Pride Month 2021 begins

Today marks the first day of Pride Month, which honors the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York City. As the Library of Congress explains, "The purpose of the commemorative month is to recognize the impact that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals have had on history locally, nationally, and internationally." I am incredibly proud of and grateful for Ashar, Joan, Kaitlyn and all of the other LGBTQIA+ people who are part of my life and enrich it immeasurably.

I picked up this box of Kellogg's Together with Pride cereal (2021 edition) recently at the Florence Safeway and have been mulling whether to put it (or perhaps a nicer one with no crease) into one of my envelopes or folders, to save for posterity. The packrat historian in me is leaning toward "yes."

What will citizens of the future think about this colorful cereal in 50, 100 or 500 years? Will they wonder why it was necessary? Will they see it as exploitation of Pride Month to make a buck? (I'm not oblivious to that reality.) Will they be proud (no pun intended) of their ancestors' efforts to promote positive change? Will they wonder why people actually had to advocate and argue for a world marked by peace, compassion, equality, diversity, justice and acceptance? Will they have mostly erased hate, injustice, bullying, poverty and discrimination?

I don't have any answers, of course. Which is part of why we document and witness the events of our lives, and let the future historians decide what they meant.

Kellogg Company began its Pride Month association with GLAAD in 2019. That year, "All Together Cereal" was a limited edition box with six mini cereal boxes packaged inside. This year, it's an actual newfangled, heart-shaped cereal. (Or maybe not so newfangled, as we're about to read.)

So, I'll conclude with the least important question: Is this cereal any good?

The breakfast cereal blog Cerealously doesn't really think so. In its review, it stated that: "we get a note-for-note technicolor remaster of 2019’s Caticorn Cereal. Together with Pride tastes exactly the same, and Caticorn wasn’t exactly memorable. ... Like Caticorn, Together with Pride is very generically fruity. It’s difficult and unproductive trying to detect any traces of raspberry or strawberry specifically, because it all gets gummed together by a sticky sugar sheen and the additional cloying sweetness of each piece’s 'edible glitter.' Imagine the fakest berry taste you can, then make it hollower and glossier."

I'm not a big consumer of breakfast cereals, but I did eat a couple of bowls of Together with Pride with oat milk, and I'll be more generous: I like it. It serves its purpose just fine as your typical sugary cereal. To me, it tastes like a combination of Froot Loops and Cap'n Crunch, which I know is not a Kellogg's product, but that's the best description I can summon. Meanwhile, Ashar, who eats all of his cereal dry (no milk), termed it "delicious." So there.