I’m glad to see more of our history being preserved. I also liked the article. It not just discussed the archives themselves, but actually addressed some of the contents. It really brings it home to you.
Documenting the toll of AIDS
Archives in L.A. and San Francisco collect personal and official records of the costs and lessons of the epidemic.
By Larry Gordon, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 2, 2008
Yesterday, I met again with the group planning the information phone line for the GLBT community in Champaign and Urbana. During the course of the meeting, we decided that what we really wanted to focus on was creating the information guide. The medium is very much secondary. Since there is so much liability potentially involved with a phone line, we decided to get a website up and running first. In the process of gathering information for the resource guide, we’re going to be interviewing a number of folks who have been active in the community here for many years. We intend on broadening the scope of this interviews to obtain as much historical information as we can. (Or at least that is my intent.) I’ve already gone ahead and registered the domains we’re going to be using, but nothing is up yet.
The Champaign County LGBTQA Resource Guide will soon be available at: www.CClgbtqaResourceGuide.org
The next meeting is:
Saturday, March 3rd at 2pm
Urbana Public Library in the conference room downstairs (turn right after taking the stairs down)
All classes has been canceled for the second day in a row. Anyone know if UIUC classes have *every* been snowed out for two days in a row? I don’t thing they have. I know the last single snow day was back in the 70s or something. We’ve gotten somewhere around 16″ of snow and are expecting more. (Just my by eye estimate!)
Update 2-15-07: The last snow day was in 1979 and there have never been two consecutive snow days in the history of UIUC. Total snow fall was just over 12″ (estimated from area reports). It looks like more than that to me, but hey…
I spent the morning working on preparations for the Midwest conference this weekend and starting the ground work for the the CU GLBT Info Line mentioned yesterday. This afternoon I spent on the quad in a giant snowball fight with a bunch of friends. Hell of a blast. In a few minutes, I’m heading over to Gary’s for a “no school tomorrow so lets enjoy ourselves” party. Overall, I could start enjoying this weather. 
As a side note, I *HATE* my new Internet service provided by my landlord (Advantage Properties). We used to have great service w/McLeodUSA, but they switched us all to Insight. My connection is almost never up and when it is, its as slow as molasses!
Sunday night I attended a meeting to discuss the starting on a GLBT community center for Champaign-Urbana. I went mostly just to find out more about it and to see how promising it looked. As it happened, I got dragged right in. (Big surprise there right?) Instead of an actual community center, what is being proposed is an information phone line that would be staffed by volunteers. We’ll be working out the details over the next couple of weeks, but it seems like it might actually be workable. We’ll definitely be taking things slow though, particularly after what happened with OUTpost.
The idea of a community center was tried once before, back in 1996. Called OUTpost it lasted until mid 2000. From what I heard last night and in previous conversations, OUTpost pretty much self destructed due to internal conflict, overworking its volunteers, and (according to some) outright fraud by two of the board members. Suffice to say, we’re trying not to repeat their mistakes. That is why we’re starting out small and growing from there if needed.
Before OUTpost, there was another GLBT info line in Champaign-Urbana, but I really don’t know much about it.
The next meeting to discuss the info line is:
Saturday, February 24th at 2pm
Urbana Public Library