One of the many activities during this extended Orcas Pride weekend was the Gay Field Day from 2-6 PM at the Village Green yesterday – an afternoon picnic in which all islanders and visitors were welcome to come down and enjoy music, dancing, games, and performances…
I have to stop here for a minute and tell you about Jack Spinogatti. In my opinion, he is one of Orcas Island’s young phenoms. If you don’t know him, his family moved here several years ago and he immediately got plugged into Orcas Center. I was first impressed by him in an acting and singing role in an Orcas Center performance. I can’t remember which – was it Cirque US? I was impressed not only because of his natural talent, but also because he didn’t hold back. Here he was a young person, new to the island, and he had no reservations, at least from an observer’s point of view. I thought he had immense courage to be up on a stage in a new place, belting out his abilities with total confidence.
Fast-forward to the beginning of COVID. Jack was one of the first kids I happened upon when COVID was beginning to shut life down. He was at the skate park, and I asked him what his thoughts were about school. He was so candid and well-spoken, saying that he had absolutely no interest in doing school if distance learning was going to replace in-class learning – that he knew himself, and he knew that he needed the dynamics of a classroom and the interaction with teachers in order to thrive. He didn’t feel hopeful at all, imagining that his grades would completely tank, but what was so intriguing and inspiring about Jack was the next thing he said – he had decided that if everything was going to shut down, he would put all his energy into improving as a skateboarder. He had set a goal to skateboard every day for 8 hours. I asked if he had been sticking with it, and he said yes, he had been doing it each day since setting the goal (he said he had, I think, 2 more hours to go that day in particular).
Now fast-forward to yesterday. Life is opening up again, and we’re seeing people out on the street and at the Village Green that we haven’t seen for a long time. I saw Jack before realizing he would be performing, and I commented to him that he looks so muscular now! He politely thanked me for the compliment. Not long after, he was introduced on the Green, the leader of a hip-hop dance routine. It turns out Jack is now a hip-hop dance instructor at Orcas Center. Wow!
Keep your eye on Jack. He’s motivated, makes lemonade out of lemons, and he’s going places. He’s also a really nice person too, not tied to conversations only within his age group. I salute you, Nicole and Jon – you have a lovely human being there.
Before getting back to the imagery, that brings me to a thought. There are a lot of kids on the island (and in the world) who have struggled to maintain their strength, their goals, and their passions in the last few years of difficult isolation. Raise them up; encourage them; remark on something good when you see them, even if you don’t know them. A kind word and smile goes a long way.
One more thought about raising others up, in a broader sense, relating to this post in general. While I do not personally reside within the LGTBQIA2S+ framework, I would like to gently address anyone who feels judgmental. Had you been at the Village Green yesterday, you would have observed kindness toward each other. Good clean fun. Joy in being human. And as a sidenote, what a welcome thing it was that there was no commercialism or consumerism. Just people getting together and enjoying one another. I thought a lot about the idea that the main people who might be judgmental, ironically, would be Christians. Jesus would not have been at home grumbling. I think he would have been at the Village Green, caring about those around him and laughing gleefully under the limbo stick.
In the words of Forrest Gump, that’s all I have to say about that.
Moving on…
I’ll see you at the Solstice Parade at noon today! Don’t miss the musical performances in the afternoon, as well as The Good Lovelies who will be playing this evening at the Village Green. They are lovely and they are GOOD! (They came to Orcas Center several years ago – see here.)
