Friday, February 6, 2015

Journey: Part 5: LHA and Memory--Thank you, Saskia and Morgan


I want to continue showing you the faces, bodies, touches of our journey in New York last year. Every segment, every visit a leave taking with all the fullness of so many years of shared comradeship. Saskia Scheffer organized a day of memory reunion at the Brooklyn home of LHA, a time of trying to understand what the archives meant to our communities as it took life and grew in 13A from 1974 to the day it left for its new home in Park Slope in the early 90s. Parts of the old community came, like Daisy De Jesus of the old Salsa Soul Sisters and Linda McKinney, our artist extraordinaire from the early days, and past coordinators and volunteers like Beth Haskill and Susan. Many more so forgive me. We told stories of what it all meant, of what we did in that apartment which was really a gathering of ourselves for social engagement. Here Sherry Gorelick tells of her need and joy at walking through that 1926 door.




Sherry telling her story.




Linda McKinney, wearing one of her designs,







Morgan Gwenwald, photographer and historian, documenting lesbian community for so many years, presented a slide show of just a small representation of her work, Here with Daisy and I so overwhelmed by the depth of it all.


Here is Saskia with the women from Alternate Corners books store, friends of Paula Grant's, who made a wonderful financial donation to the archives as part of the gathering.

Those gathered held up their cell phones and recorded many of the stories which Saskia has sent to me on a memory stick and which the archives has a copy of. To be Continued.