Classic car night

I’m sitting in the Green Bean coffee shop, looking out through the big plate glass windows at classic car night in downtown New Bedford. All kinds of classic cars, from souped-up 60s muscle cars to lovingly restored Model Ts to brightly-painted Volkswagen Bugs, are parked with hoods open or driving down Union Street.

There are also all kinds of people walking around:–

A much-pierced man with assymetrical facial hair and a black heavy metal t-shirt smiles and chats with two elderly ladies. A small boy wearing a button-down shirt and a clip-on tie is standing on the street corner, waiting in line to ride on the Zoo Choo Choo, a little electric-powered train. A big man wearing an orange, yellow, and black Hawai’ian shirt rolls down the street in a powered wheelchair. A black man and a white man walk down the street together looking at car engines and talking to each other out of the sides of their mouths. Two of the car owners pretend to get into a fist-fight — they part, laughing, and the gray-haired man goes to stand beside his big muscle car with a huge supercharger sticking out of the hood, while the young man stands beside a sedate 50s-era Volvo. A big burly man wearing a red-white-and-blue bandanna and a Harley muscle shirt bends over to peer in the window of the Volvo. Two women (who, as it happens, recently got married) take a picture of the teal-green Mustang with their cell phones.

It’s like a poster for diversity or something.

New third-party candidate

I have been an avid supporter of C’thulhu for president (“Why choose a lesser evil when you can have the greatest evil of all?”). However, I admit that I have been bothered by the Elder God Party’s platform — “Bow down in fear, pitiful minion, and prepare to meet your doom” — is just too similar to the platforms of the Democratic Party and Republican Party. I want a third-party candidate who can differentiate him/her/itself from the major party candidates.

I recently learned that a new third-party candidate, Owen W. Indy Roosevelt Jones Jr., has announced that he will be running for president. Owen (he likes to be on a first name basis with people) has formed a new party, the Richmond Canine Party, colloquially known as the “Let’s Go to the Dogs Party.” In an exclusive interview with blogger Writewrite, Owen has revealed his platform:

“Food, water, shots, walks, dog parks, treats, belly rubs, fetch. For everyone.” Then he grinned, really big. “And all dogs get to sleep on the bed.”…

He wagged his tail, picked up his tennis ball, and asked to go out and start the campaign.

Now that’s a candidate I can support.

“Organized Love”

John Bohstedt, a member of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, took issue with some of the media coverage of the recent shootings at his church. Bohstedt, a retired history professor from the University of Tennessee, sent an email message to Michael Paulson, religion correspondent at the Boston Globe, giving his viewpoint about what really happened:

An eyewitness who was protecting her children a few feet from the gunman said it was remarkable how everyone was doing exactly what they needed to do — subduing the gunman, calling 911, tending to the victims, and evacuating the sanctuary….

The reason I am saying all this is — Media have done much to make us a fearful people — to emphasize the danger in the world. Real life is often NOT like that, and in this case — evil was overcome efficiently by LOVE. One eyewitness said: There are a lot more good guys in the world, but the bad guys get all the press….

Above all, please do not let bi-coastal myopia cloud your judgments — for every crazed wacko with a gun, there are thousands of civilized, rational, and loving people in East Tennessee who have produced a remarkable culture. …

In closing, I have been studying the behavior of crowds for decades, in old documents and in our UT football stadium, and more often than not ‘there is METHOD in the ‘madness’ of crowds’ — the METHOD of our TVUUC church is organized Love.”[Link to Paulson’s blog post]

That’s a nice summary of what a church should be: “organized Love.”

What I did on my summer vacation

Summer vacation is too short. You don’t want to waste it on trivial things. You want to do things that will restore your soul. So I’ve spent the past two days of my summer vacation cleaning the apartment.

Last winter, I had bronchitis twice, so I was sick from October through April. It sucked the energy right out of me, and all I did was go to work and come home and sleep. From October through April, I did not do much housework. Then I spent May and June catching up on all the other things I hadn’t done while I was sick.

I spent so long not doing housework, I actually found myself missing housework. I said to myself: Hey, why not spend a couple-three vacation days cleaning up? I said to myself, No one uses vacation days for cleaning the apartment. But, I said to myself, an apartment that is clean will keep me in a better mood; you know I’m in a better mood when things are neat and clean. OK, OK, I replied to myself:– You win, I’ll clean the apartment.

Here’s what I did: I cleaned the bathroom. I cleaned the kitchen. I cleaned the floors, as in I got down on hands and knees and scrubbed. I cleaned the woodwork. I vacuumed and shook out rugs. I dusted. Here’s what I didn’t do: I didn’t wash the windows. I didn’t clean out the inside of cabinets or closets. After all, I am on vacation. I had to draw the line somewhere.

Summer

At noon, Carol went to the farmer’s market at Clasky’s Common. She got some beans, some peaches, and a perfect cantaloupe. She knows I love cantaloupe. She said: “The farmer told me he picked it at five this morning.” I cut it open almost as soon as she brought it in the door. It had one little bruise, but aside from that it was perfect, and perfectly ripe. I ate half of it right away. We did some housework, went shopping, went for a short walk. At four o’clock, I ate the other half. It was so good, I couldn’t resist. That was too much fruit to eat in less than four hours, and I’ll probably get the collywobbles alter on, but what good is summer if you can’t gorge yourself on melon?

July Twitter

July 01
Dining car: supper with a sculptor, breakfast with retired military, lunch with a homeschooling mom. | 12:24 PM

July 02
In front of the Air & Space museum: a boy flies a paper airplane. His dad isn’t interested. They go into the museum. | 12:12 PM
On the Mall: plump tourists wearing pastels and big sun hats dragging bored, hot children. | 12:13 PM

July 03
Anxious young woman on a cell phone. Then she relaxes, smiles, waves. A young man walks up. They go to get lunch. | 12:19 PM

July 04
Driving north from New Bedford: fireworks over the trees on the right and left, and straight ahead. | 08:20 PM

July 06
Fog rolling in off the Atlantic. I hear other people, but all I see is sand, waves, a few gulls. | 06:08 PM
Now the fog has lifted… … …now it has come in again… | 06:52 PM

July 14
Moon through clouds and the whine of mosqitos. | 11:23 PM

July 19: Podcamp Boston 3
So far, lots more Macs than any other laptop. | 08:01 AM
“Enable your superpowers,” says Chris Penn. I.e., learn how to use new media. | 08:42 AM
David Tames: “Part of filmmaking art is figuring out when the ego needs to be put on hold and collaboate with other people.” | 10:54 AM

July 20: Podcamp Boston 3
Looks like Podcamp has already clogged up the wifi in the conference center. | 01:09 PM
They’re comparing Seesmic to CB radio… huh. | 12:18 PM
Podcamp was like drinking from a firehose. Overloaded. | 07:54 PM

July 23
A guy changing clothes in the middle of the rest area men’s room. He kinda laughs, says “Sorry…” | 08:50 PM

July 24
Suddenly half a dozen smoke detectors in the neighborhood start going BeepBeepBeep BeepBeepBeep… | 01:18 AM
I take the battery out of our smoke detector. It’s the only way it’ll stop. Humidity? Eerie. | 01:22 AM

July 30
Neon sign: “SHE ATON COMMANDER” – A female monotheistic Pharaoh who’s in charge? 9:12 PM

Summer

I had an hour to kill in the middle of the day, so I parked at the old rifle range, and walked up the abandoned railroad bed to White Pond. The air was thick with humidity, and everything looked incredibly green from all the rain that’s fallen in July. Cicadas buzzed. A few birds braved the heat of the day. I passed through swamps caused by beaver dams. In places, the railroad bed was almost overgrown and only a thin path led through exuberant green shrubs and grass and poison ivy. Brilliant green leaves brushed against me from head to toe on both sides. At one point I noticed where a stand of white pines had dropped enough needles and shed enough shade to kill off most of the undergrowth; aside from that, I didn’t think of much of anything at all. Once the swamp ended and the woods began, the undergrowth mostly disappeared.

On the way back from White Pond, a Golden Labrador Retriever lay panting at the side of the trail, attended by a white-haired woman.

“That dog has the right idea,” I said. “It’s too hot to walk.”

“He’s gone lame,” said the woman. She had an English accent.

“What, does he have something in his paw?” I said.

“He walks a few yards, and then he stops and lies down,” she said. “My friend has gone to get the car.”

“He’s hot, too,” I said, watching him pant. “It’s very humid.”

“It is clammy,” she said. “I’ve just come over from England last night. We’ve been having some of the same weather over there.”

We chatted a bit, and then I said, “I’ try to carry him up to the road for you, but I think he’s a bit heavy for me.”

She laughed. “Oh, I didn’t expect you to offer to carry him up. He’ll be fine.”

Of the whole hour-long walk I took, most of what I can tell you about is that three-minute conversation. Aside from that, there are only general impressions of walking hard, sweat, gentle heat, damp air, greenness, small animals in the underbrush, flies, smell of grass and leaves — but there wasn’t much to be said about such basic physical impressions.

More on TVUUC

The following information resources about the shootings at the Tennessee Valley UU Church cOme from Deb Weiner, the Director of Electronic Communications at the Unitarian Universalist Association. Deb writes:

Friends, information on Unitarian Universalist Association response to this tragedy can be found here. A new document, Making Meaning After Disaster, by Rev. Sarah Gibb Millspaugh, has been linked from this page. It can be directly accessed here.

Additional resources… as well as prayers from international and interfaith communities, will be available soon. The UUA website pages will be updated regularly.

And the following notice comes from the board of the Liberal Religious Educators Association (LREDA):

As educators, we are aware of our responsibility to aid in efforts to understand, or at least survive such an incident as emotionally intact as possible. Questions may arise in your own communities around issues of safety, or crisis management. Two books may be useful to have on hand: Trauma in the Lives of Children, by Kendall Johnson; and Children and Trauma, by Cynthia Monahon. Also, A Terrible Thing Happened, by Margaret M. Holmes addresses the need for children to find a place to speak about their experiences. An additional resource for your adult communities is available here.

Finally, Philocrites, a journalist by profession, has the best blog coverage of the shootings, especially: links to first-hand accounts — more info on the UUA Web site — links to news reports here, here, here.

Same sex marriage news

Yesterday, the Marriage Equality Coalition of Massachusetts reported:

“By a vote of 118 to 35, Massachusetts House passed legislation this afternoon repealing the 1913 law, which prevents out-of-state same-sex couples from marrying here if they could not marry in their home state. The legislation was passed by the Senate earlier this month and is expected to be signed by Governor Patrick in short order…. Once the bill is signed, we’ll be in touch with more information about what this means for same-sex couples in other states — including when the law goes into effect.”

Ultimately, this might mean that any same sex couple who wished could get legally married here in Massachusetts. Of course, it would remain an open question whether other states or the federal government would recognize all legal rights that should be accorded to such marriages, and we should probably expect the resultant litigation to go all the way to the Supreme Court.

But when the new law does go into effect, I hereby offer to officiate at weddings for any out-of-state same-sex couple for free.