Soul interviews Executive Directors from Brother To Brother and Q-Center. Topics: 1) What's new in 08? 2) Volunteering (needs and leads) for each organization.

Guest Line-Up:

• Multnomah County Commissioner Jeff Cogen.
• Brother-To-Brother Executive Director Alisa along with B2B Board Members: Andre, Craig & Kevin.
• Q-Center Executive Director Kendall along with Paul - Q-Center’s Committee Chair of Arts and Culture.

In honor of the delay in domestic partnership benefits as well as all the work our community is doing to resolve this delay, we opened this show with track one titled: Drive recorded by Incubus from a CD with the same name: Drive. 

Show Line-Up:

• A quick call with Multnomah County Commissioner Jeff Cogen.
• An interview with Alisa, the ED of Brother-To-Brother.  Alisa (along with her Board) shares HISTORIC news! Listen in as they announce a FIRST of it’s kind (in the nation) partnership between a national and a local organization. Discover B2B news and volunteer needs.
• An interview with Q-Center Executive Director Kendall.  Q-Center received national and some international news attention when they hosted BRO’s vigil for Portland residents. Kendall shares how Q-Center plans to grow in 2008 largely supported by a wide-cast of volunteers.

Announcements:

As always, Out Loud is here to help you get the word out about Portland LGBTQ news and events. Be sure to email us directly before noon of each Tuesday.  We’ll do our best to announce or feature your event on our show or this site.

1. Jan 19th: Dottie’s Magic Pockets showing. Bring the kiddies (ages 3-8) and join Q Center for a wonderful time with LGBTQ-friendly Dottie’s Magic Pockets.

2. On Wednesday, January 30, BRO is staging a rally. Stand Up and Be Counted! A Public Rally to Defend Equality at 5:30 pm Portland, Oregon SW 3rd and Madison - opposite the Federal Courthouse. Click for more details.

3. Finally, we wonder if YOU – yes – YOU want to be part of this show? If you’re interested in becoming part of the Out Loud KBOO collective, check out these Volunteer links. Then, get in touch with us. Email us directly.  If you’ve emailed us in the past and haven’t heard back from us – PLEASE email us again.  Emails do get lost. We’re in once a week. We’ll respond to your messages and emails as soon as we receive them.

As always, there's a variety of online q-calenders to check out. For more events - click to Just Out, BRO, Q-Center and Willamette Week.

Soul interviews L4Lpdx, & Brother To Brother on the question: How do we enjoy all the colors of the rainbow – including the traditional Christmas red and green.

Guest Line-Up:

• L4L.PDX Co-Founders Robin, Vicki, and Cathy (click for Just Out article).
• Brother-To-Brother Executive Director Alisa along with B2B Board Members: Andre, Craig & Kevin.

We opened the show with In Our Lifetime (Track 16) on the audio CD Holiday Serenade available from our very own Portland’s Gay Men’s Chorus.

In the middle of the announcements, find out more about a new dance group for lesbians 35 and up known as L4L.PDX. After announcements, we learn how Robin, Cathy and Andrew sprinkle a little rainbow energy into our traditional red and green day.

Next, Alisa the Executive Director along with her Board members Andre, Craig & Kevin of Brother-To-Brother shares some wisdom around:

• myths related to gay men of color
• how to create fun, respectful relationships celebrating all cultures

We closed with Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas selected from John Blaylock’s cd titled: Home for the Holidays.  The cd jacket notes his inspiration for this work is a passion to support The Trevor Project and The Trevor Helpline. The Treavor Helpline is toll-free, 24-hour suicide prevention hotline for gay and questioning youth.  If you, or some one you know needs help, the Teavor’s toll-free helpline is: (866).4.U.TREVOR (866.488.7386)

Announcements & News

• As always, Out Loud is here to help you get the word out about Portland LGBTQ news and events. Be sure to email us directly before noon of each Tuesday.  We’ll do our best to announce or feature your event on our show or this site.

• If you’re interested in becoming part of the Out Loud KBOO collective, check out these Volunteer links. Then, get in touch with us. Email us directly.

• BRO Board of Directors unanimous vote to appoint Jeana Frazzini as the organization's new Executive Director. Check out Basic Rights Oregon for more details.

• Do you enjoy knitting, crocheting maybe some needle point? Q-Center hosts a Q-knitting group each Sunday from 2-4. 

• This announcement receives a creativity award!!  Someone text-messaged kboooutloud@yahoo.com a reminder about the traditional Saturday morning Radical Faerie coffee gathering.  Each Saturday morning starting mid morning and going to early afternoon-ish you’ll find all sorts of Fairies gathering at Three Friends Coffeehouse located at 201 SE 12th Ave.

Brother-To-Brother shares the following Kwanzaa information with us - enjoy . . .

Kwanzaa is an African American and Pan-African holiday which celebrates family, community and culture.  This is a time of:

• recommitment to our highest cultural ideals in our ongoing effort to always bring forth the best of African cultural thought and practice
• celebration of the Good, the good of life and of existence itself, the good of family, community and culture, the good of the awesome and the ordinary, in a word the good of the divine, natural and social.

There is no way to understand and appreciate the meaning and message of Kwanzaa without understanding and appreciating its profound and pervasive concern with values. Kwanzaa was created to introduce and reinforce seven basic values of African culture which contribute to building and reinforcing family, community and culture among African American people as well as Africans throughout the world African community. 

1. Umoja (Unity): To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.
2. Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.
3. Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility): To build and maintain our community together and make our brother's and sister's problems our problems and to solve them together.
4. Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together.
5. Nia (Purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
6. Kuumba (Creativity): To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
7. Imani (Faith) To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

As a same sex loving community we can embrace the principles of Kwanzaa and feel embraced by what Kwanzaa strands for.  Kwanzaa teaches us these principles so we may strive to achieve them.  This time of year is a time to look evaluate where we are in reaching these principle, reinforcing our focus on these principles, and motivating us to work on these seven principles.  Have we not strived for unity within our own families while we worked towards understanding an acceptance?  Do we not seek to define ourselves and name ourselves?  We have worked hard to build and maintain our community and be recognized as a community that is deserving of basic rights.  Need we even speak on creativity?  We are some of the most creative people on the planet!

Soul interviews Executive Director Bonnie from Love Makes A Family along with PLOP members Amy and TJ about how families can co-create less stressful holidays.

Bonnie is the founder and Executive Director of Love Makes A Family, Inc., an organization of families headed by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual people, and their friends. Groundwork for the secular organization was laid during her production of a video tape, Love Makes A Family, about lesbian and gay Quaker families (1992). From May, 1993 until January 1998 Bonnie served as moderator for Love Makes A Family: A Public Dialog About Lesbians, Gays and Family Values broadcast weekly on a local talk radio station.

Parenting/Pregnant Lesbians of Portland (PLOP) is a group of lesbian moms and their families that gather monthly. Founded in 2003 by four couples, PLOP has an open membership policy for anyone to join at anytime in their parenting journey.

Announcement(s):

• Out Loud needs volunteers!  If you’re interested in becoming part of the Out Loud KBOO collective, check out www.kboo.fm Volunteer links.  Then, email us. We’ll get back in touch asap.

• For up-to-the-minute information on current events, check the following calendars: Q-Center, Just Out, Willamette Week

Carla interviews Myshkin, lead from Myshkin's Ruby Warblers, and Sailor Banks, aka Sugar Short Wave and a member of  Myskin's Ruby Warblers, both performing with Siren Nation.