Listen to the Seen

Denver, Joan Nestle and Mabel Hampton looking out over Rocky Pond Pond in New Hampshire, Deb Edel's family vacation home, c. 1979

I have been trying to sort my images, recreating the slide shows I with the help of comrades presented through the 1970s until the 90s, for the Lesbian Herstory Archives. All will be given to LHA to be available, but as I click the images over, through the years, I pause and feel the touch of lives, of love.
I could use this space to rail at the uglinesses of our times, but in other places, these words are being said, by so many, and that is good. Here I will touch the past and what my life is like now.

Cello and Joan, on the deck at Dayehnu, Anglesea, Victoria, Australia, 2016 with my knitted blanket, the only thing I can knit

Cello, age 16, a dear friend, West Brunswick, Australia, 2016

Intent, filled with their own lives, losing vision and strength in limbs as us, they look as hard as they can at the world around them--understanding what we will never know--but willing to sit beside, with horizons out of their control. An unseeing gaze that gives complete attention.

From another time, another place:

Marching, bare breasted down Fifth Avenue, NYC, after Giuliani threatened to arrest any woman          who removed her top, Gay Pride, NYC, 1980s with images of Sonny Wainwright, writer, founder of                                                       Feminist Writers Group and Mabel Hampton held high

Oh Cello, the stories we could tell. Listen, listen.