Muammar Al Khadafi

One of the people I got to meet during the recent OUT on the Hill event who was busy working it and getting his learn on was Earnest Winborne, the Executive Producer of No More Down Low TV.

What's NoMoreDownLow TV?   It's the one year old creation of Winborne that has a mission of dispelling myths and misperceptions about same gender loving people in the African-American community.co-hosted by Kendell Hogan and Janora McDuffie.

He named it 'NoMoreDownLow TV as a response to the JL King book and subsequent Oprah show and the negative implications the “down low” discussion has had on the Black gay community.

The distracting 'down low' discussion has also spread negativity and animus in the straight Black community as well.

As I mentioned, Winborne was there recording the events of OUT on the Hill and that segment with the video from that amazing week in Washington DC will be up on their site starting today.  You might see shots of a certain outspoken transwoman y'all know and love in that upcoming episode..

NoMoreDownLow TV launched its premiere episode on October 11, 2010 which was fittingly National Coming Out Day.  Its segments are told from an African American point of view, and it is one Winborne noted is sadly missing when you talk about rainbow community issues.

“Our show will put a real face on same gender loving people who are traditionally overlooked by the mainstream media. We’ll feature people who are open and honest about who they are and those who are contributing to their communities in the fields of entertainment, sports, politics, health, music, and social activism,” Winborne said. 

NoMoreDownLow.TV segments in addition to being told from an African-American LGBT point of view, they have the underlying theme and goal of showing people inside and outside our community that you can live a successful out of the closet life at work, at home and even in a church.

Happy first anniversary No More Down Low TV!    Much love to you and much continued success in telling our stories.  May this next year be an even bigger, better and more successful one for you.

Today is the day that Barack H. Obama got married in 1992 to Michelle LaVaughn Robinson in Chicago. It happened one month before Bill Clinton was elected president of the United States.

At the time the future president was working as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School and true to his community organizer roots worked on a voter registration drive.  His wife was an attorney working in Chicago city government as an assistant to the mayor of Chicago.

I doubt at the time they or their wedding guests thought in their wildest dreams the happy couple would be celebrating future wedding anniversaries as the POTUS and FLOTUS, and having 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as their street address, but that's exactly what has happened since 2009.

Happy 19th anniversary to the President and First Lady.   May you be celebrating your 20th through 24th wedding anniversaries in the White House, and may you have many more.  

The 175th anniversary of Texas declaring its independence from Mexico was earlier this year on  March 2, but today is the 175th anniversary of the day that New York entrepreneurs John K.and Augustus Allen founded my hometown on the banks of Buffalo Bayou. 



The town they founded has grown to a city of 2.2 million people, the largest in Texas and the fourth largest in the United States.



And it's our birthday today.  



I'll be heading down to Market Square Park along with Mayor Annise Parker and the rest of the city for the 5 PM CST start time birthday bash that will celebrate the Allen Brothers founding our internationally recognized city.    



For you Houstonians who read TransGriot and missed the announcement about the shindig on the Historic Market Square Park website, here it is.

Join Mayor Annise Parker as she celebrates Houston’s 175^th
Birthday with live music, food and fun at the place where it all began,
historic Market Square Park in downtown. See performances by
Interactive Theater and other local groups that will highlight our
city’s journey from a small bayou trading post to the booming city it is
today. And we won’t even think about celebrating without cupcakes, so
come for the entertainment and stay for the sweets!   Blankets, lawn chairs, food and non-alcoholic beverages are welcome. 
Beer, wine, beverages and food are sold at Niko Niko’s at Market
Square.

Happy 175th birthday H-town!

I wrote about it last year, but today is the 50th anniversary of the day that at midnight East Germany began building what they called their 'Antifascist Protection Barrier'.   The rest of the world came to know it as the Berlin Wall.  



As I wrote last year, that structure was a part of the world I grew up in as a tangible symbol of the Cold War tensions that split a city and a nation in two    

Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in East Germany, will attend the dedication and opening of a memorial and museum to The Wall at Bernauer Strasse, which was cut in two by the construction of the wall that stood for 28 years.   There are disputed claims as to just how many people died trying to cross it.   The count ranges from 138 to the 700 claimed by victim's rights groups.  The first victim is believed to be Guenter Liftin, who was killed on August 24, 1961 and the last was Chris Gueffroy on February 6, 1989.

Two US presidents made speeches in front of it.



JFK's 1963 'Ich Bin Ein Berliner' speech.





Reagan's 1987 'Tear down this wall' speech

 





Indeed, just two years later, that Brandenburg Gate area was filled with deliriously happy people doing precisely that.  

I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important in the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.   President John F. Kennedy,  May 25, 1961 


42 years ago today on July 20, 1969 the United States and NASA fulfilled President Kennedy's goal by landing astronauts Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin and Neil Armstrong on the moon in the Eagle landing craft while Michael Collins orbited the moon in Columbia.

Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the lunar surface, spent 21 hours and 31 minutes on the Moon, collected 47.5 pounds (21.5 kg) of moon rocks before they blasted off its surface to rejoin Collins and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean on July 24.

But this anniversary of the crowning achievement of the Apollo program is tempered by the bittersweet arrival in a few hours of the space shuttle Atlantis from its final mission to the ISS to cap the Space Shuttle program

So as the space shuttle touches down for the last time at KSC it's causing space junkies like myself to ask what's next for the US space program as we shift our sights away from low earth orbit missions and hand that responsibility to the private sector.

I believe the United States and NASA needs to be doing everything possible to expand our knowledge and technological capabilities in terms of executing space missions to and the eventual colonization of Mars, colonizing the Moon, and solve the challenges and problems of long duration space flights.


It will be necessary to do so not only just to explore our celestial neighborhood but nearby stars and emerging discovered planets as well. 

The United States for its future educational and economic well being definitely needs to continue on the path started by President Kennedy and NASA as a spacefaring nation.   We must be part of any international space exploration efforts or projects like the International Space Station.   

If we want the human race to survive and thrive as a species even with all its flaws we gripe about at times, we must explore the final frontier.