Lost In La Puente

Tell me if this sounds familiar.  Saturday morning, sometime during the summer of 1970:

Me: “Hey Dad… I’m heading over to Ken’s house.”

Dad: “OK.  What are you two gonna do today?”

Me: “I dunno… maybe go grab some fries and shakes at Randy’s Burgers. Ride around.”

Dad:  “OK… just be sure to get home before dark. and stay outta trouble.”

Me: (whooshing sound as I blast off into the Great Unknown)

I would jump on my metallic purple 10-speed and haul-ass from home as fast as my pedaling could take me.  Yes, I would make my way to Ken’s house for a few minutos, maybe even find some time to make out with his sister Julie (if no one saw us), but that was only the start of a typical teen-age Saturday morning.  The possibilities were endless, and my hard-earned allowance of $3 a week (handed over to me just before I left) guaranteed that I would not go hungry or thirsty, no matter what adventures came our way.

We might ride up to the top of Pee Hill and tempt injury or death by racing down the steep streets like imbeciles.  We might ride to the (outdoor old-skool) mall in West Covina to look for girls or ride The Broadway elevator up and down 14 times before getting kicked out by the ancient security guard.  We might ride up into La Habra Heights and careen down the steep and twisty tree-lined streets while the neighborhood dogs would race after us to try and bite our legs and tires.  We might ride to Workman High School to watch the cute cheerleaders bouncing and prancing around during field practice.  We might even ride the 35 miles all the way to Huntington Beach to hang out on the sand and eat hot dogs and just be stupid hormone-soaked teenage Cali boys.

We might wind up doing some or all of those things.  Or not.  The point is, once I left the house, I was GONE, baby... totally lost.  The only way Dad would know where I was and what I’d been up to was if I got hurt or in trouble.  Otherwise, he didn’t have a clue where I was, who I was with, or what I/we were doing.  There were phone booths all over town if I had to make a call for any reason, but I had no reason to call unless I was hurt or in trouble, see?  He trusted me enough to let me roam about unhindered, unsupervised, uncontrolled.  That’s how it was for a relatively-good 13-year-old boy in 1970 in La Puente, California.  I know it wasn’t the same for girls… or was it?

I WAS FREE.

No smart phone.  No mobile phone at all.  No tablet.  No pager.  No e-tracking.  No live feeds.  No GPS.  No electronic tethers of any kind to worry about.

I WAS FREE.

No closed-circuit cameras were mounted on buildings, ready to catch me doing brodies on the smooth concrete loading dock at Food Giant.  No motion sensors were activated when we climbed into dumpsters behind the liquor store, looking for ruined copies of PLAYBOY or STAG Magazines.  Active surveillance was limited to being seen and/or heard doing… whatever.

I WAS FREE.

I feel awful for 13-year-old kids in our modern climate change age, with their (not very) smart phones and Fecesbook updates and Twatter feeds and I(B)Ms and all the things that hold them in electronic hostage, whether they are conscious of their condition or not.  Yeah, they might think they have it all… all the electronic goodies and the interconnectivity we modern humans think we cannot live without.  But they are NOT FREE, no way no how.   They can NEVER be as free as I was in 1970, riding my bike (without a helmet) across town, hair flying and sweat streaming and skinny tires glued to the ground by gravity alone.

I’d been thinking about this issue for some time when I read a column in my local paper, written by a school teacher who answers questions posed by unbelievably dense parents.  Seems a Mother’s kindergarten-aged daughter was having trouble making friends at school or her pre-scheduled ‘play dates’ and Mom asked what should she do.  The teacher’s answer was surprising… she basically said that play dates usually don’t work out for kids, because it’s really about the parents being friends and getting together. 

As for the kid making friends in her neighborhood (which the Mom doesn’t allow), the teacher talked about her own Mom letting her leave the house ON HER OWN and walk up the street to make friends, something ‘play dates’ just don’t accommodate.  Kids that don’t learn to make friends unless there is direct adult supervision are just missing out, so Mom needs to take kid to the park and let her run wild, make her own friends and learn how to assimilate into her own age group… on her own. Skip the play dates, lessen the hovering and supervision and little Missy’s ability to make friends at school would probably improve dramatically.

I read the question and answer over a few times to make sure I understood what was being discussed, and that’s when I flashed back to my yoot.  Even as a little kid, I somehow managed to find other kids my own age, whether at school or in the ‘hood, to play with and fight with and get into trouble with, to the betterment of us all.  Even then, the only time the parents got involved was when we drew blood or needed stitches or to be fed so we could rumble again.

It all relates to my original concern about too much electronic connectivity, parental control, covert and overt supervision.  When you grow up with those things as part of your world, you never know what it means to be without them, and therefore never learn to operate without them or know what it means to be so unencumbered.  This meme is probably not unlike arguments made about landline phones or teevee or any other modern conveniences that changed our lives during the last 100 years, arguments made by olds to youngs, the same arguments that are met with a heavy sigh and rolling eyeballs.  I think the newest digital demons are much more sinister, far more mind-numbing and ADD-causing, and are creating people who never really know what it means to be free, the way I was at 13 years old.

As I've asserted before, I reject the ownership of a smart phone, and will do so unless and until it becomes mandatory for my work.  I make no excuses for this Luddite tendency, even though my current work phone allows me to text and take pictures.  I understand how smart phones have become ubiquitous, their presence almost natural in many people’s lives. However, I draw the line at owning one for a wide variety of reasons.  Example: my boss recently called me into his office and we had the following conversation:

Him: “Here, I have a new phone for you to replace your old one, it’s a smart phone I just got.”

Me:  “Thanks, but I don’t need a smart phone.”

Him: “Whaddaya mean, you don’t need a smart phone?  It’s new and lets you browse the web!”

Me:  “I have a philosophical issue with smart phones and choose not to have one. The phone I have lets me text when I need to and that’s enough for me.”

Him: (sounding slightly confused) “But… you can check your e-mail from your smart phone no matter where you’re at.”

Me:  “I can check my e-mail when I'm working at my desk.  If I’m out and about, that means I’m busy doing something else and my e-mail can wait until I get back to my desk.”

Him:  (with a look of confusion and incredulity on his face, pauses for a few beats) “Well… OK then.  Have it your way.”

I know he didn’t understand my point, but then again his Droid calls out to him all day long, pulling his eyes out of his head in an instant.  For him, not having a smart phone is just… DUMB.  Every time I mention my aversion to smart phones, I get the same reaction, with varying degrees of flabbergast and disbelief.  I’m used to it, but it gets annoying.  I know it’s a losing battle… even my personal phone carrier is dropping their 2G service soon, which will render my ancient Nokia obsolete, forcing me to get a newer, more connected device.  I’m not looking forward to it.

Back to that whole teenage freedom thingie.  It only went so far (as it should), and my 13-year-old self sure as hell knew it.  In the case of being gone on my bike all day, there was one hard and fast Dad rule:  I had BETTER be in the front yard by the time the street lights came on or it was the belt for me, no questions asked, no excuses.  And he whipped HARD.  That was all the motivation I needed to keep me in line, the vision of him hanging on to my arm with one hand, his belt lashing at me with the other, both of us circling around in a weird dance of parental discipline.  Me no likey!

So here’s how it happened (more than once heh heh heh):  me and Ken are at Randy’s Burgers, eating fries and drinking choco shakes and trying to act all cool in front of some girls from another school.  Suddenly, I stopped cold… I realized it was getting dark and I was at least 2 miles from home. HOLY SHIT!!!  I dropped my food and jumped on my bike and blasted off for home, riding like a deranged rabid wolverine through the quickly-darkening neighborhoods, pedaling my ass off.  Somewhere about halfway home, my skinny front tire caught one of the recessed gutters at an intersection and I went down HARD, rolling into the curb and scrubbing flesh off my hands and arms. 

Without missing a beat, I jumped back on my bike and careened around corners, narrowly missing cars and curbs and pedestrians, riding like mad to get home please please PLEASE let me get home in time!!!!!  Rounding the curve near my home, I almost go down again, somehow managing to stay upright, slicing onto the sidewalk and crashing onto the grass in front of my house.  I jump up and see the street lights flickering on, then spin around to see Dad, standing in the front doorway, a stoic look on his face, saying nothing.  Her didn’t need to.  He slowly turns around and goes into the house, closing the door behind him.

I made it, but just barely.

I don’t begrudge the use of smart phones per se, but I do worry about the subliminal effects the electronic leash will have on the young’uns.  I am totally OK with how this technology has asserted itself into our daily lives, as all modern conveniences tend to do.  However, I can choose which of these tools to use, which ones to avoid, and which ones to rail against with vigor and contempt.  You know, just like Abe Simpson yelling at clouds… it will have the same impact.

For the time being, I’ll just keep using whatever mobile device(s) that allow me to have the least amount of connectivity possible and avoid the inevitable encroachment of streaming mega-data into my conscious sphere.  And I will continue to value that time in my life when I was pedaling around La Puente on a Saturday with my friend Ken, untethered, completely unattached from any web of any kind, thinking only of being on my own and away from home, eating fries and dodging cars, making out with Julie and getting totally and completely lost.

Epilogue: 

Ken was one of my best friends all through Junior and High School, and we spent lots of idle days cruising around town on our 10-speeds.  He was the first among my circle of friends that got his driver’s license and a car in 1972, and we managed to get into all sorts of bitchin’ situations in that faded blue beast.  I had sporadic contact with him after we left high school, and the last time I saw him was in 1990 when he stopped in to visit The Artist and me at our home in Long Beach.  I always wanted to reconnect with him again, but I found out just last year that both he and his sister had died under sad and unfortunate circumstances.

I was really depressed when I realized I could not and would not ever see him again, but that depression has passed and now I will always have him in my head and my heart. Sometimes I can almost hear him, calling my name and softly knocking on my bedroom window at 4AM on Saturday morning, ready to begin our 3-hour ride to the beach, climbing through La Habra Heights in the cool dark, careening down the other side and pedaling all the way down Beach Boulevard until we reached the sand and the ocean and the sweet escape it offered.

Thanks, Ken… we did it on the good foot, unconnected, lost in La Puente.

Lead image, gracias de flickr.com; Jimi Hendrix 'Freedom' and Bread 'Mother Freedom' videos, muchismas gracias de youtube.com; R.I.P. Ken & Julie Wallis.

Slipping Into Darkness

This story is 100% true.

April, 2011

We knew if Betty’s life was gonna be saved, we would have to do it ourselves.

After suffering a dizzy spell and falling in her home, Betty (her real name) had already spent six days in hospital being poked and prodded and medicated and imaged and evaluated and, after a somewhat inconclusive diagnosis, was pronounced healthy enough to be transferred to a local nursing care facility to regain her strength and mobility.  She couldn’t walk yet, but she would soon, they assured us.

It didn’t turn out that way.

She was in that nursing care facility, Country Villa in Seal Beach (CA), for 12 long days, during which time she was physically dropped by staffers, denied fluids, overmedicated, underfed and rendered unable to perform physical therapy due to weakness and lack of muscle tone.  They said "She isn’t sufficiently capable of making additional progress" and concluded that she was a candidate for long-term hospice care and would inform the insurance company of their decision. This was bullshit, and we knew it.

Over the first 11 days of her so-called ‘convalescence’ in that awful place, The Artist (Betty’s daughter) and I watched Betty’s health decline rapidly.  She went from being able to sit up on the edge of her bed to requiring a strap around her torso to keep her upright in her wheelchair.  Her mouth was full of terrible sores… she suffered the indignity of a catheter when they decided changing her diapers was too much trouble… she developed a severe urinary infection and was unable to eat any solid food at all.  When we visited her on The 11th Day, we knew that she was in dire straits, and the nursing facility was only making her worse and worse.  We had to do something.

On The 12th Day, I contacted Betty's health insurance company (SCAN) and spent hours on the phone with them, pleading for help.  I told them we were gonna break her out of that awful place and take her to the hospital ER unless they did it for us. To his credit, the agency's service rep was most-excellent and very pro-active, informing me that removing her without the proper approvals would cause a world of legal hurt for everyone. He did some investigation of his own while I held on the phone, confirmed the crappy nature of the care facility, checked with his supervisors and made a crucial decision. He assured me that if the staff physician rejected the family's demands to have her transferred to the ER, the insurance company would step in the next day, take over her care and do it themselves. That's all I needed to hear.

I raced home after work that evening for a speedy shower and change of clothes. The Artist and I jumped in The Beetle and blasted 35 miles up the freeway in rush-hour traffic to Betty’s home to meet up with her husband Don (his real name) and granddaughter and head to the facility.  I made the mistake of stopping to grab a burrito beforehand and was cooling my jets for 20 minutes while the cooks kept screwing up the orders.  When I finally got my food I was livid, because the facility’s visiting hours ended at 8pm and it was already past 7pm.  We hooked up with the rest of the family and raced the 10 miles back to that terrible place.

We walked in at about 7:50pm and noticed the expansive hallways, usually lined with patients in their wheelchairs, were deserted.  We went to Betty’s room and were alarmed at her appearance.  Her skin had the pallor of death, she could barely lift her head from the pillow, her mouth was filled with open sores and her tongue had the color and texture of an eggplant. When Don saw her he was shocked, and after a few minutes of visiting, we exited her room.  Don said “She’s dying… right in front of our eyes, she’s dying. I don't think she'll last another day in here. They’re killing her”  That hit me hard.  I decided RIGHT THEN to do something.

We’d been attempting to reach the staff physician, a Dr. Kim (not her real name) for days to ask for help, but no dice.  So when I walked down the long hallway, looking for someone… ANYONE… to talk to, I crossed paths with a small Asian woman in a white coat with a nametag, obviously a doctor doing her rounds. I spun around and did a double-take.  Could that be her, the mysterious Dr. Kim who refused to return my many calls?  I asked the nursing staffer on duty if that small Asian lady was indeed Dr. Kim and she confirmed that it was her.  I went back to the family standing outside Betty’s room and told them Dr. Kim was in the house and I was gonna talk to her about Betty’s condition and our plans for her.  The Artist begged me to not lose my cool and use a calming tone with her.  I agreed.

When I walked back to the nursing station, Dr. Kim was standing there, making notes in patient files.  From her demeanor, I assumed this was her standard routine, checking out patients after the families had gone home so they wouldn’t bother her with, you know, annoying questions and stuff. I also figgered she wasn’t expecting to be confronted by desperate family members at this late hour. I introduced myself to her and asked why she hadn’t responded to my numerous messages.  Her answer: “I never got your messages. And besides, you talked with my assistants, they should have been able to help you.”  WRONG ANSWER, DOC.

In a calm but insistent manner, I spent the next 5 minutes delineating Betty’s condition, our serious concerns about her rapidly declining health, and our desire to have her transferred to the local hospital ER for immediate care that evening.  The Doc began to blather something about more tests being needed and that Betty wasn’t as bad as we thought.  My response was direct:  if she didn’t transfer Betty that night, the insurance company would take over the case the next day and get her to the ER, then have words with a certain Dr. Kim.  Looking up at me from her 5-foot nothing stance, the Doc's eyes got really big upon hearing me say ‘insurance company take-over’.  Without saying a word, she went over to the night’s Charge Nurse and asked her to perform an evaluation on Betty… she simply wouldn’t do it herself. Bitch.

We walked to the room with the charge nurse who asked us to remain outside while she looked at Betty.  She went in, pulled the curtains around the bed and spent about 2 minutes in there.  She pulled the curtains open, came outside and said “Oh yeah, she needs to go to the emergency room RIGHT NOW."  She walked to Dr, Kim, they spoke for a moment, then Dr. Kim came up to us and said she would write up the transfer order right away and have an ambulance pick up Betty shortly and take her to the ER.

To say we were ecstatic would be an understatement.  Don looked like he was gonna cry, same for The Artist and granddaughter.  We went in and told Betty what was gonna happen and the best she could muster was to feebly lift her head from the pillow, open her eyes, whisper “OK, that sounds good”, then drop her head and close her eyes.  About 45 minutes later, the ambulance arrived and loaded her onto a gurney for the short drive to the hospital.  As the EMT’s strapped her in for the ride, Don and granddaughter took all of Betty’s belonging to their car, and we asked them to go home and wait while we followed the ambulance and helped get her admitted.  We jumped in The Beetle and followed the ambulance onto the freeway on-ramp Northbound.

Now, we’ve all seen an ambulance during emergency patient transports, sirens blaring and lights flashing, warning other cars to move aside.  That didn’t happen. Once the ambulance merged onto the freeway, it took off at over 90mph, seemingly to try and lose us, without lights or sirens, oblivious to other cars around them.  I sped up and started following their frantic traffic-weaving movements.

The Artist is yelling at me:

“AREYOUFUCKINGKIDDINGMESLOWDOWNYOU’REGONNAGETUSKILLED!!!!!!” 

My answer was to shout back:

“NOWAYARETHEYGONNALOSEMEIWANNAKNOWWHERETHEY’REGOING!!!!”

For the next 10 minutes, we raced at way-illegal speeds on the freeway, never losing sight of that lumbering ambulance slicing across lanes, around other cars and going faster, ever faster.  I was gripping the steering wheel like I had talons, hearing The Artist’s shouts of protest in my right ear, eyes glued to the road ahead flying at me through the windshield, hoping against hope that some hapless bozo in a slow-moving Buick wouldn’t change lanes in front of me at 45mph and take us all out.  The Beetle kept the pace, never once placed a wheel wrong, seemed to relish the asphalt dance.

After what seemed like 10 minutes, the ambulance veered off the freeway and onto the correct off-ramp, with us in hot pursuit. They ran several red lights with us right behind them, turned sharply onto a side street and directly into the ER ambulance bay.  We followed them through and slid into the parking lot across from the ER entrance.  We watched them offload Betty, wondering if she had any idea about what had just happened, and walked into the ER to get her admitted.  It was now about 9:30PM, less than 2 hours since we first walked into the care facility to rescue Betty. 

WE DID IT.

The ER waiting room was crowded when we arrived and checked in, with nary a chair to be found anywhere.  After a while we found a place to sit and wait, then were called and escorted to the ER bay where we found Betty awake, propped up in bed, with a buzz of activity around her.  Over the next several hours, multiple doctors and nurses and technicians and others came and went, a blur of medicinal treatment taking place as we watched from our little stackable chairs.  Around 1AM, I grabbed a pillow from the closet, set it on a spare tray table, laid my head down and dozed in a sitting position for about 30 minutes.  The Artist and Betty chatted up a storm, as the IV fluids and meds she’d been given were already having a positive impact on her condition.  Watching me sleep, Betty told The Artist it was the longest time she’d ever seen me not talking or making noise.  She’s funny... I love her like crazy.

By the time 2AM rolled around, the ER tests were completed.  She had an aggressive and dangerous e-coli urinary tract infection, was severely malnourished and dehydrated, her blood chemistry was all over the map, a virulent candidae thrush infection was ravaging her mouth and throat, her blood pressure was fluctuating wildly, her white blood cell count was alarmingly high, she was unable to walk and her condition was extremely unstable.  However, she was responding well to the IV fluids, was eating ice chips and talking and smiling and her beautiful blue eyes were shining and we sat there, marveling at her strength and composure under such dire circumstances.  By 3AM, she was slated to be taken up to her room, so we decided it was time to mosey on back home, get some sleep and come back the next day to see how things were going.  The drive home seemed to take forever, and after only a couple of hours of sleep, I dragged my skinny ass off to work, where I was less than useless. For the entire day.

BUT WE DID IT.

I look back on that 9-hour timespan, from the moment I jumped outta the shower at 6PM to the drive home at 3AM and think, yep, lots of things could have gone wrong and kept us from making what happened... happen.  If my burrito had been made in 5 minutes instead of 20 and we’d gotten to the care facility earlier than we did, I might have totally missed seeing the infamous Dr. Kim and lost the chance to confront her in person.  We could most definitely have gotten in an accident during that insane freeway chase.  We could have lost sight of the ambulance and, if they had not gone where they said they were going (it does happen), Betty would have gone missing, slipping into the darkness and from our grasp as the moon rose and the stars shone and the Earth spun, leaving us lost and seething and desperate to find her.  Lots of things could have happened, but on this one night, everything worked out.

WE DID IT.

Little did we know that Betty’s mysterious medical journey was just beginning, oh yes.  She would spend another 12 days in hospital, then 5 weeks in a convalescent hospital, with the weirdest arc of illness and symptoms any of us had ever seen, not to mention her many doctors.  There were dead-ends for one diagnosis after another, wrong turns and ineffective treatments. At one point, she was considered to be in a chronic degenerative state called encephalopathy that would never improve, and we were instructed to get used to her condition.  You can bet your ass after what we’d all been through, that diagnosis was soundly rejected. We pushed forward and demanded one last test, a semi-dangerous spinal tap, only to discover that we made the right choice. Betty’s illness was finally, FINALLY and correctly identified as spinal meningitis and aggressively treated, with her subsequent recovery almost startling.

Within a week or so she came home with a feeding tube stuck in her belly (don’t ask), a medical bed in her living room, a live-in nurse, a tabletop covered with meds, loss of privacy and a months-long slow-but-steady recovery.  She’ll likely never get back to 100%, but she is strong and determined and is now walking without her walker and cooks and cleans and does most of what she was doing before the day she got dizzy and fell.  Whatever her limitations may be now, we are all grateful for her amazing fighting spirit to get back as much of her previous life as possible, and we marvel at what she has achieved.

For me, the moral of this tale is:  STAY ENGAGED IN YOUR HEALTH CARE DECISIONS.  If we had listened to any one of the many doctors who wrote her off as untreatable, we’d be visiting her in hospice care, looking at the shell of a woman whose health had been lost.  From the night we broke her out of that horrible nursing facility to the day she finally returned home, I kept voluminous daily notes in my ‘Betty Book’: her daily med intake, her doctor’s comments, her bloodwork, WBC levels, food intake, temp and blood pressure, ANYTHING that related to her care.   Every night The Artist and I talked for hours about what we knew, what we didn’t know, what the doctors said and how full of shit we thought they usually were.  But all along, we paid attention, asked hard questions and never EVER took ‘I don’t know’ as a serious answer.  It just didn’t compute.

A lot can happen in a lifetime.  A lot can happen in 9 hours, too.  Every hour, every minute, every second we have in our conscious existence is precious.  Every decision we make has ramifications which are evident and obvious, but that also sometimes fly below the radar and disappear without us ever knowing about them.  Take nothing for granted… not your life, not your significant other, not your health… nothing about our lives should ever be without purpose or meaning, unless you choose to make it so by doing nothing and ceding your life decisions to others.

I like to tell people that I’ve been lucky in my life to have two Mothers-In-Law that I really loved and that loved me back.  The first one has recently left this mortal coil, but after several years of her hating my guts, she finally figgered out (after I spent hours and hours sitting at her hospital bedside) that I was pretty OK.  Betty lets me hang around her house at the holidaze, so I reckon I’m OK by her too.  I’m just glad that The Artist and I were in the right place, at the right time, with the right attitude and drive, to make a difference in her life for the better. 

 

A human being can’t ask for a more useful purpose than that.

“Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.” –Og Mandino, writer, speaker (1923-1996)

(Lead image, gracias de www.mjjlawfirm.com; War 'Slippin Into Darkness' and Harry Nilsson 'Think About Your Troubles' videos, muchismas gracias de youtube.com.)

 

'Le Mans' In My Head

I have a request of you:

I want you to find a copy of the movie ‘Le Mans’ and watch it start to finish, without interruptions or phone calls or tweeps or Fecesbook updates or any other distractions that could take you away from the storyline. Pause briefly enough only to hit the bathroom or grab a snackie cake and Yoo-Hoo. Turn off your spacephone. The film is only 94 minutes long, so it will be EASY to do. If you're a racing fan and it’s been a while since you’ve seen it, watch it again using these instructions.

Why? Because ‘Le Mans’, starring Steve McQueen at the height of his film career (check out those sideburns!), is perhaps the best movie about motor racing and racing drivers that I have ever seen. The storyline, so subtle as to be almost imperceptible, will prove to be massively satisfying if you pay close attention. This is not (shudder) ‘Talladega Nights’ or ‘Days of Thunder’ or even ‘Grand Prix’, another very fine albeit formulaic joint about racing, sex and death (the vintage race cars and circuits are SPEKTAKOOLAR in ‘Grand Prix’, starring a truly dashing pre-‘Rockford Files’ James Garner).

But ‘Le Mans’ is a different animal altogether. After a recent viewing, I found it to be even more stirring, exciting, brutal and nuanced than I remembered. I want to share with you why it is on my list of Top 20 All-Time Favorite Movies.

Filmed (mostly) in concert with the running of the 1970 event at the Le Sarthe track in France, ‘Le Mans’ was released in June of 1971 after much angst, studio interference, a mid-filming director change and little (if any) publicity by National General Films. My first exposure to it was as a sullen, despondent 15-year-old, trapped in an unexplainable road trip to visit family members in the remote and desolate town of Snowflake, Arizona sometime in late ’71 or early ‘72. We were visiting my Uncle, Aunt and their two young kids, staying with them in their ‘large’ trailer, so my notoriously smelly feet were a subject of much consternation during the few days we visited. Dad made sure to remind me that I was stinkin’ up the joint… repeatedly, each night.

My recollections of Snowflake are minimal, mostly of small houses, a smaller ‘downtown’, dirt roads and eating a burger that was bigger than the plate it was served on when we went out for dinner one night. The thing that truly stands out, that rivets me to that dusty burg in the middle of a dusty state, was that the new movie ‘Le Mans’ was showing at the tiny theater in town. I knew nothing of the film, but one evening we walked down the dirt street to the tiny old theater, bought some popcorn and cokes and sat down to watch a film that would literally FLOOR ME. I had no idea this would become a lasting love affair with such a small but important film.

The plot is simple: the film follows several drivers and their teams during the classic 24-hour race that starts at 4PM on Saturday and ends at 4PM on Sunday. Except for the PA announcer reviewing the Porsche vs. Ferrari battle, the impending weather and details about how the race will be run, there is literally NO DIALOG for the first 35 minutes. Composer Michel Legrand's glorious soundtrack is vintage ‘70’s, but it still works and perfectly suits the film's style and pacing. Steve McQueen portrays Porsche driver Michael Delaney, returning to the track where he'd crashed heavily the year before. Steve’s mannerisms, his look, his tightly-held emotional collar and classic tight-assed pit walk (copied by every budding race driver ever since, I swear!) all embody the very essence of what we (me) wanted race drivers to be.

About that first 35 minutes… if you aren’t paying close attention, you will absolutely MISS the extremely subtle developments that delineate the plot and storyline and keep resurfacing in-between the amazing road-racing action. I won’t detail anything from the film’s opening because DAMMIT, you gotta earn this one. Even though Steve once famously stated “there’s no phony love story in this film”, there is indeed a really interesting relationship he develops, slotted among several others throughout the story’s arc. Check out this first clip from the film, and wallow in the glorious sound of those sexy, fast, beautifully manic cars (Michael Delaney is driving Blue Gulf Porsche #20):



Now is when the meaty storyline elements begin to surface… slowly, languidly, an excellent counterpoint to the raging cars pounding around the track. As the race progresses, you learn more about Michael Delaney, his Ferrari rival Erich Stahler (Siegfried Rauch), race widow Maria Belgetti (Elga Andersen), the enjoined battle between Ferrari and Porsche, and the war every team is waging against this most daunting of racetracks. After numerous viewings, I finally figured out the flow and tempo that immediately brings the story to life: YOU GOTTA PAY ATTENTION. Like I said before, this ain’t The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

Sometime during the early morning hours of the second day, a sequence of events lead to a devastating accident, a moment’s distraction and subsequent massive ‘shunt’ that takes out Delaney’s Porsche, leaving it a shattered, steaming heap next to the Armco barrier. He sits in the car, stunned, shivering, recalling each millisecond of time to the moment he crashed… HARD. Every time I watch this part of the movie, I feel the crash, hear the shredding metal, smell the hot fluids spewing all over the car’s interior, taste the bloody lip. Another year, another crash, his car is demolished, his dream of winning Le Mans is snatched away. Every driver’s nightmare, come to me NOW.

He’s taken to the trackside medical center, where he encounters Maria Belgetti, who is once-again a spectating victim of how cruel racing can be. As he exits the center, he sees her besieged by the paparazzi and rescues her from their gaping maw, leading her to a taxi that whisks her away. He then heads back to the hot pits to face up to his team owner David Townsend, who sees him from trackside and walks over:

DT: (looks Delaney up and down) “Michael… are you all right?”

MD: “Yeah, I’m fine.”

DT: "Are you sure?"

MD: "I'm OK."

DT: (pauses for a moment, then looks at him squarely) “Then what about the car?”

MD: (pauses, looks pained, then speaks) “It was my fault, David. (pause) I made a mistake. I wrote the car off.”

DT: (a moment of disbelief is seen in his eyes, then resignation. Before he can speak, someone from the pit calls him and he leaves)

Simple dialog, few words, POWERFUL unspoken emotions that are evident if you're closely watching the nuanced performances of Steve McQueen and Ronald Leigh-Hunt. Just like the following clips that show Delaney walking from the pits after this exchange… I wasn’t able to find the whole segment, so play the clips in sequence to watch the full scene:





The film’s entire dénouement, including the hard truth of motor racing, is encapsulated in the trailer scene. Maria Belgetti is scarred from her love of the sport, and yet… she still loves it, still needs it. Delaney’s facial expressions when they enter the trailer are priceless, showing McQueen as a master of the understatement, his eyes and eyebrows and mouth and body speaking without words. She asks some hard questions, and he responds: “Racing's important to men who do it well. When you're racing, it's... it's life. Anything that happens before or after… is just waiting.” Right away he knows his words spear her, because she has a realization about her own life, an epiphany, and you can see it in her eyes, without the need for her to speak. This is really spare, sharp screenwriting, letting the actors emote in a seemingly effortless fashion.

Can you tell that I am enamored with this movie? DAMN, I love a movie that makes me work for the goodie!

As in real-world motor racing, everything changes when the two leading cars experience mechanical woes and are stalled in the pits for lengthy repairs near the end of the race. Ferrari takes the lead and Porsche team owner Townsend decides that the driver in one of his remaining cars isn’t fit enough to challenge, so Delaney is tapped to replace him. As they walk back to the track, Townsend tells Delaney: "Michael, I want you to drive flat out. I want Porsche to win Le Mans." This scene of the final two laps of the race brings me so close to the action, I can smell the oil and rubber and exhaust and feel the driver’s determination (this clip is compressed for some reason but is still AWESOME):



ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?! The cars are alive… filthy, frenzied, speeding beasts in mortal combat with each other. The film's interpretation of the ‘red mist’ of racing at 10/10ths is intoxicating, because NOTHING can compare to the power and craziness of competition at this level. All the sweat and blood and toil and trouble to push the leading Ferrari to the finish line is dashed by a flat tire, the disappointment and loss obvious on the faces of the car’s driver and team manager. THIS STUFF REALLY HAPPENS. The look of determination on Delaney’s face as he pushes his own car to battle with Stahler is REAL, his eyes doing all the talking. The Red and Blue cars thrust and parry, slam and bang and slice and slither their way across the track, clawing for traction and speed. I especially love the race-geek camera work, with no freaking CGI or animation to screw things up. The way the cars nose-dive and squirm as they scrub speed to take a hard turn is awesome. A mechanical ballet, where life's contrast knob is set to 11 and disaster is always just one corner away.

I like to tell non-racing fans that among the myriad reasons I love almost all forms of motorsports, one of the most important is the SCIENCE of it all. Physics on display. Combustion, momentum, friction, chemistry, aerodynamics, geometry, gravity, hydraulics, metallurgy, electromagnetics, calculus… racing embodies all of these disciplines. Add the fact that this film, shot in 1970 with what is now considered archaic and antiquated movie-making technology, so perfectly demonstrates both the physical AND emotional realities of high-caliber motor racing, the human and mechanical… it stuns me to this day.

Most of 'Le Mans' was shot during the actual 1970 race, and real drivers drove real cars really fast during race shooting and additional footage, among them Jo Siffert, Brian Redman, Vic Elford, Kurt Ahrens Jr., Herbert Linge and Jonathan Williams. Driver David Piper was involved in a crash during shooting and lost part of his lower leg (the film is dedicated to him in the closing credits). A Porsche 908/2 that McQueen had previously co-driven to a Second-Place finish in the 12 Hours of Sebring was entered into the race to compete, laden with heavy film gear to provide actual footage of the racing action. Although not classified as a finisher for not completing the minimum laps due to stops to change the film reels, it still managed to finish 2nd in the P3.0 class.

Steve McQueen was a real race car driver.

I always come back to the actors, the screenplay and the unspoken emotions that are spread throughout this film. That’s where the storyline shines, where words don’t matter but the emotion and how emotion is conveyed does. This was Steve McQueen’s vanity project, and it cost him his marriage, boatloads of money and a lot of personal capital that took years to recoup. It was also a disappointment at the box office, but time and history have given this film the respect it deserves, now considered one of only a very few racing films that can honestly be viewed as true-to-life.

Are you ready to take on this challenge? Are you capable of turning off your spacephone for 94 minutes… IN A ROW?!?!?! I guarantee that if you view this film in its entirety, pay attention to the spoken and unspoken words, watch the nuances of emotional interaction among these fine actors, you will be rewarded with a sense of completion at the film’s end that will make you smile broadly, glad to have made the effort. And, if my hunch is right, you will become a fan of 'Le Mans'. If you are already a fan of the film, see it again and (if you're like me), pretend to be Michael Delaney during those last two laps of driving flat-out in the 1970 French countryside. Full-screen zoom, volume up, eyes wide open.

It's not just a film about racing, it's a film about people who race and why they do it, and what it does to them. It's about the human condition, about why we push, no matter what the risk, in order to feel like we've achieved something bigger than ourselves. The risks are great at the sharp-end of motor racing, but the same desire for life is no less vital to any loving, feeling individual, yearning to touch the white-hot center of their short existence on this spinning Blue rock, speeding through the vacuum of time and space.



Lead image, muchismas gracias de theselvedgeyard.wordpress.com; all video clips, muchismas gracias de youtube.com; historical references, muchismas gracias de wikipedia.com. Viva Steve McQueen!

Call Of The Wild

I've always thought hunting is weird.

It should also come as no surprise that I have an intense dislike of guns, or as I refer to them, ‘death sticks’. Forget the arguments surrounding the recently-redefined Second Amendment to The Constitution, especially the part about a ‘well-regulated militia’ being the specific reason for ‘Murricans to own weapons (read: flintlock muskets). I totally get why people have a serious Jones about holding and touching and cleaning and shooting their death stick(s) of choice, all while holding fast to the notion that ANY registration or regulation of firearms is tyranny and oppression and don’t tread on me, man.

Really… I get it. Guns are an extension of our national psyche circa 1865, and that hasn’t changed much in the 147 years since. We accept and rationalize the pain and horror and crime and ugliness caused by guns and the people who pull their triggers, because FREEDOM, BABY!!!! I’m among the minority that believe firearms should be sold ONLY if the owners are trained in their use, licensed to use them, registered as owners, insured against incorrect or unlawful use, and subject to retesting and/or surrender if the owner is unable to display proper operational skills and safety. You know, just like a CAR.

Having said that, I understand and accept that we allow folks to own and use guns at their dubious discretion, and I doubt that’s gonna change in my lifetime. Along with my personal distaste for the death sticks, hunting with them also seems insane in this day and age, except for sustenance and/or protection from rabid wolverines. I believe that shooting animals with guns for sport is an unfair assertion of our dominance over living creatures who cannot shoot back (just imagine if they COULD shoot back, heh heh heh). That goes double for the whole idea of stuffing and mounting animals who were unlucky enough to be sighted and capped.

Would it surprise you to know that I have been enlightened about sport hunting?

I know I know I know… I must have been drunk and/or stoned to consider the idea of sport hunting as anything other than man’s vanity game of dominance and death. And yet, my new understanding is another indication that as this Blue Earth keeps on spinning in the vacuum of space, so too am I capable of adjusting long-accepted concepts to keep up with newly-found facts and ideas. No man is an island, right?

Over the past year, I have become friends with a guy (whose name and identity shall remain a closely guarded national secret) that I had met only briefly 30 years ago. Recent celestial turnings have reconnected us in a truly weird and roundabout way… for the purpose of this essay, I’ll simply call him Mr. Bond. He started, built and sold a very successful business, endured a grave life-threatening illness (even receiving his last rites!) and squeezed out the other side with a newfound appreciation for this mortal coil and the people in it (like that ever happens, right?). Although he is a staunch conservative, he and I have many things in common and a simpatico on a wide variety of issues. He is also a consummate outdoorsman and hunter, having bagged creatures large and small on several continents.

Last summer, Mr. Bond was telling me about an upcoming hunt in South Africa where he would attempt to down a Cape Buffalo, one of the ‘Big Three’ of exotic big-game hunting. The gun he was planning to use was a huge caliber double-barrelled weapon with a recoil that could potentially separate one’s retinas. I was put-off about the whole thing at first, but the more he told me about the hunt, the more intrigued I became. The hunt would take place on a private reserve, but once the animal was downed and he claimed the prized head, the entirety of the animal’s remains would be given to the local tribal cooperative to share for food and commerce. I had never heard about this kind of charitable offering of meat and meat by-products from a downed animal… I assumed the hunter kept it all and sold what he didn’t want (actually, they can’t sell what they kill). Mr. Bond explained this protein giveaway was pretty common nowadays for the pros, not so much for the poachers. I was impressed.

Fast-forward to the last few weeks. During his most recent visit to the Left Coast, he invited The Artist and I to spend a few days at his beautiful river-side home (where he escapes the torrid Florida summers) on a well-deserved mini-vacation. He and I had several significant discussions about the many and varied rules of hunting and fishing, the do’s and don'ts, the massive amount of self-imposed etiquette that hunters should (in his opinion) abide by. Since he is the first ‘professional’ hunter that I’ve had a chance to talk with on this subject, I found myself re-thinking the whole ‘I hate hunting’ meme. It was obvious he held his quarry in the highest esteem, and he recalled each and every detail and aspect of the hunt. I mean, EVERY detail… the weather, time of day, how he stalked the creature, the weapon and ammo used, the trigger-pull, the aftermath… all of it. I started to get the feeling it was akin to a religious experience for him.

A bit later, I was checking out the many trophy animal heads mounted on the walls of his home. Another Cape Buffalo he had claimed a few years earlier (the newest one would take a place of honor on the other side of the room, creating a matched pair), an amazing elk with a huge rack of antlers, a wild boar with gleaming tusks, a glorious Rainbow trout sporting the lure that had snagged him. It was the elk, an amazing beast taken down by Mr. Bond's Son, that caught me off-guard. I examined the animal closely, noting how every step of the taxidermy had brought the elk to life, looking as if it could sniff and stomp me RIGHT NOW. I was rapt… I had never spent so much time admiring a trophy like this one, such a beautiful creature taken down by a bullet, when a realization hit me square in my epiphany cortex.

The elk trophy was magnificent, full of the beauty and majesty of the live animal, reeking of power and defiance and wild nature. Remember, this is a stuffed animal head I’m talking about, but it exuded a pure essence that I had never experienced before. I suddenly realized that Mr. Bond revered this animal, this trophy, this example of natural wonder. His son's bullet had taken its life, but by giving it such an honorable place in his own life, he was giving this gorgeous creature a far longer ‘life’ than it could ever have in the wild. Yes, the head was stuffed and mounted on the wall, but it was still ALIVE and in this form would outlive us all, and would likely ALWAYS look this good!

I stood there, mere inches from the elk’s nose, and felt the animal’s strength and vitality pulsing out at me. There was no more blood or muscle or tendon with which it could gore my silly ass for standing so close to it. I was dumbstruck at the emotions flowing through my head and heart and soul, which sounds as weird as it must be to read, but that’s what happened! I was absorbing the elk’s power from where it hung on the wall, mute and motionless, but that feral energy reached right out and smacked me in the face. All the running and rutting and snorting and pissing and regal displays of dominance and authority… it was still THERE. I had to sit down and think hard about what had just happened to me, but I didn’t speak of it to The Artist until later.

Now I understand.

I detest guns and many of the people who own and shoot them, but I will always support an individual’s right to own them. I may never accept hunting as a necessary activity in this modern age, but Mr. Bond has enlightened me to the visceral nature and allure of hunting, especially for those who take it seriously. I would suspect that a large portion of those who hunt are just ‘shooters’ with little regard for their prey, but I’d like to think that many share the same reverence and appreciation of the Wild Things as Mr. Bond does. I don’t plan on ever owning a gun, but at least now I have a better sense that not every animal's life taken by the bullet is forever lost. THAT is one HELL of an epiphany for a pacifist like me to absorb.

Maybe it was the shooting range practice and NRA membership during my Boy Scout years. Maybe it’s the notion that guns themselves aren’t inherently evil, although their sole purpose for existing is to kill. Maybe my life’s core energy once inhabited an ancient Anasazi Indian, with his feet planted in both the wild and domesticated versions of his own short existence. I can’t say for sure, but I know a new seed of understanding has been planted in my psyche, and that is always a great thing. I’ll never fully understand the human desire to personally kill other living creatures that aren’t a threat to life and limb, but my brief exposure to professional hunting has changed me. Thanks, Mr. Bond… I no longer have my eyes wide shut.

Now, about that wolverine pelt I saw in your dining room…



Lead image, gracias de www.firearmstalk.com; The Gun Club 'Sex Beat' video, muchismas gracias de youtube.com.

Wedding Bell Blues

“The American culture promotes personal responsibility, the dignity of work, the value of education, the merit of service, devotion to a purpose greater than self, and, at the foundation, the pre-eminence of the family. (snip) Culture matters. As fundamental as these principles are, they may become topics of democratic debate. So it is today with the enduring institution of marriage. Marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman.” -- Republican Presidential nominee Willard Romney, Liberty University commencement speech – May 12, 2012

I read the transcript of Willard Romney’s speech to the fresh-faced and chaste graduates of Liberty University and had to remind myself that we are in the year 2012, not 1952. Never mind that the majority of the quote above is laughably out-of-touch with the current goals of modern Conservatism. The fact that he confirmed his belief of the fundamental principles of marriage at a school named Liberty University in order to establish his commitment to deny liberty to those who disagree with his personal beliefs is somewhat (completely?) ironic.

Allow me to dissemble a bit.

I like being married. I know that’s not a comment that you’ll hear from most Modern Males, but I have no qualms about stating the obvious fact that my second marriage to The Artist, now in its 26th year, has been nothing short of spectacular. Yes, we’ve had a few white-knuckle roller-coaster rides but, without a doubt, I would not trade a second of that time for ANYTHING. My first marriage? Doomed to failure from the start because we got married for all the wrong reasons, but at least we spawned successfully and produced the Awesome Daughter.

With the notable exception of a slight reduction in divorce rates over the past few years, it has been established and confirmed that around 50% of all marriages end in divorce. This includes hetero, gay and interracial marriages… the type of union may change, but the stats remain boringly consistent. Marriage can be HARD, and it can take a toll on those who are not prepared for the neck-snapping changes that come with matrimony and State-approved co-habitation. Add some rugrats to the mix and you have the potential for romantic flame-out, simmering banality and the unspoken hostility that comes with dreams blunted by reality.

Or not… it’s really up to the parties involved to make or break the union.

Everyone is looking for love and companionship, no matter what they say or how strenuously they deny it. Humans are hard-wired to seek out that Missing Piece, and thus has it been since the Reign Of The Humans began tens of thousands of years ago. Our ancient relatives may not have been as self-aware as we like to think we are now, but they knew what mattered, and they made it a normal pattern of their existence. They met, they fucked, they started living together, they procreated, they parented. It was all they could do just to survive, but they always found a way to make their version of love and companionship and family work. And it did, for a millenia, without the notion or label of ‘marriage’.

Of course, there have always been roadblocks to the unfettered unioning that mere mortals wished to engage in. I’m sure there were differences on the primeval Serengetti plains that caused a tribal uproar or two and resulted in thrown spears and blood feuds and headless carcasses left for the hyenas. As the Middle Ages grew middle-aged, it was simply impossible for a serf or commoner to woo a royal, for fear of being tossed into the nearest moat as Gator Chow. When we were a brand new country, it was common practice for slave owners to bang their bestest slaves and produce offspring, but MARRY THEM?!?! Oh noes. Even in the 20th century it was practically a death sentence for a Black or Brown man to gaze upon a lily-White lovely who fluttered her eyelashes in his direction, not to mention the decision sometime ago that it probably wasn’t such a great idea for a middle-aged man to marry a pre-teen virgin in her ‘child-rearin’ prime.

Call it whatever you want, but the union now referred to as ‘marriage’ has undergone numerous reboots and redefinitions throughout time, mostly the result of changes in morals and mores, in laws and wisdom, for reasons both practical and philosophical. When Willard speaks to the ‘enduring institution of marriage’ he is of course referring to the religious ceremony and status he accepts and approves of, which is rather different than the polygamous relationships his Great Great Grandfather practiced with the approval of his personal American Lord not-so-long ago. And yes, this all relates to the subject of (gasp!) GAY MARRIAGE.

We currently have yet another in a long series of traumatic national dialogs going on, this one revolving around the idea of same-sex couples getting gay married. Many traditionalists and the religiously-inclined seem to think that allowing people of the same sex to receive the official marital paperwork will somehow force everyone to renounce their firmly-held beliefs, accept Satan as their personal savior and gay-marry their next door neighbor… or something like that. Honestly, the reasoning behind the opposition to gay marriage seems to be rooted in the old-skool lizard brain ‘fight or flight’ synapse reaction.

Of course, supporters of opposite-sex-only marriage moan about ‘the sanctity of marriage’ as if the only type of marital union that exists is the God-approved church-held Bible-quoting variety. This is a patently ridiculous notion. Up until the 12th century, marriage was strictly a matter of legal ownership, a civil contract that had nothing to do with any religious doctrine. Back then the church decided it was time to sanctify the union, bestowing upon it a far more hallowed meaning than had existed before, and it has continued to be viewed as such until very recently. Those who claim that marriage has always been the aegis of the church simply do not have history on their side, and any claims that only the church may define marriage are just plain wrong.

The Artist and I were married WAAAAY back in 1986 in a decidedly non-traditional mode, courtesy of Las Vegas, Sin City, USA. Yep, it was the second round for us both, and we tied the knot in the completely non-religious Little White Chapel on the Las Vegas Strip after paying for and receiving our state-approved and mandatory marriage license from the City Court. After the 30-second ceremony, officiated by Justice of the Peace Eva Tubbs (5-ft., 400 lbs., fresh black eye and stitches, I swear!) we snuck into the closed-off patio outside the chapel for some pictures, jumped into the limo, tipped the driver $50 and spent the next hour messing up the Brown velour back seat of that lovely long White Lincoln, OH YEAH.

About that marriage license... it is not a religious document, has nothing to do with God or the church or sanctimony or the Bible or any of that. We weren’t asked to pray or kneel or tithe or pledge allegiance to a deity or cleanse our souls or give our new union over to Jesus. It was a required formality that, if not procured for $50 from the civil court, would mean that our MARRIAGE would not be LEGAL. Get that? Our newly-minted Las Vegas Wedding was completely and totally secular in nature and was devoid of any relation to the religiously-tainted version that we wanted less-than-nothing to do with. We were free to marry each other as long as we met the basic legal guidelines that had been adjudicated and codified, all without stepping foot in a church or within a mile of a holy person.

This is an important point to make: in the U.S. of A., a person can get married in a holy church ceremony as many times as they want, but they are REQUIRED to have a state-approved LICENSE for it to be LEGAL. Without the civil approval that a state-sanctioned license offers, a church wedding is not a LEGAL union, regardless of how many saints are dancing on that particular pin's head. Those who point to their religion-of-choice as proof of their ownership of the term, act and approbration of marriage are simply and totally wrong-o.

Before I go on, I want to make something very clear: I do NOT have a bone to pick with the idea of a religious marriage ceremony, because whatever your doctrine or belief of choice, it is an individual choice, a belief that works for you. I applaud that choice, because we only get one shot at this life, and if you choose to cede aspects of your life to the precepts of a sectarian belief, more power to you. It's been done for a long LONG time, and we all know how hard it can be to buck tradition, right?

My issue with the 'opposite-sex-mariage-only' proponents is this: who put THEM in charge? Most people I know who espouse that perspective base it on a strongly-held religious belief, but that doesn't pass muster when we are discussing a legal and secular contractual agreement. Last time I checked, our Constitution made it pretty clear that (as stated in Amendment 1), "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." In my feeble brain, I read that to mean that freedom OF religion also means freedom FROM religion, and when we are referring to the legal definition of marriage, the law and its implementation simply must be devoid of any adherence to a particular sectarian doctrine. I mean, COME ON... it isn't that hard to understand, is it?

Here are some real gems that were used to argue in support of 'traditional' marriage and to denigrate an alternate view:

"It's unnatural."

"It's contrary to God's will."

"It's about illicit sex, not committed relationships."

"The majority of Americans oppose such marriages."

Wait a minute... did I mention that these are the arguments used in 1948 when a bi-racial couple challenged California's interacial marriage ban in the Supreme Court? The same arguments reappeared when miscegenation (look it up) went to the Supreme Court 19 years later in the Loving v. Virginia case. By the way, the plaintiffs, an interracial married couple, won that one, but... the same freaking arguments are being used today against the approval of same-sex marriage. How very circular!

Here's the rub: marriage is a union between two consenting adults. It used to be for only the wealthy, then the poors could do it, but only WHITE poors. Then it was OK for old men to marry young girls, but then things changed and then it wasn't OK. Then it was a REALLY BAD THING for lovers of different races to get hitched, but then it was OK too. Except in Mississippi (heh heh heh). Nothing can be more important than the love two people share with each other, and the ability to join in a legal and healthy union to foster and grow that love, create a family and a legacy by enjoying the benefits that legal status affords... it must NEVER be subjected to the narrow religious or tradition-bound definitions that some would place upon it.

Through it all, the only constant... is CHANGE. Change is something we humans have to get accustomed to, because it is always swirling around us, from generation to generation, parent to offspring, no matter the social or ethnic or sexual orientation or classification. Change is HARD, no matter how hard we want it not to be... it is hovering around the peripheries of our lives, nipping away at our foundational beliefs, challenging us to keep up or get flattened like a wolverine on a hot Michigan highway.

Contrary to what the opposite-sex-only folks might think, there have been gay people amongst us as long as there have been people, and that has never changed. No matter what the religious tomes might direct and their adherents try to impose, gay people will continue to be a natural and integral part of our human civilization. It is simply wrong-headed and regressive to think they are somehow a lesser form of human, to be subjected to a different standard of respect and freedom than their non-gay brothers and sisters. For however long we had tolerated discrimination against 'the others', time and change and education and acceptance and understanding will always and eventually remove the unwarranted stigma from those who seek the same rights as the rest of us. That includes the right for all Americans to be legally married to whomever they choose, to love and honor and cherish them like we all hope someone will do to each of us.

About that love/honor/cherish thingie. The Artist and I will soon celebrate our 26th Anniversary, and all indications are that she likes having me around. Our emotional connection isn't subject to any sexuality qualifier... she either loves me or she doesn't, and so far it seems that she does, in fact, still love me. I fail to see how that feeling could be any different for a married gay couple. That alone is enough rationale for me to call on all humanoids to stand up and be counted as supporting every person's right to love and marry the one that lifts them, that gives them inspiration, that completes their emotional circle. What could be better?

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” ~ John F. Kennedy





Lead image, muchismas gracias de greenbergrants.blogspot.com; Bob Marley 'Is This Love?' and The Dixie Cups 'Going To The Chapel' videos, muchismas gracias de youtube.com.