Category: comings & goings

when we’re up to.

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New Board Confusion

Since the new boards have caused some confusion, I need to explain that Betty and I decided to start fresh with the new boards,

    which means:

  • everyone has to register again
  • everyone will have 0 (zero) posts, and “beginner” avatars
  • none of the old boards will be imported into this one

however, the old boards – what of them we have – will eventually be posted as an archive. searchable and readable, but no longer active. that way people can still refer to old posts if/when they need to, and they will still have their ‘rank’ preserved for posterity.
we *think* we have a decent backup from early april of this year, which means about 45 days worth of posts are gone.
again, our apologies. we weren’t the only PHPBB that was hit, unfortunately, but we have switched to new software that will make it difficult – if not impossible – for this to happen again.

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Voices of New York

Last night I had the pleasure of reading with 7 other Lammy nominees at the Center, and it was a very cool event. (Aaron Krach, author of Half-Life, commented that he wished all readings had been like last night’s: five minutes, no Q&A, with a bunch of queer, friendly people in the audience.) I’m really thankful for Lambda Lit, because as I sat there listening to the readers, it occurred to me how stupid it is that there is so little room in mainstream publishing for GLBT writers. The stories were remarkable: one about an older man who’d fallen in love with a man with Downs Syndrome (Perry Brass, from Serendipity); another about a married man whose male lovers were being killed by a murderer (Gary Zebrun’s Someone You Know); another about a young Irish lad’s meeting with his priest at his mother’s behest (Damian McNicholl’s A Son Called Gabriel, and whose blog I just checked out); another a confrontation between a lesbian of color and her father (Laurinda D. Brown’s Fire & Brimstone).
me readingThey were all powerful stories, they were all stories that went beyond some definition of GLBT. They were about what stories are supposed to be about, the quiet little ways we suffer and rejoice in being our lovely, pathetic selves. But at the same time, without the Lammies, who would recognize a wife’s story of her trans husband’s beauty? Where else would I meet people who’d tell me about the tranny they knew, growing up?
It was a lovely night. I’m not 100% better, not yet, but I was damned glad I wasn’t still contagious, and could be there. I regret having missed the reading in DC even moreso now, but I am very much looking forward to the Awards Night at on June 2nd.

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Glamourous Friday Cat

helen desk aeneas
Here’s me at my desk, trying to work, with Aeneas telling me its time to take a break. Or feed him. Or scratch him. But enough of the gender stuff, mom.

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Hacked

we got hacked, and we got hacked bad.
the database of all the posts is gone, empty, zero.
betty has a backup at work from a few months ago, which we’ll eventually put back up as a searchable database, and in the meantime, we’re going to use the opportunity to change the software for the forum to vBulletin, which updates its software more often (which makes it more impermeable to hackers).
betty has been struggling to fix what she could, find out what they did, & all with a migraine. she rocks. we had hoped there was more left. the user list remains, and ironically, the private messages. but everything else is gone.
i will put up a skeleton of the former boards so that people can post, and gather, while we get the new version ready – hopefully by tonight.
helen & betty

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Hacked Again

I think the MHB message boards have been hacked again. Stay tuned for more details, and apologies. I hate these creeps.

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Lambda Literary Awards – Finalist Reading

I’ll be reading this Thursday, May 19th, as part of the Lambda Literary reading for Awards’ Finalists, starting at 7 PM, at the Center.
Here’s the complete bill:
Mickey Small – Up All Night
Perry Brass – Serendipity
Gary Zebrun – Someone You Know
Kristie Helms – Dish It Up, Baby!
Damian McNicholl – A Son Called Gabriel
Laurinda D. Brown – Fire & Brimstone
Aaron Krach – Half-Life
Helen Boyd – My Husband Betty
Han Ong – The Disinherited
Alison Smith – Name All The Animals
I’ll be reading at around 8 PM, but the event starts at 7 PM.
Location: New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Center, 208 West 13th St.

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Please Donate

If you can, please donate this month to help keep the boards running.
I’m also still collecting money to help buy Lambda Lit Gala tickets for us and James Green and his partner Heidi.
Helen

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Apologies Again

Apologies once again for not being where I was supposed to be; I’d been looking forward to being on a plenary panel this morning with Eli Clare, Yosenio Lewis, and Betsy Driver to talk about “Alliances, Umbrellas, Coalitions?” in the trans community. I had a lot to say, too – since there were no other workshops that discussed either crossdressers or partners in the rest of this weekend’s conference.
I’ll eventually put my thoughts together and post them here, since once I thought about the subject I realized I had quite a lot to say.
In thehelen with cats meantime, I fear I’ve managed to get Betty sick as well, and we’re not sure either of us is going to make it to the scheduled party for the NCTE tonight; nor will I make (I doubt) the screening of Susan Stryker’s documentary Screaming Queens, which I was very much looking forward to seeing (as we’d seen a teaser cut of it at Fantasia Fair last year).
On top of everything else, I’ve gotten worse, not better, as my stomach is now in revolt (from all the painkillers, aspirin, and anti-biotics.) The cats, however, encourage me to nap, which is about the only time I don’t feel like hell.
(^ Me with the cats, on a day where I felt much better than I do today.)

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CLAGS Conference

Tomorrow and Friday are the CLAGS (CUNY’s Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies) Conference on Trans Politics, Social Change and Justice:
May 6-7, 2005
Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS)
Graduate Center, CUNY
New York, NY
Join us to for two days of plenary sessions, workshops, roundtables, caucuses, films, and performances that will strengthen activist networks, incite dialogues, share resources, and create social change.
I’ll be speaking at the 9:30 am Plenary on Umbrellas, Alliances, and Coalitions?.