Tonight, I wrote down what other people had to say, carefully limiting my commentary to the occasional doodle on the edge of the page.

Tonight, and for the next two months, I volunteered to be the interim-secretary for the Steel City Stonewall Democrats Board meeting.  I am not a board member, just a volunteer.  Ledcat is the usual secretary, but she is interim vice-chair through April so I am supporting her by taking over the secretary job. 

I think she secretly derived far too much enjoyment of saying "Sue, go ahead and write this down," but I could be paranoid like that. Sort of.  Kind of.

Why did I spend a Tuesday evening scribbling away while the snow piled ever higher on my lawn chair back on the Northside?

Because it has to be done. The mainstream Democrats aren't moving things along very speedily are they?  Half of Congress seems to be quitting on Obama. The HRC is being called to task on DADT by the big gay bloggers. LGBT voices are calling leaders to take a page from labor and point out that the COMPLETE LACK OF POSITIVE ACTION will leave the LGBT voters at home in droves. 

The meeting was heartening.  There's a new volunteer (new to Steel City) who is going to be the social media editor and she's doing a great job.  I encourage you to follow @StonewallPGH and see some good stuff.  You'll like it, I promise. 

But, time is precious folks.  It is less than two weeks until you can come to our awesome coffee house party to learn about Joe Hoeffel and then a mere 4 more weeks until the Steel City Endorsement Meeting.  You can make an impact with a simple membership check (starting at $15) and a few hours of your time. 

Seriously, this is probably the most significant thing happening this spring.  If you want more funding for AIDS research, health coverage for LGBT families, food pantries, job security, funding for the arts, funding for homeless LGBT kids, more gay people on executive boards, more lesbians, more whatever ... you need to take action to make sure allied men and women are elected and you need to do this now. 

So I promised to take objective minutes and that is what I'll do.  I attend every meeting because I want to put my money/time where my mouth is, but I won't join the board (actually, I was on the board several years ago) because I enjoy the freedom of the blog.  I don't want to be constrained or taint the organization with my baggage.  Taint sounds so quaint, doesn't it?  :-)

So ... that's what I did tonight. I still have to transcribe my scrawl into something legible.  Plus, I have actual tasks.

But someone has to do it.

If you are interested in volunteering for Steel City, drop me a line.  There are things you can do from home and things that are way out there in public view.  Small commitments, big ones.  Lots of things.  Your country needs you.