Beards on the Bayou

Last week I found myself living in makeshift dormitory at the First Methodist Church of New Iberia, Louisiana, a small town outside of the roaring metropolis that is Lafayette.  Well, it might be anyway - I didn't make it up to Lafayette.  We were there to work, courtesy of our AmeriCorps program with Rebuilding Together. We were there to rebuild houses.

And we did.  We did siding, decking, demolishing, painting, roofing, framing, nailing, screwing, sawing and some people spent a lot of time playing with caulk.  No caulk for me though.  I had my hands full screwing on the porch.  We screwed that porch right onto its frame!  Bam!

It was a blast.  By the end of the days our hands were dirty, our hair was sloppy from sweat and hard hats, our muscles ached, our skin was burned, and some people even shed blood to ensure a better life for these homeowners.  I'm sure they'd just as soon as not have shed blood, but ask me if that two-inch long splinter through my finger was worth it, and I'll proudly nod (while cradling the wound, which I can still make out).

What's a splinter compared to a family with a severely disabled daughter being able to move back into their home which was all but completely destroyed when Hurricane Rita got mad and threw a tree into it?  As we finished securing the ceiling joists and roof rafters, I caught a glimpse of the happy couple walking through the newly re-framed middle portion of their wrecked home, picking out spots for furniture.  The few words I overheard then kept me warm all night.  Which was good, considering I didn't have much of a blanket in our over-stuffed barracks.

Some of us waited for hours to shower each night.  God bless our hosts who cooked for us every evening, went shopping for fresh fruit and bread every day, and arranged a field trip to Avery Island, home of Tabasco.  We spent way too much time at each of downtown New Iberia's four bars just about every night.  An elite crew of us explored the graveyard behind the church one night, and then climbed through a not-quite-entirely parked freight train to get home afterwards.  We danced, we wandered, we made out with each other (just a little), and made friends with the locals (Pete - I hope things work out with your girlfriend leaving her husband in Dallas and all).

Most importantly, we deepened friendships that already were far more important to each of us than the short amount of time we've all spent together would normally suggest.  It's a rich incongruence of which I am a lucky part.

There is no word count bloated enough that could suitably convey the sensations of that week, so rather than understate the case myself, I'll borrow from a tombstone that never existed outside of Kurt Vonnegut's books.

"Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."  Thank you, everyone.

AlMoStNaNoWriMo

Have I mentioned that I totally failed NaNoWriMo 2009?  Yessir, in classic mattjosh fashion, I was quick to start, slow to finish.

Oh yes, I am a force in first gear, a gallop out of the gate, a booster during blast-off!

But as the time went on, and my life intruded into my writing schedule, I took my mid-month trip to Washington for my organization's national conference and endured long days, intense partying, and hard nights on various floors and beds in the circa-L'Enfant Plaza area.  I wrote on the planes, but could not recover my initial momentum once I arrived home in Albuquerque.

It didn't help that I launched into a project that had sat for two years, after a blitz of inspiration birthed and raised it in two days time into a bouncing baby step outline for a screenplay.  Now I was trying to adapt it into a novel as I went, dismayed constantly that I was not capturing the tone I had envisioned.

It's a difficult project.  A satire on Islamic Terrorism in middle America.  It has to be funny but not too funny, serious but not too serious, real but not too real.  My tone was alternately farcical and melancholic.  Maybe it will work.  Maybe, taken as a completed whole it will reek of genius, rather than simply reek.

Most importantly, I need to return to it because I won't be able to die easy without having completed it.  But there are a lot of those project sitting around my world, and maybe it's better to keep a few unfinished just so I don't get too comfortable with the notion of my own demise.

I'd like my last work to be an autobiography, its closing words, dictated because my hands have grown too feeble to type, quoting Polonius emerging from behind the curtain, "O! I am slain!"

Honey Bear Dying of Exposure

A problem and a plea today. 

Honey Bear does not handle the cold very well.  Every morning I wake up to my 40 degree or, on a good morning, 50 degree living space and find that the honey inside of Honey Bear has cemented into a sweet honey stone.  His guts are blocked.  His lifeblood no longer oozes freely around his body cavity. 

Is Honey Bear still sweet if you can't get sweetness out of Honey Bear?

He needs to be kept around 70 degrees, I think, to function as a Honey Bear should.  What's a boy to do?  Any suggestions?  Help!

The New Old-School Environmentalism

“Climate change data might have been cooked by the researchers at blah blah blah...”

That's about as far as I got into the story about East Anglia University recently.  This all happened just ahead of the Copenhagen climate thingy that's going on now. 

If I sound poorly informed, it's because I am.  Happily so.

Are we still talking about global warming?  Does anybody else see this for what it is?  The climate change issue is, at best, an erudite scientific debate that people are hoping will dictate environmental policy that ought to be based on common sense.  At worst, it's a political straw-man seized upon by the anti-environment lobby because they knew it would be a sticky mess and divert the dialogue from the real issue. 

There, I've just written what should be the key word in this debate twice.  Everyone ready for a big surprise?  Environment.  Not climate.

Everybody talks about climate change and global warming like if we could just all agree on that one way or the other, the problem will go away on its own through our collective prayer.  Don’t get me wrong.  It’s great that we finally have something on which to blame the weather, unbridled force of nature that it is.  But it doesn't matter that this July was hotter than usual, or that you remember it snowing more when you were a kid.  Weather is weird everywhere and it changes everywhere (except Southern California).

The real issue at stake is the health of our planet and its myriad species, be they cute, hideous, or just kinda-funny-lookin'.  The global warming apologists of the world want tighter industrial regulations, protections for threatened biomes, energy efficiency, less pollution, etc.  They want the exact things that environmentalists used to want simply because they were the right things to do.  Protect life, keep our air and water clean, and find sustainable ways to exist without destroying the planet. 

Sounds good, right?  Who can argue against that?  Some, maybe many, but not most.  But who can argue about scientific findings concerning an issue as big and as old as the planet itself?  Just about everybody.  Enter environmental opponents, erect straw man.

I'm not saying climate change doesn't matter.  It makes me sad that salamanders and joshua trees may become extinct.  But the solutions we've devised to combat global warming are the same as the solutions we have for general environmental destruction and pollution, so stick to the argument with the stronger evidence and get to work.  Don't waste time arguing the finer points of our demise when the tools are readily available to stop it.

Most importantly (for an English major anyway), it’s still acceptable semantics to say someone either “believes” or “does not believe” in global warming.  I believe that anything that is still commonly referred to as a “belief” should not dictate policy.

What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love, and Domestic Partnerships?

53% to 47% sounds stinkingly familiar.  I guess people in Maine are, as a whole, 1% more bigoted than people in California.  I thought both states were better than that.  I think I should stop being optimistic on this issue and simply be pleasantly surprised when a state actually votes to uphold, rather than destroy, people's equal rights.

Question 1 asked Maine voters if they would like to repeal the legislation passed earlier that year giving same-sex couples the right to marry.  Maine said, "yes, please!  Keep those filthy fags living in sin where they belong."

Referendum 71 asked Washington voters if they want to uphold similar legislation in their state, only take out the word "marriage" and replace it with "domestic partnership".  Results are still pending as of this writing, but it looks like it will win, thus preserving something resembling equality, by a similarly narrow margin. 

Does this mean the upper-left corner of our country is more leftist than the upper-right corner?

No.  It means same-sex marriage advocates won by luck and by compromise, leaving out the word "marriage" even though that is what they seem most determined to win. 

Here's an idea that will win no friends, but makes the most sense:  Fuck "marriage."

The word "marriage" carries with it too much religious baggage to even warrant mention in a civil, political, or public document.  If all we're talking about is visitation rights in hospitals and tax benefits, we need to call all these unions, gay, straight, or poly, what they are - "civil." 

They are partnerships under the law, not under God.  Same-sex marriage advocates don't often argue a need for the benefits of God recognizing their union, because they either don't care about God's opinion, or have found a religious niche that does, in fact, recognize their relationship's legitimacy.  Advocates demand the state to recognize their partnership.  The state.  A secular, non-religious entity.

So, why, oh why, does the state use the word, "marriage," a word so steeped in religiosity it became a point of contention during the Reformation?  There's the answer - it's been done that way for a really long time.  As the man said in Fiddler on the Roof, "tradition!"  Our nation's fathers should have tossed it out the same moment they penned the First Amendment.  Freedom of religion inherently includes freedom from religion, and we cannot be free of something if it is written into our laws and tax codes.

Let people get married if they like - in a church or temple or mosque or interfaith center of worship.  But anyone who wants legal benefits currently awarded to married couples will be, instead, domestically partnered.  We use this system for coming of age rituals.  A person is legally an adult at age 18.  However, in Judaism, a person is an adult at 13.  Just because a boy is bar-mitzvah'd does not mean he can go to a store and buy cigarettes.

I say again, the law must be kept separate from religious terminology, tradition, and recognition.

In conclusion:

Liberals, if you want true equality, abolish the legality of the term "marriage."  Advocate civil union and domestic partnership laws for everyone, gay or straight.

Conservatives, if you want to protect the sanctity of marriage, remove it from our corrupt and secular legal documents and take control of it in your own religious institutions once again.