Tuesday on First Coast Connect we discussed recent national and local news involving transgender people with Director of the University of North Florida LGBT Resource Center Kaitlin Legg (01:18).
Our Book Club blogger feature this month was Snow by legendary Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk (23:12).
Kedgar Volta and Joash Brunet, the creators of Brighter 2Gether, gave us a preview of the amazing display they are bringing to Five Points this weekend (46:00).
Transgender Issues
There are two important stories we’re following about transgender rights in this country.
Transgender Nease High School student Drew Adams took the stand Monday in his federal lawsuit filed against the St. Johns County School District.
Adams wants to use the boys bathroom at Nease but has been ordered to use a single stall gender neutral bathroom instead.
That trial begins, just as the Pentagon on Monday announced they would abide by the ruling of a federal court judge who placed a stay on President Trump’s order banning transgender personnel from serving in the military.
First Coast Connect Book Club- Snow
It’s been called essential reading for our times. Snow is an engrossing tale looking at the conflict between the forces of Westernization, and the Islamists, in a Middle Eastern country.
Snow is the seventh novel from the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk and it’s our selection this month on the First Coast Connect book club.
First released in Turkey in 2002 and translated into English in 2004, Snow is set in the 1990’s and and tells the tale of the struggle in Turkey during that time between fundamentalist attitudes and the move toward modernization. Pamuk is one of the most popular novelists in Turkey.
Brighter 2Gether
It’s billed as an interactive holiday event designed to bring people together.
Brighter 2Gether will do just that and on a massive scale from Friday evening through Sunday in Jacksonville’s Five Points neighborhood.
This digital projection will light up the urban environment and be multiple stories high. It will projected onto the Presbyterian Apartments on Oak Street.
It will be visible throughout Five Points and will include a staging area where people, two at a time, can get into the activation area that will include a particle light projection that people can manipulate through their movements.
It’s being hosted by the Bread and Board.
Kevin Meerschaert can be reached at kmeerschaert@wjct.org, 904-358-6334 or on Twitter at @KMeerschaertJax.
