Almost forgot to post today not sure if I am gonna make it for this whole month thing. I am determined to try which means if we travel at all this month Dawn needs to share her laptop so I can post on the days I don't have access to my desktop.
In other news talked to mom yesterday she is still in the hospital but sounds much better and says she feels much better. Apparently there was some issue that happened and she ended up with a sore back (not really sure what happened) but between that and the fact that she had a 36 pound growth hanging from her abdomen past her knees she has basically been immobile for a fairly long time they want to put her into a rehab center. I am hoping that they can put her in one somewhere around her so that the family can go see her.
I am a stiff and sore woman tonight Dawn and I spent about 8 hours cleaning out a basement. We did about 4 hour shifts for the past two days but it was nearly too much for me. We shall see how I am feeling when I wake up as that is usually the worst time for me.
And now for another video;
Friday, November 6, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
At a loss...
Tonight I seem not to have words so I give you this beautiful slide show instead;
This video would not have been possible without photograher Jo Moser (check her out at: www.gaylifephotography.com), filmmaker Phyllis Famiglietti, and the many families in Maine who participated in this project. Please do your part to support marriage for ALL Maine families. Visit EqualityMaine.org
This video would not have been possible without photograher Jo Moser (check her out at: www.gaylifephotography.com), filmmaker Phyllis Famiglietti, and the many families in Maine who participated in this project. Please do your part to support marriage for ALL Maine families. Visit EqualityMaine.org
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
It ain't over
It is now noon the day after one of the most important election days of my young life. We had the highest voter turn out of an off year election ever! 60% of registered voters voted. And I am somber and mournful that in the year 2009 the rights of the minority are still being undone by the votes of the majority. Right now with 96% of precincts reporting it is 297096(52.77%) want to reject the law that allows same-sex couples to marry and 265940(47.23%) want to keep the law. That is a difference of 31156 votes or 5.54% of the folks that voted have decided that this maybe one of these would be an appropriate license plate for me now;
So what do you all think?? Which shall I go with? UNEQUAL, LESS HUMAN, or 2ND CLASS? I think they all make wonderful statements, however they are just temporary classifications as love wins in the end, love didn't win this time so it is not the end we will continue to fight and we will be legally married here in Maine.
So what do you all think?? Which shall I go with? UNEQUAL, LESS HUMAN, or 2ND CLASS? I think they all make wonderful statements, however they are just temporary classifications as love wins in the end, love didn't win this time so it is not the end we will continue to fight and we will be legally married here in Maine.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
well here we go...
Here it is Election Day '09! Maine has 7 issues on the state ballot;
Question 1: People's Veto
An Act To End Discrimination in Civil Marriage and Affirm Religious Freedom
"Do you want to reject the new law that lets same-sex couples marry and allows individuals and religious groups to refuse to preform these marriages?"
I voted NO! To provide equality under the law for all Maine families and so I can marry Dawn
Question 2: Citizen Initiative
An Act to Decrease the Automobile Excise Tax and Promote Energy
“Do you want to cut the rate of the municipal excise tax by an average of 55% on motor vehicles less than six years old and exempt hybrid and other alternative-energy and highly fuel-efficient motor vehicles from sales tax and three years of excise tax?”
I voted NO! Why should I be punished because I can't afford a new car and excise tax repairs and maintains roads and bridges, INCLUDING plowing and sanding.
“Do you want to repeal the 2007 law on school district consolidation and restore the laws previously in effect?”
I voted NO! School consolidation is a great thing for Maine's children, and reversing it will cost too much and hurt too many.
“Do you want to change the existing formulas that limit state and local government spending and require voter approval by referendum for spending over those limits and for increases in state taxes?”
I voted NO! TABOR is bad if you have any doubts just ask Jen
“Do you want to change the medical marijuana laws to allow treatment of more medical conditions and to create a regulated system of distribution?”
I voted YES! Medical marijuana has been legal for years now but there has not been a legal way to buy it if you don't want to grow your own.
We are heading out to campaign headquarters now please keep your fingers crossed that by the time we get home we will be legitimately engaged! If you want to know what is happening head over to Dawn's blog for a list of links. Or for just question 1 follow on Twitter #VoteNoOn1
Question 1: People's Veto
An Act To End Discrimination in Civil Marriage and Affirm Religious Freedom
"Do you want to reject the new law that lets same-sex couples marry and allows individuals and religious groups to refuse to preform these marriages?"
I voted NO! To provide equality under the law for all Maine families and so I can marry Dawn
Question 2: Citizen Initiative
An Act to Decrease the Automobile Excise Tax and Promote Energy
“Do you want to cut the rate of the municipal excise tax by an average of 55% on motor vehicles less than six years old and exempt hybrid and other alternative-energy and highly fuel-efficient motor vehicles from sales tax and three years of excise tax?”
I voted NO! Why should I be punished because I can't afford a new car and excise tax repairs and maintains roads and bridges, INCLUDING plowing and sanding.
Question 3: Citizen Initiative
An Act to Repeal the School District Consolidation Laws“Do you want to repeal the 2007 law on school district consolidation and restore the laws previously in effect?”
I voted NO! School consolidation is a great thing for Maine's children, and reversing it will cost too much and hurt too many.
Question 4: Citizen Initiative
An Act to Provide Tax Relief“Do you want to change the existing formulas that limit state and local government spending and require voter approval by referendum for spending over those limits and for increases in state taxes?”
I voted NO! TABOR is bad if you have any doubts just ask Jen
Question 5: Citizen Initiative
An Act to Establish the Maine Medical Marijuana Act“Do you want to change the medical marijuana laws to allow treatment of more medical conditions and to create a regulated system of distribution?”
I voted YES! Medical marijuana has been legal for years now but there has not been a legal way to buy it if you don't want to grow your own.
Question 6: Bond Issue
“Do you favor a $71,250,000 bond issue for improvements to highways and bridges, airports, public transit facilities, ferry and port facilities, including port and harbor structures, as well as funds for the LifeFlight Foundation that will make the State eligible for over $148,000,000 in federal and other matching funds?”
It is a bond issue, I ALWAYS vote YES! for bond issues they mean jobs and infrastructure maintenance.
It is a bond issue, I ALWAYS vote YES! for bond issues they mean jobs and infrastructure maintenance.
Question 7: Constitutional Amendment
"Do you favor amending the Constitution of Maine to increase the amount of time that local officials have to certify the signatures on direct initiative petitions?”
I voted YES! With all their other work they just don't have enough time to make sure that the signatures are valid.
I voted YES! With all their other work they just don't have enough time to make sure that the signatures are valid.
We are heading out to campaign headquarters now please keep your fingers crossed that by the time we get home we will be legitimately engaged! If you want to know what is happening head over to Dawn's blog for a list of links. Or for just question 1 follow on Twitter #VoteNoOn1
Monday, November 2, 2009
Election day eve
First I must say how grateful I am that election day happens but once a year I am not sure I could handle all of this more often. Last year it was all about Obama and while I bought the t-shirt and CD and I had bumper stickers and buttons. I only spent part of one day working on his campaign.
I spent a few months working a fair amount of hours on the campaign of a dear friend who was running for the local State Representative seat and once we got all of her constituents taken care of I started calling the mid-west to get out the vote for Obama.
This year it is the battle here in Maine to protect the new law passed though our State Legislature and signed by Governor John Baldacci that would allow me and my beloved to get married here at home and have it be legal. I have spent countless hours working on this campaign starting back in April when we had the public hearing before the Judiciary Committee the like 13 hour long public hearing. With about 4000 attendees 3000 of which supported the bill at hand LD 1020, An Act To End Discrimination In Civil Marriage and Affirm Religious Freedom.
The polls close in just about 24 hours. I had wanted work as much as possible in the last 96 hours but after this past week I just am not able to. I am mentally and physically toast at this point so much so it has taken me well over an hour to write this little bit, I am done.
I spent a few months working a fair amount of hours on the campaign of a dear friend who was running for the local State Representative seat and once we got all of her constituents taken care of I started calling the mid-west to get out the vote for Obama.
This year it is the battle here in Maine to protect the new law passed though our State Legislature and signed by Governor John Baldacci that would allow me and my beloved to get married here at home and have it be legal. I have spent countless hours working on this campaign starting back in April when we had the public hearing before the Judiciary Committee the like 13 hour long public hearing. With about 4000 attendees 3000 of which supported the bill at hand LD 1020, An Act To End Discrimination In Civil Marriage and Affirm Religious Freedom.
The polls close in just about 24 hours. I had wanted work as much as possible in the last 96 hours but after this past week I just am not able to. I am mentally and physically toast at this point so much so it has taken me well over an hour to write this little bit, I am done.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
on stress, chaos, family and elections
WOW!! What a week!
Some background, I am the eldest of three children. I am the queer radical outcast, next is the younger brother with the wife and grand kids, then the baby girl (who is fast approaching 30), with some emotional and physical health issues. My brother lives next door to our mother and interacts with her on a nearly daily basis. I live 40+/- miles away and only have the occasional telephone conversation. My sister lives across town from mom and earlier this year cut ties with mom for her own sanity.
About two months ago mom was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. She was referred to a surgeon in the largest hospital in Maine about 3 hours away from our home for her safety. She is a morbidly obese woman who also has a lymphodema growth on her abdomen. They are convinced that they need to have her in the hospital best equipped to handle any issues that may arise. Mom meets with the OB/GYN who is concerned about the lymphodema growth being in the way to do the hysterectomy, so she consults with another surgeon who meets with mom and agrees to remove the growth and some of the fatty tissue around it, at the same time(well slightly before) the hysterectomy. She had the surgeries on Tuesday and all went well. She was in recovery and doing fairly well until late Thursday night early Friday morning when she became unresponsive. Something had caused her kidneys to fail.
At o'dark thirty (or 6AM) I got awoken by a phone call from my brother. He had been down with her during the surgery and had come home and was working an over-night when he got a call from our newly ex-step-dad telling him that mom had been transferred from the recovery ward to ICU and things were not looking good. So I wake-up in a hurry call my sister and tell her that things are bad and that my partner and I are coming to get her no arguing she was going. The three of us hurry down the interstate and get to the hospital by 11am. We go in and she is barely responsive and pretty incoherent when she does try to respond. The doctors have decided that dialysis is the best step to take and since mom is out of it they need someone else to give consent. She is newly divorced (don't ask, that is another post entirely) while he (Joe) is right there, he has no legal authority to sign the paperwork that is up to me as her eldest and therefore next-of-kin. So I sign and we wait.
Meanwhile my brother and sister-in-law show-up at the hospital and there are now 6 of us in the waiting room doing exactly that, waiting, and waiting and waiting some more. A little uncomfortably as none of us are all too close to Joe who is looking much like one of the Gieco cavemen and snoring loudly. Then the cavalry shows up oh hell.
My mom's mother, step-father, half-sister and her loser boyfriend. The hillbillies have come to Beverly. No this is not much of a stretch between the four of them there may be a full set of teeth and one high school diploma earned through special ed. All of them prone to lots of drama and hysterics based in some other reality. I am NOT in a space to deal with them. They are not happy with my sister and her cutting mom out of her life and they hate my partner. So now the 10 of us sitting in close proximity trying not to look at or talk to each other. We spend the entire afternoon like this interspersed with visits to mom's bedside. Eventually we all end up heading to various hotels and couches around the city.
We arrive at the hospital on Saturday after my brother and sister-in-law and mom had been asking for us. We go to see her but they are preparing to change her linens and we are allowed about 30 seconds. This is all ANY of us other then Joe get to see of her after this. The grandparents accuse me of not signing for a procedure but a thing that doesn't allow them to see her. WHATEVER! They get pissy and leave and head home. The rest of us head out to the places we are crashing for the night.
Today is Sunday, we arrive this morning and mom is not looking much better but they say she is doing better. As the day progresses we see that this is true she is awake and talking and making a lot of noise like mom does. My partner and I go in and talk to the resident on duty Doogie Howser, M.D. says that she is off all medications and her kidneys are on the mend and starting to function again. Brother and sister-in-law headed home to their children and jobs. We are here for one more night and we will check-in at the hospital in the morning. Have lunch with a friend and then head home.
Where we will drop my sister off at her house and my partner nay fiancee will throw ourselves head-long back into the final hours of the campaign that we have been working day-in and day out since March. We want to get married, to stop being second class citizens in our state, so we will be making phone calls and knocking on doors and data entry for 24 hrs and hopefully at the end of it all the people of Maine will vote for equality and fairness and we can get married.
Some background, I am the eldest of three children. I am the queer radical outcast, next is the younger brother with the wife and grand kids, then the baby girl (who is fast approaching 30), with some emotional and physical health issues. My brother lives next door to our mother and interacts with her on a nearly daily basis. I live 40+/- miles away and only have the occasional telephone conversation. My sister lives across town from mom and earlier this year cut ties with mom for her own sanity.
About two months ago mom was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. She was referred to a surgeon in the largest hospital in Maine about 3 hours away from our home for her safety. She is a morbidly obese woman who also has a lymphodema growth on her abdomen. They are convinced that they need to have her in the hospital best equipped to handle any issues that may arise. Mom meets with the OB/GYN who is concerned about the lymphodema growth being in the way to do the hysterectomy, so she consults with another surgeon who meets with mom and agrees to remove the growth and some of the fatty tissue around it, at the same time(well slightly before) the hysterectomy. She had the surgeries on Tuesday and all went well. She was in recovery and doing fairly well until late Thursday night early Friday morning when she became unresponsive. Something had caused her kidneys to fail.
At o'dark thirty (or 6AM) I got awoken by a phone call from my brother. He had been down with her during the surgery and had come home and was working an over-night when he got a call from our newly ex-step-dad telling him that mom had been transferred from the recovery ward to ICU and things were not looking good. So I wake-up in a hurry call my sister and tell her that things are bad and that my partner and I are coming to get her no arguing she was going. The three of us hurry down the interstate and get to the hospital by 11am. We go in and she is barely responsive and pretty incoherent when she does try to respond. The doctors have decided that dialysis is the best step to take and since mom is out of it they need someone else to give consent. She is newly divorced (don't ask, that is another post entirely) while he (Joe) is right there, he has no legal authority to sign the paperwork that is up to me as her eldest and therefore next-of-kin. So I sign and we wait.
Meanwhile my brother and sister-in-law show-up at the hospital and there are now 6 of us in the waiting room doing exactly that, waiting, and waiting and waiting some more. A little uncomfortably as none of us are all too close to Joe who is looking much like one of the Gieco cavemen and snoring loudly. Then the cavalry shows up oh hell.
My mom's mother, step-father, half-sister and her loser boyfriend. The hillbillies have come to Beverly. No this is not much of a stretch between the four of them there may be a full set of teeth and one high school diploma earned through special ed. All of them prone to lots of drama and hysterics based in some other reality. I am NOT in a space to deal with them. They are not happy with my sister and her cutting mom out of her life and they hate my partner. So now the 10 of us sitting in close proximity trying not to look at or talk to each other. We spend the entire afternoon like this interspersed with visits to mom's bedside. Eventually we all end up heading to various hotels and couches around the city.
We arrive at the hospital on Saturday after my brother and sister-in-law and mom had been asking for us. We go to see her but they are preparing to change her linens and we are allowed about 30 seconds. This is all ANY of us other then Joe get to see of her after this. The grandparents accuse me of not signing for a procedure but a thing that doesn't allow them to see her. WHATEVER! They get pissy and leave and head home. The rest of us head out to the places we are crashing for the night.
Today is Sunday, we arrive this morning and mom is not looking much better but they say she is doing better. As the day progresses we see that this is true she is awake and talking and making a lot of noise like mom does. My partner and I go in and talk to the resident on duty Doogie Howser, M.D. says that she is off all medications and her kidneys are on the mend and starting to function again. Brother and sister-in-law headed home to their children and jobs. We are here for one more night and we will check-in at the hospital in the morning. Have lunch with a friend and then head home.
Where we will drop my sister off at her house and my partner nay fiancee will throw ourselves head-long back into the final hours of the campaign that we have been working day-in and day out since March. We want to get married, to stop being second class citizens in our state, so we will be making phone calls and knocking on doors and data entry for 24 hrs and hopefully at the end of it all the people of Maine will vote for equality and fairness and we can get married.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Better a litte late... Banned Books Week 2009
Banned Books Week is nearly over, as I am no longer in the book industry it nearly slipped by. However there are still a few days September 26 - October 3 is the week that the American Library Association has choosen as the week to celebrate the freedom to read.
although I really like the two I used last year this one highlights children's books which are the ones most often challenged. As parents want to protect their children from the evils of talking animals as in Charlotte's Web, or from the witchcraft of the Harry Potter series, or issues of sexuality as is the case with this years most challenged book; And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell and illustrated by Henry Cole.
This book tells the TRUE STORY of two male chinstrap penguins in the the New York Central Park Zoo and their adoption of an egg and subsequent chick, dubbed Tango. Oh my goodness gracious me don't let the children know that homosexuality happens in nature!!! PUHLEAZE!!! Get over it people.
Without this turning into a political post over civil rights here it is;
The top ten most frequently challenged books of 2008
Out of 513 challenges as reported to the Office for Intellectual Freedom
- And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell
Reasons: anti-ethnic, anti-family, homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group - His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman
Reasons: political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, and violence - TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group - Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
Reasons: occult/satanism, religious viewpoint, and violence - Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
Reasons: occult/satanism, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, and violence - The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: drugs, homosexuality, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, suicide, and unsuited to age group - Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group - Uncle Bobby's Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen
Reasons: homosexuality and unsuited to age group - The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group - Flashcards of My Life, by Charise Mericle Harper
Reasons: sexually explicit and unsuited to age group
Just remember any book worth banning is worth reading!
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