By Dr. Tim Seelig –
“It’s the quiet ones you need to watch out for.”
That also applies to the elder ones! We’re not sitting around knitting and playing Canasta. You’ve read about my new musical venture in a previous article. The short version is that we’ve started a new chorus for Q+ Elders and Allies: the Portland Sage Singers. We only started last February. But, off we went, faster than any of our aging legs could carry us.
I am also certain you have read about the terrible “alternative facts” that Portland is burning to the ground and is like a war zone. That’s a miracle since there is no fire or smoke anywhere and people are still doing all the things gorgeous Portland offers in the fall. You have probably seen Oregon’s governor, Tina Kotek, fighting the good fight against total lies about Portland. The Republicans keep showing video of 2020 and saying it is now. It’s not. And Kotek is family. And she is fighting the fight with Governor Newsom and Washington’s Governor Ferguson. Maybe we’ll secede together.
The main reason I am writing at this very time is because of an outreach performance we did recently. The Portland Sage Singers sang outside the notorious ICE Detention Center. We decided not to do it on No Kings Day because our efforts would most definitely be drowned out by the 40,000 other folks protesting in our fair city. We decided to do it on the Thursday after the big day. We sang at 4 pm so we could get home before dark. There were two reasons for that: 1- Driving at night is not our favorite thing to do, and, 2- The ICE Detention Center draws some colorful characters after dark. Most of those are not really protesting, just rebel-rousing.
Of the 80 singers currently in the chorus, 45 showed up to the protest. It was amazing. We sang all the good protest songs. We started with Holly Near’s “Singing for Our Lives.” When we started this past year, she gave her blessing for us to use “Singing for the Rest of our Lives” as our tag line. We sang her “I Ain’t Afraid.” If you don’t know this song, look it up. It was especially poignant as we were being filmed by several people. The one closest to us was a self-proclaimed Proud Boy. There were some singers who had sung these very same songs at protests against the Vietnam War! Some of those tunes were the tried and true “Down by the Riverside,” and “If I Had a Hammer.” People standing around joined in.
You can’t do a protest in Portland without humor. It has been the hallmark of our protests with the incredible blow-up frogs and other non-threatening animals including unicorns. In honor of the frogs, we sang “Rainbow Connection.” The secretary of our board pulled the lyrics off Kermit’s version as seen on The Late Show and we just had to do it! Well, unbeknownst to us, we were being filmed from behind by a wonderful representative from the Transcend Thrift Project, which is part of the Transcend Affirm Project. They loved it and posted it on TikTok. At writing, it has over 50,000 likes and over 265,000 views. I told the chorus after the fact, “Had we known our singing would go viral, we would have practiced!”
So, I repeat, “Watch out for the quiet/elder ones.”
We’ve had an amazing time becoming community. GALA Choruses (Gay and Lesbian Association of Choruses) was founded on the strength of unity and providing safe spaces to sing. They say, “Every time a GALA chorus takes the stage, it is activism.” Sage Singers has so much in common. Some of it is our love of music. Some of it is our love of all things queer and allies who love the same! But, in this case, we also share the commonality of age. The minimum age is 55. Our eldest elder is 89 ½ (she wants the ½ referenced). She was sitting in a lawn chair at the protest singing her heart out.
Our first concert this past June was sponsored by AARP! It was held in a stunning performance space and sold out four weeks early. We’re back at it. This time, it sold out six weeks early. I’m very happy to say we will get to give two performances next June.
We are not going to go quietly. We may not be able to march any longer, but we can sing. And we will. And it won’t be quiet.
I’ll leave you with the alternative parody lyrics to “Rainbow Connection.”
Sing along.
Why are there so many
Trump thugs in ski masks
And why do they have to hide
You can spray us with pepper
But we won’t surrender
We’ll respond with a naked bike ride
We have been told that our city is burning
We know they’re wrong, wait and see
So, march through our city
We’ll stand up to fascists
The chicken, the T-Rex, and me
Dr. Tim Seelig is the Conductor Laureate of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus. http://www.timseelig.com/
TLC: Tears, Laughs, and Conversation
Published on November 6, 2025
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