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

Dogmath
Saturday, June 26, 2004

Here's a simple mathematics equation:

GSMDCA

AKC

 

AKC

AKC

Introducing Twister, the world's first Great Swiss Bassihuagle.

I Don't Like Memes
Tuesday, June 22, 2004

I really don't like memes. Well, to be honest, I don't think I can really define the word "meme", but like porn, I pretty much know it when I see it. I generally find memes to be trivial and pointless, and not the least bit revelatory. But Famous Author Rob Bynes did a pretty decent job with this one that I thought could be an interesting starting-off point for some storytelling. The premised of this meme is to recall where you were when significant things happened in recent history, but I figure the answers don't necessarily need to be limited to that theme.

So here’s my take on this meme. It's long, so you might want to get a fresh cup of coffee or tea or other delightful beverage of choice.

1. Where were you when you heard that Ronald Reagan died?

I was online reading the New York Times. My first reaction was “it’s about time!”  Not because I wished him dead. Not at all. I was just thinking about how devastating Alzheimer’s disease is and the terrible toll it takes on the family of the one who has it.

They call Alzheimer ’s disease “The Long Goodbye”. My great-grandmother, Easter, had it. It was sad to see her slowly slip away. Her memory began to leave her in the mid-1970’s, but she remained alive, such as it was, until 1989. She spent her last few years in a coma. Her daughter, my grandmother, is now in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s. She still walks around and speaks words, but the sentences don’t mean anything. If she follows the same path as Easter, it’s a safe bet that she will soon loose her words and her ability to walk. That will be followed by her brain forgetting how to swallow and perform other basic bodily functions.

Yet her eyes are just as clear as they ever were. Her voice still carries the same tone and expression. She still answers with the same stock phrases that she always said, but there is no meaning behind them anymore. Yet there are times, when out of the blue, something happens and she responds exactly like the grandmother I knew my entire life. Was it a coincidence or a momentary lifting of the fog? Did the door crack open ever so slightly? Did she return from wherever she was for that brief moment, only to slip away again?

Should I have seized that brief moment to say I love you? I miss you? Goodbye?

Whether she can hear it or understand it or not, I’ll go ahead and say it because it’s true.

I love you. I miss you terribly.

Goodbye, Margaret.

2. Where were you on September 11, 2001?

In bed (west coast time). The clock radio had just come on, and the NPR announcer broke in to say that a plane was reported to have crashed into the World Trade Center, and that he’d pass on more info as it came in. I thought to myself, gee, that sucks. Probably a Cessna with a pilot suffering a heart attack or something. I bet a few people died in that one. Then a few minutes later, the announcer broke in again to say a second plane crashed into the World Trade Center. I threw off the covers, ran into the living room shouting, “This is no accident – we’re under attack!” And I watched television in disbelief.

To be honest, I'm not sure how to make this question about anything else except the event itself.

3. Where were you when you heard that Princess Diana died?

I was doing some sort of web-surfing. I don’t remember what, but I know I was online because, coincidentally, I was listening to London’s Virgin Radio via the internet when they announced it. I only remember it because I was amused by the coincidence of hearing the breaking news straight from London. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have given it much thought. Celebrity doesn't impress me much, and while I am an ardent Anglophile, I found the adoration surrounding Diana to be particularly shallow.

Anyway, that all happened back when I was living in Dallas with a decent Internet connection and was able to enjoy listening to streaming radio, which I did a lot. Maybe it's the old Appalachian in me, but Internet radio really opened up an entirely new way of confronting the news and culture in a very direct and unfiltered way. And while I scoff at the self-importance of celebrity, I am endlessly fascinated by local popular cultures everywhere.

Media on the Internet is an incredible door to local cultures everywhere. I could watch local news from Helena Television in St. Lucia, and hear a local weather forecast and cricket scores from Adelaide, Australia.

I used to listen to Shortwave radio before Internet radio was available. I was glued to Radio Moscow during the failed coup attempt when Gorbachev was almost thrown out. It was interesting to hear the completely uncensored reports the first day, the carefully scripted reports the second day, and the never-ending Tchaikovsky biography the third. The jubilation as it was broadcast live from Moscow when the coup failed on the fourth day was particularly exhilarating.

Today, there are fewer and fewer foreign broadcasters on shortwave, as most of them have moved to the Internet. But now I live just outside of Tucson, where there is no cable and I have to suffer the abysmal internet connections over our noisy local telephone lines provided by Qwest (a.k.a “Qworst”). Simple web-surfing is difficult, downloads are downright tedious, and streaming audio is completely out of the question.

I miss listening to the BBC, Radio Netherlands, Virgin, and especially KCRW. That funky Santa Monica station is run by the coolest, savviest DJ’s on the face of the earth. Two of them, Chris Douridas and Liza “Mad Doll” Richardson started in Dallas at what used to be the world’s greatest radio station, KERA. But there’s no need to link to KERA anymore because they went NPR-corporate in the mid-nineties and essentially banned all music. But before these two DJ's moved on to brighter futures, they exposed me to more kinds of music worldwide and here in the U.S. than ever before. They made music an intoxicating elixir, and completely ignored the very concept of borders and genres.

That is where I learned that the Ramones, Ella Fitzgerald, Hank Williams, Mouth Music, Poi Dog Pondering, Ofra Haza, and Algerian Rai musicians can all be played back to back without worrying whether anything “goes together”. Music fits when it is good. Limiting oneself to just a few expressions of music (or even excluding any expressions of music) cuts oneself off from a whole world of discovery. I’ll never say “I don’t like rap or country” ever again.

And I am deeply indebted to KCRW’s Tom Schnabel’s series of Trance Planet CD’s for showing me that the Orchestra Marrabenta Star De Mocambique’s hauntingly beautiful Nwahulwana (track 1) transcends all barriers of time, language, continents and generation. I have no idea what the singer’s singing, but he never fails to send chills down my spine.

Sure as hell beats Candle In The Wind.

4. Do you remember where you were when you heard Kurt Cobain had died?

First Diana, now Kurt Cobain. Celebrities.

No I don't remember where I was when Kurt Cobain chickened out. Not at all. While I love music and enjoyed his, it’s about the artistry and not the celebrity.

Frankly, I don't get celebrity. Politicians, I can understand the interest in them to a point. They have an impact on the conditions of our day-to-day lives. I can also understand an interest in the thoughts and ideas of artists, philosophers, historians, and all manner of other thinkers. But I'd have to agree with what, I dunno, somebody said (I think it was Voltaire, but my lousy Internet connection prevents me from looking it up at the moment), "Ideas and philosophy are news; everything else is just gossip."

On the other hand, I can tell you exactly where I was when I learned my father died. 

5. Take one for The Gipper: What’s your favorite flavor of jelly bean?

Anything sweet, but no licorice. I hate licorice.

This is a perfect example of how silly most memes are. Aren't you glad to know I hate licorice?

That's why I've never bothered to try to find out what foreign country I am, what color I am, what my name as an acronym means, or anything else. We INFP Aquarians are like that. I guess I'm a crotchety old curmudgeon, but when I start resorting to pointless memes, you'll know my creativity has retired to a single-wide and my intellect is right there in the front yard, up on blocks.

6. Where were you when Magic Johnson announced he was retiring from the NBA due to AIDS?

I was in Dallas and saw it on the news. It really didn’t register much with me at the time.

Again, it’s that celebrity thing.

There were far to many ordinary people struggling with the illness to get too worried about someone who already had the best health care money could buy. But if there’s any good that came from it, maybe it’s this: teenagers aren’t being burned out of their homes in Florida anymore. I guess that’s something, even if it’s still not enough.

It has always struck me as odd that this great nation has made free public education a cornerstone of our democracy. We consider it an absolute right, and make demands on its quality. This is something that few other nations do. Even other fully industrialized democracies often require parents to cover the cost of text books or a modest tuition.

Yet, we find it odd and maybe a little bit un-American to contemplate health care as a right. I don't advocate an abolition of private medicine, just as we haven't abolished private education. But it seems to me that something is terribly wrong when upwards of a third of all Americans do not have health care coverage.

Remember when I said I remember exactly where I was when my father died? It is quite likely that his story would have been completely different if he hadn't had to make a choice between hospitalization after a heart attack and continuing to pay for the mortgage and food for the family after the family business burned down.

Guess which he chose.

7. Where were you when Reagan was shot?

I had just moved to Washington DC the day before to start my co-op job while I was in college. I remember the immediacy – the intimacy even – of knowing that suddenly I was much closer to the “news” than I had ever been in my life. A friend of a wife of a coworker worked at George Washington University Medical Center. That was my three degrees of separation from that event.

I was impressed at how different the news is when you live in the Nation’s capital. All “national news” suddenly has a very local dimension. As a small-town boy who never saw his hometown in the news, I was fascinated by the phenomenon. Local television news started at 4:00 in the afternoon and went on until 7:00. Everything Congress did was local. Same with the FDA, HHS, Supreme Court, State, Pentagon, you name it. It was all local, and they covered them the same as they did city hall and the latest bank robbery.

When the national TV news talked about suspicions of Libyan truck bombers plotting to blow up the White House, and how the Secret Service reacted by closing Pennsylvania Avenue and erecting truck barricades, the local angle was about how the hell everyone was going to get to work with such a major thoroughfare blocked off. And when the government was undergoing a shutdown because the President and Congress were at a budgetary impasse, the local news consisted of a very long announcement of which employees were supposed to show up for work and which ones weren’t.  It sounded sort of like school closing announcements during a snowstorm.

8. Where were you when the Challenger exploded?

I was at work in Dallas. Ironically, the previous Saturday I told a group of coworker friends about an elaborate practical joke I pulled years earlier, around 1982.

Back then, I was still a co-op student at Comsat Labs, where there was this other incredibly naïve co-op student from Rochester, NY (Doug was his name) who worked in the same department. Now, with Comsat being a communications satellite company, we followed space shuttle program very closely, which had just begun flying. Columbia was the only one flying at the time, and this was probably its third or fourth mission. Comsat maintained an audio satellite link in the auditorium whenever a mission was underway, and would switch to video whenever it was available.

On the last day of that mission, Doug, Mike (another technician) and I were leaving the cafeteria, when Mike and I decided to drop into the auditorium to watch the shuttle land. Doug had things he needed to get done, so he declined to join us and went back to the lab.  Mike and I stayed to watch the landing, and of course it was a picture-perfect landing in the Mojave Desert.

As we walked back to the lab, Mike turned to me and said, “We’ve got to tell Doug the shuttle crashed”

I replied, “No way! He’d never believe it!”

“Sure he would.”

I thought for a moment. “Naw, he may be gullible, but even he wouldn’t buy it … unless ...

"What?"

"Unless we provide as few details as possible.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, remember when Reagan was shot? Nobody knew what was going on. It was mass confusion. Nobody knew anything and reporters were confused what was happening. They even said the press secretary died when he didn’t. Details are always extremely sketchy and confusing when something like this happens.. So anytime Doug asks us anything, let’s just say ‘they don’t know’.”

“Okay… I see...”

“And another thing, let’s just make it kinda minor. Mishaps are more believable than disasters. Let’s just say the front landing gear doesn’t come down, it skids and comes to a stop, and that’s about all we know because we could see it. Everything else, they haven’t figured it out yet. Keep it simple and maybe it’ll work.”

That’s what we did. We told him only that the front nose gear didn’t come down and the shuttle skidded to a stop.

“Was anybody hurt?” Doug asked.

“They didn’t think so. We could hear them talking to the astronauts so they seemed to be okay.”

“Was there fire or anything?”

“They couldn’t tell. It kicked up a lot of dust, and they thought maybe it was smoke, but they weren’t sure. Besides it was completely surrounded by emergency vehicles so we couldn’t get a good look.”

Doug asked a few more questions that we had incomplete answers for. After a few more responses of “they don’t know”, Doug thought quietly for a while and left.

Mike turned to me and asked, “Do you think he bought it?”

“I dunno.”

Four hours later, a senior engineer walked into our lab. “Hey fellas, I’ve had the radio on all afternoon and nobody has mentioned anything about the shuttle crashing…” Poor Doug had gone and relayed the “news” to the entire department’s engineering staff.

Fade out, fade in…

I told this story and we all had a good laugh. Then, just a few days later at work, one of those same coworker friends (and a prolific practical joker himself) came into my cube to tell me that the Challenger exploded.

I didn’t believe him. And I didn't believe anyone else until I walked past a conference room and several people were gathered around a television set.

9. Where were you when the 0J verdict was announced?

At work in Dallas. I couldn’t believe that our manager – who was responsible for a high-profile, multi-year, multi-million dollar program employing some five-hundred engineers – cared enough about the verdict to reserve a television and wheel it next to his office.

Celebrity. Again.

What is it about celebrity anyway? I never understood the excitement. If we’re not obsessed over OJ, then it’s all about Britney Spears, J. Lo and the Stacy Peterson trial.

Clay who?

Madonna has decided to change her name to Esther, all the better to reflect her trendy Kabalistic values. Yawn.

What is this hold that these extremely flawed people have over the imaginations of ordinary people? I’m afraid I have more important things to think about. Ask me where I was when they announced our plant shutdown almost exactly three years after OJ’s verdict.

Pop Quiz
Friday, June 18, 2004

Here’s a pop quiz – what do all of these occupations have in common?

Acceptance tester. Accounting manager. Accounts payable manager. Activist. Activity director. Advertising. Administrative assistant. Administrator. Airline employee. Anesthetist. Antiques dealer. Appraiser. Area manager. Architect. Artisan. Artist. Arts administrator. Assembler. Assembly technician. Astrologer. At-home mom. Athletic coach. Athletic trainer. Attorney. Audiovisual coordinator. Baker. Bank branch manager. Bank executive. Banquet manager. Bartender. Billing coordinator. Boat builder. Book dealer. Bookstore manager. Buyer. Cabinet maker. Camp director. Cantor. Career counselor. Carpenter. Case manager. Caterer. Cell phone specialist. Certified nurse assistant. Certified nurse midwife. Certified public accountant. Chef. Chaplain. Chief financial officer. Chief operating officer. Chemist. Chemistry professor. Child nutrition program specialist. Child psychologist. Childbirth educator. Choreographer. Civil engineer. Claim analyst. Clergy. Clerk. Clinical chemistry supervisor. Clinical coordinator. Clinical director. Clinical social worker. Clinician. College administrator. College professor. Community center director. Company president. Compliance officer. Computer analyst. Computer consultant. Computer programmer. Computer specialist. Computer systems manager. Consultant. Contractor. Controller. Cook. Corporate benefits manager. Correction officer. Cosmetologist. Countertop installer. Courier. Craftmaker. Creative arts therapist. Creative director. Crisis clinician. Custodian. Customer service. Data architect. Database administrator. Designer. Desktop publisher. Development associate. Diagnostic radiological technician. Dialysis technician. Dietician. Director. Director of athletics. Director of employment. Director of membership. Director of recreation. Director of religious education. Director of technology. Domestic engineer. Draftsman. Economist. Editor. Educator. Electrical engineer. Electrician. Electronic technician. Emergency room technician. Engineer. English professor. Entrepreneur. Environmental scientist. Episcopal priest. Equipment installer. Estimator. Event planner. Executive. Executive assistant. Executive director. Expeditor. Facilitator. Faculty dean. Farmer. Field service engineer. Filmmaker. Financial adviser. Financial analyst. Financial manager. Financial representative. Firefighter. Fitness director. Fitness specialist. Flight attendant. Floral designer. Florist. Food service manager. Forestry technician. Fund accountant. Fund-raiser. Furniture sales. Gallery owner. Gardener. General manager. Gifts coordinator. Geographic information systems analyst. Girl Scout executive. Glazier. Goldsmith. Golf course superintendent. Graphic artist. Groomer. Group leader. Guidance counselor. Hardware store. Hairdresser. Hair designer. Hair stylist. Health and conservation agent. Health and safety manager. Health care administrator. Health care ethicist. Health inspector. Higher education administrator. Historian. History teacher. Holistic health counselor. Home daycare. Homemaker. Hospice nurse. Hospital administrator. Hotel manager. House cleaner. House painter. Housewife. Human resources. Human services director. Information security consultant. Information technology specialist. Inspector. Insurance adjuster. Insurance broker. Internal Revenue Service. Inventory control. Investment banker. Jeweler. Journalist. Judge. Krispy Kreme manager. Land surveyor. Land use planner. Landlord. Landscape architect. Landscaper. Laundry owner. Law professor. Legal assistant. Librarian. Library media specialist. Library page. Literary agent. Loan analyst. Loan originator. Locksmith. Logistics manager. Machine operator. Manager. Marine biologist. Marine service. Market research. Marketing. Massage therapist. Medical administrator. Media designer. Medical technician. Mental health counselor. Mental health executive. Midwife. Minister. Mortgage banker. Muscular therapist. Music teacher. Musician. Nanny. Newspaper production. Network administrator. Night receiver. Nurse. Nurse's aide. Nurse practitioner. Nursing home administrator. Occupational therapist. Office clerk. Office manager. Ophthalmologist. Optician. Optometric technician. Optometrist. Orthopedic surgeon. Packer. Painter. Paper hanger. Paralegal. Paramedic. Park ranger. Parole officer. Pastor. Pastry chef. PC technician. Pediatric rehabilitation aide. Percussionist. Personal care attendant. Pet business owner. Pharmaceutical manager. Phlebotomist. Photographer. Physical therapist. Physician. Physician assistant. Picture framer. Pilot. Pipe fitter. Pizza maker. Planner. Plant manager. Plumber. Point of sale coordinator. Police lieutenant. Police officer. Policy analyst. Pool manager. Postal worker. Preschool teacher. Principal. Private detective. Process consultant. Produce manager. Product designer. Production coordinator. Project manager. Program manager. Property manager. Psychologist. Psychotherapist. Public access coordinator. Public health director. Public relations. Publicist. Publishing production manager. Quality control inspector. Quality control supervisor. Quality coordinator. Rabbi. Radiologist. Real estate broker. Real estate director. Real estate manager. Realtor. Recycling coordinator. Registrar. Religious educator. Registered nurse. Reproductive biologist. Research analyst. Researcher. Residential supervisor. Respiratory therapist. Restaurant manager. Restaurateur owner. Retail management. Retired. Risk manager. Sales person. Sales manager. Sales rep. School administrator. School counselor. School nurse. School psychologist. Scientist. Security guard. Self-employed. Senior research specialist. Server. Service adviser. Service manager. Shipper/receiver. Shipwright. Shopkeeper. Short order cook. Small business owner. Social insurance specialist. Social worker. Software engineer. Software quality engineer. Soil scientist. Special education advocate. Special education teacher. Specialty food buyer. Speech pathologist. Stand-up comic. State trooper. Store manager. Student. Superintendent of schools. Supervisor. Systems analyst. Tailor. Teacher. Tech consultant. Technical support engineer. Technical writer. Technician. Telecommunications manager. Temp. Tennis instructor. Tester. Therapist. Title examiner. Training consultant. Training manager. Translator. Transportation engineer. Travel agent. Travel consultant. Triage coordinator. Truck driver. Unemployed. Union officer. Utility cleaner. Veterinarian. Veterinary technician. Victim services advocate. Video producer. Violin maker. Virologist. Visual artist. Vocational rehab counselor. Waiter. Warehouseman. Web developer. Web marketing manager. Website administrator. Welder. Writer. Yoga teacher. Youth advocate. Youth worker.

Here’s a hint: Wedding bells are gaily ringing in the Bay State.

What? No interior decorators?

Thanks to Ace for the tip.

Wandering, Wondering
Tuesday, June 15, 2004

And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you would become free? If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead.

And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.

And if it is a fear you should dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.

– Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
 

© LookingForSam / Jim Burroway

The road stretches out straight as an arrow to the distant horizon. My eyes follow the road towards that horizon. My hands and feet goad the machine into following my eyes to the other end of the earth as the ever-changing vista unwinds before us. I am smiling.

The machine settles in at a stately 80-miles-per-hour. Audi-düdi is in her element. She doesn’t like to go much slower than that. Eighty is perfect. Her 168,000 mile frame settles in quite comfortably as she stretches her legs across the landscape, still agile and purring like the young kitten she used to be back in ’96. She still enjoys a good run as she takes the highway with the ease and grace of a cheetah. She’s free and happy, and so am I.

Chris rides shotgun. He has the map and it suits him to a tee. He’s looking for landmarks, spotting and calling out Mt. Baldy, or Dos Cabesas, or Mogollón. He uses the map to find specific geography in which specific people responded with specific architecture, carving out a harsh civilization in a harsh land. He’s looking for the unique confluence of a particular people in a particular place and time. He’s looking for landmarks to his own geography. He’s looking to the pioneers to find his own place on the frontier. The maps help him. They speak to him in a very special way with a secret language, but they remain silent to me.

I don’t much care for maps. I generally use them only to find my way home. Chris uses them to discover the world, but I have my own ways for that. Chris and I, we have different approaches to life, but we make a pretty good team.

I’m ready to take any road that looks interesting at any given moment. Chris is looking for landmarks, and I’m looking for freedom. If I looked at the map, it would try to tell me where to go. I don’t want anyone telling me where to go, but Chris nudges me with hints of what we may find, and so I follow. As the spontaneity cloaks the following, I find my freedom in the spontaneity of the moment. The Great Southwestern Panorama unwinds all around us to the sound of the engine and the tires on the pavement and the wind, unfurling its majesty while holding close its many secrets.
 

In these moments I know why Sam rode the rails. I know why he hopped the freight trains as they rolled out of the yard. He was trapped in that small town surrounded by the oversized personalities that I came to know as kin. This rough-and-tumble family, whose aspirations often exceeded its grasp (and sometimes others' sense of decency), was not for the weak of stomach. The larger-than-life ambitions of his sisters and their mother were like a pressure cooker inside those sometimes too-close hills. The schemes, the cajoling, the reproaching, the pressures to succeed, the much-sought respectability of the merchant class constrained inside that narrow valley built to a boiling point.

The men in the family dealt with it by keeping their heads down and drinking a lot of seltzer to settle their stomachs. They just kept the pressure bottled up. But Sam needed release and his tonic of choice was much stronger than seltzer. Prohibition be damned, his illicit bottle released some of the pressure, but not quite enough. The all-too-narrow containment of community and family inside that all-too-small valley simply did not allow for sufficient release. As the pressure built, release became more and more imperative.

The trains were the only way.

To freedom.

If only for a short time.

Just enough freedom to be free to return and try again.

I know why he rode the rails. I know exactly why.

□■□■□

It’s ironic that the very yearning for freedom is its own yoke. I remember the freedom of the road the way an addict remembers his last high. When I drive, I am free from all responsibility and obligations, for a short while at least. I know I have to be home by Sunday night, but for a few precious days I have the illusion of being truly free.

But that illusion is gone Monday morning like a faintly-remembered dream. I spend the work week looking for the time to be free again. I am desperately looking for that time and find that there just isn’t enough to go around for all of the things that I want to do. Forty productive hours of my life are spent at a job which otherwise could be spent in freedom. It’s one thing to work for a living. It is something else to spend that time working while waiting to be free. It makes the work even harder to bear. In this, freedom is a taunting burden. It looks down on me with scorn.

At some point, Sam left and never came back. Sometimes I wonder…

Should I?
 

And thus your freedom when it looses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.

– Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

What'd I Say
Friday, June 11, 2004

A Truly Great American Hero passed away. Ray Charles, 73, died yesterday after having left a mark in the world of American music that no one will come close to touching. His unorthodox breaking of barriers between gospel, country, rock, easy-listening, jazz, big band, blues and soul represents the high-water mark in American Culture. His influences ranged from Mahalia Jackson, to The Grand Ole Oprey, to Jelly Roll Morton, to Sibelius. He tapped into the very strange mix of styles which can only be found in America, and he turned it into something that was uniquely his own.

Who else could take complete ownership of You Are My Sunshine, Let's Get Stoned, I Can't Stop Loving You, and America the Beautiful, all at the same time? This man's music was America at its most Beautiful.

My first impression of him was from his guest appearances on The Carol Burnett Show. Exploding through the somewhat snowy picture of the CBS affiliate all the way from Charleston, West Virginia was a man so full of energy that his body could not contain it all, as he perched on the piano bench and pounded out What'd I Say or Georgia On My Mind with a full orchestra, a quartet of backup black singers and this blind man in the middle of it all - commanding it all.

He swayed, smiled, screamed, whispered, grunted and groaned a magical blend that electrified the studio audience and our living room. When he finished he left one white boy growing up in Appalachian Ohio with his earliest clue that the world was much larger, richer and more textured than anyone could imagine from inside of our cozy little valley.

Aretha Franklin, who collaborated with Ray Charles on You Are My Sunshine, called him "the voice of a lifetime."

I'd say he was the voice of life itself. That's what'd I say.

Mourning in America
Wednesday, June 9, 2004

Ronald Reagan died of Alzheimer’s disease on Saturday, June 5, 2004. I know first-hand what it is like to see a loved one slowly slip away under the fog of this terrible disease. Whenever I learn of the death of an Alzheimer’s patient, my first response is one of relief. I am saddened by the loss that his family and friends are feeling right now. But believe me, I can’t help but feel that there is one more set of personal ordeals that is now over in this world, and a lot of people in his circle of family and friends will finally begin to leave this very draining experience behind them at the close of this very sad chapter. My thoughts and prayers go out to them.

□■□■□

Ronald Reagan passed away on the 21^st anniversary of the CDC’s report of an extremely rare form of pneumonia that took the lives of five Los Angeles area men. That report was the first known report of what we now know to be AIDS in the U.S.

Ronald Reagan’s lack of response to the AIDS crisis has been a primary focal point of the gay community’s assessment of his presidency. His silence on the subject has resulted in unknown numbers of lives lost to the epidemic. This didn’t happen because of some bureaucratic snafu, and it wasn’t the case of the administration simply not knowing what was happening. As the epidemic raged all around and as fear, dread, ignorance and grief gripped the nation, he simply refused to acknowledge its existence. He did not even mention the word “AIDS” publicly until 1987.

Gay Democratic activist David Mixner said, “I'm still shocked, appalled and saddened by his total lack of action on HIV and AIDS, and I think that failure of leadership cost a lot of people their lives.” This aspect of Ronald Reagan’s legacy cannot be overlooked or forgotten

But there is another aspect to his legacy that also cannot be overlooked or forgotten either. And it is something that reminds us that few great figures can be reduced to a simple-minded caricature. David Mixner first encountered Ronald Reagan in 1978 to talk about the Briggs Amendment, which would have banned gay and lesbians from teaching in California public schools. Mixner said, “He turned opinion around and saved that election for us. We would have been in deep trouble. He just thought it was wrong and came out against it.” Mixner also said, “Never have I been treated more graciously by a human being.”

Cheryl Jacques, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign said, “President Reagan will be remembered in part for his leadership in defeating the discriminatory Briggs Amendment in 1978.”

□■□■□

So which is it? I suspect that in Reagan’s heart, he was the libertarian sort of Republican who didn’t much care what people did in their own lives. He likely had a number of gay friends and allies in Hollywood and in politics. He and Nancy would not have been strangers to gay men and women.

But politics is a strange animal. The alliance between Republican economic conservatives, cold war warriors, social libertarians and religious conservatives was just forming when Reagan ran for president in 1980. Before that campaign, Reagan identified himself with the first three wings of the Republican Party, while the Moral Majority first formed to provide support for Jimmy Carter, a fellow Southern Baptist, in 1976. But in 1980, they were disappointed in Carter’s magnanimous world view. Reagan simply identified a disaffected population and courted it to secure his victory in 1980. And he made sure he kept that base of support in 1984. The Republican Party hasn’t been the same since then.

Now, a religious conservative is the standard-bearer of the Republican Party. The economic conservatives have been silenced (witness Paul O’Neil and our ballooning deficit), the cold warriors are obsolete (and replaced by the newer neo-conservatives), and the social libertarians have been largely expelled (Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter being an increasingly endangered exception). The coalition that Reagan put together has been devoured by one faction of that coalition. It is certainly not the party of Lincoln, and it is debatable whether it is even the party of Reagan.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think Reagan intended for this to be his legacy. He was many things good and terrible, but nobody could accuse him of being a cynic. But cynicism runs rampant in the actions of the Republican leadership today.

It is just a little too ironic that Reagan’s celebrated optimism is no longer found in his own party, where everyone is identified “for” and “ against”, and people with dissenting opinions are openly denounced as traitors giving comfort to the enemy. Reagan’s ability to build wide-reaching coalitions has given way to a sham coalition in Iraq, and a dismissal of the very idea of a loyal opposition at home. And his sense of personal decency towards everyone he met (and everyone, friend or foe, who has ever met him has commented on what a genuinely nice guy he was), has given way to the politics of demonization, divisiveness, and wedge issues.

□■□■□

On the other hand, Reagan’s own actions cannot be whitewashed. It’s true that he brought a measure of economic success that wasn’t surpassed until the Clinton Administration a decade later, and he is widely credited for bringing down the Soviet Union. But he made some terrible policy decisions in El Salvador and Nicaragua, Lebanon and Iran, and at home. His policies are responsible for bringing misery to untold millions the world over. We need to be honest about this, and not be afraid of speaking ill of the dead. There are thousands more dead because of his actions in Central America and his inaction at home.

The growing influence of religious conservatives provided a backdrop for the decisions of his administration. The Advocate reports that “The White House director of communications, Patrick Buchanan, once argued in print that AIDS was nature's revenge on gay men. Reagan’s secretary of education, William Bennett, and his domestic policy adviser, Gary Bauer, made sure that science (and basic tenets of Christianity, for that matter) never got in the way of politics or what they saw as ‘God’s work’.”

His most durable legacy may be his courting of the religious conservative vote, which transformed the party into what it is today. It is now the party of divisiveness and of us-verses-them – abroad as well as at home. And the leader of that party, who happens to be a master of deploying cynical wedge issues, has decided to place a fault-line directly underneath my very own foot. Our Republican president has decided that this year’s election will be in part a referendum on my private life!

That, too, is Reagan’s legacy, whether he would want it or not. Given his brave opposition to the Briggs Amendment in 1978 when the majority of Californians were for it, I suspect he would not want to see the party where it is today. Yet, the party, as it is today, is of his making. So while I am saddened by his passing (as I would be for anybody who leaves behind a family who loves him), I am extremely ambivalent about his life. I don’t know how to separate Reagan (the man) from Reagan (the politician) from Reagan (the legacy).

This essay is now about to end rather inconclusively and probably unsatisfactorily for most people, but I cannot reduce Ronald Reagan to a one-dimensional cutout. Painting complex issues in stark black and white is the tactic of his successors, and is one that I am loathe to undertake. There is such a thing as liberal fundamentalism you know, and it is just as intellectually vacuous as the conservative kind.

For me, it has always been all about the grey. So while I just don’t quite know what to make of him, I know for certain that he tried to tame a force that ended up consuming his party, and now that force is fully prepared to tear America apart. All over lil’ ol’ me.

Are We There Yet?
Monday, June 7, 2004

Well, are we? How much further do we have to go? When do we get there?

I’m tired.

I just want to go somewhere. I don’t know where. I just want to do something different. I don’t know what.

I remember – barely remember – what it was like to be on summer vacation. No shoes, no shirt, no worries all summer long. In the car with the windows rolled down, the hot air from outside roaring into the back seat and hitting us in our faces, me and my brothers singing or fighting or laughing or telling jokes or playing Billboard Alphabet. I was on the lookout for the next Dairy Queen so that I could bug Dad to stop for an ice-cream cone, and also so I can claim a “Q”.

But if there was not Dairy Queen available, any hamburger stand would do. Billboard Alphabet wasn't that important.

One week vacations, two week vacations, they’re not enough. I used to count down the last days of school for the start of a three-month furlough. Those last few days were different from the rest. We had finished our studies, took our tests, and spent the last two days putting things away and erasing stray pencil marks from our textbooks before handing them in.

The last day of school only lasted about an hour. We would show up, take one last attendance as if anyone cared and pick up our report cards. Then we walked home at nine in the morning, which was very different from walking home in the midafternoon. Yes, summer vacation always started on a sweet young summer morning. It was our gift from God to enjoy for the next three months.

Three months of waking up in the morning with the bright sun streaming in through the open window, with the birds singing right outside from the branches of the walnut tree. Three months of waking to the sound of the birds singing and the low, almost subsonic rumble of the coal barges on the river just a few blocks away. The cicadas would screech, the trains would rumble, and the steel-mill’s whistle gave a cadence to the day. And all of it would be heard through the open windows, in the few hours of the morning just before it got too hot and we needed to turn on the fans.

Three months at the town’s swimming pool with friends, accompanied by the sound of a portable AM radio as it played Mother and Child Reunion or The Night Chicago Died or American Pie. Yeah, American Pie. We would stop talking whenever that song came on.

Three months of camping at Lake Roosevelt, hiking through Shawnee State Forest, catching salamanders in Turkey Creek, and drifting off to sleep in the tent to the very particular and memorable sound that a distant ax makes when it lands with a dull thud against a log and echoes through the hollow.

Three months of traveling in the hot car to somewhere, anywhere, and spending the night in a motel in some other town. Any other town, no matter how mundane, seemed exotic just by its strangeness. As everyone got ready for bed in the motel, I would read about this town in the local information that they used to print in the front of the telephone book.

A plaque commemorates the founding by Moravian missionaries in 1836, and is located in the historic city park, where you can enjoy a nice picnic. Visitors are also encouraged to spend a lovely afternoon at the Public Library, and view the arrowhead collection in the hallway outside the City Clerk’s office in City Hall.

Well, at least they were trying.

On the other hand, getting to go to a big city like Columbus was like hitting the jackpot. Columbus had fast freeways and wide streets and tall buildings and indoor malls and everything. And the amazing thing was this: as big as Columbus was, everyone seemed to know exactly where they were going. Incredible. Laugh if you must but when I was ten, Columbus was my icon of a big, sophisticated, cosmopolitan city.

The back seat was cramped, and my two brothers and I were very territorial. It’s hard to be cooped up in a hot car when there’s no end in sight.

Make him stop making faces at me!

Ouch!

You started it!

If you don’t stop that right now, I’m gonna pull over and make you walk home!

He pulled over more than twenty years ago, metaphorically speaking, and I’ve been walking home ever since.

I really miss summer vacation. I haven’t had one in twenty-four years. I think I’m due. I’ve taken my shoes off already. Are we there yet?

Now Showing
Reflections on Hayden, Arizona
Tuesday, June 1, 2004

It's dark and cool, in the only place in town where you can spend most of the afternoon in icy air-conditioned comfort without grownups shooing you away. The sticky cool air that sweeps across your face has a certain mustiness to it, and you can smell the town in the seats and curtains. It's not at all disagreeable though. The smell is familiar and comforting because it’s home, the smells of the town that you live in, which is exactly like – and completely different from – any other place on earth.

The projector’s clickety-clickety whirr intones the introit to another world. The lion roars to life, giving voice to an eager anticipation for something – anything – to transport you to a different time and place. That time and place begins to take shape as a shaft of light pierces the faint smoky haze from the back of the theater. The flickering light penetrates the cigarette smoke rising from a few bored moms escaping the oppressive heat through the magic of the matinee.

Remember when smoking was allowed in theaters? Remember when everyone smoked and nobody minded or even gave it a second thought?

The office girl in New York City smokes and nobody thinks the worse of her. Of course, she’s in New York where it’s all so very glamorous. They do things there that we wouldn’t here, as she is well aware. She’s come a long way since she moved there from the south. But the question of the hour is this: does this formerly innocent but now jaded farm girl find love in New York City? And when she does, does she give up her whirlwind life to follow the naive young solder back to his farm in Wisconsin?

Of course she does – with the irascible milkman and his wife as their guide, how could it be any other way? Who knew you could trip over love at Penn Station? And who knew that a 48-hour pass was all that any lucky soldier would ever need?

Love can happen anywhere. Roy Rogers found love, but it wasn't the sissy googley-eyed kind like Andy Hardy was always going on about. The King of the Cowboys always had his priorities straight from the beginning. But then, who could blame Andy for being a bit flustered? He was always having to fight off some girl wherever he went. The poor guy just couldn't get a break.

Even the girl in New York fell in love with him once, long before she met her soldier. Lord knows how anyone can be certain about much of anything.

There's only one thing that you can say with any certainty and that's this: the popcorn tastes much better here than anywhere else. Even better than at the dime store down the street.

Love is found and lost and found again on the big screen. It is also clumsily sought in the seat right in front of you – tentatively, slyly, with great fear and trepidation. There's a huge gulf between safety and victory and only the brave are victorious, like on the sands of Iwo Jima. Sometimes the secret to life is just getting up in a half-crouch and running like mad. Sgt. Stryker may be an asshole, but we'll thank him in the end.

And like the words flashed on the screen to triumphant music, The End has come all too soon. But this time something is different. The posters have been taken down, the projector was sold and carted away and the lights have been switched off. The doors are closed, padlocked and boarded up for good measure.

Yul Brenner went home without his Ana, and Dracula rules the night no more. There's nothing but silence, interrupted occasionally by a piece of sheet metal rattling in the breeze on the roof. It’s starkly silent, like the when the credits roll on The Last Picture Show.

The theater, home of such great promise and excitement, is now just a dark shell of faded memories and lost laughter, much like the old home place, the old church, and the shuttered school. They've closed the smelter – I tell ya, the working man just can’t get a break in this country. The theater, along with everything else, has outlived its usefulness.

Today, it is no longer useful to see the world made safe for democracy in glorious black and white. It is no longer useful to see Arabia united and made free from British rule in spectacular CinemaScope. It is no longer useful to memorize the tongue-twisting rhymes of Danny Kay.

These days, we suppose that these things are no longer useful, but we’re wrong. Look around. We need them now more than ever before. You may argue that Abbott and Costello are better off – they aren’t being chased around by the Egyptian mummy anymore, but we’re all the poorer for it.

We’ve left it for the French to recognize the true comedy genius of Jerry Lewis – we’re much too busy chasing after something else to care.

And what is it we’re chasing after? I forgot.

Rosebud...

Sure, DVD’s played on a sleek 50-inch plasma screen may be the hottest ticket of the hour, but they don’t smell like your hometown.

You don’t understand! I could have had class! I could have been a contender! I could have been somebody instead of a bum, which is what I am – let’s face it.

The theater, the department store, the soda fountain at the Rexall are all closed. Even the last refuge of a carefree summertime, the town’s swimming pool, is eerily quiet. The entire town has lost its way and everyone in it is gone, one way or another. The lucky ones left for other jobs somewhere else. A few are still here, but even they have left in their own ways, like Timothy Bottoms pining for Cybil Shepherd in a town that isn’t here anymore.

All that’s left are a few crumbling ruins, falling down onto yesterday’s dreams of a brighter tomorrow.