Sister Dana sez, “February 14 is Valentine’s Day; but it’s also Anyone-You-Love Day.Valentine’s Day is typically about romance–but love is so much bigger. Let’s celebrate queer/straight family, the BFF who is always there, or anyone else you’re grateful to have in your life. Happy V.D.
to everybuddy!”
By Sister Dana Van Iquity
RED ENVELOPE GIVING CIRCLE GRANTEE CEREMONY 2016 gave a rousing Happy Chinese New Year to the Red Envelope Giving Circle Family at the SF GLBT HISTORY MUSEUM when the REGC celebrated their 4th year of “Giving Back to the Community.” The Red Envelope Giving Circle is committed to creating positive social change in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area through philanthropic support to Asian and Pacific Islander LGBTQ-led projects to improve the lives of API LGBTQ people and communities. REGC is a member of the NATIONAL GIVING CIRCLE NETWORK OF ASIAN AMERICANS/PACIFIC ISLANDERS IN PHILANTHROPY (AAPIP), a philanthropic advocacy organization dedicated to advancing philanthropy and Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities. Roger Doughty, E.D. of HORIZONS FOUNDATION, has the honor of being the fiscal sponsor for REGC. Over the past four years, REGC has granted out over $45,000 and was excited to kick off its 5th year with a “Give, Get, Grow Challenge” and a $10,000 promise of matching funds. All funds benefited Bay Area API-LGBT Queer Projects. It was an API-Queer Movement and Legacy of API LGBT folks giving back to the API-Queer Community. Grantees were API Queer Justice Leadership Exchange (accepted by Sammie Wills), Adrift in Sunset (Narissa Lee / Kar Yin Tham), He(ART) Beat Movement (Lai Wa Wu / RayRay Ebora), The 1st API Transmasculine Retreat (Min Matson), Sarimanok: Creative Embodiment (Rani Lacsa Marcos), and Growing Our R.O.O.T.S. (Harrison Seuga). Giving Circle Founders are Crystal Jang, Koko Lin, Pam Louie, Trinity Ordona (who served as emcee that night), Desiree Thompson, Margot Yapp, and Sydney Yeong. Attendees received special packages known as “The Lucky Ducks,” including one of twenty different cute little rubber duckies, lucky gold coins, red candies, sesame treats, and green tea—representing how lucky REGC was to be able to give back to the community.
red-envelope-giving-circle.org
Sister Dana sez, “I hope everyone had a festive Chinese New Year in this which is now The Year of the Monkey. Gung Hay Fat Choy!”
Director JOHN FISHER as Sir Hugo Latymer and SYLVIA KRATINS as Carlotta Gray were simply glorious in Noël Coward’s A SONG AT TWILIGHT in the THEATRE RHINOCEROS production at Z Below. Alas, this was the last of their run there. But fear not, because another Noel Coward play is coming there soon. But this was the story of a cosmopolitan author caught in his declining years between two women, one being his wife of convenience for twenty years (played to perfection as Hilde Latymer by TAMAR COHN), the other, one of his former lovers (Carlotta Grey by SYLVIA KRATINS). When this bygone lover threatens to reveal secrets of his past—secrets about his sexuality—he is terrified into action. A battle of wills ensues in which a man fights for his reputation and his freedom, which might very well have been compromised if it came out that he might be gay. A witty, penetrating play by The Master on a par with Private Lives and Blithe Spirit, A Song at Twilight has the distinction of being his most autobiographical in its frank discussion of Coward’s own personal life. Never frank about his homosexuality, Coward decided to bare it all, through a pseudonym, in this his last play. Coward said, “Song was about Somerset Maugham” but many have read it as Coward’s public “coming out.” Whatever the back-story, its dialogue and confrontations made it a fast moving quip-filled detective story in the great Coward tradition. Kudos!
The GLBT HISTORY MUSEUM celebrated its FIFTH ANNIVERSARY: I LOVE HISTORY with an after-hours fundraising party featuring drinks, bites, live DJs, loads of cute history buffs, and special guest hosts JUANITA MORE! & ALEX U. INN. There was a roof-raising rap and singing performance by drag king sensations MOMMA’S BOYZ; a ticket giveaway to Brava Theatre’s “MIGHTY REAL: A FABULOUS SYLVESTER MUSICAL” (which is a benefit for AIDS Emergency Fund on February 18th, 8pm, aef-sf.org); a chance to meet new GLBT Historical Society Executive Director TERRY BESWICK, and underground queer hits from seven decades from DJ MARKE B. Here queer history lovers mingled with local glitterati in the galleries. Five special guests led a very short tour, with each picking a favorite object in the museum and telling a five-minute story about why it caught their eye: Ms. Bob Davis is a professor of music at City College of San Francisco who has presented and published widely on transgender history. A former member of the board of the GLBT Historical Society, Ms. Bob also is a noted collector of transgender archival materials; Cheryl Dunye is a filmmaker who has directed five features including “The Watermelon Woman,” which won the Teddy for best queer film at the 1996 Berlin International Film Festival; Alan Guttirez works at LYRIC—a center for LGBTQQ youth in the Castro—and is a former docent at the GLBT History Museum. Some of Alan’s interests in queer herstories include San Francisco AIDS activism throughout the late 1980s and 1990s and social movements led by queer and trans people of color; Joey Plaster is a longtime volunteer with the Historical Society and is the curator of “Reigning Queens: The Lost Photos of Roz Joseph,” currently on display in the Community Gallery at the GLBT History Museum. A Ph.D. candidate at Yale University, Joey is writing a dissertation about the survival of queer homeless youth in San Francisco’s Tenderloin; and Tina Takemoto is an artist and associate professor of visual studies at California College of the Arts. She is board president of the Queer Cultural Center and co-founder of Queer Conversation on Culture and the Arts. She curated the display on Jiro Onuma in “Queer Past Into Present” in the
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