Pantheon of Leather Awards will be held in Dallas

Next, the Pantheon of Leather Awards will be held in Dallas, TX over Labor Day Weekend, September 1-5 during International Leather Sir, Leatherboy and Community Bootblack.

ILSb ICCB Executive Producer Jeffrey Payne gave Pantheon the invite last October during Pantheon of Leather when it was held in Atlanta during DomCon: Atlanta.

The Pantheon of Leather Awards will be presented during a formal ceremony on Thursday night, September 1.

Nominations will begin on April 1 and run through May 31. These nominations will be processed during the month of June and nominees will be notified at the end of June and the beginning of July allowing them enough time to make plans to be in Dallas. The recipients of the Pantheon of Leather Awards will be announced on stage in Dallas.

The nomination form is being prepared and will be ready in plenty of time. Now might be a great time to think of who to nominate and why.

ILSb ICCB is designing a fabulous web site devoted to Pantheon of Leather which will eventually include a history from each year. As my responsibilities diminish with Olympus Leather I will have more time and the mental capacity to develop a strong history of Pantheon of Leather that will appear on the web site.

I also have a goal of writing a book about my legacy as the Founder of The Leather Journal, Pantheon of Leather and The Leather Journal and the journey along the way with all of them. The highs and lows and the lessons learned will be shared in a way that will guide others in the Leather walk through life.

The Leather Journal will launch a Kickstarter campaign

The Leather Journal will launch a Kickstarter campaign beginning April 1 and concluding on May 1. This is a great way of securing funds to keep us going and to get Leatherfolk and Kinksters some great deals in the process.

Up for the taking will be discounted ad space, numbered prints of photos and artwork, merchandise and subscriptions.

Technological Evolution and Social Media

Now I am going to address a huge problem in the community which really goes beyond us and touches the greater world. Categorize this under human nature's dangerous change to keep up with fast-advancing technology.

Human sanity lagged with the discoveries and inventions relating to nuclear power. What did we do first? Create the atomic bomb. We later harnessed it as a source of energy and for medical purposes. The bad shit came first.

It is natural for nations to use advances for military purposes first because everyone wants to be the Jones's instead of those keeping up with the Jones's.

What does this have to do with us?

Social media may be something that the youngest have had their entire lives, but for some here were other methods of communication. To some now, AOL chat rooms seem just as out-of-date to those on Facebook and Twitter as did typewriters to those of us who were in those chat rooms.

As society advances so quickly we barely learn/remember to be civil. For millennia we only communicated as far as we could holler at each other. Insert visual of neanderthal-draggingcaptive-with-one-hand-while-holding-a-club-over-their-shoulder-with-the-other-hand image here. Now visualize the evolution on man scale with each major advance in communications technology after that. Clay tablet, papyrus, monks copying (inaccurately) the Bible, printing press, telegraph, land line telephones, radio, television, Univac computer that took up several rooms, personal computers that could handle almost one megabyte, smaller computers with more memory and hard drive space, portable lap tops to where we are now with cell phone.

For many, that club-over-the-shoulder has been the technological advance used to knock out the victim being dragged.

Now think of the way many talk at/to/with each other on Facebook and Twitter. People say things they would never to say to another face-to-face. It was that way by hand-written letters, by phone conversations. We feel safe under the protection of the Facebook missile silo where we can launch attacks at enemies or even those with whom we only disagree on minor things in life. Some of the tirades that I have seen on Facebook are shocking. Mean things are being sent to perceived friends and the heat ratchets up fast.

There was a time where one could write something, sit on it a day or two, then consider if it should be sent or modified. That "send" button is on the right side of one's iPhone or somewhere nearby on a laptop or desktop. So easy, a missile is launched and a good friendship is destroyed. The radiation that drifts away in the wind after the blast are those who do not want to have anything to do with said sender. More and more people are unfriending each other - all because the urge to send has not caught up with the convenience of doing so. Take that extra few seconds to think about what you are going to post. That friendship saved might just be your own.

Enjoy reading The Leather Journal,

Dave Rhodes