Arts DEVO

Comin’ out, y’all! “I am a gay cowboy.” And we have a winner for the best way to address an email to your local arts editor. Thank you, Scott Terry, author of Cowboys, Armageddon and the Truth: How a Gay Child Was Saved from Religion. You have my full attention. In his introductory email, the former Chico State student announces that he will be at Lyon Books Tuesday, Oct. 17, at 7 p.m., to promote his coming-out memoir of surviving parental abuse, homophobia and the Jehovah’s Witnesses faith to become a rodeo bull rider and live his life as an openly gay man.

While he’s in town, Terry will also take part in the Stonewall Alliance’s annual group art show, Coming Out for Art, Oct. 11-13, at the empty storefront at 220 Broadway. The opening reception is tonight (Thursday), 6-11 p.m., and includes the impressive collaboration between Jodi Rives and Nicholas Mertz: “GayINK,” a huge collage featuring 21 different portrait-style photos of tattooed members and supporters of the local LGBTQA+ community.

Oh, and speaking of coming-out memoirs by local authors, Arts DEVO has to give a long-overdue shout out to Brian Anthony Kraemer and his book Why I Slept with My Therapist: How One Gay Man Tried to Go Straight. Lyon Books also carries his fascinating story about his journey through self-enforced celibacy, daily prayer, an ex-gay ministry, two exorcisms and a “spiritual adoption” with a Christian therapist that eventually led to accepting himself as a gay man.

Sigh … You know how people say things like: “So-and-so is the person who keeps this place from falling apart.” Well, I am telling you right now that that this so-and-so really does keep this Chico News & Review place from falling apart. For the past 26 years, office manager Jane Corbett has been keeping most things together around here, and this week the rock of the CN&R is retiring.

Jane is like the cool aunt who lets you stay up late and eat candy while watching scary movies and cussing, and obviously I am going to miss her… Oh, to hell with that. No, I’m not. I’ve decided right now that I am going to impose myself on her twilight years, pick up a Bud tall boy along the way, and bribe my way onto her porch down by the river and kick back and shoot the shit as we watch the mosquitoes go by.

We all—every one of the hundreds who’ve come and gone (and stayed)—love you, Jane. Happy retirement!

DEVOtions

• Music for Movement: Join an eclectic collection of bands—Clouds on Strings, Jeff Pershing Band, Little Strawberries (a Beach Boys and Beatles cover band!)—playing the Chico Women’s Club this Saturday, Oct. 13, at this music festival benefiting the Multiple Sclerosis Society.

• Poetry 99: Next Thursday, Oct. 18, at 7 p.m., join Arts DEVO at Lyon Books for a live reading/celebration featuring the 2012 winners of the CN&R’s annual Poetry 99 contest!