Subject: Before it's too late.
From: Shelly Roberts <shellyr@bcfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us>


        Those of us who live OUT in the public eye, have long accepted the
possibility that there is a bullet, or a bomb monogrammed for us.  We have
accepted the possibility, but feeling, in the stomach, the reality that
they still believe that they can kill us and get away with it, as they
have just done in Oregon, makes me very sad, and very angry.  And also
very conscious of the fact that in the process there might just not be a
tomorrow to do something we knew we would have time to get to. So now,
while there is life and time for me, let me say the following to Roxanne
and Michelle, and most especially to you as well.

Please send this message forward to anyplace you think it has gone too
long unsaid.

Thank you.
Shelly.

                ****************************************

                        Thanks For Everything.
                                by
                          Shelly Roberts

        Now that we are a discovered society instead of a hidden one, we
run the enormous hazard of losing our camaraderie, and our reality, in the
newest rivalry for dominance.

        Fist fights happen on the way, in the headlong rush for rights to
claim the center of attention or claim credit where it once was due.
Harsh words and judgments clatter, and in the din and clash, manners are
sometimes the first casualties.

         So I should like to call a temporary truce.  To sprinkle laurels
where too often, merely, we sow thorns.

        If you made a decision on our behalf, whether it proved you a
perfect hindsight fool or victor, thank you.  Decisions are the very thing
we are most currently in need of, and the very thing for which we are
suffering a drought.

        If you said, "No." Or "Stop!" or "Not anymore!" along the way, for
yourself or someone else, to what should not have been, we're in your
debt.

        If you kept on when no one else arrived, or offered you any
relief, you've earned our thanks.  No one said it would be easy.  And she
was right.

        If you've pasted, or stapled, or colored, or carried.  If you've
copied or carted or collated or simply showed up, I hope that "Thank you."
is enough to say.

        If you edited or wrote or just kept printing when there wasn't any
more. Money.  Or backing. Or energy. Or gratitude.  But still you sent out
one more thought that there might somehow be, together, another side to
get to, we should have said we're grateful sooner.

        Thank you if you called a thousand people.  Or eleven.  For any
reason that put us face-to-face.  Seeing who we are is what is letting us
see who we can become.  We'll be talking of it for years.
And it's so easy to forget to give you our appreciation.

        If you sang your song when only dozens paid for the performance,
and still you sang again, we owe you much.

        If you paid for the performance when the audience was small.  Or
stretched a budget to contribute, you have our so-far unexpressed
acknowledgement.  And thanks.  We needed you then.  And now is no
exception. Of if you just wrote a check because you had it. Anyone who says
that money is not a contribution is a liar.  Or poor.  So, thank you, if
we haven't mentioned it yet.

        If you prayed for us and not upon us, we are truly blessed.

        If you let go of your humility and modeled roles that made others
possible, no matter the dimensions, our hat is off.

        If you signed up a voter or voted yourself in a race you either
won or did not, we are much obliged.

        If you threw a parade and everyone came and complained, we didn't
mean it.  We meant to tell you how much it meant to us.

        If you opened a business in our name and took the slings and
arrows of our misdirected outrage just for believing that you could do
well and good at the very same time, we appreciate your efforts on our
behalf.

        If you convinced a Kiwanis member, or your neighbor, or a talk show
audience, or the PTA that we have something of value to say, we say "Thank
you."

        If you told your mother so she could come out and fight for you
and for us, your bravery is commendable.  And so is hers.

        If your best was merely waiting in the wings till you could join
us with honor, we honor you.

        And if your outrage or your circumstance gave you no choice but to
staff the barricades till we could join you, we are very much obliged.

        Sometimes we get caught up in the immediacies of our own lives,
the petty details of our communal tasks, and we never stop to find the
step-back place from which to see how far we've come, just how much we've
done, and how very much we owe each other.

        So, as long as I was in the neighborhood, I thought I'd stop for a
moment and say what for too long has gone without saying.

Thank you for all you've done.  I'm just sorry it took us so long to get
around to it.
                           ________________________


(c) 1994.  Shelly Roberts.  All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted only in
its entirety with written permission.  Shelly Roberts is a nationally
syndicated columnist, speaker, and author of the forthcoming, Roberts'
Rules of Lesbian Living. (Spinsters Ink)