Turkey Tetrazzini
turkey Tetrazzini
- 1, 26-oz can condensed cream of mushroom soup
- 1.75 cups milk
- 0.75 cups grated Parmesan cheese
- 2 Tablespoons dry sherry
- 3 cups cubed, cooked turkey
- 4oz mushrooms, sliced and sauteed
- 8 oz spaghetti, cooked
- Preheat oven to 400 F.
- Mix the first 4 ingredients together. Stir in turkey, mushrooms, and spaghetti. Put into shallow, 3-quart casserole dish.
- Optionally: mix 1/3 cup bread crumbs with 2tablespoons melted butter and put on top.
- Bake for 25 minutes.
- 1 package refrigerated pie crusts, room temperature
- 1, 10.75-oz can condensed cream of chicken, or cream of mushroom soup
- 0.5 cup milk
- 2 cups cubed, cooked turkey
- 1, 12-oz package frozen mixed vegetables, thawed
- Preheat oven to 400 F.
- Put one crust in bottom of 9-inch pie plate.
- Stir remaining ingredients together. Put in pie plate.
- cover with remaining crust. Pinch crusts together. Make a few slits in the top of the crust.
- bake for 35 minutes.
- 1870: Franz Lehar
- 1877: Alice B. Toklas
- 1912: Eve Arden
- 1916: Robert Shaw
- 1926: Cloris Leachman
- 1933: Willie Nelson
- Isaac playing a festive and rambunctious fanfare by Charles Ore on the organ;
- St. Matthew's handbell choir played 3 selections, including a crowd favorite arrangement of "Just a Closer Walk with Thee", featuring clarinet solo;
- a young church member wowed us with the 1st movement of the G Major Mozart Flute Concerto;
- an a capella vocal sextet sang two wonderful spiritual arrangements;
- pianist #1 playe two pieces by Rachmaninoff (with lots of notes), "Prelude, Op23, #4" & "Moment Musical, Op. 16, #4";
- the youth choir did a remarkable a capella arrangement of Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror;
- a baroque quartet (piano, flute, clarinet, cello — yes, with yours truly) played some charming little pieces from James Oswald's "Four Seasons";
- a trio of young women sang a couple of beguiling selections;
- an awesome quartet of clarinets delighting us with an arrangement of "Smoke Gets in your Eyes", followed by a contemporary — and exhilarating! — "Suite for 4 Equal Clarinets";
- pianist #2 with Debussy's "Clair de Lune" and Liszt's arrangement of Schumann's "Widmung";
- the St. Matthew's Chancel Choir in fine form did three numbers, including their favorite, rousing arrangement of "River in Judea".
- Arthur Allen, Vaccine : The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver. New York : W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. 523 pages with notes and index. [note]
- Richard B. Alley, The Two-Mile Time Machine : Ice Cores, Abrupt Climate Change, and Our Future. Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, 2000. 229 pages, with appendices, "Sources and Related Information", and index; illustrated. [note]
- Wallace Arthur, Creatures of Accident : The Rise of the Animal Kingdom. New York, Hill and Wang, 2006. x + 255 pages, with glossary, "further reading", and index. [note]
- Philip Ball, Bright Earth : Art and the Invention of Color. New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002. 382 pages, 66 color plates. [note]
- Clark Blaise, Time Lord : Sir Sandford Fleming and the Creation of Standard Time. London : Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2000. viii + 246 pages. [note]
- Sean B. Carroll, Endless Forms Most Beautiful : The New Science of Evo Devo. New York : W.W.Norton & Company, 2005. 350 pages with "Sources and Further Reading" and index; illustrated with drawings and color plates. [note]
- Richard Dawkins, The Ancestor's Tale : A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution; with additional research by Yan Wong. Boston : Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004. 673 pages. [note]
- Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea : Evolution and the Meanings of Life. New York : Simon and Schuster, 1995. 586 pages. [note]
- Simon Garfield, Mauve : How One Man Invented a Color that Changed the World. New York : W. W. Norton, 2001. 222 pages. [note]
- Scott Huler, Defining the Wind : The Beaufort Scale, and How a Nineteenth-Century Admiral Turned Science into Poetry. New York : Crown Publishers, 2004. 290 pages, illustrated, with appendix, "notes on sources", and index. [note]
- John H. Lienhard, Inventing Modern : Growing up with X-Rays, Skyscrapers, and Tailfins. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2003. 292+ix pages, illustrated, with notes and index. [note]
- Henry Petroski. Success Through Failure : The Paradox of Design. Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2006. xii + 235 pages. [note]
- Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York : Simon & Schuster, 1986. 886 pages. [note]
- Oliver W. Sacks, Uncle Tungsten : Memories of a Chemical Boyhood. New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. viii + 337 pages. [note]
- James Schwartz, In Pursuit of the Gene : From Darwin to DNA. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press 2008. xiii + 370 pages, with notes and index; illustrated. [note]
- Simon Winchester, The Map that Changed the World : William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology. New York : HarperCollins, 2001. xix + 329 pages; illustrated, with glossary, "Sources and Recommended Reading", and index. [note]
- This meatloaf tastes to us the way we want meatloaf to taste, and
- The texture is the texture we want our meatloaf to have.
- 2 lbs ground beef (80%/20% fat is our preferred)
- 1 chopped white or yellow onion
- 1 cup oats, more or less
- 1, 14.5 oz can tomato sauce
- 1 egg
- 1 packet dried onion-soup mix
- several dashes Worcestershire sauce
- Mix everything together moderately well.
- Put in a loaf pan or 2.5 Qt casserole dish.
- Bake uncovered at 350
F for about an hour. - In Maryland, Question 6 was defeated and legal marriage for same-sex couples comes to my home state. Question 6 was a "people's veto", asking voters whether to veto or approve legislation, enacted by the Maryland legislature and signed by our Governor, granting marriage equality to Maryland residents. I think it's worth noting that 2 years ago our attorney general, Doug Gansler, gave his official opinion that Maryland recognized legal marriages made elsewhere, and our courts agreed. This created the odd condition that Isaac's and my marriage, committed in Washington, DC, was recognized in the state where we live and yet we could not commit marriage in our state. That is rectified and we hope to be attending some of our friends' weddings real soon now!
- In Minnesota, votes were presented with a hateful anti-gay constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriages in their state, by "defining" marriage to be only for mixed-gender couples; that amendment was defeated. (News from the Minneapolis StarTribune.)
- The State of Washington had on its ballot "Referendum 74", an initiative to veto marriage-equality legislation; it appears to have failed (counting continues as I write this).
- In Maine, pro-equality folks had gotten on the ballot a popular initiative allowing same-sex partners to marry. This was done in response to the plebiscite veto of marriage-equality legislation in 2009. This victory is the first ever for a popular initiative to grant marriage equality.
- President Obama was re-elected, now noted, among other things, as the first president openly supportive of marriage equality to win re-election; supporting equality for LGBT people seems not to have been the absolute deal-killer so many marriage-equality foes predicted, and their god has so far smitten no one as they have fervently hoped.
- Tammy Baldwin won her bid to become Wisconsin's newest Senator, and now gets to wear the sash that says "First Openly Gay Senator", and the Senate becomes a little more representative of the actual US population. She also has solid, liberal ideas I endorse. (Her victory speech: how thrilling it is to hear someone say "…and I am well aware that I will be the first openly gay member".)
- Elizabeth Warren defeated her opponent Scott Brown, to become the newest Senator from Massachusetts. She is another candidate with liberal ideas I endorse, and she also makes the Senate look a little bit more like the US population.
- In 2009, the Iowa Supreme Court rendered a unanimous decision that prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying contravenes the Iowa State Constitution. Anti-gay forces in Iowa bitterly resented that move and expended a considerable amount of effort in 2010 defeating 3 of the judges who were facing retention votes. Having succeeded they were very sore winners and strutted around vowing retribution for any judge who should cross their personal religious convictions. They vowed to remove, in this election, Justice David Wiggins, who was facing a retention vote. This time, however, pro-equality folks were not caught off guard and the electorate of Iowa was not confused by fear-mongering, misleading anti-gay campaigning. Justice Wiggins has been retained, a result with national repercussions. (New from the Des Moines Register.)
- Sean Patrick Maloney, an openly gay man, will be heading to the House of Representatives to represent New York. He has, by the way, a partner of 20 years and three children.
- The mayor of Troy, MI, one Janice Daniels, who got lots of press in 2011 for her ridiculously anti-gay comments on several occasions–thus proving quite an embarrassment to Troy–has been successfully recalled.
Based on a recipe from Campbell's Kitchen.
Our Favorite Turkey Pot Pie
When we were young, we enjoyed special dinners of inexpensive, frozen pot pies. They were far from fancy, but they left us with a taste we crave. We've been a long time searching, but we finally found a recipe that gives us the taste from our youth.
This recipe is very similar to one for Ultimate Chicken Pot Pie, from Campbell's Kitchen.
turkey Pot Pie
Today in History
One event that happened today, 30 April, looms large in my personal view of history : I was born on this day.
For years–decades, actually–I've known of one significant event that happened on this same date in history : Hitler killed himself (Wikipedia about). Significant, yes, but not the happiest thing to keep in my "happened on my birthday list", so I've decided I'd like to add a few more positive events.
One very positive anniversary that I happened across just today : in 1997 on this date, Ellen Morgan, the character played by Ellen DeGeneres in her television series, came out as a lesbian, in what is know as "The Puppy Episode". There's a nice recounting of events here. That is 14 years ago now–seems like just a couple of years ago, of course–and things have changed so markedly since then. Back in those days there were very few celebrities out as lesbian or gay, and they weren't often seen in a positive way at all. The idea of marriage equality was barely starting to hatch, and remember that homosexual sex would still be illegal in much of the United States until the Supreme Court decided Lawrence v. Texas (Wikipedia about) in 2003.
On the shared birthday date I've known about Carl Friedrich Gauss, born in 1777, for some time and I certainly don't mind sharing a birth date with the man so frequently described as "the world's greatest mathematician". Is there any hope of channeling a bit of his genius?
Some more shared birthdays I turned up today of people who seemed to me worth noting:
I was delighted at discovering that I share a birthday with Eve Arden, an actress I'm very fond of.
One event from the history of science that I've turned up so far : it was on this date in 1897 that J.J.Thomson announced publicly that he had discovered the electron earlier in that year. The electron was the first subatomic particle identified experimentally.
Rolling My Own
I've finally acknowledged that I need to keep, at least for awhile, a more detailed diabetes log–blood-sugar readings, carbs consumed, insulin taken, and such. My control needs to be better and it's been difficult lately to discern useful patterns in the paltry data I've been keeping.
I wanted something convenient and paperless, if I could. I almost always have my cell phone handy, so looking for a suitable Android app seemed a good answer. I found a couple of contenders that would do the job well enough, but they all disappointed me in one way or another.
Today at lunch I was pondering whether I could email myself the log entries with enough structure to process them easily with a simple computer program. The answer was "yes", but what a bunch of bother. Then: my "aha!" moment.
So, now I have a simple, automated logbook that consists of a google-drive spreadsheet linked to a simple form that populates it automatically, a form that I can quickly access via the Web and a bookmark on my phone.
Sometimes I feel very empowered by the 21st century.
In: All, Eureka!, Personal Notebook
The Pitfalls of "Big Data"
I greatly enjoyed this article ("Big data: are we making a big mistake?", by Tim Harford) on the dangers of "big data", which certainly has opened up new avenues of research but nevertheless still requires understanding to avoid statistical pitfalls. Understanding causes beyond mere correlation is still necessary: correlations can predict trends with uncanny accuracy, until they break down.
Very useful is this idea of "digital exhaust" : "…we might call 'found data', the digital exhaust of web searches, credit card payments and mobiles pinging the nearest phone mast". I rather like the phrase, too.
Read the article and heed the warning: "But while big data promise much to scientists, entrepreneurs and governments, they are doomed to disappoint us if we ignore some very familiar statistical lessons."
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, Plus Ca Change...
Corruption : A Culture of Dependency?
This article ("The Supreme Court Just Gutted Another Campaign Finance Law. Here’s What Happened.", by Andy Kroll) provides some useful background and short, clear analysis on today's McCutcheon v. FEC ruling from the Supremes.
I'm surprised, frankly, that Republicans could look so favorably on allowing large contributions from single donors; don't they realize that it could lead to dependency?
In: All, Current Events, Splenetics
How White Supremacists Help Advance the Cause of Marriage Equality
So, District Court Judge Friedman recently struck down Michigan's ban on marriage equality as unconstitutional. Michigan AG Bill Schuette vowed to appeal, wasting taxpayer money (oops! my editorial comment).
Now, a white supremacist group has filed a brief in support of his case, basically using the same arguments that he and similar marriage-equality foes have used across the country to lose their cases. (Reference: "Michigan gay marriage: AG Bill Schuette denounces brief by white nationalist group, defends trial costs".)
However, despite their ideological similarities, Schuette wants nothing to do with WHITE SUPREMACISTS! So he denounces the "language" of their brief. Oh, what to do, what to do.
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity, Laughing Matters
Signs of High Blood Sugar
Sometimes I get to be a spokesman/resource for diabetes, and people will ask how they can know if they might be showing signs of its onset. I happened across this set of "7 signs of high blood sugar" yesterday, and I think they are practical and cover most of the ground.
In: All, Briefly Noted, Explaining Things, Naming Things, Wanderings
Opening "Mame"
We have successfully made it through opening night of our production of "Mame", satisfying our audience and experiencing only enough booboisie to make for amusing stories afterward.
I am now happily tucked into bed and relaxing for what feels like the first time all week, for which my feet are grateful.
Unintentionally funniest audience comment of the evening: I play banker Dwight Babcock, with some asperity. Woman says to me after, "So, you got to be the straight man tonight!" I heard a few giggles.
And who knew there were this many costume changes! Well, costumes, at least. I haven't counted yet but I'm thinking that "Kiss Me, Kate!" had more costume changes, but only two costumes; in "Mame" I have a rather simple role, but 5 costumes and 5 changes.
How the Equinox Happens
Oh, I just now saw that the Spring Equinox happened about 20 minutes ago (12:57 pm, EDT). Happy Equinox!
Then I started wondering whether anyone wondered how it is that we can have equal amounts of daylight and dark at a precise time of the day. (The answer is that the time–and the equinox–is determined by the moment when the sun appears to cross the equator, and that can be determined with arbitrary precision.)
In: All, Explaining Things, It's Only Rocket Science
The Gettysburg Address turns 150
Earlier today I read somewhere that some teabagger (yes, I know which one but I prefer this more dismissive reference) was upset because (if I'm following the details correctly) in the short film Ken Burns made about "The Gettysburg Address" for the occasion, today, of its 150th anniversary, President Obama was filmed reading The Address and he left out God!
Now I'm interested to learn that there are 5 known surviving copies of the The Address, all in Lincoln's hand, and that each one is different. It is not known which was actually delivered. However, one can compare the texts and see that 2 of the 5 versions do not mention God. The "Nicolay Copy", housed at the Library of Congress, is one of the 2, and it's the version that the President read.
In: All, Briefly Noted, Laughing Matters
A Musical Extravaganza
St. Matthew's UMC church, where Isaac is music director, celebrated its 50th anniversary this weekend. Among the many splendid events, Isaac organized a gala musical evening this past Saturday. The program included gem after gem:
Happily, the event was very well attended, with over 200 people.
In: All, Music & Art, Personal Notebook
The Boy Scouts : Possibly a Return to Relevance?
Until just a few hours ago, I was pessimistic about the future of the Boy Scouts of America. Now it seems that they may manage to have a future. The news has just come in that a vote at the organization's annual meeting has approved a policy to allow gay scouts to remain scouts even as openly gay scouts; gay scout leaders continue to be prohibited. [see, e.g., this summary]
Years ago I was, for a few years, a Boy Scout, but it didn't really agree with me. I really wasn't the camping-and-roughing-it type of kid. Later on I could figure out that, by the time I'd graduated from the very enjoyable Cub Scouts, I was starting to feel uncomfortably different from what seemed to be the typical Scout.
In 2000 the Supreme Court told the BSA that they could go on discriminating against gay men and boys, but it was, and still is, one of the best modern examples of a Pyrrhic victory, and the BSA seemed to be beginning it's long, slow slide into irrelevance.
While it still has a ways to go for inclusiveness that would at all approach that of the Girl Scouts, it is a big step for them, a step in the right direction, certainly, and just possibly the first step on the path to recovering some twenty-first century relevance.
A Scienticity Reading List
A friend asked me for some recommendations for popular science books she might read. Here is one such list. It is 16 titles I culled from the "Top-Rated Books" [link] in the Scienticity Book-Note Collection of books that I have read and found enjoyable, informative, and memorable. Most of the notes in the links are ones that I have written, so this is very much a personal list — but these books make great reading!
Also, since I'm embarrassingly behind in writing notes about books I've read, these are all titles that I've read a few years ago, but I claim that the very fond memories I have now just demonstrate their lasting value. One thing that this list emphatically is not: it is not my list in of the best in recent publishing. Most of these books have been around for a few years, or longer, but they've proven their value in my mind.
In: All, Books, Personal Notebook, Speaking of Science
DOMA is Unconstitutional
With the Supreme Court set to hear oral arguments soon on whether the "Defense of Marriage Act" is unconstitutional, former President Bill Clinton has written a timely statement calling for the overturn of DOMA, a bill he signed into law:
Americans have been at this sort of a crossroads often enough to recognize the right path. We understand that, while our laws may at times lag behind our best natures, in the end they catch up to our core values. One hundred fifty years ago, in the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln concluded a message to Congress by posing the very question we face today: “It is not ‘Can any of us imagine better?’ but ‘Can we all do better?’ ”
The answer is of course and always yes. In that spirit, I join with the Obama administration, the petitioner Edith Windsor, and the many other dedicated men and women who have engaged in this struggle for decades in urging the Supreme Court to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act.
[Bill Clinton, "It's Time to Overturn DOMA", Washington Post, 8 March 2013.]
What a nice thing to see Bill Clinton's very public proclamation that DOMA is unconstitutionally discriminatory and should be overturned. It's also causing a very lively discussion about his motivations and excuses for signing it in 1996. That discussion seems healthy enough to me.
As everyone hastens to point out: it was a very different political landscape that LGBT people faced in 1996 and, as Clinton supporters point also point out, when he signed DOMA is had absolutely no effect — then, since same-sex marriage was nowhere legal. It loomed on the horizon, however, and it wasn't long before Massachusetts tipped over the first domino. Of course, DOMA has serious consequences now.
Clinton knew it was discriminatory then, he knows it now, and calling for it to be overturned is the right thing to do. Should he have signed it at the time? Probably. It was a political calculation. He tried in difficult times to be an LGBT ally, but vetoing DOMA, it was thought in the White House, would certainly scuttle his reelection chances, and they might have been correct. It may well have been more important for him to be reelected than to make what would have been at the time a relatively ineffective gesture.
That doesn't make it any more right, really; it's a question of whether he would have been a hero or a martyr, and a martyr might not have been so useful. Still, that doesn't make it a good thing to have done at the time, even if it was the less bad of bad choices.
I've seen Andrew Sullivan quoted (here, for instance) as saying that if we can forgive Ken Mehlman (former RNC chair during Bush II years and architect of a reelection campaign that relied on vilifying LGBT people) we can forgive Clinton. Well, I don't know who this "we" is! I haven't forgiven Mehlman who, although he has somewhat recently become an avid supporter of marriage equality, has a long, long way to go to come close to atoning for some small amount of the evil he did.
And I don't forgive Clinton for signing DOMA. It was bad, even if it seemed necessary. And while it doesn't erase that sin, this strong, public statement that DOMA must go is a seriously good thing to have done.
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
Mainline Homophobes Move to the Fringe
What if they gave a Supreme Court case and no one showed up?
So, the Supremes are to consider California's Prop 8 and part of DOMA next month. Will there be anything substantial and sensible to consider? "Standing" is a big legal issue, because no one wants to defend these dinosaurs anymore. The arguments that anti-gay proponents make in favor of restricting marriage to mixed-gender couples get more bizarre by the day–and they didn't start out in such a good place.
And, as this article points out, the defenders are looking increasingly like from-the-fringe crackpots, all dressed up in their homophobic finery with no place to go:
To see how marginalized the on-the-ground groups trying to block gay marriage have become, you have to peruse the amicus briefs filed by organizations and individuals supporting Cooper and Clement. There are no bar associations, no professional associations, no national civil rights groups, no corporate business voices, and no big prestigious firms that have written the briefs. Some amici are formidable: the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Attorneys General of 17 states, for example. But most of the intellectual, professional and cultural elites have switched sides.
[Nan Hunter, "Is the Supreme Court Argument Over Gay Marriage Really All About Straight People?", The Nation, 7 February 2013.]
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
Our Moms' Meatloaf
Meatloaf is a wonderful thing. Everyone has a recipe, but not everyone's recipe suits our taste; many are too dense in texture, or have unexpected tastes from unexpected herbs and other ingredients that catch our mouths off guard. Some people insist that they know what makes the "best" meatloaf. I refuse to claim that our version is the "best", but I will say that
Not surprisingly, this is meatloaf from our childhoods and that's the taste we were looking for. It may not be exactly that taste or those ingredients, but it suits our nostalgic memories of how that meatloaf tasted. Because our mothers' did, we use only ground beef. From there we experimented with putting in those things we remember our moms' putting in, and we ended up with just what we were looking for.
Frankly, I suspect that the main contributors here are using only ground beef, and that with some fat in it; some dry extender to soak stuff up and keep the texture loose, for which oats are admirably suited; and something liquid to contribute the right glopiness and something for the extender to soak up, for which we like the taste of tomato sauce. Working within those parameters I think there are probably any number of variations that we'd also find quite agreeable, but I'm pretty clear that I don't want, e.g., sage to appear anywhere near our meatloaf, and much as we like garlic we don't know that we want that in this meatloaf either. Tomato gravy would be nice, but we find it very satisfying to serve with ketchup added liberally at the table.
Now, so I don't forget again or wonder what I've forgotten next time, here is our version of:
Our Moms' Meatloaf
Watching the Sea Change: Post-Election Day One
We spent election evening with friends, watching returns. I don't usually pay much attention to election returns "as they are happening"–to me it's just analyzing the results for something that's already happened–but I enjoyed everyone's enthusiasm for our democratic process. This is not to say, however, that I was not keenly interested in what the results of this election would be, and it seems an unparalleled gift that nearly every result I had hoped for in this election came to pass.
Accuse me if you like of being a "single-issue voter", but there were a number of LGBT-related issues being voted on, and taken together their outcome mark a significant indication of changing attitudes in the American electorate, a change that moves toward affirming that I, an openly gay man, am on the way to gaining my full rights of citizenship and equality. Is that a "single issue", or is it arguably the only issue?
Anyway, this was a big year for ballot measures concerning marriage equality for LGBT people in America. They were of different types, each of which test the electoral water's temperature in different ways. In my home state, Maryland, and in the State of Washington, there were referendums on duly enacted legislation granting marriage equality to LGBT people: whether voters wished to veto or retain the legislation. In Minnesota, yet another in a string of proposed amendments to a state constitutions, of the kind that we've seen for years, restricting marriage to mixed-gender couples. In Maine, it was a popular initiative (i.e., instigated by the people) to recognize marriage equality, done in response to a hateful campaign in 2009 that vetoed marriage-equality legislation in that state.
The anti-gay forces — who claim that they are only in favor of "traditional" marriage and otherwise love gay people, but whose increasingly shrill anti-gay rhetoric belies that claim — were out in force, with carpetbags filled with money, and with lots of religious trappings and self-righteous preaching, trying to hold back the incoming tide of equality and civil rights for more people. Why they find it so desperately important to keep me from fully equal citizenship is something that is beyond my understanding, but with this election they've seen the tide flow mightily through their fingers and leave them in the undertow.
I am so very happy, and relieved, to see that all 4 ballot measures on state ballots (Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, & Washington) that opposed marriage equality were defeated in a resounding show of support for marriage equality across the country. I am also pleased that this happened despite huge amounts of money (millions of dollars, tens of millions, maybe more–it's hard to say when so much of the money spent is invisible), fear mongering, and campaigning from the pulpit led by the Catholic Church and its minions.
I think there's no doubt that this election was a clear repudiation of the fiercely hateful anti-gay rhetoric that has been deployed so lavishing in the name of delaying marriage equality in the US. I think we can also be sure that the anti-gay pronouncements will become still more strident and divisive, but it already seems that those hateful voices are starting to recede in relevance and their influence is severely diminished. I suspect that as many of them appeal more and more to their god to smite down their opponents, more and more of their less fanatical supporters will start to see more and more clearly with whom they've been allied, and from whose bed they now need to get up with some alacrity.
Here, then, is a brief summary of election results that made us smile and that affirmed and advanced LGBT equality in this country in this election.
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity
Fiction Guides by Emma Coates
I'm not all that big a fan of "rules" for writers, perhaps because there are far too many self-help howtos for writers filled with a lot of useless, thoughtless "rules". But when I write I have a few personal rules I follow, and I'm always delighted to find some rules from other writers that are thoughtful, provoke thought, and might actually offer some guiding ideas.
I haven't thought carefully myself about this entire list by Pixar's Emma Coats, but quite a bit of it appealed to me at first glance so I'm doing the unusual and reproducing the entire list as I found it here. I'm thinking that I might like to makes some comments, but that might work better in individual essays (that I'll get around to any day now), so let's just go with the list for now. Here it is:
Pixar story artist Emma Coats has tweeted a series of “story basics” over the past month and a half — guidelines that she learned from her more senior colleagues on how to create appealing stories:
#1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
#2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.
#3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
#7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
#8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
#9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
#10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
#11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
#12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
#13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
#16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
#17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.
#18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
#19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
#21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
#22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.
[source]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Writing
Signs of the End Times
Today the signs of the end time — for me, that would be the end to popular support for institutionalized homophobia in the US — are rife and reports are falling in front of me almost faster than I can keep track of them. Just to set the stage, this happens for me against a background where, here in Maryland, the professional haters appear to have enough petition signature to put Maryland's duly enacted marriage-equality law to a popular vote this fall, but where recent polls show a sudden surge in support for marriage equality, an effect that's apparently due to recent, significant statements of support from the NAACP and President Obama.
This seems to be making churches, some nondenominational, generic "Christian" churches, some very mainstream, nervous, and their nerves lead them to step up the stridency of their ridiculous–and increasingly ridiculed–anti-gay rhetoric.
But first, this headline from the Washington Post: "Serpent-handling pastor profiled earlier in Washington Post dies from rattlesnake bite". Now, as I understand it, Pentecostals like Mr. Wolford, profiled here post mortem, handle their snakes confident that their god will protect them from bites thanks to the unshakable strength of their faith or, if they do get bitten, he will smite the poison from their bodies. It didn't work this time for Mr. Wolford. To my mind this is a pretty clear sign whether one believes in a god or not.
And here's some trouble for the more mainstream Catholic Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, Archbishop of New York and recently serving as the highest profile anti-gay hater of the Catholic Church: it seems that when he was Archbishop in Milwaukee he paid off some pedophile priests, some to the tune of $20,000, to leave the church quietly:
Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York authorized payments of as much as $20,000 to sexually abusive priests as an incentive for them to agree to dismissal from the priesthood when he was the archbishop of Milwaukee.
[Laurie Goodstein, "In Milwaukee Post, Cardinal Authorized Paying Abusers", New York Times, 30 May 2012.]
To my mind, this too is a pretty clear sign whether one believe in a god or not, with the further note that fervent belief in a god doesn't seem to be helping these guys much.
Then there has been the rash of new pastor contestants in that unofficial reality game "America's Got Hate".
You'll remember the "pastor" in North Carolina who felt that gays and lesbians should be rounded up and "put behind electric fences" until we died off from being unable to reproduce (he obviously didn't pay attention during that biology lesson); he's being defended by his congregation and himself remains unrepentant. Oh, there's the competitor in Kansas who announced from his pulpit that the government should be putting GLBT people to death, but probably wouldn't. He's gone the route of issuing "clarifications" that only make his case worse. (More here.)
But they're old news. This week's phenomenon was the viral video of the 4-year-old boy singing "Ain't No Homos Gonna Make it to Heaven" (I haven't watched the video and I won't link to it–y'all know how to use the google if you want to) while his "pastor" and the congregation of that little Indiana church cheered him on. Hallelujah! All they're trying to do is witness for the truth and the "pastor" says they've only been getting "death threats" for their trouble.
Shall we talk about bearing false witness?
An Indiana sheriff is disputing reports that a local pastor has received death threats over a viral video of his congregation cheering a young boy as he sang: "Ain't no homo gonna make it to heaven."
“To my knowledge, there are no death threats at this time,” Decatur County Sheriff Gregory Allen told FoxNews.com. He was responding to a report on TMZ.com that Jeff Sangl, pastor of Apostolic Truth Tabernacle Church in Greensburg, Ind., had received death threats after the video hit the Internet Wednesday.
[Joshua Rhett Miller, "Indiana sheriff denies report that pastor got death threats over anti-gay video", Fox News, 31 May 2012.]
Just to add a bit of sparkle to the end-times feeling, one notes that the story quoted above is from Fox "News".
And in positive news, just in today is word that the Federal Appeals Court in Boston has declared part of the odious DOMA unconstitutional:
Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act — the federal definition of "marriage" and "spouse" is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court in Boston ruled today. The decision by a unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Gill v. Office of Personnel Management and Massachusetts v. United States, is the first instance of a federal appellate court striking down any portion of the 1996 law.
[Chris Geidner, "BREAKING: DOMA's Federal Definition of Marriage Unconstitutional, Federal Appeals Court Rules", Metro Weekly, 31 May 2012.]
I haven't read the decision yet, but indications are that it is strongly wrought.
In: All, Current Events, Faaabulosity