Civil Unions for Heterosexual Couples
26 Jun 2008
“The answer [to the marriage equality debates] isn’t civil unions for gays; it’s civil unions for heterosexuals. Pivot on this. Let the church have the marriage issue, just make it irrelevant to the discussion at hand. [Barack Obama] one of the few politicians gifted enough to pull it off and an increasingly younger and more gay-supportive public is with [him].”
posted by radicalruss | via Pam’s House Blend
Happy Solstice, everyone!
I had a wonderful time at our neighborhood Solstice party, where there was singing and good food, and a sharing circle where I got a chance to catch up with what friends and neighbors had been up to. Children were drawing chalk artwork on the blocked-off street, and grandparents shared their stories of what the neighborhood was like 60 years ago. It reminded how lucky I am to be surrounded by a community – it really takes a village, as the saying goes.
After the celebrations died down, I went to Devon St. – the Indian/Pakistani neighborhood of Chicago – to pick up some dinner and some ingredients for a project I have. I’ve been craving Sri Lankan food (well, more than just the food, but the food is what I can recreate here), so I’m making idhi appam and potato curry tomorrow morning for breakfast. Wish me luck!
Going to Devon after having been in India was delightful…every little thing, it seemed, reminded me of my favorite parts of Bombay and Delhi. The smells, the garish Bollywood signs, the people (even the rude ones)…where else can you walk down streets crowded with women in saris and hijabs, listen to old men in pale blue tunics and white muslim caps discussing politics and religion on street-corner benches, and stop into a fragrant “pure veg” chaat joint for a refreshing “Thums Up” soda. I picked up canned jackfruit to curry later on, and finished off my shopping with fresh sugarcane juice from a street vendor. Mmmm.
Still, without the dust and the honking and the beggars and the noise and the dirt-cheap prices, it wasn’t quite the same. A Cubs-White Sox game had just let out as I was leaving, though, so the traffic seemed just as bad:)
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Heat
18 Jun 2008
It’s book review time again…
It’s nice to see my summer reading list slowly shrinking (and I do mean see: the top of the pile of books beside my bed is no longer at eye level when I wake up every day! ) Then again, new suggestions keep on coming up. Luckily, since I’ve vowed not to purchase more books until I’ve dealt with moving the ones I have, that may take a while. Although there’s always the library, which is where I found this latest one, entirely by accident.
Of course I loved Heat: it’s British. All joking aside, though, in this particular case that may be one of the failings of the book. I didn’t realize it when I first picked the book up, but the American edition has hardly been adapted for audiences this side of the pond – the only concession I noticed was a thoughtful introduction explaining the peculiar failures our government has to answer for on the score of global climate change. Faced with figures in pence per kilo and constant references to 10 Downing Street, the average American reader might feel a bit overwhelmed.
Ultimately, though, despite the hundreds of meticulous foot- and end-notes, it’s not the details that matter in this book. George Monbiot, the author, describes the book as a “thought experiment.” After a lecture on global warming that he gave a few years back, he says, he was startle by an audience member’s question: what will our lives look like once we’ve achieved the carbon cuts scientists are calling for? This book is his answer, an attempt to show what will have to change, in order to achieve a 90% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030.
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