I have voted NO on Question 1

I have voted NO on One. Here's why:

• This question is fundamentally about equality;
  
• All tax paying, law abiding citizens should have the full, unadulterated benefits of citizenship;
  
• All citizens should be able to direct and receive inheritance, decide who visits in the hospital, and how their end of life transacts;
• No citizen should be forced to take on considerable financial expense to obtain legal contracts that, essentially, finesse the benefits and assurances granted to same-gender commitments;
  
• In the history of our state and our nation "Separate But Equal" has consistently failed to fulfill its original intentions. Consider: School segregation, the Tuskegee Airmen, and women in the military. Better yet, consider Washington County's status in relation to the rest of the State of Maine.

My faith (Religious Society of Friends - Quakers) has been uniting same-sex couples for years. This is because the Jesus we know has taught us by his deeds that all people have their measure of Light and are equal under God.

This I know and this I believe.

I encourage all who have not yet voted to take these considerations into your hearts.

Then join me in voting NO on One.

Storm

Here I am, up with Lucy at 4:15 as she shivers and pants her way through the storm that's plowing through here this a.m. It's raining cats and frogs and there's nearly continual thunder and lightening.

The power is out.

I'm hoping that the stuff I gave Lucy will take effect some time soon. I am beginning to wish I hadn't stopped work on that ark. And forget the equivocation on the "nearly continual" thunder and lightening. It's an all the time thing.

I presently live about 2/10ths of a mile from where my grandmother used to live when I was a kid. I used to stay with her a lot in the summer. I never had any fear of thunder and lightening but I guess she must have had some. Whenever there was a thunder and lightening storm she used to wake me up, get me more or less dressed (like, I'd have a coat and socks and shoes plus my pajamas), and she'd get us out to the car, having unplugged everything in the house. Then she'd drive around - my grandfather never went with us on these drives - until the storm had passed.

She drove around town, what there is/was of one; we never stopped to watch the storm action and we almost never talked during the drive. She just drove. Then the storm would be over. She'd drive back home, fix some Lipton tea with milk, and we'd go back to bed.

This storm is moving off as I write. Sounds like to the northeast. It should be quiet enough in less than an hour, if it continues to travel at its current speed, for Lucy to settle down and for me to go back to bed.

Ah geeeez. Another rain band barreling through.

I've unplugged my computer and the other electronics. The sky has lightened and morning is here.

'scuse me while I go make some tea.

A Statement in Absence about Maine Marriage Equality

I'll be absent from the hearings in Augusta next week when many friends will testify about marriage equality in Maine. Work demands I stay seated and at the keyboard up here in Washington County.

But perhaps you will suffer a few random thoughts, based on experience.

For me, the cogent issue before us is citizenship. Other components of marriage equality stream from that such as equality and responsibility. But the real issue - and, I think, the most effective context for speaking about this issue - is citizenship. The benefits that flow from the way marriage is set up serve to protect and strengthen the smallest unit in our society. If we function as equal contributors in society and are willing to take on equal responsibility we should enjoy equal citizenship. That's it.

I learned a long time ago that appealing to a pol's sense of humanity, appealing to their hearts by showing that their friends suffer for lack of laws they refuse to enact, appealing to their own history, quoting doctors / psychiatrists / lawyers, and showing that societies in which enfranchisement has been established have not crumbled basically does not work. But speaking to their Puritan guts is effective.

That's why, if I was there next week, I'd say that I work 60 hours a week to improve the economic conditions in the poorest county in Maine. I volunteer with community and civic organizations. I attend my town meeting and vote every chance I get. I have a religious practice and participate a religious community. I have a creative life. Like everyone else I know I don't enjoy paying my share of taxes but I do it.

In short, I'm exactly the sort of person you want in your community: the effective, responsible, committed partner in society.

What I don't have is enfranchisement.

I pay more in taxes because my relationship is not recognized by the state and federal government. If I have a health crisis, my parents, with whom I have not lived in nearly 40 years and who are over 80 years old, could claim the right to make critical decisions about my care if they chose to challenge the decisions of my parter. If I were to die, my partner could legally be granted less time to grieve. I have no rights to disperse my property nor can my partner receive survivorship benefits. These and many other conditions flow from civil recognition of my committed relationship.

I'd tell them that I realize they'll make their decision to either change this condition or somehow find it within themselves to continue to apply the status quo. I'd encourage them to do the right thing.

D/DWWMSG Recommends One Nation Under Dog

I came home late from work recently - as I am wont to do too often lately - to be greeted by my faithful canine, Lucy who was all excited and very insistent that I pay full and immediate attention while she told me, in detail, about that night's proceedings of her Dogs/Doodles With Working Moms Support Group (D/DWWMSG).

She felt especially heard, she said, with this group. Way more nourishing than her reading group (which meets on the nights I teach creative writing) and her chess club (which meets on the Sunday afternoons when I must attend meetings of Downeast Farmers' Alliance).

It seems that some of the dogs (she's the only Doodle) in the D/DWWMSG are also in the reading group. All are excited about One Nation Under Dog: Adventures in the New World of Prozac-Popping Puppies, Dog-Park Politics, and Organic Pet Food. http://www.indiebound.org/book/0805087117

She has long been concerned, Lucy said, about the elevation of canines to their new status which, she believes, robs them of their rich and most essential dogness. But only recently, thanks to her support group, has she been able to put her thoughts into words. It's been a real breakthrough. Perhaps you can relate.

She believes that many canines who are taking prozac, for example, feel that the emphasis placed by human keepers on things like facials, counseling/channeling, high-end dog care products, and so on have, by their insistence on anthropomorphizing the dog they live with, deeply disenfranchised their dog from the pack.

In essence, no one has sought to ask dogs what THEY want! (Except for those who represent that they channel dogs but Lucy says most in her circle wryly assess that humans who purport to channel dogs are really channeling their own chemical imbalance.)

So I feel like I got a good overall sense of her concerns - she couldn't go into detail because of confidentiality expectations - and I promised that I'd pass on to this group, and to others who live with dogs, about the book and the website.

The bottom line, for Lucy anyway, (she wisely insists that she does not and cannot speak for all dogs everywhere) is simply this: It's The Toys, Stupid!

The House is Angry. But Not Angry Enough.

Media report: Spurred by anger over A.I.G. bonuses, the House voted 328 to 93 to levy a 90 percent tax on any company accepting more than $5 billion in bailout money.

I reply: Only 90 percent? Why isn't the House angry enough to levy a 100 percent tax? What does that unlevied ten percent want to accomplish? Recognition for trying? I thought they only did that, these days, in kindergarten. (That's one of the things Glenn Beck is crying about these days, anyway.)

Further, my imagination is challenged to understand why all 423 House members were not angry.

Further still, I ask, why didn't the House levy ANY company receiving ANY bailout money which, I remind us, is my money, your money not THEIR money.

This whole deal - and I use that word deliberately - hearkens back to the good ole days (economically speaking) of government advise to Americans immediately after the Twin Towers collapsed.

Remember "Shut up and shop?"

Please join me in recognizing the same tone now.

Presently, however, their advice to the American people is much abbreviated.

Now it's simply "Shut up".

Letter to the Editor: Transport Stim for SoME - Ditches a'brim with money and jobs

Editor:

Re the Blaine House announcement that Maine's $162 million share of the transportation portion of the stimulus package will be used to upgrade roads, railways and waterways, primarily in southern Maine:

I'm so thankful I live in Washington County where all our highways, byways, and bridges are in the same pristine condition now as when they were laid. I'm glad for our transport infrastructure that speeds commerce to and from our towns and villages with 21st century efficiency.

And, oh yeah, while I'm at it, I'm moved to note that I'm grateful that all our homes and businesses in Washington County are wired with 3G broadband and that our cell towers are strategically distributed so that we are blessed, in every regard, with connectivity to the globe which enables the engine of industry to chug away 24/7 - bringing good fortune and prosperity to every citizen here in our little piece of heaven.

That's GOT to be the reason that decision-makers in Augusta have determined that all $162 million dollars of Maine's share of transportation stimulus - and the jobs the work will create - will be apportioned entirely to southern Maine, right?

What other reason could there be?

I'm Mad as Hell...

I just watched, for the first time since I saw it in a theater right after it was released, the film Network. I'd recorded it off TCM as they broadcast their month of Oscar-winning films.

Network was the first movie I walked out on. I thought it was awful. Just awful. I didn't ask for my money back I just left. I haven't walked out on a movie before or since.

Let me say, however, that having watched it tonight I understood my first viewing experience as akin to the way literature is wasted, many times, on the young. Like, the way high school students take a disliking to Charles Dickens.

Tonight I understand that Network is more a premonition than an film.

I encourage everyone to run to your video store, surf on over to Netflix, or do whatever it is you do to rent movies. Order this one. Sit down and watch it until Howard Beal tells you to get up out of your chair.

Then go over to your nearest window facing the nearest bloom of population, fling open your window, lean your torso out, and yell for all to hear: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"

Today I Fell In Love

...with a shop vac.

Yes, boys and gurls, ladies and ladies, when I understood the power of this tool - when I experienced the exhilaration - when I saw with my own eyes how the suction cleared the plaster dust, wood shavings, sawdust, and random nails from...well...every possible surface... My heart melted. They always say "lick don't suck" (well, we gurls say this) but, believe you me, there are exceptions to this rule.

I was unable to help myself from imagining the way my entire living room - nay! Perhaps my stairs, the second floor landing would look in a week or so after all the work is DONE!! I was awash in serotonin.

Then I discovered...extensions. I tried at least three and they ALL worked miracles of which I never could dreamt last week when I walked into my house immediately after they knocked down the wall between the DR and the LV. It was morning in America. Life seemed worth living again.

Possibilities opened up: If I could accomplish all of this in an afternoon what did that mean for - could I hope?!?!?! - hooking up my satellite tee vee???

If you can dream it you can be it! Yes We Can Yes We Can Yes We Can!!

Wiping with a wet cloth, then wiping with a dry cloth (like Dawn told me to do) I excavated first my bookshelves - powering through more plaster dust and sawdust and using those cloths until, after an hour or so, I had brought my electronic equipment back to its original luster. (These items had been under cover but, for the purposes of exaggerated storytelling I'm, well, exaggerating...)

Could I successfully bring back 100 channels and nothing on without calling DISH Networks' Help Line? With my shop vac beside me I methodically connected this to that, dusted of this bit of coax and screwed it into that receptor and - angels flying close to the ground - soon I was watching The Obama Express on CNN and, during commercials on CNN, re-runs of 3rd Rock From the Sun on TVLand and when commercials came on that channel, back to the Obama Express. What more could I want?

In keeping with my construction-like surroundings (what am I saying? My surroundings are construction in REALITY) I mixed myself a screwdriver, positioned the shop vac where I could glance lovingly over at it, at will, filled with gratitude, and took a seat in a chair I'd cleaned off.

I've only now surfaced to share my joy and will be returning, in a twinkling, to 3rd Rock From the Sun. For the time being I'm ignoring those tiny voices coming from my left shoulder that observe about how "100 channels and nothing on" might be closer to the truth than I'd allowed ten days ago when my access to tee vee was first interrupted.

After all, since I'm able to channel surf to CNN I've learned that the Obama's are installed in the Blair House - now that that evil son of a bitch Dick Chaney has finally pissed away enough of his wickedness and allowed The President Elect and His Family to moved out of a hotel and into The Blair House - and that there are Inauguration activities starting tomorrow which I can now watch.

And, oh yeah, the Israelis announced a unilateral cease fire now that their Knight in Shining Armour is moving back to Texas in two days thank you Jesus. Like that's any great surprise. I was more than a little surprised, though, when Ehud Olmert sincerely assured the people of Gaza that the Israelis were not their enemies. Like, wow! How GW Bush of him!

Okay, I could go on...it's probably a good thing not to. I'm missing 3rd Rock. And, icing on the cake, I can sleep as long as I want - first time for this in ten days - tomorrow a.m. I wonder if I can get the shop vac upstairs????

Signing off now.