this weekend's activities

in the name of love

Apparently Madison's Pride thingy is Sunday. (What, June wasn't hot & sticky enough for ya?).

I sorta feel like I should go this year, what with being gay being controversial again and all that. Anyone else from these parts wanna go? (since of course Loopy is in prelim hell). Well, let me know.

Here's a web page with the schedule... note the rally at (sweltering) noon at the (shadeless) capitol.

Or we could go line dancin' with the Dairyland Cowboys and Cowgirls. I was gonna say something sarcastic here but hey, it could be fun. (In the spirit of being more open-minded and flexible).

There's also...

Prairie Fest 2005

...at the International Crane Foundation out near Baraboo. There'll be naturalists leading wetland/prairie walks, pointing out/explaining all the different species of coneflower and crane, etc. I'd love to do that. Seriously. The website says you can learn all about bats and meet a goshawk. (Yes, I'm a big nature geek, in case y'all didn't already know that).

But then there's that whole "sweltering" issue again. Are there even cranes here this time of year?

I can't decide. It feels like there's too much else to do (mainly preparing for two upcoming trips) to use both weekend days in frivolous pursuits... and as usual when I can't decide, I'll probably do neither. But if anyone's inspired by one or the other, and is willing to accompany me, let me know.

cute cute cute!!!

Nadine's baby Alexa, again. SO CUTE!!!!! (Chip's baby too, sorry).

When I'm done with this never-ending work for the socialist summer school (geek geek geek!) I'll post some more pix of my friends' & relatives' adorable children. Nobody else so obligingly puts the photos online, I have to do all the work. Phooey.

Of course, secretly I look forward to the reward of playing with all those fun photos. I just gotta crank this thing out.... yawwwwwwn.....

summertime.... or, the world in a peach

Breakfast: the best peach I ever ate, sliced with cottage cheese.

It's an organic "Elegant Lady" peach from our CSA box.

CSA of course stands for "community supported agriculture:" we pay up front for biweekly boxes of fruit, all summer long, and let me tell you, it's heaven.

As I savor the peach, I consider how the sense of connection to the farmer and to nature makes it even more pleasurable to eat. This peach has never seen the inside of a supermarket or even Brennan's...it came straight from the farmer, David Masumoto (left), to the fruit box guys in Minnesota (I can't remember their names but I've been reading their newsletters for three years), to me.

I know the names of the farmer's kids (Nikiko and Korio, above right—such elfin creatures!), I can visit his website, and in the newsletter I can even read his story:

My old peach orchard tells my family's stories. In the twisted trunks lay the history of my father who planted these trees more than thirty years ago. I recall helping him as the family lined up trees by sight, holding up a bare root tree, closing one eye and squinting the other...down a quarter mile row trying to keep the row straight. We weren't perfect nor fast, and for decades I've had to swing my tractor wide to avoid the crooked tree I must have planted. But planting five hundred trees by hand and trusting our vision seems to be a wonderfully human way to befin an orchard. We made mistakes and rationalized our efforts. Life in nture is not always straight.

Maybe if more people understood that they wouldn't have such a problem with queers. In the film "The Business of Fancydancing," the narrator (clearly semi-autobiographical representation of the author, Sherman Alexie, a Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian) talks about telling his traditional grandmother he was gay. Paraphrased:

She tells him a story about how she once got a rooster that was gay. He was more beautiful than any rooster she'd ever seen, so she should have known, she reflects. Anyway, he wouldn't service the hens, just walked around looking beautiful. Finally she got another rooster so the damn hens would lay eggs, and whaddya know, the first rooster walks up to the new rooster and squats down in front of him to mate. "So then I knew he was gay, and I ate him," she concluded.

Although this is not exactly a happy ending (to me anyway), the narrator explains that this was her way of saying that she doesn't think there's anything unnatural about being gay. I wonder if, for someone who sees how the "same" corn plant or peach tree can come up in an infinite variety of shapes, it doesn't seem so odd to think that people come in all different varieties as well.

How did I get here from the peach? Ah yes. I was initially going to talk about Thich Nhat Hanh's description of "interbeing," that nothing is possible without everything else. He uses the example of the paper on which the reader is seeing his ideas. Without the tree and the logger and the processing plant and its workers, the paper would not exist; without the sun and the rain and the sky and the earth, the tree would not exist. It's all interconnected; every piece is necessary; everything needs everything else. Interbeing.

So. The world, but especially David Masumoto and his parents planting the orchard and children picking the peaches, and his tractor swinging round the crooked tree, and the earth of his farm and the California sun, and his grandmother too (whom he describes perfectly enjoying a summer peach—you can read the whole essay here, in his moving paean to food and farming and memory).... it all connects to me through one peach this morning, and I love it, and I love the summer.

I haven't been to town in days, well, two days. I love being out here, especially with Loopy, even though she's peeved at me at the moment, I still love just being near her all day, day after day, in the quiet house surrounded by all this beauty.

our backyard
(for real—note the composters at the bottom center of the frame)

I wish I could stay here forever.

better than TV

At this evening's socialist soiree, the following conversation took place between Allen, age 56, and Max, age 4. (Max is Shawnee & Joel's kid, for those of you who know them)(Allen's surprisingly great with kids, for those of you who know him).

Allen: Hey, Max, your face is all scratched—what happened?

Max: I got in a fight at daycare.

Allen: Uh-oh! With who?

Max: With Dylan.

Allen: Dylan, huh?

Max (sadly): Yeah. We had to leave the sandbox.

Allen: Ohhhh.

Max: Carl had to leave the sandbox too.

Allen: Why? Did Carl fight?

Max: No, Carl doesn't fight. He's a good boy.

Allen: Wait a minute, let me get this straight—Carl doesn't fight and that makes him a good boy. You do fight.... so what does that make you?

Max (in all seriousness & without missing a beat): Obi Wan Kenobi.

deja vu all over again...

...but smaller.

Like everyone else, of course, this reminds me of 9/11, but in terms of proportion, it feels more like a "normal" disaster—the plane crashes & hurricanes that we tut-tut over on a fairly regular basis. My question is, is that a good thing?

Initially I felt some eerie echoes, flashed back to shakily dialing my calling card number into pay phones all day (didn't I have a cell phone then? huh...), going down my list of New Yorkers, starting with those who worked in or next to the towers before calling people who had more likely been safe in Queens. When I couldn't reach people I started calling mutual friends in other states: "Have you heard anything from Suzanne? ...from Effie?...is David okay?..."

The first call I made that morning was to the home of a neighbor with whom I used to ride the subway to work, who worked at the top of the south tower. How do you leave a message for someone, when you don't know if they're giddily relieved or a grieving widow?

"Uh, I hope everything is, you know, okay—I mean, as okay as it could be, under the circumstances—and, uh, if it's, uh, not okay, uh, let us know if there's anything we can do, I mean, I'm not sure what but if there's anything, anyway, we're thinking of you..."

My hands didn't stop shaking for three days.

Of course, by the time we got the message back—

"We just got home from Maine; yours was the first message on the machine. It was so kind of you to call, and now that we're back in touch, do call again and let's catch up...."

—I had known for a while (thanks to the doorman) that her husband was safe, so at this from the wife, I just thought, "Call you back? Why? We hated each other."

Anyway, then is not now. 37 is not 3000, for one thing, and for another, Brits are not Americans. The passers-by on the "telly" seem remarkably unperturbed. Well, back in the day I guess the IRA bombed them all the time—maybe they're used to it.

On our end, this time, only two friends to reach, and the odds were a lot better that they were not hurt. I heard back from one quickly, and she seemed unperturbed ("Yep we're fine!"); the other reports that his friend was in the train ahead of one that was bombed, and that there was "panic this morning but everything seems to have settled down ok." On the BBC there's a "business continuity expert" who said that "we're getting better and better at this."

I watched "The Incredibles" again while walking on the treadmill and was almost surprised that this thing was still on the TV when I finished. Wolf Blitzer was questioning an eyewitness with what seemed (though I hesitate to accuse the esteemed newsman of this) voyeuristic curiosity: "Beyond 'lacerations,' can you describe some of the injuries you saw?" No, really, please don't. Ooh. Ugh. Was that really necessary?



So what does it mean—is this progress, if this seems almost normal, if "business continuity" is getting better and better? Or is it horrific callousness?

Rumsfeld was on after the lacerations, saying we are to "go about our business," because otherwise, you know, we'll be letting the terrorists win. If we accept that this is normal, are we letting the imperialists win?

Is there any choice about it?

What movie am I thinking of, where terrorist incidents are so ordinary that nobody bats an eye—is it "Brazil" or "1984"? Or both?

Sorry, nothing witty today. Hope you & yours are all okay.

not a good sign

When we were in Chicago I picked up the Windy City Times, which had a "youth" column that was, well, a bit strange.

The writer's topic was the mysterious interconnection between crushes, sex, and love. Essentially the point was something like this: when you get all nervous, scared and sweaty over the thought of saying "hello" to someone new, well, that's not love. That's just a crush. And, boys & girls, you shouldn't have sex unless you're really in love. (What the $*&%$# kind of puritan queer kids are we spawning here?)

Anyway, how do you know you're really in love?

Well, apparently, love is when you have been dating that person for a while, and they still make you all nervous, scared and sweaty ("heart pounding, throat closing, sweat pouring" was the exact phrase).

I didn't know whether to be more disturbed by the puritan attitude or the kid's idea of love. I kept meaning to write to the author to try to explain two things.

First of all, as Franklin told me a long time ago (in the Lowell House dining hall no less), "casual" sex is very nice, even if not quite as nice as sex with someone you love. (Some years later, when I determined that Franklin was right and the Catholic Church was wrong, I was stunned by the implications and became an atheist).

Second, if you are nervous, scared and sweaty around someone you have been dating for a while, you either have an anxiety disorder or an abusive relationship.

Diagnosis: too much Disney!!!

This is supposed to be the beginning of a mushy post about my own true love, but I'm going now to actually spend some actual time with the real-life version. More to follow tomorrow.

"The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common."

Last year on the 4th of July, Democracy Now broadcast a speech by Frederick Douglass which he delivered on this day in 1852. I don't know whose voice read the words, but it was genuinely thrilling to listen to it.

This year, rereading it was my only observance of this holiday (other than telling my dog to shut up and quit barking at the damn fireworks).

You can read the full text here and some good excerpts here.

Douglass's prose style is in itself a delight, even more sublime when combined with the content. He basically came right out & told the people who'd invited him to speak that they were "requiring a song of the captive," that they were asking him to speak in celebration when he saw little reason to celebrate liberty in a nation that still held so many in bondage.

His words seem particularly appropriate at a time when the bigwigs in this country—who undoubtedly marked the day with much pomp and ceremony and pontification on themes of "freedom" and "democracy"—are preparing for the G8 meeting in Scotland, where they will determine the fate of millions who have neither voice nor vote in the proceedings.

O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would, to-day, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Isn't he fantastic? Can't you just hear him when he's really on a roll?

May we live to see a 4th of July when everyone in the world is genuinely independent of the imperial caprice of this land of "revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy."

What, to the slave, is your 4th of July?