Crossing the Great Divide

The dying gasp of daylight savings time

We know it will rise again some 4 plus months from now, as it finds new life in a new Month, arriving on the second Saturday in March.

Yet it is something I cling to with my fingernails dug deeply in, wishing it not to slide from my insufficient grasp. Like it or not, it's leaving in 4 days.

The result will be evening commutes in the darkness, particularly dicey this time of year, what with skittish critters scurrying to and fro trying to escape the two legged predators who take to our forests in their annual ritual. Deer and moose crossing interstates can be deadly for animal and vehicle operator, and far too common an occurrence in these parts.

So heightened awareness will be the rule, at least until things settle down as winter drops it's first significant blanket of whiteness.

In the meantime, I'm left to lament the passing of this friend, who unfailingly lifts my spirits in anticipation during the frigid days of late January and February. Most of you can recall nelle stories of peepers, of spring countdowns, of watching the retreating ice shields on the NOAA website.

This time, this time the wait is shorter. 19 weeks after exiting stage left, DST will wander back on in to reclaim prominence in our timekeeping. Imagine it gets 33 full weeks carefully rearranging the sun's time shining down on us, warming old bones, lighting our way, getting us out of doors to swat mosquitos and black flies... um, forget that... to park on patios with beer or margarita, coffee or tea (boring) to enjoy lively conversation as the peepers keep time.

Be well, Daylight S.T.

Senseless and tragic

Today is the funeral of Michael Briggs.

Don't know this name? Neither did I, though Michael already was known to our community for saving people in a rapidly burning building.

In another instance, Michael treated a person who had been shot, one Michael Addison, caring for him until EMT's arrived.

On early Monday, Michael Addison, this person Michael Briggs cared for the day he was shot, shot and killed him.

Somewhere overnight on the 16th, there was a report to Manchester police of a domestic violence incident. Michael Briggs, Manchester police officer who patroled on bicycle, responsed. Two people were fleeing the scene, and one, Michael Addison, turned and fired at Officer Briggs.

The next morning, our news was full of the critically injured officer. When I left work, the first story I heard on the news was of his 'killer.' Nothing further to hear here, they had just told me with that one reference how Officer Briggs fared.

So this morning I bring lunch to my mom. She is watching the news coverage of Officer Briggs funeral at the Fisher Cats ballpark. Not two miles from here, the park is filled to capacity with dignitaries, local citizenry, and officers from all over the country. The size of the Boston contingent astounds. I've included a picture of the funeral procession through Manchester, courtesy of the Manchester Union Leader.

Hundreds of police officers pay tribute to Briggs

This was the first officer lost in our community in 30 years. The irony, the tragedy, the senselessness overwhelms. There is a partner, there are two children, who have had to confront unspeakable pain. I set and I watched with mom, my mind simply unable to overcome the need of my tears to flow.

The inverted world

Time was, being inverted meant you were a lesbian. I think we can lay that usage to rest, and go for a more modern and reflective usage.

Over the last several days, we've seen North Korea make some macho noise... men dig big hole, men make big boom. We have Iran thumping it's national chest, and our very own president, why... he has an action figure doll, need I say more?

And here we have a world where people are still being slaughtered in Darfur; where an entire continent is in danger of oblivion, with subsistence levels of agriculture declining. Where aids is taking out parent after paren, and whole communities. 

And the world spends it's time building bombs, testing bombs, dropping bombs.

The US Defence budget is approaching half a trillion a year. If any of us were suddenly charged with a half trillion dollar budget, what could we do in Africa to start solving issues? What could we do within our own country?

Would our schools be in decay? Would education instead be a shining light? Would 45 million still be without health care? Would there still be people with not enough to eat?

If we sent forth ambassadors who, instead of delivering ultimatums of compliance or else, spoke of working together to solve the issues that know no borders, would we not be better off? If we had occasion to not fear each other, would we not all be better off?

Wouldn't economic gain preclude radicalisation of various areas of the world? If one has a good job to go to, and a family to return home to, are they as inclined to be attaching bombs to their chests and setting it off on a bus?

We approach all of this arse backwards. We meet threat with do as we say or we bomb messages, and we run headfirst into human dignity and pride. Fuck you is the collective response.

I know not if the world will ever get this. It would be nice to see, but none of us should hold our breath. What I would like to know is... looking backward from just such a vantage point, from a place where we finally figured this out... at what point would we see the lightbulb go off over someone? And how did they get things rolling in the right direction?

Paedophilia and the wildly speculative

I'm listening to NPR's Here and Now on the noon hour, listening to a spokesperson for Log Cabin Republicans denounce Mark Foley.

Hey, all well and good, but um... didja notice that every other comment out there is associating being gay with paedophilia? Not a bloody word out of him in refutation.

Some spokesperson.

So it falls to us shout in the wilderness bloggers to speak up and out. Repeat after me... this is not about being gay. This is not about being gay. This is not about being gay.

I've argued the point for days on message boards, and one poster, in the most cogent moment of their life, posted in this manner to me:

GERRY STUDDS!!!

GERRY STUDDS!!!

This after I spent several days defending Republicans from the equally ridiculous assertions that Republicans are somehow associated with paedophilia.

Can we get past this shit already? Must we associate everything with paedophilia? You like coke, not Pepsi, must be a paedophile. You prefer Fox News to MSNBC? Paedophile. Speak French? Paedophile.

We tend to measure everyone else by the actions of the few or the one. Yet we try to pulverise the rights of the few or the one. Funny how we attach so much importance to small numbers, then think them irrelevant.

Well, psssssssst... paedophilia is not gay associative. Plenty of hetero paedophiles out and about folks... along with a whole herd of hetero rapists and abusers. So what? There are gay folk who do these things, there is no correlation to whom one is naturally attracted to.

Yet now we have to endure the fallout of this. And for that, a big huge, well swung foot square on Mr. Foley's backside. For the idiots who then make the association with gays.. may you face a rotten veggie food fight.

Diversity vs dogma

I'm taking a break at work, and flipping through a May edition of The Advocate. There are a couple of interesting stories on Muslim lesbian women, women who have courageously stood and said "count my opinion, and you may not like what I have to say..."

And I think on the various messages in these articles and in their words. There is Irshad Manji (of Canada as near as I can tell) who talks on "Muslims not asking hard questions about what happens when faith becomes dogma."

This statement provoked my own mind to delve into this, applying it well beyond Islam. Surely Islam is not the only belief system that should stand such scrutiny. Look around us, at what those in this country would like to do with their belief systems vis a vis the rest of us.

People are all too willing to blindly follow someone else's outline of a belief system, get themselves all in  a lather if the precise syllabus is deviated from, and soon begin viewing those who are not believers as sinners and as evil.

My grandmother once told my sister and mom you could tell a Protestant by their eyes, they were soulless. (She had issues with those not Franco-American as well, hello mom, even though she was adopted and English-American by birth. Go figure.) Damn beer is empty, go figure again.

Where was I? We need to reshape our belief systems in such a way as they are less judgemental and harsh, and more enabling of critical thought and examination, more willing to embrace and respect, more willing to slide over on the seat and make room for someone who looks a little different.

We distrust each other. It's easy. What do those Muslims 8,000 miles care about anyway? And we then outline their outlook, as if everyone there thinks in the way we perceive, or that we have captured the essence of their belief.

And we do it right here, with each other. How can you believe that? Don't you know you will go to hell for how you live? Don't you know those Christians are all pigheaded dogmatics too? And we aren't? There are times I catch myself thinking something, and a big 'whoa!' forms over my head. Time to think a bit further, nelle dear.

In another article, author Christopher Lisotta delves into the 'clash' of lgbt folk and Islam in Europe, and wonders if we are next. He argues America is better suited to handle the assimilation of Muslims, and to have the discussion/tempering advocated by Irshad. We are? America? Did I miss something?

Perhaps we all are, eh? Perhaps we all have it in us, but simply refuse to admit we can be dogmatic and accepting, open and closed minded, contemplative and rejecting, fearful and fearless. If we see these things within us, we can challenge them.

Insecurity

My radio shares more sordid details. Another school shooting, more children... dead.

Children. Sometimes children murdering children. Sometimes adults murdering children. Sometimes children murdering adults.

There is a common thread here, and that common thread is insecurity.

For my money, insecurity is one of the most powerful forces on this planet, a compulsion to be. To be seen favourably, to be simply one among many, to fit in with one's peers, and not the opposite... to be singled out, to be ostracised, to be put down.

Our social complexity embraces our young from the moment of their birth. Every interaction produces learned conditioning in that child, and in adults as well... we are learning and conditioning from birth until death.

We learn how to communicate. We learn laughter that is happy, we learn laughter that is harmless, and we learn laughter that springs from the discomfort of another. We single out those different, because that difference might be visible. Subconsciously, we single out out of our own insecurity, and out of our own need to avoid being the target of someone singling us out.

Each of us will perceive these things within our own understanding of the world. One person can shrug it off, another will be enraged. One has learned to channel, another is consumed by it.

I've done the insecurity thing, my whole life was one big insecure mess held together by a will to survive, and my optimistic glue. Look to the future... past there... past that other obstacle as well... to what lie beyond. I'm a passive creature, but even my passivity took out others as things finally came to one sorry focal point.

So the news shares yet another sad tale. Yanno, there are lessons here, beyond the let's get tough and get these people shouts. It's about why insecurities abound. It's about ignoring things like bullying and taunting. It's about seeing nothing wrong with putting down whole classes of people, of singling out visible or expressed differences, and jumping all over them.

Some of us rationalise; some strike back. By that time, it's too late. As I recall, each of these recent events has carried story of someone who felt slighted or put down. Our society really needs to take a closer look at this, we need to study, and learn and make sure we see the put downs, and we see the receptions they get. On both sides of this issue... we need to work.

The human war on women

There is that ugly recorded history, where patriarchy predominates. There are the examples in the lives of most every woman alive. There are even the experiences from my own brief time crossed gender. and there are the ongoing stories, from within the western world, from without the western world, from places where anarchy reigns.

And they all lead towards one conclusion... if given the chance, women are will be preyed upon in greater numbers than men are.

We see stories like this one this morning Childhood Marriages Resurface in Iraq. We see women raped in Pakistan get to shoulder the blame for it's occurrence. We see in Iraq it leads to honour killings. In China, if you are female, your own birth is more hazardous for you. If you live in a war zone, or even one where there is an absence of law, the potential for rape increases astronomically.

After 11 September, I read an article about Mohammed Atta, the supposed leader of the not so merry band of hijackers. Apparently he left instructions no women should visit his grave. When he earned his masters, his mentor being a woman, he refused to shake her hand.

Want to be a Catholic priest, a religion of 1 billion? Better be male. President of the United States? Hey, if you aim for the House of Representatives or Senate, your peers are 13% of the total number serving.

Then there is FGM, the horrors of how AIDS is spreading through Africa, the places where educating women is seen as evil, our own unrelenting pressure to convince women to turn back (see the twice yearly NY Times piece of women leaving the workplace for the wonders of home life.)

And we enable this conduct. How many women have I heard cut down the appearance of a successful woman, say... Hillary?

When a Warren Jeffs becomes news, with it comes all the wives of his crowd, convinced they deserve to be one in 25.

We hear of how choice is evil, and that to choose the option of abortion is to choose to murder. Of course, women have no right to self determination, men need a say.

In this country, much attention recently focuses on the failures of boys in the classroom. Left out of most of these stories is the fact the performance of boys has been pretty consistent, undeclining, but that the performance of girls has gone nuts... so oh, my, why... this is horrible.

What we should be saying is... how do we move all forward, but no... this gets the press it does now, in the way that viagra got insurance funding upon it's introduction, whilst the pill took decades.

This world needs to take a good, hard look, but... it's not going to happen in our lifetimes. What exactly will it take?

On the eve

A year ago, I was not quite apoplectic, but nonetheless rather annoyed.

Our president had just spoken to the press, and barely a mention had been made of the impending monster headed for our shores.

I'm interested in weather, it can be fascinating. I love a hard rain, be it the harsh coldness of a nor'easter minus the cold to make the result shovelable, or the warm summer downpour or a heat breaking thunderstorm. I'm fascinated by lightning, and it's child, thunder. Of how so many diverse yet interrelated forces in nature can come together in so many fascinating yet, oh so dangerous ways.

As a child, we were not allowed to play in the rain, some old belief that one would end up sick, perhaps stricken with pneumonia. Bummer, for I so love being in rain today. Especially if it is with the knowledge, in that aforementioned cold, harsh rain, a warming fire awaits back at home.

Once again, I've digressed. With that background, I'd been following this storm from it's first mention as an area of convective activity that bore watching. Saw it named. Saw the map show it path crossing the Caribbean, one they really nailed, one of the better forecasting jobs of NHC. Landfall minus three, it was looking like anyone in NO should get their arse moving pronto. Minus two... I was getting antsy, it was being seriously underplayed. Minus one, and the damn president royally pissed me off. And the next day...

was too late.

I'm not certain who it was who did not 'sell' this in a way that would have grabbed someone with the power to act, but they didn't do a very good job of selling. Or maybe the recipient of this sales presentation simply was preoccupied elsewhere. Hurricanes? Get 'em every year. Now about this war...

Yeah. 165 mph winds on a metro area are pretty much a war, Mr. President. Stick your hand out of a moving car at say... 75 mph, minimum hurricane strength. Not much can stand to 165. And there is the matter of the low pressure bubble... the middle of a hurricane has extremely low pressure, which allows the ocean to rise in place of the air that normally pushes down harder. With a storm pushing below 900 millibars, that water is seriously going up... and being pushed forward, with the storm.

Into an area damn close to, or even below, sea level.

I wondered, wondered on minus one out loud to my mom... why no National Guard to assist? Why no military evacuation assistance?

And now...

a year later... 100 billion later, much of the area lies fallow, not yet under wholesale reconstruction. Many insurers are playing at semantics, where they can attributing the losses to flood, not covered, to be covered elsewhere. Most times this is a clear differentiation and the insurers have a legitimate argument, but they are lowballing on the other side. People cannot rebuild with the sums they are being offered. States should take heed... NH is a valued policy state, if ya have a total loss, you get paid policy amount, no dickering. A wise precaution to avoid the current nonsense.

So where is this 100 billion? Yet unspent? Or is it flowing to the no bid contract of well connected corporations, who probably have very little in the way of an actual Gulf presence? I know not.

All I know is... this was an American humanitarian disaster. I hope it got people's attention, for the next time.

Red state, blue state, hope from the past?

As mentioned previously, I'm reading Christine Jorgensen's bio. No, I'm not ranting on that again.

What was of interest today was her being banned in Boston in 1954, the year of my birth. I quote from Christine Jorgensen, A Personal Autobiography*:

Charlie Yates (her manager) came across the initial notice in the Boston Daily Globe, three days before the opening:

Christine Jorgensen's scheduled appearance at the Latin Quarter got top billing yestersay, in the executive, judicial, and legislative branches of local government.

Boston's City Council passed an order, asking the Licensing Board to force the "sex-transformed: ex-soldier to submit to a medical examination.

In the House, a resolution calling for a ban on Christine was proposed, but shelved.

Mayor Hynes looked askance at the situation, and labeled it, "a travesty on the entertainment profession."

District Attorney Garrett H. Byrne said the grand jury would investigate "the Jorgensen case, and related matters" when it convenes today.

Summoned to appear before the grand jury, is Rocco Palladino, proprietor of the Latin Quarter.

I found this rather interesting. Think of Boston in 1954, and think of Boston now, capitol of the first state tto sanction the marriage of same sex partners. Quite a change in 52 years, and who's to say a similar evolution (now there's a thorny word for a red state) cannot occur in those rosy coloured states?

Looking back at life of this and even earlier times, we see how attitudes can change. Look at how far we've come with segregation.

It would seem what is transpiring now, much like how bad publicity can still be good publicity, is good in tehe sense the issue is challenging minds, and so long as there is a reaction afoot, minds have the issue under contemplation, however unwittingly. Sooner or later, someone will start saying "what's the big deal?" and we are sliding into acceptance.

*, Cleis Press, Inc, Publisher

The sad and the crazy

Three stories are preoccupying my current thoughts, one perilously close, for unknown reason, to triggering me in some way. The second saddens me deeply, while the third is simply of interest and worthy of discussion.

The first story comes courtesy of this message board discussion: Mom gives daugher to boyfriend for sex. A second story, if you are interested, has just been posted: Mom makes sex deal for girl. OK,no rocket science in knowng the issues afoot with this story. Yet I am incredulous to see someone trying to say the 15 year old somehow has or might have culpability here.

Yeah, 15 year olds get horny. Yeah, 15 year old have sex, like it or not... but think most parents hope they find responsible outlets and means of satisfying this horniness, or if they absolutely love someone and wish to go there, do so in a very responsible manner. Satisfying mom's boyfriend would not seem to fit that criteria. I don't care (as stated in that thread) if she sat naked on his lap trying to entice him... if he has some semblance of a functioning brain, no go there. And mom?

The second story comes by way of our local news: Child Found With 24 Broken Bones. A six month old child. 24 broken bones. When are we going to start teaching - seriously teaching - what to expect with a baby, what to be ready for, and how to prepare for the early childhood years. We require divorcing parents to attend classes, yes a good idea, on how the separation impacts children, and this one should be next.

The final story is about the increasingly violent conduct of young women. In this second local story, a 14 year old was assaulted by other young women. The trend nationally is for increase. It's not unexpected, with the move to equality for women, gaining ground across the board logically suggests there would also be a corresponding increase in aggression. The question to ponder is... do we try to run interference now, or do we let this culture of aggression continue growing unchecked?

If the answer is intercede and correct, how?