Can Pride, Hope, and Pandemics Mix?

The last time I joined Pride was June 2019, just as Stonewall turned 50 and 100,000+ people marched with me through the NYC streets while millions watched along the sidewalks and around the world.

In his epic book, Thinking Fast and Slow, which I gobbled down during a Harvard Kennedy School course about Leadership Decision Making (LDM) in 2018, Danny Kahneman explores the essential role of intentionality in our actions and decisions, like learning to drive a car or make judgments about a situation.

I used to return from my many adventures overseas looking forward to the iconic skyline and rush of New York. The sirens, bustling stores, restaurants, outdoor cafes, and even the crazy delivery people on bicycles. Most of all, I looked forward to the concept of change. As Nora Ephron encapsulated in Kathleen Kelly’s quote about New York when her little book store closed.

How many of you get motion-sickness in the backseat of a car? Or on a turbulent plane? How many of you get more than physically ill and feel absolute anxiety or even terror?

While I don’t feel terror, per se, moving locations for extended periods of time (like 6 months in Bermuda) does give me pretty bad anxiety.

This is what I see regularly outside my bedroom window here in Bermuda. And every time a rainbow lands in my morning coffee, a barrage of songs and contemplations runs through my brain.

“Big things come in small packages.”

Did your parents ever use that excuse when your brothers received a light saber, gigantic ATAT and Millennium Falcon for Christmas, or the entire Civil War militia (both sides) plus replica battlefields, while you only got a tiny box with a “precious” charm bracelet and pair of “delicate golden slippers” in it?

“VIOLA: What country, friends, is this?

Captain: This is Illyria, lady.

VIOLA: And what should I do in Illyria? My brother he is in Elysium. Perchance he is not drown’d: what think you, sailors?

Captain: It is perchance that you yourself were saved.”

Does this image stress you out as much as it does me? Does it make you MAD?

This is the Mulberry that has literally, figuratively and increasingly loomed over my life in New York for the last 10 years.

“…First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself”

— First inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Saturday, March 4, 1933

FDR was right, and clinical studies have proven that The impact of fear and anxiety for prolonged periods of time is actually often worse for our bodies and minds than facing the reality.

Easier said than done, right? Especially these days, when new COVID variants run rampant in the developed and developing world (despite the massive vaccination effort) decimating the futures of so many young people and small business owners?

“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.”

— George Eliot

That’s always been my favorite quote, from one of my favorite cross-dressing, barrier- shattering authors.

Whenever I need insight on NYC, its history, what’s important right now, or even just what’s showing at Lincoln Center, I ask one of the many “senior advisors” I volunteer with every Tuesday and Friday.

The LGBTQ+ community is unique as a minority because it stems from our families. LGBTQ+ children are born to straight families. LGBTQ+ parents produce straight children. We are their family and they are ours. In short: we are one.

On the afternoon of May 14th 2014, I woke up with an open, jagged fishhook carved into half my skull and an uncertain prognosis. A drill saw had cut open my head so the surgeons could remove a type and size of brain tumor they’d never seen before.

I want to share a secret with you. Something you’ll never hear on cable news or in the halls of Congress: Tax cuts are government spending. I know, I was shocked when I read it too.

As a cancer survivor, I’m grateful for life. But now it must be more meaningful. There’s an adage that says a tradition that doesn’t change is a dead tradition. It’s a bit of a paradox — a tradition is something we do all the time, but if we don’t do it, it’s no longer a tradition.

Here we are, just weeks before what is already a contentious dash to the midterms and there’s one word on my mind: Fear. Not just the Bob Woodward blockbuster about Trump’s White House, but fear for my country, my neighbors and myself.

Templeton, the rat from Charlotte’s Web, always made me smile with his sly quips. Until he and his extended relations moved into my backyard this summer.

Say the word “Manhattan” to me, and I see the skyline I love coming home to. Iconic buildings reaching to new heights, man-made mountains of apartments and commerce pulsing and engulfing an entire island.

As a child growing up in New York City I took diversity for granted. My neighborhood was filled with people from different countries, ethnicities, classes and sexual orientations, so I assumed every place and child’s life was as rich as mine.