Oak Park Area Lesbian and Gay Association
Since its inception in 1989, OPALGA has become one of the largest community based, multipurpose lesbian and gay membership organizations in Illinois.
Annual Meeting Recap
On November 1, OPALGA held its annual meeting at Holley Court Terrace. Approximately 35 attendees enjoyed a lavish spread of delicious hors d’oeuvres, desserts, and beverages. Co-Chair Brad Bartels welcomed OPALGA members to the meeting and then introduced members of the Oak Park-based American Opera Group, who treated attendees to two selections from their current production of “Die Fledermaus.”
After the musical entertainment, Bartels gave a presentation on the state of the association, including a review of our mission and goals, accomplishments, and programs. Board Treasurer Mike Cochrane reported on the 2006 budget and year-to-date income and expenses.
Youth Program Director Susan Abbott spoke about the sometimes surprising results she encounters on her educational outreach travels, this time at a recent visit to 75 students at Concordia University Chicago in River Forest.
Nominating Committee member Susan Anderson announced the results of the recent Board of Directors election. Dr. Cheryl Haugh was reelected as Female Co-Chair, and Sherrie Wolfe was reelected as Board Secretary. Four Board Members-at-Large were also reelected: J. Lee Latham, Rick McVey, Liz Stallone, and Michael Williams.
An OPALGA Annual Report will be mailed to the membership in February, 2007.
Book Club Announces New Selections, Full Schedule
November’s book-club meeting was a great success. With seven in attendance (five prior members and two newcomers), Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees was discussed. All enjoyed the nuances of this incredibly captivating novel.
On Sunday, December 17, the book-club discussion will center around Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. We hope this meeting will be just as well-attended because this, too, is a very engaging novel. Set in an unnamed South American country, terrorists attack at a birthday party for a Japanese industrialist in the vice president’s home. Captors and their prisoners settle into a strange domesticity, and romantic liaisons soon develop.
On Sunday, January 14, Fall on Your Knees by Canadian playwright and actor Ann-Marie MacDonald will be discussed. Set in the coal-mining communities of Nova Scotia in the early part of this century, the novel centers on four sisters and their relationships with each other and with their father.
The OPALGA book club also decided on their selections through April, 2007:
February Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
The son of a poet with a “wild mental imbalance” and a professor with a “pitch-black dark side,” Burroughs is sent to live with Dr. Finch (his mother’s therapist) when his parents separate and his mother comes out as a lesbian.
March Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde
From her childhood in Harlem to her young adulthood, Lorde writes in detail of her cultural heritage from the Caribbean island of Grenada and recalls what it was like to be a young, black lesbian in the 1950s.
April The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
Esperanza Cordero, a girl coming of age in the Hispanic quarter of Chicago, uses poems and stories to express thoughts and emotions about her oppressive environment.
Note: January’s meeting has been changed to Sunday, January 14, because the holiday brunch has been scheduled for Sunday, January 21.
The book club meetings take place on Sundays from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. at The OPALGA Center, 947 Garfield, Oak Park. All books are available through amazon.com. In addition, copies will be made available at the Oak Park Public Library as well as at The Book Table. Remember, OPALGA receives a charitable donation from The Book Table for each book purchased there. Please let them know that you are purchasing your book as part of the OPALGA book club.
Other books being considered (join us and voice your preferences) include the following:
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. A womanizing Czech surgeon is forced to flee Russian invasion and takes on menial roles.
• The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith. A young woman and a married mother fall in love.
• Aquamarine by Carol Anshaw. An Olympic swimmer is seduced and edged out for the gold medal by a rival.
• When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago. A memoir recounts childhood in rural Puerto Rico and teenage years in New York City.
• The Swimming Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst. An interracial affair in pre-AIDS London.
• Sula by Toni Morrison. Two women—friends since childhood—are reunited as grown women.
• Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. Story of a young, black woman on a journey of self-discovery.
• Mean Spirit by Linda Hogan. A tale of two doomed Osage Indian families in the 1950s.
OPALGA and the Center on Halsted Join Forces to Bring You “Brunch with Hemingway”
Do you often find yourself visiting Chicago-area landmarks only when you have family or friends in from out of town? If you do, you are not alone. Well, OPALGA and the Center on Halsted have come together to give you an opportunity to see a part of Oak Park history and meet new people while you are doing it. On Sunday, January 28, we will be hosting an event where you can learn more about the Center on Halsted as well as OPALGA, make new friends, have brunch at Oak Park’s Hemmingway’s Bistro, and visit both the Ernest Hemingway Museum and his Birthplace Home.
The brunch will start at 11:00 a.m. at Hemmingway’s Bistro, 211 N. Oak Park Ave., Oak Park, and will include, along with socializing, a brief introduction to the Center on Halsted. Following brunch, attendees will be treated to a tour of the Ernest Hemingway Museum, which features rare photos of Hemingway, his childhood diary, letters, early writings and other memorabilia as well as videos documenting the author’s life and work. This event will also include a tour of the Victorian home where Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899 and you will learn a great deal about his early family life.
Tickets for the event are $35.00 per person, which includes brunch as well as the tours of the museum and birthplace home. Tickets can be purchased by calling The OPALGA Center at (708) 848-0273 or by visiting the Center on Halsted Web site at www.centeronhalsted.org.
We hope that you will be able to join us!
Youth Group Update
Thanksgiving Celebration
On Monday, November 20, we had a wonderful pre-Thanksgiving potluck with all of our drop-in groups. It was a great evening to catch up with old friends, meet new ones, hear an always-wonderful OUTspoken performance, and, of course, share a wonderful meal. Thanks to everyone who attended, and let’s make this an annual event!
Welcome to Hector Salgado
Hector Salgado is the newest member of the OPALGA staff. Hector is our new Amigos Latinos Apoyando Siempre (ALAS) Coordinator. Hector joins us from Project VIDA in Chicago and has many years experience providing HIV prevention education and outreach. Welcome, Hector!
High School Happenings
OPALGA has been busy working with our local high schools this fall. This school year proves to have the greatest number of supportive programs for LGBT students in our communities. Pocha Carter, one of our youth outreach educators, is working with his alma mater, Proviso East High School in Maywood. Four out students at Proviso East are in the process of beginning their school’s first Gay Straight Alliance, and Pocha is helping them break new ground.
Morton West High School in Berwyn has a very active Gay Straight Alliance this year, and they have asked OPALGA to provide HIV/STD prevention programs and to provide some basic Q&A on LGBT issues they are facing.
On December 6, we will be celebrating World AIDS Day with the Oak Park and River Forest High School Gay Straight Alliance, “A Place for All.” If any OPALGA members are alumni of local high schools, give us a call. Student groups would love to hear what high school was like for you, whether is was 5 or 25 years ago!
December Women Like Me Group Canceled
Women Like Me, which meets regularly on the fourth Sunday of each month, will not meet this December because the date falls on December 24, which is Christmas Eve. The group will resume its regularly scheduled meetings on January 28, 2007.
Don’t Miss This Month’s Coffee House
On Friday, November 17th, the OPALGA Coffee House features the compelling voice & guitar stylings of Jeffrey Altergott.
Born and raised within earshot of the sprawling Chicago music scene, Jeffrey Altergott has been a player in its ranks for over a decade. Influenced by the music of the Indigo Girls, Tracy Chapman and other acoustic guitar-slinging woman troubadours, he got his start as half of the acoustic duo Carnival of Faith. The group released two CDs. Jeff kicked off his solo career with the art-folk CD, Little Blue Record Player (1997), touted by Chicago Reader’s Monica Kendrik to have “bite and funk and a sense of wonder”. Altergott’s sophomore release was the hopeful melancholy that is Icarus Grounded. It’s release prompted the Chicago Tribune to feature Altergott in its Artist Watch and then on their Metromix television program.
Jeff’s latest musical offering, Runt (2004), is a collection of songs that are as driving as they are thought provoking. Quiet, reflective, rowdy and raucous, Runt satisfies true music lovers who long for the individual styling found in the likes of the Indigo Girls and Tom Waits.
Come join us at the Buzz Cafe, 905 S Lombard in Oak Park, at 7:00 PM and bring your friends.
Get Your Flu Shot Clinic Through The Oak Park Health Department
OPALGA will be hosting a Flu Shot Clinic offered by the Oak Park Health Department on Thursday November 30th from 4 to 7 PM at The OPALGA Center. Flu shots are recommended for anyone who wants to reduce their risk of getting the flu this season. Shots are $20 for adults, and free for anyone 18 or under. You do not need to be an Oak Park resident to be eligible for the service, all are welcome. Shots will be given on a walk in basis, but we are asking for RSVP’s for anyone bringing children 3 or younger, so the health department can ensure they have to proper supplies.
If you have any questions about Flu Shots, please call Margaret at the Oak Park Health Department at (708) 358-5492 prior to the event.
The OPALGA Center is located at 947 Garfield in Oak Park. For questions about getting to OPALGA, please call Jan at (708) 848-0273.
Seeing is Believing: THE MIRACLE, A Film By Jeffrey Jon Smith
A film by longtime OPALGA member Jeffrey Jon Smith, THE MIRACLE, will be screened on Friday, December 1, 2006. Jeff’s film is based on the life and work of Tekki Lomnicki and stars Ms. Lomnicki and Rula Sirhan Gardenier. The screening is part of the Columbia College Chicago MFA 2006 Presentation which beings at 6:00 PM at Columbia College Chicago, 1104 S. Wabash on the 8th Floor in the Film Row Cinema. Admission is free, and seating is first come, first served.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The Miracle will be one of four Graduate Thesis films screened that evening, and the program will run continuously. It is not possible to come and see The Miracle only. We think you will enjoy all the films and urge you to arrive comfortably early to be guaranteed seating. Seating is very limited, and friends and family of all the filmmakers will be vying for seats. Out of respect for the filmmakers, audience members will be asked not to leave or enter the auditorium once the screening has begun.
Directions: This is the Ludington Building on the southwest corner of Wabash and 11th. It is one block north of Roosevelt, one block east of State, and one block west of Michigan. This is a busy, mixed commercial and residential area, and there are parking lots available near the building. For more information call (312) 344-6700.
DVD copies of the film will not be available until sometime next year. The film is currently being submitted to festivals and we will alert you to future screenings. We congratulate Jeffrey on his achievement! Please visit the website for THE MIRACLE, themiracle.shatteringparadigms.com
Drop In Group GLBTQ Thanksgivin’ Potluck!
Monday, November 20th at The OPALGA Center we are having an all group (Prism, Spectrum, TGIQ, RED and ALAS) Potluck to kick off the holiday season in style. We will provide the turkey and potatoes, YOU can bring your fAV dish! Not a cook? NO PROBLEM, get over here anyway for fun and good eats! OUTspoken will perform and there will be door prizes. Dinner will be served from 7-9:30 so get here early! RSVP ahead of time if you can! Any questions? Call (708) 386-3463 or email prism@opalga.org.
November 2006 Message From The Co-Chairs
We are fortunate to live in a time and region of the world that is tolerant, if not accepting, of the LGBT community as an integral and productive part of its village. Historically, many individuals have risked their personal security—physically, financially, and emotionally—to wage the war on discrimination and hate. It has been an act of courage and integrity for these individuals to stand up and declare themselves gay at times when to do so was often a lonely, singular act and sometimes cost them their lives.
Even though the national climate against gays and lesbians has been one of consistent loathing used to foster conservative political action, we still have felt buffered by our residence in a community that strives for diversity and inclusion.
But we are not immune to bigotry and discrimination.
You will remember that soon after the Oak Park domestic partnership registry was passed, a referendum to strike down that registry gained enough momentum to be included on the spring ballot. Although this was significantly defeated, 2,000 Oak Parkers turned out to vote in favor of stopping same-sex partners from being counted. Recently, a church employee who had been openly gay in this church’s congregation was fired, reportedly, for his homosexuality after several years of service. He was devastated, as were a number of parishioners who had grown to love him.
Alan Amato writes in this month’s Empower about how gays and lesbians are being tortured and executed as they are discovered by authorized Iraqi “gay death squads.” American troops, despite the shortage of enlisted persons in numbers enough to provide safety for our own armed services, are being “found out” and court-marshaled with dishonorable discharges for their sexuality. These are people who have volunteered to serve in this conflict despite how they are viewed or how they have been treated.
These reminders of harsh reality serve to heighten our commitment to this local organization, OPALGA. In our small way, for every person whose life we can touch and say to him or her, “You have a purpose being here,” we can stand in the face of discrimination and hate, holding our ground and make this a better world, One Gay at a Time!
