Running Out of Words a Million Letters Later
When Jon Stewart retired as host of The Daily Show last summer, he acknowledged that after 17 years he was running out of gas—or gags—or both. And I realized that I have been writing these CAMPtalk columns for the same length of time as Stewart presided over his satirical news series. We both began in the previous millennium, in the early months of 1999, and while I’m not comparing the effort that has gone into my pieces for Letters from CAMP Rehoboth to the copious amount of work required to do a four-night a week TV program, I also find myself having an increasingly difficult time keeping the column fresh and informative and (in my case) timely. (At least Stewart had a large team of writers to help him, and his words reached his audience within hours.)
I used to be able to report a fair amount of news in this column because information for and about LGBT folks’ concerns was hard to get from the mainstream media. Today, everything of importance or even inconsequential interest spins the globe with the quick click of a web news bulletin or Facebook post. Hundreds of gay-themed websites vie to deliver the scoop first.
Times have changed dramatically over these last 17 years, and I’m happy to say that the LGBT community has won many hard-fought battles (though plenty of skirmishes remain and we must all continue to work hard for our full civil rights). When I first wrote of gay marriage, I was certain it wasn’t going to happen in my lifetime, if ever, and the best we could practically strive for was legal domestic partnerships or government-recognized civil unions. Now, here I am in my second year of happily-ever-after with a man I’d known and loved 25 years before my first column appeared in these pages. And we’re especially happy that we got hitched in our old stomping grounds of Sussex County, Delaware, even though we’ve lived 900 miles south for many years now.
Flipping through binders full of my back pages—a quarter of a million words and at least a million characters worth of CAMPtalk—I recall what a vast variety of subject matter I’ve been fortunate enough to cover. Some topics were and are deadly serious: AIDS prevention and education (I served as the director of the CAMPsafe campaign in 1999-2000) and the escalating perils of climate change, to name just a couple. Other columns have been historical musings and still others have been frivolous—or just for fun.
Early on, I challenged Dr. Laura’s homophobic rants and the scurrilous campaign against sweet little Tinky Winky. I frequently reported on efforts to put an end to bullying in our schools and the need to end discrimination against LGBT seniors in nursing homes, where many Americans are forced to return to their closets in their elder years. I’ve taken on self-righteous, rightwing, hypocritical politicians—and could continue to call out such people for many more years. I’ve chronicled the rise of gay, lesbian and transgender roles on television and in the cinema and mourned the fall of once prominent queer bookstores. And I’ve pondered the effects, pro and con, of our assimilation into a more homogenized society.
Some of my pieces have been about personal pet peeves, and many of those still irk me. In my very first column I complained of Americans’ fetish for slathering or slicing cheese over everything they eat. I expressed frustration that Subway always asked me “what kind of cheese” I wanted, not whether I cared to add a dairy product to my sandwich. Well, it’s still happening—just today in fact. And the sandwich artist who was an infant when my first column appeared seemed just as startled when my response was, “No cheese.”
In 1999 I also complained about the increasing use of cell phones in restaurants and how they were interfering with face-to-face conversations. “Smart” phones didn’t exist back then so people had to speak into their instruments and wait for a verbal answer—often while neighboring tables of diners were forced to listen. I quickly lost the cell wars as higher tech phones proliferated, although public dining has become a little quieter now that texting, Tweeting and instant messaging have become so ubiquitous. I may be showing my age but I don’t understand why a couple goes out for a meal or to shop and ignores each other in favor of whatever pops up on their hand-held devices. It’s a serious addiction problem.
Oh, well, I’ve spoken my mind sufficiently on that topic and many others. And I’ve reached a point where much of what interests me does not make especially illuminating reading. John and I are traveling more (currently planning a Danube River cruise); we’re going to concerts by as many of the living legends of rock ‘n roll as possible from John Fogerty to the Moody Blues. (We just saw Darlene Love perform, and it was a highlight of our year.) We’re involved in local LGBT groups in our community and still work our “company store.” All is well (other than my accelerating macular degeneration), but the older I get the less time I find in the day to accomplish everything on my must-do and wanna-do lists. The fewer deadlines I have to face the better.
I have loved the opportunity to write for Letters for so long, and I may still contribute a piece from time to time if I come up with something I think will inform or entertain you (and if Steve, Murray, and the team care to run it). But it’s time for a new voice to fill this space. I also am proud to have been a part of CAMP Rehoboth in one capacity or another since its earliest founding meetings a quarter of a century ago.
You’ll still be able to find me ranting in short bites on Facebook; if you’d like to “friend” me, feel free. And I’d love for you to search the CAMP Rehoboth archive online and explore some of my CAMPtalk wisdom through nearly two decades. A compendium of these columns would make a fascinating real-time book of LGBT history and cultural change since the turn of the millennium—if I do say so myself.
For some time I’ve thought about how to close my final CAMPtalk, and I’ve decided to recycle the aspiration I used to close my last column when I was editor of my college daily (Ohio University Post) in 1968-69. So here is my simple wish for all of us:
Peace, power, freedom, happiness!
To which I’ll add just one more word—love.
Email Bill Sievert or find him on Facebook as William Sievert. His comedic mystery novel Sawdust Confessions is available on amazon.com.
Editor’s note: It has been a pleasure to work with Bill in his capacity as a CAMP Rehoboth Board Member, CAMPsafe Director, and as a columnist for more than two decades. I will miss his words of wisdom but look forward to hearing from him from time to time.