JUDY FREAKING SHEPARD IS COMING TO SPEAK AT SPSCC >>>

Gay-rights activist Judy Shepard will speak Friday in Olympia. Shepard is not a household name, but her late son is. Matthew Shepard was the gay college student who was beaten to death in 1998 in Laramie, Wyoming.

"I think I'm a little angrier now than I was when Matt passed, because I thought things would move a little faster," Judy Shepard said last week at a speech at Loyola University in Chicago.

The play and HBO special The Laramie Project have continued to draw attention to the crime. Shepard himself, a slight and sweet-faced young man, can be seen in footage from the documentary film "Dear Jesse," shot 2 years before his death.

Judy Shepard's speech is sponsored by the Matthew Shepard Foundation and the South Puget Sound Community College Queer-Straight Alliance - whose Facebook page announces the event with the headline "Judy FREAKING Shepard Is Coming to Speak at SPSCC" and a photograph of a yowling cat captioned "OMG!!!"

[Kenneth J. Minnaert Center for the Arts, Judy Shepard, Friday, Feb. 18, 7:30 p.m., donations accepted, 2011 Mottman Road S.W., Olympia, 360.753.8586 or washingtoncenter.org]