Saturday, March 18, 2017

It Was A Long Day Yesterday.

I was up at the True Colors conference at UConn main campus in Storrs all day yesterday. When I was going for my MSW I interned at True Colors but I have known Robin the director way before my internship, we probably go back fifteen years, we worked on many legislative bills together.

I got up there a little after 11 AM and I got home at 7 PM after having dinner with Stana at Adams Mill in Manchester.

I normally go to lunch with a former UConn School of Social Work classmate and her students, she is a high school social worker but when I got to Storrs the parking lots were filled because of the conference and all the women’s NCAA basketball tournament was going on at Gampel Pavilion. The conference was maxed out with around 2500 attendees for the conference.

When I got to the Student Union I went to the presenter’s table and checked in, while I was standing there in line I spied my classmate and talk to her for a while apologizing about not being able to join them for lunch with her LGBT GSA students because of the long walk across the campus and up a couple flights of stairs, it would have been too much for my back. Then I went to the vendor area and stopped by the Hartford Gay and Lesbian Health Collective’s table and dropped my stuff coat off and left flyers for our conference in April, and then over to PFLAG’s table to drop off more flyers for them to hand out.

Since it was now after noon I went up  to the Rainbow Center on the fourth floor of the Student Union for lunch (the presenters get free lunch), I said “Hi” to the assistant director of the center and I was hoping to meet the former Director who now has a job out in Colorado but she had already left. I found a place to park my butt next to a friend who does the radio show Gay Spirits at WWUH. A couple of trans people that I know walked by and we said “Hi” to each other, also Peterson Tuscano sat down and we had a talk about his new projects that he is working on.

Things quieted down at the center and I was able to stretch out on a couch to ease me back.

I then started over to the classroom for my presentation. I had a fair turnout for my workshop on Trans History, I glanced at the workshop evaluation forms after my lecture and I got rated all fives!

Then it was off to Adam’s Mill to meet up Stana. The waitress remembered us from last year… one of the things about being trans is that people don’t forget you.

One of the people who attended my workshop was “Dave.” He is a gay man that I first meet way back around 2003 – 2005 time frame at the True Colors conference (back then it was called “Children from the Shadows”). I was a attending a Trans 101 conference that a friend was giving and he was in the audience, after the workshop we walked back to the main lobby and he was asking questions about being trans. Well every conference since then our paths cross and we catch up on what has happened to us that year, this year he told me sad news, his mother passed away during the year. We also usually met at the LGBT Film Festival opening night.

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