My new passion: PFLAG Portland

June is Pride Month and I find myself this year in an entirely unexpected role: as a leader of PFLAG Portland, a local nonprofit with a long history of supporting our local LGBTQ+ community.

Founded in 1973, PFLAG is the first and largest organization dedicated to supporting, educating, and advocating for LGBTQ+ people and their families. The Portland chapter is one of the oldest in the country, dating back to 1982, the year after a forerunner group called Parents of Gays voted to join the PFLAG National Network as PFLAG Portland.

The acronym used to stand for Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays but it was changed years ago to simply “PFLAG” as the community broadened to include bisexual, transgender and other queer identities.

In less than 3 years, I’ve gone from just another participant in PFLAG’s twice-monthly meetings to membership on the group’s board of directors to president of the Portland chapter.

Believe me, it’s all happened way faster than I could have ever imagined. The path I followed has taken me from wide-eyed newbie to getting my bearings as a board member to recruiting several colleagues who can, hopefully, help lead the chapter into an exciting and sustainable future.

We have no staff. All six of us are volunteers and I’m the only one who’s retired. The immediate past president is the mother of a gay son. I’m the father of a gay daughter. Both of us are grandparents. The four newest members include three married mothers of trans children and one bisexual woman who is single. All four of them work full-time. I’m inspired by their dedication –and their fierce love for their kiddos, whether they are 25, 15 or 10 years old.

We meet as a board once each month online and take turns hosting twice-monthly “support circles” where fellow parents (and other family members) can come together in a safe space to share their questions, concerns and feelings about sexual orientation, gender identity and other topics related to their children, whether young adults, adolescents or elementary school age.

Before the pandemic shutdown, all of these support circles were held in-person at a local church. During COVID, the organization pivoted to Zoom, with assurances that everything said during a gathering would remain confidential — no audio or video recording allowed, nor sharing of identities or information outside the meeting.

This year, we agreed to modify the schedule so that once every two months, we will meet in person. That means six in-person gatherings during the year, with two of them set aside for a summer picnic (coming up this Saturday, June 22, as a matter of fact) and a “holigays” party in December.

Poison Waters, one of Portland’s most popular drag queens, was the featured speaker at our 2023 “holigays” party. Also pictured: Patt Bekken, immediate past president of PFLAG Portland, and myself.

Lori and I started attending meetings simply because we wanted to become better allies to our daughter (who came out to us when she was in college) and others in the LGBTQ+ community. Other parents have shown up to these meetings with more urgent needs and, more frequently, with issues related to their trans children.

Some parents have been caught by surprise and want help understanding what becoming trans means for their child and for themselves. Some are fully supportive of their child’s transition and welcome recommendations of specific medical professionals and clinics. Some, sadly, find themselves dealing with a suicidal son or daughter; the unfortunate truth is that queer youth are at higher risk because of how they are mistreated and stigmatized in society.

Whatever their reason for joining a support circle, these moms and dads (and sometimes aunts, uncles and siblings) will find themselves on common ground with parents who’ve gone through the same issues and emotions and can now share their experience and advice. Why do pronouns matter? What is a “dead name”? How do you deal with family members who aren’t supportive?

It’s a wonderful thing to witness these conversations. Tears are inevitably shed, sometimes from joy, sometimes from heartbreak. Empathy, laughter, connection — it all happens, whether on those tiny Zoom boxes or in person as we sit in a literal circle and share.

If you or someone you know would like to check us out,

Our home page is here: https://pflagpdx.org/

Under Upcoming Events, click on the date of the meeting you’d like to attend and you’ll be taken to a registration page.

***

I’ll be honest (and I know Lori will agree): Leading a nonprofit board has been both invigorating and rewarding but also time-consuming. In the first six months of this year, I’ve had 40 PFLAG-related meetings, community events , webinars and coffees on the calendar.

That workload begins with two support circles and one board meeting each month. We have a secretary and treasurer, plus the immediate past president, who’s been an extraordinary mentor helping guide me while providing institutional history, community connections and priceless context as it relates to past board decisions and present policies.

As for me, my presidential duties go well beyond setting the board agenda, leading the meeting and delegating tasks. I find myself online at meetings of allied organizations, immersed in one-on-one conversations with national and local activists, and following up by text, phone, Zoom or in person with individual board members.

I’ve served on nonprofit boards and an advisory council before, but all had paid staff. We don’t have that luxury at PFLAG Portland, so part of our challenge is knowing how much time and effort we can put into the events and activities that matter most to us and our community.

It’s been a learning process, for sure. I was appointed to the board in January 2023 and was elected president the following September.

June 2024 marks 10 months of being in that position — and it brings me to the topic referenced in the headline on this piece.

***

Pride Month, for the uninitiated, honors the legacy of the Stonewall Uprising in New York City in the summer of 1969. Police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village, and LGBTQ+ people fought back over the next six days, marking a turning point in the struggle for gay rights.

A year later, on June 28, 1970, on the one-year anniversary of the rebellion, the first Pride marches were held in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Since then, cities and towns all over the country have held annual parades, festivals and other events as a way of celebrating LGBTQ+ identities and standing up to discrimination and violence.

Last summer, Lori and I participated for the first time in the Portland Pride Festival Parade, joining thousands of others representing local nonprofits, businesses and government agencies in walking a festive one-mile route from the North Park Blocks to Gov. Tom McCall Waterfront Park.

As a new board member, I also took a turn “tabling” in our booth at the Pride Festival, meaning I helped give away stickers, flags, buttons, brochures, etc., to people who approached us for swag and/or information. I was nervous at first, but quickly grew comfortable sharing PFLAG’s story — and my own as a parent — with strangers of all ages.

This year, our chapter committed to “tabling” at several events during Pride Month, starting at a Kids’ Pride Parade at a Portland elementary school and continuing at community events in Garden Home, Canby and Beaverton. Next month, we’ll be at Portland Pride in full force on July 20-21, for two days of tabling and the annual parade on a Sunday morning.

Why do I this?

Because I want to be an ally. Because I want to be on the right side of history in this latest chapter of our nation’s cultural wars.

I don’t need to tell you of the hostility directed toward trans people in this country. It’s heartbreaking to witness people, especially kids, being targeted simply for being who they are. Two of our board members moved their families to Oregon to get away from anti-trans legislation in red states.

But that’s only the most glaring bit.

Despite growing acceptance of gay and lesbian people in America and the legalization of same-sex marriage 11 years ago this June, there are still pockets of resistance to be found, even in the metro Portland area and other parts of the Pacific Northwest.

This year, city councils in Canby, Battle Ground and Yakima, Washington, all refused to approve a Pride Month proclamation. Unbelievable.

Pride Month is a time when queer people and their allies can stand up and celebrate themselves. That means doing so with support from those of us on the PFLAG Portland board and hopefully you too, dear reader.

More reading and resources:

Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pflagpdx/

PFLAG National: https://pflag.org/

I recently wrote a letter to the editor of The Oregonian on a controversy involving a high school trans athlete. https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2024/06/readers-respond-right-calls-on-trans-athlete-coverage.html?gift=ba32c259-9b0c-4efa-9de6-89f07047d53e&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR3TO479bFDyMC38rjmmQYcVGQ1i_UAfN2t-KIw2PLMKR2W90SzZEgyqfoc_aem_ChRPkm_kCvwdC5AElnBvTA

Come join us this Saturday, June 22, at a family-friendly picnic in North Plains:

Words for Dad

By Lori Rede

Editor’s note: On this Father’s Day 2024, I’m sharing a tribute to my late father, written by my wife seven years ago. Lori couldn’t be there with me in Silver City, New Mexico, when we buried my 91-year-old dad. But she did share memories of her father-in-law, which I was proud to share with family and friends who attended the April 6, 2017, funeral Mass at the Catholic parish that Dad and my stepmother Ora attended. — George

I have had the privilege of being the only daughter-in-law to a gentle man named Catarino.

I proudly called you “Dad” for some 42 years because you were like a father to me in every sense of the word. You always warmed my heart when you called me “mija.”

I lost my own father twenty-five years ago. Having you in my life was a joy for me.

You were a hard-working soul, a man of integrity who took great pride in all of his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, sincerely interested in all of our endeavors.

I know you were especially proud of your grandsons who served in the Armed Forces. That pride gave me comfort when our youngest son, Jordan, was deployed to Afghanistan.

Always supportive, always understanding, you watched as your family moved around the country and pursued our interests. You instilled the values of independence, responsibility and self-reliance in all of us.

Wherever we lived, you and Ora always made it a priority to visit us and we appreciated that.

Lori, a native San Franciscan, smiles as her father-in-law shows off his 49ers license plate, a birthday gift, in March 2016, a year before his death.

One of my fondest memories was watching you garden and enjoy the fruits of your labors. Not only would you grow a variety of peppers, but you would can them and cook with them, remembering to save a jar or two for me.

Up in Oregon it’s almost time to plant some peppers, and I will think of you when I garden.

There will be much to miss about you, Dad. We are the individuals we are because you had a hand in shaping us. This is a part of the legacy you leave behind.

A couple of others are:
* Your silly jokes that George continues to repeat.
* Your funny pronunciations of Spanish words. I think I will forever call “tortillas” “torpeders.”

Farewell, Catarino.

I know my parents are happy to see you again up beyond those pearly gates.

Anne Lamott, at 70, on love

In April, the bestselling author Anne Lamott turned 70 years old and celebrated by launching a national tour to promote her new book, her 20th.

During that month, Anne visited 16 cities in 12 states in 17 days –a grueling schedule for someone of any age. The tour came nowhere near the Pacific Northwest, but somehow I managed to come away with a signed copy of “Somehow: Thoughts on Love.”

I’ll explain below, but first let’s turn to the author and her newest work.

Anne Lamott has been writing books since 1979 — 7 novels and now 13 nonfiction books. I’d read only one previously (“Traveling Mercies,” 1999) but I’d been reintroduced to her work through a series of columns on aging that The Washington Post asked her to write in the run-up to her milestone birthday and book tour.

If you missed them, here’s a link to three of the columns, along with an interview she did on her exploration of getting older and her evolution as a writer for more than 40 years.

“Anne Lamott’s meditations on life, love and the cycle of aging”

The new book, like most everything she writes, is marked by self-deprecating humor and openness, whether she’s discussing friends and family, alcoholism, spirituality, homelessness or her hippie persona. Born in San Francisco, she now lives in Marin County, where she’s known for her progressive politics and liberal Christianity. She writes with great compassion and humanity, occasionally peppering her prose with profanities.

Such language makes her all the more relatable considering that I’m, ahem, a year older than Anne. If you’re going to make honesty a hallmark of your writing, why not use words that lend authenticity to your voice?

***

“Somehow” consists of 10 chapters and a coda. It’s a quick read at 191 pages in a hardcover book small enough to fit in one hand. And for me, it was a nice change of pace, considering the last few books I’ve read centered on war, poverty and other serious themes.

According to the book jacket blurb, “Lamott explores the power of love in our lives: how it surprises us, forces us to confront uncomfortable truths, reminds us of our humanity, and guides us forward.”

True. Very true. I’ll leave it to the professional book critics to elaborate.

What I liked was the way she composed certain sentences and sprinkled wise observations throughout. A few examples:

• “Getting old has made me a better listener even as my hearing goes.”

• “Getting and staying sober was the hardest work I’d ever done. I was scared and ashamed, defeated and defiant. Yet what those people gave me, and continue to give me decades later, remains the great gift and miracle of my life. They gave me me, they gave me a way of life, they gave me everything alcohol had promised.”

• “It is so hard for Karen to stay alive right now, and we both know she is about to die, but when I pay attention, I see that this takes a back seat to her being alive, stroking the luxurious fur of her cat, sipping her tea with a best friend, watching videos of her grandchildren. And her face brightens when she sees me; her light is still on in there, like a nightstand lamp beteen those dark, dangerous lungs,”

• “Life is such a mystery that you have to wonder if God drinks a little. How did my youngish, athletic friend get this disease? It must have been on a day when God was drinking tequila.”

• “I think Jesus would agree that some people are incredibly annoying. (Many days He had to lie down with a cold compress on his head.)”

• “Parents are constitutionally unable to throw out anything that their kids made. Almost all attics in America used to contain a clay ashtray with rounded indents where the child pressed her finger to create the place for the parent to rest their cigarette between sips. There are all the handprint turkeys from Thanksgivings, the book made of stapled index cards, the drawings, the report cards. Saving it all in a box meant you were a good parent.” [I remember making one of these ashtrays as a 9-year-old Cub Scout. GR]

• “I drove to church on Palm Sunday, six days after the latest school shooting.”

• “Why is it called Good Friday if Jesus dies?” The older kids are always my undoing. They ask why little kids get cancer, and why God doesn’t stop global warming, and I want to say “Go figure, right?” But I can tell them that God helps nurses and us care for sick kids. And God gave us Earth to care for, but we got greedy and power mad and we wrecked it. God doesn’t cause cancer. Nature does what it does, and God is in the healers among us.”

I tend to ask the same types of questions. But even if, like me, you’re not a particularly spiritual person, you can still appreciate the perspective of Anne Lamott. She writes beautifully and she expresses her opinions and beliefs with no apologies. She’s made a career of writing with empathy and honesty and this new book will undoubtedly be well received by her fans.

***

Now, about that autographed book that made its way to Portland. How did that happen?

A high school classmate living in Poughkeepsie, New York, where the book tour began, snagged a copy at the April 9th reading and kindly sent it my way. I’d reached out to my friend, Diane Perea, a few weeks earlier to ask she knew Anne was headed her way.

“I am! And I have tix,” she replied. “I’ve seen her a few times before in California, where she was a neighbor of sorts.”

Who knew!?

Not everyone gets to live near a famous author, but any of us can share the experience of appreciating the same writer. A book filled with “thoughts on love” just might be the balm we need in these fraught times.

Want more of Anne Lamott? Here’s a Q&A she did before a March 8th appearance in Carmel, California.

“Author and activist Anne Lamott reflects on life and literature before her 70th birthday, and a talk in Carmel.”

Gabrielle’s graduation

It’s graduation season for the Class of 2024. In our extended family, that means congratulating students of all ages for completing college, high school, elementary school and even kindergarten.

But with so many relatives living so far away, it’s impossible to see the smiles of these young graduates in person.

So that’s why it felt like a real treat yesterday to be invited to a backyard celebration for Gabrielle Akimoff, the daughter of a longtime friend.

I’ve known her dad, Tim, for about 20 years since he was a journalism student at the University of Oregon and I was the newsroom recruiter at The Oregonian. He came to work in our newsroom as an intern and since then has become an award-winning social media practitioner as a public affairs specialist for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

He was a founding member of the Voices of August group that wrote personal essays, often moving and surprising, for 13 years for my Rough and Rede blog. And that is how I came to meet Gabrielle.

She was just 9 years old when she, too, wrote an essay for VOA in 2015, becoming our youngest-ever contributor.

“I was born in Salem, Oregon in 2006,” it began. “I don’t remember much about that time, because I was 18 months old when we moved to Montana because of my dad’s work. He’s a journalist.”

The piece was titled “Hiking across America,” and you can read it right here: https://georgerede.wordpress.com/2015/08/31/hiking-around-america/

9-year-old Gabrielle with her father in downtown Portland in 2015.

Suffice to say Gabrielle has grown into a young lady in the nine years since. She graduated from Sprague High School in Salem and plans to attend Chemeketa Community College in the fall as a general studies major. Smart move to go in all options on the table.

I not only got to chat with Gabbers, as she’s known to her family, but I also got to meet Tim’s parents, Al and Carol, and his mother-in-law Nancy — plus exchange hugs with proud mama Cheryl. Such a wonderful group of people.

The quiet neighborhood where the Akimoffs live at the far end of south Salem didn’t exist when Lori and I lived in Oregon’s capital city from the late ’70s to the mid-80s. The home was easy to spot, though, with a Ukrainian flag waving in the mid-afternoon, a nod to the family’s heritage on Grandpa Al’s side.

These are exciting and challenging times for the Class of 2024. I wish Gabrielle and her peers the best as they explore life.

‘Demon Copperhead’ is a masterpiece

I love it when things just magically fall into place. In this case, those “things” were “Demon Copperhead,” the brilliant novel that won its author the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and two book clubs that I belong to.

Barbara Kingsolver is the distinguished writer who won the Pulitzer for her novel about a teenaged boy growing up in Appalachia in the face of generational poverty and fractured families. It’s a portrait of a region accustomed to being ignored or mocked, as well as a tale of one boy’s inner strength and resilience.

A men’s book club that I recently joined chose it earlier this year to read and discuss in late May. Coincidentally, the online book club I joined through Portland State University’s Alumni Association also picked the book as our May-July selection.

I was going to read the book on my own anyway, but having everything fall into place was sweet.

Last October, I saw Kingsolver speak at a Literary Arts event in Portland. It was shortly after she’d won the Pulitzer and I was intrigued by what she had to say in conversation with Northwest author Jess Walter (one of my favorites, btw).

Kingsolver grew up in rural Kentucky and has lived for many years on a farm in southwestern Virginia, so she’s seen firsthand the conditions that have made Appalachian residents, largely poor and white, the object of pity or ridicule: the loss of jobs in coal and tobacco, the scourge of the opioid epidemic, substandard public education, ineffective state and local government, a sense of hopelessness.

Kingsolver said she set out to write a modern-day version of the mid-19th century classic “David Copperfield.” In the original, Charles Dickens told the story of a young English boy named David, born six months after his father’s death, who struggles to become a man in a cruel world, with little money and few people to guide him.

For her novel, Kingsolver spent years researching and developing the story she told through the eyes of a boy, who’s born to a teenage mother in a single-wide trailer and soon becomes orphaned when she dies of a drug overdose. The red-headed boy, born as Damon Fields, quickly picks up a schoolyard nickname that plays off his “attitude” and copper-wire hair in addition to the copperhead snakes that populate western Virginia.

The book is magnificent.

All seven of us guys who gathered to discuss it over lunch agreed that the quality of writing was superb.

How, we wondered, did a woman in her 60s manage to write in the voice of a young adolescent male? From the first page to the last of its 546 pages, Kingsolver captures the vocabulary, inner thoughts, raw energy and gradual maturing of young Damon (er, Demon) as he encounters one setback after another as a kid with no family, no agency.

After his mom’s death, he’s got to deal with her violent boyfriend, survive multiple foster care placements and fend for himself as a social outcast. He’s got to navigate high school boredom, teen romance, a serious football injury, and the temptation to dive into painkilling drugs.

Through Demon, we come to know the sad reality of growing up around people trapped by low expectations and few opportunities in a small, forgotten town. Many of us would be worn out and ground down by despair, but Demon is a survivor.

Early on, he realizes, “If you’re standing on a small pile of shit, fighting for your one place to stand, God almighty how you fight!”

Later, he’s reading a book for a high school class when he’s reminded of “the Charles Dickens one, seriously old guy, dead and a foreigner, but Christ Jesus did he get the picture on kids and orphans getting screwed over and nobody giving a rat’s ass. You’d think he was from around here.”

My fellow readers and I also marveled at the layers of issues addressed in the book.

Kingsolver shows us the norms and cultural values that shape Appalachia and reveals how Big Pharma sank its hooks into a vulnerable population of poor Americans. She addresses the public school and foster care systems, substance abuse, domestic violence, the failing economy, regional stereotypes and more.

But the book also is about family loyalty and love, determination and toughness — qualities that show the humanity of Demon and the people closest to him.

Born in 1955, Barbara Kingsolver earned degrees in biology from DePauw University and the University of Arizona, and has worked as a freelance writer and author since 1985. At various times in her adult life she has lived in England, France, and the Canary Islands, and has worked in Europe, Africa, Asia, Mexico, and South America. She spent two decades in Tucson, Arizona, before moving to southwestern Virginia where she currently resides.

“Demon Copperfield” has been compared to “Hillbilly Elegy,” the 2016 memoir by J.D. Vance that came out in the wake of Donald Trump’s election and was held up as a way to understand the struggles of America’s white working class. (Of course, that was before Vance, now a U.S. senator from Ohio, did a 180 and aligned himself with Trump.)

I read the Vance book, too, but found Kingsolver’s novel the superior work.

Whereas Vance’s memoir focused on himself and his immediate family, Kingsolver introduced several characters to help tell a larger story. Among them: a young social worker, various foster families, a fellow foster kid, the small-town football coach, the coach’s daughter, a married interracial pair of teachers who take an interest in Demon, and assorted friends and family members.

Bottom line: Vance pretty much told one story – his own – while “Demon Copperhead” gave us glimpses of several stories that added up to a broader, emblematic one about Lee County, Virginia.

I’ve previously read one Kingsolver book out of the 10 bestselling novels she’s written along with books of poetry, essays and creative nonfiction. That was “The Posionwood Bible,” her 1998 novel about a missionary family in the Belgian Congo during the colony’s struggle for independence. It remains one of my favorite books of all time — and now I can add “Demon Copperhead” to that list.

It’s a masterpiece.

Barbara Kingsolver’s website: http://barbarakingsolver.net/books/

A final thought: Several of us in the men’s book club had personal reflections as we read “Demon Copperhead.”

Mine? I couldn’t help but contrast Demon’s hellish existence with that of our youngest son, whom we adopted as a 4-month-old. He, too, was born to an unwed teenage mother.

Demon had to scrap and fight for everything — food, housing, friendship — whereas our son grew up with all the comforts of a stable family, with college-educated parents, in a middle-class neighborhood. Last month, our baby boy, now 36, received a Ph.D in microbiology from an Ivy League institution, an amazing achievement that even now makes me wonder whether it was more the result of nature or nurture.

How would his life be different had he been raised by that teen mom or a another adoptive family?