Thomas Roberts interviewed - very lightly, I must say - the Queen of Mean yesterday on MSNBC. (You fellas recall that a couple of days ago, she was a no-show for an earlier interview; MSNBC claims they made a scheduling error.) Maggie, of course, did her fat-cat purr, all pretty in pink, and dodged and oozed all around the questions like snake oil, denying any hateful conspiracy, untoward action, or unkind motive towards anyone at all. Why, as Scarlett said of India Wilkes, butter just wouldn't melt in her mouth!
Which strongly reminds your Head Trucker of the famous statement: "I am not a crook."
On this coming Monday, the National Archives will release its first-ever digitzed version of a census to the Internet. If you are into researching your genealogy, or even if you never have but would like to start, this is a welcome development; census records are kept confidential for 72 years to protect people's privacy. Below, a government archivist explains how the records have been prepared for online release.
And here, a family historian explains the unique features of the 1940 census and what you can do with it. Of course, the best way to start researching your roots is to begin with what you know - the present - and work backwards.
As a public service, your Head Trucker would like to pause here and offer this tip to budding filmmakers: DO NOT MINDLESSLY REPLAY THAT CUTESIE PERIOD MUSIC ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE FUCKING MOVIE. Twenty seconds' worth at the beginning and again at the end is totally sufficient. Unless, of course, you intend to IRRITATE THE LIVING HELL OUT OF YOUR VIEWERS. Just sayin'.
And one other big tip, to everybody: for every single bit of info you dig up on your ancestors, no matter how trivial, make a note of exactly where you found it. Trust me on this. Yes, it's a little irritating at first, when you are so excited and eager for the hunt - but if you make this a habit, you soon will get used to it, and it will save you major grief on down the road.
There are any number of good and inexpensive software programs that will make all of it easier, such as Family Tree Maker - about $35 last time I checked. Or you can do what your Head Trucker did, and just download the free software from the Mormon website, which is very user-friendly and has all the essential tools you need to keep track of your family data. It works just fine, and is dandy for a beginner.
For several years after I finally got a home computer in 1999 - yes, I was a tad late to the party, but I kept thinking it was all just a fad - I devoted a lot of time to climbing the branches of my family tree, and with persisitence, and help from a couple of cousins as well as some paid help from a couple of very nice professional genealogists, I finally was able to track down all but one of my 16 great-great grandparents, and 22 out of my 32 great-great-great grandparents. Which takes me back to colonial times in the 18th century, and all the lines that I can trace that far go back to old Virginia or Maryland.
Which is about what I figured when I started. It would be nice to get further back to England, but that would require digging in archives and things that aren't online, or paying someone to do it, and I just decided to quit while I was ahead; I have enough to confirm the general course of my ancestry, and that was a very satisfying research project. It's also a wonderful hobby because you never get to the end of it: there's always another branch to trace, more kinfolks to search for. And all that contributes to your understanding of who you are, exactly, and where you came from. As well as who you are not.
I'm over it now, largely because there's no easy way to go further back, but I can recommend ancestry.com for folks who want to do their own digging.
Before we leave this topic, you boys might enjoy this 1940 short the Census Bureau put out to encourage folks to cooperate with the census takers. The film begins, as so many made in that era did, with a paean to our great, shining Republic, wholly devoid of irony or self-consciousness, a thing not possible today for a number of reasons. I'm sad to say.
I reckon you fellas already know about the smoking-gun document that reveals NOM's secret agenda - agenda! - to manipulate blacks and Latinos into hating on the gays. Which, even though I'm old enough to have long since figured out how the world really works, still sorta takes my breath away: my mind just doesn't work in such callous, contemptuous, thoroughly manipulative ways. Not something I would have ever thought of doing.
But just for the record, if you want the low down on the dirty tricks Maggie and Co. have been trying to pull, you can read a quick summary or the document in full over at the HRC's website.
Lots of bloggers have written trenchant commentaries about NOM's plot to "drive a wedge between gays and blacks" - a direct quote from NOM's own report - but here I'll just quote what Evan Wolfson had to say about this revelation at Freedom to Marry, which reflects my own thoughts pretty well:
In its anti-gay crusade to block the freedom to marry, NOM has spent years working to drive wedges within communities across the nation, all the while claiming it does not ’hate’ anyone, gay or non-gay. Now exposure of NOM’s own strategy memos confirms that NOM will stop at nothing to push its agenda, pitting American against American, minority against minority, family members against family members.
NOM’s wedge-strategy memos detail its campaign to funnel money to a handful of African-American clergy in order to attack gay couples and, appallingly, discredit the strong and clear voice of those African-American civil rights champions, such as John Lewis, Julian Bond, and Coretta Scott King, who have stood up for the freedom to marry and the equal civil rights of all people, including gay people of color. These smoking-gun documents show how NOM has sought, in the most cynical ways imaginable, to bait the gay community in hopes of provoking a hurt response that would further divide, all in furtherance of the ugly and cruel anti-gay agenda.
NOM’s secret memos describe its intention to ‘interrupt [Latinos’] process of assimilation’ by ‘making support for marriage a key badge of Latino identity’ and ‘seek to identify glamorous young Latino and Latina leaders’ to reject equal protection for their own family members who are gay. And all of this to be done, fueled by NOM’s shadowy secret funders, in the name of religion -- in flagrant contempt of the Golden Rule of treating others as you would want to be treated. Despicable.
Wolfson concludes his post by showing that NOM is totally out of touch with reality:
Notwithstanding NOM’s efforts, an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, conducted Feb. 29 through March 3, confirmed growth in support for the freedom to marry since October 2009 across nearly every slice of the electorate, with strong growth in support among African-Americans by 56% (from 32% to 50%) and Hispanic voters now supporting the freedom to marry by nearly 2 to 1 (55% to 30%).
This is the cost of war. Look at it, don't turn away and pretend you didn't see.
Congressman Walter Jones, a republican from North Carolina, is raising that question in the House Armed Services Committee's hearings on the Afghan war this week. Maureen Dowd writes in the NYT:
The impossible has happened in the past few weeks. A war that long ago reached its breaking point has gone mad, with violent episodes that seemed emblematic of the searing, mind-bending frustration on both sides after 10 years of fighting in a place where battle has been an occupation, and preoccupation, for centuries.
Afghan security forces cold-bloodedly murdered some American troops after Korans were burned by military personnel. Then an American soldier walked out of his base early one morning and began cold-bloodedly murdering Afghan innocents, leaving seven adults and nine children in one small village dead.
There was an exhausted feel to the oversight hearing, lawmakers on both sides looking visibly sapped by our draining decade of wars. Even hawks seem beaten down by our self-defeating pattern in Afghanistan: giving billions to rebuild the country, money that ends up in the foreign bank accounts of its corrupt officials. . . .
Jones was once so gung ho about W.’s attempts to impose democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan that, after the French opposed invading Iraq in 2003, he helped lead the effort to rename French fries “freedom fries” and French toast “freedom toast” in the House cafeteria.
But now he thinks that both wars are sucking away lives and money, reaping only futility, and that he was silly about the fries. He said he’s fed up with having military commanders and Pentagon officials come to Capitol Hill year after year for a decade and say about Afghanistan: “Our gains are sustainable, but there will be setbacks” and “We are making progress, but it’s fragile and reversible.”
He said he had recently visited Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval Hospital to see wounded troops: “I had a young Marine lance corporal who lost one leg,” in a room with his mother.
“My question is,” the Marine asked him, “Why are we still there?” . . .
[Jones] concluded: "We can declare victory now. But there’s one thing we cannot do, and that is change history, because Afghanistan has never changed since they’ve been existing."
The epitaph of our Sisyphean decade of two agonizing wars was written last year by then-Secretary of Defense Bob Gates: “Any future defense secretary who advises the president to send a big American land army into Asia, or into the Middle East or Africa, should have his head examined."
What I Say: Your Head Trucker is no military man, but as a student of history, the insanity of trying to subjugate and occupy a country so impenetrable and so far away has long been apparent, as shown by the disastrous careers of invaders in other lands down through the centuries, from Alexander to Napoleon to Hitler. This takes no special knowledge of military science, just a simple appreciation of the facts of geography, terrain, an enormously long supply line, the lack of dependable nearby allies, corruption, and the natural resistance of any people to a foreign invader.
It's crazy. It's stupid. It's a totally ridiculous proposition, one that is doomed to fail before it ever begins. And yet . . . why does our country keep doing this terrible thing? Korea - Vietnam - Iraq - Afghanistan. Does nobody in Washington ever have a brain bigger than his goddamn dick?
I bet the Marine lying there in Bethesda missing a leg wonders that too.
No, that's not where I was this weekend, but I thought you fellas might enjoy this short film about the legendary resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, from 1948 - when there was still a bit of glamour to the upper reaches of society. Now they're just as vulgar as anyone else, if you can believe the tabloids and TV shows.
For an update, here's a quick look at the renovated Greenbrier today, where the emphasis is on catering to the hoi polloi, quite a different tone from 1948:
In case you doubt me, their website shows you can get three nights there for about 500 bucks, and a steak dinner will set you back only $40. Not the Econolodge, but within range of most middle-class folks for a special trip. Of course, all their advertising shows straight couples - don't you think it's time some of us queered the place?
This song was a favorite of my late husband's, who played it a number of times in church as an occasional piece. Here it's performed with exquisite styling by Eva Cassidy, another talented soul gone too soon from our midst.
And btw, here's an ABC documentary about her posthumous fame that I just ran across, apparently filmed in 2002:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, harmony; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that I may seek not so much to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
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We cannot all do great things, but we can do small things with great love.
and welcome to the Blue Truck, a blog for mature gay men with news and views on gay rights, history, art, humor, and whatever comes to mind. Plus a few hot men. The truck's all washed and gassed up, so hop in buddy, let's go.
CAUTION: For mature gay men only beyond this point. Some posts and links may not be suitable for children or the unco guid. You have been warned.
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My Story
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Churches say that the expression of love in a heterosexual monogamous relationship includes the physical, the touching, embracing, kissing, the genital act - the totality of our love makes each of us grow to become increasingly godlike and compassionate. If this is so for the heterosexual, what earthly reason have we to say that it is not the case with the homosexual?
It is a perversion if you say to me that a person chooses to be homosexual. You must be crazy to choose a way of life that exposes you to a kind of hatred. It's like saying you choose to be black in a race-infected society.
If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn't worship that God.
