From: mattegray.sf@gmail.com
To: BARadv@aol.com
Date: Thursday, September 23, 1999 5:43 PM
Subject: United Ad
Mr. McBrayer,
I’ve just read the September 23rd issue of the Bay Area Reporter [a San Francisco gay newspaper] and couldn’t help noticing the full page United Airlines ad. I understand that the BAR must have advertising revenue to survive, and I want the BAR to survive. However, I do not see how you can, in good conscience, print an ad in which United boasts of being “…the first [US airline] to announce domestic partner benefits…” without their mentioning that they were forced by court order to do so and that they have appealed the order.
Of course when United’s appeal is successful, I’m sure that The White Christian Times will be just delighted to run their ad boasting that they were the first airline to withdraw domestic partner benefits.
But hey, I’m sure you really, really needed the money and meant no harm. Besides, I take some comfort in realizing that anyone too ignorant to be outraged by the mendacity of that ad probably wouldn’t be able to find his way to the airport anyhow.
Yours truly,
Matte Gray
San Francisco
From: BARadv@aol.com
To: mattegray.sf@gmail.com
Date: Friday, September 24, 1999 9:43 AM
Subject: Re: United Ad
Oh Please
Family Reunion – October 1999
I returned yesterday from a trip to Texas, where I took Mother to a Yarbrough family reunion on a hilltop at the site of the homestead of the first Yarbrough in Texas. She was the only great granddaughter of this man, the other Yarbrough women present being great-great granddaughters at least. The only people I knew, of the seventy-five people there, were two cousins, a second cousin, and a cousin once removed. The great majority of the others were descendants of one of my great-great grandfather’s brothers.
When I stood up to introduce Mother and me, I said, “I’m Louis Bryan, and this is my mother, who lives in Garrison. She was born Kathryn Lamerle Yarbrough and is the daughter of Robert Henry Yarbrough, granddaughter of William Henry Yarbrough, and great granddaughter of Asa Yarbrough.” Someone asked where I lived, and I said, with a self-deprecating smile and my butchest baritone, “I’m a computer geek from San Francisco.” And in the remaining two hours we spent there socializing, not a single person had another question about computers, geeks, San Francisco, or me.
A sultry afternoon, even under the oaks, but with a lovely view of the Attoyac River bottom, a dozen miles or so above the point where the Attoyac is subsumed by the Angelina.