Our Neighbor To The North

The 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey data is being broken down to the state levels and the results are being released,

Survey suggests transgender Maine residents face discrimination
Many respondents say they have experienced problems in housing, health care and when dealing with law enforcement.
Press Herald
By Dennis Hoey
June 15, 2017

A new survey of transgender life in Maine and the United States suggests transgender people in Maine face discrimination in health care, housing and the criminal justice system.

The U.S. Transgender Survey was conducted by the National Center for Transgender Equality through an anonymous online survey in 2015 of nearly 28,000 people in all 50 states, 182 of them in Maine.
[…]
“This data gives voice to the experiences of Mainers from Aroostook to York,” Quinn Gormley, president of MaineTransNet, said in a statement. “We, as advocates, face a constant struggle to impress upon providers, politicians and the public the severity of discrimination faced by transgender Mainers. These statistics come as no surprise to anyone in our community.”
[…]
“From employment to housing, to education, to police violence, sexual assault, access to health care and beyond, transgender Mainers experience disparities that can scarcely be compared to the lived reality of the general population,” Maggie Campbell, director of communications and development for the Health Equity Alliance, said in a statement.

Surveys are important because when you deal with legislators usually the first question that they ask is “show me the data” and without any data it is hard to show a need for the legislation. That is why the removal of any questions about LGBT people from the 2020 U.S. census if going to hurt us. If you are not counted you don’t exist.

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I went to see the musical with three other fiends and the show was excellent! I always love going to a play, I am drawn to the live performance and I am amazed at all the line that the actors have to memorize. I have a hard enough time memorizing a sentence let alone a whole play.

The Goodspeed Opera House is from the 1870s,

The Goodspeed has endured as a majestic presence on the Connecticut River since it was built as the Goodspeed Opera House in 1876 by William H. Goodspeed, shipping and banking magnate and avid theatre lover. Since that time The Goodspeed has lived two lives: the first as a bustling center of commerce housing a theatre, professional offices, steamboat passenger terminal ,and a general store; and the second, after a period of neglect and deterioration, as a magnificent professional musical theatre fully restored in 1963 to its original splendor.
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The theater in the Victorian-style building is located on the fourth floor of the tallest wooden structure on the Connecticut River, and was constructed in 1876. A new stage was built over the original and incorporates what were formerly audience boxes into the downstage left and right areas. The boxes now serve as actor entrances below and lighting positions above.

We had seats in the balcony, or the nosebleed section overlooking the stage. The theater is on the second floor and the balcony up on the third floor which is accessed through a winding staircase and it is a good climb up the stairs, I wasn’t the only one huffing and puffing by the time you reach the third floor.

Give me a play any day over a movie or television.