Isaac Stolzfuts' Journal

2007-10-10T10:45:00.000-04:00

I'm placing this image as I have no news to report concerning Isaac's disappearance at this time.

Adam

My Stand

2007-09-11T09:38:00.000-04:00

I am publishing my Granddad’s poem, “My Stand,” as he has done every September 11th since Nine-Eleven as a commemoration of those who died in that horrible International Terrorist event, and to commemorate Granddad’s life as well. I wish that more people were able to think as thoroughly and lovingly as my grandfather did.

Adam

My Stand

Isaac Stolzfuts

I was born on September 11, 1919.
I was with my great grand children
On September 11th, 2001,
My 82nd birthday.
We celebrated by playing together.
Drawing pictures, they told me what they saw;
The farm, our orchard, friends at school,
Their Mom and Dad.

Black space...

The TV’s white-noise-background
Suddenly startorian to my mind
Though the anchor man’s voice
Even and measured announced
“APPARENT TERRORIST ATTACK...”
Pulled us away
And, no longer laughing at play,
We watched "live" as thousands died.
It felt as though we were there
Engulfed in that ebon cloud of dust,
The taste of death in our mouths.

Rebecca (named after her Grandma)
Cried, “That’s just a movie, Grandpa,
Right?” And Abe Junior said,
"Where are all the super heroes?
When we need-um!"
Well, the super heroes are in Iraq today,
Fighting for what they believe.
I pray for their safety even as
Mr. Bush says, “ I pray for peace.”

I was born on September 11, 1919,
At the end of WWI and the flue epidemic.
A Surreal world of horror
Was born on September 11, 2001.
Flowers and fireworks opposed to cinders and soot.
A world in which the lost lives of Iraq's
Women and children are not counted.
A world in which stolen artifacts
Testament to the beginning of civilization
Are casualties to Imperialist ambition.
A world in which a 21st century crusade has begun.

I do not believe in this war.
I do not believe in the "New American Century."

I do believe in a United States that stands for peace and trust.
I do believe in a United States that leads the world by example.
I do believe in a United States that bequeaths to the world
A vision of democracy and freedom.

Each American in Iraq is a hero and a patriot.
Each American who states his or her opinion
Opposing this war is also a hero and a patriot.

Dissent is one of the freedoms we believe in!
Would you have 225 years of national endeavor destroyed?
Do not call me anti-American.
Do not tell me that I did not suffer on September 11.
Do not tell me that I am not a patriot.

I was born on September 11, 1919.
My life always circled around Nine Eleven.
By birthright I am Nine Eleven.
I am a child of Nine Eleven.
I am freedom.
And, like Whitman I am part of you
And all of you are a part of me.
I am American.
I don't believe in this war of American conquest, and
I am a 21st century American patriot!

Goodbye

2007-09-07T09:32:00.000-04:00

The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth--it is the truth which conceals that there is none.

Jean Baudrillard

An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

Mohandas Gandhi

I am posting this last post as a memorial to Granddad, and I will leave this journal in tact, at least for the short term as a testimony to his life. I hope others will find it, read him, and because of that, he will help to shape the lives of others as he has mine.

For those who have been his regular readers over the years, I will post news concerning the resolution of his disappearance as it occurs.

In recognition of his life, and as he would have it said in the end (I'm sure),

"God bless each and everyone."

Adam

Saturn

2007-09-03T09:04:00.000-04:00

Granddad’s car has been found. It is one month since his disappearance, and several children who telephoned the police yesterday discovered his Saturn VUE. The car was near Sarasota, Florida, on cinder blocks and stripped. The State Police said there was no blood in the car and there was no evidence of foul play. But, there it was, an empty, ruined Saturn, and no Isaac. Of course, my reaction is that the stripped car found 150 miles from Isaac's home is evidence of foul play. The police say that it was stipped because Isaac abandoned the car. Instead, I ask - did he abondone the car willlingly?

I’ve talked with Granddad’s lawyer by telephone and he said that disposing of Granddad’s estate would be a protracted process. Nothing can be disposed of until it is demonstrated that he (God, this sounds terrible!) is dead. The process is further complicated because another legal assumption must be met. Legally, a missing person is presumed to be alive, and that presupposition is called “the assumption of the continuance of life.” In the case of missing persons, a thorough search must be completed, and it can take many years before the courts are willing to declare the person “missing and presumed to be dead.” The process can take up to seven years. Also, anyone, namely Mother, who wishes to dispose of, and or acquire possessions of Granddad’s must either have him declared missing and presumed dead or have legal power of attorney. Since Granddad had granted power of attorney to me last year, and since I am named executor of his will, I am the only person who can legally begin the proceedings, and / or dispose of his estate. So, it would appear that I am in control of this process, and I do not intend to allow anyone to sell Granddad’s condominium and dispose of his possessions until I am satisfied that he is no longer living.

I know Mother will be difficult. I know my father will go to bat for her. I know we may end up not speaking for a time. However, I’m just going to do what I must and let the mother machine be a witch if she will.

Granddad Helped me to Know Why I Teach.

2007-08-31T08:47:00.000-04:00

There’s nothing new to report on Isaac.

I miss calling him every week and talking with him. He was able to make the biggest problem seem unimportant, and the most inconsequential items of ordinary daily living became magnificent when he examined them. For instance, in my last entry here, I made teaching sound burdensome when that is the farthest thing from the truth, and Granddad would have called me on it. I do love teaching, or I wouldn’t be doing it. I like working with my students – notice they are “my students” – because I take them, problems and all, and together we create a special place where we all work together to help one another learn. And, I learn from them. I know this sounds like Mr. Pollyanna, head in the clouds fairy science teacher. I suppose that the reality of teaching lies somewhere between today’s statement and that of August twenty-eighth. However, I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else, and Granddad is the reason I know that. He helped me to see that I will be spending at least 30 years as a gay male adult teaching children and or young adults (the second option is based on pursuing a masters and doctorate in science), and that is wonderful, because I like doing just that. So many people don’t like their work, and therefore suffer, and cause others to suffer. Sometimes I suffer from doing my work, but it is because I am a type A personality and perfectionist. However, I actually love the work. Granddad helped to give me that focus.

Please, be sitting by the water somewhere, Granddad, taking photographs, drawing, or reading. I love you and I miss you.

This drawing is one of Granddad's last. It was on his drafting table on the porch in North Palm Beach.

Still Nothing

2007-08-28T09:16:00.001-04:00

My students are back this week, until Friday. We will all be off four days for the holiday. Of course, it’s maniacal at school. Start up always is - new forms to complete every day - both for the students, their families, faculty and staff. Every school administrator is required to take a course titled “Forms 101,” when completing Masters requirements, and the first thing the professor teaches in that course, rule #1 is, “Thou shall have your secretary design at least one new form every week.”

One of my personal stumbling blocks is learning all my new student’s names. I play name games in every class ostensibly so students can learn one another’s names quickly. Never the less, I hope they don't know that Mr. Stolzfuts struggles just as much as they do - perhaps more so. Of course I’ve given two assignments in every class already, so I end up correcting and grading papers every evening because I insist on immediately returning papers –else how’s a student to learn new material? Each student must know as soon as possible what he/she reported correctly and incorrectly – as well as misspelled words, improper syntax and grammar, and so on. Well, I guess I could continue this diatribe on the problems of a science teacher at the beginning of the school year. However, that is not my purpose, and this is not my journal.

I have nothing much to report concerning Granddad at this time. The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office and Florida State Police have finally put out a missing person’s report on Isaac. I will try to continue updating, perhaps once a week.

Thank you everyone, for your messages of concern.

No News Isn’t Necessarily Good News.

2007-08-26T08:42:00.000-04:00

I talked with Mother on the phone last night. She said that whether or not Isaac is located she and Dad plan on returning to Granddad’s condominium during the Thanksgiving holiday to sell the furniture, empty, and put it up for sale. My heart sank through the floor, and I’ve been terribly depressed ever since. I’m not sure they can do that if Granddad isn’t legally dead. Nevertheless, I will check into it, and at the very least, I will go along, or separately by plane so I can save his laptop, records, artwork, and writing from my compulsive and obsessed mother.

There’s not much else to report at this time. I certainly don’t feel like doing a lengthy personal expose of my feelings. The media drive me mad with their obsession concerning personal confession and disclosure. I’m tired of hearing and reading emotional and trivial life stories, because such things should be private. Besides, there is nothing in most diurnal existence to interest anyone other than the individual. Perhaps Jesus Christ, Ghandi, Buddah, and a few others took personal experience and transformed it into something that all humanity can learn from. The rest of us, well - Twenty-first Century America is a wasteland of hyper empty-headed emotion.

H-m-m-m-m-m! I guess I can do a crazed diatribe just as well as my Granddad. Thus, this is the first moment possessed of a certain and positive cathartic feeling since Granddad disappeared.

You can send E-mail comments to
ZacSfuts@Comcast.net
, or post them below.

Static State!

2007-08-22T22:44:00.001-04:00

I’m back in New Jersey, because In Service has begun, and my students will return to school next week on Monday. Mother is still in South Florida, and Dad will leave Orchard Hill Farm by car and drive to South Florida tomorrow. He and Mother plan the return trip to Pennsylvania by car on Friday and Saturday. I told them that they ought to wait until next week because they will run into shore traffic all the way up the east coast of Florida and Georgia on Friday. But, as usual there is no arguing with Mother once her mind is made up, and she wants to go home.

It still appears that Peter is the Palm Beach Sheriff’s primary suspect in evil doing, though as I’ve said, I personally don’t believe that is likely even though Peter continues not speaking to me. That makes him look guilty as hell - but, I think he’s just deeply hurt that anyone would think he is capable of hurting Granddad. And, I also think he feels guilty he and Granddad had not sorted through the complications in their relationship before Granddad disappeared. Upon my return to Woodbury, I had Stephen (my partner) call Peter, but Peter did not answer the phone, nor has he returned Stephen’s call though Stephen left a message on Peter’s machine. I feel badly, but there is nothing else I can do just now.

We are in stasis down in Florida. Granddad is still missing. His condominium will be left as is, at least until we have some definitive answers to the questions surrounding his disappearance. The police haven’t found his car, though they’ve widened the search to include Broward and Dade counties. Mother and I complained that the search should be widened to include the entire state, but so far, that has not been done. I can’t help wondering if the sheriff and police wouldn’t be a bit more proactive if Granddad was a more important person. The longer this thing drags on, the less optimistic I am that Granddad is alive, though I hate to admit it. I love him and miss him. He is extremely important in my life at least in part because he has been such a great help and an example to me in sorting through the problems created by growing up gay in our heterosexist culture. I plan to keep his journal open and running as long as there is some hope that he will be found alive, and perhaps I will keep the blog in tact as a testimony to his life after that. However, I guess I should cross that bridge at the appropriate time.

For now, I’m tired, and I’m writing this on my laptop during In-service. In short, I’m not focused on the blithering speaker at the front of the auditorium, and I will get in trouble if I’m caught uploading this through the school’s Internet hook-up. So, I will use my own wireless hook-up during our break, or upload tonight after work.

You can send E-mail comments to
ZacSfuts@Comcast.net
, or post them below.

Primary Suspect

2007-08-19T09:49:00.000-04:00

We’ve been here almost one week, and mother and I are bumping into one another. We are both temperamental. My mother has always been difficult. She can’t help it. She’s just complicated as all get out, and high maintenance, plus, plus. She and Granddad never got a long. In fact, she cleaned out his studio - the bolted and locked “Sanctuary” in the Orchard Hill Farm attic - in the late 1990’s. Granddad had retired from the farm and moved to Pine Needle Retirement Home at the time. Mother said she was just making the farm ready for her own family, but she gave all his paraphernalia and artworks away. I don’t think Granddad has ever forgiven her.* I think she’s feeling guilty now, and that fuels her anxiety and temper. I have no excuse for my irritability.

The state police told Peter not to leave the county the other day, and he still isn’t speaking to us. I drove over to his place yesterday afternoon, but he refused to let me in, saying, “just go!”

“I know you didn’t do anything to Granddad, Peter.”

“That’s not what your mother and the police think.”

“Mother is a mess, and the police are being ridiculous.”

“I don’t want you here, Adam.”

“I had hoped you would help.”

“With what? Apparently I’m the primary suspect. The police have made all kinds of disgusting innuendos about my relationship with Isaac, and they told me not to leave the area. I feel as though I’m stuck in some horrible piece of trashy fiction.”

“Won’t you let me in?”

“Adam, No!” He shut the door and I heard the dead bolt turn, then silence. I knew there was no point. I’ve called repeatedly, but I get his machine. I worry because Peter is actually acting guilty, and I wonder, could the police be right? Did Peter have something to do with Granddad’s disappearance?

*See Granddad’s journal 2003 and 2004 entries for details concerning the Sanctuary debacle.

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The Search

2007-08-16T09:47:00.000-04:00

I am Adam Stolzfuts Groff, and I am completing this entry in my grandfather’s Weblog because my grandfather, Isaac has been missing since August 2nd or 3rd. His last entry in this journal was made on Thursday, August 2, 2007. You can refer to my entry in Granddad’s journal from August 11, 2007 for an account of our family’s discovery of Isaac’s disappearance.

My mother, Ruth and I flew to Palm Beach International airport from Philadelphia International this past Monday, rented a car, and drove to Granddad’s condominium. Peter, Granddad’s best friend in North Palm Beach met us at the condominium, and we knocked on the door and rang the doorbell repeatedly before unlocking and entering the apartment. Granddad was not there, though everything was neat as a pin, and cool, the air conditioning running full steam ahead, cutting the humidity to a fraction of the August swamp outside. I add this last detail because it is important to note that Granddad had the thermostat set to 73 degrees Fahrenheit. He is frugal and environmentally conscious so I know he would have turned the thermostat up to 79 degrees if he were going away on a trip. We did not conduct much of a search at the time, and Peter suggested we touch nothing until we could convince the police to investigate.

We have visited both the state police, and the North Palm Beach Sheriff's offices. We filed a complete report on Granddad’s disappearance, and finally have convinced both state police and sheriff's office that Isaac is missing, and not just on an unannounced and whimsical junket. They have conducted a thorough search of Isaac’s condominium for anything of significance that might be helpful in finding Granddad, including taking finger prints. A countywide search for Isaac’s Saturn has been instituted though the Saturn hasn’t turned up. In an alrming move the state police have insisted on questioning Peter repeatedly and at great length. I have been wondering if they consider him to be involved in Granddad’s disappearance, and my Mother has been entirely obnoxious with Peter, all but accusing him of doing away with Isaac. Because of her, Peter will no longer talk with us. I don’t blame him because I think this journal itself proves that Peter could not have been involved in Granddad’s disappearance. In fact, I think he loves my Grandfather as much, perhaps more, than any of us in the family.

Meanwhile Mother and I have moved into Grandpa’s condominium after staying in a hotel for the first few days. I feel his presence around me all the time. It is as though he stepped outside for one of his constitutionals. There is a book laying upside down and open on the table next to his chair in the living room - notes in the margins as always, an almost finished drawing on the drawing table in the porch, and a partially completed digital photo montage in a folder labeled “New Work,” on the desktop in this computer. It feels as though he should walk in the door at any moment, and I’m hoping desperately that he is still alive and well.

You can send E-mail comments to
ZacSfuts@Comcast.net
, or post them below.

Isaac Stolzfuts is Missing

2007-08-11T10:21:00.001-04:00

I am Adam Stolzfuts, Isaac’s grandson. I am placing this entry on my grandfather’s Web log because he is not available to do so. Briefly, my grandfather has disappeared. His last journal entry was August 2, 2007. I telephoned Grandpa on the third of August and got the message that he was not available at the time. On Saturday, August fourth, my Mother, Ruth tried to call Grandpa and also received the not available message. After we both had made several more attempts to call Grandpa during the afternoon on Saturday, we called one another. I called Grandpa’s friend, Peter who lives near Grandpa's condominium. We tried the telephone number again, got the “I’m not available” message, so Peter went to Grandpa’s, knocked on the door and rang the doorbell repeatedly while we were connected by cell phone. There was no answer. Peter then went to Grandpa’s garage to see if the car was there. It was not. “He must have gone away for a few days, Adam,” said Peter.

“But that isn’t like Isaac. He would have at least called my mother and told her that he would be away, and where he could be reached while away from North Palm Beach.”

“When did you talk to him last?”

“About a week ago.”

“So, the third of August.”

“Yes, that’s about right.”

“When was his last journal entry, Adam?”

“I checked. August second.”

“Let’s see. I know he tries to do entries at least every three days. Since you talked to him on the third, he probably left the condo after that, and that means he’s been away for at least eight days.”

“Yes, without telling anyone he was leaving for a week or longer. That's just not like Grandpa. I’m calling the police.”

I called the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office. They took the report, but said it is common for people to go away without notifying relatives, and told us to call them when Grandpa returned. I was furious! So far nobody is looking for Isaac.

I also asked Peter to look in Grandpa’s condo since he has a key, which he refused to do.

“The police should be the first to look in there, Adam.”

“But, there might be a clue as to his location inside.”

“Still, I don't want to be the first person to go in. If we can’t get the sheriff’s office or the police to take this seriously, then you, or your Dad should be the first person to go into Isaac’s condo.”

My dad has to work, so Mother and I are planning to fly to Florida on Monday if Grandpa hasn’t returned home by then. We will call the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office again, and the Florida State Police before leaving.

I’ve posted this to Grandpa’s journal in the hopes that one of his reader’s might have an idea where he’s gone. Please contact us at Grandpa’s email address. I’ve listed it below as he always does.

You can send E-mail comments to
ZacSfuts@Comcast.net
, or post them below.

Gay Art Websites

2007-08-02T08:54:00.000-04:00

As an experiment I “Googled” the above phrase. I found quite a few entries and I’ve included the first ten of them here with a brief summary of each and a link to each. I will continue the list in the future, and I will save critique for another entry. I hope the reader will explore, enjoy, and begin his/her own critique of gay art and the gay art Websites available on the Internet.

http://www.queer-arts.org/ - Queer Arts Organization - an actual resource for gay artists with events and calendar of events, bookshop, gallery of works, membership, links to other Websites, and comments.

http://gayartgallery.com/index.html - Gay Art Gallery - Many of the images would not open - figurative, concentration on lean and muscular boys.

http://www.manstouch.com/ - Man’s touch - a store with several lists of artists and their work.

http://www.haskinsmaleart.com/ - Haskins Male Art - the artist’s Website and store.

http://www.larryhillart.com/ - Larry Hill Art - the artists Website and store.

http://www.rickchris.com/ - Rick Chris - a gay artist’s Website with galleries of his paintings of well muscled men and boys, store, a novel length story, and a blog.

http://www.douglassimonson.com/ - Douglass Simonson - Honolulu artist who draws and paints naked gay youth and men in various media by the thousands. All work is for sale.

http://www.glbtq.com/arts/am_art_gay_post_stonewall.html - The glbtg Encyclopedia on line has a history of gay male art since the Stonewall Riots. It does not contain images, but discusses the intervention of the Federal Government through censorship associated with the Mapplethorpe exhibit at the Corcoran in 1980 and proceeds through art about AIDS and the fight by gay artists to be able to create work in the mainstream of the art market.

http://gaylife.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ/Ya&sdn=gay
life&cdn=people&tm=5&f=00&tt=14&bt=1&bts=
1&zu=http%3A//www.reddotfineart.com/ - An on line gallery with a physical gallery based on Santa Fe, NM that appears to be much more of a fine art oriented website than many of the others I found. The site lists shows, artists, and opportunities for artists.

http://www.fineart4men.com/ - Fine Art 4 Men - Another store that covers gay figurative drawing, painting, photography historic to contemporary.

You can send E-mail comments to
ZacSfuts@Comcast.net
, or post them below.

Of Course You Would do Careful Diplomatic Feelers Before Talking to Fidel Castro, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, or Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

2007-07-29T16:10:00.000-04:00

Barack Obama’s comment in debate this past Monday evening that he would meet such leaders without precondition has sparked so much debate. Was it naive? Was it ill conceived? Was it simply framed so as to contrast with the current administration’s refusal to communicate? Was it intended to spark controversy? Will it hurt Obama? The answer to all these questions is “probably.” However, I personally like the fact that Obama is willing to take a stand in contrast to the other Democratic candidates. Hillary and most of the others seem to be answering questions with “diplomatease.” I’m tired of the status quo, and I have a hunch that, like me, many American’s are looking for new, and bold answers.

Dinner with Peter Friday Evening

He looked tired, and had little of substance to say. There were long, awkward silences, and I finally asked if he was dating anyone special, and he said, “No.”

“Playing the field, huh?”

“Yes,” he said.

Changing the subject, I asked if he had read any interesting books of late, and he said, “No.” The silence and monosyllabic answers were driving me mad, so I excused myself and pretended to putter around in the kitchen.

I prepared beans and rice, corn and apple salsa made from sweet Georgia corn sliced fresh off the cob, and jerk chicken. The menu was good and so was my cooking. However, my conversation was boring, and I don’t feel as though the evening was a success. Peter left before ten o’clock.

I’ve spent the weekend feeling depressed.

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Peter’s Telephone Call

2007-07-26T09:29:00.000-04:00

Awkward!

He was with a group of people, because I could hear voices and music in the background. He sounded a bit juiced as well. Someone interrupted him, and he said, “It’s okay,” and I told him to call back when he could actually talk to me.

“I can talk, Isaac. At least enough to tell you that I should have called you sooner.”

“Don’t worry about it, Peter. I’m a big boy.”

“When can I see you?”

“When is good for you, Peter? I have nothing pressing in my schedule.”

“How about tomorrow evening?”

“Do you want to come over for dinner?”

“That would be fine.”

“Come about six.” There was raucous laughter in the background and the music had gotten considerably louder.

“What?”

“Six,” I shouted into the phone. “Come over at six.”

“Oh, okay. I’ll see you then, he said.” And, at that point he was interrupted by someone saying that they were ready to leave, and was Peter coming with them?”

“I’ve got to go, Isaac. See you tomorrow evening.” The phone line went dead, and I couldn’t help but feel that Peter had squeezed that call into a busy social evening, almost as an after thought. At the same time, I felt my heart leap. I know it skipped a beat or two. Could we be good friends now? Or had Peter learned to love the young gay social whirl so much - being sought after and fawned over in the bar and club scene - that he wouldn’t have time for his old friend? Had a chasm opened between us? Or could we renew and make better a friendship that had become muddied and awkward because of an unhealthy physical attraction on my part, and an insalubrious eromenos-like (ancient Greek student/lover) attraction on Peter’s part?

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Senator Vitter and the Prostitutes

2007-07-23T09:15:00.000-04:00

Once again we have an evangelical Christian who wants to deny first class citizenship to gay and lesbian couples, but finds his own Christian marriage to be a matter of convenience. Senator David Vitter (R- Louisiana) denies having had relations with a series of New Orleans prostitutes while admitting that he had dealings with Deborah Jeane Palfrey’s prostitution ring in Washington D.C. Thus, one more male evangelical has demonstrated the belief that he is immune to transgressions against his partner. If evangelicals sin, God will forgive them their transgressions. At the same time a long-standing gay or lesbian relationship may not be recognized because (supposedly) God does not approve. In other words, God, who is perfect, made a mistake because he created a world in which two loving homosexuals must remain separate and gay, because their love is unequal to the love of heterosexual evangelical couples.

In fact, God does not care about our sexuality. As science demonstrates, God made many animals with multiple sexual preferences. He also made man with multiple sexual preferences. I’m tired of evangelical’s Bible quoting snobbery. The Bible is God's word as understood by men who lived in various places, around the Eastern Mediterranean, at various times though all removed from the present by thousands of years. Their understanding of God was based in the cultures in which they lived. Evangelical understanding of the Bible is also based on the institutionalized prejudices of the subculture in which they live. The entire point of the Bible is that God did not make man perfect! Man does sin. So many stories in the Bible are demonstrations of men’s transgressions against one another and/or God, and they demonstrate God’s constant ability to forgive those transgressions. Yes, ancient writers made mistakes when writing. Evangelical men and women make mistakes when interpreting the Bible. Evangelical men and women make mistakes in their lives and their marriages. Gay and lesbian men and women make mistakes in their lives and relationships. However, God created all of us. At least here in the United States, our forefathers had the sense to write into our constitution that all “men are created equal.” Women had to fight another two hundred years to gain suffrage, though suffering today from the evangelical idea that men are better than women. The primitive pagan idea that the seed of a man must be allowed to grow to fruition within a woman still lingers in the evangelical Christian lexicon. It thrives even if the outcome is death for the woman, and/or a child who may be denied love and happiness. I suppose it is too much to expect such people to accept that in God’s eyes, we are all equal, brothers and sisters, born of this earth.

God loves us when we love one another, no matter who we are.

God loves us, each and every one.

God even loves Senator Vitter.

It is that simple.

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July Whitehouse Iraq Report

2007-07-19T09:25:00.000-04:00

President Bush says, “I’m in charge of this war.” When confronted with Congress’ wish to draw down forces in Iraq.

However, It shouldn’t be about how fast we want to withdraw our forces from Iraq. First, we need to acknowledge that the war was a mistake from the start. Once that has been done, and we allow the nation to digest the (no longer sub-text) fact that this president and the nation made a horrendous mistake four and one half years ago, perhaps the Congress, Senate, and President can put together a reformed policy that can actually accomplish a phased withdrawal from Iraq that involves international cooperation (reads United Nations peace keepers), that will prevent a complete collapse in Iraq, and generalized war in the Middle East.

Most importantly, such an admission will allow us to begin discussions at a philosophical level designed to obtain an understanding of the workings of fundamentalist religious practices, and the roll of poverty in the West and East, both of which are at the root cause of terrorist activities in Iraq and elsewhere. Once such a discussion has taken place, we must make ourselves completely aware of the knowledge gained from these discussions and incorporate it into a set of objectives and specific activities designed to meet goals designed to end the global terrorist threat posed by Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Only by doing this thorough job of introspection can we solve the problems we have created by invading Iraq, as well as meeting the actual and very real problem of worldwide terrorism head on.

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Ho-Hum, Peter and My Health

2007-07-16T08:52:00.000-04:00

Peter

It took the entire day to work up the courage, but I finally called Peter last night. He wasn’t home, so I left a message. I hope he returns the call, because I don’t want to go through another approach avoidance conflict marathon.

Health

I took a walk on the beach early yesterday morning. As usual I had my camera with me, and I took some pictures. I include one here. It was terribly warm and humid and I huffed and puffed quite a bit. I had to stop and rest over and over again. I do not have the stamina I had a year ago. I’ve also noticed that I am increasingly forgetful, I lose my train of thought when reading, and I’m having trouble balancing my checkbook. I’ve always done that with great ease. I complained about my difficulties to Adam on the phone, and he made me promise to visit the doctor.

“What can he do at my age,” I said.

“He can run some tests and you will at least know if there is anything wrong, Grandpa.”

“I just have a bad feeling. What good is knowing, if there is nothing to be done?”

“You don’t know anything at this point, including whether or not something can be done about a hypothetical ‘something wrong.’ Go to the doctor,” he said, punctuating the sentence by adding spaces between each word. “Promise me you will make an appointment as soon as we hang up.”

“Okay, Adam. Relax. I promise.”

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Move On Organization and Live Earth

2007-07-12T09:01:00.000-04:00

This past Saturday, I attended a “Save the Planet Party,” one of over 1300 held around the country as over 2 billion people around the world worked to raise awareness concerning the global warming crisis. The parties were part of the Live Earth concert sponsored through Al Gore’s efforts to make global warming the number one issue of the 2008 presidential race. The Live Earth concert and associated parties were sponsored by a group of organizations including The Alliance for Climate Protection, Live Earth Organization, and Move On. The Twenty-five attendees at one of the villas in my community socialized during a potluck dinner and while watching the Live Earth concert on television. We listened to Al Gore make a speech in which he outlined his 7 point pledge to curve global warming, and we watched the Move On Organization’s Town Hall Video in which presidential candidates answered questions given them by Move On Organization members about global warming.

Of the candidates I personally thought that Bill Richardson, (governor of New Mexico,) had the most forceful and thoroughly thought out plan to deal with the global warming crisis, though voters on the Moveon.org Website voted John Edwards the best. All at our party agreed that this should be a bipartisan concern, but that so far, it seems to be primarily a concern of progressive Democrats. I was encouraged that two billion viewers of the Live Earth Concert worldwide demonstrate that the concern is more universal and not just a Democratic Party concern. Unfortunately, I have since watched FOX News belittle those who are concerned with global warming, so I guess that the concern shall remain progressive and Democrat.

Briefly, three of the most important points in Al Gore's pledge ask participants to first, demand that the USA join a global treaty to roll back global warming within the next two years, second dramatically increase the energy efficiency of their homes, and third, fight for laws and policies that expand the use of renewable energy sources and reduce dependence on oil and coal.

Our party host said, “the party was successful because we all feel as though we made connections with like minded persons, did something as a group to further our concerns about global warming, learned more about candidates for President of the United States positions concerning global warming, and had a great time as well.”

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I'm Still Missing Peter

2007-07-09T22:04:00.000-04:00

I had been so busy with family and my trip north that I hadn’t thought about Peter – well, not as much anyway. However, since I returned to Florida, he has been constantly on my mind. I’m such a silly old man. I pick up the phone several times a day thinking that it is time to call him. I hold it in my hand, stare at it as though it is a foreign object from another planet. What is this I hold in my hand - what strange manner of thing, and I am empty headed. Finally I put the phone down and go work on a photograph or drawing in the attempt to distract myself.

I will work for 15 to 20 minutes before my mind drifts back to Peter, and once again I find myself staring into space lost in beach memories, evening talks about religion, philosophy, and books. Why did he have to be so damn intelligent and interesting as well as magnificently made?

It has been months since Peter and I agreed not to see or talk to one another for thirty days. Surely he has found his sexual freedom - young hunks must be clamoring for dates. He has probably forgotten all about me, and I should leave him alone.

But I can’t get him off my mind!

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Al Qaeda and related issues are more and more visible in the news as we draw closer to the 2008election.

2007-07-06T09:58:00.000-04:00

Is that because Al Qaeda is more and more active or is it because our political system is taking increasing note as interest in the 2008 election grows? With the current spate of reports that we are being threatened with a calamity much greater than 9/11/2001, I wonder if Al Qaeda or someone isn’t trying to manipulate our political process. Specifically and first, the Internet video posted by an American member of Al Qaeda, Adam Yehiye Gadahn this past month in which he says, “"Your failure to heed our demands ... means that you and your people will ... experience things which will make you forget all about the horrors of September 11th, Afghanistan and Iraq and Virginia Tech."* Analysts say that the threats and warnings are designed to relieve al-Qaeda of responsibility for any of the damage it does. Another article posted on the BBC Website titled “Al-Qaeda seeks unity with Hamas,” describes an audio-tape posted on the Internet by Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s number two man that also calls on Muslims everywhere to fight against Israeli and U.S. interests. * Last week, we had the British car bombs, and the rumor that over 300 al-Qaida operatives have infiltrated the U.K. and U.S. with the goal of taking car bombs to targets throughout both countries. Al-Qaeda also continues to be active in Osama bin Laden’s homeland of Yemen where a recent car bomb killed Spanish and Yemenis visiting a Mosque associated with the Biblical Queen of Sheba. I conclude that the sudden spate of articles and news stories about al-Qaeda is the result of someone, a group, or groups trying to influence the 2008 presidential election. Hawks, Republicans, doves, Democrats, News Services, who? Additionally, of course, al Qaida’s goal is to destroy Western civilization.

Americans are such babies these days, myself included. If the presence of such threats becomes pervasive, we will probably panic and immediately begin looking for the biggest Republican hawk to save us from the evil infidel. I guess that’s John McCain. If he should be elected president, the war in Iraq would go on and on, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. The United States would pay even less attention to the actual problem of sabotage by al Qaeda and it’s evil issue from within our borders. Thus, the disruption of our way of life would become inevitable.

We need a candidate for president who has a clear program for international cooperation, with direct involvement of the United Nations policing to remove al-Qaeda from the international theater. Such a candidate would articulate a set of goals that will enable us to work toward peace between the West and Mid-east in order to remove the root cause of terrorism.

But, where is such a person?

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*Johnson, Anna (AP),“al-Qaida Video Threatens Attacks on U.S.,” on Comcast.net. http://www.comcast.net/includes/article/print.jsp?fn=/data/news/html..., posted May 30, 2007, 5:30 AM EDT, viewed: May 30, 2007, 10:21 AM EDT.

Kratova, Katrina (AP), “al Qaida Escapee in Online Video,” on Comcast.net., http://www.comcast.net/news/international/index.jsp?cat=INTERNATIONAL&fn=/2007/05/30/676044.html. Posted May 30, 2007, Posted May 30, 2007, 7:00 AM EDT, viewed May 30, 2007,10:48 AM EDT.

Delio, Michelle, “Al Qaeda Website Refuses to Die,” WIRED, http://www.wired.com/print/techbiz/it/news/2003/04/58356. Posted 040707 at 2:00 AM EDT. Viewed Wednesday, May 30, 2007, 11:03 AM EDT.

“Al Qaeda blamed for Yemen Attack,” AP press release, on CNN.com/world, http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/07/03/yemen.blast.ap/index.html. Updated 1:46 PM EDT, Monday, July 2, 2007. Viewed 9:40 AM EDT, Wednesday, July 4, 2007.

“Al-Queda Seeks Unity with Hamas,” BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6237314.stm, Monday, June 25, 2007, 11:57 GMT, 12:57 UK, viewed 9:31 AM EDT.

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Rehoboth Beach, Delaware

2007-07-02T01:18:00.000-04:00

It felt odd to go back to my old haunts of the 1950’s through 1970’s. I wanted to dress up as the foil man again and roam the North Shore beach, but Adam wouldn’t let me. He said I’d probably get arrested. To see and read examples of, and theory in reference to my past performances as the foil man you can go to my “Family Album,” (see links on side panel) or the following entries here on my journal: August 3, 2003, August 5, 2003, September 4, 2003, December 10, 2003, January 24, 2004, February 28, 2004, March 12, 2004, April 4, 2004.

I slathered up with number 30 DPF suntan lotion and went to the beach with Adam and Stephen one day, though Ruth and Samuel didn’t go with us. Instead, they watched us from the shady balcony of the house Adam had rented. We all drove to the state park at Cape Henlopen one day and visited Fort Miles, the WWII Observation Towers, the old military base there, and walked on the beach just before sunset. The sand dunes on Henlopen are the highest point on the coast between Cape Cod and Cape Hatteras, and the beach is one of the best-preserved natural beach areas on the Atlantic seaboard. The photograph at the top of this entry is on Cape Henlopen.

We ate in most evenings. Ruth and Adam took turns cooking in our well-stocked kitchen. However, one evening we ate out at Adriatico Restaurant. I had eaten there several times in the past during return visits to Rehoboth Beach, and always enjoyed the upscale Italian cuisine. However, this time our meal was a disaster. The drinks as always were excellent. However, my Caesar salad was warm, not room temperature but about 110 degrees Fahrenheit warm. I sent it back, and after 15 minutes, another extremely warm salad was brought to me. I think they put the salad on plates right out of the dishwasher, and the Romaine lettuce was not refrigerated. I ordered gnocchi and they were over-cooked with a glue-like pasty texture. I was so disappointed. Additionally, service was extremely slow, though normally I don’t mind that, as I like a relaxed and leisurely dinner out. I will never return to Adriatico, so why complain? Because restaurants in Rehoboth Beach are pricy with a la cart menus and typical entrees ranging from 15 to 40 dollars. At such prices, food and service ought to be excellent.

I was amazed at the exponential growth at Rehoboth Beach. Everyone wants to live at the beach, but I wonder how it's possible to maintain such expansion. Condominiums, town houses, villas, and single homes are going up on every available scrap of land. At the same time, infrastructure is not keeping up with the real estate boom. Roads are particularly impossible, the system being basically nineteenth century with the exception of Highway One, the only four-lane road near the beach, and it has traffic lights every quarter to half mile. At the same time, Rehoboth Beach is one of the most reasonable resorts to live because local taxes are extremely low. AARP rates it as one of the five most reasonable places to live in the coninental United States.

I took walks on the boardwalk and beach every day, indulging in the contrast between the beaches in Delaware and Florida. The boardwalk itself is a Northern Phenomenon. The beaches in South Florida don’t have them. The sand is finer in Delaware than that in Southeast Florida, though the Gulf side has powder white sand. Delaware sand is pale brown to beige while the sand in Southeast Florida tends to be gray, and composed in part of ground up coral and shells. The ocean itself is different, a dull opaque steel blue shading to greenish-brown in Delaware, transparent aqua to emerald green in South Florida. The Ocean up north looks cold and is cold. The atmosphere is charged with the tension between cold sea and warm land in summer. In winter the contrast reverses, the water being slightly warmer than the frozen land, and Nor’easters rip cold sea-foam into the algid and damp coastal air. On the other hand the warm Gulf Stream helps to level temperatures in Southeast Florida. The water temperature in January runs in the low to mid seventies. When frozen Canadian air does drop down to South Florida it is sucked out over the warm water and returned to the land as a moist and chilly but sub-tropical blanket that protects tender tropical vegetation from frost and freeze. These contrasts make both kinds of beaches wonderful for different reasons, and I love them both.

It would be nice to be able to live near northern beaches and southern beaches.

H-m-m-m-m-m-m, no wonder there are so many snowbirds!

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Orchard Hill Farm

2007-06-30T09:32:00.000-04:00

I think my daughter, Ruth was actually happy to see me, though she did make one of her dramatic entrances. Adam, Stephen, and I had arrived and greeted Sam in the center hall stairs when she swooped down the stairs like a bright blue and yellow field bird and said, “Daddy! How wonderful to see you.”

“Hello daughter,” I said as I hugged her and kissed her on the cheek. She made the rounds to Adam and Stephen as well, and I was surprised that she seemed to be on such good terms with Stephen, discussing favorite TV sitcom characters as Sam, Adam, and I chatted about the weather, the farm, and his experimentation with the latest apple varietals. Apparently, Ruth has accepted Adam’s mate without reservation. Perhaps my daughter has finally vanquished her demons.

As you know, dear Journal, Ruth is a wonderful cook, and we had a fantastic farm dinner that evening: a pot roast, carrots, snow peas, and lumpy bistro mashed potatoes with mixed in sautéed garlic, celery, and onion. For dessert there were two pies, rhubarb, and apple. Ruth’s piecrusts are to die for, so short they melt in your mouth, and of course, the rhubarb was home grown, as were the apples.

The next day, Thursday, Sam took me on a tour of the farm to show me the improvements made to the storage barn, and orchards. He is so proud of his large produce stand at the end of the farm lane. “It’s not a store, Isaac. I don’t want this to get out of hand. I just sell fruit and vegetables in season. I avoid using so many of the fertilizers and pesticides so that my local produce is much healthier and better for you than what you can get in the super market. I open in May and close at the end of October.”

“But, what about all the fruit you grow in my orchards?”

“The rest of the apples, peaches, and pears are still sold wholesale.”

“You know, I can’t say I miss the farming, Sam. Though I was quite successful, I enjoyed doing my art much more.”

We stayed at Orchard Hill for 4 days before moving on to Rehoboth Beach where Adam and Stephen had rented a 4-bedroom house for one week. I’ll report on our stay at the beach in my next entry, dear Journal.

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My Trip to Woodbury, New Jersey, Orchard Hill Farm, Pennsylvania, and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware

2007-06-27T09:05:00.000-04:00

The trip north was pleasant, including the flight to Philadelphia, even though I had a two-hour layover in Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. I took the opportunity take the tram from one section to another, and to walk through the terminal for exercise. I guess you know, dear Journal, that the Atlanta airport is the busiest passenger airport in the country, perhaps the world, and the hub for the southeastern United States. The crowds of people, and the distances you must cover to get to your connecting flight are both huge. Once on board the Philadelphia flight we sat in a queue waiting on the runway for half an hour.

When I arrived in Philadelphia, Adam and Stephen were there to greet me and to help me with my luggage. I had packed only one medium size bag, and a carry-on bag because I knew I would have to walk and drag my own luggage at Palm Beach International. Stephen ribbed me about it.

“What, a gay man with only two bags? You’re traveling for three weeks, Isaac! You should have at least three bags.”

“I know. I’m just not a good example to all you twinks.”

“Funny man. I’ll have you know I’m thirty, and can not possibly have been a twink for many years now.”

“Then be sure you act it.” I think I won that exchange.

I spent an entire week plus two days with Adam and Stephen until the school year ended, and Adam had finished his In Service days. During the weekend of June 9th and 10th the boys took me into Philadelphia where we did the Old City and the historical section including Ben Franklin’s house and print shop, Independence Hall, the National Constitution Museum, the Museum of the American Philosophical Society, Pennsylvania Hospital (the oldest hospital in the Nation, co-founded by Thomas Bond and Ben Franklin in 1751), and of course, we saw the liberty bell, though I had seen it several times before. Stephen wanted me to see the new location, “Liberty Bell Center,” at Sixth and Chestnut Street. It is a spectacular setting for the bell, and I was able to learn more about it than I ever had at its old resting place.

We covered a lot of territory very fast. I enjoyed the tour, but I was totally exhausted. I definitely knew what 87 years feels like, and I slept like a baby Sunday night (12 hours).

We finally left for Orchard Hill Farm and Pennsylvania Dutch Country on Wednesday, June 13th. I will leave that part of my journey for the next entry, dear Journal.

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Ethics and Religious Virtue

2007-06-23T09:15:00.000-04:00

The news media are not talking about the obvious dichotomy that exposes the folly in the Bush administration’s policies. So, upon my return to South Florida, I am!

Constantly reading that stem cell research is an ethical as well as a political issue, and that Mr. Bush vetoed stem cell research because of his religious and ethical convictions, I am totally mystified!* Our evangelical president will not kill a single embryonic cell, but he will authorize the deaths of thousands of American service personnel and tens of thousands of Iraqis in a foreign invasion he undertook for personal reasons that has since destabilized the entire Middle-east. There is no logic, no religious or ethical virtue to that dichotomy.

I have dealt with this and related ethical and Christian religious issues in a more logical and thorough manner in the past. See my entries for April 26, 2007, February 24, 2007, and February 20, 2007.

*Riechman, Deb, “Bush to Veto Stem Cell Bill Today.” AP in Comcast.news, http://www.comcast.net/news/index.jsp?cat
=GENERAL&fn=/2007/06/20/694377.html&cvqh=itn_bush, 10:00 AM EDT, Wednesday, June 20, 2007. Viewed 10:46 AM EDT.

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I’m Leaving Florida Tomorrow!

2007-06-02T09:25:00.000-04:00

Correction to My Journal Entry for May 24, 2007

Thank goodness I’m not leaving today! Palm Beach International Airport has reported over 7 inches of rain from Barry so far. I’m not complaining. We needed it. Lake Okeechobee was at the lowest recorded level ever before Barry sent all this blessed water our way.

I was going to wait until June 16th for Adam and Stephen to come to South Florida and pick me up. However, they really didn’t need to make two trips to Florida, so I have decided to seize the bull by the horns and fly to Philadelphia tomorrow. That will save my grandson and his partner the long drive to Florida after the always-difficult end to the school year. There really was no reason for them to drive twelve hundred miles down and back, as I’m perfectly capable of getting myself to PBI. I will fly out of PBI at 8:30 Sunday morning and arrive in Philadelphia at 1:30 in the afternoon (a 959 mile flight). Adam will pick me up and take me to Woodbury, New Jersey for several days as planned. I won’t be writing to you for a while, dear Journal, as I will have only spotty access to the Internet during the next two to three weeks. Wish me a wonderful vacation in New Jersey, Pennsylvania Dutch Country, and the Delaware shore.

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There’s this big Old Fashioned Steam Locomotive…

2007-05-31T10:03:00.000-04:00

Mr. Bush’s news conference last Thursday served to demonstrate once again that this supposedly unintelligent president gets everything he wants. This time the Democrats in Congress and Senate retreated from their demand that actual benchmarks be put in place for troop withdrawal, and Mr. Bush has 120 billion dollars more in funds for the Iraq war, funds that could be better put to use here at home. There are so many things that are broken in this country; New Orleans, education, health care, and our pathetic oil based infra structure.

Carl Rove must have told George to be grammatically hokey during the press conference in the White House Rose Garden. For instance, while speaking about the United States’ trade relationship with China, Bush said, "This is a complex relationship. There's areas where there's friction, and we just got to work through the friction,"*

This tired old circus would be funny if so many people weren’t being killed in Iraq, both Iraqi and American. Did Iraq invade the United States? Of course not! Iraq had nothing to do with the 9-11-01 attacks - Osama Bin Ladin and Al Qaeda did. Have we captured and or killed him? Why are we in Iraq? Why didn’t we devote a massive effort to fighting and reconstruction in Afghanistan instead of Iraq?

Could it be that OIL is more important than Al Qaeda and Bin Ladin?

Once again, I feel deserted by our government and the democratic process in the United States. It feels as though we are all traveling on a train running at full throttle, and the engineer has just died of a heart attack. Nobody knows it yet, but the train’s breaks don’t work, and the computer that helps govern traffic on the rail system just crashed.

* Hunt, Terence, AP White House Correspondent, “Bush Wants Tougher Sanctions on Iran” on comcast.news. http://www.comcast.net/news/index.jsp?cat=GENERAL&fn=/2007/05/24/671780.html, Thursday, May 24, 2007, viewed Thursday, May 24, 2007, 3:15 PM EDT.

Mitt Romney: Will the Real Flip-flopping Worm Please Stand Up?

2007-05-27T10:41:00.000-04:00

Mr. Romney changes with the wind direction! When he had to worry about politics and getting elected in Massachusetts he was all for women’s rights, gay marriage, and gun control. Now that he wants the Republican nomination for president in 2009 he is against women, gays, and wants guns. He represents the most evil aspect of the new evangelical dominated Republican Party. He will do anything to accommodate the party’s prejudiced base.*

Unfortunately, should he obtain the Republican Party nomination for president, he may be elected by our sad electorate in 2009.

“How is that possible, Isaac?” Yes, I’m talking to myself again. Let me explain.

Our nation, and the world are in the midst of an anachronistic conservative fundamentalist reaction to change. We want the confusion of the relativistic world ushered in by Freud and Einstein to vanish. We want the Nineteenth Century back. And, we of the United States of North America have the worst of this new type of religious anachronistic breed of people. And most of the rest of us aren't much better. We want the world to be as it was before Walt Whitman became the great American poet, before the word “homosexual” was invented, before the world wars, women’s rights, and emancipation. We want the world as it was before we confronted the Twentieth Century Garden of Eden.

If the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama as the 2009 Democrat Party candidate for president, we will loose the election.

“Why Isaac?”

Because, we will play into the prejudices of the culture in which we live. Most of us may not be able to admit our prejudices out loud, and we have all sorts of rationalizations for those prejudices, including being for life but against women, afraid of and hate same sex behavior, but love gay people. Espouse racial equality, but do nothing to save millions of black children from the ghetto. I am stirring the proverbial bucket of worms, I know. Never the less, these statements are true, however hurtful they are. Unfortunately Mitt Romney is the worm on top of the pile of dirt inside that bucket, and under current conditions, he is the worm that wins the next election.

*For an explanation of labeling evangelical Christians “prejudiced,” read my journal entries from May 18 and 21, 2007.

Proposed Trip North

2007-05-24T08:57:00.000-04:00

My grandson,Adam, has been reading my blog, and of course I talk to him on the telephone every week, so he knows how miserable I’ve been since Peter and I agreed not to see or talk to one another for at least one month. He said that he and Stephen, his partner, will drive down to South Florida as soon as school is out. They will stay for a week so they can enjoy the beach and clear Caribbean like ocean here, then we will drive back to New Jersey. I’ll stay with them for a week, and we’ll make a couple of day trips to Philadelphia to visit museums and the Imax Theater. After that we will drive to Lancaster County to visit Ruth and Samuel at Orchard Hill Farm. Then we will all drive in two cars to Rehoboth Beach in Delaware for a week at the beach. I still love the small town atmosphere of Rehoboth Beach, even though it gets so crowded in-season. After our week at the Delaware shore I will spend another few days in New Jersey with Adam and Stephen before they drive me back to Florida. Adam said that he and Stephen would like to drop me off and then drive to the Keys. After a week, they will return to stay with me in North Palm Beach a few days, then travel north to Orlando and visit the parks there before returning to New Jersey.

I have a-two week wait before Adam and Stephen get here. I’m so happy! I have so much to look forward to. Hopefully I will have recovered from my love sickness by the time I return to Florida, and Peter and I will be able to break silence to resume a more natural friendship in July. Who knows – perhaps he will have found a companion.

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Making a Difference

2007-05-21T09:20:00.000-04:00

Some of us don’t understanding that we are here to fulfill God’s purpose. What is God’s purpose? God created the universe and all things in it or, as some would have it, the universe is God. God would not have us destroy or knowingly let any part of that universe perish. However, mankind chooses to ignore God and pursue selfish ends. We are damaging our planet’s ecology, and putting entire species at risk. At the same time, some of us claim to choose God but revile entire nations, nationalities, races, ethnic groups, practitioners of specific faiths, and/or human sexualities in God’s name.

I wonder if God cries.

Excuse me; this threatens to descend into another religious diatribe. Rather, I would like to plug an organization that fights for justice when individuals and groups of people are treated as less than God’s own creation. That group is The Southern Poverty Law Center begun by Morris Dees and Joe Levin in 1971 – The organization under these men has fought ceaselessly against hate crimes, for racial justice, and has educated for tolerance – most recently achieving a reward of nine-million dollars for Billy Ray Johnson, the black handicapped Texan beaten and brain damaged by four white men at a late night field party in 2003.

The organization’s name suggests that the organization works only in the South. Not so - their programs such as “Teaching Tolerance” reach out to the entire nation. The Southern Poverty Law Center acts where others write proclamations. The organization is responsible for ending the involuntary sterilization of women in our welfare program (Yes, here in the USA!), dethroning the KKK, and where possible exposing and interrupting the Neo-Nazi/skinhead threat in the United States.

There are few organizations that achieve tangible goals and successful change toward eliminating hate and prejudice . Giving to The Southern Poverty Law Center is one way we can make a difference in this tortured world. I give on a yearly basis, and I believe that any person who claims to be Christian and/or moral must support The Southern Poverty Law Center in any way possible.

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Senator Fred Thompson, the Most Recent Republican Candidate for President

2007-05-18T08:05:00.000-04:00

One More Super Conservative Candidate for President of the United Prejudiced States of America

Senator Fred Thompson will be another super social conservative Republican Party candidate for President? Notice I said “social conservative.” He is being touted as a traditional Republican. He is not. The traditional Republican was financially conservative. He/she believed in balancing the budget, and states’ rights. Traditional Republicans were not necessarily socially prejudiced, which this new Republican Party and new candidate are. Let me explain. I left the Republican Party when it was obvious to me that the new Republican base of evangelical Christians became dominant. These false Christians including our current President wish to impose their beliefs on the entire country. First, they would do away with separation of church and state, and they have already made giant steps toward that goal. Example: the Federal Government now funds private church charities. Second, they would make lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people second-class citizens by law, and have made tremendous progress towards that goal, 28 states having written anti-LGBT amendments to their constitutions. Third, the new Republicans are more concerned with making women second class citizens through limiting abortion rights, and are working toward repealing Roe versus Wade. Our Supreme Court has been made over by the Bush Presidency into a socially conservative force that will help our nation retreat to a Nineteenth Century stance on most social issues and stay there well into the mid Twenty-first Century.

It is my opinion that this new kind of Republican might be more correctly referred to as an evangelical Christian fascist. I realize that I am being hurtful in so saying. So be it. The new evangelical Christian Republican needs to reexamine his/her relationship with God, because God does not reject people on the basis of their color, religion, sex, or sexuality. God created all of us, and God does not make mistakes. Therefore he loves us all; black, white, Muslim, Jew, Christian,lesbian, gay, male, female. God does not reject the evangelical Christian either. He/she accepts each and every one of us.

Okay, once again, I’ve gone completely off course with a religious diatribe instead of pursuing my original purpose, which was to discuss politics. So, I’ll segue abruptly back to politics. The only Republican candidate that remotely resembles a traditional Republican is former New York City Mayor Rudi Giuliani. Do I think he has a chance of getting the nomination? No. However, if it were possible for him to achieve the Republican Party nomination, he might win the Presidency because most moderate Republicans and Democrats would vote for him. However, I doubt such a nomination is in the cards because Rudi Giuliani does not represent the prejudiced values of the new Republicans. Senator Thompson is more likely to get the nomination since he is an anti-gay, anti-abortion; “pater familias” type modern Republican. Check his voting record.

Unfortunately, I also think we will have another Republican president in 2009, even after the failed Bush Gang of Oil Oligarchy cut throats. We Americans are anachronistic throwbacks, mired in the Nineteenth Century, and unable to participate logically in the Twenty-first. Senator Fred Thompson is the type of guy who is likely to make it to the presidency at the end of the first decade in the new century, not Rudi Giuliani. Such is the political and social condition of our prejudiced nation.

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Missing Peter

2007-05-15T07:45:00.000-04:00

I know we agreed. I know we both said we needed to stay apart. I know I believed it was necessary. I still do - but, oh my.

It’s been an entire two weeks – feels like forever.

I’m like a love sick juvenile. Pathetic.

All I need is sophomoric high school guitar players and a very repetitive melody and I’ll have a teenage love song. How sad is that?

I pick up the telephone every day with the intent to call. I hesitate with my hand above the keypad - frozen ambivalent, like an ice sculpture, the embodiment of algid indecision.

I tell myself that I will get better, but…

“Let’s do a chorus, Isaac.” Yes, I’m talking to myself again.

Talking to myself again. Oh, oh, oh.

“So, go play with your new camera Isaac. Take your mind off of the boy, now!”

Here’s another Blurry Canon photograph.

Actually this is one of the few that I’ve managed to take that is in focus with the Canon. It’s the first really rough day of surf caused by Andrea last week.

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Fire! Fire! Fire!

2007-05-11T08:36:00.000-04:00

According to The Weather Station there are/have been 220 brush fires burning in the state of Florida. It hasn’t rained but a drop or two here in North Palm Beach in 4 months. There is also a named storm spinning off the Georgia and North Florida coasts! However, there’s no such thing as global warming!

It seems to me we should be investing massively in alternative energy for two reasons. First, because we must wean ourselves off of expensive foreign oil, and second, because we must stop polluting the atmosphere with more heat absorbing carbon dioxide.

I’ve been looking into alternative energy sources, and I’ve decided to buy some General Electric stock since they are heavily into wind power. I live near Florida Power and Light, and they are also heavily invested in wind power. However, I refuse to invest in FPL since they fly their executives into and out of their headquarters every day by helicopter from all over the state. The damn thing must run six times a day. What a waste of money and energy! I am also going to buy some solar stock, specifically Evergreen Solar Incorporated currently trading at $9.44 with a range of $6.97 -$14.44. They are a small company, but they are about to build a new 150 million dollar plant in Massachusetts.

Sub-tropical Storm Andrea

Back to the Old Camera

As I said, sub-tropical storm Andrea has been spinning out there in the Atlantic without giving us any rain. However, it has generated huge surf here in South Florida. I drove up to blowing rocks on Jupiter Island yesterday and took photographs. Gorgeous! I’ve included one here.

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I’ve completed my camera tests.

2007-05-08T08:39:00.000-04:00

I've shot three of several scenes at the beach using the various settings as outlined my May 5th entry, downloaded the images, and compared them. I'm now more confused than ever. Sometimes the preset "Landscape" camera setting takes the best picture of the same scene. Other times the "A-DEP" setting works best, while in still other situations, the "Av" setting takes the photo with the best depth of field. I can't take three pictures of every location/object/portrait I like in the attempt to get the best image - the scene will often change before I can complete such a procedure. For instance if I’m trying to capture a crashing wave, it will not stop itself and wait for me to take three separate pictures in the attempt to get one that has the depth of field I need to capture foreground, middle ground, and background.

Damn!

Solution?

I’ve discovered a Sony 10.2 mega pixel camera. I think I’m going to return the Cannon and buy the Sony.

I have included an image taken with the camera (above). It is the best of the three taken of several breaking waves created by the nor’easter off the coast of Georgia, yesterday. That storm is still creating flooding and beach erosion all the way down the coast to Miami today.

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My New Toy

2007-05-05T16:24:00.000-04:00

Last week I bought a Canon Rebel Eos XTI, 10.1-mega pixel camera. The Canon Website says that the camera is easy to use. However, I’ve been trying to figure out how to use it for a week now. It is not user friendly. My old Sony 5 mega pixel camera was. So far I’ve shot over 500 pictures trying to understand how to use the darn thing, and I have several seemingly unsolvable problems. First, I cannot decrease the opening of the lens (the f stop) in order to increase depth of field while the camera is in “Landscape” mode. There is another setting that will allow me to go to f 22 and higher, but not with the “Landscape” setting. I know there must be ways to do this, it just doesn’t work the way an old-fashioned 35 mm SLR camera use to. Second, when I shoot a landscape or seascape, the foreground is always slightly out of focus. That is why I wish to have more control over depth of field in this setting. Third, there are so many controls that I cannot hope to remember all of them until I have played with the camera under various conditions and in various situations during the next few months, which means that I will not be able to return the camera if I decide I do not
like it.

So, I’ve decided to create some study sheets with various shooting problems outlined with possible solutions. I’ll pour over the instruction manual, which is about 200 pages, and use the sheets which will include a blank grid to write in data concerning camera settings, ISO, shutter speed, f-stop that I am able to control, as well as other settings using the camera’s presets. I will take the camera to the beach this afternoon and set it up with my tripod so all the pictures will be of the exact same scene. I’ll shoot and number each image, and note the settings. I can then download the images to my computer and make comparisons to see if I am able to gain control over the blurred image problem, while keeping the depth and breadth of color the camera’s preset “landscape” setting allows. Unfortunately, this solution to my dilemma will take at least several days to accomplish, and meanwhile I must wait to get serious with the camera.

Additionally, I use the camera as an aid to drawing - that is I shoot objects and scenes that I can edit/montage in order to draw/paint them. So I shall have to postpone that function of the camera until after I have solved these basic camera-setting problems.

Ah well, such is life , or as a dear friend use to say, "Asi es la vida."

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Let’s Argue

2007-05-02T09:39:00.000-04:00

I marvel at the confrontation between Mr. Bush and Congress over funding and troop withdrawal in Iraq for it seems to me that the war never should have happened in the first place. And, I can’t help myself – I wonder what the world would look like today if the actual winner of the 2000 presidential election had been allowed to take office by our nation’s supreme court. In fact, I believe our system of government failed in 2000. Leaving out any accusations against (at the time) Jeb Bush’s Florida, but considering the possibility that the count in Florida was actually a few votes in George Washington Bush’s favor, the Electoral College was proven untrustworthy in the Twenty-first Century United States of America, since Al Gore actually won the popular vote. Additionally, based on past reading - specifically “None Dare Call it Stolen,” by Mark Crispin Miller, in the August 2005 issue of Harpers - the accuracy of the 2004 presidential election may also be questionable. If that should actually be the case, this disastrous chapter in our history is/was totally unnecessary, and Congress would not have to be battling the American President over funding to support our troops’ attempts to end a foreign civil war that we ourselves caused.

Ah, poop!

I’m tired of it. I want this idiot and his rich oil oligarchy cronies gone, and it just isn’t “gon-na” happen. I hope our country is able to survive them and live happily ever after, but I have my doubts.

I must find something else, happy to think on. This idiocy totally depresses me.

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The Iraq War failure isn’t even front page news.

2007-04-29T11:20:00.000-04:00

It’s on the third page of the Palm Beach Post today. The water shortage and real estate disaster take up the front and 2nd pages. The Bush/Cheney oil oligarchy administration failure is secondary when put up against the problems of the wealthy members of their class in this rich county. Perhaps I’m being unfair. The water shortage is a problem for us all, even though the rich folks here use 350 times as much water as the average citizen. And, Democrats in Congress did give Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq back in 2002. Fools!

I thought I’d just remind myself about the real problem. All else is trickle down effect. It’s like a house of cards, or a row of dominos. Take one out and the rest collapses/falls with it. Frightening!

Brief Summary - Statistics

Estimates of Iraqi dead range from 50,000 to 90,000
3346 Americans dead
24,919 Americans wounded

Whether you blame the United States or the Iraqis themselves for Iraqi deaths, we started their civil war. Our simple-minded Neoconservative invasion had nothing to do with global terrorism, and everything to do with OIL and our gluttony. God forgive us! This entire affair is wrong headed, America! We're stuck with George Bush for another 631 days, and I’ll bet this country elects another Republican president in 2009.

I’ve lost all faith in Americans' ability to make intelligent decisions.

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Thinking about God, Morality, and the Iraq War

2007-04-26T08:08:00.000-04:00

The Philosophical/ Spiritual Rational that Influences my diurnal existence including beliefs about myself and others

1. Mankind has attained the gift of intelligence, and so he is a part of the universe that knows of itself. If he/she should be truly intelligent, man/woman-kind will understand that his/her perception of the universe will be colored by the very act of his/her being within a particular culture, and his/her individual experience, and thus may not be accurate. Such alteration will also occur when perceiving the thought of other men, and/or most tragically, when perceiving God.

2. Being a moral person and believing in God do not necessarily create the same results. First, because they are two different things, and may act in conjunction with one another or independently. Second, because a belief in God does not necessarily lead to a moral life. Why is that? Most definitions of morality are based in conducting a virtuous life, and few of us would include harming others, and/or animal life or harming the earth itself as virtuous. More often than not, religion and/or God are used as an excuse to defend all of the - not so virtuous - actions listed above, including the current war in Iraq.

3. At the same time, immoral actions are similar to evil actions. Why? While I know that the universe and God exist within and without my person, I also know that evil exists within and without. Why? Because, when I misuse my perception of the universe and/or God to defend actions that will harm any part of this earth and/or any being on it, sapient or not, I am acting in a manner that most of mankind would agree is both evil and immoral.

4. Thus, I also know that evil and immorality coexist when any other person uses his/her perception of the universe and/or God in defense of harmful actions to this earth or any/ all things on it. I know that evil is just as recognizable as immorality.

5. These four thoughts seem redundant because they are connected. They may also seem to operate independently of an actual God, who exists in the universe. In part that is because I believe one cannot separate God from the universe. It is also because I am trying to think in a way that allows me to separate religion from spirituality because religion is so often used as an excuse to do damage to others, to life in general, and to the earth. I do not think religion is evil. However, I do believe that mankind uses incorrect perception of God and the universe to drive immoral religious acts and war.

6. I also know that a mortal and fallible being such as myself cannot know God completely. For, who am I, that God would choose me to be the vessel of his desires, so I will guard against immoral omnipotent thoughts concerning God’s wishes for mankind and/or this earth. However, I believe that God would have me lead a moral life. Therefore it is not difficult to know when my own behavior is ungodly.

7. As corollary to the above, I will also hold in great suspicion any man or woman who claims to speak personally with God, or who says that he/she knows exactly what God intends for us. I believe such a person to be immoral and evil. That is why the people of Judea in the Roman Empire asked Jesus of Nazareth to produce miracles to prove his claim to devine origin.

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Peter and I

2007-04-22T23:24:00.000-04:00

We agreed to take a break, so I won’t be seeing Peter for a few weeks. He is going to play the field, look around – and be very active but safe sexually. I made him promise to explore as many young hot men as he can. I’m sure he’ll be a heart breaker. I hope he finds a hot young, brilliant, handsome man who is perfectly tuned to his person.

What am I saying?

There I go talking to myself again. Seriously, I must let go. I must allow Peter to find someone his own age. I know that it will happen – probably very fast. They will be forming a line. Damn!

I’m not upset! Really, I’m not.

Right.

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How to Stop School Shootings?

2007-04-20T10:36:00.000-04:00

Okay, now we know that Cho was a mental mess. Of course, he had to be. However, to blame Virginia Tech as negligent for not anticipating his rampage - most of our newscasters and pundits seem to be doing just that - is wrongheaded. Why? First, even the people who lived with Cho had no idea he was capable of such horrendous behavior. Second, the law protects a student’s right to privacy; schools are not even allowed to disclose grades to the student’s family without his/her permission. Third, the same privacy legislation prevents a school from informing others of a student’s mental problems except when specifically given permission by the student, or his/her family. Fourth, some have suggested that the school should have had Cho put into a mental institution. In order to do that, he would have had to be declared mentally incompetent, and such a declaration is extremely difficult to obtain. Two Psychiatrists must sign the form, as must the patient and/or a family member.

The national news pundits have seized on the easy but incorrect answer. Virginia Tech is not to be blamed for Cho Seung Hui’s acherontic berserker behavior. Rather, we all are responsible for the over 500 documented incidents of school shootings. We have allowed our entire society to spiral downward and out of control. We all accept violence as a part of our daily existence. For instance, most of us did not notice this week that Tuesday was the worst day for death and mayhem in Iraq since President Bush’s latest plan was put into operation there. In 2002 we accepted our President’s declaration of invasion of Iraq without provocation – Saddam Hussein may have been a maniacal and evil dictator, but he had done nothing to the United States - and we didn’t bat an eye. This very week, we have denied a woman’s right to an abortion even when the developing child threatens the mother’s life. Instead, we claim the child’s right to life trumps the mother’s. We accept a type of Christian that believes God has ordained that we should kill 60,000 Iraqis and 3000 Americans. We expect that our neighbors and/or family members to own guns. Hoodlums and criminals are better armed than our police forces. Common courtesy has degenerated into road-rage. People don’t even say "excuse me" when they run carts into one another in the super market. Images of violence seem to multiply exponentially in our media. Worse still, we all seem to hang onto such images with a passion that supersedes logic.

What are we to do to begin to change this atmosphere of violence that permeates our culture? First, logic tells me that we must make it more difficult to obtain arms. Yes, we have the constitutional right to bare arms. Nevertheless, shouldn’t we have to demonstrate a logical reason for owning weapons - a hunting license for instance? Second, if each of us had to show a certain amount of intelligence (pass a test) before we were entrusted with owning a weapon, some accidents with guns might be prevented. Third, perhaps we all should be required to demonstrate a fair level of maturity and social conscience through a psychological examination before we are allowed to bare arms. Fourth, we must create a more civil society, one in which manners are the norm, not the exception. Fifth, as we do not wish to suspend the right to free speech, all students must be prepared for life in a civil society through education. For instance, there should be required courses that help students to understand the purpose of the arts, as well as signification through symbols and signs used in the arts, both high and low. Most importantly we must end poverty. If our youth and young adults know they can be successful in a society that aims to help all its citizens toward success of one kind or another they will not participate and/or perpetrate violence.

I realize these fundamental objectives will be extremely hard to achieve, and that each encompasses an entire subset of smaller goals and processes. It will be necessary to create a process that will saturate our leaders, people, and institutions with these goals. I also realize that the alternative is more of the same. Worse, the alternative can only be the escalation of student shootings, of many more lost lives and so much lost potential.

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A Culture Permeated by MALE Violence, War, and Guns

2007-04-18T11:23:00.000-04:00

I’m taking a break from my personal life to look at problems associated with the latest mass murder of students by a single maverick male.

Last fall those innocent Amish children were murdered in their school by a berserker, and now, the horror at Virginia Tech. “Columbine” is an infamous name that needs no clarification. Today our public schools are on constant lock-down with metal detectors at the doors, and resident police. There have been over 500 incidents of school shooting recorded, all of which occurred during the past 40 years with 2 exceptions. It is time for our society to attempt to make some fundamental changes in the broad cultural conditions that encourage boys and men to kill in mass.

Yes, boys and men. There are no recorded incidents in which a woman or girl has picked up a gun or guns and mass murdered students. I believe this phenomenon is a freakish perversion of the hunter instinct, the prehistoric program to provide food for the family/tribe. Unfortunately studies dwell on other aspects of school violence. A Secret Service Study states that profiling a “type” of school shooter is dangerous because they do not fit our preconceptions. They do not typically come from broken homes. Many were “joiners” with good friends. Of course, it is possibly to early to compare the MALE responsible for this most recent event at Virginia Tech with the perpetrators of past events, though he seems to have been more of an introverted loner than many of the past perpetrators. As far as I know, there are no studies that specifically identify this as a MALE problem.

Not one of us can deny that these are violent times in which we live. Incidents of genocide abound. Global terrorism is a fact. We are fighting a war that our MALE president initiated against what he mistakenly described as a MALE dictator with WMD and connections to the MALE gang of international terrorists, Al Qaeda. MALE dominated gangs and gang warfare dominate City streets, and increasingly suburban streets. Cultural imagery is dominated by violence as well. The Hans Solo doll of Star Wars fame was, when first released a normal, well muscled MALE. Today, he is a hyper steroidal grotesque with arms bigger than a normal man’s legs. We are all familiar with this litany of violence that includes television and motion picture crashing vehicles, guns, blood and guts splashing and spilling across both big and little screen.

In a society in which criminal and terrorist alike are armed with better weapons than are our police we as a people must begin to take responsibility for this MALE dominated violence. We must begin to make fundamental changes in the way our culture thinks about and processes violent and peaceful events alike. We must target men as perpetrators of this perverted hunting instinct and attempt to understand how individuals who lead seemingly normal lives become murdering maniacs. We must do the work necessary in human psychology to understand and help MALES to know and understand the violent perversion of the hunter instinct that moves malevolently to damage us in this first decade of the Twenty-first Century. If we do not do these things mass murders of students by MALES will continue to take place on a regular basis.

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Peter Drops a Bomb! (Part III)

2007-04-15T16:27:00.000-04:00

Continued from April 12, 2007

The Infinite Beach and the Eternal Ocean

Peter said, “Isaac, I’m falling in love with you, and that just doesn’t make sense.”

I stared out at the Atlantic, shocked! I hadn’t expected such an admission from Peter. I knew how I felt, but I didn’t think it was possible that this magnificent - in every way I could imagine - young man might feel the same as I did.

Isaac, you haven’t said anything.”

“I’m stunned,” I said.

“You’re angry with me?”

“No, Just amazed, and perplexed, I mean, I’m eighty-seven years old, Peter. You are a handsome young man, I’m tempted to say ‘beautiful,’ but I know that I’m using language that a young hunk such as yourself might find disagreeable.”

“I’m flattered, but I hope you think of me in other ways than that.”

“You know I do. You have been my intellectual companion this past winter and the fall before that. You are a mature young man of character, and these things more than your physical beauty are what make you so attractive.”

“You flatter me.”

“Yes, but I’m being honest too. I am simply describing the way I perceive you, Peter. And now, you tell me that you may be falling in love with me. I am both happy and appalled.”

“But how can you say you are appalled?”

“Precisely for the same reason as you, “ ‘it just doesn’t make sense.’ ”

“It doesn’t.”

“Any why is that?”

“We are two generations apart. I’m the same age as your grandson.”

“Exactly. I have been crazy with my feelings of love for you these past six months. I have struggled to contain them, bury them, destroy them…”

“But, why?”

“Because they are not right.”

“I was afraid you would think that I am mad.”

“We both are.” I paused, feeling caliginous, as though my world had burned to cinerescent ruins. I bent in my rickety manner to pick a shell up off the beach. I threw it a few feet into the crystal clear ocean, watching it sink below the surface in a zigzag pattern, an aqueous feather slowly floating down to the ancient reef. The reef itself appeared as a refracted serpentine image beneath each passing wave and a single gliding Pelican suddenly punched through the surface, plunging toward the reef as it chased dinner. My heart was heavy, sinking with that shell beneath the ocean’s surface because I knew the time that lay between the advent of Peter’s life and my own was like the surface of water before me, an elastic skin that stretched to the horizon separating two worlds. In fact, I have instructed Peter to read this entry on line with the intent that he might understand some of my feelings on this impossible love of ours.

“I don’t want to lose you.”

“You won’t. You will always be present here.” I touched myself on the chest and forehead purposefully, then lightly touched Peter there also.

“But you won’t always be here.” He waved his arm and hand indicating the vast ocean before us, and the beach stretching until it vanished at two points one to the north, and one to the south.

“So, you see the problem. In all likelihood, I shall leave this earth very soon, Peter, while you shall remain the span of an entire lifetime. You should find someone who is close to you in age so that the two of you may walk upon these sands for a long time.”

We both stood silently looking to the horizon. I felt tears start. They followed a devious path over my wrinkled cheeks to become drops of salty sea at the corners of my mouth.

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Peter Drops a Bomb! (Part II)

2007-04-12T13:01:00.000-04:00

Continued from April 9, 2007

Sea Grapes

We parked the car at the Juno Beach Pavilion, an octagonal wood structure with benches and open-air beach shower at the top of the sea grape crowned dunes. A short path runs between coconut palms and expensive shorefront real estate to one of the few natural beaches left in this area. A senior citizen sat reading an Isaac Asimov science fiction novel on a bench in the pavilion as we passed on wood treads that angled down to the beach, and a limpid sea breeze tugged at the wisps of hair on the top of my head. I glanced up and down the beach as I walked, looked over the aqua water sunlight dazzling the eyes and sparkling off gentle rolling waves.

Peter said, “Let’s walk down toward the golf course.” There is a 2-mile section of beach behind a seaside golf course with no houses, condominiums or other structures on it. Sea grapes cover the dunes between the golf course and ocean creating a natural barrier between the civilized greens and beach. Occasionally a wild coconut palm peaks up through the grapes, and pelicans often fly by in lazy formation over our heads as we walk there. The ancient reef is clearly visible below the surface of the water, and portions of it peak through the beach sand. I have taken many pictures here because the light changes constantly creating a soft contrast of shadow and striking tableau as it picks out a single person walking ahead on the beach. It is one of the most tranquil spots I know. That afternoon we had taken off our shoes and were walked quietly at water’s edge, gentle waves lapping at our toes. Peter seemed about to talk several times but did not. I allowed him space because I thought it better to allow him to struggle with whatever demons possessed him, and because I enjoyed the sea-tranquility induced calm lapping quietly in my mind. It felt as though I floated through the intense sub-tropical sunlight.
“Finally, after many long minutes I decided to let Peter off the hook and said, “you seem so preoccupied.”

“Yes,” he said, followed by silence.

“Peter?”

“I don’t know how to...”

“Just say it.”

“We’re, well, we’re…”

“What?” I asked, concern causing my voice to shake in old man fashion. After hesitating, he stopped walking and poked at a seashell with his left foot. Finally, he said.

“We’re too close.”

“Meaning.”

“I’m worried.”

“Because we’re close?”

“Yes.”

“Why does that worry you.”

“Good God, Isaac, I’m just barely twenty-four. You’re eighty-seven!”

“I know.”

“Well…”

“So far, all you’re managing is to make an extremely ageist statement.”

“I think you know what I’m talking about.”

“Perhaps you should make your statement a bit more clear, Peter.” I know I sounded angry, and I know I was reacting harshly because I have been struggling with the same issue.

“Isaac, I’m falling in love with you, and that just doesn’t make sense.”

to be continued.

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Peter Drops a Bomb! (Part I)

2007-04-09T08:48:00.000-04:00

Yesterday Peter called and asked if I wanted to go for another walk on the beach.

“Silly boy,” I said. “Of course I want to go for a walk on the beach.”

“Good,” he said. “I’ll be right over.”

“Give me fifteen minutes,”

“Sure. See you then.”

“Okay.”

I thought the invitation was sudden, and I wondered if anything were wrong. I had no idea what was actually about to transpire. I changed clothes to an old pair of genes I’d cut off below the knees many years ago. They are about the same length as those almost pedal-pusher length baggy pants worn down below the butt crack the “wanna-bes” wear. I swear I had no idea in the 80’s when I cut them off that the baggy painter pants would be so perfect for the year 2007 – except when I wear them I look like an 87 year old “wanna-be” 25 “wanna-be.” Such irony!

Peter knocked on my door at precisely 15 minutes, and I answered the door with trusty digital camera draped around my neck, and bottle of water in my left hand. “Let’s go,” I said as I pushed him out of the entrance, pulled the door to and locked it. “I can’t wait to see that water. It’s calm today, and the sky is so blue. It should be spectacular.” Peter grabbed my arm in order to steer me to the elevator, but I pulled away and said. “I’m feeling so good today. I want to walk down the stairs.” Peter flinched a bit, and I realized I’d been a bit abrupt. “I didn’t mean to pull away so suddenly, Peter. I’m just having one of my really good days. I feel like I’m seventy again instead of one-hundred-and-ten!”

“That’s fine. You sure you don’t want some support going down those steps.”

“No. I’m absolutely perfect.” Indeed, I practically sailed down the stairs despite bones creaking and crunching in knees, ankles, and hips. After a short walk to the car, we drove to the beach in Peter’s used BMW convertible, top down, and I felt as though I were a 20 something, just like Peter, out for a joy ride with my best friend.

O-o-o-o-ps, the doorbell ringeth. I’ll continue this next time, dear Journal.

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Illegal and Legal Immigrants Strengthen Us

2007-04-06T14:22:00.000-04:00

Two days ago Peter (once again) drove me to the beach for one of our walks. The ocean was a deep emerald green, crystal clear and lake-like. As we walked a perky young blond “highschooler” came up to us and asked, “Are you vacationing here?” I responded that we both lived in the area though I was an import from Pennsylvania. She had a slight German accent, so I added – “Actually I’m from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania with a huge population of Amish, Mennonite, and other Pennsylvania Dutch 4th to 8th generation German immigrants.”*

“Do you speak German,” she said.

“No, unfortunately I don’t, but some of my family do.”

“I’ve been to Lancaster, and some of the Pennsylvania Dutch speak German that is almost indistinguishable from modern Black Forest German.”

“Amazing, isn’t it.”

We chatted on for a few minutes and I discovered that she was with a group of foreign exchange students who were on their spring/Easter break and visiting Florida in a large group. They had been to Orlando and Disney World. She was enthralled with the warm, sunny, and hot South Florida weather and wondered - “Is it sunny all the time?”

I explained that this was the dry season, and that as spring progressed into summer we would have more rain. I complimented her on her beautiful English, and she told me “everyone in Germany speaks English as well or better than she because it was taught as a second language. I made a statement to the affect that we Americans are so provincial because we don’t bother with a 2nd and / or 3rd language, and so limit ourselves in our intercourse with other peoples. The extremely precocious young lady gave me her thoughts on that subject. “Well, with all the Spanish speaking people immigrating to the United States from Latin and South America you will be forced as a nation to have a second language, Spanish. Perhaps, once you realize that has already happened, you will put more emphasis on learning a 2nd and/or 3rd language.”

That started me to thinking about the supposed illegal alien immigrant problem in a new light. For instance, it is because of legal and illegal immigration that the cities of the Northeast corridor are no longer decreasing in population. Also, we have workers willing to work for less than minimum wages – something absolutely necessary if we are to be competitive with rising third world nations. Additionally, we can take back our outsourced jobs if we are willing to create a new category of wage earners, and to make the financial investment necessary to update our failing infrastructure and factories. Yes, we have a new population of people that the middle class white / protestant and Catholic majority despise because these folks are willing to work two and three unskilled jobs, whatever it takes to be on track to the “American dream.”

The latest influx of Latino population may threaten to become the new majority according to census figures - still another reason for the middle class majority to feel threatened. However, our culture is already changing. Latin rhythms abound in popular music. Spanish is already the second language within our borders. Many second-generation first-wave Mexican Cuban, and Puerto Rican immigrants have moved up and into the middle class. These American families are often bi-lingual, hard working, church going citizens that often vote Republican.

In fact, I have often wondered – Why do so many first and second-generation Latino citizens vote Republican when that party stands against immigration, legal and illegal? Why do they vote Republican when that is the party least likely to approve and take the measures necessary to protect and help them on their journey to the American Dream? Why, indeed, to answer rhetorically, because for some reason they, as do most of us, identify the notion that hard work will automatically lead to success with standard Republican Party ideology. We forget that the Democratic Party is the party most willing to help in circumstances where the dispossessed including the new legal or illegal immigrant is unable to take advantage of upward mobility because he/she has dark skin (yes, prejudice exists!), lacks English language skills, lacks work skills in a technology based economy, has no green card, and no money.

However, this brobdingnagian Latino population has arrived and has already caused our nation to be increasingly Latin including the fact that, as I stated early on, Spanish has become our second language. If you are inclined to question this last, just look at our ubiquitous direction, construction and work signage. “WET FLOOR, PISO MOJADO.” “CLOSED SIDEWALK, LA ACERA ES CERRADA,” “ENTRANCE, ENTRADA.” “EXIST, SALIDA.”

I have one more question. Why can’t we, whatever our national origins and arrival dates, relax and help new arrivals to build constructive lives? To do so will only create new jobs, increase our national productivity, grow the economy, and make the nation stronger. To do otherwise is divisive, counterproductive, and foolish.

*I always think of a generation as 30 years because it takes that long for a person to become financially independent in the Twenty-first Century.

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Senator Harry Reid and the Democrats are Making a Mistake

2007-04-03T09:55:00.000-04:00

The sun shines brightly on the White House Rose Garden on this beautiful spring morning. In a few minutes the President will speak with reporters concerning the fight over funding for the Iraq War between he and the Democratic leaders of both Congress and Senate.

In an effort to increase the pressure on Mr. Bush to place limits on the Iraq war, Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid has now proposed a new bill that would pull the purse strings tight in March of 2008, all the while knowing he does not have enough Democratic votes to take the two-thirds majority necessary to carry his plan. The proposed bill is a mistake in strategy. It is guaranteed to backfire – at least short term because it absolutely provides both Mr. Bush and Vice President Cheney the ammunition they need, once again, to claim that Democrats do not support our troops. I know that such a statement is a stale, old and pathetic attempt to sully the patriotism of Democrats - but it works.

Unfortunately Mr. Bush, and Mr. Cheney are not just schoolyard bullies as so many of us picture them. They are upper crust, old money American aristocracy - yes, Virginia, there is still such a thing – with ties to the largest corporate interests in the world, and the most powerful evangelical protestant churches in the United States. Their strategist Carl Rove is the most brilliant of his kind. He and the neo-con thugs of this administration know that once again, Democrats play into their hands with this latest attempt to stall the inevitable. The Democratic majority in both houses will look foolish, and inept when they lose once again.

Right now, George Washington Bush (Ye gods, what a name!) is preparing in the oval office, surrounded by his supporters, going over notes. Someone is saying, “George, remember it’s A-may-ri-cah, not Amurca.” I can almost hear Mr. Bush gloating as he says to Mr. Cheney something like, “We are gon-na git-um.” And, I think he means all of the following - the oil, Iraq, the money and American Democrats.

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Sharks are not predators of humans, just fish.

2007-04-01T10:09:00.000-04:00

In my last entry, Peter had just said that he had something other than going clubbing in mind, and I asked what that was…

“A visit to and walk on the beach.”

“Sounds fantastic.”

“Bring your camera. Surfs up. The water and clouds are beautiful.”

“Are you going to wear a suit so you can go in.”

“No, the wind is still blasting out of the east as it has been for a week now, and it’s bringing in the nasty man-o-war guys. There have also been shark sightings all week. Seems they’re headed north along the coast.”

“Sharks aren’t dangerous.”

“Unless you happen to be in the way when they’re chasing their food – then, snap and you’ve lost a limb that the fellow may spit out because he doesn’t like your flavor.”

“Okay, I’ve got the picture. Still, I’ll bet we see people in that heavy surf because the water temperature is up to 76 degrees, and the snow birds like me think that’s incredibly warm.”

“Probably, but I plan on walking in bare feet through the surf and sand down to the ancient reef, soaking in the rays, and taking some pictures. Bring your camera.”

I did take the camera along, and I’ve included a couple of the photographs here. It was a beautiful day with puffy cumulous clouds blowing in off the aqua and green ocean. The sun is getting very strong now, like mid to late summer sun at home in Pennsylvania, but stronger because the air is cleaner here. South Florida has no industry other than taking care of us old folks the Yankee snowbirds – frisking our pockets clean is more like it - but thay's another story (see entries for 01-14-07 & 02-14-07).

There I go talking to myself again. Ah well, Peter and I had a great afternoon despite my grumpy disposition. Seems I find it impossible to be grumpy when I’m with him. We laugh a lot and the intellectual content of our conversation tends to be in the rather rarified upper troposphere.

I’ve spoken of Peter’s good looks in the past. Sunday he wore only a long pair of shorts, and walked on the beach bare foot so as to get some color. He often splashed through the edge of the boiling surf, and I had trouble appreciating the beauty of the beach, ocean, and clouds because I couldn’t help but drink in the magnificence of his extremely well made corporeal self. I think he knew that my eyes and camera constantly wondered back to him because he often struck a pose and I took many photographs of him walking, running, and playing on the beach, none of which shall appear here, dear journal.

I couldn’t help but dwell on the fleeting beauty of youth, so often compared to the bloom of a rose because of its short-lived splendor - and, I stood envying the youth, wanting it all back again. Yes, I wanted to possess him as well, another way to incorporate that golden splendor within my own ageing and failing body. Like a predatory vampire, I wanted to drink of that beauty and possess it completely, however fleetingly.

I do not glory in that desire however, recognizing its predatory implications. I love Peter because of who he is inside, the quality of his character, his sweet disposition, the way he cares for others, his intelligence. The physical body is the container for all that – fleeting God-given blessing. The young must be allowed to enjoy their physical strength and beauty thoroughly as it will be gone in an instant. An old man may envy magnificence and vigor. However, a love based on that envy is something to be spurned, and the fire must be dampened.

I’m not sure how to live with these thoughts and feelings, but I will until God sees fit to call me away from them.

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On the Phone with Peter

2007-03-29T12:08:00.000-04:00

I have a telephone that makes the old-fashioned “ring” sound because it reminds me of old times at the farm, my family, and that most of my life was spent in the Twentieth Century. Anyway,the telephone woke me up early Sunday morning. After a few rings I picked up the receiver, and said“Hello.”

“Isaac?" Peter said.

“No, it’s Vincent," I said, laughing despite myself. "I’m the guy Isaac brought home from the disco last night.”

“Hah! There are no discos anymore, Isaac. People go clubbing these days.”

“Smart ass!”

“I’ll take you clubbing sometime, if you want.”

“No you won’t.”

“Why not?”

“I went with Adam and Stephen a couple of times. I enjoyed watching all the young guys dance, but I couldn't participate because I got too tired.”

“That’s not what I heard.”

“Okay, so I danced once. I thought I’d have heart failure right there on the dance floor and the boys would have had to call an ambulance and rush me to the hospital, and…”

“A bit dramatic, don’t you think?"

“So, I won’t dance. Don’t ask me.” I confess I sang the old song to Peter on the telephone. My voice wavers with that old-man-raspy-voice quality that young actors use to great advantage when portraying us old farts.

“I had something a bit more sedate in mind anyway.”

“Like?”

To be continued.

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Passing: Continued, a Book Review

2007-03-24T10:29:00.000-04:00

Kroeger, Brooke. Passing, When People Can’t Be Who They Are. Cambridge: Perseus Books Group, 2003.

Through six detailed biographies Brooke Kroeger examines “passing” as a common phenomenon in our contemporary culture. Though the typical conception of passing is that of black posing as white, the author looks at passing accomplished for many reasons including combinations of religious, ethnic, racial, and sexuality. Referring to both the 1934 and 1959 film versions of Fanny Hurst’s “Imitation of Life” the author states the following. “Despite the different plots, the moral in each version of the story is the same. Passing, if not altogether bad, is at least a really bad idea, and society, or life itself, will punish the “passer” for breaking the rules. A “Peola,” a passer, in fiction or in real life, has never been a good thing to be. “(Brooke, 2) Of course, the author is talking of black passing as white whereas I am most concerned with gay passing as straight, not quite the same thing, but similar enough to draw many parallels between the two. For instance, Ms. Kroeger goes on to say that the actual culprit in both versions of the story is racism, not passing, and it’s fair to say that the real culprit in gays passing as straight is intolerance (heterosexism), not passing.

“The prevalence of passing today really shouldn’t have surprised me. As scholars tell us, wherever there is prejudice and preconception, there is passing, and of prejudice and preconception we as yet have no lack.”(Brooke, 4)

So what harm is there in passing? Kroeger’s intention, at least in part, is to challenge the negative views the general culture has of passing through biographical research into the lives of six contemporary persons who have passed. She includes commentary from psychologists and other experts, and juxtaposes these with actual tragic passing sagas such as the motion picture "Boys Don’t Cry" the story of the murder of Brandon Tina.

The LGBT community as a sub culture also maintains the negative view held by the larger culture, the belief that a LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered) person will lose his/her self-respect, that he/she will have low self-esteem, and that other maladjustments will be manifest. It is also the general belief within the gay community that “coming out” is the only remedy to the alternative passing life style of dysfunction, though many (perhaps millions) in small town and rural America still find it necessary to protect themselves from family and a religious culture that will turn on them if they should drop the pretense.

Kroeger describes passing as “performance,” a description that might be applied to all as we place our personality before others (by way of Judith Butler) in that we “perform” those parts of ourselves that we know will be best received whether by those around us, and/or the critical self within.

In her biography of David Matthews a young man who passes as white and Jewish, Kroeger proffers “the whys and wherefores of being someone with an ambiguous personal presence, one that offers the right to float and a shore pass for both sides of the gully between the black identity he has no choice about and the white and Jewish identities he can so ably “perform.”(Brooke, 16)

Again we can draw some obvious parallels between passing (in this case double passing) for color / Jewish ethnicity and homosexual passing for heterosexual, as the homosexual most often has no choice about his/her sexuality (despite evangelical Christian dogmatism), but can perform as a heterosexual in public and the work place. However, a major difference exists between passing for another race versus passing straight for gay. That difference being that our families make assumptions concerning our identity – that we are, like them, black, or white, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, but always we are believed to be, and taught to perform as heterosexual. Those who cannot perform the part are labeled, queer, dyke, butch, fem, bitch, dolly, pansy, and so on. They are ostracized and risk emotional and physical harassment at home and school. Thus, the gay person feels he/she must cover his/her sexuality and pass for “straight.” If the performance is successful, he/she is given all the perks his family, society and culture normally bestow. The youth is taught that passing is necessary. He/she is encouraged in the disguise whereas a charade to disguise race is under most circumstances extremely difficult if not ludicrous for all who pass the passer “know” despite the mannerisms, accent, body language, and other learned characteristics the poser manifests.

I have found Kroeger’s book to be informative and intriguing, if a bit frightening - Frightening because I am convinced that in all but the major cities, and/or in many careers it may be just as necessary to pass as in the past. The book demonstrates the fluidity of identity, and I fear that many - as I was for most of my adult life - live a performed reality, an actor on a stage, isolated from much of objective reality, as well as their own innermost persons.

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Artworks About Passing: Sanctuary – 1950’s to 1970’s

2007-03-21T10:17:00.000-04:00

I promised in my last entry that I would display some of the artwork I created during the time I was passing as heterosexual, and here they are with a brief description of my studio at Orchard Hill Farms. Sadly that studio no longer exists.

I kept my attic studio, “Sanctuary,” under lock and key much to Rebecca and Ruth’s consternation. I had to because all my visual and written fantasies including the pencil drawings of semi-nude Amish men and ink drawings of male anatomy were there. The Varnastrama journals in which I wrote about visits to an alternate reality, where men fought with outer-space-aliens for domination of a world in which the Roman Empire never collapsed were scribbled in black bound journals and kept on a shelf next to my rickety old desk. I also processed my photographs about the silver foil man in a tiny dark room in a closet at the back of that studio space. The foil man was my alter ego who reflected the life and light around him, but was isolated from that life by his metallic shell Thus, Sanctuary was the place in which I attempted through my art to deal with the strains of my secret double life.

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Being Gay, Passing - God and My Middle Years

2007-03-17T11:05:00.000-04:00

From 1930 until the last decade of the Twentieth Century, as an adult worldly male (one who has left the Amish order), I transformed my concerns about Amish directives (Procreate! Do not desire same sex objects!) into erotic images that are meditations on desire.* These images allow me to cross the bridge from my Amish heritage to my “gay” concerns.-- The Amish hat, suspenders and black pants, signified a god-like (and ironically a godly) Amish male, and an onanistic/spiritual response during my years passing for heterosexual.*2 The image and its accouterments were iconic and unattainable. Nevertheless, the images were objects of desire, onanistic orgasm, and transgressive spiritual fulfillment. Thus, being gay, desiring, and having an orgasm became tied to spirituality, a worshipful state of mind, and God. I reorganized my belief in God, so that it contradicted the religious instruction of my Amish childhood. The new belief system supported my position as an adult, homosexual male, caught in a culture that does not allow me a positive conceptualization of my sexuality. In the reorganized belief system, I understood that I was gay because God made me that way, and, because God is good, being gay and desiring a person of the same sex, must also be good. To create a gay man, and designate him as evil, in my mind, would mean that God made a mistake. That is a contradiction. God being perfect does not make mistakes.

* I will publish some of those early erotic images in my next journal entry.
*2 The Amish also use the term “gay” to refer to the world outside the order.

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Gays Passing as Straight: Continued

2007-03-10T11:35:00.000-05:00

Based on my look at “Gays passing as straight”, I offer the following bibliography. It is by no means complete, and I intend to continue my search and update it in the future.

Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: on the Discursive Limits of “Sex”. New York: Routledge, 1993.
---. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.

Duberman, Martin. Cures: A Gay Man’s Odyssey. New York: Plum, 1992

Hooker, Evelyn. “The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual,” Journal of Projective Techniques 21 (1957): 18-31.

Humphreys, Laud. Tearoom trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places. Hawthorne, New York: Aldine De Gruyter, 1975.

Katz, Jonathan Ned. The Invention of Heterosexuality. New York: Plume,1996.

Kinsey, A. C.;Pomeroy, W. B.; & Martin, C. E.. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, 1948.

Kroeger, Brooke. Passing: When People Can’t be Who They Are. Cambridge: Perseus Books Group, 2003.

Savin-Williams, Ritch C. & Kenneth M. Cohen (eds.). The Lives of Lesbians, Gays, and Bisexuals. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1996.

Roberts, Tara & Harris, E. Lynn, as told to Asha Bandele. “Passing for straight: brothers who secretly have sex with men explain the attraction plus, women talk about the price of loving a man on the down low” Essence Magazine, July 2004. In Look Smart, Find Articles on line, http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1264/is_3_35/ai_n6100394. Saturday, March 10, 2007, 11:17 AM EST.

Tobias, Andrew. Psdnym., John Reid. The Best Little Boy in the World. New York: Ballantine, 1973.

Troiden, Richard R. “Self, Self-concept, identity, and homosexual identity: Constructs in need of definition and differentiation.” Journal of Homosexuality. 10 (1984-85) 97-109.

Passing

2007-03-06T10:34:00.000-05:00

I watched the motion picture The Human Stain last night after having rented it from Netflix, and was amazed at its power, though it is but a cameo of the Philip Roth novel. I’m not sure why it received so little attention. The cast is spectacular, Anthony Hopkins, Nicole Kidman, Ed Harris, Gary Sinise, Wentworth Miller, Mimi Kuzyk. Hopkins portrayal of the senior Coleman Silk is, as one would expect, superbly nuanced, while Miller’s interpretation of the young Coleman Silk is balanced, though a bit stiff. Nicole Kidman does her superior best as a raspy voiced Faunia Farley in which there is no trace left of crusty origins, only the detritus of a destroyed personality and life. Ed Harris is chilling in his understated portrayal of the psychotic Lester Farley. Gary Sinise’s and Mimi Duzyk’s characters are however written too thin to demonstrate the subtleties of Roth’s Nathan Zuckerman and Delphine Roux. I suppose part of the problem here is that cinema necessitates the dilution of the novel in order to zero in on the singular most important piece of plot that will carry the cinematic vehicle to an easily recognizable visual denouement.

The subject, passing has been done in the past, most noticeably in the novel Imitation of Life, (1933) by Fannie Hurst, and the two films based on it, Imitation of Life, (1934), directed by Fred Stahl, staring Claudette Colbert and Warren William and Imitation of Life (1959), directed by Douglass Sirk, staring Lana Turner, John Gavin, Sandra Dee, Susan Kohner, and Juanita Moore. The 1934 film deals more poignantly with the subject “passing,” than the 1959 Sirk version, which attempts to be a more thorough critique of 1950’s American society and culture. However, the subject of “passing” has not only to do with light skinned blacks posing as white, but also gay and lesbian men and women posing as heterosexual and the twenty-first century “down low” phenomenon of married black American males refusing to claim the bisexual and/or gay identity that their sexual behavior describes. Having spent many decades of my own life passing as heterosexual, I am an expert on the matter.

I have recently had several conversations with young Peter about passing, and I hope to continue writing more on the subject in my next few entries, dear Journal.

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Writing as a Form of Meditation

2007-03-03T09:54:00.000-05:00

I woke up with the above title hovering like a deep velvet dark-but-luminous purple cloud at the edge of consciousness this morning. I don’t know what sparked it – the detritus of a forgotten dream perhaps – but after some thought, I know that I do use writing as a form of meditation.

I write every morning, during and after my breakfast. I write in the quiet of my bedroom. Sometimes I play baroque music softly while I work, sometimes not. The process frees my thoughts, opens and sometimes unlocks doors in the house of consciousness. Through the process I cleanse the mind, dust the furniture so to speak. Writing allows me to ascend the stairs to the attic, and descend to the basement in order to sort and clean the dark and cobwebbed corners there.

Now that I’ve bludgeoned the house metaphor to pieces, I would ask for reader’s comments. Can you site particular examples that serve to answer the following questions? Are there problems that writing has helped you to solve? Can writing have anything to do with altered states? Has writing served to carry you closer to your spiritual center?

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Another Evening Walk on the Beach

2007-02-28T10:26:00.000-05:00

I am so fortunate! I am truly blessed because at 87 I am still capable of walks on the beach. My mind has not failed - neither have any of the senses - though the mind does play more tricks than it use to. However, that might be a diatribe for another entry. All of this verbiage is by way of preamble to a description of another walk on the beach. I especially like to go down to the beach at Juno just before sunset. The air is cool, the pink and lavender evening light spotlights waves as they break against the sand, and the eastern sky above the Atlantic glows with variations of intensity based on atmospheric conditions at the time.

After walking a short distance, I stand or sit at water’s edge and shoot picture after picture, trying to capture the perfect moment, a visual surfer of the waves. Of course, I understand that I can’t steal the moment, which I think is one of the reasons people take photographs. Instead, each moment is like the particles of sand on the beach, a moment strewn upon the shores of time, different than, yet the same as the other random grains of sand, each a gift to the individual who walks there. It has been suggested by some philosophers that the universe has no purpose, that all of space and time is an accident. If this is true, it becomes the responsibility of each thinking human being to make purpose as we walk on our beach. I believe that should we do so, we will discover God and our own reason for being.

As an artist, I also believe that part of my purpose on this earth is to present that which I discover to others who tread upon the infinite grains of sand on this beach called life. At the same time, I am not my artistic talent because like the random grains of sand, it is an accident. Should I present that which I see to others, they will perceive that which they understand and not necessarily my vision of this world. Never the less, should two or more of us try to realize completely what it means to be human, we will be able to share some part of the vision. Perhaps we might learn and grow in understanding of the beach upon which we walk.

If we should all do so, there would be no hate, no evangelical Christians, just Christians, there would be no war in Iraq, and there would never be another nine-eleven.

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Bush Plan Working in Iraq

2007-02-24T10:25:00.000-05:00

Yes. I am tempted to hope that such a headline will exist, even though it would turn Bush’s ratings up from the abyss into which they have fallen, even though his presidency would be rescued from failure, even though the Democratic Party would suffer another loss in the 2008 elections. The Bush Presidency would not go down in history as the terminus of the United States ascendancy on the world stage. That headline would mark the beginning of the end for the civil war in Iraq that is tearing the country apart and killing thousands of its citizens.

Unfortunately that headline would also mean that the neoconservative philosophy that brought about the Iraq invasion would be justified, and the United States would embark on a spree of preemptive strikes designed to win “the war against terror,” and justified by a string of Republican hawkish presidents. Ultimately these wars would lead to the over-extension of, and finally to the economic collapse of the republic. I also know beyond the shadow of a doubt that the evangelical “end times” religious belief system that sustains millions of American’s in this evil war including President Bush himself would gain millions of more converts mired in a religion that encourages hate and divisiveness instead of the actual pluralistic unification of mankind through religious practices that recognize all of the teachings of God present on earth, Siddhartha Gotama, Mohammed, and Jesus Christ, among others.

Instead, the end of the Bush presidency will hopefully mark the time to begin working with the other nations of the world to end international terrorism through diplomatic cooperation rather than a unilateral preemptive terror of our own. Instead, working toward the end of the war in Iraq with the other nations of the world will hopefully mark the return to a Christian belief system in the United States based on the actual teachings of Jesus Christ rather than the self-serving institutionalized evangelical church practices seized by the small-minded charismatic leaders of those institutions.

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God Inside

2007-02-20T09:55:00.000-05:00

I’ve been searching for and have finally found a copy of The Gospel of Mary Magdalene at a used bookstore here in North Palm Beach. This Gnostic gospel with commentary by Jean-Yves LeLoup, and translated to English by Joseph Rowe is mostly commentary as Mary’s Gospel is missing 10 of 19 pages, and Leloup’s text with an additional forward by Jacob Needleman is 176 pages.

Mary’s partial Gospel is one of the books the fledgling Catholic Church decided to delete from the accepted canon in the 4th century AD, and is at the same time one of the earliest gospels to be written. Of course the big boys in the Church were trying to corner Jesus for themselves and leave the feminine out of it, so Mary got dumped. That’s putting it crudely perhaps, but honestly. Be that as it may, I’m enjoying the book tremendously, and I find it uplifting. I’ve always felt that the Gnostic approach to God as being deeply rooted inside all of us to be a difficult comfort because it suggests that God is not just far away out there in the universe, but that if we are willing to carefully sift down through and analyze the complex structures inside our own person we will find God. The Gospel of Mary Magdalene has reinforced that belief.

Leloup has used translations of the original Coptic/Semitic and ancient Greek, in his translation to French. Thus, when I read Mary’s Gospel in the English translation, I am reading it through at least 4 separate translations, as I do with the accepted canonical texts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. However, Leloup’s explanation of Greek terms sheds light on both Mary’s Gospel and the canon as well. For instance, Leloup translates the Greek in Mary, p8, line 23 as “Walk Forth!” He then goes on to explain that these words are the same in the Greek and its underlying Semitic terms as the language in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5) which have been translated as “Blessed are you” instead. Leloup’s translation makes the Beatitudes active instead of passive. Instead of “Blessed are the Peacemakers,” we have, “Walk forth peacemakers, for you shall be called the children of God.” In Leloup’s translation Jesus does more than passively bless those who make peace. Rather, Jesus exhorts us to actively make peace in the world. Neither are the meek merely blessed, but they are called to walk forth into the world and inherit it. According to this translation, Jesus tells us to actively participate in our lives and the world around us.

At the same time Leloup claims that Mary’s Jesus asks us to reexamine the world through his eyes, and not those of the society around us, because the world in and of itself does not have meaning. Society makes meaning. Each of us makes meaning during our diurnal existence. And, each of us has the choice to accept the meaning we are given by those around us, or to look inside, find “the Teacher,” and return to the original creation. At that point, and only then, will we be able to walk forth, make peace, and inherit the earth.

As a thinking self-activated Christian I found Leloup’s translation and commentary comforting, but at the same time, I wondered how much of his interpretation was colored by a postmodern layer – that individual interpretation of the text is more important than the originator’s intent - in addition to the Gnostic percept that subjective introspection allows us to find God inside the self. That is the problem with being the kind of Christian that I am - the harder I look, the more questions I have. At the same time, it also means that Jesus lives and evolves in my thoughts daily.

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Clouds at Sunset

2007-02-17T10:09:00.000-05:00

I took one of my walks to the Intracoastal the other evening, before this current cool weather started (38 degrees Fahrenheit this morning). The sunset was magnificent with huge puffed up and ragged cumulous clouds everywhere. I got some great pictures.

It never ceases to amaze me that the sun sets over an hour later here than in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Sunset the other evening was about 6:03. I called Ruth from the dock at the marina, and she said that it had been dark there for an hour. She also said that it was in the upper teens with snow falling, and she gave me a lot of grief for “bragging” about the eighty-degree weather I was enjoying at the time.

Here’s a picture from that evening.

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Another slam against the “Save our homes exemption” and high Palm Beach County property taxes

2007-02-14T08:43:00.000-05:00

Killing the Golden Goose

I was so pleased to read the Palm Beach Post, Tuesday, February 13, 2007. A front-page article by George Bennett titled “Property owners sound off” stated that taxpayers are demanding a complete revision of the tax system here. One person attending the meeting in Palm Beach County said that his taxes are “ like another mortgage…” As I’ve stated in the past, my own taxes on the condominium here have almost doubled this year, and will do the same again next year. Having just moved here I am unable to homestead until then. Property-owners that have homesteads dating back to the nineties are able to maintain relatively low taxes while new businesses, snowbirds, small business, small investors, renters, those with vacation homes, and families hoping to move here are hit with extremely high property taxes. Mine will approach $9,000.00 next year when I will finally be able to slow them to an annual 3% rise by homesteading my property. It has become so expensive to maintain a home here that people have begun to sell their properties and leave South Florida. Even the rich find themselves caught in the vise. For example, a vacation property valued at 15 million dollars will be taxed at about $270,000 dollars per year. Any intelligent person of wealth would find such unacceptable. After all, there are other tropical options. The Mayan Riviera is a short air flight away, and property is relatively reasonable compared to South Florida, though the Mexican government is also learning how to tax property owners at inappropriate levels. My financial advisor said, “It’s as though the state and county want to kill the golden goose.”

By way of explanation, the “Save our homes exemption” was voted in place in 1992, and permanent homeowners taxes were frozen at ninety-two levels, while all other categories were allowed to rise. However, since that time anyone who moves to a new home in order to upgrade their home within the state and/or Palm Beach County is immediately assessed at the most recent, highest levels caused by profligate state and county spending which has also caused taxes on many homesteaded properties to soar as well as the other categories mentioned above. Marinas in Palm Beach County are taxed at an especially high rate because the local assessor bases his assessment value on the highest potential level of use, which does not take into consideration that the county has a basic three-month season, January though March. The real problem here is county and state government officials, both appointees, and elected officials who have pork barreled the gold coast into insolvency. I will not go so far as to say that crooked officials are in on the take as well, but I have my suspicions.

An organ for over-sight of budgets gone wild, and prosecution of individuals who are using tax funds inappropriately must be developed. I have already described on two separate occasions (January 14, 2007 and December 14, 2006) one County program designed to entrap gay men that has instead entrapped many married bisexual and heterosexual men. I have no idea the cost of the program, but it claims to have entrapped 12,000 men, and I suspect the cost is in the millions of dollars per year.

The County Property Appraiser, Gary Nikolits is accused of assessing property values based on the highest potential value of the property, thus, for example, a commercial lot that now has three small businesses located on it is valued as if it had a 25 story luxury high rise condominium complex instead. A recent Palm Beach Post article demonstrated how the mayor of West Palm Beach accepts gifts from developers who will create these properties of highest potential. She has not been prosecuted. County spending has increased by 80% between 2001 and 2006, and I’m sure has continued to rise during 2007. Instead, escalation must not be allowed to continue. However, spending must also be scaled back to something approximating 2001 levels, and if officials like Mr. Nikolits and the mayor are unable to be part of that change, they must go!

Happy Valentines Day!

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Ageism and Love

2007-02-11T10:41:00.000-05:00

Adam called last night and in a paternalistic tone said, “I want to talk to you about Peter.” At first I thought I was telepathic, and had somehow communicated my desire over the nearly twelve hundred-mile distance between Woodbury, New Jersey and Juno Beach, Florida.

“H-m-m-m-m, 'telepathetic' is more like it, Isaac.”

However, Adam had read my Wednesday journal entry on the Internet. At first our talk was a replay of my conversation with my alter ego as recorded in that Journal entry, and there’s no need to repeat it. Never the less, Adam threatened to fly down and haul me back to the algid northern states to cool me down. It has been in the mid teens at night and upper twenties during the day in Woodbury, New Jersey lately, compared to WPB highs in the low to mid seventies and lows between sixty-one and sixty-six.

“Grandpa, I think you are demonstrating symptoms of chronic brain syndrome, or dementia.”

“I am not!”

“How else do you explain yourself?"

“Just because I’m old doesn’t mean that I don’t have feelings toward others, and that my sexual body parts have gone dormant, atrophied, and fallen off.”

“Of course not! But, there’s such a thing as maturity. That should have something to do with the behavior of an octogenarian.”

“What behavior? I have done nothing. I have not acted on my feelings, and I don’t intend to. Unlike Jimmy Carter, I don’t feel as though I have sinned in my heart. I feel that the verb, to sin, requires an inappropriate act or set of actions. The act(s) being absent, one has not sinned. In fact, feelings of love toward others, however inappropriate can motivate one to right actions. It is a choice we all make, and astronaut Lisa Nowack simply made the wrong choices. Of course, her situation may not have been “simple” to her, complicated, as it must have been with familial expectations, the presence of husband and two daughters, the apparent desired lover, Ofelein, and the other woman. I wonder how much of her apparent murderous breakdown was precipitated by the fact that, as difficult as her life must have been, she always came out on top, achieving everything she always wanted. Under such circumstances, it might be possible to internalize the idea that one is capable of achieving all goals through hard work and perseverance. After all, isn’t that part of our American belief system, certainly part of the Republican credo. I hear it often enough, the idea that there is no excuse for failure in the United States, that anything is possible if one is willing to go after success. That is part of the reasoning behind, removing special opportunities for blacks, Latinos, women, and placing LGBT people in a second class of citizenship. After all, evangelicals know that lesbians and gay men, bisexuals and transgendered people just have to click their ruby “slippered” heels together, pray to God to make them straight, and, “POOF”, instantaneously they are back in Kansas.

“How does that follow,” you say?

It follows because according to evangelical thought, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people make a choice concerning their sexuality - it is not God given – though in actuality, science seems to be demonstrating that it is. However, the rest of the Christian world knows the evangelical position on science as well – that real science is best regarded as immoral, so invent shoddy unscientific theory and place it in opposition to the actual hard work of scientific theoreticians. Ah, well, I seem to have gone off on a tangent.

Be that as it may, I have pursued no inappropriate behavior, and that is what I said to Adam on the telephone last evening. I may be befuddled, and confused by my feelings, but I am behaving in a way that suits my advanced age, though I must say that my feelings demonstrate the fact that senior citizens are perfectly capable of sexual lust, no matter what the popular ideas are that are circulated within the sick and unrealistic culture in which we live.

“Ageist is the word you’re looking for, Isaac.”

“Ageist doesn’t begin to carry the sense of resentment I feel toward our popular notions about anyone over the age of 30, much less those of us who are actually achieving advanced years.”

“You’re over reacting now.”

“No, I’m not. But I shall have to contain and live with my feelings, as painful as they may be!”

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Love Isn’t Dirty

2007-02-07T10:36:00.000-05:00

So, there’s this old man who wants to have sex with his best hunky young friend. I finally admitted it to myself – my subconscious won – and I am horny as hell.

“Who?”

“Why, it’s Peter of course.”

“Isaac, you can’t.”

“I know, it sounds totally evil.”

“It is!”

“It’s just that he’s so sweet, considerate, and smart, and handsome, and built – he’s my physical ideal, slender and muscular, nice basket - and ye gods, I wish I were 50 years younger!”

“So, put it back in your pants where it belongs, and perhaps your feelings will motivate you to be a good friend to the young man.”

As we’ve discussed before, I do talk to myself, especially if I’m upset about something. I answer too, which according to the old saw makes me loony as any resident in the booby hatch – just a crazy old man (C.O.M.).

“I’d say that 'Dirty Old Man' is closer to it Isaac. Pederasty, here We come.”

“He’s in his twenties. He’s not a child, and love isn’t dirty. In fact, I wonder how much of our negative perception of pederasty isn’t based on a Twenty-first century Western culture ageist orientation – that is, life before thirty is glorious - life after thirty just a descent into pathetically wrinkled dementia. ”

By way of explanation - Peter came over last evening for one of our marathon conversations about the universe, art, sex, love, and politics. We talked into the wee hours of the morning. On his way out, he turned and hugged me at the door, and I was so overwhelmed that I almost fell to the floor. I was unable to utter a word to his “goodnight, Isaac.” After closing the door absentmindedly, I performed my usual sleepy-time ablutions, went to bed and tossed and turned all night. I finally wept myself to sleep at about 4:00 A.M.

I’m such a silly old fart! I can’t tell Peter about my feelings because I will risk loosing my best friend here in Florida. I thought I might call Adam and talk to him about it, but I can’t because my being in love with Peter is so absurd, stupid, and ridiculous (Too many descriptors – so shoot me!).

What is there to do?

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U. S. Should Leave Iraq!

2007-02-03T10:18:00.000-05:00

Am I the only voice, crying in the wilderness?

I have been against the Iraq War since President Bush and his Neoconservative buddies first mentioned the possibility of invading the country. Whether Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or not wasn’t the issue in my mind. Instead, I worried about the morality of the United States making a preemptive invasion of any country. Yes, the 9/11/2001 attack on the World Trade Center was abhorrent and evil. It did not, however, make moral an invasion of a foreign country based on the assertion that it had ties to Al Qaeda. Such an invasion was and is immoral. To my mind, it smacks of “an eye for an eye” anachronistic Pentateuch world view, and I thought that the United States would achieve nothing but the reputation of the fat schoolyard bullyboy by pursuing a preemptive invasion of Iraq.

Time has proven me right. And, I am saying, "I told you so!"

I also assert that the only correct course today, nearly 4 years after the invasion is to leave Iraq. Yes, leave, immediately if not sooner. By staying we compound the original error. Even if President Bush had invaded with 200,000 troops and managed to secure a permanent victory and peace in Iraq, the only correct course would have been to leave immediately. Having botched the entire operation, there is no alternative but to leave because the longer we stay the more dangerous the civil war between the Shiah and Sunni becomes.

To those who say that we would leave a power vacuum in the Middle East, I say, what power vacuum? We seem to have created a power vacuum. If we leave, the players there might just be able to correct the situation. I might add that by staying, we are spending our hard earned capital on a mistaken enterprise, and that it threatens to break the treasury. Instead, we need to focus on actual/real problems around the world. Problems like North Korea, Iran, and global warming.

“A-hah,” you say. “But, Iran is part of the problem with Iraq!”

To which, I reply. “No, a destabilized Iraq is part of the problem for Iran, and we might be able to help, if we were willing to talk to Iran, rather than ignore her and/or threaten her.”

I also wonder what might be wrong with going to the United Nations? Is it so terrible to say, “We made a mistake?” Would it be wrong to ask the nations of the world for help to correct the problems we have created? I guess that would be up to another president since this one is unable to understand that he has created a huge mess in the first place.

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Improved Health and Butterfly World

2007-02-01T10:04:00.000-05:00

Prelude

It’s been so pleasant and cool lately! I took advantage of the upper 60’s F, Canadian high pressure weather system yesterday and drove down to Broward County to see Butterfly World. It was the first big excursion out on my own since I had pneumonia, and I was a bit apprehensive since it has taken a long time and a lot of regular exercise to get my strength back. However, I had no problem with negotiating any of the driving and only a bit of difficulty with the walking that the trip entailed. In fact, I wasn’t terribly tired when I returned home, and I’ve decided I can start pushing myself harder in my walking, and exercise routine.

Other than the New Age music playing at top volume outside, I found Butterfly World to be fascinating, and I spent 3 hours wandering through the various aviaries. Each has a double (sort of air-lock) between it and the outside world. There are overlapping plastic strips hanging down, and signs that direct one to close the inside door before opening the outside door – all precautions to prevent the beautiful creatures from escaping into the natural habitat of South Florida. H-m-m-m-m-m - oxymoron that, as there’s not much of a natural habitat left here. It’s all concrete and buildings, planned gardens, road grid, giant trash heaps fifty to one-hundred-feet high that cover many acres, and other infrastructure with little left of the original flora and fauna. Be that as it may, the aviaries at Butterfly World were recreations of tropical rain forests complete with misty grottos and over 80 species of butterflies flashing their brilliant yellow, orange, red, blue, and green spotted stained-glass-like wings everywhere. One large neon blue and black fellow landed on my shoulder and stayed for over a minute and I became the center of attention as camera-bearing people descended on me from every direction. The fairy-tail environment created by these magnificent creatures was peaceful beyond belief. I sat down on a bench in one corner and rested there, incredulity filling my entire being as I allowed the aura of peace to descend and fill me like an empty vessel. I wish I were a great poet, or composer, so I could describe for you, dear Journal, the ecstasy that owned my soul and spirit.

After sitting for fifteen minutes, or more - I’m not sure how long I sat transfixed - I gradually pulled together the scattered parts of myself that were flying with the magnificent creatures around me. I got up and walked the jungle paths still floating, not completely of this earth. I stopped to read some of the signs, and discovered that many of these ethereal creatures lived no more that six days, the most long-lived, eleven.

Something shattered, like crystals, into a thousand small pieces – joy trampled to powdery sand beneath my feet – beaches – cumulous filled sky reflecting sunset pink and salmon oranges, hung above the aqua and green ocean and filled my heart - then, joyous revelation!

I too am like those magnificent creatures and my short cycle of days is almost gone. Soon I shall return to God. And yes, I shall return despite the evangelical belief to the contrary - I shall spread my rainbow wings, and he/she will open the gates and the light will fill me with the peace I knew yesterday, and I will dwell in God’s aviary until I am bid to return.

Peace, love, and grace to us all, and may God forgive us our smallness of spirit.

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News Overload

2007-01-29T10:32:00.000-05:00

Let’s list just a few possible headlines one might have read during the past several days.

1. Jimmy Carter Accused of Anti Semitism!
2. Worst Day in Iraq War!
3. Nineteen United States Troops Killed!
4. Hillary’s Hat Is In the Circle!
5. Maniacal Man Kidnaps Mother and Four Children!
6. Nasty American Idol!
7. Hate Crime Claims Hmong Hunter!
8. 200 Iraqi insurgents killed
9. Three Israelis killed by suicide bomber
10. Brookings Institute says Iraq Civil War will expand into a regional war.
11. Soldiers rape Iraqi girl and kill family
12. U.S. influence world-wide will slide because of Iraq war.
13. 29 States have anti-gay marriage laws on the books
14. Between 50,000 to 60,000 Iraqis dead in war
15. 3090 US Troop deaths in Iraq
16. Housing Market Crash!
17. Man Sentenced to 4 Years for War Protests
18. Rejected American Idol Crashes and Burns

It’s just me, I suppose, but I’d like to read something really nice in the news. I’d like some relief from all the prejudices and hate we Americans exhibit toward one another. I’d like some relief from the war that claims us though I personally did not want it. I’d so much like to be relieved of American Idol. Speaking of relief, I’d like to have some from the Bush presidency as well. Fat chance!

I’m weary of it all! I want a break!

I suppose God will arrange a permanent one for me soon enough, so I best stop with the complaints.

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The Weather Change, and A Walk on the Beach

2007-01-26T09:57:00.000-05:00

Thursday was chilly with a cold Northwest wind accompanied by a misty drizzle and at times a heavier shower. Today is cool with intense cobalt skies and a predicted high of 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Of course all this is much better than Ruth and Samuel are having in Lancaster, Pennsylvania with lows in the 10 to 15 degree range and highs around 25 to 30. I spoke with them on the telephone last evening and they said they had been having off-and-on snow showers all day with about an inch accumulation – just enough to make driving difficult, but not enough to make the rolling hills and farms into a pretty “snowscape.” The long warm fall and winter have finally been broken.

A couple of days before the cool weather started - perhaps it was Tuesday - Peter drove me to the beach in the evening. My memory seems to be slowing these days. He helped me walk to water’s edge. The water was relatively calm, and I waded into the gentle surf clinging to Peter for support. It was clear, aqua-green, and perhaps 74 degrees - too cool for these not so hearty folk down here, though it felt marvelous to me. In Rehoboth Beach, Delaware we were always lucky if the water warmed to 74 degrees in August. The light sea breeze felt marvelous against my face and scalp as it picked up the few loose white strands of hair I have remaining up there. There were low puffy pink cumulous clouds near the horizon, and both water and air had that special sparkle that seems to happen just before sunset. Peter told me that there had been Man-of-war washing up on the beach the past several weeks, which make it unsafe to swim because they can sting really badly. However, the bright aqua and magenta balloons the creatures use as flotation devices were not in evidence that evening. I took a few pictures of the waves rolling in, and I include one here.

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The State of the Union

2007-01-23T09:41:00.000-05:00

Why, it’s pathetic, Mr. President -

I understand you are going to speak to the following domestic issues, and I’ve got a fairly clear picture of what you might say, so here is my response.

1. Health: We have done nothing to prevent vast increases in the cost of healthcare since refusing to listen to Hillary Clinton’s proposals back in the early 1990’s. The big boys continue to reap vast profits, and great numbers of our children are not able to obtain basic medical services. Your plan does nothing to address these fundamental inequities.

2. Energy: By all means, lets encourage the use of ethanol. However, we should also be encouraging utility companies to switch to renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power (Not Nuclear energy!). For instance, Florida Power and light does have a renewable energy program in which it asks the customer to foot the bill! In a state in which county property taxes, insurance costs, and utility costs have skyrocketed, only 23,000 customers have elected to add the renewable energy charge to their bill. My conclusion is the logical one - a federal mandate is necessary to require utilities to invest heavily in alternative energy sources before they ask customers to take on the burden.

3. Education: No Child Left Behind is a paper nightmare that tests a child’s ability to memorize and learn by rote. First, It does not allow the child to learn through gestalt and/or creative leaps of insight much less provide the opportunity to learn the use of deductive and or inductive problem solving skills. Second, all children do not learn alike Mr. President. One will be a mathematical wiz with low verbal skills, while another will be brilliant verbally, and another may have neither predisposition, but be a mechanical wiz-kid. Third, all children are not capable of reaching the level tested as you require them to do without a great deal of extra help by additional personnel that poor school districts cannot afford to hire. Thus, inner city school districts are bound to loose funding, instead of gain the funding needed to help children from poorer families gain expertise and access to “The American Dream.”

Your proposals will not deal with these basic domestic issues in the creative/innovative way necessary to create actual change and improvement for the people of our nation.

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The Return of Politics.

2007-01-21T09:41:00.001-05:00

Based on viewing statistics, I will put my political entries back in my daily journal, at least for the time being. I had felt that these entries made my journal disjointed and cluttered. However, since readership of the separate political journal is practically nonexistent, I’m bringing the politics back. Starting with my next entry, I will publish the political entries in both journals, and perhaps ultimately I will remove the political journal altogether.

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My Boy Peter

2007-01-17T10:09:00.000-05:00

He is often here in the evenings, brings books and his studies along. He comes for dinner, and we talk about the world - THE BUSH plan for Iraq (more of the same, it’s broke and can’t be fixed), local Palm Beach County issues (taxes and insurance are way out of line), his classes (Art History class requires way too much memorizing and there isn't time to thoroughly look at the artworks), but he will not talk about his mother and father. I don’t know what’s going on there - actually I do - I just can’t talk about it and keep Peter’s trust. So, I’ll let it drop there. It feels almost as though I’ve adopted a son, except that we have a connection that allows deeper intercourse (pun not intended) than father and son.

Our conversation is likely to wonder into art, literature, art theory, history or religion. For example, the other evening, the night of the Golden Globes, we discussed Kate Kretz’s painting of Angelina Jolie, Blessed Art Thou. That evening Angelina on the big rectangular box, looked cool, almost cold, reserved, as though she were somewhere other than the Golden Globe Awards. One of the co-hosts even made a half-snide remark that Angelina was too busy saving third world children to be interested in the mundane events at the awards. I showed Kate Kretz’s painting to Peter, and that sparked a conversation about Judith Butler’s feminist work, Bodies That Matter, 1993, and Gender Trouble, 1990, much of which I had discussed also in my December 20, 2006 entry, Charles Ray’s Art, Entrapment, Fear of Conversion, and the Palm Beach County “Social Disease” – Part II. In both books Butler discusses her notion of “performance,” as the way normative behaviors become socially encrypted, that is our behaviors are like recordings, molecules rearranged on the surface of our psyche by repeated socially accepted acts that are demonstrated to us by the adults around us when we are young. The rearranged molecules are built in stronger strands and layers by repeated performance until the behaviors we play back to others seem to be the way all human beings of our type should behave. Even feminine and masculine behaviors are learned at the feet of our parents, though I believe the child doesn’t choose which behaviors to encrypt based on the necessity dictated by his/her own genetic/biological makeup.

Be that as it may, Peter and my conversation returned to Kretz’s painting of Jolie, having decided that Jolie’s performance of “Mother” was perhaps based in part on an encrypted recording of a parent or other family member’s altruistic mothering behaviors. We also discussed the possibility that Jolie as a child literally believed the teachings of her religion that we are all of us God’s children. As an actress, she has trained herself through performance to be that which she was shown as a child, perhaps a modification of Butler’s idea of performance, but the proof is in the pudding as they say.

After dinner I sit and read on the porch, or I work on photographs I’ve taken recently, or write to you, dear journal. Peter is at the desk in my living room studying. It seems colleges and universities down here return to school immediately after the holidays as do the public schools in the North, not the third or fourth week of January as most colleges and universities do in Yankee land. There is no talking during study time. It is so quiet that even I can hear the tapping sound as Peter works on his laptop. Often I go to bed leaving Peter engrossed in his books, papers, and computer. When I get up in the morning, he has left for home, work, or school.

Check My Political Journal!

There are so many more readers of this blog than that. Click on the link just above or the one on the side links, or go to the link at the bottom of my blog description at the top of the page. I may not predict the future, or anticipate events, or even be the first with news of current happenings, but my interpretation and understanding of the events offers a unique point of view.

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Florida Property Taxes, Quarterly Fees, and Insurance Costs Go UP, UP, UP!

2007-01-14T09:47:00.000-05:00

I moved to sunny South Florida to get away from the cold. So, what happens? Global warming has Lancaster County Pennsylvania averaging eighteen degrees above normal. Samuel tells me they’ve had but one hard freeze so far this year, and most days are in the upper fifties to lower sixties. The daffodils are ready to bloom, and the cherry trees are blossoming. Of course, here in South Florida, it’s more like summer. Yesterday on my porch, in the shade it was 76 degrees, and last night the low was 71 degrees. The weather folks are promising the low 80’s the next several days. I won’t complain when it turns chilly. I PROMISE!

At the same time, my basic cost of living here has gone up 50% in one year. How absurd is that. Since the summer of Katrina and Wilma, my insurance on the interior of the condo went up a whopping 50%, and my quarterly condominium fees – they do outdoor maintenance, painting, lawn mowing, garden mulching, pool cleaning, pool bathroom cleaning (every blue moon) – went up 45%. My Palm Beach County Property tax also went up a whopping 40 %. The current system is designed to protect Florida's longtime middle class home owners, but penalizes her new middle class residents. All of this has happened in the one year since I moved in. The basic cost of having my two-bedroom condo in South Florida is over one-thousand-four-hundred-dollars per month, not including all other basic expenses, like medical insurance, electricity, telephone, food, and gas. Hell, Pine Needle Manor was only costing me one thousand a month in maintenance expense, and that was an apartment in a retirement community. I’m frustrated and I’m angry. I expected an incremental increase over time, but nothing like this one-year leap in living expense.

I listened to our new Governor, Charlie Crist’s inaugural address the other day and he said that something must be done about the escalating insurance costs, and profligate county government spending because it is forcing middle class citizens to leave the state. I hope he means what he says, but I can’t imagine any of these existing increases will be taken back.

I can’t afford to live here now!

It looks as though this major change in my life has been a major misadventure.

I have applied to homestead here so that when I sell the condo the Federal government cannot tax me on the proceeds, and I will begin a search for another location that is less expensive though not as warm as South Florida.

I was already feeling upset with Palm Beach County over that entrapment incident I reported concerning my heterosexual neighbor, a husband and father, who was detained and charged 100 dollars court costs for exposing himself when he went to take a leak in a public men’s room, forced to attend classes on the evils of homosexuality -It’s a social disease! - given maps, told he must not go into any downtown area in Palm Beach County until sometime in April or he will be arrested and sent to jail for sixty days. He was told that 1200 men have been put through this profiling juggernaut. He went to pee for God’s sake! Talk about county programs that cause profligate spending. Ah, well, I’ll stop there. Just go back and read the December 14, 2006 entry titled, “Danger in the Parks, Gay- Entrapment(?).”Also, read the two follow-up pieces, December seventeen and twenty that describe the social reasons for this kind of "police-state" activity.

It seems to me that the name of the game is “Save Palm Beach County for a certain type of rich person (sort of like the Bushes and Cheneys). Make the extremely poor servants of the rich even poorer so they’re willing to continue work in, around, and on the rich peoples homes, pay high rents for slum condos in Riviera Beach, and at the same time, force the new middle class arrivals out of the county, perhaps even the state.”

No, I’m not bitter!

I did go for a walk on the beach last evening just before sunset, and I include a picture here. I can certainly understand why the rich, Republican, fascist types want to have all this beauty for themselves.

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Blessed Art Thou

2007-01-09T10:01:00.000-05:00

Kate Kretz’ painting of Angelina Jolie shown this past weekend at Art Miami, has garnered a great deal of attention. Suddenly 15,000 people a day are visiting Kretz’ website and blog. One art critic, Blake Gopnic of the Washington Post pans the painting as an inconsequential play on a superstar’s notoriety. However, I think Gopnic missed the point(s). Kretz herself says, and I am paraphrasing, that she chose the subject - an angelic Jolie holding her newborn, Shiloh, her other two children, Maddox, and Sahara at her feet ascending on clouds above a Walmart checkout line – because of our cultural indulgence in celebrity worship, because of Jolie’s unachievable beauty, and because of Jolie’s good-works, her seeming total immersion in saving the children of the world. The painting is thus, a visual metaphor on several levels, and it refers with obvious (ir)reverence - Both I think - to Catholic religious paintings of the Renaissance, and it has a definite kinship in style with the paintings of Paul Cadmus. As such, it is a Postmodern tour de force. I went to Kretz’ Website myself, and discovered that she also makes objects, clothing, purses, and embroiders with human hair, and that all of these objects perform second wave feminist commentary on the status of women in our culture, as well as address Kretz’ own personal life.

Last week I saw a Larry King interview with Jolie about her humanitarian work. It amazed me that one of these beautiful, adored and pampered, made rich as Croesus, objects of our affection has been able to transform herself into an actual humanitarian angel. Perhaps there is some of that wonder in Kretz’ painting as well.

I’m so close to Miami, and I’m sorry I missed Art Miami, though the trip and all the walking would have made me utterly miserable. Never the less, It would have been worth it if for no other reason than to visit Kretz’ representation of Jolie as angelic mother figure.

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Peter’s Visit

2007-01-06T11:36:00.000-05:00

My young hunk neighbor stopped by last evening, and we had a telling conversation.

“I’ve missed our talks Isaac. I mean, I’m happy that you had such a great time with your family in Pennsylvania, but it’s just not the same around here without you. Friends my age are mostly interested in drinking, doing drugs, clubbing, and sports, in that order.”

“Perhaps you should be looking for other friends.”

“That wouldn’t do any good. It’s pretty much a sea of sameness out there.”

“You’re a physical guy. You exercise, and play sports.”

“I’m the typical gay guy.”

“Meaning.”

“I exercise to be healthy and look good, but mostly to look good. I do sports you can do on your own, like tennis, swimming, running. I’d like to try wind surfing, but that will have to wait until I’m done with school and can afford it.”

“I see. No team sports.”

“Well, wrestling back in high school, because that was the only way I could get physical with guys.”

“It would be interesting to see how much research has been done on this aspect of the gay man.” You want to do a search at your school library? I’ll search on line.”

"I don't know."

"Come on. You might even be able to use the research for a paper in one of your courses.”

“I’m not taking any LGBT classes right now.”

“You never know.”

“True.”

“In any case, I can publish the results as part of my journal.”

“Okay. Let’s do it.”

I'm afraid the poor young man needs to get out more.

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Christmas in Pennsylvania Dutch Country: Part II

2007-01-03T09:26:00.000-05:00

Christmas eve was a treat that I wish every person on our planet might experience just once. Samuel and Ruth are not members of the Moravian church, but Samuel had made advanced arrangements for the entire family to attend the candlelight, “Love Feast” Service at the Moravian Church in Lititz, Pennsylvania. It is a marvelous Christmas Story extravaganza. The minister/pastor gave a brief sermon about God’s gift of love to all of mankind through the birth of Jesus Christ. The service included the music of Franz Joseph Haydn presented by orchestra, chorus and organ, as well as the sharing of Moravian sugar cake, and prayer.* The historic Moravian church building was filled with the palpable Holy presence of God’s love for ALL of mankind.

Christmas day began with gift opening of course, and I marveled that the major gifts were all technology based. Not that there weren’t the usual shirts, sweater, and wallet presents. However, Amy and Terrance, Sam Junior’s children, both received iPods and new cell-phones. Sam and Ruth got a plasma-screen television from Santa for their bedroom. Nichole, Sam Junior’s wife, got a card from Santa that guaranteed a year of DSL Internet to replace her slowpoke landline service. Stephen gave Adam satellite radio for his car. Adam gave Stephen a new digital camera, and I know Adam and Stephen had some input into Santa’s delivery of my new digital 10-mega-pixel camera. So far, the first decade of the 21st Century seems to be all about personal and/or digital electronic devices.

Mid afternoon found the family sitting down to Ruth’s marathon Christmas dinner that included roast turkey, duck, and ham. Not satisfied with one item in any course of the meal, she made rutabagas, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, and a French cut string bean casserole with fried onion topping. She served homemade rolls, multi-grain bread, and egg bread steaming from the oven with molded butter in the shape of snowflakes, presented on ice in cut crystal. The dessert menu included homemade apple pie, pumpkin pie, bread pudding with a butterscotch sauce, and bourbon balls (her own confectioners’ masterpiece). There was, however, no shoofly pie, thank goodness!

At the end of my Christmas visit to Orchard Hill Farm, I felt as though my family had finally managed to put aside differences, to replace the false teachings of evangelical Christianity with the actual gift of tolerance and love that Jesus Christ meant for us to take from his teaching. I hope each family member took that lesson of reconciliation away from the Pennsylvania Dutch Country in order to pass it on to friends and acquaintances in our various communities. If only other families could do the same, we might manage to pass that lesson on to our members of Congress, the Senate, and even the President in Washington D.C., and thence to the rest of the world.

I’m such a Romantic old fool!

*Franz Joseph Haydn was composing at the time the Moravian Church was brought to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and his music has been used historically in Moravian Church services.

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Christmas in Pennsylvania Dutch Country

2006-12-30T10:55:00.000-05:00

The direct flight to Philadelphia was fine. However, the walk through the airport in Philadelphia is interminable! Adam and Stephen took a personal day for Friday, December 22nd so they could leave Woodbury, New Jersey immediately after work on Thursday, meet me at the airport and drive me to Lancaster County. They were waiting for me at the luggage pick-up, so I had nothing to carry to the car, thank goodness. We talked nonstop the entire one and one-half hour trip home. However, having just recovered from pneumonia, I was exhausted and took a nap as soon as I could after arriving at Orchard Hill Farm.

The days leading up to Christmas were crazed! However, I did have a marvelous time. Ruth and I did not argue much because we weren’t allowed to. Each time one of us would start, Samuel, or Sam Junior, Nichole, or another family member interrupted with either an admonition and/or a distraction. It was a conspiracy because we were never allowed to be alone together for more than a few minutes.

Abraham and Naomi were strangely silent concerning Adam’s, Stephen’s, and my sexuality, though I caught Naomi squinting at the boys through furrowed brow, as though she were performing some queer (pun intended) telepathic evangelical exorcism on them. Samuel, as head of the house asked Abraham to say grace at several of the evening meals, and each of his prayers were short and sweet, including the part in which he asked God to bless every member of the family. However, Abraham did look as though he might cut and run when embraced by Stephen during introductions when he and Naomi arrived at Orchard Hill Friday evening.

It didn’t feel much like Christmas during my stay in Lancaster County with temperatures ranging from the low fifties to mid-sixties in the daytime, and the thirties to mid-forties at night. We did all the usual Christmas stuff, shopped, wrapped packages, visited family and friends, ate too much, and some of us drank too much. I managed to find some time alone to write this entry and another for my political journal, titled “I Told You So.” I also walked around the farm and took pictures of animals, out buildings, and fields. I’ve included one that I especially like with this entry.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were without snow, almost spring-like, but were otherwise better than perfect - more about that next time, dear journal.

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Christmas Trip

2006-12-21T07:17:00.000-05:00

Ruth and Samuel called last night to tell me that I have electronic tickets to fly home for Christmas. I leave today and return to Florida on the 29th of December. I packed like a mad man last night, and I leave for the airport in an hour. I’m still a bit weak as I am recovering from pneumonia. However, I’m sure I’ll be fine. Abraham and his wife, Naomi will be there, as will Sam Jr. and his wife, Nichole, along with their children, Amy and Terrance. The visit should be most interesting because Adam and his partner, Stephen will drive me to Lancaster County from New Jersey from the Philadelphia airport. You see, Abraham and Naomi are evangelical Christians. Not only are Adam and Stephen living an evil life style that will surely send them both straight to hell, but I myself, Abraham’s father, a self-proclaimed gay man will also go straight to hell upon my demise. I have promised Ruth that I will be a good father, and that I will not bring the issue to a head. Never the less, this may well be a most stimulating visit.

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Charles Ray’s Art, Entrapment, Fear of Conversion,

2006-12-20T09:14:00.000-05:00

and the Palm Beach County “Social Disease.” – Part II

Continued from December 17, 2006

Second, I looked for an artist whose work might illustrate, or at least demonstrate some of the same concerns as the feminist, Judith Butler. I found Oh Charley, Charley, Charley! by Charles Ray. Oh Charley, Charley, Charley! is about the limitations placed on the individual and artist by normative cultural presuppositions and the visual statements artists make about such standardized cultural limits. Ray, however, does not intend to place his work in opposition to these limits. Rather, he wishes to make them apparent.
Oh Charley, Charley, Charley! causes conflict to either a male heterosexist or homosexist position because it appears to be about orgiastic homosexual sex. Let me explain. First, the object appears to be the quintessential demonstration of male, homoerotic sex because there are eight intertwined nude male figures in the sculpture. As such, it is foreign and frightening to the male heterosexist, calling forth nightmares about power and violation. The male heterosexist’s distress is understandable, though limiting since it is founded upon the irrational fear that it is possible to be converted to a gay persuasion, in this case through rape. If that were so, why do most gay persons not fear the opposite? Despite the fact that our culture teaches GLBT persons to believe conversion to a heterosexual persuasion is desirable, by the time most are into their mid-twenties, their non-heterosexual identity is an accepted part of their person. In fact, this resolution of personal conflict has been identified as one of the stages of a non-heterosexual person’s adjustment to his or her sexuality in many coming out models. Kenneth M. Cohen and Rich C. Savin-Williams discuss many such models in “Coming Out,” in The Lives of Lesbians, Gays, and Bisexuals. *1
The figures in this sculpture, however, are all self-portraits of Charles Ray, and Ray is a heterosexual male. Ray’s heterosexual identity denies the portrayal of desire and sex among these various selves, unless we conceive of the sculpture as a pre-oedipal representation of narcissism. If so, Ray would have been better off with one figure, and nine mirrors. Thus, Ray’s actual intent denies the homosexual fantasy the multiple image seems to indicate.
A closer look at Oh, Charley, Charley, Charley! will serve to clarify just how disturbing the work is to either heterosexist or homosexist position. The polychrome figures are a smooth even flesh tone. They are about to engage in sexual intercourse, both anal and oral, active and passive. Physical action, however, like in a Poussin painting, is frozen, as though a cold wind has pierced the space the sculpture occupies. The figures are locked in the moment, just before insertion, an encomium to fictitious sexual acts that will not take place.
Most importantly, however, Ray denies that the sculpture is about sexuality at all. Instead, he maintains that it is about a Formalist schema artists use to achieve unity within a composition through the repetition of form or shape. The work is thus engaged in a kind of static dance, both literally and figuratively. The figures are frozen in time and space, disconnected links, like a series of individual motion picture frames with no connection or motion. The figures resist interpretation, even as they twist and turn in suspended animation upon the floor, and they are about sexuality even as they deny it.
Oh, Charley, Charley, Charley! points toward the possibility that beneath our conceptualization of sexuality there lies neither heterosexual identity nor homosexual identity, but something else beyond that dichotomy. After all, Ray himself, as stated above, plays with the likelihood that the viewer will misunderstand his intent. The misinterpretation of artistic intent is in turn based upon a faulty apprehension of “normal behavior.” Ray leads us upon a zany obsessive-compulsive chase. Like a cat in its game of mistaken identity, he is chasing his own tail while we watch and wonder. Does he know what he is doing? His seeming obsessive-compulsive narcissism obfuscates the normative sexual concerns we, as viewers, bring to his sculpture.

Unfortunately, as Palm Beach County government “gay entrapment practice” demonstrates, our culture has neither the time nor the ability to work toward an understanding of it’s own obsessive-compulsive narcissism, and would rather place fear of conversion on gay and straight men on whom nature has called to empty their bladder.
--------------------------

*1 “Coming out” is the process by which a non-heterosexual person accepts his or her sexuality and discloses it to others, family, friends, and co-workers. Some of the models Cohen and Savin-Williams discuss are the following. Hooker, Evelyn A. “Male homosexuals and their worlds,” in J. Marmor, ed. Sexual Inversion: The Multiple Roots of Homosexuality. New York: Basic Books,1965, pages 83-107. Plummer, K. Sexual Stigma: An Interactionist Account. Boston: Routledge, 1975. Myrick, F. L. Homosexual Types: An Empirical Investigation, The Journal of Sex Research. 10: 1974 , 226-237. Elliot, P. E. “Lesbian Identity and Self Disclosure,” Dissertation Abstracts International. 42: 1982, 3494B . Fitzpatrick, G. “Self Disclosure of Lesbianism as related to self-actualization and self-stigmatization,” Dissertation Abstracts International. 43: 1983, 4143B. Hencken, J. D. “Sexual-Orientation Self-Disclosure,” Dissertation Abstracts International. 45:1985, 2310B. (Cohen and Savin-Williams, 117).

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Charles Ray’s Art,

2006-12-17T12:18:00.000-05:00

Entrapment, Fear of Conversion, Judith Butler, and the Palm Beach County “Social Disease.”

Dear Journal,

The police entrapment incident I reported on December 14, 2006 has caused me to start thinking about sexual identity and cultural restrictions placed on individual’s identities, and the policing of sexual identity. Not for the first time, I wondered how often artists like myself have dealt with the issue. You know of my own concerns about identity and sexual identity. I have written about them extensively in the past. Entries in this journal concerning sexuality and identity can be found as far back as 2003. Be that as it may, I’ve decided to revisit some of these concerns in the attempt to understand how it is politically feasible for Palm Beach County to spend millions of dollars per year in the attempt to regulate sexuality at a time when property taxes in the county have jumped 80% in the past 5 years, causing middle-working-class families to flee South Florida.

First, I need to discuss Judith Butler’s feminist ideas concerning identity, sexual identity, and cultural imprinting of sexual identity in her books, Bodies That Matter, 1993, and Gender Trouble, 1990. She discusses the “performance” of sexuality and its limitations, and she claims that sexuality and gender are personal traits acquired from the culture in which one lives, the result of a process over which neither the individual nor society has much control. Rather, normative behaviors accumulate through a process described by Michele Foucault and others in which institutions and discourses acquire the power to prescribe normative human behaviors over time (I will look at Michele Foucault in another entry.). Thus, according to Butler, effeminate behavior is like a surface patina acquired from the culture. It is not necessarily the prerogative of either sex. It is a prescription for behavior that is taught to one sex. If a person of the other sex adopts that prescription as his own, his behavior is seen as transgressive.
Butler describes this process of cultural inscription in great detail and calls it the “reformulation of the materiality of bodies.” It is a complex process in which the individual learns to know himself or herself through the teaching of the culture in which he or she lives. Knowledge of self materializes when the individual receives powerful structures from the culture. These structures are acquired by individuals as they are performed in a daily routine. The routine and structure as received from the culture are not conscious. No persons decide in advance what these routines and structures are to be. They are developed in an oral tradition, in writing and discourses between and among many persons. Over time they become increasingly pronounced in the cultural milieu. Butler states that the entire process favors the heterosexual over any/other/all sexual identities. Furthermore, she indicates that identity, gender identity, and sexuality are understood to be similar in Western culture.

...but rather that the subject, the speaking “I” is formulated by virtue of having gone through such a process of assuming a sex; and (5) a linking of this process of “assuming” a sex with the question of identification, and with the discursive means by which the heterosexual imperative enables certain sexed identifications and forecloses and/or disavows other identifications (Butler 3).

Thus, Butler assumes that sexuality is similar to identity and that the “heterosexual imperative” delineates and limits individual identity. There are other feminists who also write about cultural inscription of sexuality, among them Luce Irigaray, the subject for still another journal entry.

I will continue with a look at Charles Ray’s Oh Charley, Charley, Charley! and how it relates to the feminist work of Judith Butler and police sexual profiling in Palm Beach County in my next journal entry.

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Danger in the Parks – Gay Entrapment(?)

2006-12-14T10:34:00.000-05:00

I will publish this piece in both my journal, and Isaac’s Political Journal for two reasons. First, I am relating part of my daily existence here in Florida. Second, the situation I describe below reflects an administrative system that has distorted the purpose (to aid and protect citizens) of at least two major municipal institutions in Palm Beach County.

I always think that the police are here to help and protect me. I forget that the constabulary was created as an arm of local municipal government to control and regulate human behavior, and that the beginning of any honest police history must be filled with many a clash between ordinary citizenry and the police. Originally, the early American colonial British based watch system was fashioned in part with the responsibility to prevent public drunkenness. Later, in large cities the police forces were composed of hundreds of volunteers. Often convicts themselves, and or dull witted, they were called “leather heads” by ordinary American workers. The first paid police force was created in New York City in 1845 and other large cities were soon to follow. These police forces, recruited from the working class, were trained to think of themselves as better than their peers and during the late nineteenth century were used to control mobs, race riots, and strikes. The city bosses who were friendly to business concerns used the newly armed professional police to round up striking intoxicated (Irish) workers -thus the term “paddy wagon.” The confrontations often large in scale resulted in armed conflict. Thus, these police forces were used in service to big business, the rich, and the city bosses. They did not help the ordinary citizenry, rather they can best be understood as a militia used against the worker in class warfare.

I give this preamble concerning police history by way of explanation. You see, I just found out that one of my neighbors, a heterosexual male, was arrested last week for soliciting in a men’s room in a nearby county park. I will not divulge his identity because I have learned from past experience that doing so can hurt friends and family members. My neighbor, I’ll call him “Ted,” is not going to fight the arrest because the county police have sworn that Ted will not be prosecuted if he follows their directions explicitly. It seems there is an entire complex program here in Palm Beach County based on a profile of the “gay tearoom queen” (my term). Ted was told that over twelve hundred men in Palm Beach County have been “detained” under the program and that it is designed to help control a “social disease.” Ted has had to appear in court, and he will attend a “class” in which “experts” will teach him about the evils of tearoom solicitation including vandalism, blackmail, robbery, prostitution, and HIV AIDS. Ted must also have an HIV test. If he does these things, and stays out of all county public parks and other various particular locations throughout the county for 90 days, he will not be prosecuted. His name will not go on lists, including that of known sex offenders.

Now, do I believe the police are being honest and forthright with Ted? No, I don’t. Ted has been required to fill out many forms including one on which he had to admit to guilt that he can’t possibly have. The police have placed his car’s license plate number on file, and he has been given a list of all the places he may not go. These police requirements have forced him to tell his wife and child about the arrest so that neither should mistakenly drive the car into one of the forbidden areas.

One of the most disturbing aspects of this situation is that my neighbor was framed in a bizarre performance created by a trained undercover policeman, a very handsome and well endowed individual I am told, who stepped up to the urinal next to my neighbor, exposed himself and asked my neighbor what he wanted to do with the exposed tumescent part. My neighbor, shocked speechless, was then confronted by a second plain-clothes policeman who placed him under arrest. A third, uniformed policement stood outside the men's room. I’m appalled because such a program requires a huge expenditure. It is designed to profile a small population, but has mistakenly pulled in a person who does not fit the stereotyped profile, and I wonder how many times that has happened. Additionally, many persons must participate in such a program, from the top echelon of county administration, including trained professionals in several fields, the uniformed policeman, and the undercover agent. Each is receiving a salary. There are literally hundreds of county parks in this huge Palm Beach County. Do the police patrol all of them with handsome well endowed undercover agents whose purpose is to trap unsuspecting gay men? How many “experts” are paid on a regular basis to teach the special “classes” designed to mistakenly rid us of a “social disease?” How many court personnel are tied up with this ridiculous charade?”

I am appalled! Are we pursuing drug dealers with such gusto? Do we plan to hound organized car thieves with even a fraction of the energy, time and money required to fund this mammoth program designed to harass gay men? Is there a program anywhere to help the gay child thrown onto the street by his/her family to find housing, schooling, and a thoroughly supportive environment? I don’t thinks so, and I suppose there isn’t anything to do about it. Some angry and brave gay or straight man must confront the system by refusing to participate in this travesty, and so be prosecuted, dragged through the courts and the mud by a program with the intent to publicly display him as a deviant and incarcerate him. Who would be willing to do such a thing to himself?

Sadly, this is the state of liberty in Twenty-first century United States of America, home of the free and the brave!

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I watched from my porch as Discovery (STS-116) blasted off.

2006-12-12T09:02:00.000-05:00

Sunday, December 10, 2006
I’m over one hundred miles south of Cape Kennedy. However, my neighbor Peter had told me that I would be able to see the launch easily, and sure enough, I watched from my porch as the horizon lit up and a line of light spread behind the many buildings to the northeast. The light got brighter and expanded into a rising slightly rounded and thick form then suddenly collapsed as a brilliant tiny white pencil like beam rose from behind. The Atlantic Ocean is directly behind those buildings though they block my view of it, and looking toward them, I was at the narrow base of a very acute triangle pointing at Cape Kennedy.

I had mistakenly expected to see Discovery climb above my head before fading. Instead, it slowly headed out over the Atlantic as it climbed, and the ascent became less and less apparent, it’s pencil shape concentrated to a brilliant splotch of light, the most intense object in the sky. Slowly, it lost all apparent motion and gradually faded, until a low scudding gray cumulous cloud covered it.

I had never thought much about the previous 115 launches - with the exception of the Columbia and Challenger disasters - because I wasn’t able to see them with my own eyes. This time, as I witnessed the heavenly ascent, I felt a connection to the seven members of the crew, a thread stretching thinner by the second as Discovery climbed toward its 250 mile high orbit at a peak speed of about 17, 000 miles per hour. I wondered how the seven crewmembers felt emotionally and physically as they ascended into the cosmos. Intellectually, I know that they were suffering the effects of multiple G forces as the shuttle rose through the troposphere and stratosphere, but how does that feel. I can only surmise, based on the subtle effect of accelerating motor vehicles and planes I have experienced. I know the astronauts are trained in accelerators so that they are use to the incredible force of 5, even 6 Gravities. However, more importantly I wondered if they felt any spiritual rush in addition to the physical pain and emotional charge of climbing toward the black velvet vacuum of space.

Is it possible that God might reach out to touch those of us who are able to physically transcend this wicked war torn planet, and what would that feel like?

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Chilly!

2006-12-09T11:54:00.000-05:00

Sixty-eight Fahrenheit was the high temp yesterday, with drizzle and rainy gray skies. However, I’m not complaining. I talked with Ruth on the phone last night, and it was twenty-six degrees in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Ruth is still upset that I live so far away from her. She complained that I was here alone and sick in Florida, and she couldn't come take care of me. She suggested flying down to cook and clean, generally help during my convalescence.

"Ruth," I said. "I'm completely recovered and I'd rather have you and Samuel come to visit when I am at my best so that I can show you around Palm Beach County. There is so much to see and do."

I also had my visit with the doctor yesterday and he said, “You’re doing well, Isaac. Don’t expect to conquer the world immediately, but you’re recovering nicely.” A good report, I guess, but frustrating. I’m still taking a walk every morning and evening. I lift my little weights 2 times every day, but I don’t have energy left over to do anything else. I don’t even feel like reading much. Yesterday, Peter was talking about going out with friends, and I was actually envious.

I have cabin fever, and I’m bored!

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Feeling Better and More about Peter

2006-12-06T09:36:00.001-05:00

I’m slowly getting my strength back. Yesterday was nasty, so I just cleaned the condo, and lifted my little weights for a half hour. However, this morning was magnificent, so I took a long walk around the entire complex. Hunky Peter joined me, and we talked about his school and work. He finishes his Masters Degree this Semester, so right now he’s buried in work. His thesis is done, and he has to go through a review board, or panel (I’m not sure what it’s called) next week. He finishes course work this week with finals next. With all that, he works 20 hours a week to help pay for courses and pay rent to his parents. And, he exercises 3 to 4 times a week. He looked tired.

I’m including another photo of our wonderful beach, clouds, and sunset here. I took it as I looked over a fence and through someone’s back yard.

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Going for a Drive at Sunset

2006-12-02T10:02:00.000-05:00

My cell phone is set to do this barnyard “cluck, cluck, quack” thing instead of a normal ring. I can’t possibly do the racket it makes justice in words because it is the most ridiculous sounding noise I’ve ever heard. Adam set it for me this past summer, and I don’t have the direction book that came with the phone and I don’t know how to change it. I am semi-illiterate with electronic devices, and have had to struggle with much help from Adam and Stephen to learn to use this amazing computer of mine.

Yesterday afternoon I was reading on the porch when my phone began it’s barnyard cacophony. Of course, being eighty-seven years old, I never remember to carry the thing with me, so I had to get up and home on the outrageously dissonant signal. It was in my pants, hanging in the bedroom closet, and of course had stopped its “cluck, cluck, quack” by the time I got to it. However, it is such a marvelous electronic device that I was able to discover that the call had come from Peter just by pressing a button - pressed again, and Peter’s phone was ringing.

“Hi, Peter. What did you want?"

“Isaac, I wondered if you’d like to get out of that condo for a bit, take a ride to the beach. The sunset’s going to be gorgeous, and you know how the clouds light up over the water sometimes.”

“Yes, I do. It can be spectacular. So, yes, I’d love to go.”

“Good, I’ll stop by in a couple of minutes.”

“Thanks, Peter.”

“Your welcome, Isaac.”

My wonderful young hunky neighbor showed up at the door in an International Male skin tight shirt and running shorts that made him look like a model ready for a shoot on South Beach, and I know my jaw must have dropped when I opened the door.

“I’m going to take a swim while we’re there.”

“Good for you,” I managed to get out with only one extra “g” fastened to the beginning of “good.”

We drove the short distance to Juno Beach, and I sat on a bench with my camera, while Peter ran down to the roaring surf and jumped in. I got some good pictures of the sky, water, and palm trees, but the sky wasn’t as spectacular as I’ve seen it in spring and summer. I’ve included one here, above.

Peter swam about in the pounding surf for about 20 minutes, got out just as the sun was touching the horizon, ran up the beach and steps to my bench dripping wet and out of breath. Oh my! The orange sunlight made the water on his smooth muscled skin sparkle and my heart gave a leap as I castigated myself for being such a dirty old man.

“Isaac, I can’t wait till you’ve recovered enough to go in with me.”

“Peter, even when I was in the best of health, I couldn’t have gone in with that raging surf.”

“Okay, so we’ll come to the beach on a calm day. Some days it’s like a big lake."

"Yes, I know. I’ve seen that. But, I can take a bit of wave action.”

“Good. It’s a date. Be prepared for me to call when the conditions are right.”

I know he didn’t mean literally, “IT’S A DATE,” but my heart jumped into my mouth, and I began repeating the mantra, “I will not make a fool of myself. I will not make a fool of myself. I will not make a fool of myself.”

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Health Improving

2006-11-29T09:56:00.000-05:00

11/27/06

Rain, rain, rain, and more rain. It doesn’t matter because I’m stuck inside anyway. I have a doctor’s appointment on Friday, and that will be the first time I’ve been out of the condo since Peter brought me home this past Saturday. Hopefully the doctor will give me the green light and I’ll feel safe to at least walk to the pool and sit there in the mornings. I still feel extremely unsteady, but I’m walking back and forth through the condo as fast as I can, 10 times, several times a day. I started lifting my little ten-pound weights yesterday, and ye gads – I’m pathetic – what a struggle! At my age, I guess the body isn’t producing new cells fast enough. Then I get sick on top of that and a whole bunch of cells are killed by the fever, and now I’m in a deficit from which it will be difficult to recover. But, recover I will! Thanks for putting up with my complaints, dear Journal.

11/29/06

The sun is in and out of puffy clouds blowing in off the Atlantic and it’s in the mid seventies going to eighty something today. I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I went for a short walk early this morning. Peter walked with me before leaving for work and school. I didn’t ask, he just saw me outside and came out immediately.

“You shouldn’t be out by yourself, Isaac.”

“I don’t have permission from the doctor, but here I am. I just had to get out into this glorious weather.”

“Why didn’t you call?”

“Honestly, Peter. I’m okay.”

“I’ll just walk with you, and we’ll talk.”

“That bench over there does look terribly good,” I said, slightly out-of-breath.

Peter stayed with me until I had rested, walked me back to my front door, and I thanked him. My young hunk of a neighbor is a sweetie-pie.

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I’m Not Dead!

2006-11-26T10:45:00.000-05:00

Damn! I’m tired of being sick, weak, and exhausted. The next time I have a cold, I’ll go to the doctor immediately, and I don’t care if he says-

“you have a virus, go home and live through it.” I’ll throw a temper tantrum and insist on having antibiotics immediately.

Other than that, what can I say, dear Journal, but apologize for ignoring you for so long. The first week in the hospital is a blur. I ran an extremely high temperature, was delirious, and evidently came close to death. I do remember seeing my neighbor Peter sitting by the bed often, and I saw my Peter of Varnastrama there too, as was Rebecca. So, I must have been delirious. My temperature broke 4 days after being hospitalized, and I was removed to a local nursing facility 2 days after that. I remained there until Adam flew down during his Thanksgiving holiday and moved me home yesterday. He flies back to New Jersey tomorrow. I still don’t feel like doing much of anything. However, as my health has improved, I’ve had copious amounts of time to on my hands as I rest. I have filled the void with reading and writing. I read every issue of Time magazine that could be pirated to me from the hospital waiting room and later, the nursing home lobby. Based on that reading I’ve written a small political piece about Barack Obama. Please go to Isaac’s Political Journal to find it. I think it’s an interesting read because it discusses a liberal Christian worldview as opposed to the institutionalized and rigid evangelical one.

I almost missed out on the November election, but Peter got an affidavit, absentee ballot, and a Notary Public to my room in the hospital because I threw a semi-delirious fit on the way there. So, I voted, and we’ve got the majority back in both the House, and the Senate. Yeah for the USA! Mr. Bush and his cronies can’t just run rough shod over the entire three hundred million of us anymore, though I’m afraid we’re stuck with Mr. Bush’s conservative Supreme Court for the next thirty years. It’s amazing, but I think that news helped bring me back from the brink because I want to be present in an America that isn’t totally doomed by the politics of fear of terror and the scapegoating of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people.

I’m tired now and going to take one of my many catnaps. With improving health I should be able write more often, dear Journal.

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I feel like (BLEEP)!

2006-11-06T06:42:00.000-05:00

I’m dizzy.

I ache.

I’m having trouble breathing.

In fact, I feel so bad, dear Journal that I’m taking myself down to the car right now. I’ve called Peter’s family and he is on his way over to drive me to the hospital. I also called Adam before he left for work. He asked me to have Peter call him at school and leave my hospital room number with one of the office secretaries when I’m settled in. In turn, he will call Ruth and Samuel, and Samuel Junior as well. Adam will ask Ruth to call Abraham and Joseph. So, I’m covered – all the family will be informed. All I have to do is get diagnosed, get treated, and get better.

I’m a bit worried its pneumonia. I’ve had a cold that I was ignoring, because normally I just have to suffer through the darned things for about ten days. Well, not this time. I may not be on line for some time, and all thought of travel to Mexico is off, at least for now.

I wonder if I can vote from the hospital. Tomorrow’s the day - one of the most important elections in history – and I wonder if we’ll have another fiasco like 2000 and/or 2004. And now we have electronic voting machines with no paper trail!

Vive le Democratic Party! And, good luck.

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Spanish Continued: Traveling to Mexico and the Riots in Oaxaca

2006-11-03T08:06:00.000-05:00

Here I am with the desire to go to Mexico, and I’m reading about the riots in Oaxaca. These began with a teacher’s strike back in May of this year, and escalated as other groups joined in, asking for the resignation of the governor of that state, Ulises Ruiz. There is the suggestion that the problem is related to political involvement with drug lords (“Perhaps the politicos are the drug lords, Isaac.”) There I go talking to myself again. Be that as it may, Oaxaca is on the other side of Mexico, a thousand miles to the South and West, on the Pacific side, from the state of Quintana Roo where I would visit. I doubt fighting would spread to the Mayan Riviera. It’s the kind of situation that only makes me want to visit all the more. So, I’m including a couple of photographs from my last visit, and another one of my Spanish worksheets.
Tulum, looking toward Northeast

Tropical Foliage, Playacar

Traveling with Spanish

1. I would like to cash these travelers checks.

Quisiera cobrar estos cheques de viajeros.
Querría cambiar estos cheques de viajeros.

2. Do I need to use the ATM instead?

¿Necesito utilizar la ATM en lugar de otro?
¿Necesito utilizar la atmósfera en lugar de otro?
¿Necesito utilizar el cajero automático en lugar de otro?

ATM U.S. (abr de Automated-Teller Machine) cajero automático – or “la atmósfera” - or pronounce letters of alphabet in Spanish “A – T - M”

Yes, it is in the front of the lobby (building)(corridor), on the left.
Sí, está en la frente del vestíbulo (edificio) (pasillo), a la izquierda.

Yes, it is in the back of the lobby, in the center.
Sí, está en la parte posteriora del vestíbulo, en el centro.

Yes, it is straight ahead, in the front of the building.
_ sí, él ser todo derecho, en delantero edificio. _

Yes, it is straight ahead, in front of the building.
Sí, es recto, delante del edificio.

3. Where is the ATM?

¿Donde está la A-T-M?
¿Donde está la atmósfera?
¿Donde esta el cajero automático?

You go straight ahead to the front of the lobby.
You go straight ahead to the front of the Bank.
Usted va todo derecho al frente del vestíbulo.
Usted va todo derecho al frente del banco.

You go to the right, and it’s in the center of the lobby.
Usted va a la derecha, y está en el centro del vestíbulo.

Well, there you have it. I'm getting myself more fired up here every day. Perhaps I will go to Mexico once again.

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Studying Spanish and Traveling to Mexico

2006-10-30T09:24:00.000-05:00

I like to pretend that I will get back to Mexico though that is highly unlikely at age 87, so I’m practicing my terrible Spanish once again. I could probably use some help here, especially with syntax and oxymoronic daily usage. If anyone reading this speaks Spanish as a first language (or second) - I know this is unlikely, since I seem to have so few readers - please correct my Spanish. I make up study sheets that apply directly to what I will need to say, rather than use ready-made stuff. Here is one of them.

Traveling in Spanish

1. I would like a round trip ticket to Cozumel.
Quisiera un boleto (redondo del viaje) (de ida y vuelta) a Cozumel.

That will cost 10 pesos.
Eso costará diez Pesos.

Good. Here it is
Bueno. Aquí lo tiene.

Thank you, and here is your ticket.
Gracias, y aquí está su boleto.

Thank you
Gracias.

2. I would like a one-way ticket to Playa del Carmen.
Quisiera un boleto unidireccional a Playa del Carmen.

3. How far is it to Tulum?
¿Está cómo lejos a Tulum?

It is about 35 kilometers to Tulum.
Es cerca de treinta y cinco kilómetros a Tulum.

4. How much do you charge to go into Playa del Carmen?
¿Cuánto carga usted que entre Playa del Carmen?

I charge eleven pesos.
Cargo once pesos.

You gave me thirteen pesos.
Usted me dio trece pesos.

You gave me thirteen pesos instead of eleven.
Usted me dio trece pesos en vez de once.

Yes. That includes your tip.
Sí. Eso incluye su extremidad.

5. I need to go to Tulum. How much do you charge to go there?
Necesito ir a Tulum. ¿Cuánto carga usted que vaya allí?

It will cost you seven pesos.
Le costará siete pesos.

6. Can you recommend a good restaurant? We would like one that serves authentic Mexican (Mayan) cuisine.
¿Puede usted recomendar un buen restaurante? Quisiéramos uno que sirve la cocina mexicana auténtica (la cocina auténtica del indio del maya).
And, how do we get there?
¿Y, cómo conseguimos allí?

Just tell the taxi driver the name and street address of the restaurant.
Apenas diga a conductor del taxi el nombre y la dirección del restaurante.

7. I would like to rent a small car for the day, one that will
seat the four of us (one that will seat myself and three other people).
Quisiera alquilar un coche pequeño para el día, uno que asentará los cuatro de nosotros (uno que se asentará yo mismo y a tres otras personas).

Do you need air conditioning?
¿Usted necesita el aire acondicionado?

What about automatic transmission or stick shift?
¿Qué sobre la transmisión automática o cambio manual?

Would you like automatic transmission or stick?
¿usted tienen gusto de la transmisión automática o cambio manual?

If I am able to go back this year, I’ll do it during the coldest weather here in Palm Beach County, January or February, and I’ll go to the Mayan Gold Coast in the state of Quintana Roo. However, not Cancun – might as well go to Atlantic City, New Jersey. Instead, I’ll go down the coast farther, around Playa del Carmen, Akumal, Perhaps even Tulum. I might even take a trip into Valladolid in the interior of the Yukatan, and visit the pyramids at Chichen itza. There is a wonderful colonial hotel there, the Meson del Marquis that is located on the central plaza of the small city. I would, however, like to have a travel companion, or companions.

We’ll see.

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I Go For Walks

2006-10-26T10:34:00.000-04:00

The weather finally cooled down a bit in Palm Beach County, only 80 degrees yesterday, and 77 the day before. I’ve taken mile long walks both days. In fact, I drove to the beach in Jupiter yesterday, and walked along the sidewalk above the beach. The water was a magnificent blue-green and aqua. The town of Jupiter has got to have one of the prettiest oceanfront walks anywhere. Here’s a picture looking down onto the beach.

Real Estate Market Falls and Goes…

2006-10-22T23:03:00.000-04:00

October 21, 2006 - Adam Called
He’s so excited because he and Stephen have found several houses they like. And, in two cases, the price dropped since they began looking.

“Did the bubble burst, Grandpa?”

“Looks that way, doesn’t it.”

“Yeah, Stephen’s sister and her husband have had their house up for sale for over a year with few bites. They’ve changed realtors twice, but nothing happens.”

“What will they do?”

“They’re talking about adding onto the house instead of selling it.”

“That makes sense.”

“I don’t understand why builders keep putting up new houses and condos. They're going in everywhere around here. And, you saw Rehoboth Beach - thousands of new units are going up down there.”

“Same here in South Florida. I don’t know if resorts are feeling the pinch yet. Also, many condominiums and other projects here in Palm Beach County, and I guess everywhere, have been in the pipeline for years. The buildings going up now were actually in the planning stages 3 to 4 years ago. And once one of these big projects is started it can't be stopped without everyone and his brother losing his shirt, his tie, and his hat.”

“But, what happens if most of us guys in the middle class can’t afford the high prices of houses and condos that are on the market?”

“Is it going to stop you from buying?”

“Stephen’s talking about waiting until spring because he says prices are bound to come down further.”

“You might adopt a wait and see posture. I think a lot of people are doing that right now.”

“Do you think prices will come down?”

“Who knows. I think housing is over-priced. I guess I’m more afraid the bottom will fall out completely because the market is so full of new housing, and prices are so high that the people who need it can’t afford it, and those who already own one house, have speculated and bought a 2nd, and even 3rd with interest only loans.”

“If the bottom falls out, prices would really come down.”

“Yes, lower than low.”

"Like the 29 crash."

"Actually, the stock market crashed in 29, but price inflation had been rampant during the 1920's, property included. Frightening thought isn't it."

"Yes.

"Well, I'm an old man, and I've been told recently that we old folks tend to dwell on the negative too much. Besides, other areas of our economy haven't been terribly inflationary - just oil and real estate. I'm probably wrong."

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Peter’s Visit Continued

2006-10-18T00:55:00.000-04:00

“Of course the Democrats will take back the majority of seats in Congress and the Senate, Isaac.”

“That would be one heck of a lot of seats, 15 in Congress, and 6 in the Senate, I believe.””

“We will do it. I feel it in my bones.”

“I wish I had your confidence. Besides, your bones are too young to have that kind of feeling. You’ll have to get old, and crotchety like me first.”

“Right. Actually I think you’re a time-bot, Isaac, a kind of disguised eternal type pretending to be an old man. Sometimes you act like a kid. Sometimes you talk like a person my age. Don’t think I haven’t seen you take a sudden skip, jump, and hop as you walk toward the pond and fountain on your morning walks.”

“Actually, I do perform as a silver foil man, who travels to alternate realities- and you don’t know how I hurt after I do my morning skip-hop-and-jump, the heart pounds, and the head floats off into a spin, as I struggle to catch my breath."

"So, Why do it, and you do?"

"Yes, and because I’m stubborn, and I refuse to give in to this body of mine. I’m just a thirty-seven year old person trapped in an eighty-seven year old body. And, time-bot indeed! You are a science fiction fiend, my friend.”

“I do like science fiction, especially Isaac Asimov.”

“He’s one of my favorites too.”

“Did you see I Robot?”

“Yes - but the movie seemed anachronistic to me. That's not quite the right word either. It's because the movie is of the action hero ilk, and Asimov’s positronic creatures become super robots, leaping through the air, and jumping buildings in a single bound. Things get smashed and broken constantly. I think Asimov’s stories are more thoughtful, and his robots, more gentle, if sometimes extremely threatening in their benign superiority.”

“That’s because the 3 laws of robotics prevent them from harming humans, but also cause them to prevent humans from harming one another, like hovering over protective parents.”

“Or, like a limited evangelical vision of God, who is prevented from harming his children physically by his own moral universe, but, instead ends up punishing them through limits placed that stunt their potential growth.”

“U-m-m-m-m-m. I don’t really want to go there, Isaac. I get so angry at Christians!”

“Be careful, Peter. I’m a Christian. You need to separate evangelical from other Christians.”

“Are there others?”

“Yes.”

“I was being facetious.”

“I know. Sometimes it seems as though the only kind of Christian out there is the kind that hates us while unwilling to admit that it is so. They pretend that they love all people and blame God and the Bible for their prejudice.”

“But the Bible does make statements against homosexuals.”

“No, it doesn’t. It makes negative statements about sodomy based in a culture that had no understanding about a type of human being who desires and has sex only with the same sex. And there is much more to it than that, such as Hebrew and Greek words with multiple meanings, or meanings that are not the same as those words used in translations of the original languages in which the Bible was written. Have you read What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality?”

“No.”

“I’m not remembering the author’s name. But the book is right over there in the porch.” I began to lift myself out of my chair in order to retrieve the book, but Peter was up and out of the glass slider before I could stand up.”

“Where on the porch, Isaac.”

“On the table next to the rattan couch.” I watched as he rummaged through the short stack of books and magazines there.

“Yeah, here it is. Helminiak is his name. Daniel A. Helminiak, Ph.D.”

“I’ve finished it. You want to borrow it?”

“Yes, I would. Ye gods! It looks like a college freshman’s text. It’s dog eared, underlined, highlighted, and the margins are filled with notes.”

“That’s a habit of mine. It’s the only way I can remember. If I don’t scribble all over a book while reading, I end up having to go back and reread entire pages and chapters. It helps my old brain to retain the stuff I want to know.”

“Isaac, everyone who reads for understanding has to do that.”

“Not geniuses with photographic memories.”

“Yeah, well. Those are few and far between.”

“So, why couldn’t I be one?”

“Why couldn’t we all?” I wonder what the world would be like.”

“That’s one of those unanswerable questions -imponderable. However, if Isaac Asimov were alive, and here, talking with us, he might decide to write a science fiction story based on the idea.”

"Now that's an idea I'll take home with me. By the way, you need to tell me about your silver foil man."

“When you have an hour or longer to devote to him, I’ll broach the subject.”

And, so it went, on into the night. I hope Peter will visit more often.

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Peter’s Visit

2006-10-15T09:46:00.000-04:00

October 14, 2006

First, he called on the landline.

“Hi, Mr. Stolzfuts.”

“Yes.”

“It’s Peter.”

“Hey, Peter. How’ve you been?”

“Good. Busy with school and all, but good.”

“So, to what do I owe the honor of this call?”

“Just wondered if you were open for a visit this evening.”

“Absolutely,” I said. After all, I’m starved for conversation. Besides, sad to say, the dirty old man will have some eye candy.

“What time?”

“How is 7:30?”

“Good. What kind of liquor would you like me to bring?”

“Grand Marnier is my favorite.”

“You’ve got it. I’ll see you then. Bye.”

So, I ran around like a mad man or, at least as fast as I can, cleaning the place though I doubt most male “twenty somethings” would notice how clean a place is. “He’s gay, Isaac, off course he’ll notice!”

There I go talking to myself again. I swear there are two of me, and the second me is a pain in the (bleep!) because he is always correcting me. Anyway, Peter did visit and stayed until almost midnight. We talked about politics, art, science fiction, my art, his classes, his work out techniques, his coming out process, and his search for a small inexpensive apartment of his own, something that is hard to find in this area. But, I’ll cover more of that conversation in my next entry. Needless to say, I had a wonderful evening, and I think Peter did too.

If I were 60 years younger…

“Dirty Old Man!”

See, there he goes again. And, yes, I do answer back.

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Relaxing on the Porch

2006-10-11T09:02:00.000-04:00

Presently, I’m sitting on the porch with my trusty laptop. I love to sit or sprawl here on my rattan couch, work on the blog, read, look out at the tops of live oaks and palms – I can see queen, royal, and coconut from here - and/or snooze. I keep several books on the table next to the couch and peruse them depending on whether or not I want heavy or light reading. Currently in the stack are Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact by Ludwig Fleck (1982 edition) on the heavy side, and, on the lighter side, Flight of Aquavit by Anthony Bidulka. The Fleck book is there because of Kuhn’s, as the latter seems to be an extension of the former. I Googled both on line, and found out that my conclusions are correct because, Kuhn himself claimed Fleck as an inspiration. I’m not far into either, but there are two ideas I’ve gathered from Kuhn and Fleck’s works so far. First, scientific theory is dependent on culture, and therefore, a particular scientific revolution is unthinkable in times and places other than ones own. Therefore, we can look back through time and understand those scientific revolutions that exist in the past. However, by way of example, an aborigine from the Seventeenth Century would not have been able to understand Newton’s theory of gravitation. Secondly, it seems that a particular way of looking scientifically at the universe (a paradigm) from a particular place in time would have been viable and appropriate at the time, though to us it may no longer be correct and applicable. At first, it seems as though Kuhn is making a claim that scientific revolutions are somewhat random, though he claims not. Instead, my understanding is that while dependent on culture to exist, scientific revolutions (paradigms) are none-the-less based in actual fact and capable of being theorized, studied and hopefully proved by scientific method, though, at the same time, our conceptualization of “science” itself could not exist in a culture other than our own. Fleck’s work precedes Kuhn’s by decades, and as such was way ahead of its time. Both fit logically into the postmodern way of looking at man’s understanding of all things as culture based.

So, there you have it, one of my intellectual digressions. I can’t help it. What else have I to do at my age, but think in circles and spirals loosely woven together in frayed and tattered fabrics? Thank God, I’m still able!

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Adam and Stephen

2006-10-08T09:37:00.000-04:00

I talked with Adam by landline telephone last night. I still prefer the old fashioned telephone because it doesn’t break up, voices are clearer, and I can understand better. I don’t think it’s a hearing problem so much - though I don’t hear as well as I used to – as just my preference based on a seventy year history of telephone conversations. Be that as it may, Adam said they just had a nasty northeaster in southern New Jersey, and I thought, “I’m happy to be in sunny South Florida.” We did have a half-inch of rain day before yesterday, but most of the day was clear with intense bright sunshine, as was yesterday, high 86, and low 72. I, of course, gloated and rubbed it in.

Adam also informed me that he and Stephen were planning on making a weekend trip to New York City in November, and were trying to make up there minds as to what musical to see. I said that they had better start trying to get tickets to any of them right now, because sometimes they’re booked solid six months to a year in advance.

Finally,his voice quavering a bit, Adam told me that he and Stephen are once again talking about moving in together. He even showed Stephen photographs of some of the small houses he’s been looking at with the intent to purchase, and Stephen suggested they might buy one together. I was so pleased, especially considering Adam’s indiscretions and the break-up they went through this past spring.

I know those two young men think of me as an important person in their lives. I also know that I'm on the minds of other family members. For instance, Ruth worries and obsesses about me, and I’m sure she loves me in her way as do Samuel, her brothers and their families. However, those two men really like me, and enjoy spending time with me. The difference, I think, is that I am valued by Adam and Stephen, while other family members just worry about old, strange Isaac, spending his money, getting older, queerer, more frail, and perhaps senile.

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Mark Foley’s Situation Reflects Unfavorably on Us All:

2006-10-05T11:38:00.000-04:00

I woke up this morning at 4:00 AM and could not get back to sleep. Today I’m exhausted and miserable thinking about the national news. Originally, in 2005, I separated my political material from this blog because I felt it distracted attention from the details of my diurnal existence. However, I am so upset and miserable about what has happened in this congress in general, and now specifically with the Foley affair that it is affecting the pattern of my daily life. So, here it is, my attempt to clarify my worries about Mr. Foley’s sad situation in order to put an end to this disrupting influence in the pattern of my existence.

As I lay tossing and turning in the dark this morning, I tried to apply some logical thought to my upset. I thought about the accusation that Mr. Foley had cybersex with at least one of his past pages. First, I questioned the implications of a cybersex act. The term involves no physical contact. One cannot crawl into ones computer and meet another person in the circuitry, nor in the empty space of wires, host computers, and satellites that comprise cyberspace, and make corporeal contact. Thus, the term “cybersex” at least as it exists at this point in time, is a misnomer. One can type messages to another person, even see the other person in real time as a small pixilated image, moving in fits and starts, fantasize that he or she is physically present, and fantasize having sex with them. However, having actual sex with them is impossible. Thus, cybersex involves an act of masturbation. It may be more erotic than looking at a photograph of a naked man or woman, I don’t know, not having done such a thing (H-m-m-m-m), but it is no more than masterbation. Second, I questioned the pedophile connection to Mr. Foley. I remembered that our conception of pedophilia as sick and evil is a contemporary idea. For instance, the ancient Greeks looked upon the physical/sexual relationship between an older educated man (erastes) and a younger man (teenager) who was involved as apprentice, and/or as student (eromenos) to the older man’s role as educator and mentor, as noble and special. While I realize that we live in a culture that considers a pedophile to be vile and sick, and has laws in place to punish him, I know it has not always been so. These thoughts do not in any way exonerate Mr. Foley, but they do serve to place his possible role as pedophile – remember, he stands accused only - in context.

Unfortunately X-Congressman Mark Foley’s descent into the abysmal pedophilic degradation in which our culture seems to revel, like a gourmand on a binge, reflects on all gay men because so many people in our already diseased culture believe that all gay men are pedophiles. In actuality, scientific research into pederasty (the actual sex act performed between an older individual and a child) shows that our expectations concerning the two participants in pederasty, and the results of such a relationship are totally incorrect. First, empirical research is difficult to find, and is often unreliable.1 Second, it would appear that it is rare for an act of pederasty to stand in isolation. Third, more often than not, it involves a long term relationship between the younger man and older man, not a single act. Forth, more often than not, the younger member of the pair grows up to be heterosexual. Fifth, often the older man is heterosexual and married. Sixth, more often than not, the younger member of the pair grows up to be married, father children, and lead a monogamous heterosexual adult life. 2 In fact, it would appear that much of the current view of pedophiles as sick predators is a contemporary reaction that is at least partially based in hysteria. 3 Having said all that, I certainly will distance myself from the homosexual or heterosexual pederast who would rape children just as I distance myself from the heterosexual male who would rape a grown woman. That this particularly frightening incident (because of its national focus) involves a closeted homosexual man who just happened to be a six term congressman in the United States Congress, and who also had so much to do with The Child Protection Act of 2005, should give caution to us all, homosexual and heterosexual. That it comes at a time when it will undoubtedly influence the upcoming mid-term elections is a plus for Democrats does make me happy. However, I ask the question – how much of our reaction to Mr. Foley’s pedophilia is pure hysteria based in a social malaise that has to do with a more than myopic cultural preoccupation with sex in general?

1. Brongersma Edward, JD, “Boy Lovers and Their Influence on Boys: Distorted Research and Anecdotal Observations.” Journal of Homosexuality, 20-1/2, 1990. http://www.ipce.info/library_3/files/brong_90_frm.htm. Viewed Thursday, October 5, 2006, 10:54 AM. EDT.
2. Tindall, Ralph H., PhD., “The male adolescent involved with a pederast becomes an adult.” Journal of Homosexuality, Vol 3 (4) Summer 1978. http://www.ipce.info/library_3/files/tindall.htm. Viewed Thursday, October, 5, 2006, 10:56 AM. EDT.
3. Gieles, Frans, “Is pedophilia a mental disorder? Discussion in Archives of Sexual Behavior (Dec. 2002),” in Ipce Newsletter, Number E 15, March 2003. http://www.ipce.info/newsletters/nl_e_15.htm. Viewed on line, Thursday, October 5, 2006, 11:02 AM, EDT.

The Holiday Weekend

2006-09-28T09:34:00.000-04:00

Sunday, September 3, 2006 started with a gray sky and rain! I got up late because Adam and Stephen had taken me out to a Philadelphia gay owned restaurant and bar the night before. The pianist played Broadway musical and other tunes and after dinner we ended up singing along until one in the morning – well, I mostly listened, but a group of about two dozen men sounded as good as a Broadway chorus to my alcohol laced brain.

Adam rushed me through a cup of coffee and cereal. I shaved and dressed in shirt, tie, and slacks that he provided. Amazingly they fit though a bit baggy in the shoulders and chest. We went to church at the Mickleton Friends Meeting House. The Quakers, at least in the Philadelphia area are a gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered (GLBT) friendly organization. Adam has not joined the Mickleton group, but he is looking for a GLBT friendly church to join, and this visit was part of that search. After the worship service, we returned to his apartment. Adam unlocked the door with a smug smile spreading slowly across his face.

“What?” I said.

“Nothing.” He said, as he opened the door to a living room full of family. Ruth and Samuel stood behind the couch. Samuel Jr. and Nichole were seated in front of them. The children, Amy and Terrance, now in their teens were sitting near Adam’s 42-inch plasma television. Stephen, my grandson-in-law (so to speak) by association with Adam was coming out of the kitchen with a tray of snacks. All of our family members who are close enough to drive to Woodbury were there. That meant Abraham and Joseph’s families were at their respective homes, but they called that afternoon. I must admit, a tear escaped and slowly found its way down my right cheek as everyone stood and greeted me all at once, a chorus of overlapping “Hi grandpa,” and “Hi Dad,” followed by hugs and kisses all around.

We talked non-stop all afternoon, catching up on each other’s accomplishments and the important recent events of our lives. The sound of laughter echoed the feelings of communion and love that filled Adam’s apartment with joy. Even Ruth seemed to be enjoying herself. Later, Adam and Stephen grilled chicken on the roofed balcony for a mid-afternoon dinner. Ruth had brought her famous Pennsylvania Dutch potato salad, loaded with almost as much egg, chopped onion and celery, as potato. Yum! Nichole had brought a big plastic bag of tri-bean salad, and a bowl of bowtie-and-seafood salad, as well as a three layer chocolate fudge cake. We all stuffed ourselves to bursting before our visitors forced themselves back into their cars and headed home.

Evidently Adam and Stephen had been working on the event since the beginning of August. I don’t know what they would have done had I refused to stay for the holiday – probably kidnapped me, tied me up and thrown me in the closet until the holiday. "I'm back in the closet again." No, NEVER!

What a wonderful dreary, and rainy day!

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My Rehoboth Beach Visit Was Too Short!

2006-09-24T14:00:00.000-04:00

We drove back to Woodbury, New Jersey Sunday evening because both Adam and Stephen had to work on Monday. The shore traffic was a mess, but I knew it would be. Back in the fifties and sixties of the last century I often drove Rebecca and the children to Rehoboth Beach for a long weekend during the summer. We rented a cottage there (one that no longer exists) for several years. In fact, with the new turnpike in place, it was much better this time than back in the old days. Back then Rt. One went through every small town and we often had to stop at every traffic light between Christiana and Rehoboth Beach, thirty-seven according to my count. This past Sunday it took us three hours in heavy traffic, compared with four and one half hours back when I made the drive regularly every summer.

Monday, August 28, 2006 - What the Bible Doesn’t Say about Homosexuality

Sunday, August 27, 2006

Once I was ensconced in Adam’s apartment in Woodbury, and Adam had left for work, I returned to my book, What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality, by Daniel A. Helminiak, Ph.D.. Dr. Helminiak seems to be making the claim that the Bible doesn’t talk about homosexuals as a type of human being, since there wasn’t a word for that type of man or woman at the time. However, he doesn’t say that in so many words. Instead he proceeds to examine the standard texts used by prejudiced Christians to make their case against homosexuals in minute detail, describing the Hebrew state practices, and cultural institutions of the time, and the ways these did or did not address same sex behaviors. He describes this as an historical religious approach as opposed to a literal religious approach to the Bible. I found myself thinking that both of these approaches are interpretations of the Bible, and that neither allows much room for the reader to approach the Bible with the goal to understand it from a unique perspective.

Looking at the old testament, Dr. Helminiak states that same sex behaviors were understood as unclean by the ancient Hebrew texts, but makes several distinctions between the Bible’s statements about same sex behaviors and the claim that the Bible says homosexuals are evil, bad, unacceptable, and so forth. For instance, in the story of Sodom he states that the term “abomination” does not refer to sex acts at all, but to “idolatry, to Israel’s infidelity to God, and to Child Sacrifice and murder.”*1 He then goes on to say, and I’m loosely paraphrasing that religious parents who disown or punish their gay child are guilty of the very sin the story of Sodom is addressing.

Dr. Helminiak continues to write in that vein, analyzing every part of the Bible in which many Christians claim to find statements that support their prejudice against lesbian and gay people. Unfortunately some of the labyrinthine explorations of ancient languages, etymology, and conflicting social customs, of ancient Hebrew, Greek, and Roman cultures become so abstruse as to prevent most people (though perfectly capable) from bothering to follow through to Dr. Helminiak's conclusion as stated above. I am not disparaging the text, rather the obvious lack of will to read for subtlety of understanding in our culture. Most of us subscribe to the Western Cartesian proclivity for opposites. Something is or it is not, it is black versus white, male versus female, Christian versus Jew, heterosexual versus homosexual, Republican versus Democrat, East versus West. If it is not an opposition, it can’t be dealt with in any logical fashion. Thus, the explorations of subtle meaning in Doctor Helminiak's book will be too difficult for those in most need of correction to bother with.

Upon finishing What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality, I couldn't help thinking that those who use the Bible to support their own prejudice superimpose their negative view of the world upon the holy book, and perform the worst disservice to God's word.

*1 Helminiak, Daniel A. Ph.D., What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality, Tajique Alamo Square Press (Millennium edition, 2000), p.48.

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Cape Henlopen

2006-09-21T09:55:00.000-04:00

Sunday we drove out to the end of the Cape. You can just barely see the southern most tip of New Jersey, Cape May on the horizon, across the Delaware Bay. While standing atop the north dune view point in the park we watched one of the Cape May Ferries come out of the Bay and head for South New Jersey. There are two lighthouses, one on the bay, and a second at the border between bay and open-ocean. I loved the one-hundred-eighty-degree panorama view of sand dunes, bay, and ocean. After visiting the tip of the cape, Adam drove us South through the state park to the highest point on the beach between Cape Cod and Cape Hatteras. The dunes rise to a height of almost one hundred-eighty-feet, and we had a spectacular view of the beaches below us, the ocean, and an oil tanker coming into the Delaware Bay.

Henlopen State Park was created out of old Fort Miles. There are observation towers throughout the park that were built in order to protect shipping against German U-boats during World War Two. Though they were never actually used for that purpose, they were, however, used to help rescue crews from ships damaged during east coast winter storms. You can even climb one of the towers for a spectacular 360-degree view of the cape, bay, and ocean. Yes, I did climb it, all be it very slowly, and with rests every 10 to 12 steps. All that exercise I have put myself through over the years has paid off. I don’t think too many guys my age could do that climb. I drew a picture of one of the towers at Gordon’s Pond in the Park. I used pastels, and I’ve included it here.

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Poodle Beach

2006-09-17T23:28:00.000-04:00

Saturday, August 26, 2006
The boys – I shouldn’t call them that because they’re young men - got a parking pass for the weekend, so they could drive me close to the beach. I protested that the walk would do me good, but they wouldn’t have it, so I was chauffeured to the boardwalk. Poodle beach was named according to one storey after the glitzy 19 40’s and 50’s queens who took their poufed and dressed-in-Sunday-best poodles to the area located at the end of the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk. It was still quite a hike from the car to the boardwalk, and across the wide expanse of beach. Adam put our umbrella up in an area populated by young lesbian and gay families. It was wonderful to see two dads or two moms building sand castles with their young children, dipping toddlers in and out of the waves, and/or watching older children protectively from the shade of their umbrellas.

The end of the Rehoboth Beach Boardwalk. Poodle Beach is to the left.

When I was a young man, the only way a gay man could have a family was to marry a heterosexual woman. It worked for me, but I know that I gave dear Rebecca many difficult moments, and I guess that is putting it mildly. We did love one another, but I know that I wasn’t what Rebecca needed physically in a husband. And, I think I was unbelievably neurotic and tricky to live with. I’m sure that the tensions between us helped to make my Ruthie, Adam’s mother, such a complicated, high-maintenance personality.

Be that as it may, I found in Rehoboth Beach, “the nation’s summer capitol,” solid evidence of the families lesbian women and gay men are creating in the first decade of the Twenty-first century. Too bad our evangelical Christian brothers and sisters are unwilling to accept these beautiful young parents and their children - so much for “family values.”

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And Now We Return to My Rehoboth Beach Visit

2006-09-14T09:42:00.000-04:00

While in Rehoboth Beach, Adam and Stephen began a campaign to have me stay with them through the holiday weekend. They were unrelenting. They started on me Saturday morning and kept it up all weekend, even on the drive back to Woodbury Sunday night.

“Really, grandpa – why go back to Florida for the holiday week-end and be by yourself? We’d like to have you stay in New Jersey with us.”

“But you’ll be at work until Friday.”

“You were going to be with me Monday to Thursday anyway, and I would have been working then. I’m off Friday through Monday.”

“How will I get to the airport on Tuesday? You’ll be at work.”

“There’s limousine service.”

“Isn’t that expensive?”

“We’ll pay for it,” said Stephen.

“You’re worth it,” chimed in Adam. “Besides, We’ll go in to Philadelphia and visit the Art Museum.”

“Go out to dinner,” said Stephen.

“Maybe take in a play,” said Adam.

“We could go to the IMAX Theater at the Franklin Museum,” said Stephen.

“Yeah, I’ll bet you haven’t been to an IMAX theater, Grandpa. The screen is huge, so big it makes you move your body when the scene shifts in the film, and the sound goes all around you, makes the theater shake, and you feel as though you’re in the middle of the movie itself.”

“Don’t know about that one, Adam.”

“Then you’ll stay.”

“Come on, Isaac,” said Stephen. “You know you want to.”

Tears came to my eyes. I have family - I won’t ever sit alone and be forgotten - they’re gay family, and blood family that care about me. I’m such a lucky old man. “Okay, okay.” I said. “I give in. I’ll stay.”

“All right,” said Stephen.

“Hallelujah,” said Adam.

“Amen,” said Stephen.

“Now, boys,” I said. “That borders on blasphemy.”

“Never,” said Adam. “I’ll bet God’s pleased you’re staying too.”

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Nine-Eleven Remembered

2006-09-11T09:38:00.000-04:00

It’s my birthday and I'm 87!

This will be my first birthday alone, I think ever. Ruth called today to decry the fact that she can’t have my traditional birthday dinner. I commiserated with her, and metaphorically held her hand. I also promised that if I’m alive and well next year, I’ll fly home and stay at Orchard Hill Farm for my birthday with her and Samuel.

Recapitulating “My Stand” One More Time

Because it’s my birthday, and because that horrible world shaking event since tagged “9/11” took place on my 82nd birthday, I’m including the poem, “My Stand.” This is the fourth repeat, but I will not apologize because “My Stand” was sparked by a poem “The Stand” e-mailed to me by a friend. Fortunately, I have since lost “The Stand” in the move from Pine Needle Retirement Home to South Florida. I was incredibly angry when I read “The Stand” four years ago, because, and I am paraphrasing, it said that anyone who was against the war in Iraq was not patriotic.

Well, I’ve felt from the get-go That the Iraq war is, a foolish adventure waged by a foolish president, who was not elected to be president at least the first time around, who was elected by an equally foolish American people for a second term. Thus we risk repeating history. I say that “We, the people” and our foolish president risk repeating history because Vietnam, and the Spanish Armada should have given all of us great pause. The American people were fooled into going along with this misadventure, and for that, we must each take responsibility. We are all responsible, even those of us who did not agree, because we did not shout our opposition from the rooftops!

The war on Iraq is morally wrong. It stands in contrast to everything we say we believe in; God, peace, freedom, and democracy. Instead, we have destroyed a nation and killed thousands of women and children in the process. Additionally, Two-thousand-six-hundred-sixty-six of our own children have died in Iraq and over 19,945 have been wounded.

My opposition to this foolish war does not make me any less of a patriot than those who are for it. My memorial to 9/11 follows.

My Stand

Isaac Stolzfuts

I was born on September 11, 1919.
I was with my great grandchildren
On September 11th, 2001,
My eighty-second birthday.
We celebrated by playing together.
Drawing pictures, they told me what they saw,
The farm, our orchard, friends at school,
Their Mom and Dad.

Black space...

The TV’s white-noise-background
Suddenly stentorian to my mind
Though the anchor man’s voice
Even and measured announces
“APPARENT TERRORIST ATTACK...”
And, no longer laughing at play,
We watch "live" as thousands die.

It felt as though we were there,
Engulfed in that ebon cloud of dust,
The taste of death in our mouths.
Rebecca (named after her Grandma)
Cried, “That’s just a movie, Grandpa,
Right?” And Abe Junior said,
"Where are all the super heroes?
When we need-um!"
Well, the super heroes are in Iraq today,
Fighting for what they believe.
I pray for their safety even as
Mr. Bush claims to pray for peace.

I was born on September 11, 1919,
At the end of the flue epidemic, and World War One.
A Surreal world of horror both then and in 2001
Flowers and fireworks opposed to cinders and soot.
A world in which the lost lives of Iraq's
Women and children are not counted.
A world in which stolen artifacts
Testament to the beginning of civilization
Are casualties to Imperialist ambition.
A world in which a 21st century crusade has begun.

I do not believe in this war.
I do not believe in the "New American Century."

I do believe in a United States that stands for peace and trust.
I do believe in a United States that leads the world by GOOD example.
I do believe in a United States that bequeaths to the world
A vision of democracy and freedom.

Each American in Iraq is a hero and a patriot.
Each American who states his or her opinion
Opposing this war is also a hero and a patriot.

Dissent is one of the freedoms we believe in!
Would you have 225 years of national endeavor destroyed?
Do not call me anti-American.
Do not tell me that I did not suffer on September 11.
Do not tell me that I am not a patriot.

I was born on September 11, 1919.
My life always circled around “Nine Eleven.”
I am a child of “Nine Eleven.”
By birthright I am “Nine Eleven.”
I am freedom.
And, like Whitman I am part of you
And all of you are a part of me.
I am an American.
I don't believe in this war of American conquest, and
I am a 21st century American patriot!

Remember Them the Way They Used To Be

*

*Rodric M. Rabbah,"Lost But Never Forgotten". "http://web.mit.edu/rabbah/www/pictures/wtc/ny_3.jpg" viewed Sunday, September 11, 2005, 10:40 AM EDT.

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The Trip to Rehoboth Beach

2006-09-08T09:20:00.000-04:00

The Flight to Philadephia and Drive to New Jersey

My flight to Philadelphia was uneventful. There was an hour and one half layover for the connecting flight in Atlanta with no delays, and I had plenty of time to make it across the terminal. I did have to walk forever at Philadelphia International, but Adam had prepared me for that. Besides, I don’t mind walking. It is good for me. Adam met me at the luggage pick-up area, and he carried my bag to the car. The drive to Woodbury, New Jersey, where Adam lives took about 25 minutes.

Woodbury is across the Delaware River from Philadelphia in Gloucester County. The community was founded in 1683 and became a Quaker religious center that figured prominently in the American Revolution. It was used by General Cornwallis as his headquarters for the British assault on Philadelphia in 1777.

Adam rents a two-bedroom apartment there in a nice garden apartment community that has its own pool and tennis courts. I told him that it is time he invested in his own place.

“Everything is so expensive, Granpa, and it just never seemed important to have my own place as long as I was single.”

“So, what’s your rent here?”

“About twelve hundred a month.”

“And you don’t think you can do a mortgage for that?”

“Yes, I probably could, on a small fixer-upper.”

“Buy a house Adam. You won’t be pouring money into someone else’s property, and you’ll be building equity in your own.”

I spent but one day in Woodbury, Friday, while Adam was at work. I had packed What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality, by Daniel A. Helminiak, Ph.D..
I sat on Adam’s balcony and read it cover to cover - more about that later. As soon as Adam got home, we loaded the car, picked Stephen up, and headed for Rehoboth Beach. Woodbury is closer to southern New Jersey shore communities than it is to Rehoboth. However, we crossed the Walt Whitman Bridge, went to 95, and headed south, connected with Route One in Delaware, which took us straight (I mean forward) south to Rehoboth Beach, about a 2 and 1/2 hour journey. The house loaned to Adam and Stephen for the weekend was an old 3-bedroom cottage/bungalow in an area known as Silver Lake. It had a porch and deck with mature shade trees, and was located several blocks back from the ocean. The area is named for the body of water that lies between it and the beach, a pretty, but brackish lake that separates huge vacation houses built by the rich along the beach in the nineties from the rest of the community, and from Dewey Beach immediately to the South.

More later.

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I’m Back in South Florida

2006-09-05T16:45:00.000-04:00

Ye gods, I must be getting old! What a flight! I’m exhausted. I’m going to bed. I’ll report on my journey later, dear Journal.

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