The United States this past June did something that the Catholic Church and the Vatican have for years railed against: granted marriage equality to its gay and lesbian citizens. Yet, Pope Francis had nothing to say about it. Not then and not now.
Considering that Pope Benedict often vocally expressed harsh condemnation of marriage equality -- even traveling to Spain to speak out against it when that country was among the first to legalize marriage for gays and lesbians and called it a "threat to the future of humanity"-- it's astonishing how silent Francis is on the issue. I've noted in the past how he had no comment as country after country in Europe legalized marriage for gays and lesbians. And then this past June, he had no comment after the U.S. Supreme Court decision.
And yet, while some of the American media noted the significance of his non-mention of the issue during his address to Congress, others were determined to read into his comments something that simply was not there.
All of this seemed to be part of an insistent mainstream media narrative that the pope, on his trip to the U.S., is making comments that "both sides" -- mostly meaning Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and progressives -- will be happy about. This is simply not true. The pope spent little time in his address to Congress on abortion -- without mentioning the word -- while going full force against the death penalty and emphatically using the term. From climate change to immigration, his passions are clear. Even conservatives are noting that on abortion and gay equality, the pope was subdued.
No mention of marriage being between a "man and woman" or children needing a "mother and a father"? Really? No mention of passing laws that could inhibit marriage for gays and "protect" those opposed to it, like the Kentucky clerk, Kim Davis? That, again, is astonishing. Francis was, after all, speaking to the legislative body that could do something about it -- and which is trying to, with Republicans having introduced the odious First Amendment Defense Act, which would allow clerks like Kim Davis and bakers and florists and others to deny services to gay and lesbian couples.
Also sitting right before Francis during his address to Congress were three of the five Supreme Court justices -- a majority of the majority -- who ruled for marriage equality in June: Justices Sotomayor, Ginsburg and Kennedy. The pope had his big chance to be clear and emphatic about the terrible thing they'd supposedly done and he blew it? Maybe he just didn't care all that much.
The pope's main concern about the family, according to what he said in his comments to Congress, is that people -- children in particular -- seem to be "disoriented and aimless, trapped in a hopeless maze of violence, abuse and despair." That sounds more like someone promoting social programs to help the poor and stop gun-violence than someone trying to end same-sex marriage.
Francis may still be more emphatic at the conference on families he's attending in Philadelphia after his trip to New York. We'll know for sure in a couple of days.
But so far, the pope at best spoke in code -- as when, during his address at the White House, and sounding like Republican political candidates, he talked of defending "religious liberty" in the context of also protecting people against discrimination -- and at worst (for anti-gay conservatives, of course) he completely dodged the issue during his address to Congress, focusing instead on other forces plaguing the family. Whether or not it's all calculated, and though it represents no change of any kind in the doctrine of the church, it's still a win for LGBT people and an angering loss for anti-LGBT forces in America.
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| My niece from NYC and her brother |
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| View across the Potomac from River Farm |
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| First Dance |
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| Cutting the cake |
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| The house |
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| The tables set for dinner |
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| Arbor behind where the ceremony took place |
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| My nephew with his cousin's son |
The River Farm property was established in 1653-54 by Giles Brent and his wife, a princess of the Piscataway tribe, who received a grant of 1,800 acres (7.3 km2) named Piscataway Neck. In 1739 the land was passed from George Brent to brother-in-law, William Clifton who renamed the property Clifton's Neck. In 1757 Clifton completed the brick house that now serves as AHS headquarters. Following financial difficulties, Clifton sold the land to neighbor George Washington, who obtained the property for £1,210 through a bankruptcy sale in 1760. Washington changed the name of Clifton's Neck to River Farm and leased the property to tenant farmers. River Farm was passed down through two immediate generations of Washingtons and later sold with 652 arces of Washington's original land to the Snowden brothers of New Jersey. The property was home to numerous owners including Malcolm Matheson, who bought the property in 1919. Matheson placed the property on the market in 1971 and received an offer from the Soviet Embassy who planned to use the land as a retreat or dacha for its staff. The public opposed this purchase which resulted in the AHS acquisition of the property.
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| View from our beach |
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| The main house |
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| Two of my sisters - including my late sister - and a friend circa 1969 |
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| One of my one time best friends who I've lost contact with |
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| The bride and her parents |
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| The ceremony |
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| My two daughters and new son-in-law |
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| The new son-in-law |
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| The Boyfriend with my children and me |
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| The first dance |
I've written before about my niece who left the world of corporate banking in New York City to seek a career pursuing her real love: cooking and baking. A love she seems to inherited from my late sister who always seemed most happy when baking cakes or pies or making some other delectable sweet. Happily, my niece continues to get some much deserved media coverage Here website is here), this time in Sweet Finds that has a review of her gourmet marshmallows. Here are some highlights from the write up:Just two years ago, Kristin Lee Godburn left a fast-paced job in investment baking to put on a kitchen apron. After attending the French Culinary Institute, she honed her baking chops while working with the cupcake folks of Robicelli's in Brooklyn, and then launched her sweets company Kitty Lee Thomas.
She makes cookies and other treats, but we're here to talk about marshmallows. She has quite the eclectic marshmallow menu, including flavors like Toasted Coconut, S'mores, Rocky Road, and Fluffernut. They're fancied-up marshmallows that serve as desserts on their own.
The Cookies 'n' Cream version starts with a homemade vanilla bean marshmallow that's covered in chocolate cookie crumbs and dipped in dark chocolate. The cocoa content is high and the marshmallow has a satisfying, rich flavor. The cookie crumbs are finely ground so one bite sends down a prodigious shower of cookie crumbs—don't try to nibble these secretly, because the cookie-crumb trail will give you away.
Available online, or at several locations in New York.
We saw Priscilla Queen of the Desert on Saturday and the show was great and a lot of fun. It also had some messages for the audience too, including that all of us - gay, straight, and transgender - are all human and need to be treated with respect. Personally, I was touched when at one point when one of the main characters describes his fathering a child as the best mistake he ever made. It's a feeling I have concerning my own children and, despite the pain of all the years in the closet and the often nightmarish aspects of my coming out journey, I'd do it all again in order to have my children. I highly recommend the show for a good time, great music and a message that more in society need to grasp and take to heart - particularly those who claim to be Christian yet act as modern day Pharisees instead.
This post has nothing to do with gay rights or politics, but given that my mother's father worked on building the Panama Canal and made enough money to put himself through medical school and ultimately invest in Central America, I continue to follow events in Panama and Honduras. Thus, it was of interest that Panama is in the process of doing a major upgrade to the Panama Canal which when completed will double the amount of goods that will be able to transit from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean and Atlantic. Here are highlights from the New York Times:
About a mile long, several hundred feet wide and more than 100 feet deep, the excavation is an initial step in the building of a larger set of locks for the Panama Canal that should double the amount of goods that can pass through it each year.
The $5.25 billion project, scheduled for completion in 2014, is the first expansion in the history of the century-old shortcut between the Atlantic and Pacific. By allowing much bigger container ships and other cargo vessels to easily reach the Eastern United States, it will alter patterns of trade and put pressure on East and Gulf Coast ports like Savannah, Ga., and New Orleans to deepen harbors and expand cargo-handling facilities.
The new third set of locks will help eliminate some of those backlogs, by adding perhaps 15 passages to the daily total. More important, the locks will be able to handle “New Panamax” ships — 25 percent longer, 50 percent wider and, with a deeper draft as well, able to carry two or three times the cargo.
The expansion is being financed with loans from development banks to be repaid through tolls that currently reach several hundred thousand dollars for large ships. The project is huge by Panama’s standards; among other things, the country’s largest rock-crushing plant has sprung up, almost overnight, to turn the mountain of excavated rubble into sand and stone for the concrete.
Like the construction of the original canal, an engineering masterpiece that opened in 1914 after 10 years of work by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, the expansion project is a daunting task, but for different reasons. The corps had to tackle tropical diseases that had killed thousands of workers during an earlier failed effort by the French. It had to excavate — and, crucially, dispose of — tens of millions of cubic yards of dirt and rock. And it built locks that were then the world’s largest.
Deeper approach channels are being dredged on both coasts. And on the Pacific side, crews are excavating a long channel that will connect the new locks to the Culebra Cut. The channel through Gatún Lake is being widened so that larger ships can pass each other.
The new locks, which will account for about half the cost of the project, will work on the same principle used by the existing ones: moved solely by gravity, water is fed into or emptied from the chambers, raising or lowering the ships inside. But the new locks will use a different kind of gate at the end of each chamber, which should make maintenance easier and less disruptive. They will also have a feature found on some canals in Europe: three shallow basins next to each lock that will store water and reuse it. With the basins, the new locks will use about four million fewer gallons of water for each ship’s passage through the canal than the much smaller existing locks
The water-saving basins, with an elaborate system of culverts and valves to divert water to and from the chambers, may be the project’s most technologically challenging part. Operators will use computer controls that are a far cry from the electromechanical ones, with brass and glass indicators and chrome valve handles, that were used from 1914 until just a few years ago. Despite the system’s complexities, Mr. Quijano, the canal authority official, insisted that the authority was capable of carrying it out successfully. “We have not invented anything that has not been invented before,” he said.
Back in May after one of my nieces' wedding I mentioned my late sister's daughter who lives in New York City and who decided to walk away from a promising career in banking to pursue her real love: cooking and baking - something she clearly inherited from my sister. Back at the first of the year she finished her training at The French Culinary Institute. Now, Zagat Buzz - New York has a story on my niece's debut of her new gourmet handmade marshmallows at the Dekalb Market in Brooklyn this weekend. It goes without saying that we are extremely proud of Kristin and wish her much success in this new endeavor. Here are some story highlights:
The boyfriend and I are back from Washington, D.C., and I wanted to continue my tribute to my late Aunt who died on Friday. She was a great lady and a lot of fun. She played a huge role in my childhood and she will be forever etched in my memory and in my heart. Ironically, her late husband grew up at the same orphanage as the one where my father and his siblings spent their childhoods - his widowed mother was a house mother at one of the dormitories. It was through my father that my uncle and aunt met. In her younger years she was a stunning beauty and served as a Wave in World War II. I will miss her so deeply. Here's a portion of her obituary from the Troy New York newspaper that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of her amazing life :
This weekend - which was supposed to be light and cheery - has taken on a somber aspect. I just received a call from my sister to advise me that my mother's oldest sister (pictured at far right in the family passport photo above - my mother is sitting in my grandfather's lap) died last night. As a child growing up, she was a favorite of mine as we summered at the family lake house on Brantingham Lake in the Adirondack Mountains. Like my mother, my aunt, Mary Alice Phelps Isachsen, but always known as "Mickie" within the family, had a long and adventurous life having been born in Panama, lived in Honduras, traveled on United Fruit Company's "Greet White Fleet" ships, and then went on to have a long career in the medical field.
I have often told my children that I'd never pay even a penny towards their education costs if they were to go to law school. Why? Because in general law sucks as a career. To do well in larger firms one needs to sacrifice family and much of a private life because of the grueling hours. And then there's the constant back stabbing and fighting over how the firm pie is divided up. And on top of that, at least in many parts of the USA, being openly gay is a sure ticket to being shown the door - something I found out personally seven years ago. Now, the law firm plantation system is taking on a new modification. In addition to associates who will work like dogs to enrich the partners big firms are adding a "non-partner" track for attorneys. These lawyers will do largely the same work - and no doubt be billed out to clients at much the same rate as partner track associates - and add to the profits of the partners. The only positive (which will need to be borne out over time and proven to not just be a case of less pay for the same work) is that for less pay, these folks may actually be able to have a life and put in fewer hours. The New York Times looks at this growing form of legal serfdom. Here are highlights:
I had my misgivings a we headed out early this morning to my niece's wedding, but the day proved to be a wonder, happy and healing experience. I believe many old emotional wounds were healed and that my siblings all felt that moving on and allowing the past to remain the past was the order of the day. Moreover, the wedding was a sweet, sentimental and most enjoyable affair with good music, good food and good company. On top of that, the weather cooperated and we had a gorgeous day - even if some of us are a bit sunburned as a result. The view from the house is set out above and the wedding party is set out below (my niece's brother is second from the right and his English wife is at far left). Not surprisingly, the boyfriend worked his usual magic on the bride's and bridesmaids' hair. And at the risk of sounding a bit "woo-woo," I do feel that my parents were with us in spirit today.
