Ready for Love

I'm doing a play reading later this month for the Prairie Pride Coalition, a human rights group in our area. I love it when the arts and social justice come together, and I get to help out! Titled A Different Time, it's a play about how hard it was to be a gay man in "a different time" than now, and it's still hard. But it sure makes me glad of and grateful for all the advances in human and civil rights during my lifetime. If you're local, come hear the reading on Monday, February 23, at 7:30 p.m. at Kemp Hall. It's free. The playwright will be present!

In the meantime, I will be celebrating Valentine's Day by attending the intercity junior high volleyball tournament. Yes, that's what the love of my life will be doing, coaching his still undefeated seventh grade team, and I'll be there! That's another wonderful thing about the times we live in: girls'/women's sports!

There will be chocolate. Beautiful Uptown Normal is having a chocolate walk next week, and I plan to find some chocolate by walking around. I hope I find it at the wine bar! Next week is also my birthday week, people are taking me to lunch the next two Fridays, and I'm gathering with some women writers on Sunday to share love poems and stories--funny or sad--so it's going to be a good February, indeed, even if the bitter cold comes back instead of the annual February thaw I used to enjoy in my college years and beyond.

Speaking of love poems, we have plenty at Escape Into Life, in two features already up and another coming up on Valentine's Day itself. The first was Looking for Love, and the one that went up today is Ready for Love, with paintings by Maude McDonald, including the one you see here, View from Within, and, above, This Piece of Me. I hope you have a lovely Valentine's Day, ready or not.