Artenol_Fall_flipbook
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
time-somewhat role as rabbi, and to their credit,<br />
they did not blink.<br />
10<br />
Paper plane protest<br />
Little did I know, and probably little did any of<br />
us know, but by the time November had rolled<br />
around, the impending ceremony had taken<br />
on the trappings of a full-blown PC meltdown<br />
scandal, with several members of the local gay<br />
constabulary having taken it into their heads<br />
that the Art Guys were making fun of them.<br />
The Houston Chronicle’s art critic at the time<br />
hyperventilated about the way the Menil had<br />
allowed its hallowed name to become involved<br />
in an assault on what was, after all, “the human<br />
rights issue of our time.” At a sort of rally the<br />
night before the Menil ceremony, gay rights advocates<br />
and their supporters gathered at a local<br />
gay strip club, where the critic in question (just<br />
to register the sheer extent of the outraged community’s<br />
umbrage)<br />
By the time November<br />
had rolled around, the<br />
impending ceremony<br />
had taken on the trappings<br />
of a full-blown<br />
PC meltdown ...<br />
subjected himself,<br />
in the time-honored<br />
spirit of civil<br />
disobedience, to<br />
the ultimate sacrifice,<br />
as he put it, to<br />
“marry a woman.”<br />
The celebrants were<br />
thereupon invited to<br />
fold that marriage’s announcements into (very<br />
sharp) paper airplanes and to reconvene the<br />
next morning at the Art Guys’ event.<br />
This is the scene into which I, as rebbe, now<br />
found myself lumbering that gray and drizzly<br />
morn, as several hundred officiants gathered<br />
on the Menil’s grounds, several dozen of those<br />
armed with (very sharp-looking) paper planes.<br />
In any event, things went off quite peaceably.<br />
In my role as rebbe (nobody even noticed how in<br />
the spirit of the festivities I had taken to wearing<br />
a Palestinian kafia in lieu of the traditional Hebrew<br />
tallit), I noted how powerful a thing it was<br />
to be re-consecrating this particular tree in the<br />
wake of the previous season’s record-shattering<br />
heat wave which had decimated a truly dismay-<br />
UP A TREE The Art Guys, Michael Galbreth, left, and<br />
Jack Massing, and their betrothed pose for a formal<br />
portrait in 2011. Everett Taasevigen photo<br />
FALL 2015
Change language