three women of song who will be remembered long after they’re gone
Trouble, we have known trouble In our struggle just to get by Many times the burden’s been heavy Still we carried on side by side And when we’re gone, long gone The only thing that will have mattered Is the love that we shared And the way that we cared When we’re gone, long gone And when we’re walking together in glory Hand in hand through eternity It’s the love that will be remembered Not wealth, not poverty And when we’re gone, long gone The only thing that will have mattered Is the love that we’ve shared And the way that we cared When we’re gone, long gone When we’re gone, long gone The only thing that will have mattered Is the love that we shared And the way that we cared When we’re gone, long gone
“For ALL Women and Girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment.”
This year’s theme calls for action that can unlock equal rights, power and opportunities for all and a feminist future where no one is left behind.
—United Nations
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Like many twenty-eight-year-olds I wasn’t interested in finding a personal physician because I hadn’t been really sick after surviving the usual childhood illnesses during the 1950s and 60s. Unlike most young adults in the 1970s, I lived in a city that was a thousand miles from my roots and I needed to see a doctor. A friend at my new job recommended Dr. J. Frank Martin, Sr.; I liked him immediately, but I loved his wife who was the center of warmth for their family practice which has been my medical home for fifty years. Dr. J. Frank Martin, Jr. continued the tradition of his parents following his father’s retirement.
This past week Sarah Kay Cox Martin died in her home in Hopkins, South Carolina, at the age of 93. I will always remember her kindness, her smile, her sensitivity to a young woman from Texas who found a family practice where family was more than a word. So many memories…
five-year-old Ella, three-year-old Molly, and Naynay at Krispy KremeStore
Nana and Ella love Krispy Kreme donuts
Molly doesn’t like donuts (according to her)
Hmm. Maybe Molly needs to reconsider her position on donuts.
I’m trying to figure out how to eat the icing first
is there anything more delicious than a donut?
Yes! It’s a donut with M&M candy in the icing!
Such an adventure with our two granddaughters who have grown up with Krispy Kreme donuts but always in a drive-thru setting – never actually going inside a store where the donuts are made. Heavenly aromas as we opened the door to the store and feasts for the eyes that opened wide to see the dozens of varieties in spotless display cases as hundreds of donuts moved through an assembly line in full view behind the cases. The girls were mesmerized and a bit overwhelmed by the choices when we limited them to two each but thrilled to sit at a little table with their milk to experiment with unusual tastes and colors. Finally, a race to the restroom to wash hands and faces when we had to take them to their parents.
As Nana leaned into the middle row of the grannymobile to buckle Ella in her car seat when we were leaving the Krispy Kreme store, Ella asked out of the blue: Nana, did you marry Naynay? Nana said yes, I did. I was sitting next to Ella who then turned to me and asked the question Naynay, did you marry Nana? I answered yes, I married Nana.
But you’re both girls, Ella continued, and I nodded yes to her. But that’s okay, I said. Without skipping a beat as the wheels turned in her five-year-old brain she said, Owen had two moms. Owen was a little boy in her first daycare for two years. He did, indeed, have two moms we met when we picked Ella up in the afternoons.
Yes, I said. We are two of your grandmothers like Owen’s two mothers.
And that was that. No more questions. No long discussions – they would come later, but for now everything was fine in her mind.
Old King Cole was a merry old soul, And a merry old soul was he; He called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl, And he called for his fiddlers three.
Old King Don was a grumpy old soul,
and a grumpy old soul was he;
he called for his pens, and he called for his friends,
and he mowed down democracy.
Heh, heh. Sometimes I have to entertain myself and cross my fingers somebody else thinks I’m as funny as I fancy I am.
Since 1709, the Brits have had a nursery rhyme about the fictional Old King Cole. Starting this week in 2025, the Americans across the Pond from the Brits have a chief executive who fancies himself to be a King with the absolute authority to demolish democratic rule in these United States.
Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye, Elon and Don – we ain’t picking up what you’re putting down. The next time we vote for a King, your names will be deleted by the thousands of people affected by your doge department layoffs.
“It’s well-documented that transgender people, especially transgender women of color, were leaders at Stonewall and in the movement for LGBTQ+ equality. Removing the T from a government website certainly doesn’t change that.
I’m in my 40s, and the Stonewall Inn was designated as a National Monument less than a decade ago. For most of my life as a transgender man, the government has not marked our history or celebrated our achievements. LGBTQ+ people were fighting for justice long before Stonewall, and we’ll keep fighting long after.
The government does not determine our value or worth. LGBTQ+ people know who we are, and no presidential administration can take that away.” – Jace Woodrum, Executive Director of ACLU of South Carolina
On Thursday, February 13th., the National Parks Administration removed all references to transgender persons from the Stonewall Inn National Monument website in response to an executive order signed by President Trump on his first day in office, an EO designed to be anti-transgender across the entire federal government in its scope. ABC News reported the following saga of what I have dubbed “T-Gate.”
What used to be listed as LGBTQ+, has been changed to LGB.
“Before the 1960s, almost everything about living openly as a lesbian, gay, bisexual (LGB) person was illegal. The Stonewall Uprising on June 28, 1969, is a milestone in the quest for LGB civil rights and provided momentum for a movement,” the website now says.
The Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village became a national monument in 2016 under former President Barack Obama, creating the country’s first national park site dedicated to LGBTQ+ history.
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Full disclosure I had lived in Seattle, Washington, for a year in that summer of 1969. I was twenty-three years old, single with no prospects, no lesbian dating sites, singing in a Southern Baptist church choir with typical homophobic rhetoric coming from the pulpit. But I still loved the music and made a major life decision to return the 3,000 miles to my native Texas to enroll in the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth in the fall of 1969. God does work in mysterious ways, I am here to testify. My first long term lesbian relationship began in the seminary with another woman who shared more than our love of music. Twenty years later I learned about the uprising at the Stonewall Inn and understood my debt to the brave transgender women who risked their lives to spark a movement for equality.
What if, I wonder, the new president decides to ban all historical sites that refer in any way to a “T.” Hmm. For example, think about the Old South Meeting House in Boston, Massachusetts, the site of the Tea Party in 1773 which sparked the first revolution against oppression in America. Colonists disguised as Indigenous Americans boarded three ships in the harbor and dumped 342 chests of tea into the river. Should we take the “Tea Party” off the historical sites since the colonists were really a rowdy group of immigrants who thought they shouldn’t be ruled by a King?
I'll Call It Like I See It 
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