This was their life

Today I was trying to remember a quote about Boston, New York and Philadelphia. Turns out it was by Mark Twain: "In Boston they ask, how much does he know? In New York, how much is he worth? In Philadelphia, who were his parents?" What led me to this was quote was a reading of the bio of "E. M. Forster, A Great Unrecorded Life" by Wendy Moffat (I also want to read the unexpurgated autobiography of Mark Twain, vol. 1 was just published). What amazed me about Forster was the altering of my view of his life. Virginia Woolf, whose writing I admire, had her opinions of Forster (who was a friend) upended for me because of Moffat's book. Until I read that, I always remembered Woolf's comments on her friend ( "E. M. Forster the novelist, whose books once influenced mine, and are very good, I think, though impeded, shrivelled and immature" and her diary entry with Forster in mind, "The middle age of buggers is not to be contemplated without horror."). When I considered Forster's cessation of writing fiction and his hiding away of his gay writings, I always thought of him as a sad man who avoided his own truth.
Since reading the book, I find Forster a man who did abandon fiction and not publish his gay-themed stories and novel, but who grew in his concern and involvement for the world, broadcasting on the BBC during the war, attending international writers' conferences to address the world's peril that led up to WWII, and saving his work that dealt with homosexuality until such time as it would be received as not sensationalistic, but a reflection on his life and desires, as well as the gay life that existed before it could "speak its name."

OK, so what does Mark Twain and his Boston, New York and Philadelphia statement have to do with this? Forster's life was filled and interconnected with so many people, Christopher Isherwood, W.H. Auden, Benjamin Britten, Paul Cadmus, George Platt Lynes, etc. What a wonderful crowd of creative types.

Of late, I find myself drawn to biography; Before the Forster book I read a book called "My Queer War" about a gay soldier serving in WWII (and meeting Picasso and Gertrude Stein when stationed in Paris, connections again, right?); now I am reading Justin Spring's "Secret Historian," the life of professor, tattoo artist and sexual renegade Samuel Steward (also filled with connections, Gertrude Stein, Alfred Kinsey, andGeorge Platt Lynes to name a few)and Frances Osborne's "The Bolter," the scandalous Edwardian woman, Idina Sackville, which ties in to Virginia Woolf and that crowd.

I feel lucky (and sometimes a tad jealous) of my friends who maintain a creative level in their lives. I have been feeling uncreative and need to reconnect with that part of myself. Once I decide in what direction to go, I'll let you know.

Hi, I'm a Tea-Partier

Video games and marriage?

I got to thinking about the “sanctity” of marriage (interesting that the definition of sanctity in addition to the word holy, uses the word inviolability).

The thought process started as I was watching a video Cataclysm Cinematic Intro(World of Warcraft)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq4Y7ztznKc&feature=youtube_gdata while waiting for some files to upload to our large file format method of transfer.

I don’t know how I got from the video to marriage, but some of the steps were these:
Why in games and their movies are the societies quaint, often medieval-looking, when they have technology (and magic) to create warriors and weapons that fit the WMD category? Do we credit/blame Tolkien and other story/myth creators (and Joseph Campbell)?

Is it a comment on our tribal-mindset past as our world moves ahead in its ability to create technological methods to destroy while the distrust of ‘the other’ remains in us?

Somehow I got from there to the idea of using another’s idea to build on and from there to the idea of someone objecting to their ideas being used (perhaps because on my way to work I was looking at a blurb for a book on intellectual property while remembering the Harry Potter/Willy the Wizard lawsuit).

From there I jumped to the Supreme Court case (not a difficult jump, yesterday I was reading an item from the New Yorker that commented on the activism by the current SCOTUS’s conservative justices) about Fred Phelp’s and his Westboro Baptist crew protesting at military funerals. (For the record, I totally disagree with Phelps and his crew’s position and have some problem with their right to protest, but not based on my disagreement with their views. My issue is why they have the right to protest without restriction when people going to voice their opinions in political convention cities are restricted to ‘free speech zones?’ This is because of my firm belief that the First relates to Evelyn Beatrice Hall’s “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” which is based on Voltaire’s statement "Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.")

I recently read about the LGBT issue with the current administration’s talk of support but arguing for laws that are anti-equality. Part of me can see a law professor’s reason for dealing with the law in legal fashion, but do not consider it activism when a judge applies Constitutional principles to overturn wrongful laws.

Combine that and the right to free speech and disagreement, and the religion-based statements about marriage between one man and one woman, allowing marriage equality undermines the concept of marriage, etc.

Having been in 3 serial relationships in my life, I don’t define sanctity for other people, nor do I demand that they define/base their relationships on my terms/beliefs. While not Christian, I do like the Golden Rule concept and therefore I expect the same courtesy for freedom of thought be returned.

Finally (and luckily the 13 large memory files were now uploaded) this led to my thoughts on sanctity and how one-man-one-woman has certainly had some problems in upholding that concept (on another somewhat personal note, in an extended family with 13 grandchildren for one of my grandmothers, only 2 are in their original marriages).

So, in our celebrity-obsessed culture where movie stars testify before congress on the plight of the farmer and sell us everything from political opinion to aspirations to a similar lifestyle, here are some famous people with their examples of the holy estate:
• 8 months - Jennifer Lopez and Cris Judd wed October 2001, split July 2002. (Another Jennifer Lopez marriage to Ojani Noa – wed February 1997, split March 1998 – lasted13 months.)
• 8 months - Elizabeth Taylor and Nicky Hilton May 1950, split January 1951.
Famed bride Elizabeth Taylor got a jump on her string of weddings with her first marriage to hotelier (and grandfather to sisters Nicky and Paris Hilton) Nicky Hilton. 19 year-old Elizabeth reportedly said about the wedding, "I have a woman's body and a child's emotions."
• 7 months - Courtney Thorne-Smith and Andrew Conrad wed June 2000, split January 2001. They couldn't even make it to when their wedding pictures were infamously published by Instyle Magazine in February/March 2001.
• 5 months - Shannen Doherty and Ashley Hamilton wed September 1993, split February 1994. [Shannen Doherty also married Rick Salomon (of Paris Hilton sex tape fame) wed February 2002, split November 2002 for a total of 9 months.]
• 5 months -Carmen Electra and Dennis Rodman wed November 1998, split March 1999. Like Britney and Jason, these two were wed in a quickie Vegas wedding. Rodman initially tried to get an annullment after nine days of wedded bliss, but the two managed to stick it out another four and a half months.
• 4 months, 24 days - Charlie Sheen and Donna Peele wed September 1995, split February 1996.
• 3 months, 15 days - Lisa Marie Presley and Nicolas Cage wed August 2002, split November 2002. (Lisa Marie Presley was also married to Michael Jackson wed May 1994, split December 1995 for a tally of 20 months.)
• 32 days - Ernest Borgnine and Ethel Merman wed June 1964, split July 1964. 32 days (and I am not sure which I sympathize with more as to why it didn’t work out)
• 30 days - Drew Barrymore and Jeremy Thomas wed March 1994, split April 1994. (Drew Barrymore also married Tom Green wed July 2001, split December 2001, a length of five months.)
• 9 days - Cher and Gregg Allman wed July 1975, split July 1975. Kids, another example of why you've got to watch out for those Vegas weddings. Just three days after divorcing Sonny Bono, Cher and musician Gregg Allman spontaneously flew to Vegas in his Lear Jet to wed. However, she reportedly soon discovered that his drug and alcohol problems were too much for her, and filed for divorce after only nine days.
• 8 days - Dennis Hopper and Michelle Phillips wed October 1970, split November 1970.
• 55 hours - Britney Spears' and Jason Allen Alexander wed January 3, 2004, split 2 days and 7 hours later.
• 6 hours - Rudolph Valentino & Jean Acker wed and split November 1919. (The jury's still out on whether Britney's marriage was shorter than famed lover Rudolph Valentino's. After just six hours, the bride locked Valentino out of the honeymoon suite! He soon gave up and headed home. However, they didn't finalize a divorce until 1922.)
• And, least we forget, a 1-m-1-w marriage is holy for both
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQTe47cR-Ws&feature=related

Addiction?

A quote in an e-mail from Bill (“Reading is the last act of secular prayer.” - Richard Powers) and a Facebook post by Deborah (“Once you learn to read you will be forever free." --Frederick Douglass) made this happen. Reading is my crutch, my education, my solace, my inspiration, my fear, my religion and my basis for home decoration; in other words a big part of my life:

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.
Mortimer J. Adler

A library is a hospital for the mind.
Anonymous

Read books. They are good for us.
Natalie Goldberg

To feel most beautifully alive means to be reading something beautiful, ready always to apprehend in the flow of language the sudden flash of poetry.
Gaston Bachelard

A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors.
Henry Ward Beecher

I must say that I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a book.
Groucho Marx

Outside a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside a dog, it's too dark to read.
Groucho Marx

Read in order to live.
Gustave Flaubert

Don't join the book burners. Don't be afraid to go in your library and read every book.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.
Joseph Brodsky

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books.
The true university of these days is a collection of books.
Thomas Carlyle

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.
Atwood H. Townsend

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature,
to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.
Eleanor Roosevelt

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think.
Mccosh

Life happened because I turned the pages.
Alberto Manguel

In a very real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read.
It is not true that we have only one life to lead; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.
S. I. Hayakawa

The closest we will ever come to an orderly universe is a good library.
Ashleigh Brilliant

I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me.
I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke in me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.
Malcolm X

Man ceased to be an ape, vanquished the ape, on the day the first book was written.
Yevgeny Zamyatin

Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.
Virginia Woolf

When the Day of Judgment dawns and the great conquerers and lawyers and statesmen come to receive their rewards -- their crowns, their laurels, their names carved indelibly upon imperishable marble -- the Almighty will turn to Peter and will say, not without a certain envy when he sees us coming with our books under our arms, "Look, these need no reward. We have nothing to give them here. They have loved reading. (1932)
Virginia Woolf

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.
Henry David Thoreau





In books lies the soul of the whole past time.
Thomas Carlyle

For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past,
the reason why men lived and worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.
Amy Lowell

All the best stories in the world are but one story in reality -- the story of escape.
It is the only thing which interests us all and at all times, how to escape.
Arthur Christopher Benson

There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us Lands away,
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry.
Emily Dickinson

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
Logan Pearsall Smith

A good book is the purest essence of a human soul.
Thomas Carlyle

A room without books is like a body without a soul.
Marcus T. Cicero

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
Jorge Luis Borges

I have good reason to be content, for thank God I can read and perhaps understand Shakespeare to his depths.
John Keats

No entertainment is so cheap as reading, nor any pleasure so lasting.
Lady M. W. Montague

The libraries have become my candy store.
Juliana Kimball

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
Ray Bradbury

He who destroys a good book kills reason itself.
John Milton


One half who graduate from college never read another book.
Herbert True

A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.
Chinese proverb

Read, read, read.
William Faulkner

When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left, I buy food and clothes.
Desiderius Erasmus 1466-1536

Wear the old coat and buy the new book.
Austin Phelps

My home is where my books are. (1909)
Ellen Thompson

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
Henry Ward Beecher

Books do furnish a room.
Anthony Powell

Reclaiming the flag and all it stands for this Memorial Day

(Video credit: Google video)

I was reading Slate.com today and one article was about flag flying: "'I fervently believe the glorious Star-Spangled Banner should wave over our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guard heros [sic]. President Obama wants to raise the rainbow flag of the homosexual rights movement over them,' read a recent fundraising letter from the conservative Family Research Council. I don't want to be associated with people who fly the flag, metaphorically or otherwise, to telegraph their cause; the Stars and Stripes has become so freighted with assumptions that it seemed almost safer to me to avoid dealing with it altogether. There was nothing I felt I needed to prove, to friends, neighbors, or anyone else.
"But I put it up. The flag was big and unwieldy, so I was a little self-conscious as I tried to screw it into the base. Despite this, it felt familiar, almost as if I'd been doing it my whole life and was merely trying to recall the best method.
It didn't feel like a political act. In fact, as I surveyed my work, I was surprised and moved by the sense of satisfaction that came from reclaiming the flag from partisanship."

This took me back to review the flag in my past:
As a Boy Scout, I learned about when and how to fly and fold the flag;
As a student of history, I learned about the U.S. role and suddenly realized that that thrill I felt when I saw the flag was gone.
As a war protester, I read about people angry that "hippie scum" were contemptuously sewing the flag onto their clothing.
As a resident of Washington DC, I lived near a Marine base and saw them exercising in the morning, some wearing flag running shorts.
As a government worker, I saw political appointees wearing flag lapel pins when an administration who said, as reported by CNN and other media, "You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror."
And in the following election, I saw candidates being charged with not really loving their country because they did not wear the flag lapel pins (to say nothing of them being admonished for not holding their hands over their hearts when the national anthem was sung -- something I have never thought was required).

So, Now I'm showing our flag this holiday, remembering those who fought for our country, whether the wars were just or not (and whether they were heterosexual or homosexual), as a symbol of all of us, not just those who politically agree on issues.


(Cartoon credit to: Philadelphia Inquirer)

As Carl Scurz (Union Army General, later US Senator, and US Secretary of the Interior) stated: "My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”

I heard the news today, oh boy

Since this post is sort of about bathrooms, here's one fact:Most toilet flushes are in E Flat.

According to the London Assembly of Liberal Democrats, London has been outfitted with over 500,000 surveillance cameras. Other put the number much higher at 1.4million cameras but nobody is telling what the real number is. Another few 10,000 cameras have been installed in taxis and police cars as well.
America Blog reported this and added: You can imagine my surprise after I paid my 50pence to use the public bathroom, walked in and found myself staring at not just one but three ceiling mounted video surveillance cameras. I had to get real close to their enclosures to convince myself that I wasn't seeing things. Not only was it really there, but it was a Pan-Tilt-Zoom model with a microphone to top it off. Must get some great noises coming from there. It has also been reported that London officials are now installing cameras with speakers to allow them to talk as well as see and listen. Perhaps its just me, but I had absolutely no idea that this was legal anywhere, let alone in downtown London, UK. Sure I knew that London has more cameras per square mile than any other country on the planet, but in bathrooms?! How are they getting away with that one? It is appalling!
But the iPhone has an ap for the noise part, You can call up 30, 60 or 90 seconds of flushing sound. Don't you love technology?
Next bathroom issue to tackle, as the blog No Parental Discretion notes, is people who don't flush.

Questioning some "family's values"

I just took a break from a two-hour-a-day e-mail habit that was sucking the joy from my life by causing feelings of anger, unease and frustration at our current state of political division. I would read, provide stories in an email with some comments and share with a group of readers who asked to get the daily post. Just as I noted why I was taking a break, I then read the following on one of the sites I still visit:
Pam's House Blend: Gay Teen in Georgia Kicked Out by Parents Over Bringing Boyfriend to Prom: Derrick Martin, a gay teenager from Georiga who was inspired by the Constance McMillen cancelled Prom story in Mississippi, asked to bring another boy to prom. His request was approved by the School Superintendent.
A happy ending for the Bleckly County High School student, right?
Wrong. Derrick has been kicked out of his home by his parents now that his story has hit the media:
because of the media attention, Martin's parents have kicked him out and the teen is staying with a friend, he said.
It's appalling this is happening to a brave, bright young man who simply wanted to take his boyfriend to prom. Derrick seems to be remaining strong and is proud of the stand he took, saying:
Maybe (other gay students) will think if Bleckley County will let them, maybe my school will.
I can only say how proud I am of Derrick Martin for the stand he is making and how angry I am at his parents for kicking him out.
I have to agree with Pam, the boy took a stand and, for those who say gays cannot be compared to other groups that face discrimination, I ask how many other minorities do you know who are sometimes rejected by their own families.