‘What Can I Say – What A Day Today!’

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(Draft)
(18 May 17):

‘What Can I Say – What A Day Today!’

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Dear Reader:

Sahwdee Khaf.

Seems that today was a day when I expected to post a quickie up-date to my home page.

Nope. Not when I continued writing more than those few lines.

I shall have more to add to this page in a day or two.

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My dear friend Lilly / Qian (from China) sent a fantastic e-mail to me today.  Her life is improving; she is studying computers at Beijing.  She is one more reason – the best reason – to return to Asia.

Lilly / Qian included recent pictures.  You look great, Lilly / Qian!  It is wonderfull seeing your up-dated photographs.

Then ‘Twilight Zone’ hit.  When I minimised my e-mail window, there on my desktop was our photograph from the shrine outside Tesco Mall – we, the Li twins of the Baan Siri sorority.  My desktop rotation to our picture at that exact moment must be a great omen for our future.

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Today came the following news articles about the release of Chelsea Manning.

• (https://www.yahoo.com/beauty/chelsea-manning-reveals-first-post-prison-photo-world-192205947.html)
• (https://www.yahoo.com/news/chelsea-manning-probably-getting-her-141806776.html)

FREEDOM!!!

The fresh air is sweet!

Enjoy all the pizza you can devour, Chelsea my friend – the taste today is far greater than yesterday.

Your new journey of a thousand miles begins with your first step.  Walk as far as you choose in your new sneakers – you have the world at your doorstep.

You look great for enduring all your years of hardship.  Keep fighting your good fight.  You are a winner!

Manning is also a hero to me.  Dunno about you others – you haters, you detractors.

Manning’s entire prosecution and incarceration is a travesty of American justice.

She paid a far heavier price to be a whistle-blower than I ever did at both the USDA Forest Service and at the Arizona State Department of Administration combined.  She faced all these past years hounded, harassed, intimidated, humiliated, prosecuted, incarcerated, denied medical care; makes my being fired a walk in the park.

I am humbled!

Curious, you Republi-cons have no difficulties with Wikileaks posting lies about Clinton.

• Trump: ‘I love Wikileaks!’

Where does Trump stand on Julian Assange?

His answer is obvious.

It was Assange whose ‘fake news’ harmed Clinton’s reputation and campaign last year and which vaulted Trump to the presidency.  Now that Sweden retracted their arrest warrant against Assange, Trump announced he will not pursue criminal charges and the current arrest warrant against Assange that has been in place these past seven years.  Trump eagerly allows Assange to go free from legal scrutiny for his crimes that rippled through the international community.

How’s that, Dear Trumpster, for your ‘law and order’ president; one more ‘change thingy’, eh.

But you Trumpsters go nuts when there is truth exposing your Fuhrer Trump.

We heard more outrageous words spoken on this morning’s CBN ‘700 Club’.  Rev Robertson held up a gun target with numerous gunshot holes and bragged,

• ‘I used to think of Osama – there, right between the eyes.  Now I think of a special Senator.’

Sick, Pat, slick.

You Republi-cons have quite a history of ‘lock and load’ against Democratic Party and Liberals:

• you Republi-cons can hardly forget the entire eight years Republi-cons hounded President Obama,
• you Republi-cons making NRA gun targets with President Obama’s picture,
• you Republi-cons inciting the implementation of 2nd Amendment ‘slave patrols’ for the assassination of President Obama.

You, Robertson, are a weak man, a coward.  If you really want to put yourself to your 1st Amendment mettle, then you would have made your Senator accusation by name.

You, Robertson, know well enough how to say enough not incurring criminal and civil liabilities of incitement and conspiracy by actually calling out whomever Senator you keep in mind.

You, Robertson, speak words of ugly sentiment from your position of public scrutiny. Some Christian Conservative – your manner of Christianity. Ugly!!!

You, Robertson – your entire life’s amount of courage is a mere thimble compared to Manning’s full measure.

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Today was the day at Red Cross – 72 pints now on my books makes 9 gallons.

I did apheresis again.  Thank you for the correction, Hil; not ‘aphoresis’.  The Red Cross nurse here also chuckled at my mis-spelling.

This time, no smell or taste of metal and no cool, though the line-in felt cool.

Thank you, Cassandra.  You did a fine job today.  We shall meet again in four months.

I drank my fill of cranberry juice and snacked on ‘Cheez Its’ and two bags of trail mix.  Yummy!  But there were no peanut butter cookies this time.

Next stop will be that 10 gallon hat – 80 pints.  Then 90 pints, 100 pints.  Who knows how much?

I challenge each and every Reader to join with me and commit to Red Cross blood donations – do them regularly.  Maybe your friend will be saved by your donation.  Maybe today’s donation will save your friend; thank you for that honour.

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I had an appointment with my Primary Care Physician the other day.

Seems two new surveys are making their way around these parts.

One survey asks us to identify our sex, gender, and orientation.

The other survey rates our susceptibility to depression and suicide.

I assess the sex / gender survey as I have explained in my past posts – I am female.  ‘Transsexual’ / ‘transgender’ are terms that identify the person during their transition, both were the concept of Stanford’s program that was my guidance through my transition during the 1970s and as far as my own definition goes for my self-identification.

I was an ‘out’ trans child since at least age 3 (1959), I time the beginning of my official transition as that when I turned age 18 (1974), and I completed my transition in May 1983 with my first correction surgery.  I was female before transition (as an inter-sex female); I have been all ways female since at least then:  biologically, medically, legally, socially, psychologically, practically.  My subsequent trip to the Chettawut Clinic for revision further confirmed me as female, adding another period to that sentence that I am no longer ‘trans …’.

Maddy, no matter what, you earned however you choose to self-identify.  You are free to use ‘transgender’ all you want.  It is your choice; I respect you for it.

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Pardon me that I seem to bear a grudge against the current crop of johnny-come-latelies who think that they invented trans – whether as a performer playing a trans character or as themselves trans.

I lack cable / satellite TV and home Internet.  I know little to nothing of such current crop as Lavern Cox, Jeffrey Tambor, Caitlyn Jenner, Jazz Jennings, and today’s other celebrity types.

I personally hold in high esteem the many who paved my way (you can read their names on my home page).  Don’t get me wrong, I do hold a level of respect for the others of our shared life experiences.  But I am among the community of old-timers who perceive this lack of regard by those ‘newbies’ toward our combined predecessors.  It frosts me to see nearly no acknowledgement among this current crowd obliviously awash in their own self-celebrity.

I read an article last year proclaiming that it was the definitive list of trans performers and actors.  Their only 20th Century name was Carolyn Cossey.  They ignored Christine Jorgensen.  No one would hire her as the professional photographer she was (to her prospects, being transsexual had a negative impact upon her competence as a photographer); she was forced to go into stage acting to earn a living.

Credibility is gone when ABC broadcast their second interview with Jenner (22 Apr 17).  There came a time when Diane Sawyer’s voice-over said ‘the pioneers of transgender …’ and the video showed snips of current celebrity trans persons absent anything more than five years in the past.  ‘Pioneers’???  Hogwash and chips!!!  My blood is still boiling!  (Time for a blue pill – maybe make it a double.)

Then we have Jazz Jennings who seems to present herself as the first ‘out’ trans child.  I was an ‘out’ trans child beginning at age 3 (1959), but I never made such an outrageous claim as Jennings.  No doubt there were many more ‘out’ children before me who deserve that credit.  ABC and Sawyer, please locate them and do a documentary of their survival through far more challenging times than what is here for Jennings today.   Jennings came from a supportive home environment.  Conversely, we early trans children and the true ‘pioneers’ endured hardship – a far more common fate.  My family murdered my uncle during his transition, they beat me as a child (but they could not beat the trans out of me, eh), and nearly all family continue rejecting me.

Hey, ABC and Sawyer, you wanna do a documentary on ‘pioneers’?  Then come here and talk to real, true ‘pioneers’.

• Millye, from my support group, deserves many rounds of applause and credit.  She pre-dates me by more than a decade.  She has been helping abandoned trans teens and young adults before I reached adulthood; she could have been my mentor had I known her during my childhood.

• Regina, from church, has been helping homeless trans teens and young adults far longer than most of these johnny-come-latelies have been alive.  Let’s render more rounds of applause for Regina.

In business, there is the saying, ‘location, location, location.’  Well, in the performing arts, it can be said that one needs to be at the right place at the right time; too soon and no one will accept you, too late and they will call you a copy-cat.

With a few experiences in school, an extra role in ‘A Star Is Born’, and a listing, I corresponded with the producer of ‘The Young and the Restless’ beginning in 1977.  I proposed a minor side role of a young transsexual as a patient to Dr. ‘Snapper’ Foster;  I would perform my actual transition on network television with the guidance of the Stanford University Medical Center program.  The producer eventually sent a personal letter to me conceding that those days (the late-1970s) were not yet acceptable to present a transsexual story-line.

That was not to be the end of my road.  A few years later and along came the Nick and Sharon characters on Y&R.  Two years ago came transsexual character Nick on ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’.

As for lists for acting, my place is documented.

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Kapung khaf, Dear Friends.

Thanks for visiting today.  Please return soon for another new post.

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