The bright side of a Moon
“You know, women are just like cars. They both come with strings attached.” – some hairy guy in a cheap suit, to a companion.
…whaaaaaaaaaaaaa?
Generally, every Christmas season, my family (me, my sister and her husband and kids, her in-laws, and my dad and his girlfriend (my aunt – long story)) plan a trip somewhere.
Generally, we go somewhere warm – we’ve been to Mexico a few times, and Hawaii once. They’ve been to Aruba (I didn’t go that year). We’re not a cold-weather kind of family.
The past couple of years we haven’t gone anywhere. The last trip was to Puerto Vallarta, and that was at least two Christmases ago.
So when my sister called me and left a message saying that she’d made some holiday plans, I was curious. At this late date, any trip out of the country is going to be expensive – usually we have stuff locked down by October at the latest. This year, because of a general lack of funds, I had assumed we’d just be going to the beach or something cheap.
It was a bit of a disappointment, because a good friend of mine, and my sister’s brother-in-law, David, had made comments about marrying his long-time girlfriend Jackie, at Christmas, wherever we ended up. I felt a bit sad at missing that opportunity. Oh, did I explain that David lives in New York City? So he wouldn’t be flying himself, Jackie, and their two kids out to Portland just to go to the beach.
When I called my sister to find out what the plans were, it’s amazing, for all the above reasons, that I hadn’t seen the obvious solution:
We’re going to New York City for Christmas.
Staying with David and Jackie in Long Island (on Long Island? Which is correct?)
I haven’t been to the Big Apple since early 2001 – pre-9/11. Um, OK, actually, that was the only time I’ve been to New York. At that time, David was still dating Jackie but was living in a one-bedroom, sixth-floor walk-up in Spanish Harlem, on (I believe) 102nd and 10th, with two other guys. That was a fun trip, and I would not have believed that three straight guys could share a one-bedroom apartment so easily. Not to mention having a guest for a couple of nights. But having different work schedules helps tremendously.
On that trip I went to the Museum of Natural Science and History, walked up to the top of the Statue of Liberty, and walked around Times Square. This was all pre-digital cameras, at least for me, so I don’t have pictures online. But it was a great trip.
I’m really looking forward to going back to New York. Christmas, my birthday (my 42nd, actually), and, if I can stretch it out, New Year’s Eve.
I know I’ve said this before, but I personally believe that the most romance-filled night of the year is New Year’s Eve. When did Harry meet Sally when they finally got together? New Year’s Eve. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan in “Sleepless in Seattle”? New Year’s Eve.
I could go on and on. And it’s my blog – it’s not like anyone’s going to stop me. But for now I’m just going to sit here and ponder all the really cool things to do in New York City during Christmas…
Feel free to leave suggestions in the comments…
Randy Milholland, creator of online comic Something Positive, claims that a Google search for “baby penguins” can cure a bad mood.
I’m just passing that along. No linkie – you’ll have to do the hard work yourself.
My weekend, in numbers:
Ken and I are going to the Blazer game tonight. A friend of Tracy’s was generous enough to gift me with an invitation to join her in a suite at the Rose Garden. I’ve never been in one before; I’m assuming it’s a nice way to catch a game.
They’re playing Dallas tonight. I know very little about the team this year, having given up hope for the Blazers two seasons ago. But I guess they’ve been winning some tough games, and not giving up, and showing heart and all those sports metaphors.
Should be fun… I’ll report back about how it turned out.
Dear Dad:
I had the strangest dream yesterday. You were driving along, staring straight ahead at the road, not looking left or right. You were going along just over the speed limit, not enough to get busted, though. You were on SR 14 in Washington, just on the other side of the river from Oregon.
I was in a car, with my friend Ken, in his little red Corolla, and we were on SR 14 in Washington, too.
And you glanced at your fingernails, as if checking out a manicure or somethin’, and you slowly pulled away from us. All without looking over.
It was a funny dream.
…or was it?
Today’s musical accompaniment has been “Future Soundtrack For America”, which was great in 2004, then became almost too painful to listen to, but is great again; and Green Day’s “American Idiot”, which is has a whole new, less bitter, meaning for me today.
Over and over and over again.
And I’m dancing a lot.
I guess I’ll have to re-start my political blog again. Turns out winning is energizing and anti-demoralizing. Who knew? Now I’ve got lots to say again that isn’t angry!
Want to know just how different the 110th Congress is going to be?
Introducing the first-ever Muslim Congressman, Representative Keith Ellison, from the great state of Minnesota.
It should surprise no one that he ran, and won, as a member of the Democratic Party. Y’know, the party of inclusion.
Hey, maybe we can all get along.
Bye, Rumsfeld!
The Donald becomes the first recipient of Lunar Obverse’s “Yellow Undies” award. I hope (oh, how I hope!) that there will be many, many more.
Don’t let an IED hit your ass on the way out!
And, sadly, Bush had to reverse himself, after defending Rumsfeld time and again. But when the Army Times, Navy Times, Marine Times and Air Force Times newspapers all join in calling for the Defense Secretary’s resignation, truly… it’s time to go.
Wait, did I say “sadly”? Sorry, it’s hard to read what I’m saying while I’m wearing this huge grin on my face.
I hope our president likes the taste of crow…
Good news comes in threes, they say. But I’ve lost count of all the good news for our country that I’ve heard in the last 24 hours. Still, if there’s more to come, I’m so ready for it.
Truly, this is the best day of my political life.
This month’s Wired Magazine deals with The New Atheism, and includes this telling quote from the author, Gary Wolf:
I RETURN FROM OXFORD enthusiastic for argument. I immediately begin trying out Dawkins’ appeal in polite company. At dinner parties or over drinks, I ask people to declare themselves. “Who here is an atheist?” I ask.
Usually, the first response is silence, accompanied by glances all around in the hope that somebody else will speak first. Then, after a moment, somebody does, almost always a man, almost always with a defiant smile and a tone of enthusiasm. He says happily, “I am!”
But it is the next comment that is telling. Somebody turns to him and says: “You would be.”
“Why?”
“Because you enjoy pissing people off.”
“Well, that’s true.”
This type of conversation takes place not in central Ohio, where I was born, or in Utah, where I was a teenager, but on the West Coast, among technical and scientific people, possibly the social group that is least likely among all Americans to be religious. Most of these people call themselves agnostic, but they don’t harbor much suspicion that God is real. They tell me they reject atheism not out of piety but out of politeness. As one said, “Atheism is like telling somebody, ‘The very thing you hinge your life on, I totally dismiss.'” This is the type of statement she would never want to make.
This is the statement the New Atheists believe must be made – loudly, clearly, and before it’s too late. I continue to invite my friends for a nice, invigorating stroll down Logic Lane. For the most part, they just laugh and wave me on.
If we, as a society, don’t offer respect to those who believe in a real Easter Bunny, or laugh at the followers of Marshall Applewhite (nervously, because they’re all dead now), why is belief in the God of Abraham accorded more respect?
Since the central tenet of Christianity is that only by accepting Jesus Christ as one’s “personal savior” can one enter Heaven, it’s apparent that Christianity is unable to co-exist with religious beliefs that counter that idea. People who claim belief in Christianity but pretend to tolerance are, in the view of the New Atheists, and in my own view, fence-sitters. Toss in the other things that Christianity requires one to believe, like the Virgin Birth, or global floods, or multiple forms of immortality and resurrection, ideas incompatible with the evidence that surrounds us today, and the practice, let alone the idea, of tolerance is pushed to its limit.
Post-9/11 (and 3/11, and 7/7, not to mention the Iraq Occupation and the rude introduction of the various Islamic sects like the Sunni and Shia), Americans can no longer ignore the fact that there are other religions than Christianity in the world, and that those religions are just as fundamentalist as Christianity can be.
The irony is that making a case for the natural world view, one that rejects supernaturalism, is seen as evangelical. It creates embarrassment, not only for those listening to the arguments but those making the arguments, also. When I, myself, bring up the topic I chuckle nervously and call it “evangelical atheism”.
But I think that the embarrassment stems from the deep, irrational taboo we have against contradicting others’ god-belief, unless we are promoting an alternative god-belief. I think that this taboo is no more rational than the belief that someone with chocolate-colored skin is somehow a “lesser” human than one with pinkish skin.
And I believe that this taboo can be overcome. What bothers me is that it may not be overcome – and I fear the consequences of that.
And it bothers me not a bit that I now borrow a phrase from a radical religious leader to draw my intellectual line:
“Here I stand. I can do no other.” – Martin Luther