in a row, not the lesbian circle chairs - electronic equipment and a large screen.

I'm up first after the director intros the center and evenings program. I rush through things faster than I should, as not only am I asked to talk about my book, but also about lesbian herstory - I'm probably the oldest lesbian there and definitely I've been out the longest.

I identified myself proudly as a radical (I hope!) lesbian feminist, just to get on the right foot, and spoke briefly of our magic, powerful, amazing amazon community that I was fortunate enough to come out into forty years ago! YEAH!!!! I forgot to invite folks to talk to me after if they want to know more.

And then I talked about my book, highlighting that most of us in this country do not know our true history but instead most of us know a lot of myths and propaganda about our history - we don't even know the truth about our present state of affairs, here and in the world.

I asked folks to stand if they have a roof over their heads, food they don't have to eat today, a change of clothes, daily source of clean water -= everyone stood & I talked about those standing are the 15% richest humans on earth. Which Ithen lead into the amerikkkan nitemare - running out of time, I recounted the salmon story.

No one felt inspired to buy my book...tearz but I did give one copy away to one of the two Black people there, a gay man.

LAMBDA from San Diego was the featured speakers who presented a slide show. I almost felt like I did when we gathered together to listen to bush give his state of the union and we counted how many times he said certain words. I listened carefully for the "L" word or even the Dyke word - but those words seemed to come from my mouth only. Even when talking about the aids crisis and 'women' came out to help their 'brothers', not lesbians. 8000 gay men have died of AIDS since 1982 but no mention of how many womyn have died from breast cancer since 1982.

Queer of course was probably mentioned as much as trans though. I had to point out, when one of the gay white male presenters recalled the victory over tRump's attempt to ban trans people from the military, that we are engaged in the longest war off this continent and the state department wants anyone who is willing to murder other people.

I plugged the Bay Area Lesbian Archives for Lenn and the rest of us. Of course, no mention of the controversy, exclusion, of lesbians from the archives, although they did touch on the lack of Black representation  -which is why we are creating our own archives.