Have you seen her?

Block Betsy DeVos

Please join me by signing this petition to Senate Democratic leaders, urging them to do everything in their power to block Betsy DeVos from becoming secretary of education.

Betsy DeVos is the worst of all nominees currently being considered for Cabinet level positions in Trump's Administration. She is so UNQUALIFIED, it's scary.

DeVos is a woman who never went to public school, nor sent her children to public school, nor worked for public schools. Her agenda is to break the public education system, not educate kids but replace it with a for-profit model.

She doesn't know the law. She hasn't had any experience as an education administrator. And she basically believes there is no role for the Federal Government to play in education. During her confirmation hearing, she replied to almost every question, "I believe that is an issue for the States to decide." Over and over and over.

Asked how school performance should be assessed, she did not know the difference between growth, which measures how much students have learned over a given period, and proficiency, which measures how many students reach a targeted score.

Ms. DeVos even suggested that some school officials should be allowed to carry guns on school  premises. When pressed to explain why, her answer was "to defend against grizzly bears."

For more background, I recommend this Washington Post article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/18/us/politics/betsy-devos-education-secretary-confirmation-donald-trump.html

Then click this link to sign the petition:
https://act.credoaction.com/sign/block_devos

That's when we'll whistle, bitch

A cartoon by Peter Kuper, from this week’s issue. Follow @newyorkercartoons for more #TNYcartoons.

A photo posted by The New Yorker (@newyorkermag) on Dec 27, 2016 at 2:18pm PST

Double LPV and Allied Anniversaries -=- One Special Night -=- You're invited!

This gala affair to celebrate the double anniversaries of Le Petit Versailles (20th) and Allied Productions (35th) is happening in just a matter of weeks. I hope to see you there as a show of support for Co-founders Jack Waters and Peter Cramer. Your participation will help to bring in a little extra revenue for the Garden this coming summer too.

Get your tickets now.

Allied Productions & Le Petit Versailles
Double Anniversary Benefit Celebration
Wednesday December 21st, 5-9pm

@ Howl! Happening: An Arturo Vega Project
6 East First Street (between Bowery & 2nd Avenue)
New York, NY 10003
(917) 475-1294

Tickets and Benefit Premiums are available for purchase

This year commemorates the 35th anniversary of Allied Productions,Inc. (Allied) and 20th anniversary of Le Petit Versailles (LPV) garden.

To mark these banner years, our celebration honors stalwarts of New York City that represent the incredible artists and resources that sustain and inspire us:

• Sarah Schulman, author, playwright, professor and activist
• Harriet Taub, Executive Director of Materials for the Arts

Benefit event includes a silent art auction of work by more than forty artists and live performances by Penny Arcade, Pamela Sneed, and John Michael Swartz, graciously hosted by Howl Happenings on Wednesday December 21 from 5-9pm.

You can begin bidding on silent auction art at: www.biddingowl.com/alliedproductionsinc

Allied is a tax exempt non profit arts umbrella founded in 1981 as an entirely artist-run multi-purpose entity that fosters collective community building by presenting, producing, and sponsoring all areas of the arts, including the activities of individuals, groups, and organizations. 

Allied created LPV in 1995 and transformed an abandoned lot into an extraordinary community garden and multipurpose space that serves as our primary venue for art and activism, supporting communities at risk,including LGBTQ communities and youth of color. 

Since 2001 LPV has presented hundred of poets, artists, filmmakers, musicians and more,benefiting our community. Furthermore we are moving forward with improvements to sustain the garden itself.

Benefit Committee (List in Formation)
Barbara Braun
Susan C. Brown
Peter Cramer
Jose Carlos Del Pino
Gene Fedorko
Harry Kafka
Noelle King
Barbara Korein
Zoe Leonard
Anelle Miller
Lucia Maria Minervini
Hunter O'Hanian
Richard Peterson
Linda Richardson
Jackie Rudin
Lynne Sachs
Ethan Shoshan
Frank Susa
Jack Waters
Bonnie and Doug Weill
Friends of Materials for the Arts

Silent Auction Contributing Artists ( List in formation ) *Live Auction*
Leilah Babirye, Bizzy Barefoot, Michael Bailey-Gates, Olivia Beens, Helene Berson, Dietmar Busse, Mary Campbell, Walt Cessna, Peter Cramer, Yoshiko Chuma, Sylvia de Swaan, Mike Diana, Chev D'orange, *Olafur Eliasson*, Coleen Fitzgibbon, Robert Flynt, Carl George, Ingo Giezendanner, Michelle Handelman, Geoffrey Hendricks, Kate Huh, Bill Jacobson, Noe Kidder, Daryl King, Elisabeth Kley, Nina Kuo, Stephen Lack, Scooter LaForge, International Chuck/Phoebe Legere, Matthew Leifheit, Jonathan Leiter, Zoe Leonard, Jackie Lima, Alyson Lipkin, Leslie Lowe, *Robert Mangold*, Shelley Marlow, Paul Miller aka DJ SPOOKY, Lucia Maria Minervini, Ursula Minervini, Rafael Melendez, Alice O'Malley, Tom Otterness, Sanou Oumar, Clayton Patterson, Hermes Payrhuber, Gio Black Peter, Scott Pfaffman, Kembra Pfahler, Neil Polen, Carlo Quispe, Hunter Reynolds, Wade Rosenthal, Lorin Roser, Rafael Sánchez, Justin Sayre, Sarah Schulman, Ethan Shoshan, Patricia Silva, Mark Street, John Michael Swartz, Sarah Tell, Gail Thacker, George Towne, Conrad Ventur, Anton Van Dalen, Jack Waters, Kathleen White, Lili White, Tad Wiley, Martha Wilson, Alex Wolkowicz, Doug Wright, Sally Young, The YES Men, Quito Ziegler

Kudos and Thanks
Howl Happenings – Jane Friedman, Ted Riederer, Carter Edwards, Susan Martin, Allied Productions Inc. Board of Directors, Ethan Shoshan, Carlo Quispe, Sur Rodney Sur, Kelvin Goncalves/ ELKEL. and all the contributing artists and performers.

---

Donation Levels & What You Get

BENEFIT MEMBER $55
Admission to the 12/21/16 benefit silent auction and performance event @ 6pm.
Carlo Quispe silkscreen design tote bag (and surprise goodie bag items)
Allied's Gordon Kurtti Exhibition Catalogue ($20 value)

BENEFIT COMMITTEE $110
Early Preview admission to the 12/21/16 benefit silent auction and performance event @ 5pm.
Carlo Quispe silkscreen design tote bag (and surprise goodie bag items)
Allied's Gordon Kurtti Exhibition Catalogue ($20 value)
Dancing Foxes Press book Available Light, 2014 by Zoe Leonard ($45 value)

SWEETHEART $500
All of the above PLUS LPVTV DVD One Hour Special ($45 value)
or Ultimately Civil Project limited ed silkscreen poster signed by artist Leslie Lowe ($150 value)

LOVE BUG $1500
All of the above plus Kiki Smith "Island Of Negative Utopia"  signed silkscreen on linen ($850 value)

ANGEL $2500
All of the above except for Kiki Smith print.
Kembra Pfahler & Gordon Kurtti giclee prints (2013, Limited Ed of 20, $1200 value)

DEITY $5000 
EVERYTHING under the umbrella…

ABOUT HOWL! HAPPENING

Are you available to help?

Able-bodied friends,

Are you available to lend me a hand at home this weekend? I need help to begin packing up my apartment. (Yes, I'm moving from Brooklyn to Rhode Island by late October/early November, in case you haven't heard that news from me quite yet.)

I'm looking for folx to help anytime this Sunday, Oct 2. This is just round one of packing so it won't involve any heavy lifting. No furniture or books to move yet, just clothes, kitchen stuff, knickknacks, and the like.

Two or three volunteers would be VERY advantageous, and of course the more the merrier.

I will feed you, pour you drinks, smoke you up, do sexy dances, etc. Whatever it takes to get a few cheery helpers, please!

Please email me back if you can spare two or three hours on Sunday (morning, afternoon, or evening). Don't try texting or calling... my phone is out of service.

Thanks,
Frank

@gayletter pick for Sunday: "Are Queers Ageist?" with @scotteeisfat and @murray_hill at @bgsqd.

A photo posted by DAX MGMT (@dax_mgmt) on Sep 21, 2016 at 7:23pm PDT

Ten seconds of Empire (2016)

Ten seconds of Empire

A video posted by Frank Susa (@fmsnyc) on Jul 22, 2016 at 10:47pm PDT

The greatest gift of the season

First of all, I'm a few days late wishing you a happy 2016, everyone! But with over 360 days to go in the year, it still feels right to offer you joyous felicitations for the weeks and months ahead anyway. 

Despite my better intentions, I haven't written to this list since October. I thought at the time that I would be sending updates every so often about my progress through treatment for my Hodgkin's Lymphoma relapse that was detected by my doctors earlier in the fall. But here we are, several months later, and this is the one and only update on that subject that you'll be getting from me.

It's the only report you'll get ― I'm thrilled to say ― because I've made it through my treatment much more quickly than expected. Just about two weeks ago, my oncologist told me that I am officially in remission and that he does not see a need for me to continue with chemo or radiation therapy. In the spirit of spreading good tidings of great joy, as one does during the holidays, it feels quite apropos to share this news with you. This reprieve is after all the greatest gift I could have hoped for this season.

However, in the vernacular of cancer treatment remission is not equivalent to cure. As good as this news sounds at first, it comes with a caveat. From the moment the relapse had been detected, my doctors were completely confident that they would get me back into remission fairly quickly. As predicted, it took just about three months. The unexpected part is that this is where we will stop. We're ending this episode in my lymphoma chronicles ahead of schedule.

Beyond remission, the doctors' treatment plan for me included an additional three month process in the form of a full bone marrow transplant. This is how we would have gotten from remission to cure. Bone marrow transplants are done with very high dose chemotherapy, and sometimes with whole body radiotherapy. In the three months of treatment I had during the fall, I had both of these procedures already, just at lower doses. The higher dose therapies would have required me to be hospitalized to provide a highly controlled sterile environment so that they could completely kill off my lymph tissues (where the Hodgkin's cells "lived"). The doses would be high enough to also kill off my bone marrow where all the body's red blood cells are created.

In effect, by killing off all these cells at once, they would have annihilated the entire environment where any remaining Hodgkin's cells could possibly be hiding. It's a scorched earth strategy, and thus so effective I could be declared cancer-free with nearly 100% certainty.

The clincher here is that I did not, and shall not be going through this more rigorous round of therapy ― even though this leaves open the possibility that there may still be Hodgkin's cells left in my body. In remission, I may still have cancer, but just so little of it that it's "undetectable." I am going to be healthy and unaffected by cancer for many years to come. But we are much less certain (statistically speaking) whether I might have another relapse one day down the road.

Now, I have not taken the time to explain all this to you just to dwell on a negative hypothetical. I'm not living in fear of another relapse, nor do I want you to. I just wanted you to have a more clear understanding of my reality. I am deeply at peace with the facts I just spelled out. I'm still celebrating my good news to the fullest. And just as I said at the beginning of this update, I'm writing to spread this joyous celebration just a little further and farther afield into the year anyway.

 So please join me in taking a breath of relief and let's share in the gift of this moment. Enjoy! And may you carry with you the same gratitude I feel in my heart, for at least some moment every day of this coming year.


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Do You Hear What We Hear?!

This is the first, and possibly the only Christmas album I'm listening to this year. Happy holidaze!

Frank's Medical Misadventures: A Status Update

Hi folks,

This is a brief message from me to say that I just spent the day at MSKCC Urgent Care because of a fever I had developed over night on Sunday. I went into the hospital to be monitored most of the day, Monday. After a litany of tests they determined I was not in danger. I came home with no melodramatic aplomb and feeling somewhat refreshed to be quite honest, having gotten some extra hydration and a few new meds to add to my arsenal.

This is my first "personal update" post to this list in a while. You'll soon start to see more. I've decided to revitalize this list by using it to work on chronicling the unfolding story of my medical misadventures. I mean, I've done such things before on this list. But this marks the first time I'm writing specifically about the re-lapse of Hodgkins Lymphoma that I am now battling, after having enjoyed a solid seven-year remission.

For those of you who don't follow me on other channels, and for whom this is news, I will share some more backstory in a later message. I had just wanted to get this one short post out there, just because I've been meaning to. Turns out I am up rather late tonight and I had both the time and wherewithal to do this tiny bit of writing.

For those who want to read more and dig through some other superfluous stuff, go ahead check out my public Facebook and Twitter feeds. There's some medical news and update stuff there already. If we're beyond "unconnected" basic public users sharing cyberspace in the ever-evolving and increasingly impersonal social media universe, there's even more. IDK,* social media has it's place. But, so does the more basic work of telling one's own story on one's own terms. That's what I'll be doing here, especially, on the frankslist email list.

LAST OF ALL, I've created some documents and tools online to assist you in your efforts to follow me. I offer these links for just reference right now. I don't want to go into what they are yet. Just click through the links below and you will see what I am talking about. Hopefully the purpose of the docs will be self-evident.

Treatment Calendar & Visitor Schedule

    http://bit.ly/schedule4frank

Buddy List & Contact Info

    http://bit.ly/buddies4frank

Please put yourself down on the calendar at any point you can be available to visit me at home and/or in the hospital. And also definitely take a moment to fill in your contact info on the buddy list.

Ok, I think that's it for now. "More bulletins at once," as I used to hear Paul Harvey say on AM radio.

Hugs,
Frank


P.S. IDK = I don't know. (In case you didn't.)