I did this Christmas picture during my first Christmas season living at the Habana Inn in Oklahoma City.

I had joined two GLBT groups when I first moved to OKC, Simply Equal and the Oklahoma Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus (OGLPC), and I had been doing cartoons for the Gayly.

This is how I learned what the OKC/GLBT Community was all about, got introduced to the wider political environment in the city and state, and got to meet quite a few of the movers and shakers.

14 years before this, I had been teaching in Stoughton, Massachusetts where I was active in the teachers union in that town and through that the Massachusetts Teachers Association.

Before I became the president of the Stoughton Teachers Association I had attempted to institute a modified sheltered workshop for my Special Education students. That had been a bit of a battle that introduced to me to the political underbelly of a school district which showed me that there were a lot of education decisions made that had little to do with educating students, but more to do with administrative self promotion. This was something I encountered wherever I was to teach after that, and it was also something many retired teachers I meet here on Cape Cod had come to experience, and which influenced many to leave the profession.

A simple request that met with some rather odd objections and resistance, as well as that Wizard of Oz approach of adding a new requirement as each existing requirement was met, got coverage in a local regional newspaper both during this process and after when the program was finally allowed and it showed great success.

Later as the union president I took on the Board and superintendent as they attempted to target certain teachers under the guise of needing to reorganize the schools. They were clumsy and too obvious, and definitely were not prepared for strong opposition. The employees of the district were so disturbed by this draconian sloppiness that we were united in opposition.

Being a long process, it was featured in the media on a regular basis, and the public exposure of the goings-on helped bring the plan to a halt.

Meanwhile a few towns away, there was a minister strongly fighting for human rights.

Every time he would go before his town’s Board of Selectman, organize an event at his church, or had some gathering in the town square, he got coverage in the same paper that was covering my activities.

I read every report about his attempts to gain equal rights for all people, especially Gay people, and this was in the late 70’s early 80’s, so he was extremely progressive, often alone, and a target of the prejudiced.

And, as I was to find out in the most unimaginable location, he was also reading the newspaper reports about my sheltered workshop and opposition to that reorganization plan. But, during that time, we had never met.

What was the time that you have spends in your young age days. lowest priced cialis Why do women orgasm so hard? Now, more and more of my I.M. colleagues and indeed new people that I cheap cialis overnight meet on line are `getting into blogging’. European doctors have a long time experience with healing foods in helping people with pancreatic deficiency. discount viagra from canada In most cases, shop for viagra the penile organ does not receive enough amount of blood to cause an erection. I was sitting at an OGLPC meeting one night in what had been the Oasis Center on 39th street among the Gay bars, and the gentleman sitting next to me, who was a long time member of the group, was explaining his attempt to gather all manner of GLBT historiana for a planned museum. He had pamphlets, posters, documents, newspaper articles, pictures, anything that dealt with the history of the GLBT Community in Oklahoma City and was looking for a place to house it as his own home did not have enough space for what he had collected.

When he was asked about the viability of his plan, he explained that when he had been a pastor of a church in a small town in Massachusetts he had done the same thing for his church and another local organization.

Something sounded familiar about him and his story.

We got to talking and found that we were very familiar with each other as I was the teacher he had read about 14 years before, and he the minister I had read about.

He had eventually moved to Oklahoma City to assume the pastorship of a church, and I had moved on to Los Angeles before arriving in Oklahoma City as a result of a “series of errors in judgment”.

And here we were sitting at a meeting in Oklahoma City, the minister and the teacher who knew of each other, but who had never met, finally having that meeting.

Bob died not long after that from a heart attack, but not before we had got to know each other better working for GLBT equality in OKC.

That’s Bob on the left side of the picture sporting the mustache and the bald head.

I put him in the picture as a personal remembrance, both of the good guy he was, and to our having been fans of each other who never met when we read about each other, but had finally gotten acquainted when we were fighting for the same thing, not in different towns this time, but together in a city neither of us ever thought we would be in.

That was 20 year ago.

So I thought I would use that picture to wish everyone a Merry ChrisKwanHoliChanamas this year and remember Bob at the same time.