Two 22-year-old men who left a campfire to walk along the beach in Seaside were beaten unconscious in what appears to have been a hate crime, according to police.
The man disembarked the bus moments later, followed by Idris and an associate. Police say Idris again approached him, telling the man that homosexuality violates his religion.
Kafagolis and Kirkwood reportedly inveighed against the victim, screaming anti-gay epithets as they punched and kicked him, knocking him to the ground.
…they were returning to their car parked near Raymond Boulevard and Broad Street from the Prudential Center at approximately 11 p.m. when a group of 15 to 20 teenage girls and boys approached them from the opposite direction and then punched and kicked them as they yelled an anti-gay slur.
Probably not. But I haven’t been blogging as often as I have previously and it’s because I’m not sitting in front of a computer nearly as much. As I said previously, I’m finding I get a lot more done around the house when I’m not sitting down at my computer. But something else is happening. Something I was sort-of hoping would happen, though I hadn’t taken into account what it might mean for my blogging patterns. Slowly, but inevitably, my iPhone is becoming my all purpose communication – entertainment – information widget.
When it first hit the streets, the iPhone was lacking a couple of really important items in my personal information management toolkit: a sync-able notepad and ToDo tracker. But I have really great third party iPhone apps now that fill those slots. And as I get more comfortable with using them, I use Mowgli, my main household computer, less and less.
Last weekend, I had Mowgli off almost the entire time. I ran Bagheera, the art room Mac, to finish a couple of photography projects that I’d left on my plate for far too long. But Mowgli is slowly being relegated to finances and work related projects. I am keeping in touch with the world, and with my daily life, more and more with just the iPhone now.
And…there is this: My little patch of the good earth is on the cusp of spring, and I don’t want to be angry all the time. I read the news, in particular the continuing culture war on gay people, and I get angry. So I am avoiding the news.
This Saturday, I’m going to Disney World again, for a week. Mostly to just spend some more time in a place where it’s a small world after all, there’s a great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day, and dreams really do come true. Better there, then driving across the mid-west and listening to hate radio the whole way. My brother said they still have their YES ON 8 campaign signs planted in their front yards of houses all over Oceano, Pismo Beach and Arroyo Grande.
You Can’t Punish A Group Because You Don’t Like Them. Unless I Don’t Like Them Either. Then It’s Okay…
Via Box Turtle Bulletin . Congressman Daniel Lungren complains that congress, in its outrage over bonuses paid to the AIG group that wreaked the company, and oh by the way, the entire world economy, is ignoring the constitution…
Here are the facts: in the stimulus package an amendment was adopted that the Majority put in stating that provisions in the TARP and stimulus bills that limited compensation payments would not apply to ‘any bonus payment required to be paid pursuant to a written employment contract executed on or before February 11, 2009.’ It was written specifically to protect the very bonuses that we’re talking about here today. And so now we’re asking how do we undo what we did? And the Majority has brought to us a bill that doesn’t recognize the truth of the Constitution. There is something called a bill of attainder. You can’t punish a group because you don’t like them. You can’t have them treated more onerously than somebody else without a trial.
Now, that’s an unfortunate truth that we have to deal with. How can we deal with it? Yesterday in the Judiciary Committee we had an alternative using bankruptcy principles, but that hasn’t been brought to the floor because it’s arguably constitutional. This is to get headlines to show we are outraged. Let me tell you if we overturn the Constitution to show our outrage, no single American is safe. Because in the future what we will do is say, we have a precedent that when we have an unpopular group, when we have a group that deserves some punishment, we won’t go through the real laws.
Emphasis mine. You can’t punish a group because you don’t like them. If we overturn the Constitution to show our outrage, no single American is safe. Ya think?
In 2004, Michelle, a project manager for a financial services company, and Marc, a draftsman, planned to marry in Philadelphia and get their license in Bucks County – a decision influenced only by the office’s proximity to their home in Hatboro.
They were acting within the law, of course. Couples can buy their marriage licenses in any one of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties and hold their ceremonies in any other.
So how, the Toths now wonder, is their marriage considered legal in Montgomery County, but possibly null and void in Bucks?
The short answer is that the people responsible for issuing marriage licenses – the 67 elected clerks of Orphans Court – are at odds with one another. And the growing ranks of couples using a nontraditional officiant or no officiant at all are getting caught in the conflict.
On one side are clerks, such as those in Bucks and Delaware counties, who want the state marriage-license law tightened. They say the institution of marriage is being sullied, if not undermined, by nontraditional ministers and those who they believe are irreligious, liberal couples seeking to stretch the law.
On the other side are clerks, including those in Philadelphia, Chester, and Montgomery counties, who say the law is clear as long as it is read without bias. Their position has the backing of the American Civil Liberties Union. (This issue does not exist in New Jersey.)
Once, getting the license was not among the wedding minutiae that might drive a sane person to "go bridal." But now the process has become complicated and, some would say, needlessly politicized.
Pennsylvania has two types of marriage license: One that involves some registered official, either a clergyman or a judge. The other is a "self-uniting" license, which is used by couples who wish to take their vows in the presence of witnesses, but without a the clergy or judge. Quakers, being the most frequent self-uniters in the state, this license has come to be known as the "Quaker" license. But note, it isn’t just for Quakers.
The clerks are trying to get rid of the self-uniting license, or severely restrict it to Quakers or other approved religious groups only…they claim to protect the interests of the married couples. They’re telling couples they can’t use the self-uniting license unless they’re Quakers, and warning couples who have already been married using that license to come in with a real minister for a re-marriage.
The ACLU is fighting the clerks over this and so far they’ve won every court case. But the clerks are apparently ignoring the courts and doing what they damn well please.
In an Allegheny County case, a federal judge ruled that self-uniting licenses were not just for Quakers – and that clerks were barred from asking religious questions.
In Philadelphia, Bucks, and Montgomery Counties, judges issued rulings that conflicted with York County’s. Clergy from the Universal Life Church were indeed authorized to solemnize marriages, Bucks County Court Judge C. Theodore Fritsch Jr. ruled in December 2008.
Still, Bucks and Delaware Counties are ignoring the rulings in the ACLU lawsuits.
Reilly says she is protecting engaged couples from future problems. Hugh Donaghue of Delaware County goes a step further. He requires marriage-license applicants to supply Social Security numbers (not required under federal law) because he suspects that some foreign nationals see the marriage license as a valid form of identification.
"Getting a marriage license allows you to establish identification for other purposes and change your status in the country," Donaghue says.
And, speaking of identification, Donaghue’s office requires a photo ID, and he is suspicious when individuals (mostly followers of Islam) don’t have them.
"They say their religious beliefs do not allow them to have their photos taken," Donaghue says.
Like Reilly, Donaghue says his interest is in protecting well-meaning individuals.
Pull the other one. They don’t give a rat’s ass about the welfare of couples in love. They care about this:
They say the institution of marriage is being sullied, if not undermined, by nontraditional ministers and those who they believe are irreligious, liberal couples seeking to stretch the law.
That’s the problem here. That’s the only problem here.
What you need to understand about the fight over same-sex marriage is that it isn’t a fight over same-sex marriage. It’s a fight over the freedom to marry. My freedom and yours. If you have been sitting back watching the religious right take a torch to the marriages of same-sex couples because you didn’t figure it had anything to do with you, I have two words for you: You’re next.
Hate crime cases involving anti-gay sentiment shot up in Santa Clara County last year, a striking increase that a leading prosecutor attributes to controversy over Proposition 8, the voter-approved ban on gay marriage.
Anti-gay incidents accounted for more than half of hate-crime cases last year — 56 percent — a big jump from only 15 percent in 2007. There were 14 anti-gay cases out of 25 hate-crime cases in 2008, compared with only 3 out of 20 in 2007.
"My belief from having done this work for many years is that surges in types of hate incidents are linked to the headlines and controversies of the day,” said Deputy District Attorney Jay Boyarsky, who is assigned to monitor hate crimes. "Marriage equality and Proposition 8 have been in the news, and we have seen an increase in gay-bashing.”
I’ve been sitting at my computer, seeing one report of anti-gay violence after another glide across my screen, week after week since Proposition 8 and the election of President Obama. Numb, and unsurprised. You hear crackpots calling down God’s wrath on gay folk all the time. You hear them comparing us to murderers and terrorists. You hear them citing the passages in Leviticus that call for homosexuals to be put to death. It’s when you hear all that coming from the statehouses that it makes you wonder if a threshold has been crossed in the culture war…
Last night, Utah’s local ABC station received leaked portions of an interview with state senator Chris Buttars (R), which will be highlighted in an upcoming documentary on Proposition 8. Buttars is an outspoken opponent of gay rights; in the latest interview, he compares gays to alcoholics and Muslim terrorists, and warns that gay people are “probably the greatest threat to America.”
…If it passes, SB 88 would extend state employee health benefits to same-sex partners of state employees.
Renfroe said he was voting against the bill because it would sanction sin and be an abomination to God.
“The Lord God said it is not good for man to be alone — and so he made a helper suitable for him — and that was woman,” said Renfroe, quoting a Bible verse from Genesis. “God blessed them and said be fruitful and multiply.
“Leviticus 18:22 says, ‘You shall not lie with a man as one lies with a female, it is an abomination.’
“Leviticus 20:13 says, ‘If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act and they shall surely be put to death. Their blood guiltiness is upon them.’
State Representative Tony Shipley was quoted on OpenPen on March 13 in a blog that had jaws dropping throughout the GLBT community. Shipley today told O&AN and Jenny Ford, a lobbyist for the Tennessee Equality Project (TEP), that the quotations were taken out of context.
A lobbyist writing under the name Desoto quoted Shipley as saying, ”They can do whatever they want out in California, with gays passing babies around, and violating God’s law, but when God drops California off into the sea, they will have to deal with the consequences of their actions.”
…
In the blog, Desoto also reported that Shipley said, ”That [gays adopting] ain’t gonna fly-I’m sorry, I’m a Southern Baptist, I’m a Christian," and "If they [the "secular progressives"] keep pushing and pushing and pushing-they’re pushing us too far, and something will happen-just like we did in 1860." Tennessee
…and in one statehouse after another where they are still fighting over same-sex marriage, adoption, hate crime laws, and anti discrimination laws. They can’t seem to hate us enough. I was sitting in the office one of my project managers and told him offhandedly about my decision to not take my usual cross-country drive this year because I was disturbed by all the anti-gay rhetoric I was seeing coming out of the heartland statehouses, and the resulting violence. He was genuinely shocked to hear about it. But to see it happening, you have to read the gay news blogs. As far as the mainstream news media is concerned, violence against homosexuals is still an unremarkable thing. Something like dog bites man. Not worth wasting their reader’s time over.
I read a Baltimore crime blog almost daily now, to get a feel for what’s happening at street level in my city because mainstream local news coverage is so crappy. It’s basically an aggregator, just posting links from other sources to crime stories, with maybe a little commentary between them. There needs to be something like that for the gay community. Some place were we, and everyone else, can see how dangerous things are. Because there is still a lot of denial that so many violent words flung at gay people, can possibly be turning into violent acts.
I don’t want my little life blog to be that place. But I am sick of seeing one act of violence after another flashing across my screen and it’s too much to comment on all of it. So from now on, instead of just letting it go, I’m going to compile them into a running series of posts.
"During the wars with Napoleon, when Admiral Nelson asked for the numbers of men killed and wounded in a week of action, he said ‘Let me have the butcher’s bill for the week’". Dritz sighed to a reporter one day. "As I make out these reports with the new numbers of AIDS cases each week, and as I check them off when they die, I feel like I am writing the butcher’s bill of this epidemic."
-Randy Shilts, And The Band Played On
Here’s a few line items in the culture war on gay people…
"I had him in my arms, and as I had him in my arms I was calling the paramedics," Brown said. Duncanson, who had been stabbed four times in the back, was taken to Kings County Hospital, where he died roughly one hour later.
‘He assumed the two guys were men he had met and they said ‘hi’ and called him over. He went over and said hi. They asked him if he was gay and when he said yes, they knocked him down and kicked him in the face,’
They lived together in the Spanish province of Vigo and were planning to get married. Both were stabbed to death by Jacobo Piñeiro Rial in their apartment in the early morning of January 13th, 2006. The bodies showed a total of 57 stab wounds, according to forensics. After killing them, Piñeiro took a shower and cleaned himself up. He filled a suitcase with some of their belongings to make it look like a robbery and then spilled clothing all over the place. He poured alcohol over everything, including his victims’ bodies, turned on the gas spigot on the stove, and set everything on fire.
"Dean told jurors that Gunter punched him in the nose and that the next thing he remembered was seeing two men beat him. Gunter kicked him in the back and Singleton kicked him in the face before he lost consciousness again, he said. A witness testified hearing Gunter and Singleton make anti-gay remarks during the attack. As a result of the attack, Dean suffered a fractured back and dislocated jaw, and his chin was broken in half. He testified that he has vision problems, lost his sense of smell and is still missing teeth."
According to the paper, defense attorneys argued that Singleton was responsible for the beating.
Give gay and straight couples alike the same license — a certificate confirming them as a family, and call it a "civil union" — anything, really, other than "marriage." For those for whom the word marriage is important, the next stop after the courthouse could be the church, where they could bless their union with all the religious ceremony they could want. The Church itself would lose nothing of its role in sanctioning the kinds of unions that it finds in keeping with its tenets. And for non-believers or those for whom the word marriage is less important, the civil union license issued by the state would be all they needed to unlock the benefits reserved in most states, and in federal law, for "married" couples.
This is a wonderful solution to some problem somewhere in a galaxy far, far away perhaps, but not to the problem of same-sex marriage here on Planet Earth. Once more: how many of these state amendments bulldozed through by the religious right also ban civil unions outright? How many of them are written to ban any and all rights and benefits associated with marriage, never mind civil unions? How many times do the bigots have to complain that anything that gives same sex couples any sort of recognition at all is unacceptable before you begin to listen to them? How many of the Common Ground initiative laws proposed in Utah, after the Mormon Church averred that they weren’t really against giving same sex couples Any rights, did the Mormon church actually allow to pass? What…not even hospital visitation?
At long last, do you still not get the depth of the hatred here? The word they’re choking on isn’t ‘marriage’, it’s ‘homosexual’.
Those Odd Little Thoughts That Go Floating Through Your Head, Whilst Sitting Alone In Complete Darkness…
[Geek Alert…]
When I’m working with my hands, and trying to completely focus my mind on what my fingers are doing, I’ll close my eyes, so as to tune out the visual, in favor of the tactile. This is something I’ve done ever since I was a kid working on a new model car or a slot car or a Heathkit assembly. It’s a reflex, something akin I think to how I sometimes stare off into nowhere when I’m concentrating on something someone is saying to me.
So I’m in the darkroom trying to load some film into the tank. I had a roll of sprocket damaged film I was trying to get onto a developing reel and because it was damaged it was fighting me. I kept trying to wind it, and felt it kinking and knew that it had jumped the track, rewound and started over. It was getting frustrating. I realized in the middle of all this that I’m closing my eyes to concentrate on the feel of the film going into the reel. Yet I was doing this in complete darkness anyway. There couldn’t have been anything more superfluous just then, then closing my eyes. Yet I kept on doing it. Even when I realized I was doing it, and thought to stop myself. I couldn’t concentrate on not closing my eyes, and getting the film wound correctly at the same time. So I stopped fighting my eyelids and focused my attention on getting the film wound.
I don’t think that’s a habit I got into. It’s some sort of brain reflex.
Holy Crap! Remember those old rolls of film I mentioned in the previous post? The ones I’d mistakenly put into the color film reserve in the fridge? Two of them were almost thirty years old. No kidding…I have new found images of my life from 1979 to look at.
Hectic Weekends With The Absent Minded Photographer
[A longish post about developing film and the wages of procrastination…]
I have a little staging area in my basement bathroom/darkroom, where I sit the odd roll of exposed film to be developed at a later date. If it’s something immediate, I do it then and there. But if the roll gets put into the staging area who knows when I’ll develop it. I’ll get to it later, I tell myself. Later being anywhere from tomorrow to the heat death of the universe.
Point of fact, as of Saturday morning I had about twenty-five rolls of exposed 35mm black and white film from various periods in the past decade that I hadn’t yet processed. Some of it was stored in the fridge, and some in the darkroom staging area, and none of it was labeled. This became important when I decided this weekend that I absolutely positively had to develop the last roll of black and white I took at the class reunion. Over a year ago. Okay…now which one was that…??
I’d turned in the digital images from the reunion, and tons of shots I’d taken back in high school, long ago. But that last solitary roll of Tri-X I’d exposed mostly just for old times sake, just to see myself snapping some Tri-X with my classmates as I had once upon a time back when we were all kids, just hung out there waiting. And waiting. This weekend, I was determined to get to it. I reckoned I’d just develop what I had in the staging area until I got to the roll I was looking for. Ha. Setting up to develop film isn’t as simple as copying your digital image files from the flash card to the computer. It’s a tad messy and you have to be careful. This is probably why I’m getting so lackadaisical with my roll film backlog. The digital camera is spoiling me.
I needed to make fresh chemicals and for that I needed to go to the store and buy distilled water. A gallon for Kodak Rapid Fix, Indicator Stop Bath, Perma-Wash and Photo-Flo, then enough to make a half-gallon of HC-110 stock solution. From the stock solution I make a working solution of one ounce stock to fifteen water. I have a Kindermann stainless steel tank that can hold two reels of 120 roll film and four 35mm. The tank needs a quart (32 ounces) to cover four reels of 35mm, so that’s two ounces of HC-110 stock solution to 30 ounces of water to make 32 ounces of developer. That’s a one-shot solution…that is, you use it once and toss it. The advantage to a one-shot solution is you always start with your developer at a consistent strength. But I was going to need 30 ounces of distilled water for every batch of film I ran through the tank. So I went to the grocery store and bought six gallons of distilled water. I swear one of these days someone is going to look at me going through the checkout line with all those bottles of distilled water and think I’m running a meth lab or something and call the cops.
So I get my plastic jugs of distilled water home and start cooking up a batch of fresh chemicals. I have a large assortment of measuring flasks, and a bucket I’ve marked off with half-gallon and gallon tick marks (my European readers are just going to have to endure my constant references here to U.S. measurements…sorry.). I pour the old chemicals out of their storage bottles and rinse them thoroughly. One thing this process isn’t is very green. I use tons of water and all sorts of chemicals are going right down the drain. Whether the chemicals needed to create the circuit boards and memory sticks of the digital realm are any greener when all is said and done is something I wonder about. But from a household point of view, film is a messy business.
I have the basement bathroom light sealed. All I need a darkroom for these days is loading film into the tank. That needs absolute darkness. I have a routine. I set down my film cassettes and lay out all my tools…the stainless steel film reels and developing tank, its lid, a pair of scissors and a tool for popping open 35mm film cassettes. I need these things to be where my hands expect them to be, because once the lights are out the darkroom is, must be, so dark you can’t see your hand in front of your face. You have to know the room by touch. You have to do everything by touch.
A 35mm film cassette is a metal case with a length of film inside, wound around a plastic spool. When I have the lights out, I feel for one, get my fingers around it, and then find the opening tool and pop the case open. Then I ease out the roll of film inside. There better be not even the faintest breath of light in here now or else the film has just been ruined. I carefully put the opener tool back Exactly where it was, then get my fingers around the scissors. The start of a roll of film is shaped into a little tab that goes into the camera’s take-up spool. I have to cut that off to make the end square. When that’s done and the scissors put back, I feel around for one of the stainless steel reels and carefully try to get film started on it.
The reel holds the film in the tank and allows the processing chemistry to circulate around it. Some folks use a loader device but I use my fingers. In the darkroom it’s all about touch. So long as your hands are clean you can safely touch the back of the film and the edges and you’re fine. Just never touch the emulsion side. You need to feel around the edges of the reel to know which way it’s oriented so you don’t try to load the film on backwards. Then thread the film into the center of the reel and start working it around the track. Once you get it started correctly it’s not hard to wind film onto a reel. If it jumps the track you can feel it start to kink and you just backup until it’s going on right again and continue. You must do all this by touch. The saving grace of it is that the natural film curl helps you out in this. It just wants to slide nicely into the reel. If it’s fighting you then you know it’s jumped the track somewhere and you need to backup and do it over. When I reach the end of the film I need the scissors again to cut it off the spool. I let the pieces…the metal case and the spool, just fall onto the floor in the darkness.
When I’ve wound a roll of film into a reel it goes into the tank. Rinse, repeat… I do this four times for four rolls of film and I’m done. I put the lid tightly down on the tank and now I can turn the lights back on. My floor is littered with film cassette cases, spools and film tabs, which I clean up then and there. It’s Real Easy throughout this process to let everything turn into a big mess and you can’t let that happen or you’ll get sloppy and make a mistake and ruin your film. You have to concentrate. I am not a naturally tidy person, but I will keep my work areas clean and well organized because that helps me keep my focus on what I’m doing.
I take my film tank around to the art room The rest of this can happen in normal light. Thanks to the scanner and the computer I don’t need a paper darkroom anymore. Processing film is nothing compared to the work and mess of making paper enlargements. Nowadays I can make bigger prints of far, far better quality with Bagheera, my art room Macintosh, and my nice Epson wide bed printer, then I ever could with my old enlarger setup. And it’s a lot less of a mess. But processing black and white film is mess enough.
The art room is the finished front half of my basement, which the previous homeowner made into a clubroom. It’s got the usual knotty pine walls and thick carpet. He’d put a bar in the back of it. I set up there. On the bar I lay down a work rag because no matter how careful I am there is always some spillage. I put out three one quart measuring flasks. Into one I carefully measure and pour two ounces of HC-110 into 30 ounces of distilled water. Then I pour a quart of stop bath and fixer into each of the others. I have a precision Weston dial thermometer I dip into the flask of developer. It responds quickly and I get a fix on the solution temperature. From that I calculate my development time using the Kodak charts. I am using a non-standard dilution of HC-110…the photo hacker children call it "dilution ‘H’". But it’s simply a double of the standard times for dilution ‘B’. I also take the temperature of the other two solutions. This is important. If they’re not close enough to the temperature of the developer I have to take steps to equalize them. Tri-X is a fast, but grainy film. If you keep everything the same temperature during the process the grain you end up with will be nice and uniform and not bother the eye really. But if the temperature of your solutions diverge very much the grain will tend to clump together and it will look horrible.
When I have all my chemistry ready I hang an old fashion stop watch around my neck and click on and pour developer into the tank and I’m off. For the next fifteen minutes I can’t be disturbed or distracted by anything. While you have solution in the tank you have to watch the clock and agitate every so often. That’s because the solution against the more highly exposed parts of the film gets exhausted quicker then what’s against the less exposed parts, and so development slows down there sooner then elsewhere. Agitation brings fresh chemical up against the parts of the film that are exhausting it quicker. If you don’t agitate those areas of the film don’t get as well developed and overall contrast suffers. But on the other hand if you agitate too much the effect is to over develop parts of the film. This effect is something a film photographer knows how to manipulate depending on shooting conditions. This, and adjusting the development time, is how we used to finesse contrast in the negative before Photoshop.
So I’m sloshing chemicals in and out of the tank. 11 minutes development time at 65 degrees f. 10 minutes at 68, which is the more ideal temperature. My basement nicely oscillates between the two in the winter months. In the summer I have to let my chemicals cool down in a bath of cold water before I can begin. Pour out the developer and then pour in, and right back out, the stop bath. This is just a very weak acid solution. The developer is a base (remember your chemistry class?) and when the stop bath hits what’s left of the developer sticking to the film it kills it. It’s like an instant off switch for the developer stage. Then in comes the fixer. Fixer is acidic too, and so some photographers don’t bother with a stop bath for film. I do it on the ground that at least it protects the fixer from becoming exhausted too quickly. But it isn’t critical. The developer changes the silver salts in the film that were hit by light to metallic silver. The fixer dissolves the silver salts that were not developed, leaving the negative image on the film. 4 minutes to fix.
Then I have to wash it. I take the tank over to the sink, take the film reels out of the tank and drop them into a film washer that holds the same size and number of film reels as the tank. It connects to the sink faucet and two holes at the base draw in air and create a vortex that swirls around the film, getting the last of the fixer off it. That’s very important. If any fixer is left behind on the film it will begin to slowly stain it and then your negatives are ruined. Again, I have to monitor the temperature of the wash carefully. It needs to be the same as the chemicals I used for developing.
Now I can relax a bit. The critical part is done. I will usually take a quick glance at the film now, to reassure myself that everything is okay. I can let my mind wander a bit…maybe go grab a snack from the kitchen. But I still keep the stopwatch around my neck. After about fifteen minutes of washing I pour a solution of Perma-Wash into the tank and dip the film in it for a minute. This is supposed to neutralize the last of the fixer. Then wash for a few minutes more, then I pour a solution of Photo-Flo into the tank and bathe the film in that for a minute. Photo-Flo is a simple wetting agent that prevents spotting on the film as it dries.
Slosh, slosh, slosh. By now I have little spills everywhere. I’m not exceptionally clumsy, but you have to get these solutions in and out of the tank pretty quickly and I won’t fret if a little spills now and then. Your kitchen isn’t going to remain spotless while you’re busy cooking in it either.
Then I take the film back to the bathroom and hang it up to dry. It must dry in as dust-free an environment as I can manage. At this stage the film emulsion is soft, and if dust gets on it now as it is drying and hardening it’s there forever.
Once the film is up on hangers to dry, I begin cleaning my workspace. Even if I am going to do another batch right away, I clean everything up. Especially then. The used developer goes down the sink. The stop bath and fixer back into their storage jugs. The tank and reels and empty measuring flasks into a wash bin I carry upstairs to the kitchen sink. I mop up every spill until the workspace is clean and dry again. I rinse out the tank and reels and flasks and set them out to dry, or hand dry them if I need to use them again right now.
Take a breath. Pause. Think about what you are doing…go over your mental checklists… Wash…rinse…repeat…
I did this all weekend long, looking for that damn roll of film from the reunion. And I didn’t find it. Twenty-five rolls I processed, and none of them were the one I was looking for.
There was one roll left in the staging area…a roll I wasn’t sure was Tri-X. It was in a Fuji color film cassette, but I’d often re-used those for bulk reloading back in the day. I usually make sure to put a piece of tape over it to identify it as Tri-X though. This one didn’t have that, but it was one of the older Fuji cassettes I usually used for that. So I turned off the darkroom lights, popped the case, cut off the tab, put the film back in the case, turned the lights back on and looked at it. Even before I’d turned the lights back on though, I knew it was one of my bulk reloads because of how I’d shaped the tab.
I had a batch of film from the big tank in the wash. I had some smaller tanks though that held only one and two reels, and a spare reel. So I ran that roll through the process while the others were washing. That wasn’t the roll I was looking for either.
I was beginning to get desperate. I dug around and uncovered three more unprocessed rolls of Tri-X in a part of the fridge I’d reserved for color. They’d gotten mixed in, but this was old stuff and I doubted the film I was looking for was one of those. I dug through my camera bags looking for anything I might have missed. I found a partially exposed roll still in one camera body that I though might…just might…be the roll from the reunion. My habit is to use one body for color and one for black and white, and at the reunion I had both of those plus the digital camera. Maybe I just hadn’t taken out the roll of film from the black and white body.
But I was done for the weekend. I’d used up all the distilled water I’d bought and before I could process any more I’d need to buy some. After a thorough search of Casa del Garrett I’d come up with four possible rolls of film and a fifth that had still been in the camera. Figured I’d do them Monday. I was already thinking out my apology to the reunion committee for loosing the film. It wouldn’t have been a big loss…I’d given them a ton of stuff already. But that one last little roll might have had some good shots on it too, and it seemed now that it was gone.
So this morning I get up and start cutting all the film I’d developed down from the hangers. I cut a roll to lengths of six shots each, and store the strips temporarily in glassine envelopes until I get them scanned. During scanning the roll gets assigned a number based on a system I’ve used since high school, and then it goes into an archival film holder page with that number written on it, plus a few notes about what’s on it, and the page goes into a binder for safekeeping. As I’m cutting I’m looking at what’s there. It’s an odd assortment of images from almost a decade’s worth of odds and ends…film I hadn’t gotten around to developing because it wasn’t pressing. An office Party. Images of Kansas and Monument Valley. Shots from around my Baltimore neighborhood. Oh…what’s this…??
I’d worked my way back to the beginning of my weekend’s work and there, in the middle of one of the rolls, were the shots from the reunion. I hadn’t taken a whole roll of black and white that evening, which was probably why I’d not developed it the next day. I’d likely wanted to finish the roll first, then in the process of getting the color film developed and working on the digital images plus all the stuff from my high school years, I’d let it slip. I’d developed the roll I was looking for in the very first batch I’d done and I’d missed it completely. The reunion shots were right there, in between a trip to Stroudsburg to visit my friend Glenn, ironically another high school classmate I hadn’t seen in almost two decades, and Peterson’s performance at Gallaudet a month after.
There’s a lesson in here somewhere but I am unlikely to learn it. Considering the volume of film I still shoot, even with the digital cameras in my stable, I actually don’t stage all that much. It’s mostly odds and ends that I put aside for later processing. There were another two full rolls from Peterson’s Gallaudet performance that I’d developed right away, and one from that first visit in years to see Glenn. The reunion shots were in the middle of both of those and I had tons of other stuff from that event that I’d taken care of. It fell between the cracks.
I do this all the time…staging odds and ends for development that I never get around to for years, and then suddenly I do it all at once. And what I discover every time is how facinating the odds and ends are when you look at them after years have gone by. It’s like re-living random bits and pieces of your past all at once. But I need at least, to make it a rule from now on, that no film goes into the staging area without a tag on it that tells me what it is.
I’m not sick or dead or away somewhere…just discovering that I get a lot more done around the house when I have my computers turned off. The weather here in Charm City is trying to struggle itself out of winter and I’m finding a lot of things to do outside. Plus…I have two major photo projects I absolutely must get done this weekend. Plus, I have a project demo I have to do at work, plus start the process of migrating the test center to new quarters. In other words, I’m a bit swamped. So…lite to no posting for a while.
I am treating myself to some nice dinners out though. I’d become used to the Friday night happy hour and dinner with some gay friends in the Washington area. I’m not doing that anymore for reasons I may go into here at a later date. But there is tons of good eating right here in Baltimore, if not the tons of Gay bars and clubs that Washington has, and I’m taking more advantage of that now then I did before. Very good eating within walking distance from the house at Cafe’ Hon and elsewhere on The Avenue. And if I want to go downtown…my god Baltimore is just loaded with good eats. They say the best revenge is living well.
My computers are a subtil trap. They make me good money. But they also keep me sitting down. I don’t want to be spending the rest of my life sitting down.
In the post Scott mentioned earlier, Dreher insists that the jarring juxtaposition that occasioned many readers to question his values and priorities, has been the subject of a significant misinterpretation. It’s the surprisingness of the "bisexuality is cool" claim that motivated his post, not it’s relative wrongness.
Many commenters remain, understandably, unpersuaded by his effort to explain his bizarre post. But it’s necessary to take Dreher at his word to fully grasp the depravity of his position. So let’s grant him: a) that a remark by one (horribly traumatized) parent is sufficient evidence to to grant that bisexuality is indeed "cool" in the high school culture of one East Texas town, and b) that while this doesn’t rise to the level of parricide in an index of moral wrongs, it is a disturbing and troubling trend that suggests something that was once right with the world has gone wrong.
The nature of the typical experience of non-heterosexual adolescents in our schools and our society is hardly a secret. The ostracization and bullying of those suspected to be non-heterosexual takes an enormous psychological toll, and has life and death consequences, as evidenced higher rates of depression and suicide amongst non-heterosexual youth. They typically live in fear: fear that something is horribly wrong with them, fear of being rejected by their friends and family, and fear of violence. But: in one small town, at least for some non-heterosexual youth, there’s a chance this status quo might be changing. For anyone whose moral worldview contains any compassion, changes to this horrific status quo are a sign of hope. For Dreher, it’s the precise opposite.
Dreher was adamant in that post that he was "so keeping his kids away" from modern American culture, if that meant a toleration of bisexuality…let alone one supposes homosexuality. But what if one of those poor kids is gay themselves?
Tens of thousands of gay kid come of age in that hostile environment every generation and many of them don’t make it to adulthood alive. And it’s a fact that many of their parents would actually rather they killed themselves, or were killed, then grew up to be happy, contented gay adults. It doesn’t take much to imagine where Dreher fits in. He reads a horrific news article about a home invasion massacre, and instead of grieving for the dead kids, their mother, and the father who has to now carry those horrible memories to his grave, he goes on a rant about something the father said offhandedly about how cool bisexuality was in his town. I read something like this and I can’t get out of my head how horrible their last moments must have been (which is why I avoid crime stories in the newspapers). Dreher, reads it and is just stunned by the fact that bisexuals in one small East Texas town aren’t hated.
This is eminently typical of what hate does to a person’s conscience. This is the conscience of the culture warriors. Look at it if you have the stomach for it. There is the Pit, grinning back at you. The grotesque indifference to human life in that crime story, and in Dreher’s callow, superficial response to it, are of a single piece. What is more shocking then the murder of a man’s entire family? Why…bisexuality of course.
Don’t look for too long. Nietzsche was right about the dangers of staring into an Abyss.
Exactly what Lopez said in Matteson’s class is unclear. Lopez turned down an interview request, Matteson did not respond to e-mails, and French said he did not know enough about the speech to detail it.
So we still don’t know what it was he actually said. And that’s the crux of the entire episode. But…dig it. Lopez, the kid who is suing (through the courtesy of the culture warriors at the Alliance Defense Fund), isn’t saying. Now…why would he not want to tell anyone what it was he actually said? Better yet…why would couldn’t the reporters covering this story not be bothered to find out?
His Alliance Defense Fund mouthpiece (French) says Lopez spoke two verses from the bible that "had nothing to do with homosexuality." But…look at this…he’s not saying what they were. If he knows for a fact that they had nothing to do with homosexuality, then he knows what they were and he can tell the reporters what they were. If he doesn’t know what Lopez actually said then he can’t say that they had nothing to do with homosexuality.
They’re being very evasive here. It’s not hard to figure why.
BOULDER, Colo. — A 24-year-old ski lift operator who fatally shot the general manager of the Eldora ski area was determined to kill co-workers who weren’t Christian, according to court records obtained Thursday.
The documents, filed Wednesday in Boulder District Court, said witnesses told authorities that Derik Bonestroo walked into a building at work, fired a gun into the ceiling and said: "If you’re not Christian, you’re going to die."
General manager Brian Mahon was shot and killed Dec. 30 at the ski area west of Nederland, Colo., in Boulder County.
Witnesses said when Bonestroo asked Mahon’s religion, Mahon said "Catholic" and Bonestroo shot him twice: in the chest and head.
I guess that was the wrong answer. I suppose Mormon wouldn’t have been a good answer either. Or Unitarian I suppose. The other employees fled out the back door and into the woods. Boonestroo left in his car and was chased down by a local deputy who, fortunately, was also a SWAT team member. When Boonestroo opened fire the deputy shot back and that was that for one little hammer of god.
He was found to be wearing the usual para military gear and armed to the teeth. Oh…and this…
Among the list of items confiscated from Bonestroo’s apartment were medication and a dead cat that was stabbed several times, Pelle said. The cat was believed to be Bonestroo’s pet.
This is how the culture war staggers onward…with religious right megachurch gasbags calling down God’s wrath on Americans, knowing prefectly well that they are raising the temperature higher and higher and before long someone, some crazy someone, some massively stressed out to the point of breaking someone, will take their words and turn them into blood.
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