Fantasia Fair Day 4 – Whales!

Yesterday’s luncheon keynote address was by Denise Norris and her keynote was “My Journey to Gender Authenticity.” I haven’t heard of her so I read her bio,

Denise Norris is more recently the lead for global transgender workplace inclusion at a global management consulting firm with over 300,000 employees world-wide and she also serves on the Board of Directors for Marriage Equality USA, a national organization advocating an end of discrimination regarding civil marriage for all people regardless of gender or orientation. Her roots in the Transgender community extend back more than 20 years from co-founding The Transexual Menace in 1993 to the creation of the Institute for Transgender Economic Advancement in 2014. In 2012, she received the Stonewall Spirit of Pride Award from the Stonewall National Museum and Archives for her contributions to the Transgender community. Her vision for the future is that we will no longer be separated by letters like L, G, B and T, but will become one community, united in seeking equality for all genders and all orientations. She claims the mountains of the Catskills in New York State as her home along with several horses and a couple of dogs.

In her talk she said many things that I believe such as what we have in common with LGB and that it is the person who does not conform to the gender norms that are discriminated against; that those who cannot “pass” or integrate into society face the blunt of harassment and violence.

She also said that diversity improves the bottom line, having a diverse workforce brings about a border pool of ideas and innovations. Having teams made up of men and women, people from different races, sexual orientation, and gender identities actually is more productive.

Companies that value diversity are leading in the market place; they are well ahead of companies that meet the HRC’s (Human Rights Campanian) Corporate Equality Index (CEI).

In the morning “Effectively Representing the Trans Community” and I was on a panel with Dr. Miqqi Alicia Gilbert and Dainna Cicotello and I was the light weight on the panel. They were pushing the envelope long before I was even peeking out the closet door. We kept getting off track but Miqqi did an excellent job of keeping us on topic.

In the afternoon I went on a photo shoot and I got side tracked… I went over to Race Point and as I was walking down to the beach a whale breaches about a 100 yards offshore. .. whoa! I set up my camera with the 500mm telephoto lens and wait, and wait, and wait. After about 45 minutes I give up, I think I have some photos of the hump and it blowing but it didn't breach again. I'm walking back to the parking lot and I hear everyone gasp, it breached again about a 1/4 mile from shore. Aggg...

While I was there about for “kids” walked by dragging a large cage and one of them asked me what everyone was looking at, I told her there was a whale with a calve offshore. She asked a few more questions and then called her boss. It turned out they were there to rescue an injured seal and she said it was very rare for a whale to be in so close to shore.

So this was the best shot of the whale, all you can see is a black share and the spray of water from the blow hole.

Passing by about a 1/2 mile offshore was this NOAA research ship…

I can't help wonder if the NOAA fisheries research ship had any relationship with the whale being just offshore. I thought maybe they were tracking a large school of fish.

The Coast Guard station…