Surrounded by Life

My landlord and friend, Brian, walked past my porch moments ago and noted out loud that I had my whole life right there with me: my laptop (playing music), "Atlas Shrugged (reading), Turkish coffee (Yum!), my prayer book (faith), my telephone (friends) and my checkbook (work-income).

I guess that really is a pretty good summary of my life.

Last Call

Hummingbird visits to my feeders had dropped to nearly none before I realized that the New Mexican summer heat had fermented the sugary drink I had placed out for them.

Immediately after I changed the syrup, an aggressive hummingbird buzzed the feeder, tested it and flew off chattering wildly.

I don't know if it was excitement and he was telling others that at last there was something good to drink, or if he was swearing angrily about the bar being closed.

Today the temperature outside is the same as my body, or only slightly less, and it causes me to feel seemless, like I have no edges and am one with the air. Even the ever-so-slight breeze that tickles the Aspen leaves into a lazy dance doesn't register on my skin as external. It feels, instead, as though my own body were moving while I am standing still.

These are the magical days of summer dreaming, when time connects us, if we pause, to the conversations of rocks and dirt, to the soundless writing of the sky.

Let Them Eat Cake!

My typical eating schedule goes as follow:
• Coffee at work around 9 AM, occasionally accompanied by something like an empanada.
• Bowl of micro-waved Indian food at 1 PM
• Maybe a pizza and drink around 7:30 PM

I’ve been reading a lot lately on the chemical properties of food, their interactions and body metabolism. To sum up, I pretty much eat all of the wrong foods at all of the wrong intervals.

According to my latest reading, my body type needs 4-5 oz. of protein (and not from nuts, beans, dairy and other stuff I usually consider my protein sources) consumed at a minimum of 5 times a day. Plus, 100 oz. of water each day is highly recommended.

I’m trying to follow the regimen closely, mostly to absorb the concepts of eating that much protein, balanced with just the right amount of good carbohydrates, that often. Last week, I spent an hour planning my meals. Then I went shopping for 45 minutes. At home, I cooked and packaged meals for 3 hours.

Following a properly recommended healthy eating plan, I consumed it all in two days! Halibut and oatmeal with berries for breakfast; a protein shake and baked yam at 10 AM; filet of sole, salad, baked potato for lunch, 4 boiled egg whites and rice in the afternoon; albacore tuna, greens and rice for dinner; halibut and baked potato as an after dinner snack: Day One.

So much food! Basically, the equivalent of 28 oz. of steak, 3 baked potatoes, a cup or so of red fruits and as many green veggies as I care to eat…every day!

I can’t afford to be healthy. I don’t have that much time or money.

P.S. I've taken the liberty of posting some comments to the blog that were sent directly to me. It had seemed so quiet here lately, but I still hear from so many folks that they are reading this blog. Just click on the word "comments" when you want to add something. Also, remember to check out updates to my music, books and movies posted in the column to the right.

Happy Belated Father's Day

I spent Father’s Day with friends at a family cookout. It was also how I celebrated my birthday. They had invited me to share the Father’s Day celebration with their family, so it seemed awkward and a bit trite to accept only to then say, “By the way, it’s my birthday. Celebrate me, too.”

Instead, I savored the joy of being included simply because they wanted me to be there. Inwardly, as sometimes I have done in past years, I quietly enjoyed the day of my birth soaking up ordinary moments of the day that were uncluttered by prescribed social birthday obligations, pondering these moments in light of years gone by and times to come.

This year, the ending of my 41st, listening to the stories and tears of an elder patriarch’s survived battle with prostate cancer, swapping jokes, laughing, playing cards, passing bowls of strawberry shortcake, touring old carcasses of foreign cars and being with friends was perfect.

I am happy to be alive.

Springtime Breakfasts

We are waiting on the apricots to ripen at home. The cherries are past their prime, but we didn't get to eat them. Instead, the birds pecked precisely one bite out of each.

Somewhere, there's a mother bird chastising, "Eat your cherries. Just think of all the starving birds in China."

(Art by Sheila Simpson-Creps.)

March On

I went to the gay Pride Parade this past Saturday. It's not a huge affair in Albuquerque, mostly friends marching down the street waving to friends watching them from the sidewalk.

Afterwards, I went home. The following things remained true:

• I can be fired in 30 states simply because I am gay.
• Same-sex domestic benefits are federally taxed. Heterosexual domestic benefits are not.
• 45 states have either a constitutional amendment or a law that restricts marriage to one man and one woman.
• 21 states have no state laws that protect LGBT students against harassment.
• 19 states do not recognize violence against someone because of sexual orientation as a hate crime.
• 4 states prohibit my adopting a child.

Still, everyone loves a parade.

(source: Human Rights Campaign.)

Happy Pride!

Name the origin of the pink triangle as a symbol for the gay community....

It's Pride Week in many cities all over the country. Here in Albuquerque, there was an inter-faith service last weekend to begin the week. Festivities culminate Saturday with a parade that leads to a festival at the state fairgrounds.

A local exhibit worth noting is showcased at the New Mexcio Holocaust and Intolerance Museum. It is a touring exhibit of Nazi Perscution of Homosexuals, 1933-1945.

"An estimated 1.2 million men were homosexuals in Germany in 1928. Between 1933-1945, an estimated 100,000 men were arrested as homosexuals, and of these, some 50,000 officially defined homosexuals were sentenced. Most of these men spent time in regular prisons, and an estimated 5,000 to 15,000 of the total sentenced were incarcerated in concentration camps," according to a pamphlet published by the United States Holocaust Museum. This does not include women who were also arrested, imprisoned and executed because of sexuality.

After the Holocaust, in 1956, West Germany disqualified recipients of compensation if their internment in a concentration camp had been based upon homosexuality. Homosexuality remained a crime in Germany until 1969; persons incarcerated in the camps because of their sexuality were not publicly commemorated until the mid 1980s. (source: Alibi, June 7-13, 2007)

The pink triangle was the patch LGBT persons were forced to wear during the Holocaust and in concentration camps to identify them as homosexuals. Today the pink triangle serves as a tragic and symbolic reminder of the horrific treatment that many in our community still experience, here in the United States and throughout the world.

There Goes the Neighborhood

I put up a second feeder for the hummingbirds so that they wouldn't fight. They aren't fighting. They aren't coming to feed, either.

I think it has something to do along the lines of, "Well, there goes the neighborhood. Now we have a Starbucks on every corner. These trees are becoming Mc-ified with absolutely no local variety anymore."

I don't blame them, really.

But I did add some extra sugar to see if that will lure them back.

BLOG SITE BONUS!!:
If you can make the proper association of the picture below to this posting, I'll send you some hummingbird droppings! Go ahead...take a guess as to how the two relate.

Wave Hello

Who's this guy waving to???

Why is the hand signal for turning left a parallel left arm pointing left, but to turn right it is still the left arm, bent at the elbow hand upward at a 45 degree angle to the ground?

If we signal left with the left arm, couldn't we just signal right with the right arm?

(Actually, I just figured out the answer typing this. Does anyone else know the answer?)

Awoke to happy finches chirping as they munched the safflower seeds I had put out for them. There is even an oriole nesting nearby.

I'm have been discussing debt loan options these days with friends. I can manage payments but interest rates mean that I'll never be debt free. Bankruptcy option is an option, but unattractive to me at this time. I spoke with two debt management companies. They can save me $13,000 in interest fees. They close all credit accounts and it does negatively affect credit history.

I figure that I could do the same plan as they would by using a flat interest rate and pay people rather than companies. Some churches do it (not mine, yet). Basically, they loan the money expecting to make 3-10 percent of the loan and the individual pays them on a monthly plan. If there is a default of payment, the individual transfers the loan back into his or her credit cards so that the lender is not at risk. (The credit line is still open because the individual has paid off the outstanding credit and still has an open and good credit history.)

My brother directed me to www.prosper.com where folks are doing this through that site. I've just printed out pages and pages of material about their process to take home and read. Will let you know what I learn.

Seems like a good idea, paying my debt back through others earning some interest on a personal level rather than the big companies making ludicrous money at my expense.

Check out the site for yourself and feel free to give me some feedback.

Meanwhile, you can still become my friend at www.GoodReads.com. I'm having fun logging my reading habits there. If you need me to re-invite you, drop me a note.

Sugar High

Following my previous post, I noticed this week that it is not only human nature to fight. I have a hummingbird feeder hanging in my yard. One hummingbird has decided that it is her own private restaurant.

She sits perched on a branch just above and to the side of the feeder and dive-bombs any other hummingbird who approaces.

Survival instinct? Maybe. But there is plenty for all to feed and no need to hoard or fight over the resources.

Kind of like humans?

Guns Don't Kill People...

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for the 2nd Ammendment. James Madison wrote,

"Let a regular army be formed...still it would not be going too far to say, that the State governments, with the People on their side, would be albe to repel the danger"

220 years before our current dictatorship of a federal government. Perhaps the danger he envisioned wasn't the federal government itself, but the idea has been considered.

Now that this posting has the words, "kill" "gun" and "federal government" in it, no doubt I'm being monitored. Don't think so? Check out the PBS Frontline special on how Big Brother operates today in America. And if/when I do get called in and questioned, remember that you will never know because it is illegal for those investigated to ever say that they have been. Persons must simply answer that they can't answer.

Read Kafka's The Trial.

It is the news from Illinois that got me writing about this. Seems that a 10-month old baby got his permit to carry a gun.

"What?!" you say. That's right. It's illegal for minors to buy a gun. But since grandpa gave Bubba his gun, all was legal. Why a Firearm Owner's Identification Card is necessary at all if a 10-month can get one is beyond me.

Forget Columbine and Virginia Tech. Now we can watch the pre-schools.

Invasion!

I captured and released 14 moths from inside my home last night. Two more moths were dead on the floor. Eight more were flying around in my screened in porch.

87108

I watched "Hotel Rwanda" last night with friends. Afterwards, we discussed the tragedy of Rwanda and, currently, the genocide in Darfur. We spoke of complicity, of peaceful solutions vs. killing, of the role of the bystander.

One thing that stood out in the movie for me was a scene of all white persons being escorted out by the United Nations. Even a dog was allowed to evacuate with its white owner. All blacks were left behind to endure the conflict.

I can speak out about such atrocities. That is important. However, in a larger picture of things, my impact will be relatively small. Sometimes that makes focusing overseas more attractive: I can feel remorse and politically correct emotions without having to be implicated too much.

What about nearer to home? In Albuquerque, we put our "undesireables" mostly within one zip code, 87108, known by locals as "the war zone." We do so by placing all of the sub-standard housing there, giving little choice to someone poor as to where else they might go. Like Rwanda, we--the elite, middle- to upper-class whites--go on about our business and let "them" deal with their differences, turning our heads away when yet another killing is reported. In fact, we tend to think murder and drugs as fairly normal for people "like them."

"Let them resolve it," we say with our actions. Like Rwanda, it's their business; if they want to kill each other, that is their choice. I don't have to live there and all of my friends are in safer places. That is my only responsibility.

Or is it? By not addressing this injustice in my backyard, how can I effect change globally? What is my role to be in changing the conditions of "the war zone" so that they can live in peace? What is my role to be in changing the conditions of Darfur so that people can survive and live in peaceful conditions?

No answers today. Maybe not tomorrow, either. But in remembering my love for my mother this Mother's Day, I recognize that mothers exist everywhere. In Rwanda. In Darfur. In zip code area 87108.

I want a world in which all mothers are treated as I want mine to be treated.