Sadness

Monday night I finished reading Tristessa by Jack Kerouac. It was good. There'd be some really good writing and occasionally something kinda goofy (and a bit heavy on the Buddha stuff, especially in the first part, but it does kinda make up for that in the direction it goes in the latter part). Yesterday Mary Beth and I went to the second of the Memphis for Bernie discussions on the issues. It was at Spaghetti Warehouse and it was concerned around the topics of LGBTQ and womens' issues. There were three speakers this time and they were all really good. The first started this organization called Sister Reach (after a terrible experience at one of those abortion "crisis center" things, those christian bait-and-switch bits of fraud). She talked about reproductive advocacy (I think that's the term she used). The second was with a Memphis gay and lesbian organization. She talked a lot about the direction of gay/lesbian rights post-marriage equality: five issues that are sort of "next steps" to work on: workplace discrimination (especially in Tennessee's poisonous right-to-work environment), trans right to live, lgbtq youth homelessness, and I'm forgetting the other things right now...damn. The third was with Planned Parenthood. She was getting pretty emotional talking about the recent events (mass shooting at PP last Friday for those reading at a future date ((...and more mass shootings today...not PP-related, but more mass shootings, more and more...)) ). The talks were really good and there was good QA afterwards. Also it was kinda neat remembering first going to a Spaghetti Warehouse as a kid and my fuckin' mind being blown that there was STUFF inside the restaurant (obviously the tables inside the streetcar inside the building, thought it was so COOL). I remembered it being a little more busy with that kinda stuff than it was. Well, it was enough to impress me at the time.