Fantasia Fair Day 2

I found the orientation brunch on the third try, I stopped at Bayside Betsey’s… nope not there. They say it was at the Crown and Anchor so I went to the Cabaret Room… nope not there and someone said that it was in the Paramount Room… yup.

I sat with some friends from COS and meet other people from uniTy, there are quite a number of folks from COS and uniTy here as well as others that I have known from past fairs. Unfortunately the one workshop that I wanted to attend was canceled because of the doctor didn’t show up.

At the brunch I asked the chief of police if there were any charging station in town for electric vehicles and she said that there weren’t… rats. My car is a plug-in hybrid so I guess I have to burn gas around town.

I went to the lunch time talk “Yellowed and Fading: Searching for Transgender Identity in Vintage
Photographs of Crossdressing,” it was a very good presentation on vintage photographs of trans-people from the early nineteenth century to about the mid-seventies. The presenter has an extensive collection of old photographs, many of them were from Casa Susanna in the Catskills.

When I was leaving the talk, Mariette Pathy Allen was photographing someone who was dressed in late 1800s style dress out in the parking lot of the Crown and Anchor.

When I got back to my motel room and checked my email I found that I had a number of email for a meeting that I’m coordinating for CTAC (Connecticut TransAdvocacy Coalition), so I had to send out a bunch of emails. No rest for the wicked.

In the evening there was a dinner and a show for us at the Paramount Room at the Crown & Anchor, and I sat with Stana, a couple from uniTy, and someone else from Connecticut. After the dinner of hot dogs and hamburgers Christine Howey did her spoken word play Exact Change about her life and transition… it was excellent! There were so many parts that resonated with me, her early childhood and wanting to go and play with the girl, crossdressing in secret, her being a quite boy and the relief she felt once she transitioned.

The FanFair website said this about the play,

For the Fantasia Fair 40, The Ruby Jubilee, acclaimed film critic, poet and trans woman Christine Howey will be performing her one woman play, Exact Change, for our Monday night Town and Gown affair. This is a moving play about finding your voice and championing your identity. Exact Change is the powerful, amusing and personal story of noted Cleveland actor, journalist and critic Christine Howey (formerly Dick Howey). Before transitioning in 1990, Ms. Howey was a celebrated stage actor in Cleveland, known for playing such heavy-hitting male roles as Lucifer, Josef Goebbels, "Terrible Jim Fitch," Richard Nixon, Robespierre, God and others. Exact Change is a one-woman tour-de-force spiced with literary references, personal stories and an incisive wit that truly packs a punch.

Also I had a pleasant surprise, a therapist (she is cisgender) that I know came to Fantasia Fair and after the play when I was talking to her after the play she told me that watching the play made her realize that she is in the right job.

P.S. As I mentioned yesterday, the motel that I am staying at is a bare-bones motel, this morning it was reinforced. The continental breakfast has coffee, tea and orange juice, and muffins, scones and pastries but no cream cheese or butter.