“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the grain of sands of the Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinaries, that are here. ”
leap peeping and sundry things part 1
We just returned from a 1,600 mile driving extravaganza through New England, New York, and (ostensibly) New Jersey. We leaf peeped, visited friends and family, went to a 45th reunion and became one with the mob of gawking tourists in Times Square.
Maine. Maybe the biggest surprise of the trip, as I had subconsciously likened Maine to New England's Mississippi. But its coastline was spectacular, its towns excruciatingly quaint, and the forests were exploding with fall colors. Acadia National Park: one big win after another. Additionally we stopped by Stephen King's house and took photos, which I'm sure he is a little over at this point, but it's his fault for buying such an easily accessible home in the middle of Bangor. And please, Mr. King, a Pontiac? Really?
Stewart lived briefly in Agusta, Maine, and his sister Mel was borne there so we stopped by the old homestead. It felt strange for me, and I'm sure for Stewart, to be standing next to the home he last lived in more than 60 years ago. But still not in bad shape.
New Hampshire. A close rival to Maine, sans the coastline (okay, it has a teeny coastline, but we didn't get to see very much of it). The White Mountains, gorgeous. Mt. Washington, home of "The World's Worst Weather", was foreboding and mysterious. And unrelentingly windy (that's me blow, leaning in). Stewart might add a few more adjectives as he white-knuckled our rental car up the side of the mountain with no guard rails and on a road apparently designed by an Irishman with a penchant for uncomfortably narrow roads.
Vermont. Montpelier, big win. The only state capitol without a McDonald's. We visited the Rock of Ages quarry, home to the top shelf granite that graces many of the monuments in DC and elsewhere, and we made the pilgrimage to Ben and Jerry's of course. I had forgotten how politically active Messrs. Ben and Jerry were, and the young docent did not shy away from mentioning it. Good for them. Ben and Jerry's has a graveyard, by the way, for flavors that did not quite make it in the marketplace (sweep potato, srsly).
tamania, ho!
We just returned from a trip to Tasmania, that small island just south of the southeast corner of Australia. Not to be confused with Tanzania, which apparently happened more than once before we left.
We camper-vanned the whole thing, ten days; a first for me, and it generally turned out great. Stewart and I met up with daughter Caroline and grandson Liam in Melbourne, and then we flew to Hobart, staying a few days before heading up the eastern seaboard. Then inland to the mountains and back to Hobart. Caroline's boyfriend Ed accompanied us for the first several days, and was unrelentingly gracious as we traipsed from one place to the next.
I've never really considered myself a nature freak as it were, although I do like granola and loose-fitting pants, but as in Peru and Ecuador my favorite part of the trip was experiencing the flora and fauna of the island: penguins, kangaroos, paddymelons, wombats, tasmanian devils; pristine, world-class beaches, rain forests, waterfalls, mountains and mountainous lakes. All quite beautiful, and all nearly vacant as Australian schools were still in session.
Below is a photo of us with a glimpse of Wineglass Bay in the background (more photos in the travel section of this webpage). By at least a few subjective critics Wineglass has been named one of the most beautiful beaches in the world.
Happy 6th
Stewart's and my 6th wedding anniversary is today. It's such a cliche to say, but it doesn't seem that long ago when the California State Supreme Court had opened the door to allow for gay marriage, and many of us rushed out to tie the knot before the pending public vote that November.
It was the start of everything, in a sense. Not the start of the LGBT community's efforts, of course, but one of the first manifestations of the tidal wave of changes to come. Obama's election, DADT, DOMA, and an endlessly surprising litany of other victories that have had the gratifying effect of making our marriage nearly commonplace.
We actually have been together since 1997, when we exchanged rings on top of Mt. Soledad on our birthdays. It was a time of incredible upheaval in my life, having finally come to terms with my sexuality at the age of 30, while simultaneously switching careers and entering into what I hoped to be a long term relationship. But again, hard to believe it's been 17 years.
I'm not sure what we will do to celebrate, but maybe we'll just head to the Imperial Beach pier for fish and chips, and to watch the sun sink below the Pacific.
Bluegrass Country
Stewart and I just returned from our now-annual trip to Lexington, KY. For those of you who slept through 5th grade U.S. geography class, Kentucky is nestled within 7 states, but generally south of Ohio and Indiana and north of Tennessee. And Lexington sits sort of in the middle of the Commonwealth, an hour and a half south of Cincinnati, and an hour and a half east of Louisville. If you're looking to buy or race a thoroughbred horse, or house it in multi-million dollar stable surrounded by manicured fields of grass surrounded by miles of white fencing, you'll want to go to Lexington.
But I digress.
We attended the McNabb reunion/picnic (my Dad's side of the genealogical house), and the ensuing cousin after party once the elders headed off to bed. It was held this year in Shillito Park, the park of my childhood, although its layout and feel has changed considerably in the intervening 40 years.
We hit the Bourbon Trail twice, once at Buffalo Trace and then at Town Ranch, which is slightly ironic since both Stewart and Mom don't drink. My Dad and I stress the educational and cultural value of such outings, as we sip their bourbon and whiskey samples. We also visited Colonel Sanders' grave, had dinner at Colonel Sanders' wife's restaurant in Shelbyville, and Mom and Dad treated us to a Derby Dinner Theater evening with Mary Poppins and a lot of fried catfish. All quite enjoyable.
Mom cooked and hosted a dinner with the Reverend Mark Beckett who came down from Columbus, and with Bill and Cindi Clark and their kids/our godsons Jay and David. Then lunch out with my godfather/uncle Arden and aunt Shirley, and Stephanie Gardner.
We try to go back to Lexington at least once a year, if not twice, although this December we will be headed to Spokane instead, for Stewart's son's 40th birthday.
Et tu, Santa Monica?
A few weeks ago Stewart and I were in Santa Monica, meeting a longtime friend of mine who had traveled out from Illinois to see the spectacle that is Los Angeles. Having lived in SoCal for nearly 25 years I have become inured to both the grandeur and the oddness that greets those who visit from the midwest and south, but at the same time I never fail to be disappointed at our State's conservancy of what we have. An otherwise potentially beautiful beach, in typical American style it is strewn with all manner of trash, as are the highways leading into and around the town. Visitors to the Santa Monica Pier are relentlessly accosted by the homeless and near-homeless who aggressively panhandle for money. The tourist attractions, even given that they are designed to lure the unsuspecting or the unaware into buying something, are chintzy and poorly maintained.
On top of that my friend got the pleasure of experiencing SoCal traffic, which has become a standing icon of our State's failure to create an infrastructure that somewhat approximates the number of citizens that will invariably interact with and use it. Stewart and I ourselves fell into the trap as we headed home later that evening, when Caltrans decided to shut the entire freeway down for maintenance.
Sydney and Melbourne Australia have millions of residents similar to a Santa Monica or a San Diego, and their public parks are impeccable. No trash, no homeless, the flora and fauna maintained to what seems to be an impossible standard given the volume of people who frequent them. Even their grass is somehow maintained such that it doesn't look like a stampede of buffalo ran circles over it all day, as opposed to how Balboa Park in San Diego typically looks.
It probably doesn't help that California is in a severe drought, but that's hardly a surprising turn of events for LA and San Diego. Yet we haven't transitioned to plants that actually are sustainable in drought conditions, unlike say Palm Springs, so we're left with stressed, terminally ill landscapes that make much of our public spaces, especially those surrounding our highways, look like the lawn of a foreclosed home. On the plus side, I suppose, if it weren't for the occasional gang of prisoners marched around on the shoulders of the 5, 8, and 15 picking up trash, you'd likely never see most of the vegetation at all.
So there's the silver lining, California's nearly unlimited supply of prison labor. And the fact that the Santa Monica Pier is the terminus of Route 66:
Door To Door
Attempted Murder
A few weeks ago I was selected for my first jury duty. Attempted murder and various other, related charges in connection with a stabbing that took place in the house pictured above. I had always been somewhat suspicious of the American justice system, and the process of jury selection and the trial itself only confirmed my suspicions. After it was all over I felt a sense of unease and no small degree of trepidation that should misfortune befall me, my fate would not likely depend upon my innocence or guilt but on the fragile and quirky workings of the court.
The judge first read the charges being levied against the defendant, and then explained at length the concept of innocent until proven guilty. I thought she had gotten her point across 30 seconds into the 5 minute monologue, but then she posed a hypothetical question to the jury pool: if she were to send us to deliberation right now, without having heard a single piece of evidence or any remarks from either attorney, which of us would return a verdict of guilty? At least two juror candidates promptly raised their hand.
Odd, I thought. Perhaps they didn't understand the question. But then after further explanation from the judge as to their error, she and the two attorneys proceeded to ask individual jurors some questions about themselves, presumably as it pertained to the charges. For the next three hours I sat and listened, mortified, as one juror candidate after another conveyed fantastical tragedies that had befallen them, and/or bizarre belief systems that would prejudice them against the defendant. Most of which had no bearing on anything but were the result of some unstoppable, compulsive need to over share.
All told the two attorneys struck down at least twenty of the initial juror pool, and would have kept going had they not been stopped by the judge.
The trial proceeded over the course of three days, and the District Attorney did a wholesale terrible job at convincing anyone of the defendant's guilt. The only witness he called was the victim, who otherwise might have been a slam dunk except his blood alcohol level was .25 and he (unsurprisingly) remembers nothing. In full disclosure I have been somewhere in the vicinity of .25 myself, and the fact that he was still upright and conscious at the time I found to be exceptionally impressive. But while his body entered that home on the fateful evening, his mind apparently wasn't anywhere in the vicinity.
The defendant--a prior convicted felon--was schizophrenic and bipolar, which apparently we learned can have the byproduct of hyper-religiosity. Which would explain why he had a penchant for spray painting crosses inside the refrigerator freezer and hot water tank, for example. And why he had a cross tattooed on his face.
He also kept falling asleep during the trial, as did one of the jurors. Both had to be awakened at the behest of the judge.
The defendant looked and acted as if were entirely capable of committing the alleged crime (and then some), and in all honesty he very likely did attempt to kill his Mom's boyfriend. But he and his Mom were sober that evening, their stories more or less aligned, and the other plausible theories behind the stabbing were left hanging by the incompetent prosecution. We returned a verdict of not guilty.
I can hardly make sweeping judgments of our legal system after one trial, but the fact that the incompetence of a single attorney could turn the tide one way or another gave me chills. And I can't help but think how many defendents have been convicted of crimes they didn't commit because that incompetent attorney just happened to be theirs.
After the verdict I was chatting with another juror in the parking lot, and the defendant walked by. He waved, yelled "God bless you," and I laughed and waved back as he hopped in his car and drove away, a free man.
South America, Part 2
After Machu Picchu we traveled to the Galapagos Islands, the archipelago made famous by Charles Darwin during his voyage on The Beagle. There are no indigenous mammals there, just reptiles, birds and a great diversity of marine wildlife. The reptiles and sea lions have no innate fear or aversion to humans, although at times it was clear we were straining their patience. But otherwise you could walk right up to them and just look and observe (touching was strictly verboten). On two different occasions while snorkeling a sea lion decided to spook the living bejeezus out of me by launching himself from a rocky outcropping into the water just a few feet away from my head. Which if I were a sea lion I would do all the time.
Below is a photo of a small colony of sea lions, the younger one suckling from his very disinterested mother.
One of the reasons I wanted to go to the Galapagos was to see the the evolutionary differentiation within species, something I find fascinating. The eyes and fur of the sea lions who hunt at night rather than the day evolved to better accommodate the colder temperatures and absence of light. The land tortoises' shells changed shape compared to their marine brethren as the source and location of their food changed. The seafaring iguana developed a mechanism to filter salt out of seawater, and then expel it by snorting it periodically (and with impressive velocity) out its nose.
The Galapagos still have active volcanoes, and one day we hiked along the rim of one, and then actually onto the cooled lava flow. The photo below was taken of one that had erupted in the mid 2000's (most of the volcano is actually off to the left, but I thought the juxtaposition of the lava against the surrounding vegetation was interesting).
After the Galapagos we returned to mainland Ecuador and then traveled to Cuenca (CWEN-ka) to visit Sara Coppler and her wife Kathy. Sara's parents are my godparents, and by a small quirk of fate her Dad is now my uncle (her Mom has since passed away). And growing up Sara used to babysit me. We had a great time, capped off by Sara hosting a large group of friends and cooking several pots of authentic Coppler chili, and then the next day with a four hour hike up to the Giron waterfalls (photo below). It was a surprisingly difficult: slippery, muddy and with dense vegetation along the trail, but the falls were just beautiful and solitary.
Numbers
“One death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic.”
South America, Part 1
Stewart and I just returned from a three-week adventure trip to South America. Machu Picchu in Peru, specifically, and then the Galapagos Islands of Ecuador.
Machu Picchu (MP) was The Citadel of the Incan Empire, and was at the time a magnificent feat of engineering and human ingenuity situated at a most impossible location in the Peruvian Andes. While one of their more visually stunning accomplishments, MP was one of many structures and communities the Incans built across their empire that at one time spanned most of the South American coast and stretched far inland.
Below is a photo of one of their mortarless walls, with each boulder cut and fitted so exactingly to one another that you can scarcely insert a piece of paper between them, 600 years after they were built.
The famous 12-sided stone in an Incan wall in Cusco, Peru
There are a hundred stories as to why the walls were built the way they are, to include making them nearly impervious to earthquakes, and some that explain why there are small boulders at the bottom of the wall instead of the top.
You can probably find more stunning photos of MP on the web, but armed with iPhones and a GoPro, here's one of our better ones:
The photo does not begin to capture the enormity and complexity of the site, nor the far greater enormity of the mountain range in which it sits. It is one of those things you have to see to truly appreciate. To get a sense of the scale, the second day there we climbed the prominent mountain just behind the ruins, and it took us an hour and a half, literally going straight up its sheer side.
The day prior we white-water rafted on the Urubamba River, which snakes through the mountain ranges and around MP itself. Again, just spectacular scenery, punctuated with a few rapids that kept things interesting:
I'm in the blue helmet on the left (with the GoPro camera strapped to my head), and Stewart is just behind me. I think around the time this photo was taken our boat guide was having serious doubts about our physical acumen when it came to synchronized paddling. Which might explain why we collided with the branches of an overhanging tree several minutes later.
During the Peru portion of our trip I also rode a horse, in honor of my Kentucky heritage, although the horse and I were clearly not communicating very well with one another. But that's another story.
I will post some more photos soon, in case you are a glutton for vacation-photo punishment.
Happy 47 and 67
Stewart and I celebrated our 67th and 47th birthdays yesterday with a trip to Santa Barbara. A nice town, beautiful coastline, made all the better by being forced to slog through unrelenting LA traffic to get there. We celebrated on several occasions over the weekend, all of which invariably involved large amounts of food and alcohol (for me anyway), but the moment made it both appropriate and memorable.
Every year I try to mark the occasion of my birth with serious thought, but nothing ever comes of it, save for the conclusion that my random birth in a first world country, to educated parents who likewise insisted that I myself become educated, was a stroke of unbelievable luck. Not to mention the fact that I am gay, which would have been a stroke of unbelievably bad luck had I been born in a great number of other places. Not that Kentucky is the first State one thinks of when contemplating gay rights, but I'll take it over Nigeria.
My parents gave me the Chicago Manual of Style (with which I am now enthralled) so that I may become a better writer someday and, in the near term, a more insufferable critic of other people's work. If it weren't over 800 pages I would be quite inclined to carry it around for emphasis as I point out the errors of other people's compositions. I also got a Neo-Lucida, an optical transference device for people very much like myself who love to draw and paint but lack the necessary talent to transfer what we see onto paper, unaided. It is actually a very clever device, purportedly used by the ancient masters of yesteryear.
Heidi and Greg gave us a college course from The Great Courses, which we love and look forward to listening to. For those unaware, The Great Courses is essentially a company that sells full semesters' worth of college instruction, without the stress of passing exams or wondering how the hell you're going to get a job after graduation.
All in all, a great birthday, and for those numerologists in our midst: Stewart was born in 1947 and I turned 47. I was born in 1967 and Stewart turned 67.