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A link to an interesting blog, whose author lives down this way; I were an English/literature/poetry teacher, I’d have all of my students reading him:
They want to cut Einsteins Balls off…… read more if you like at www.americanworkmule.com
Nashville J responded to yesterday’s homophobia, external and internal – Key West, and beyond post:
Sloan:
I guess all I can say is that I don’t remember anyone other than you mentioning or standing up for the young boy, who was expected to be gay and bullied, and went home and shot himself a few months ago. Other than what you posted there was very little coverage and to my knowledge there has been no final report on it – no investigation and interviewing of all the kids who knew what happened. You never belittled the young man, you never judged him, you only asked how and why the School would allow a young boy to be bullied because he was supposedly gay. I don’t remember any gays coming out and protesting or saying a word about his death.
They can place any lable on anyone and often do, whether it is correct or not. All I can say is IF you are homophobic, then the gay people should hope and pray for more homophobics just like you.
Regards,
J
I wrote back:
Morning, J -
Thanks, however …
Carol King, mother of a gay Key West High School gay boy, who was chronically bullied at that school for being gay, wrote a piercing letter to the editor, which The Key West Citizen published, in which she told the school district that she had warned them something like Matthew Gilleran’s suicide was going to happen, if they didn’t deal with what was going on in that school.
The Key West Business Guild, which started out as a gay organization., and then attracted some straight members, including me, when I lived in Key West, wrote a pretty strong letter to the school district about Matthew Gilleran’s death. I later heard the school district was going to be talking with the Guild about bullying of gays generally, but no sense of an actual and thorough investigation into events at KWHS leading up to young Matthew leaving school one Friday and going home and posting a farewell for good to his Facebook friends, and then shooting himself in the head with what I gather was a .22 caliber pistol owned by his father.
That, incredibly, led to school board member Robin Smith-Martin publicly saying that the cause of Matthew’s death was guns in the home.
There’s been heaps of attention focused on the school district in the wake of the recent state audit report on the district, and that is important and needs serious attention – my way is for the state to take over the district altogether. However, that does not deal with what happened to Carol King’s son at KWHS, and then to Matthew Gilleran, the accumulated karma for which is HUGE and will play out in all sorts of ways nobody will connect back to King’s son and Mathew Gilleran.
Ignoring wakeup calls of that magnitude increases the karma.
Sloan
P.S.
Also, while out for a walk after responding to you, I recalled writing in one or two posts following Matthew Gilleran’s suicide, that the gay community should lay back and let the straight community lean on the school district about doing a thorough investigation into the events at KWHS leading up to that terrible Friday. I likened that approach to when prominent American Jews went to Albert Einstein in the latter 1930s, to persuade him to lobby the US Government re what was Germany was doing to its Jews, and Einstein’s response was, that cause needed to be carried by non-Jews.
J wrote back:
Well, obviously, I do not live there and do not know all the news and do not get the newspapers, so , not aware of the letters to the Editors. Regardless, no one seems to be doing anything about it in the schools.
Have a good day!
J
Vicki Weeks, formerly of Key West, responded to yesterday’s post:
vicki weeks (DIVERVICKI@aol.com)
To: sloanbashinsky@hotmail.com
Yea! This is the program we were talking about a couple of months ago and I’m so happy to see it getting back on track! Looks like they may be able to use a little help in getting the word out though, especially in terms of bringing in some more volunteers – thus the forward.
Be well,
Vicki
Mike Mongo (mike@mikemongo.com)
To: divervicki@aol.com
Oye, Yesterday was Challenge Day at Key West High School and it was amazing! I personally believe Challenge Day is the most successful engagement we have with Monroe County students for the quelling of bullying and fostering diversity. It is a full-day event with lunch for the students. Volunteering for this day was a gift. Over 100 students participated—though almost half that many were turned away for lack of funding and adult involvement—and I guarantee hearts were changed after yesterday.
It was my second year of Challenge Day at Key West High, and I want to thank KWHS Principal Amber Bosco, DirectorTheresa Axford, and Superintendent Mark Porter for their work in making this program happen again. Especially considering the tough time we as a community recently experienced with the loss of Matthew Gilleran. You only have to volunteer with Challenge Day once to understand how invaluable a program this is for our County and our kids. Awesomely, Be The Change of the Florida Keys (501c3) also fosters 8TP at HOB, the extraordinary program that transitions students from 8th grade to middle school. What a team! I just wanted to say great job everyone, and keep up the good work!
Mike Mongo
I think Challenge Day is great. However, 100 out of close to 1,200 students does exactly cover the waterfront, but we can hope students, who did Challenge Day and were truly changed thereby, will influence other students to be truly changed, and perhaps in time Key West High School will be a bastion for “We are all created equal members of One Human Family.’ Meanwhile, I still see no signs of a thorough investigation of the events at Key West High School leading up to Matthew Gilleran killing himself.
I drove down to Key West yesterday to take in some of the school board workshop and the board meeting which followed. I left after Ed Davidson made his report, just after citizen comments.
I think people who want to know what goes on at school board meetings should attend or watch them on TV or livestreaming. I hope I am through with school stuff. I hope they turn the school district around. Truly, I hope that. I still feel, though, that they are way over their heads and it’s going to take a state takeover of the school district to turn it around.
Maybe you would feel that way, too, if you had been there yesterday and watched/heard school board members, the superintendent and staff, all but board member Ed Davidson, make into nothing the school district missing an annual loan (mortgage) payment on Horace O’Bryant School, and their collective effort, either by words or by silence, to keep Ed, thus the public, from finding out who was responsible for it.
I wish I had not seen it happen, but then, if I had not seen it happen, I might not have believed it, if it had been reported in a newspaper.
I wonder if the newspapers will tell you that, during the workshop, Chief Financial Officer Ken Gentile told the school board money was tight when the mortgage payment was due, they had lots of obligations to pay back then. Like I said, if I had not been there, I would not have believed it.
When the school board meeting began, a teacher came in with several young Spelling B-winner students, who all sat near me. I asked the kids if they could spell “supercallafragicalistickexpialadocious”. They looked at me like I was retarded. So I asked if they could spell “dociousalaexpiisticfragicalarupus”? Now they were curious. I said, my daughters made me learn it both ways, so I would not appear ignorant to their friends.
One of the kids then told me a story about when Sherlock Holmes and Watson went camping, and in the middle of the night they woke up and Holmes asked Watson what he saw overhead? Watson said he said a lot of pretty stars, and Homes said, “You idiot, someone stole our tent!”
I was remiss in not telling that, after leading off my citizen comments with what my daughters had taught me, so I would not appear ignorant to their friends.
What I did next during citizen comments was I got onto school board chairman Andy Griffiths, who is in his sixth term,
for trying to talk the other school board members into spending the taxpayers’ money to go to state-approved school board member trainings on the mainland, where school board members could state their complaints against each other in private, without violating the Sunshine Law, or The Griffiths Rule – “Praise in public, criticize in private.”
What I said after that, I had said several times before, and it was redundant and irrelevant in the big scheme of things.
After I spoke,
citizen watchdog Margaret Romero, at a candidate forum when she ran for mayor of Key West in 2011, scolded the school board and staff for complaining during the workshop about the newspapers, The Citizen Blog, Facebook and local blogs making the board and staff’s lives harder.
Citizen watchdog and school board member Capt. Ed Davidson chimed in agreement with Margaret. He did not get any seconds.
I also wondered if any of that would be reported in the newspapers?
Not in The Key West Citizen today. The next Keynoter comes out Saturday.
Even so, thank you to both newspapers, and the blogs and Facebook, for stealing the school board and the school district’s tent, so the stars could see them at night, and the sun by day.
As for balls, Ed Davidson seems to have some, but it’s going to take a heap more than balls to straighten out this school district.
Meanwhile,
on another battlefront, in The Key West Citizen – www.keysnews.com – today:
“Carnival Cruise Lines will send two of its ships, the Fascination and the Ecstasy, to a private island in the Bahamas owned by a fellow cruise corporation instead of docking in Key West.”
It didn’t have anything to do with the channel not being wide enough, but had to do with the private island in the Bahamas being a more attractive port of call.
Hallelujah.
There is a from the perspective of a former practicing lawyer, a human being and a mystic, the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case is bad enough already, there will be serious repercussions whichever way it turns out, I wish people would stop shopping photos and making jokes about it post today at goodmorningbirmingham.com, which you should be able to reach by clicking on that link.
Sloan Bashinsky
keysmyhome@hotmail.com