This is the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which got very little news attention at the time --

Hundreds of young men went on a rampage in Greenwich Village shortly after 3 A.M. yesterday after a force of plainclothes men raided a bar that the police said was wellknown for its homosexual clientele. Thirteen persons were arrested and four policemen injured.

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20714FA3D5D1A7B93CBAB178DD85F4D8685F9

We've come a long way!

I started this post, thinking I would talk about prior GLBT successes over what seem to us now to be ridiculous laws (like the US Post Office not carrying gay material until 1958 or that it wasn't until 1991 when it was okay to hire a gay person in a Virginia bar...)

But that historical stuff was a real downer, lol!

So, my mind wandered to what I, personally, can do to support the GLBT cause.

So, here are some of the steps I personally want to take (sort of like "new year's resolutions") --

• Hold politicians to the promises they made as candidates (yes, I'm looking at you, Mr. Obama...). By that, I mean, that I should be writing to my elected officials more often. And, I should not give a repeat vote to a politician if he/she did not serve me well.
  
  
• Live my life as well and as honestly as I can. I remember having a Historic District Board meeting at my house once -- I think one of the Board members was a little surprised to see O barefoot and cooking dinner for himself in the kitchen while we were holding the meeting in the living room, lol! I think that each GLBT person has to define what living well and honestly means for themselves.
  
  
• Financially support GLBT organizations which are doing good work -- and then monitor them to make sure that they don't get complacent and self-important. GLBT organizations have a smaller base to start from, so they need extra attention from GLBT folks.
  
  
• Show up for some GLBT political protest events -- this is often outside my comfort zone, but I want to show up for at least a couple events over the next year. It's really easy to join groups on Facebook, but it's a lot harder to actually show up!

I had not heard of this Austrian election. It's sort of scary, right?

Some 70 years on from that infamous pogrom (Kristallnacht), the world faces a similar financial crisis to the one that precipitated the rise of Hitler and, in chilling echoes of Thirties Europe, support for far-right groups is exploding. Hitler’s birthplace has become the focus for neo-Nazis across the world.

And so I have come to Austria to investigate how Fascism and extremism are moving, unchecked, into the forefront of its society.

Last September, Austria’s far right gained massive political influence in an election that saw the FPO along with another far right party – Alliance For The Future (BZO) – gain 29 per cent of the vote, the same share as Austria’s main party, the Social Democrats. The election stirred up terrifying memories of the rise of the Nazi Party in the Thirties.

And just as the Nazis gained power on the back of extreme nationalism and virulent anti-Semitism, the recent unprecedented gains in Austria were made on a platform of fear about immigration and the perceived threat of Islam. FPO leader Heinz Christian Strache, for example, described women in Islamic dress as ‘female ninjas’.

Emboldened by the new power in parliament, neo-Nazi thugs have desecrated Muslim graves. Recently, in Hitler’s home town of Braunau, a swastika flag was publicly unveiled.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1160972/The-far-right-march-rise-fascism-Austria.html

Continuing our tour of Eastern Virginia, O and I drove down Rt 5 to Berkeley Plantation, had lunch in Williamsburg, and then went to Jamestown.

We returned by way of the Jamestown-Scotland Ferry -- I had not ridden that ferry in 20 years! It's free now -- there used to be a toll.

Berkley Plantation

Benjamin loves Anne, made into the wall of the house --






I LOVED how you could walk right down to the edge of the James River --

Williamsburg

We ate lunch in Williamsburg and walked around my alma mater a bit.

Jamestown

Neither of us had been here since we went with our elementary school trips. (That just happens to be several years longer for me than for O!)






This is tobacco drying. The sweet smell took me back to the barns on my grandfather's tobacco farm!










Tobacco growing outside. Of course, growing up, we would never have let the tobacco sucker like this -- we would have plucked the suckers off in order to promote more growth in the leaves.


The Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery were the three ships that brought the settlers to Jamestown. This is the largest -- the Susan Constant.


This is the Discovery -- the smallest. I swear this didn't look much bigger than a rowboat!






At one point, O noticed that the clouds looked like a smiley face, lol!


Indian village --

Ferry

We took the the route home that would take us over the Jamestown-Scotland Ferry.

There are some nice pictures here at the Library of Congress' Flikr site.

If you like history and the Middle Ages, this was kind of interesting -- it's an animated Bayeux Tapestry --


I especially like the Carmina Burana (O Fortuna) music later on -- like the music in the Omen, lol!

And, by the way, the comet at the beginning which was seen that year (1066) was Halley's Comet.

E Pluribus Unum has a very cool mini movie that shows the various empires that have washed over the Middle East..

http://www.rubyan.com/politics/2006/10/see_5000_years_of_history_in_9.html