Hi all,

When recently I found myself unemployed, I decided to take all of the items I sell at a couple of annual bear events and setup an online store.

We will be adding more items as we design them. Some will be internet only items, while others will be available at the in-person events as well. The shirt shown above is just one of our fun shirts.

The store is http://www.Playfulbear.com we have both bear related items (not just gay bear stuff, but actual bear items) as well as other fun and irreverent shirts and related products. So come on over and spend! This is my only source of income right now.

Thanks!

Dale

My 'family' pretty much sucks. I do realize that many people have had worse families than mine, however I am not aware of any that when a direct relative dies that the remainder of the 'family' doesn't bother to contact you.

And yes, they do know how to reach me as they have my phone number, email addresses and physical address.

My mother died a few days ago (Wednesday, September, 17th, 2008). The only way I found out is that I had been trying to get into contact with a cousin that had moved around and changed jobs a bit over the past few years and no longer had the same email or phone contact information.

Ironically we spoke on Thursday night for a bit and a short time after we spoke his father (my uncle) called him to let him know. Once he heard what had happened he called me back to let me know as one of the topics of our phone call is that I would most likely not be notified when she passed (I did know she was ill, but my 'relatives' refused to let me know where she was or a phone number to reach her - I did repeatedly call her cell phone, but got no response).

At this point as of Saturday, September 20th, 2008, no other member of the 'family' has bothered to contact me. I found out the funeral was this morning.

This only proves that you need to build your own family, as blood relations really don't mean a thing.

The last time I heard my "sperm donor's" voice was the day he told me that he doesn't have a son. That was about 20 years ago.

Yet even with the abuse I continued to suffer from them, I constantly tried to maintain some sort of relationship. Not quite sure why, other than I believe family is important.

I really was not surprised about not being contacted as during the short email conversations I had with my sister earlier in the month she told me I was not welcome back in Maine - strangely enough when speaking to my Aunt, she told me all my mother could talk about during their conversations was that she wanted to see me, yet I was not allowed to speak to my mother the last month or so of her life.

Also, when both my maternal Grandmother and Grandfather passed (separate events) both my mother and sister told anyone that asked if I would be coming up for the funerals, that they had called me and I responded that I Was too busy. Unfortunately they lied as no one had contacted me about their deaths either.

I sincerely hope that anyone that reads this has a much better relationship with their family, or more to the point, has a much better family than mine.

Wed Aug 6, 7:35 PM ET

LONDON (AFP) - Faithful gay relationships are "comparable to marriage" in the eyes of God, the leader of the world's Anglicans wrote in private correspondence before he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, British newspapers reported Thursday.

According to The Times and The Daily Telegraph, Rowan Williams argued in the letters, written in 2000 and 2001, that biblical prohibitions on homosexuality were targeted at "heterosexuals looking for sexual variety in their experience."

"I concluded that an active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage, if and only if it had about it the same character of absolute covenanted faithfulness," Williams was reported to have written.

The letters were apparently written to Deborah Pitt, a psychiatrist and evangelical Christian, while Williams was still archbishop of Wales.

He was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Church of England and the leader of the world's 77-million-strong Anglican Communion, in 2002.

Williams presided over the once-a-decade Lambeth Conference earlier this month, amid a row over gay bishops in the church.

Around 200 bishops boycotted the meeting over the consecration five years ago of the first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, the bishop of New Hampshire in the United States.

According to the newspapers, Williams apparently wrote that the church "has shifted its stance on several matters -- notably the rightness of lending money at interest and the moral admissibility of contraception so I am bound to ask if this is another such issue."

In response to the reports, Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury's office, only quoted remarks given by Williams recently to the Church of England Newspaper: "When I teach as a bishop I teach what the church teaches. In controverted areas it is my responsibility to teach what the church has said and why."

Link to source

Have been chatting with a great guy I met via 360. We are going to meet this coming weekend. I am very much looking forward to meeting him in person.

He is one of the most handsome men I have had the pleasure to chat with and comes across to me as a very down to earth man and has dogs to boot, so he has to be a great guy :)