I haven’t abandoned my passion for photography, it’s just been put aside with everything else I’m doing and working on. I’ve revamped the MadeMark Photo site to make it more interesting to me, and I’m hoping it will get me out there more with a camera swinging around my neck.
Cross-posted from lgbtSr.org:
My partner Frank and I were in Doylestown this weekend, waiting for the first service on the new Prius V we bought a year ago. It takes all day, so we headed in the loaner to Doylestown for a lovely day of walking around and checking out the shops.
A highlight of the day was walking into Vintage Doylestown, which is exactly what the name implies: as store chock full of stuff, vintage items, buttons, whatever you can name, they have. And best of all was Debi Seltzer, the owner. Sometimes you meet people with the most incredible energy who make you feel welcome, and you just want to hang around talking all day. We couldn’t, but we bought some things (hint to my sister Cathy for Christmas) and I knew when we left I had to pass the word on this place. If you’re in Doylestown, make this a must-stop.
Cross-posted from lgbtSr.org:
It’s been a long time since I wrote one of these ‘Café Moi’ pieces, but I felt compelled to address this after last night’s podcast, when my co-host Rick Rose brought up the current firestorm over Tom Akin’s “legitimate rape” comment.
The entire spectrum of Republicans, from the dwindling and increasingly impotent establishment to the shrill, irrationally furious Tea Party (aka Christian extremists), is telling Akin to step aside. Not because his comment was, as they claim, terribly offensive, but because he made the mistake of being very plain spoken about what they think: despite having plenty of women in their ranks, the core of the GOP considers, at the deepest level (so deep they probably can’t admit it to themselves), women to be property, in spirit if not in law. As for girls? Forget it. If things go their way we could someday regularly see 12 year old girls giving birth to their father’s (or uncle’s or brother’s) children from incestuous rape because, well, the Bible tells them so. (Their exemption-free prohibition on abortion, as expected in their party platform, is not balanced by any call to make impregnating a woman or girl through rape or incest a capital crime; that would at least make the transparency of their anti-female worldview a bit more opaque).
This discussion blindsided me a bit; I was expecting to just have a light-hearted chat with our guest about the entrepreneurial spirit and taking risks to follow our passions. Instead I was reminded of the proposed GOP platform, and in it, a plank opposing marriage equality (of course) but – how exciting! how gracious! how kind! – extending “dignity and respect” to all people, which means us.
Think about it: the Republican Party is willing to extend dignity and respect to LGBT people, as if these are things that can be extended. Or maybe they’re acknowledging our worth, however diminished it is compared to theirs. It reminds me of the unfortunate embrace of “tolerance” in our culture, as one may tolerate a rodent as long as it isn’t eating the cereal. I have no interest in being tolerated. Nor do I fall for the poison flowers of “dignity and respect,” much as a snake might offer to a mouse before she eats it.
“Dignity and respect” are meaningless, words meant to mollify and deceive. It is equality, and nothing short of equality, we demand, whether it is offered or not.
Krugman smart Ferguson cute
About that Krugman-Ferguson cage match over Obama’s competency: I’m a big Paul Krugman fan, when I can make it through one of his columns without my eyes glazing over, but he can’t match Niall Furguson on the cute-o-meter.
From the Wall Street Journal:
NEW YORK — Muslims gathering to celebrate the end of Ramadan at a New York City park found uncooked bacon scattered there, and police are investigating it as a possible hate crime.
New York Police Department investigators believe the same person might be behind an anti-Muslim Internet posting, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said Monday.
Kelly declined to elaborate on the posting.
In a statement, the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations cited a report that the posting read in part, “I am going to walk my pet pig and i am gonna let him (defecate) ….just in time for morning prayers.”
One of my favorite getaways is just 90 minutes from NYC, and it’s the inspiration for Pride Lodge, the fictional setting of the first in the Kyle Callahan mystery series. The owners at Rainbow Mountain agreed that it would make a great place for a reading. Not only that, but it will be over the Halloween weekend (the weekend before, as all holiday weekends are). Given that the story takes place over the Halloween weekend, the timing couldn’t be better. So exciting!
Millennials, you know the ones: Generation Y, the Neo-Youth who disdain the idea of a 9-5 and then complain when they have to move back home with Moms because they can’t find a job. The ones those of us over 50 as supposed to be making room for. We may have no choice – a new survey has discovered that New York City’s population of those between 24-36 has exploded over the last decade.
Even while energetic young people are fleeing the rest of the state, the Big Apple continues to be a big draw, a new report shows.
New York City gained 300,000 new residents between the ages of 20 and 34 between 2000 and 2010, the report by the Empire Center for New York State Policy shows.
The influx includes new immigrants from other countries, those who move to the city from other parts of the state — and people who come here with a dream from cities and states around the country, said report co-author E.J. McMahon.
“This is where people still flock to,” he said. “It’s not the only place, but it’s seen as an exciting place to work and start one’s career.”
There are now 1.4 million people between the ages of 25 and 34 living in the city, the report shows.
A revealing insight into what voters really want to know about Paul Ryan.
