I’m in the process of tidying up the left sidebar blog roll. There are some dead links there, and some that are not dead, but not at all well. As in, the blogs seem to be abandoned. So I’m going to move some stuff around a bit, try to clear out the dead wood, and add a few new things that I’ve been hitting on a lot lately, but I just haven’t gotten around to putting on the blog roll.
If I remove a link of yours it’s probably because I think you aren’t blogging anymore, so if you still are let me know and I’ll put it back. And if you have a different link you’d rather I put up in its place give it to me please. I’ve found several myself that should be pointing to different places now.
I’m going to add several new sections to the blog roll. One for the two bloggers on my list, Steve Gilliard and James Capozzola who have both passed away. I need to move the link to Steve’s blog back to the old blogger site, since it’s still there. The link currently goes to his later News Blog site which only has his memorial up on it now alas. I wish they’d have left his posts there up too. His words should remain with us. But at least the stuff he posted on blogger is still there.
I need a section for the various international news sites I visit, and one just for German news and culture sites alone, since my interest in that little corner of the world has taken an uptick. I want to add a section for all the fun mental health stop sites…like Fark.Com for example. And I have some more links for cartoon sites and regular blogs that I visit regularly now, like SLOG, that I want to put up. SLOG is neither fish nor fowl when it comes to blogs. It’s part of The Stranger news site, but the blog is as sociable as it is newsy, so I’m not putting it in the news section. It’s a blog. A news (and commentary) blog is just that. But it’s not a sharp distinct line either.
You may find it surprising that I don’t have a Space News section here, seeing as how I work for the Space Telescope Science Institute. It’s not that I don’t visit certain sites regularly, like Space.Com for instance. But I’m trying to keep the Institute and my work there separate from my web site and blog for what I think are obvious reasons. This is not a sharp distinction I draw in life, as anyone who has ever paid a visit to Casa del Garrett knows (The SM-4 throw that’s currently covering one of my cedar chests being but one new example…). I don’t even have a link to the Institute web site up here. But in case you’re wondering it’s: www.stsci.edu. hubblesite.org, the public outreach site, is also a great place to go for Hubble news and views. I’d put those links up here, but I want to be completely free to speak my mind on my own web site so I don’t want there to be any doubt that my site is not in any way related to the Institute, other then that I happen to work there. I’m a gay man and I don’t speak for the Militant Homosexual Conspiracy either.
I had almost two months of leave time saved up when I took my vacation last Thanksgiving. Because I worked in two Institute holidays (Thanksgiving and the day after) those two weeks only subtracted fifty-six hours out of my accrued leave. This end-of-year holiday season has two more official Institute holidays, Christmas and New Year. So I signed up to take the two weeks between them off too, for another fifty-six hours down. With the leave I accrued since Thanksgiving added in, plus the three discretionary holidays we get at the beginning of every new year, that still leaves me with slightly over four weeks of leave still in the bank.
Don’t hate me…this job is the first one I’ve ever had that came with any sort of paid vacation time at all. I was never all that openly gay back in my twenties and thirties, but I never hid it either. The consequence of that was getting either fired or laid off when the powers that be found out they had a faggot in the ranks, which they inevitably did when my co-workers wised up to the fact that Bruce never talked about dating girls. I never had to openly aknowledge my sexual orientation to catch shit for it. And every time I hear some knuckle dragging jackass complain that they’d have nothing against gays if we’d only stop shoving it in their faces all the time I want to laugh in their face. I went through decades doing just that and still got canned for being gay. You can’t just keep it to yourself, you have to pretend to be heterosexual.
So for decades the only work I could get was temp work and one-off stuff from people who were fine with giving me work under the table or as a contractor, so long as they could keep their staff one-hundred percent heterosexual. My entire career as an architectural model maker was built around the realization that I could get all the work I wanted so long as I didn’t apply for a staff position anywhere. But it got me comfortable with being self-employed and that was, in a way, a plus after all. But I’ve had no benefits of any sort for most of my working life. Which is why I know how it is out there, not to have health care unless I paid for it out of pocket, or sick leave, let alone paid vacation. That was me throughout my twenties and thirties, and much of my forties. Until I got the job at space telescope. It’s taken me years to really believe I can take a vacation and still get paid. Even now I am always asking myself if I can afford it. Which is why I have so much accrued.
So I’m off for the rest of the year. I might take a few small trips here and there locally, but not far, particularly if the weather gets all snow and icy. And after Disney, I don’t really have any spare money for motels. But the price of gasoline makes travel a lot more affordable then it was this summer, so I’ll probably go somewhere, possibly to Ocean City New Jersey for an overnight maybe. Maybe to see a friend or two here and there. But mostly this vacation will be the stay-at-home I was planning on doing last Thanksgiving, before a co-worker invited me to meet him and his family down at Disney World. I can still feel the childhood delight I found again there. And I got to see a certain someone again after thirty-five years, which was…wonderful. But I-95 is not a good place to be during the holidays. It seems like everyone on the East Coast dogpiles on it to get south this time of year. I reckon it’s ether to see the retired folks down in Florida retirement land or the theme parks in Orlando, or maybe Key West, which was what I did last year. I’m not doing it this year because Key West is almost as expensive as Disney World this time of year. I kid you not.
I have a bunch of projects around the house I want to take care of in a not hurried pace. And…a spaceship model I want to build. I haven’t built a model in years and I’m really looking forward to getting the old tools out and starting to work on it. And I need to get started on Episode 12 of A Coming Out Story. It’ll be really nice to have the time to do some this-and-that stuff without the clock always nagging me. Two weeks just to myself. Yes, I’d trade it all in an instant for a lover. I’d wash dishes the whole holiday season for a lover. But fate doesn’t give us those choices and I can endure being single during the holidays on the afterglow of Disney World. Smirk if you like, but I still have that Dreams-Can-Come-True-After-All feeling inside of me. I’ve been waiting for it to slough off, I’ve been expecting it to, really, and it still hasn’t. But there will be no Christmas tree this year. Again. It’s really no fun decorating one alone anymore. I keep telling myself the next time I take the decorations out, there will be someone beside me.
CYPRESS – A young man from Cypress is set to be charged Friday with 13 felonies for what authorities say was an elaborate scheme in which he would obtain the personal information of unsuspecting young women through Facebook, then send them packages using assumed identities.
The women would receive an e-mail with a tracking number for a package from an "Art Shaw" of Aramark Corp. When they opened the package, they would find blank notepaper and envelopes, and sometimes, markers. Sharpie markers, according to police.
Police allege Arpan Harshad Shah, 26, used aliases, false e-mail addresses, drop locations and stolen corporate FedEx account numbers to hide the fact that he was the one sending the women packages.
I’m guessing that in Cypress you signal your romantic interest in someone by giving them office supplies…
This post was written by CBS News chief political consultant Marc Ambinder:
One reason the Rick Warren thing is a big deal is because, after Bill Clinton, the gay community is unusually sensitive to getting the shorter angle of presidential triangulation. It is hard to overstate the optimism and excitement that gays and lesbians felt in 1992. But the optimism deflated spectacularly after "Don’t Ask, Don’t tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act, not to mention President Clinton’s sneaky 1996 ad boasting about DOMA, which aired only on Christian radio.
Clinton was willing to say the word "gay" in public and appear in black tie at the Human Rights Campaign dinner, but, in the eyes of the gay political community, his commitment to gay rights vanished both times it counted most.
Relative to other minority groups, the LGBT community is disproportionately dependent on the goodwill of the president, because almost all of their big-ticket agenda items are federal laws (the military, DOMA repeal, hate crimes, ENDA, the Permanent Partners Immigration Act, etc.). And relative to other minorities, gays still want and need basic reassurance that they are an ordinary part of American life and politics. So everyone is peering anxiously at Obama wondering if he is going to let them down like Clinton did.
Emphasis mine. That is all we want to be. An ordinary part of American life. And yet…we can’t. Our lives have to be other people’s stepping stones to heaven. That’s what we were put on this earth for, apparently. To be other people’s stepping stones to heaven. Or in the case of Mormons, godhood…
Fine. When we’re all equals in the eyes of the law.
Proposition 8 was not about agreeing to disagree. If the law treated gay people equally with heterosexuals, I doubt any of us would give a rat’s ass what Rick Warren thinks. First we should be a nation of equals. Then we can all agree to disagree. Not before.
While it’s obvious that an invocation is just a prayer and that Warren is not part of the Obama administration, Warren taking the pulpit as some sort of olive branch to evangelicals and a show of unity and diversity is absurd and insulting symbolism. The fact that the Obama camp’s talking points mention a LGBT marching band’s presence during the official parade shows you how clueless (or calculating, you decide) these folks are.
A marching band is entertainment…
Gay people have always provided the entertainment for heterosexuals. And…we do their hair. And decorate their homes. And arrange the floral bouquets on their wedding day. It’s our function in life…
I think it’s more likely that he’s marginalizing Warren’s rivals among the Evangelical leadership. Warren is not actually any less conservative than Dobson or Robertson or anyone else. He is less partisan. His views on abortion and violence are similarly inconsistent, with one being abhorrent and the other acceptable. (The power and legitimacy of the American state, it seems, turns the conservative faithful into moral relativists.) But Warren has shown a tendency not to attack individual political figures the way his peers have, and so Obama has made the decision to elevate Warren at his rivals’ expense. I had an argument with my colleague Brentin Mock yesterday about Obama’s decision, where he pointed out that someone else would be occupying Warren’s leadership role if it wasn’t Warren, and given the alternatives he’s the best choice.
None of this really changes the fact that mainstreaming homophobia is inexcusable, and that Warren does not deserve to share a stage with the Rev. Joseph Lowery. The contrast between Warren’s celebrity and Lowery’s life fighting for civil rights is absolutely staggering. It’s possible to interpret the decision to include Warren and Lowery as another Lincoln "we are not enemies but friends" moment, an attempt to bring the religious right and religious left together. The only problem is the most offended parties, the LGBTQ community and the women Warren equates with Nazis, are not in any symbolic sense present to make the choice to be friends or enemies. Had Obama, say, chosen a gay pastor and forced Warren to make the difficult decision of whether or not to appear, the situation might be a bit different. At the same time, Lowery’s presence as a symbol of his generation’s sacrifice is absolutely necessary. Obama simply wouldn’t be able to run for president without men like Joseph Lowery.
Even if one reads Warren’s presence as a cold political calculation, it’s hard to see why the LGBTQ community wouldn’t be outraged at being exploited for the purpose of cultural triangulation. Obama isn’t a homophobe, but you gotta wonder how long the LGBTQ community has to wait before they get a president who thinks homophobia is unacceptable…
Someone else…I forget who…remarked that it was as if it was 1993 all over again…an unpopular Bush leaves office and a bright and shining new hope for everyone who believes in liberty and justice for all takes office, only to sell out gay Americans and begin a strategy of triangulation…
How long? Yes. That is The Question. How long do we have to wait for our heterosexual neighbors to finally, at long last, become appalled at what has been done all these years to their gay and lesbian neighbors…to their friends…to their own children…? How long before they finally, Finally see the magnitude of what has been taken from? How long before the sight of hate toward loving couples disgusts them more, then the sight of someone making excuses for hate? How long before shaking hands with gutter crawling bigots like Rick Warren disgusts them enough that even a politician can feel it?
ike everyone else who cares about LGBT equality, election night brought a mix of joy as it became apparent Obama would win, and pain as we realized Prop. 8 would pass. My wife and I spent the evening in Union Square trying to enjoy a birthday dinner with friends before heading to the official No on 8 party. When word came at around 8:15 that Obama had been elected, cable cars rang their bells and whoops of job sprang up all around the Square. I joined a dozen folks clustering around a local TV station’s van watching a teeny tiny TV broadcasting CNN. I tried to join in the revelry, but all I could access was alienation. At no other time in my life had I felt so discriminated against . I spend my days working on a variety of progressive issues, but in that moment — and for the next week — all that mattered was Prop. 8. My vision narrowed and intensified. They say this happens when you feel under attack. "What about us?" I kept wanting to say. "What about our rights?"
Our dinner ran late, so we missed Obama’s speech and we even missed the official No on 8 party. Upon leaving the restaurant all we saw was members of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus and other assorted folks out on the street, stunned and wondering what to do next. I spent the next few days fearing conversation with anyone who might not be thinking about Prop. 8 — anyone who would want to talk about Obama, or the weather, or our kids’ school, or anything not related to my pain. It was as though I was grieving and I didn’t want to be with anyone who wasn’t grieving too.
This is exactly why I haven’t posted much here about Obama’s victory. Yes, I’m grateful. Especially so since a certain someone told me recently, that he’d have moved, possibly back to Germany, if McCain had won. As he’s lived here in America most of his life, its not exactly like the old country is home now. But for him, like for a lot of people, America had started to become a strange foreign land…a place where the American dream of liberty and justice for all had become a dirty joke. A McCain victory would have been the final straw. I’d have wanted to leave too then. I wanted to leave after the 2004 election. But I’m too old to immigrate anywhere unless I bring sacks of money along with me. It’s good Obama won. But how good…really?
So it breaks my heart — in fact, it’s pretty much inconceivable — to learn that Obama has asked anti-gay California pastor Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration.
I could forgive Obama his tepid support for the No on 8 campaign. It was election time — he had to win. There are so many critical issues in front of him. He had to win.
But he could have chosen any clergy member in the nation to deliver his invocation. So why one from the state where religion has so recently been a painful dividing line? One who spoke out so publicly in support of Prop 8, stating that "there is no need to change the universal, historical definition of marriage to appease 2 percent of our population … This is not a political issue — it is a moral issue that God has spoken clearly about"? One who continues to argue that marriage equality silences his religious views?
Why re-open painful wounds?
As unlikely as it seems, here’s hoping Obama will listen to reason and rescind his invitation. Here’s hoping I will finally, finally, be able to have my Obama moment.
He won’t. He’s smarter then that. Rescinding the invitation now would just make more headlines and keep the thing in the news that much longer. But it’s a disaster. Lee Stranahan, also over at the Huffington Post , assures us that he understands our anger, but that the reality is most Americans agree with Warren on same sex marriage.
Like my comrades, I think Warren is dead wrong on same sex marriage. But the reality is that at the end of 2008, a majority of voters in California agreed with him. A majority of Americans agree with Warren about same sex marriage and many more states have made marriage equality unconstitutional than have ratified it.
Fine. But Warren’s dagger at same-sex marriage was dipped in hate monger’s poison. Here’s some reality for you: Warren said that same sex love was akin to incest. He said that same sex couples were akin to pedophiles. Stranahan urges us to embrace what we have in common with Warren…but what could any decent person have in common with that gutter crawling bigot, other then that we’re all breathing the same oxygen?
This is being portrayed as an olive branch to the social conservatives, by a heterosexual news media that thinks the cheapshit hatreds of bar stool preachers like Warren are more legitimate, more real, more essentially American, then the love and devotion of same-sex couples. But the betrayal here is larger then the gay community. Obama’s election give the entire world hope. That hope, for peace, for justice, for a re-awakening of the better part of human nature, is what was betrayed here.
Rick Warren is on record as saying America should feel free to assassinate foreign leaders if that is in its interests. But when is political assassination ever in the interest of democracy, let alone the rule of law? Reality. Obama is about to sit down in the Oval Office in a world that has become so violent with hate, sectarian and nationalistic, that the possibility of world war III has practically become moot. Hundreds of innocent people died in a series of co-ordinated terrorist attacks in India just a few weeks ago. Reality. And Obama choses a minister of hate to speak the words that begin his presidency. There’s your reality Stranahan. Look at it. No…really look at it.
You don’t heal the wounds in a people by spitting more poison on them. You don’t bind a nation back together by giving the knife that cut it apart a place at the table. You don’t offer an olive branch to your enemy while he’s still busy burning down the forest.
You Have To Figure That Democrats Just Want Gay Americans To Stop Voting Altogether
Rick Warren. Rick Warren. Rick Warren. The man who said that the love of same-sex couples for one another was akin to incest. The man who said that the love of same-sex couples for one another was akin to pedophilia. Rick Warren. Gay Americans were brutalized last November, and now we’re being spit on by what we thought was a ray of hope.
Of course, trying to avoid the hate when you’re a gay man is a little like trying to avoid the rain during monsoon season in India. I ran across this thread on Fark.Com…
I haven’t posted here lately because I’m busy with work and stuff. And I’m getting my Christmas cards ready to send. Every year since I started working at the Space Telescope I’ve made up my own custom Christmas cards with images from the Hubble Space Telescope on them. It’s been one of the joys of working on Hubble that I can do this and send them out to family and friends.
More later. In the meantime I need a break from the fight. Really. It is just such a major stress in my life to have to deal with all the hate out there toward gay people. It never ends. It never ends. And it’s draining all the joy and wonder from my life. I hate it. I never really realized how much it stresses me out until I spent that time in Disney World. When I came back home, several friends and co-workers remarked on how relaxed I looked. One even asserted that I must have gotten laid while I was down in Orlando. No…that didn’t happen. What happened was I managed to recapture some of the joy of life I’ve been missing ever since I took a walk through adolescence, and learned that I would always be hated for what I am, and that finding love was going to be a struggle that I’d probably loose.
I want that joy back. I need that joy back. So I’m going to do something I’ve always disdained: I’m going to drop out of the news loop for a while. Or at least try to. If I can. I’m such a news addict. Especially when it comes to news concerning the gay community. I need to back off for a while. So you won’t see me posting much here about gay issues for a while. Hopefully. Maybe.
I have a lot of vacation time accrued, so I’m taking another two weeks off this Christmas-New Years holiday period. I don’t think I’ll be going anyway…at least not far from home. I might take a few drives here and there…maybe to see an old friend in PA…if he’s free…maybe to Ocean City New Jersey for a while. I dunno. But I need the break. The relentless hate is just wearing me down. I need to ignore it for a while. I need to remember why life is good. Laugh at me, but I really enjoyed my stay in Disney World. When I get last Thanksgiving’s trip paid off, I am going back. No question about it.
I’ve been coding more this last few days, a thing I enjoy immensely. And working on the new virtual test center at work. And I’m feeling the pressure to assume more management kinds of roles. I’ve always resisted that because I like coding and working down in the guts of systems. But there comes a point where you have to just accept the path life is placing before you. I had it explained to me today in terms I was finally able to accept, that my value to the organization is tilting more now towards project management. I’m 55 years old…I’ve been doing this work since the first PCs came to market, and I have so much experience that it makes more sense for me to step up the chain and give the Institute the benefit of that, then keep myself down in the nuts and bolts of things.
There’s an irony here. Parents are always telling their children You just wait…when you have kids of your own you’ll see…! And, being a gay man and not wanting to raise kids of my own I would just shrug all that off with a laugh. But you can’t escape the responsibilities of age, like it or not. I can just hear every boss I’ve ever had now, wagging their fingers at me from the past and saying You just wait…when you have staff of your own you’ll see…!
Well…maybe. All that’s in the future and nothing is certain. But apparently I am being positioned for it on at least one project and I reckon it’s an inescapable part of having a career in a trade you love. And the work we do at Space Telescope is for the ages. You can’t beat that. At some point I realized that my work life and my personal life had become one and it was here, really, that it happened. I don’t do nine to five anymore. I haven’t for years. It’s a joy few people manage to find and I am so blessed that I did. I live and breath this stuff. Single and lonely though I am, I have that at least.
But I guess I can’t be a simple coder forever. At some point, you have to move on. But if it keeps me valuable to the Institute, then I reckon I’ll do it. There is no growing up…there is only growing. And I promised myself when I was a kid that I would never stop growing.
If you made yourself that same promise then I salute you, we are kindred spirits, and I wish you and yours all the best this holiday season.
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