The Agenda:

Testing the Premise: Are Gays a Threat to Our Children?

What the "Dutch Study" Really Says About Gay Couples

Federal Hate Crime Statistics: Why The Numbers Don't Add Up

Refuting Christianity Today

  Favorites:

Still Life At Sunset

Anderson Cooper and Scooter

Wandering, Wondering

The Aperture of Memory

Easter's Birthday

The First Time I Cussed

  Photo Essays:

The Anasazi Ruins of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico

Monsoons of 2004

Miracle Mile

Now Showing / Reflection on Hayden, Arizona

Old Photographs
Saturday, January 31, 2004
The 43rd Anniversary of My Birth

Panchesco wrote this sweet little piece about a photograph that was taken when he was little.  I have become something of the family's unofficial archivist myself.  I finally got around to posting some of those pictures.  Enjoy!

Portsmouth, Ohio, 45662
Saturday, January 31, 2004
The 43rd Anniversary of My Birth

I saw this item on the Portsmouth Daily Times website yesterday and got a kick out of it. It appears that for the first time in several decades, my hometown is getting a movie theater.

The theater would be placed near the Civic Development telemarketing firm beside the U.S. 23 viaduct. Republic President Ernest Powell wants to open the theater by July 4, but said it probably won’t open until October. “It will be state-of-the-art with stadium seating, digital sound, wide screen, cupholder arm rests and the whole nine yards,” Powell said. “Just like the big cities.”

Whoooweee! Did you hear that? Just like the big cities!

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Thinking about my hometown always leaves me feeling a little nostalgic. While I love the place, it never fails to disappoint me whenever I go back. I love Portsmouth when I’m in Arizona, and am deeply troubled by it when I am there. I guess I love the memory of it more than I do the place itself.

Portsmouth is situated on the Ohio River, directly across from the Kentucky foothills, and only about 30 miles downriver from West Virginia. It is quite Appalachian in character, although I didn’t understand what that meant while I was growing up there. Its main industry was a large steel mill and a small shoe factory. At one time, Portsmouth was dotted with nearly a dozen shoe factories, but only one was left by the time I was in high school. It was, for that region, a very large town of some 28,000 people when I was younger, but because of the persistently high unemployment, it behaved like a much smaller town. We had no movie theater, for instance, nor did we have any shopping malls or chain restaurants or much of anything else for amusement. We were, however, lucky enough to have a very large swimming pool in the middle of town that served as the main gathering place for us teenagers in the summertime.

The town was too big for everyone to actually know everyone else, but you somehow had the feeling that it might be possible anyway. It seemed that between you and everyone you knew and everyone they knew, you could have the whole town covered. News and rumors traveled fast.

Our town was split between the rich and poor, with a relatively smaller middle class in between. Because we had all of the doctors and lawyers for a 40-mile radius, there were enough of them to form a critical-mass in the northern foothills in town, known locally as Hilltop. If you were a Hilltopper, you had it made.

Our family was not Hilltoppers. We lived down by the river, in the area known as the East End, sandwiched between downtown and an even poorer area known as Funk’s Gut. A gut is an Appalachian term for a dry creek bed; in Arizona it would be called an arroyo. Funk was the name of the farmer who tilled the fields bisected by the gut. When the area was developed just after WWII, it retained old farmer Funk’s name. I always liked the name Funk’s Gut, and everyone who lived there liked it too. It was, well, funky. Almost as funky as the historic west side of town, which is known as Boneyfiddle. Nobody knows where Boneyfiddle got its name.

My family was not poor at all. We were pretty much middle class, which meant that in my neighborhood, we were pretty well off. We went on vacations, camped, had a late model car and a decent house. My next door neighbor on the other hand, had never left Scioto County, except once to go to a Red’s game in Cincinnati.

The split in town between the Hilltoppers and the rest of us was wide. Wide enough to have the highest unemployment in the state in 1979, while also having a part-time Rolls Royce dealership downtown. Wide enough for the N&W railroad to slice its way through the middle of town, drawing a line between us and Hilltop – the proverbial tracks which divide so many towns physically and socially. And the main highways largely followed the tracks, so that the steel trucks, moving their cargo through town towards the great factories in Detroit, further underscored the wide barrier between us and Hilltop.

I didn’t realize at the time how isolated we were. For some reason, our world was very small. I suppose there is sometimes a tendency to presume that the whole wide world is not much different from wherever you happen to be. Portsmouth was small, and we presumed the world was just as small, and that presumption had the strange effect of making Portsmouth appear so much larger and so much more important. Once, a Catholic was running for city council (usually a doomed effort in Appalachia), and the Oldsmobile dealer ran a letter to the editor saying we didn’t need the Pope telling us how to run our town. I laughed with I read this, imagining what his mental picture must be. It was probably that of the Pope all the way over there in Rome, sitting on his throne and beckoning his black-robed aides with his crooked finger, saying, “It’s time we tore up Washington Street in front of that Protestant Oldsmobile dealer again.”

Our horizons were so very close. It took me a very long time to stretch my own horizons when I left home, first to college in Cincinnati, then living and working in Washington D.C., Dallas, and now Tucson. In some ways, my horizons are still stretching, some thirty-five years after leaving home.

I graduated high school in 1979, moved away to college, and never looked back. The last shoe factory by then was long gone. The steel mill shut down in 1980, which made our record unemployment skyrocket further. The population shrank to 19,000, where it stands today.

It was a strange place then, and a stranger place today. The town is now a mere shadow of its former self. Those who could get out mostly did. Those left behind live in an even smaller world than the one I knew. The swimming pool closed about ten years ago and was filled in. Downtown is completely abandoned, and the steel mill was torn down long ago to make way for a Wal-mart. Everybody shops at Wal-mart, but the parking lot is only full at the first of the month.

When I go back, I don’t know anybody anymore. Most of my friends have moved away. The ones who didn’t get away are still living between those narrow horizons. The last time I visited with them, I found myself standing beyond their dark green hills. My Appalachian accent had softened a little, and they said I sounded different, although I suspect they thought I sounded stuck up. My job, my home, my clothes, and I suppose my accent said to them that I had “gotten beyond my raising”, which is not widely regarded as a good thing. Another gap had opened up.

But I’d still love to hear the blasts from the trains’ horns as they pull out of the rail yard in the middle of town at 3:00 a.m. I miss the sound of the curfew siren from the village across the river in Kentucky. These sounds echoed across the valley and through the hills, lending a magical, otherworldly atmosphere to the town. In my mind, I can still hear the low, almost subsonic rumble of a tugboat pushing a long barge of coal down the river. I miss the Pentecostal musicians coming into town on Sunday to sing on the radio. And sometimes I yearn to hear the choppy, clipped sound of that unique way of speaking that is slowly dying out as the older generations fade away. But they’re not all gone yet. There are still a few who speak of fried feesh caught fresh from a nearby lake, of warshin’ deeshes after dinner, and settin’ on the porch in the evenings with neighbors, as the young-uns catch lightning bugs in the yard and the sun sets across the river bottoms. And there they sit, shootin’ the bull, chatting about unimportant things not making no never-mind.

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Dad never adjusted to the accent. He was from northeastern Ohio where they don’t talk like that. Whenever we would go driving through Kentucky, we’d often get lost on the poorly marked back country roads. So Dad would stop at a country store or gas station and go inside to ask for directions. He often had trouble understanding some of the expressions that the proprietor would use, so he learned to come back out to the car and repeat phonetically to Mom anything he didn’t understand. She’d interpret the instructions and they’d go on.

One time, we were going to Greenbo Lake, and the map showed that the lake was not very far along the road we were on. But it was a poor and winding road, and it seemed as though we were on it for an awful long time. Dad was afraid that maybe he missed a turn, so he stopped in a store to ask how much further it was. He came back out to the car with a puzzled look on his face. Mom asked what the store owner said, and Dad repeated the answer syllable by syllable.

Mom said, “Oh, it’s not very far at all then.”

“Wait a minute! How on earth did you figure it out from that? What did he say?”

Mom turned to him with a smile. “He said, ‘It’s just a hoot, a holler, and a frog jump’.”

Finding a Cure for Grisi Siknis
Wednesday, January 28, 2004

I read this in News of the Weird, which ran in our local paper this week.

“Over a two-month period in the American Indian Miskito community of northern Nicaragua, about 150 people contracted a hysteria whose symptoms included wandering naked in public, becoming severely violent, fighting imaginary enemies, and, later, lapsing into comalike states. Nicaraguan officials regard the illness, ‘grisi siknis,’ as culture-bound, with traditional healers more effective at treating it than medical doctors (in contrast to affluent societies’ culture-bound illnesses, such as anorexia nervosa, which are often treated medically).”

We have a large number of culture-bound illnesses making the rounds. In addition to Anorexia Nervosa and other eating disorders, I suspect that a number of behavior disorders – including a large proportion of ADHD diagnoses – are culture-bound. Many other disorders, such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and other psychiatric maladies are not culture-bound in origin, but they may nevertheless have a culturally-relevant expression requiring a culturally-relevant response. Even clinical Depression, which also is not culture-bound, can nevertheless be experienced according to cultural expectations. But despite the explosion of drugs that are now available to treat many of these disorders, we typically resort to some form of counseling (“talk” therapy) to augment these drugs, which, when you think of it, amounts to a cultural engagement of some sort. The success rate is still hit-or-miss: some people recover fully, others continue to struggle, still others see little to no improvement.

In the above quote, columnist Chuck Shepherd highlighted the fact that in the U.S. we would tend to seek medical attention, while the Indians made do with traditional healers. I hope he wasn’t belittling any of these maladies or their sufferers by comparing modern medicine to witch doctors. While the recognition of the cultural origins and aspects of these maladies should not be dismissed, this recognition should not become an exercise in belittling the sufferer. It is important to keep in mind that the suffering is very real to the sufferer, and is not the fault of the sufferer.

I don’t know of any studies on the subject – and I don’t mean to belittle the medical profession with what I'm about to suggest – but I wouldn’t be surprised if the success rate of our western medical practices for many culture-bound disorders is similar to that of traditional healers. It occurs to me that both healing methods are essentially the same thing. When you consider the tremendous faith we have placed in our medically-based healing methods, then there is a strong argument to be made that medical doctors are the shaman of our culture. It’s all a matter of who you trust.

The First Time I Cussed
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Warning: This post contains language that got me in a lot of trouble when I was little. If it offends you, cover your ears.

Mom pretty much did all of the cussing in the family. She had a rather comprehensive vocabulary, and there were only a few choice words that she didn’t use. And since I never heard those words, I didn’t know about them. She mostly said shit, damn, goddamn, hell, and when she was mad at Dad, sonovabitch.

Dad didn’t cuss. If he ever reached the point of being absolutely furious, with the burning fury where you could imagine steam rolling out of his skull, he might let loose with “Oh, hell!” But that was pretty much it for him. He hated cussing, hating particularly that Mom cussed when she was mad, even in front of us kids.

I, of course, was not allowed to cuss. Both of my parents strongly forbade it.

Back in 1968, I was seven years old and there was another kid some three doors down who was the same age as me, although he didn’t go to my school. I went to Catholic school at the time, and Carson – like about half of the kids in my block – went to public school. Carson and his family were very different from all of the other families though. Police cars would stop in front of Carson’s apartment house from time to time. Carson’s dad drank and was away a lot, sometimes in jail for one thing or another. I don’t remember Carson having a mother, but then I don’t remember ever being inside his apartment. Carson’s older brother was menacing and I was afraid of him, keeping my distance whenever I could. Their dog was a vicious Doberman that they kept chained in the back yard. They were what I would later come to know as white trash – trailer trash if they had actually had a trailer instead of an apartment.

Carson cussed a lot and he was inventive in his cussing, at least to my ears. His all-time favorite phrase was “goddamn mother-fucker”. He said it all the time.

Now, being an attentive Catholic school student, I knew the goddamn part was bad, but mother-fucker didn’t mean much of anything as far as I could tell. I had never heard the word “fucker” before, and had absolutely no idea what it meant, or even that it meant anything.

When I said that there were only a few choice words that my mother didn’t use, I’d have to to clarify that, by saying that I think “fuck” and all of its derivatives were probably the only words Mom didn’t use. Her vocabulary was full and authoritative otherwise. And since Mom didn’t use it, Dad didn’t have an opportunity to disapprove of the word. Separated from meaning and context, it hadn’t entered the realm of forbidden words for me. It seemed like such a simple word, with a very satisfying set of syllables to spit out. But other than that, it was like so many other meaningless words people tossed around that I didn’t pay much attention to. You know, words like “Vietnam” or “integration” or “homework”.

So anyway, late one summer evening Carson and I were playing in the front yard while Dad was washing the car. I don’t remember what happened, but Carson ended up calling me a shithead. Dad looked up and told Carson to go home and not to come back. When Carson left, Dad turned to me and said, “I don’t want you around Carson anymore. He and his family are nothing but trouble and he’ll drag you into it, too.”

“Aw Dad,” I said, “Don’t worry about him. He’s nothing but a mother-fucker…”

Goodnight, Captain
Friday, January 23, 2004

When I was young, even before I started kindergarten, I had trained myself to wake up in the morning a few minutes before 8:00. I'd get up and go to the living room and turn on the television to channel three to watch my favorite program. Mom would still be asleep, but the TV would wake her and she'd get up and come into the kitchen to fix breakfast.

I can't remember – what was it Mr. Moose would say that would cause it to rain ping-pong balls onto Captain Kangaroo's head?

Rest in peace, Captain.

Bob Keeshan, June 27, 1927 – January 23, 2004

Comments and the Life of an Artist
Friday, January 23, 2004

Okay. I have finally succumbed to the temptation to solicit comments, although I haven’t committed enough to the idea to pay for it. I’m using a free blog commenting service called Haloscan, which should work pretty well for the time being, at least until I decide whether it’s a direction I want to go for this weblog. They make setting up commenting a breeze. It’s probably the simplest web tool you could ever hope to use, with the easiest to follow instructions for installation. This of course meant that they had to help me when I could only get it to work on one page. But their fast and friendly service was able to show me exactly where I screwed up. I slapped my head Homer Simpson-style, and now here it is.

The free service deletes posts after four months, so it gives me some time to decide whether this is the way to go or not. Either way, I’ll save the posts and figure out how to keep them available. The upgrade is amazingly cheap, so if I decide to keep it I won’t have to give up my monthly ration of chocolate mousse at the Epic Café.

This is where I find out that nobody reads this, or they read it and don’t really have much to say about it.

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Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger. – Franklin P. Jones, American businessman, (1887 - 1929).

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Actually, I spent some time pondering whether this commenting capability was appropriate for this website. I’m always suspicious when someone touts the benefits of an “interactive experience”. They usually wind up being as about credible as a carnival huckster, drawing in the rubes so he can profit off of the next big e-thing.

On the other hand, constructive criticism and alternate points of view is what this experience ideally should be all about. Right now, I’m finding it rather easy to pontificate on about any subject that crosses my mind (as you can well see when you go through previous posts). There’s nothing so easy as to put something out there in a “safe” environment, with no real chance of being challenged,

On the other hand, I’ve looked at other favorite websites, and the ones that I find to be the most entertaining tend not to have a commenting capability. I wonder if maybe those authors have found they don’t have a need to see or hear their audience. Maybe it’s too much of a distraction from what they are trying to do. I know that if I’m not careful, there’s the possibility that I may wind up writing for the audience, giving them what they seem to want. Comments would make it easier for that to happen, which I think would be a bad thing.

On the other hand, we all might learn how entertaining you can be.

On the other hand, I privately suspect that adding a comment capability is nothing but a craven attempt to fulfill my secret desire for adulation.

On the other hand, I wonder if this opportunity for you to say Oh, shut up already! will expose me to an ego-crushing experience.

Well you just go right ahead. I can take it.

I think.

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I am not a writer, and I am not a potter, although I’d love to be either of those things. I don’t have much talent – at least I’m not talented in that self-reliant making-a-living sort of way. I’m risk-averse, which is why I’m a dabbler. I’ve dabbled in what you might charitably call “creative writing” assignments I’ve given myself, and I’ve dabbled in pottery. I’ve enjoyed doing both, but I haven’t had to worry about pestering phone calls from the Atlantic Monthly or the Guggenheim either one.

I used to do pottery when I was living in Dallas. One of the community colleges used to have a non-credit program on Sundays where we could sign up for what amounted to studio time. It was officially a “class” with an instructor available to advise us. But it wasn’t so much a class as it was a club, and there were a dozen or so of us regulars who were there every Sunday, working on our stuff and generally having a good time. I used to do Raku pottery, which involves a lot of pyromania in the firing process. I think I enjoyed the firing process more than the pottery itself.

Sometimes, I fantasize about what it would be like to quit my job to live the life of a clay artist. Of course, my fantasy does not involve a mortgage or car payment, and it presupposes that I have talent and a well-stocked studio in my home. I’d wake up, get coffee, and saunter into the studio. I’d crank some tunes, wedge some clay and start working in the soft mud up to my elbows. I’d be oh, so creative, doing exiting things with clay that would result in commissions and art journal features. I’d experiment with new glazes and firing processes. I’d quit about lunchtime, grab a bite to eat, work out, and then head to the coffee shop where I’d sit there dressed all in black and cool sunglasses, reading the New York Times and making pithy observations.

Or, maybe, I’d quit my job to live the life of a writer instead. I’d wake up, get coffee, and saunter into the office. I’d crank some tunes, boot up the computer, and start working on my latest story. I’d be oh, so creative, plumbing the depths of human experience with incredible insight, peppered with hilarious anecdotes, full of self-deprecating humor and high ideals. I’d be published in magazines, anthologies, and an occasional book here and there. I’d quit about lunchtime, grab a bite to eat, work out, and then head to the coffee shop where I’d sit there dressed all in black and cool sunglasses, reading the New York Times and making pithy observations.

Or maybe I’d do pottery in the morning and write in the afternoon. It all sounds so easy, don’t you think?

Well, don’t you? You can tell me now, remember?

Hey! Over here! ►

Of Broken Clocks, Old Photos and Unanswered Questions
Thursday, January 22, 2004

My horoscope for today, courtesy of yahoo.com – – –

You could be drawn to the past today, Aquarius. Perhaps you will sort through some old objects at home. You could come across old photo albums or journals. Suddenly, your mind is transported back to the old days. You'll think about all of the adventures you have had and how certain experiences shaped your character. It's good to take note of these things and realize how far you have come.

My dad used to say, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”

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Truthfully, I am encountering an all new feeling that I didn’t anticipate when I started this blog. I have an overwhelming urge to pull everything down and start over. I tell myself that this time I won’t be so pretentious. I won’t act like I have all the answers and all I need to do is climb onto this cyber-soapbox in this little Speaker’s Corner of my own creation. As if anyone would want to read this stuff anyway, I tell myself. As if my half-baked ideas are the least bit interesting to anyone outside of my own navel.

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So, why did I start this weblog? It all started with another project I took on some seven years ago. Actually, it started much before that, but the more immediate impetuous was in 1997, when my mother stopped by to visit when I was living in Dallas. She was moving with her husband from Ohio to Ft. Walton Beach in the Florida panhandle (a.k.a Lower Alabama, the Redneck Riviera), but her fear of hurricanes prompted her to leave the old family photographs with me in Dallas. These photos stretched back over a hundred years, some of them originally belong to my great-grandmother, and were subsequently handed down and added to through the generations.

We had gotten the pictures out several years earlier one Christmas, when my grandmother’s mind was just beginning to fail and my great-great aunt had lost her ability to speak. Together we were able to identify some of the people in the pictures and scribble their names on the backs. Some pictures would transport my grandmother back to her youth, with each sight and sound as vivid to her as our very presence that day. But other photos contained faces with names that were locked away, out of reach. She’d have that look of recognition on her face and she’d open her mouth, expecting the name to come tumbling out, but it never came.

Since then I kept bugging my mother to organize these pictures, put them in albums and try to figure out who these people were in the pictures before the names were lost forever. I even bought her some really nice photo albums and all of the supplies she would ever need. But she never got around to it, and finally here she was in Dallas, handing the boxes off to me, saying, “Here. You do it.”

Okay, no problem. There were only about 150 pictures. I figured if I buckled down and worked hard at it, I could get it done in about three months. It ended up taking up over two years of intense effort, with lots of research and calls and e-mails to relatives to try to figure it all out. I scanned all of the photos on my computer and put the pictures on CD-ROM so everyone could have copies of them. I visited relatives and told them about my project and asked if they had any old photos they’d be willing to share. They’d inevitable say no, not really, they didn’t really have any, maybe a few but not very many at all. Then without fail, they would drag out a box or album containing another fifty or hundred pictures and I’d scan them all into my laptop one by one at their kitchen table, all the while exchanging stories about everyone in the photographs. When my grandmother finally went into the nursing home two years ago, my mother and I found another box of photos that neither of us knew existed. I now have over eight hundred photos on my bulging hard drive, more genealogical information than I know what to do with, and I’m still working on another set of CD-ROM’s for the clan. Who knows when I’ll finish all of this?

This is how I found out about Sam, my great-grandmother’s brother. I had heard of him before, but had never seen his picture until I started this project, and the only four pictures I have of him are posted on this website. He was very good looking, and each photograph of him shows a charisma that is lacking in so many of the other relatives’ photos. There is a spark that leaps out of each of his four pictures. I found myself thinking about him a lot. His mysterious life and disappearance became an enigma that would never be solved. There is a vacuum where a man once existed and then vanished forever without a trace.

The mysteries are many. Nobody ever mentioned a girlfriend and he never married. He was easy-going, and he was both gregarious and a loner at the same time. He never settled down, never held a steady job. The census logs and old city directories show he didn’t had an address of his own, instead giving his mother’s home as his residence. He drank, he hopped trains and no one ever knew where he went. He apparently never bothered to tell anyone where he went beforehand or after he returned. Finally, he never returned.

I don’t know how Sam viewed himself. Did he see himself as a failure? A misfit of some sort? Why was he so different — he clearly was. You can see it in the pictures without knowing anything about him. He stands out. He is separate from everyone else. He looks like I always felt my entire life. He was different from everyone else, just like me.

He is an utter mystery, a winning smile on a blank canvas, vast and empty enough for me to project my own questions of life onto. And his bright face illuminated a few clues for me to pursue in my own journey. My quest in looking for Sam’s story melded into my quest in looking for myself. Looking for Sam became looking for me.

Sam has brought me a long way since I first saw him. I like the idea of having him as a guide. Sam never knew me; he never even had any notion that I would ever exist. But I turn to him now whenever I have a question to ask. In Sam, I feel have someone who I can talk to, ask questions, toss ideas around with. And someday I’m sure he’ll answer. Meanwhile I’ll keep looking for him a little longer, asking more questions, seeking more answers.

Because, like I said, I pretend to know all of the answers, but deep down — and here is my little secret, so don’t tell anyone — I really don’t know squat.

Decisions, Take Two
Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Pompous self-righteous ass! That’s what echoes through my brain when I reread what I posted on Saturday. I wish I were a better writer, good enough so that what I write reflects not just what I think, but how I think. I suppose it takes a lot more practice and I could probably benefit from a few writing workshops. I dunno.

If I were a lesser man, I would have taken down that post days ago, but the problem is that I really believe every word I wrote. I just wish I had written it completely differently than I did. Besides, taking it down is a coward’s way out. No, what I think I need to do is back up a little and try again, but this time try doing it with a more personal approach, by telling you about how decisions I made when I was young led to where I am today, and how my decisions, every step of the way, could have been blamed on others, but in the end were entirely my own.

I want to learn how to write in nuances and carefully crafted metaphors that resonate with truths that echo more loudly than words. Until I can do that — if that day ever comes — I’m stuck trying to talk like a three-year-old, using childish phrases and gestures to make myself understood.

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Let me start from this point. I believe very strongly every word I wrote last Saturday. I also know from painful personal experience so much more than what I wrote. I know because one choice I made was to be closeted for a good part of my life. I did this for a whole host of reasons, but one of these reasons was a terribly unhealthy one: I was afraid to disappoint my family. Now remember when I said there was an upside and a downside to every decision? The upside for me was that I didn’t have to explain myself to them, didn’t have to feel the shame and embarrassment of such a revelation that I knew I would feel, and I didn’t have to see the look of pain in my mother’s eyes. At least that was the upside as I imagined it at that point, and in my emotional maturity in those years, these weren’t easy upsides to dismiss.

Of course, the downside was that I lived a hidden life, which in fact pushed me further away from my family than the truth would ever do. You know what I mean.

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I don't mean to blame my mother and family for my old decisions — it was all me. I was the one who was afraid of telling them, afraid of their reactions, afraid of my reflection in their eyes, afraid of everything.

In particular, I was afraid of my mother’s emotional well-being if she knew the truth. When I was younger, she had a tendency to take things very personally, to assume that everything worked against her. She had a miscarriage when I was fourteen, and after that she would careen wildly between the two frightening poles of a violent, volcanic anger and a deep, silent depression, and that had left an indelible mark on me. She got a pretty good handle on her anger long after I left home, but Dad’s sudden death at the age of forty-eight with three boys still at home left her more depressed than ever before. I told myself that coming out to her would just be piling on, and that was the last thing I wanted to do. I was afraid that when I told her the truth, that she would find some way to blame herself, as though it were her fault, or anybody else’s fault. Or even that there was a fault to be blamed.

But that was my fear, not anything she held as a weapon against me. Some may say that if you are afraid of someone, that it is that person’s fault that you are afraid. I disagree to a point. It is healthy to be fearful of someone who has the actual capacity to harm you, and you need to be sure to protect yourself from that person. But that is actually a rather narrow limit, a narrower limit than most people realize. I think I had a tendency to inflate other people’s ability to harm me.

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In fact, there was not a lot that my mother could do to me. Mostly because she loved me and in the end that would keep her from doing anything too terribly drastic. But to take a harder look at things, there was little she could actually do even if she were a cold-hearted evil person. What’s the worst she could do? Let’s say she’s Joan friggin’ Crawford — which she isn’t by any means. But just say, for instance. Would she scream? Hit me? Kick me out and say don’t see her ever again? These would hurt beyond all description. For years and years I would feel the pain of such a terrible reaction. But then, if she were that irrational, why would I value her opinion so much? Why would I want to accommodate that sort of irrational reaction? Would I remain silent and keep hiding just because she’s my mother?

I might, and I did. Decisions like these aren’t always made rationally. But I also know that if I had chosen differently and the worst happened, there would have been a tremendous tug-of-war over my heart, but in the end, I’d live. I would wake up the next morning. I may wake up full of dread, self-loathing, regrets, or anything else you can imagine, but I’d still wake up. And in that day and each day following, if I’m paying attention at all, I would have another opportunity to gain just a tiny bit more perspective, put that pain just a little but further behind me, and grow just a little more. And I’d still go to bed that night and try to sleep. I may sleep fitfully, with monsters and demons inhabiting my dreams, but I’d make it through the night and wake up again. I’d keep living, one step at a time, and I’d continue to go forward.

And besides, who was I kidding with all of these rationalizations about how it would have hurt my mother? I told myself I was protecting her, which would have been a somewhat acceptable reason in and of itself — maybe — but I think I was glad to have these excuses because it meant I didn’t have to face myself and deal with me. My mother certainly didn't have anything to do with my hiding from my friends and coworkers. There were a whole different set of fears to deal with there. But at that time, I was only capable of the most superficial of examinations, and as long as I stayed on the surface I was safe from having to make any real commitment to the truth of who I am. I also didn’t have to make any decision in my life based on that truth and deal with those consequences. All of these things were just more benefits, as I saw it, to the decision I made. It represented all that I was capable of doing at that time, as sad as it sounds today.

I also probably would have told you that I had no choice. I would have said that my family would have made coming out impossible. I would have made excuses about society's condemnation of homosexuality, of my church's condemnation, and of my friend's and coworker's disapproval and repulsion. I would have told you there was no other way. And of course, you know well as I do, that I would have been wrong, all wrong.

These things I know today. These things I did not understand then. I needed to buy myself some time, to acquire some badly needed tools for my tool shed, to acquire them one by one and to learn how to use them. That decision to stay in the closet, if nothing else, bought me that time.

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Rufus Wainwright said, "There is this thing with mothers … Though they’re usually the ones who show you the most love and who are the most nurturing, they’re also the ones who have the greatest capacity to rip you apart.” This is true with the best of mothers, and it is so very true with mine. My mother is nothing like Joan Crawford. Nothing at all. She did indeed show me the most love and was the most nurturing. She and I, despite everything were very close and continue to be through thick and thin. Mom, if you ever find out I’m writing a weblog and you’re reading this, it’s not about you at all. It’s about me. Thank you for telling me you’ll always love me. I will always love and cherish you, too.

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You might say that there was a much better decision I could have made many years ago, and I would agree with you. I’d be agreeing with you in hindsight, from the perspective of a confident forty-something, not from that of a shy, unsure twenty-something or a depressed self-loathing early thirty-something. I’d be agreeing with you wholeheartedly and from the basis of my own experience, I would advise — hell, I would kick and scream and forcefully strong-arm — anyone in a similar situation to take the path that I was afraid to take.

But whatever I would advise for someone else, I can’t take it back for myself and do it over. And in truth, I’m not entirely sure I would want to. Because even in that bad decision — one that I would not advise for anyone else on God’s green earth — even in that coward’s way out, there was some good that came out of even that bad decision. And that good is this: I am today exactly where I am as the result of an accumulation of experiences brought about by my own decisions, including my time in the closet.

I learned a lot about internal struggle and introspection. I learned a lot about my own motivations. I learned that I didn’t need anyone else to define my own sense of fulfillment and well-being. I learned how to eat alone in restaurants and travel alone on weekends. I learned a lot about depression, about how to take care of myself during those dark, sinister times. I learned a lot about Christianity as I tried to deal with my sexuality on Christian terms. I learned a lot about sexuality as I tried to deal with Christianity on my sexual terms. I learned that I am a creation of God. I learned that I am who I am, and God created me too.I learned that I am a sinner, but so what? — so is everyone else including the saints. Especially the saints. I learned that if what they say is true, then Jesus died for me just like He died for St. Francis and Jerry Falwell and Jimmy and Tammy Fae and the Pope, and that Mary loves God’s children just as my mother loves me. I learned that when God created me, He created me in His image; and I am many things including gay — yet even still He created me in His image, and I don’t need to understand anything more than that. I learned that deep down, really deep down, hidden under the many layers of protection I wrapped myself in, I was someone worthy of love and happiness. I learned that I was responsible for my happiness, and that happiness lies only in the outcomes of steps I take, not in the steps of others.

I’m pretty sure I would have missed most of these things if I had been out in my twenties, and I would not trade the world for them now.

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This is what I meant when I said that I have little reason to look back to anything in my past with regret. I appreciate where I am today and how I got here. I can also heartily recommend that nobody — absolutely nobody — follow the path I trod.

I've come to appreciate the growth that I underwent in those many years. I can look back at how I was then, and contrast it with how I am now and see the vast chasm that I leaped across to get here. I’m very proud of that leap. If I were to regret the initial decision that I made to stay in the closet, then I would not be able to look across the chasm from where I stand today, and feel proud of that soaring flight I took across that canyon. I won’t let anybody (including myself) take that away from me.

I know I am ending on a point of hubris, and I'll be embarrassed all over again when I read this later. I'll be humbled by a bad move that I'll make that doesn't allow for such a great opportunity for growth as this one has. Most bad decisions are that way. But whatever the outcome, good or bad, it will be mine to own. I guess I've become greedy that way.

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Speaking of decisions, I have now decided to lighten up for a while.

Usurper Boy
Sunday, January 18, 2004

Okay Okay Okay! You wanna know the real reason I’ve been cranky lately? It’s not Britney, and it’s not gloomy Sundays.

Morning Boy is missing! We haven’t seen him since the holidays. Instead, we have Usurper Boy to greet us at the gym at 5:30 in the morning. Usurper Boy is not as cheerful and vibrant as Morning Boy. Usurper Boy barely looks at us when we hand him our membership cards. Usurper Boy plays lousy music over the P.A.

Eyes Without A Face is an unacceptable substitute for the English Beat or Squeeze, don’t you agree?

Not My Fault
Saturday, January 17, 2004

I should warn you, dear reader, that today I am in a sullen, crotchety and very self-righteous mood, far beyond my rights to be so. I am about to say a lot of high-minded and arrogant things, and I'm feeling extraordinarily long-winded. So, if you want to skip this one, I won’t blame you too much, although I'm rather proud of the closing two paragraphs.

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I read here that Britney Spears has disavowed significant responsibility for her recent 55-hour marriage fiasco, saying, “I was in Vegas, and it took over me.”

Bullshit!

Vegas, my ass! She had opportunities galore to stop the nonsense and at each opportunity, she made a decision not to. When she and her friend concocted the idea, she decided not to say no. When she and her friend got into the car, she decided not to say no. When she and her friend chose the wedding chapel, she decided not to say no. When she and her friend learned that the chapel could not marry her without a wedding license, she decided not to say no. When she and her friend filled out the marriage license application, she decided not to say no. When she paid for the marriage license, she decided not to say no. When she and her friend returned to the chapel, she decided not to say no. When she was asked during the ceremony, she decided not to say "I’m sorry, I don’t.”

It didn’t “just happen”. And Vegas didn’t do it. She did it, and made specific decisions to do it every step of the way.

Frankly, I think her record label’s initial response — that it was a joke taken too far — was a much better explanation. It may be a lame excuse, but at least the responsibility rests with the jokers, not some nameless and faceless force of “Vegas” which can’t examine its motives or grow from the experience.

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I’d like to think that I am a pretty tolerant person, and very eager to empathize with someone who makes a mistake, whether they make that mistake out of ignorance or poor judgment. I use the word empathize because I find myself all too often in the unfortunate position of needing a certain amount of slack. I hope that whenever I pull one of my whoppers, I can be forgiven and have an opportunity to learn from that mistake, grow, and move on. That is, as they say, “the Christian thing to do.”

However, that growth can’t take place unless I look at the poor decisions I made — whether they come out of genuine ignorance or selfishness or poor judgment — and acknowledge where I went wrong, and decide to fix the resulting mess and try not to do it again. As good as it may make me feel about the situation, I don’t get to blame anyone or anything else and still expect to grow.

It may sound simple, but it’s definitely not that easy.

We live in a culture that is very good at blaming others for the dumb things that we do ourselves. But whether we realize it or not, we made thousands of decisions yesterday, all of which move us forward to where we find ourselves today. I have learned, slowly and painfully, that when I take the time to make these decisions with the consideration of their impacts, I can give myself the opportunity to make responsible decisions that I can better live with. When I make these decisions based solely on how much fun it may be, or cultural expectations, or on how they make me feel, I often find that I can do some colossally stupid things. But the resulting mess still winds up being my responsibility, mostly because it is a mess I have to live with. I can’t blame it on Vegas.

Over time, and over a hell of a lot of mistakes and misery, I finally have learned (intellectually at least) that good decision making means taking the responsibility to evaluate the options, assess the positives and negatives, and make a reasoned decision. Nearly every choice involves positives and negatives. There is almost always a downside to every decision, even the phenomenally good ones. So, when I make a decision, I’ve found that I have to live with the negatives as I get to enjoy the positives. When the negative aspect of the decision crops up, I have to stop to remember how and why I made the decision in the first place. And if I find I made a mistake, I can make another decision that starts to put me where I want to be.

I have only done this consciously (although not necessarily consistently) for about seven years now, and I have found this conceptually simple thing to be a very difficult exercise, but a very empowering one. My decision making is my opportunity to exercise control — or abdicate it, as the case may be. But whether I make a good decision or a bad one, either way it was mine and nobody else’s. Personally I think this sense of empowerment, more than anything else, has been the root of happiness for me. I'm not the sort of person to feel powerful very often.

As a result of this, it has become much more rare for me to find myself blinking into the klieg lights trying to explain myself.

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That all can be well and good, but what about the case where people have done terrible things to us? Admittedly, this is where it gets to be more difficult, and my response will start to get really preachy, because the answer is essentially the same.

Sometimes it would be nice if we could live in a vacuum, but unfortunately we're not so lucky sometimes. We have to deal with the arbitrary and often adverse decisions of others. These decisions include whether to love us, fight with us, tell us a joke, abuse us, smile at us, steal from us, give us flowers, return our phone call, don’t return our phone call, scream at us, assault us, console us, threaten us, harm us, and so on. We have a range of choices in our response to their actions. Our responses must ultimately include not only holding them accountable for the wrongs that they did (to the extent that self-protection allows it), but also holding ourselves accountable for the outcomes of our responses. And we must recognize that our responses are not just the immediate decisions we make at the time, but also decisions that we continue to make, perhaps for the rest of our lives. So even where I have been at the mercy of others years ago, I find that I must again decide how to respond to it today, and to take responsibility for that. And I may have to decide again how to respond tomorrow as well. “One day at a time”, as they say.

These decisions get to be difficult when dealing with childhood issues such as abuse or neglect. As children, we were limited in our ability to respond by our lack of maturity, lack of knowledge, and lack of empowerment. I’ve learned over time that I have had to recognize and accept that my ability to respond wisely was nonexistent. I’ve also learned that I have benefited greatly in studying my childhood to understand how those experiences continue to influence me to this day. But I’ve also had to learn somewhere along the way that blaming my problems on childhood experiences really doesn’t get me anywhere. In fact, it tends to leave me in the same child-like state of helplessness. There was a trend some ten years ago about finding your “inner child”. I suppose it was all well and good, as long as the goal in finding him was so you could get him to grow up.

Today I am no longer a young child and I have to recognize that. If I were to choose to nurse those wounds and continue to respond as though I was still a child, the responsibility for the outcome will be mine alone to deal with, and not that of family, friends, relatives, doctors, priests, teachers, politicians, neighborhood bullies, criminals, or anyone else. They are not still doing anything to me. It does me no good to blame any of them for my problems today, not does it do me any good to blame my feelings either. I’ve had to try to work against my anger and fear, towards what I know intellectually what’s best.

Anytime anyone hurts you, whether it be in childhood or just an hour ago, it is inevitably a very difficult and emotional situation to deal with from a cool and rational framework, Try as I might, I'm not always able to do it by myself. Sometimes the decisions and emotions are too overwhelming to handle alone. If that is the case, then I find that I need to just make the smaller decisions that I know I can do, perhaps to call someone for advice for example. Any baby step that I can take that still puts me in the right direction is a positive step to take. I can then better sort the bigger decisions from that fresher ground.

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Don’t get me wrong — I still believe we should hold others accountable for the bad things they do to us. I’m not recommending that we leave anyone off the hook. But we can’t let ourselves off the hook either, especially when we abdicate control over the situation or wait and hope for “closure”. I have come to the conclusion that there really isn’t any such thing as closure. It only exists in really bad made-for-TV movies and schlocky daytime TV talk shows. In fact, lately whenever I hear anyone talk about seeking closure, I just roll my eyes. Too often, seeking closure is another form of abdication of control over the situation, placing the power of the pacing of events into the hands of that other person. I have found that people continue to affect me only when I let them — when I invest the emotional energy in caring about the person who would do me harm, when I care about what he continues to think, do or say. When I decide that I don’t care what he or she does, then I have found that this person’s power over me largely disappears. When I decide that I no longer want these things to affect me, I can take different actions to “close” the issue myself. The power for that is within me, not with the other person.

Because every day I can make new decisions to better address things that have happened to me, I have also found that in many ways it’s never too late for much of anything. The beauty of this has been that I almost never have to mourn lost opportunities like I used to, because I can still do things now and in the future to build a better way of living for me. The past, being in the past as it is, is not much of a factor in the decisions I make today except maybe as warnings of what not to do. My decisions can be made while looking towards the future, towards the hoped-for outcome of today’s decisions. I can’t fix the past, but I can influence my future. And that for me is also empowering. You can invest hope in the future in a way you never can in the past.

So, here’s my advice in dealing with other troublesome people: don’t look to the other person for your source of closure, triumph, acknowledgement, or validation. Take that power away from that person and keep it for yourself. Because if you choose to view yourself as a helpless victim, you will remain a helpless victim. Society will be quite willing to validate your victimhood and reward you for it. But in the end, viewing yourself as a helpless victim is your decision, and the results of that decision is your responsibility. And you’re not likely to find much “closure” in that.

It is our task — my task! — to make new decisions from this day forward. I was a victim, but I am not a victim anymore. I was a child, but I’m not a child anymore. No one can make me do anything that I understand to be harmful.

This all sounds very triumphant on my part, and indeed it would be if I could be at all consistent in my approach to dealing with other people. But in truth, I’m not entirely successful at following what I preach. I’m can be a hypocrite that way. I slipped a bit from that commitment last Sunday and published that moment on the web for all the world to see. But that doesn’t change the fact that I am still very much responsible for my actions, not my mother, my father, or anyone else. What’s past is past. And if I stay in the past, I only have myself to blame for where I ultimately find myself today because I made millions of decisions myself since then. I can act and behave much differently now that I am forty-two (forty-three in two weeks!) than I could at age ten.

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It’s hard to say all of this without using the word “forgiveness”. Although I managed to do it, I find that this whole discussion is largely empty without it. I hardly know where to start on the subject of forgiveness. I do know that if I am going to really move on from other people’s bad behavior, forgiveness is essential. I can’t move on from what other people do to me simply by ignoring them and pretending it didn’t happen, and I suppose that in a way, it probably sounds as if that was exactly what I was saying. No, I’ve actually had to learn a few things on how to forgive, which is a toughie. I'm still learning. I won't be able to address it adequately here. Others, much smarter than me, have written a million pages on the subject and yet its still complex and difficult. But I can try to go over just a few key points that I've discovered from some of these very smart people.

The Lord’s Prayer says, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” I think it is significant that there is not a conditional clause in that petition. It does not say “… as we forgive those who trespass against us and ask for forgiveness.” The fact is, sometimes that person can’t or won’t ask for forgiveness. Maybe that person is dead. Or maybe that person simply doesn’t see things the way you do, or can’t bring himself or herself to admit to the problem. Maybe that person is truly evil. Does that mean that I should remain in my state of anger and pain until he comes to me on bended knee? Am I willing to concede that kind of power to him — the power to make me angry, full of pain and fear? And think about this: should I concede that kind of power to anyone who clearly does not have my best interests at heart, who has actually done something to harm me? Why on earth should I do that?

I think we tend to look upon forgiveness as some sort of altruistic act for the benefit of the person being forgiven. It’s satisfying to imagine that terrible person prostrate on the floor, begging for me forgiveness, and me with the power to bring relief to that person’s mental anguish. On the other side, I also know how much better I feel when people forgive me of my boneheaded moves. I think we tend to imagine forgiveness as a gift that we bestow on the transgressor. But lest face it, I’m not that altruistic, especially when people don’t ask for forgiveness. I don’t think I’m alone in that feeling.

It’s a good thing that altruism is not the only motivation needed to forgive. We can also forgive for the most selfish of motivations: for our own benefit; so we can move forward. Leave that miserable creature in the mire if we have to, but leave nevertheless. Shake the dust off your sandals, so to speak, and leave it behind.

I’m not an expert at forgiveness, but I think Debbie Morris is. She wrote Forgiving the Dead Man Walking. She was a 16-year-old in Mississippi who was kidnapped along with her boyfriend by Joe Vaccaro and Robert Lee Willie (who, as a result of this crime became the subject of the book and movie, Dead Man Walking). Her boyfriend was shot and left for dead. She was repeatedly and brutally raped but eventually got away. Her whole life fell apart and she spent the better part of two decades dealing with the aftermath. It’s a very long, painful, and moving story that took some 250 pages to tell, so I can’t go into a whole lot of detail here. But in the end, she found that she had to forgive the men who did these horrible things to her and her boyfriend, only in order to put her own life back together. She found that the other victims of these two men followed different paths and ended up bitter and defeated. Like I said, I’m not an expert on forgiveness — my life experiences don’t begin to compare to the more horrific things that can happen to a lot of people. But I think Debbie Morris can, and she has the authority of her tragic experiences to teach us a lot.

She found that she had to forgive not because her attackers deserved it, or even asked for it. She didn’t forgive in that “forgive and forget” nonsense frame of mind. She didn’t coyly say, “aw shucks, that’s alright”. She was just as angry at Helen Prejean, the nun who wrote Dead Man Walking about her fight against Robert Lee Willie's death sentence. She didn’t reach much of a reconciliation with the people who nearly destroyed her life. But she decided to do forgive them anyway because she saw no other way to reclaim her life. One might argue that she forgave for the most selfish of reasons, but she made the decision that she was no longer going to be bound by anyone else’s pathology. And in that act, she took back the power that her attackers had taken from her.

This kind of forgiveness is not an easy thing to do. And in my experience, I have found that it is not a one time thing. Sometimes I find that I have to forgive the same person over and over again, for the exact same thing — for the exact same incident. I may remember a slight on Monday, and so I forgive. When I remember the same slight on Tuesday, I find I have to do it all over again. Unlike in the movies, it often doesn’t end with the credits rolling when you forgive someone.

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There is a humiliating aspect to this, but humiliating isn't bad necessarily. It comes from he word "humble".

In order to do all of this, you have to be willing to not care about other people's gossip. If you are making sound decisions and living your life in a true and honorable way, other people's gossip will ring hollow and will have little substantial affect. Your reputation precedes you, and if you have a reputation as a hot head, then gossip will be damaging. But if you have a reputation for being a considered human being, the gossip will not gain much traction.

In order to do all of this, you have to be willing to appear a little naive sometimes. You have to be willing to make decisions that go against the grain of retaliation for its own sake, which in the eyes of some people may make you appear weak. But you will only be weak if you think the opinions of these people are important. There is amazing strength over time in confounding the ideas of some of these people.

In order to do all of this, you have to be willing to forgo other people's notion of satisfaction, justice, triumph, or whatever. In fact, sometimes you have to be willing to forgo other people's opinions on a lot of things. There is strength in that also, in the fact that these people cannot influence you for their own purposes, that these people are like hamsters in an terrarium, unable to get at you through the thick glass.

In order to do all of this, you also have to learn to ignore your own bile, but instead follow your head, guided by your heart. And it helps to do it with empathy. Not sympathy necessarily, but simple empathy.

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I know this all can sound pretty arrogant because I know that I am still capable of making some pretty bad decisions for some pretty bad reasons. In that, I am no better than anyone else, including Britney. But it is my task in life to always try to be cognizant of the impact of my decisions on myself as well as others. This includes my responses, past and present, to things that have happened to me, so that I can choose a better way forward. And tomorrow, hopefully, I may discover yet another better choice that I didn’t think of today.

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This is an awful lot to write just because Britney had another vapid moment in the sun. To be honest, I’d have to agree that her dumb move doesn’t warrant all of this, but one thing leads to another, and before I knew it, I had this whole thing finished and a lot was gotten off of my chest. I certainly feel better.

I generally try not to be too preachy, but events in my life have made the issue of choice and responsibility extremely important to my emotional well being. Unfortunately, Britney’s disavowal of any role her own choices played in her little fiasco left an itch that I decided was time to scratch. Britney may not be important, but the issues raised by her debacle are.

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While I am on the subject of Britney, let me make one more point:

There are people in this world who are daily taking up the challenge of making very responsible choices in their relationships and, particularly, in raising their children. A few of these people are doing a very remarkable job, and many more are striving valiantly to do a similarly remarkable job. They are keenly aware that the decisions they make every day, big and small, slowly build towards a better world, a better community, and a better family. And yet, these people aren’t allowed do the one thing that Britney just did as a joke or because “Vegas” seduced her to do it. They can’t legally marry.

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Ironically, Britney’s new video is called “Toxic”.

When I Dream
Tuesday, January 13, 2004

When I dream, I don’t always pay very close attention to what is going on. I guess paying attention requires a degree of concentration that I often can’t muster while sleeping. That is why I usually don’t remember my dreams when I wake up.

I know I dream because just before I wake up, I am aware that people had been talking, but I have just walked into the room and everyone stopped and turned to look at me. As I slowly awake, they leave the room one by one without saying a word.

Sometimes, I catch snippets of conversation just before I walk into the room, but they usually don’t make much sense. I hear things like, “The passenger door on the bicycle is squeaking.” Or, “… water under the bridge and the girl is laughing.” Or, “Third time charms are all we need.” Or, in one particularly enigmatic instance, “In our tribe, we call ourselves the ‘Our-Them’.”

Occasionally, I walk into the room and the people don’t stop what they’re doing. They carry on as before. I know they do this because these are the dreams I remember. Sometimes I join in; sometimes I just stand and watch. The light is usually rather clear but spotty. I only see clearly what I look at. There isn’t much background, and when it exists, it constantly shifts and changes as people appear and disappear, and I am not bothered by this. The light comes from nowhere, and there are no shadows unless the thing that casts the shadow is ominous. It is the shadow that warns of danger.

When a shadow appears, the dream may become a nightmare. Sometimes, I am able to remember that it is just a dream, and I might willfully dream the danger away. But in truth, I am rarely able to do this. I can do it only when I’m lucky and paying very close attention. And like I said, I don’t always pay close attention.

I’m grateful for the few times I remember my dreams, mostly because it happens so rarely its like getting cable TV without paying for it.

But when I do remember a dream, I believe in its veracity without question. Mostly because when I am dreaming — even on those rare occasions when I can influence the course of a bad dream — I still don’t have the presence of mind to lie.

The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization
Tuesday, January 13, 2004

It says here that Britney Spears married Jason Allen Alexander, a childhood friend, on the spur of the moment as a joke that went too far in Las Vegas. The groom said, “It was just crazy, man, and we were just looking at each other and said, ‘Let’s do something wild, crazy. Let’s go get married, just for the hell of it.’” The marriage was annulled a mere 55 hours later as soon as the courthouse opened for business on Monday morning.

So, me get this straight. They’re worried that committed gay couples will weaken and demean the institution of marriage when these two can do that?

It Was a Dark and Gloomy Night
Sunday, January 11, 2003

Actually, it’s a cloudy and gloomy Sunday afternoon. Gloomy weather is rare in Tucson, but when it arrives it definitely sets a completely different mood to everything it touches, including people.

All is quiet. The birds are silent; the air is perfectly still. There is no fresh cleansing presence of rain to bring reason for the stillness. The only things reaching my ears are the pumping of my own blood and the barely-perceptible drone of a far-away Cessna. I am in a reflective mood, and Chris is uncharacteristically quiet.

To be honest, I find weather like this stressful. I could never survive living in Seattle without round-the-clock observation. This darkness has the feeling of the calm before a storm, and not a meteorological one. The dark overcast sky is a psychological foreboding made manifest, dank and dark. My feet are cold and my stomach hurts a little. I breathe a little less easy.

I find myself remembering the feeling of helplessness that came over me on those nights when my father was away and my mother was not up to coping with us or anything else, so she would retire to the bedroom as the house grew ever darker. Darkness took on metaphysical dimensions, and to someone my age, turning on a light seemed like a remarkably grown-up thing to do. I was still a kid. But the darkness would get to be too much, so I’d do the grown-up thing and turn on a light, boil some hot dogs for me and my brothers, and listen for any noise that would stir from upstairs. And I would say to myself, “I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

Chris enjoys low mood lighting as does just about everyone else. I usually do too, but there are a few rare moments when it bothers me. There are times when it’s all I can do to keep from running through the house and lighting every light to chase away the darkness. But I know why I feel as I do, so I gird myself and don’t do anything except to curse the darkness.

But there are times when I find that I must cling desperately to bright light, out of fear that the darkness will envelope me, smother me, clutch at me and take me away forever. When I was in college, mom called at 2:00 a.m. with the terrible news that my father died of a sudden heart attack. Every light in my bedroom stayed on for the rest of the night and for weeks afterwards. When two of my best friends moved away, I slept with the lights on for each occasion. When my brother was in the hospital with third-degree burns, I kept the lights on for I don’t know how long. When I learned of our plant shutdown five years ago, I slept with the lights on for three nights straight. The lights were my source of reassurance during those dark, foreboding times. As long as the room stayed brightly lit, dad would come home any minute, dinner would be simmering on the stove, mom would be in the kitchen, lovingly and patiently helping us with our homework at the kitchen table under those bright fluorescent lights, and all would be well.

I can’t wait for the dark clouds to lift and for the sun to come out. I also can’t wait for the weather to literally improve, which it probably will tomorrow. The good thing about living in Tucson is that it always does. The clouds will lift and everything will be bright and cheerful again. And I will welcome the sunlight with my arms stretched outward and my face turned to meet it, eyes closed and smiling with relief.

Computer Geek Chronicles
Friday, January 9, 2004

Panchesco read my Christmas Day entry and asked, “...what exactly is in your Unix profile?”

Oh goody. Here’s my opportunity to show off my profoundly geeky nature…

Let me start with some background information for those lucky enough to be uninitiated. In UNIX, there is a command called finger, which returns lots of arcane information about the person with a given User ID, the most useful information being that person’s actual name, since User ID’s tend to be meaningless in the real world. The results of the finger command can be quite dull, but you can jazz up what is displayed when someone looks you up by placing a .plan file in your home directory, which is what I did. UNIX will then attach the text in the .plan file to the bottom of the finger results. Most people don’t know about the .plan file, so it’s somewhat rare for anyone to bother to do this. Except, of course, geeks like me.

So, suppose you’re trying to work on a file on the network that is being edited by someone with the User ID of ab5475, and you wanted to know who the hell ab5475 is, you’d go to the UNIX command line prompt and type "finger ab5475", and you would see something like what you see below, which is a standard finger result followed by the contents of my old .plan file.

(By the way, all three of the guys mentioned below had profiles talking about how cool they were. One guy drove an El Camino, and another drove a Chevy Astro Van.)

So there you go, fans. Keep those cards and letters coming, but let this be a lesson to you — be careful what you ask for. I promise not to subject you to this nerdy nonsense ever again.

And lest you worry, I sold the Probe years ago.

Bihari Vajpayee
Wednesday, January 7, 2004

It’s 6:30 AM.  Chris and I are silently driving home from our all-too-early morning workout at the gym (darn those New Year's resolutions!). The radio is on, and the news announcer is droning on about the peace talks between Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Chris perks up. “Big Hairy Vaj Pie? Is that what he said?”

I wake up. “Big Hairy Vaj Pie? Eww!”

We get home. Chris says, “Ugh! The garbage needs to go out. That Big Hairy Vaj Pie is starting to stink up the place.”

After breakfast, I washed the dishes. “Eww! What’s that Big Hairy Vaj Pie doing in the bottom of that mug?”

Chris’ stomach growls. “Ohh! I’m feeling a Big Hairy Vaj Pie coming on!”

I’m thinking, “I gotta brush my teeth bad. Feels like I had a Big Hairy Vaj Pie last night.”

Yuck.

We’re fifteen again, and finding it to be a bit more fun than being forty-three.

Resolutions
Tuesday, January 6, 2004

“Have you made your New Year’s Resolutions?”

The question stopped me cold, and I realized I hadn’t given it a single thought. Chris went on to point out that it was as good a time as any to take stock, reflect, and maybe set forth a new path or attitude.

New Year’s Resolutions, huh? I guess I’ve never really been one to make too much of a new year. I vaguely remember vowing two years ago to loose weight (which I did), but beyond that I really never took it too seriously. But when Chris mentioned that he had made a few (without actually going into what they were — kind of like a birthday wish that only comes true if it’s kept a secret), I thought maybe there might be something to it.

Since I’m something of a resolution virgin, don’t expect too much out of me. But I had an opportunity to think about resolutions today at work as I was working on my 2003 performance review. Yes, it’s that time of year, and performance reviews are probably my least favorite activity. It’s when you get to tell your boss about all of the wonderful things you did in the past year to make the company tons of money, of which you actually get to see but a smidgen. My performance review submittal was late, and the write-up could have been so much better if I had taken the time to do it right and get it turned in when it was due before the Christmas break. So this brings me to my first resolution —

Resolution #1
I resolve to do my 2004 performance review on time before its due date next December, so I won't have to play catch-up like I’m doing right now.

While I'm at it, I may as well promise to do better at staying on a workout schedule. I know it's an overused cliché in the resolution department, but somehow resolutions don't seem complete without at least one nod to one's dissatisfaction with how one looks when one catches a glimpse of oneself in the mirror when one steps out of the shower. Especially after one spends two weeks in California over the holidays, which does something to make one feel a little less fabulous.

Resolution #2
I resolve to work out at the gym at least 4 days a week and will not binge during the holidays, so I won't have to play catch-up like I’m doing right now.

Finally, since these resolutions really aren’t that good, I’ll have to make one final resolution —

Resolution #3
I resolve to think a little more about my New Year’s resolution for 2005 before New Year’s Day, so I won't have to play catch-up like I’m doing right now.

There. I’ve got that done, and now I can get on with my life.

The Grail is Buried Somewhere in California
Monday, January 5, 2004

I saw this sign posted at a Chevron station in Beverly Hills —

California: Where