30 SONGS FOR GAY PRIDE ~ 2022

I’m picking thirty of my favorite songs, one a day, for Gay Pride 2022. They range from pretty darned old to fairly new. They are each songs I really like, and many of them, love with all my gay heart. So I am going to try and one song to this list a day, and then repost it with that day’s date, moving the song from the day down one. I hope you like my list. And I would love to hear which ones you like, and tell me songs that make you feel Gay Pride!

As a bonus, you will find all the lyrics to the songs at the second half of this posting!

HAPPY GAY PRIDE!!

The Three Bears; A Love Story

“‘Love your neighbor’” is not just a beautiful slogan, but a law of nature. To fulfill another person’s desire means to sense ourselves in balance with a harmonious infinite stream of the force of love, beyond this world’s limitations of time, space and motion.”
~~ Michael Laitman

I’ve known many kinds of love. To my surprise, knowing I was gay, I met a woman and found myself loving her, and we were together for six years. We had a beautiful daughter. I think what made it work as long as it did was that I believed that bodies don’t matter, that souls have no sex, and I fell in love with this soul which just happened to be in a female body.

But then I discovered that, for me, that souls are male and female as well. I believe that. My theory (and it can only be a theory) that that is exactly why we have trans people. Because they know what they are inside (their souls) are a different sex than their body. Now I am not trans, I am cis male, so I could be told I’m wrong, and that’s fine. I am always ready to learn.

But my point is that I found I needed to be loved by not only someone in a man’s body,

Religious Holidays: Imbolc / Candlemas 2021

Imbolc, in the Celtic seasonal calendar, signals the beginning of Spring and the stirrings of new life and marks the beginning of the lambing season. It is Feile Brighde, the ‘quickening of the year.’ The original word Imbolg means ‘in the belly.’ All is pregnant and expectant. It is the promise of renewal, of hidden potential, of earth awakening and life-force stirring. Imbolc 2021 in Ireland will begin in the evening of Monday, February 1 and ends in the evening of Tuesday, February 2. A lesser known pagan holiday, Imbolc falls exactly halfway between the Winter Solstice (Yule) and the Spring Equinox (Ostara). Daylight is increasing and spring is the air.

Imbolc is traditionally the festival honoring the Goddess Brigid (Brighid, Bride, Brigit), so loved as a pagan deity that her worship was woven into the Christian church as St Bridget. As Christianity spread from Rome to northern Europe and the British Isles Imbolc was adopted as Candlemass, still celebrated on February 2. Brigid is a Goddess of healing, poetry and smithcraft and also a of Fire, of the Sun, and the Hearth. She brings fertility to the land and its people and is closely connected to midwives and new-born babies. Also referred to as the Feast of Pan, Feast of Torches, Feast of Waxing Lights, and Oimele (“ewes milk”).

It is time to let go of the past and to look to the future, clearing out the old, making both outer and inner space for new beginnings. This can be done in numerous ways, from spring cleaning your home to clearing the mind and heart to allow inspiration to enter for the new cycle. It’s a good time for wish-making or making a dedication.

WAYS TO CELEBRATE IMBOLC
Eat your dinner by candlelight
Create meals with intention for what you want to accomplish in the coming year
Create authentic medieval fare such as roasted meats, hearty breads and old fashion desserts
Have a romantic dinner or for a few of your favorite people
Decorate your favorite room with candles in the evening
Take time to meditate or journal in your candlelit room
Weather permitting, take some time to go outside and enjoy the lengthening days and increased sunlight. Take a walk to appreciate this period of rest for the earth and nature.

According to the author Patti Wigington, “Although traditionally Imbolc is associated with Brighid, the Irish goddess of hearth and home, there are a number of other deities who are represented at this time of year.”

Some of these are….

🌻🥖🍏 Three Bears Lammas 🍴 Lughnasa Feast! 🍖🌽🌾

And this feast is such a symbol of all that we’ve been given! Pork ribs cooked with blackberries and red onion, vegetable soup made from locally grown and seasons with herbs from our garden, fire roasted corn (also local), fresh bread (it’s supposed to be a man! *G*) and apple blackberry cobbler.

And even Oliver and Frodo got to feast on rib bones! Frodo really tore into his!

Once, to our ancestors, it was a prominent Celtic festival, a joyful celebration of the first harvest. In an age when crops can be imported all year round, we tend to forget just how important this time was to our ancestors―the failure of the harvest meant starvation and death.

Thank You Universe for all You have provided, especially in such troubled times. It’s good to remember all the blessings we have!

🌻🥖🌽🌾 Happy Lammas and Blessed Lughnasa to all! 🌽🌾🌻🥖

If This Was a Normal Year (Ha! Ha!) Today Would Have Been the Last Day of Midwest Men’s Festival

But this isn’t a “normal” year is it? Nope. Not at all. It is the weirdest and possibly hardest year of my life. And darnit, I want it to be over. On the other hand, if there is one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s not to wish away my life. Because I honestly don’t know how much life I have left.

I think about some of the best friends I’ve had in my life, Paulle Jung Morvant-Alexander and Joanne Papin, and so many ohters. They were not expecting their last day and–wham–it came. Jo went in for exploratory surgery to find out why she was fainting and before the operation even started,

I Am Confused. Please Help.

I don’t want to get all political, and I don’t want to cause any kind of hurt, any kind of anger, I am just trying to understand. Any calm and collected answers to my questions would really be appreciated

Okay, they are taking down Confederate statues which glorify historical figures. And there are those who are angry about this, and I’m not sure I understand. They claim that

RE-BLOG; “Men’s Variety” Explains Otters in a Fairly Good and Comprehensive Article

From the online magazine Men’s Variety comes this fairly good/comprehensive essay explaining what “otters,” a subgroup of gay men, are. It is good information for gay romance writers as well as anyone who might be interested! The author seems to have a type. My husband “R” is “technically” more an otter than a bear, but he likes being a part of that community. Enjoy…!

Gay Otters: Learn About the Hairy Relative of Wolves and Bears!

Gay Otters Are So Cute!

Gay otters represent one of the largest swath of men within the

Happy Autumn, Peaceful Autumnal Equinox, and Bright Mabon Blessings

“And all at once, summer collapsed into fall.”
~~ Oscar Wilde

It’s a lovely time of year and what I will focus on. It is a time of change, and change can be good. I’m calling on the good and I pray for it for you as well. I don’t like the cold. But I like cuddling and autumn colors.

My Pagan friends celebrate this day as Mabon, and the Autumn Equinox divides the day and night equally, and we can all take a moment to pay our respects to the impending dark and give thanks to the waning sunlight, as we store our harvest of this year’s crops. According to “The Celtic Connection,” the Druids call this celebration, Mea’n Fo’mhair, and honor the Green Man, the God of the Forest, by offering libations to trees. Offerings of ciders, wines, herbs and fertilizer are appropriate at this time. Wiccans celebrate the aging Goddess as she passes from Mother to Crone, and her consort the God as he prepares for death and re-birth.

Did you know that Fall leaf colors actually exist all year long? Leaves come in all different colors including yellow and orange and purple and red, but we normally see they as green most of the year because chlorophyll is produced more in the summer months. As the Earth tilts, they get less sunlight and therefor the chlorophyll production goes down and the natural colors of the leaves comes through!

Did you know Fall isn’t caused by the Earth’s distance from the sun? That’s right. Fall, like all of the seasons, is caused by the Earth’s tilt in relation to the sun. It gets warmer in each hemisphere when that hemisphere tilts toward the sun and colder when it leans away.

Fall is only “Fall” to Americans, even though the term was coined in Britain. The word “harvest” was used until the 1300’s, but sometime after, poets coined the phrase “the fall of leaves” — shortened to “Fall” in the 1600s. The word “autumn” still remained popular throughout England’s period of colonizing the world. The lack of consistent communication between the English and the people in the American colonies led to differences in the language. By the mid-1800s, the word “fall” had firmly rooted itself in America.

I suspect one day soon I’ll be running around taking lots of pictures, if I can get them. Autumn often lasts about a week here in KC—LOL!—because it will be just starting to turn colors and then a big storm will hit and all the leaves will be gone. But those couple days?

BEAUTIFUL!

I hope that your day and your season are filled with blessings and that the changes will be the best ever!
BG “Ben” Thomas
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I got some of my information from here!:
CNN Travel: “The first day of fall is here. Here are 5 things you probably didn’t know.”
By Cassandra Santiago and Amanda Barnett CLICK HERE
The Celtic Connection: “Mabon” CLICK HERE

A Re-Blog from Love Bytes: I Thought I Would Share a Special Moment (or two) With You!

POSTED BY B.G. THOMAS ON JULY 27, 2019 IN LOVEBYTES

Thought I would share the guest post I did for Dani Elle Maas’s amazing MM Romance blog, LoveBytes yesterday. You can read it below or also the original post by Clicking Rich HERE. The advantage of doing the second is you will see a wonderful world of articles, essays, reviews and more. Either place you can see what I have to say about gays being homogenized and heteronormalized AND even BETTER, you can see the video of my drag act.

Not bad, huh?

Check it out, Girlfriends!
Love,
BG “Ben” Thomas

I Thought I Would Share a Special Moment (or two) With You!

Some of you may know that each year I go to a retreat called Midwest Men’s Festival. It’s the center of my year. In many ways the axis my world revolves around. It’s that important to me. It even inspired my novel, Summer Lover.

It’s a little hard how to explain just what Midwest Men’s Festival is. Without writing a novel here, that is, instead of an essay. If you ever saw that episode of Queer As Folk where Michael and Emmet go to Faerie Camp, you can get an idea. But part of what it is a total rejection of the homogenization and heteronormalizing of gay men.

What I mean by that is that it often feels that a big part of why gay men are becoming more and more “accepted” (and I can’t speak for LBTQ) is that we as a culture are becoming more and more

GAY PRIDE MONTH; Day Thirty, Pride Music

This past month, during Gay Pride’s Fiftieth Anniversary, I have shared a few of my personal Pride anthems. These included Heather Small’s “Proud”, Johnna’s “Pride” and Gloria Gaynor’s version of “I Am What I Am” from the musical version of La Cage aux Folles. All have wonderful things to say and stir my blood. Others would include “I Will Survive” also by Ms Gaynor, “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” by Sylvester, “We Are Family” by Sister Sledge, “I’m Coming Out” by Diana Ross, “It’s Raining Men” by The Weather Girls, and “Firework” by Katy Perry are just a few more. But one that rises above, for me, is Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.” The words are powerful and speak not only to all the “letters” in GLBTQIA+ but also all peoples. She excludes no one!

No matter gay, straight, or bi
Lesbian, transgendered life
I’m on the right track, baby
I was born to survive
No matter black, white or beige
Chola or orient made
I’m on the right track, baby
I was born to be brave

Here is the version I picked out….