I was a big fan of ‘I Love You, Phillip Morris,’ with McGregor and Jim Carey. McGregor’s new movie looks to be marvelous, but with an obvious heartbreaker at its center: his father, Christopher Plummer, comes out late in life . . . just in time to have a terminal illness. I don’t know if I’ll see this one, it looks like it could be as much a downer as an upper, but it’s on my list.]]>

Believed to be the first of its kind, the Jewish Museum in New York City has collaborated with Selfhelp’s Virtual Senior Center to make it possible for homebound seniors to have a virtual museum experience. Selfhelp is providing ways for the homebound to connect to local senior centers via computers and the Internet to they can participate in live web-cammed classes. From Broadway World: For the country’s millions of homebound seniors, innovative collaborations like the one between Selfhelp’s Virtual Senior Center and The Jewish Museum may make staying at home a much more interesting proposition. The collaboration is believed to be the first in-home museum art series designed for homebound seniors allowing video interaction among senior participants and the museum’s educators. The June 1 program (which editors are welcome to attend by internet connection at 2:00 p.m., June 1) will focus on The Jewish Museum’s current exhibition, Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore. Featured are over 50 works from The Baltimore Museum of Art’s internationally renowned Cone Collection including paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by such artists as Matisse, Picasso, Cézanne, Renoir, and van Gogh. The exhibition reveals Claribel and Etta Cone’s bold and idiosyncratic affinity for modern art which was indeed ahead of its time. “We are thrilled to have the opportunity to collaborate with Selfhelp’s Virtual Senior Center to bring these exceptional works of art, and the inspiring story of the sisters behind the collection, to homebound seniors – a critically underserved, overlooked segment of our country,” said Nelly Silagy Benedek, Director of Education at The Jewish Museum.

[SNIP] The Virtual Senior Center has focused on providing innovative ways for homebound seniors to connect to a local senior center via computers and the Internet, so seniors can participate in live web-cammed classes. The VSC made its debut in New York about 15 months ago, as a test project developed by the City of New York, Microsoft and Selfhelp Community Services. Selfhelp, a nonprofit organization founded 75 years ago to help Holocaust survivors fleeing Nazi persecution, provides affordable housing and other services to a broad base of more than 20,000 seniors in the New York area.]]>

Co-curators Jill Austin (left) and Jennifer Brier discuss the Chicago History Museum’s new exhibit “Out in Chicago.” Chicago, Chicago, the big city I would love to live in but probably never will. I grew up across the lake in Elkhart, Indiana, and remember trips to Chicago very well. Frank and I are there almost every year for his business, and it remains dear to my heart. A new exhibit is opening today at the History Museum, chronicling the proud story of the city’s LGBT history. I remember walking down Halsted Street when I was a teenager and knowing I wasn’t alone, long before my life in Los Angeles and now New York. From the Sun-Times:
In 1958, Chuck Renslow, his friends and their group’s affinity for leather was too much for a Chicago gay bar called Omar’s. Tossed out, Renslow decided to open his own nightspot, the Gold Coast Bar, a haven for people of all persuasions that was the country’s first leather bar.
“I was just trying to bring the leather community together,” said Renslow, 82. “It was a place where leather men could meet and know each other.” A mural of Renslow and friends from the Gold Coast Bar is now a piece of Chicago history, part of a new exhibit “Out in Chicago” opening Saturday at the Chicago History Museum. “We’re telling Chicago history through the lens of LGBT history,” said Jill Austin, a Chicago History Museum curator who co-curated the exhibit with Jennifer Brier, an associate dean and professor at University of Illinois at Chicago.]]>

I happened upon this Robyn’s Perch diary entry at DailyKos, where she writes about the upcoming Gay & Grey Expo in Portland, Oregon. She includes several excellent videos on LGBT seniors and aging, which is why I’m not just posting about the Expo. You can see the videos on YouTube here, here and here. The Expo is May 21st:

The Gay & Grey Expo is an annual event presented by Friendly House and the Q Center. It includes a Friday night social and a Saturday resource convention that combines informative break-out sessions and a trade fair to address the health, housing and social service needs of LGBTQI Seniors.]]>

A recent photography class combined seniors with young students, sent them out to shoot photographs, and is now exhibiting the results. From WestHollywoodPatch: Currently on display at The Village in Hollywood is the Senior/Youth Photography Project, an artistic collaboration between gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender seniors and youth residents of West Hollywood. This exciting project is displayed in a gallery full of photographs resulting from a senior/youth photography class sponsored by the City of West Hollywood’s Senior Advisory Board and the Senior Activity Programs of the West Hollywood Comprehensives Services Center.
According to Jennifer Browne, a photography teacher from the project, the center offers the photography class once a year and at the end of every class, a photo showcase is held. “There are seniors and youths in the class. It’s a community building project, as well as a photography class,” explains Browne.]]>

I love to travel and do a lot more of it since meeting Frank. We’re heading on a cruise in early June, something I never did before but have come to love. I’d likely find a lot to like at the IGLTA convention, being an amateur travel writer myself. The convention runs in Ft. Lauderdale from today (Tuesday) through Sunday. From the Miami Herald: BY STEVE ROTHAUS
srothaus@MiamiHerald.com Miami Beach hotelier Karen Brown understands both sides of the gay travel market. As general manager of The Angler’s Boutique Resort on Washington Avenue, Brown says about 20 percent of her hotel clientele is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. Even more LGBT people (about 30 percent) dine at The Angler’s on-site restaurant. “Everyone is welcome,” Brown said. “We have seniors we call ‘silver foxes’ sitting next to Craig and Steve, next to six girls here for girly spring break weekend.” [SNIP] “It’s going to be the Super Bowl of gay travel opportunities,” Brown says, “to educate, to learn, to see how the gay travel world has evolved with new technology, politics, new laws, travel habits, financial abilities.” The convention, which runs Tuesday through Sunday, is hosted by the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau. The past decade has brought a sea change in the global gay travel industry. Many of the world’s largest airlines and hotel companies now actively recruit gay travelers and employees. Continue reading]]>

We sleep with the television on, a very old habit of Frank’s that seems unbreakable. I’ve gotten used to it (I didn’t even have a TV in my bedroom the 14 years I was single) and can tell what time it is by what’s on the Hallmark Channel or TV Land. Frazier comes on before The Golden Girls. Strange, how the background sound of a sitcom can become soporific, but it has. I’ve gotten into shows I never watched, shows like Frazier, with the wonderful David Hyde Pierce. We saw him on Broadway a few years ago in ‘Curtains.’ He was marvelous. And I’ve always admired him for being out, proud and married to his longtime partner, Brian Hargrove. Pierce is coming back to the stage and I hope we manage to see it. From the Washington Post: NEW YORK — David Hyde Pierce will return to the New York stage in December as an obsessive book editor. The former “Frasier” star will headline “Close Up Space,” a play by Molly Smith Metzler to be staged at New York City Center. It centers on an editor who is estranged from his daughter until she walks back into his life. Pierce was last on stage opposite Mark Rylance in “La Bete.”
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San Diego artist William E. Kelly recently had an exhibit and donated 30 percent of the proceeds to San Diego’s LGBT senior community. From LGBT Weekly: Local artist William E. Kelly hosted an event last night at the White Buddha Lounge at Saigon on Fifth to benefit the underserved LGBT senior community in the city of San Diego. [SNIP] “The community is ill-prepared to meet the increasing burdens that a growing senior and LGBT senior population is experiencing or about to experience in increasing numbers,” Kelly explained to the San Diego Gay and Lesbian News. “This is a brewing crisis. We need to not only make the community aware of the challenges but bring them together to find reasonable solutions.” For his 60th birthday, Kelly and his husband Bob Taylor requested donations in lieu of gifts in order to open the Kelly/Taylor Senior Assistance Fund at the San Diego Human Dignity Foundation – an organization with which Kelly has long been connected.
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