San Antonio Judge Leaves the Dark Side

Finally, former Republican Judge Carlo Key in San Antonio has seen the light, as he announces in this stick-it-to-'em campaign video:




It was in San Antonio, you may recall, that a couple of months ago opponents of a nondiscrimination ordinance booed wounded gay Marine veteran Eric Alva at a City Council meeting.  The ordinance was subsequently enacted by a council vote of 8-3.

Pope Says Lay Off the Gays, God Is in Everybody

Whoa, this is big news, and a big breath of fresh air. Pope Francis, in an interview he granted last month to an Italian Jesuit magazine, says the Catholic Church needs to find a new balance. The New York Times reports:

Pope Francis, in the first extensive interview of his six-month-old papacy, said that the Roman Catholic Church had grown “obsessed” with preaching about abortion, gay marriage and contraception, and that he has chosen not to speak of those issues despite recriminations from some critics.

In remarkably blunt language, Francis sought to set a new tone for the church, saying it should be a “home for all” and not a “small chapel” focused on doctrine, orthodoxy and a limited agenda of moral teachings.

“It is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time,” the pope told the Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a fellow Jesuit and editor in chief of La Civiltà Cattolica, the Italian Jesuit journal whose content is routinely approved by the Vatican. “The dogmatic and moral teachings of the church are not all equivalent. The church’s pastoral ministry cannot be obsessed with the transmission of a disjointed multitude of doctrines to be imposed insistently.

“We have to find a new balance,” the pope continued, “otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel.” . . .

The new pope’s words are likely to have repercussions in a church whose bishops and priests in many countries, including the United States, often appeared to make combating abortion, gay marriage and contraception their top public policy priorities. These teachings are “clear” to him as “a son of the church,” he said, but they have to be taught in a larger context. “The proclamation of the saving love of God comes before moral and religious imperatives.” . . .

“A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality,” he told Father Spadaro. “I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person.” . . .

"I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else — God is in this person’s life. You can, you must try to seek God in every human life. Although the life of a person is a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. You have to trust God."

You can read the full interview in English at America magazine, a weekly Catholic journal.

In another story reported by the Huffington Post, a 25-year-old gay man from Toulouse, France, claims that the Pope called him on August 29 after receiving a letter the man wrote, telling of his experiences with bullying and self-doubt. The Pope supposedly said to him:

"I received the letter you sent me," he said. Then we talked about the situation in my life. He told me: "Your homosexuality, it does not matter. You must remain brave, you must continue to believe, to pray, and be good. "

He encouraged me to continue the volunteer work I mentioned in my letter. He encouraged me, told me to be strong. He told me this: "One way or another, we are all children of God. This is why we must continue to be good. We all return to God, and only God knows if we are good. "

A Vatican official later denied that the Pope had called the man, who nevertheless maintains that it was indeed the Pope who called him. But still, in your Head Trucker's opinion the story does seem very much in keeping with Francis's public expressions so far.


Update, 9/20:  On the CBS This Morning program, New York's homophobic Cardinal Dolan, full of porcine pep and cheer, says it was no biggie - the Pope was just talking about doing a makeover on the Church's PR strategy, 'cause the old one ain't pulling in the demographics like it used to.  I wonder . . . .

IRS Recognizes All Married Gay Couples Across the Country

So much momentous, life-changing good news in one day, I can hardly take it all in, boys. After waiting all these many years for Change, now that it's arrived, it just seems unreal - am I waking or dreaming?

First, via Freedom to Marry:

Today, the Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service announced how they will implement the June 2013 Supreme Court ruling declaring the central part of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. The Treasury Department and the IRS announced that all legally married same-sex couples will be fully respected by all federal tax programs, including income tax, gift and estate taxes, deductions, exemptions, retirement accounts, and child tax credit.

The ruling will be applied to same-sex couples who married legally in any U.S. state or international country that has approved marriage for same-sex couples. All couples - no matter which state they live in (even if they live in a state that discriminates against their marriage) - will be respected for these federal tax programs.

Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew announced the decision today. He said:

Today’s ruling provides certainty and clear, coherent tax filing guidance for all legally married same-sex couples nationwide. It provides access to benefits, responsibilities and protections under federal tax law that all Americans deserve. This ruling also assures legally married same-sex couples that they can move freely throughout the country knowing that their federal filing status will not change.

Wonderful news and a great advance for equality and civil rights - but note that the ruling does not apply to couples in domestic partnerships or civil unions. Of course, every couple should seek professional advice on how best to make use of these new financial benefits.

What does this mean for you? Well for starters, bud, even if you aren't particularly well off, it means that if your husband dies and you inherit the house, you do not have to pay income tax on the value of it, or any part of his estate you inherit, if you guys were married. And that, fellas, is truly a big fucking deal.

For another thing here and now, if you have health insurance through your husband's employer's plan, it will no longer be counted as income to you, so you won't have to pay income tax on it any longer.

Evan Wolfson has compiled a comprehensive list of statements and policies from various federal agencies in the wake of the Windsor ruling here. At the time of this writing, it seems that Social Security for the near future will base benefits on whether a couple lives in a marriage-equality state or not, but that might change, so stay tuned.

See also these very helpful factsheets on Life after DOMA, and what it means for you in terms of bankruptcy, family and medical leave, federal student aid, and other pertinent issues.


Update, 4:45 p.m.:  More good news, via the Advocate:

The federal Department of Health and Human Services announced today that legally married same-sex couples on Medicare will be eligible for equal benefits and joint placement in nursing homes around the country.

In the wake of the Supreme Court's landmark ruling in June striking down a key section of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius said today's announcement is just the first in a series of changes forthcoming in how the department deals with married same-sex couples.

"Today, Medicare is ensuring that all beneficiaries will have equal access to coverage in a nursing home where their spouse lives, regardless of their sexual orientation," said Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator Marilyn Tavenner in a statement. "Prior to this, a beneficiary in a same-sex marriage enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan did not have equal access to such coverage and, as a result, could have faced time away from his or her spouse or higher costs because of the way that marriage was defined for this purpose." . . .

The new guidelines revise this standard, confirming that Medicare now applies equally to all married couples, regardless of where the couple resides. That's important for legally married gay and lesbian Medicare recipients who reside in a nursing home in a state that does not embrace marriage equality, since they will still be eligible for the same benefits as opposite-sex couples.

Update, Friday, 12:30 p.m.: Yesterday, a federal district judge in California struck down the provisions of Title 38 of the United States Code that limited veterans benefits to heterosexual couples. According to Freedom to Marry,

The judge wrote that there was no rational basis for the Department of Veterans Affairs to bar same-sex spouses from receiving these protections - that it is not related to the goal of gender equality, to any military purposes, or to the military's commitment to caring for veteran families. The judge explained that the definition of "spouse" in Title 38 of the Code of Federal Regulations is unconstitutional.

For now, the ruling is limited to married same-sex couples living in states with the freedom to marry. We await further clarification on how military families living in the 37 non-marriage states will be treated.

The case is Cooper-Harris v. United States, and here's a sweet video about the plaintiffs:

Late-night Thoughts

Five years ago tonight, this blog didn't exist, and same-sex marriage was available in only two states - Massachusetts (which had just revoked its 1913 law barring foreign couples from getting married if the marriage was illegal in their home state) and California, which had started marrying gay couples just six weeks before. A bare handful of other states offered civil unions or domestic partnerships. Gay couples in many places were still going off to Canada to get married, like Edie Windsor and Thea Speyer did.

I think too of all the quiet little commitment ceremonies - already now a dated phrase - that have taken place over the last forty years, all across the nation; usually in some private, secluded spot like a meadow, a beach, or a rented cabin in the woods, with a small group of friends to witness and celebrate. And I think of the many other couples, differently situated, for whom unwitnessed vows and private embraces had to suffice - like my late husband and I.

But what a stunning change in just five years: at midnight tonight, Delaware's new marriage equality law will come into effect, making a total of 12 states and the District of Columbia where gays can tie the knot - totally legal, just like the straights can, plus six more states that offer some kind of civil unions. On August 1st, Rhode Island and Minnesota will also become marriage-equality states, raising the total to 14, containing 30 percent of the U. S. population.

That's Change at a breathtaking speed. This is an historic period we're living through, folks, just like the late 60's/early 70's - as I well recall - when schools were integrating all across the South, and the "White" and "Colored" signs started to disappear. And suddenly, startlingly, there were black news anchors on TV, and female disk jockeys on the radio (that's right, children - there were no women DJ's before about 1972, not in my part of the world - radio was totally a man's business; and TV too, but they at least had the weather girls on some stations).

Of course we get frustrated now, as I'm sure progressive people were frustrated then, living with the day-to-day delays and surmounting the obstacles that remain - but it's all good. The tide is flowing in our direction now, and as Justice Scalia (who, make no mistake, has a brilliant legal mind, even if he is a bigot) said in his dissent this week, given the majority's ruling that marriage discrimination violates the Fifth Amendment, it's only a matter of time before we have marriage rights all across these United States.

For all this I thank, among others, our President, who despite some needless, equivocating foot-dragging, has delivered on DADT and is now making the federal government implement the post-DOMA changes as quickly as possible. Getting ENDA passed would be a great triple-play to cement his legacy as the Equality President, if he and our allies in Congress can get that done before his term ends. But just think, guys - how much of the last five years would have happened if McCain was president? Or Romney? Or, God help us all, Palin? What a chilling thought.

I still think it could be 2030 before the Deep South accepts the change - and here I mean the great red swath from Texas to South Carolina, which is the most conservative and most religious and most hell-no region in the country. The struggles will be fierce; there could even be scattered acts of violence and open rebellion. But in the next twenty years Change will come to my homeland too - if for no other reason than that the demographics make it certain. For example, whites in Texas are already only 48% of the population; in twenty years, Latinos will be over 50% and whites only 35%. Then too, the diehard, anti-gay, over-60 Bible-thumpers will be dying off.

Well I'm glad I have lived to see this much change in my lifetime. For me personally, nothing much actually changes out here on the prairie, but I do rejoice at the thought of the wonderful difference it all makes in the lives of others, whose pictures I've posted here on the Blue Truck, and for the generations yet unborn, who will take their freedom and equality for granted - and yawn over the history books, and wonder what was all the fuss about?

And won't that be fabulous.

Change you can believe in:
Edie Windsor as Grand Marshall in today's NYC Pride Parade.
When her car turned onto Christopher Street, the crowds roared,
"EDIE!  EDIE!  EDIE!"

The Coronation, 1953

At this time in 1953, Winston Churchill was Prime Minister of England, and over here President Dwight Eisenhower was still in the early months of his first term of office, and "Mamie pink," the First Lady's favorite color, was a trending fashion. I Love Lucy was just concluding its second season; Lucy's competitors Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, and Imogene Coca were household names. Steam locomotives were still to be seen pulling passenger and freight trains all across the U.S.A., though brightly-painted diesels had already crowded them out on some routes. To get from New York to Los Angeles, you could take the 20th Century Limited to Chicago in 16 hours overnight, rocked to sleep in a snug, air-conditioned Pullman bedroom (think of the famous scenes in North by Northwest with Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint); and then after a leisurely 12-hour layover in Chicago, during which you could enjoy the city's finest offerings in the way of shopping, dining, and perhaps taking in a museum or a movie, the Super Chief would carry you on to the Golden State in just 39 3/4 hours; in other words, a civilized traveler who left New York on Friday afternoon at 5 p.m. would arrive in L.A. at 8:30 on Monday morning. Plenty of millionaires and movie stars, as well as ordinary folks, still traveled that way in 1953.

But for those in a real hurry, the quickest way to get from New York to Los Angeles was a nine-hour non-stop flight aboard an elegant, four-propellered Lockheed Constellation (price: $158.25 one way, or $1360 in today's dollars; plus 10% federal transportation tax). It took twelve hours for a Connie to jump the Atlantic and wing you to London, with a stop in Newfoundland or Ireland en route. Cunard's magnificent ships, the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth, still plied the North Atlantic in tandem like clockwork, with one arriving and departing New York harbor every week, along with the liners of many other steamship companies. More people still crossed the Atlantic by ship than by plane. And the SS United States, pride of this nation since winning the Blue Riband a year before, was likewise shuttling back and forth between England and America at 32 knots, or 37 mph for you landlubbers - the fastest thing afloat. There were no spacecraft, no astronauts, and no NASA. Telephones were black and identical, had dials, not pushbuttons, weighed about five pounds, and were all of them wired securely to the wall. None of them took photographs. There were no color televisions, microwave ovens, or home computers. Even rock'n'roll was unknown: Elvis had yet to cut his first demo record. And nobody had ever heard of McDonalds.

It was a very different world, but one thing has remained constant since then, amidst all the flux of change: sixty years ago today, Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in Westminster Abbey, the first major public occasion to be televised nationwide in Britain, with film footage delivered across the oceans by military jet planes to be seen on TV screens throughout much of the world.  Here's a behind-the-scenes documentary produced by the BBC that includes stunning color footage of the Queen, the pageantry and processions, and the ceremony itself - which, as the commentator says, and I think rightly, was of a grandeur and magnificence that will never be seen again.



William Shawcross, official biographer of the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, writing in The Telegraph:

As the country has become more diverse and restless, the only real focus of unity today is the monarchy. And we saw in both the Golden and Diamond Jubilees how much people value that. The union is mystical and, I would say, that it is vital.

The paradox – indeed, the genius of constitutional monarchy – is obvious in the Coronation ceremony. The Queen is anointed in the presence of God, as she truly believed; she was crowned and she sat in the chair in which so many of her forebears had sat to be crowned. Lords temporal and spiritual paid homage to her. But at the same time, she swore oaths to preserve the laws of her lands.

Put another way, she was God’s anointed that day but she swore to God to obey the elected representatives of her people.

This system of government may seem archaic to those who consider themselves progressive, but it has worked remarkably well for centuries.

Never better, perhaps, than under this monarch. And that is at least in part because she is utterly true to everything she experienced at her Coronation.

At Christmas 2000, she explained: “For me, the teachings of Christ and my own personal accountability before God provide a framework in which I try to live my life.”

That Christian framework has enabled her to keep every one of the vows she made on that wet summer’s day 60 years ago.

Processing the Whirlwind

The Supreme Court hasn't made any decision on the issue yet - and there's no absolute guarantee that they will rule in our favor - but lots of people think a turning point has been reached on gay marriage in America. Ten U. S. Senators, including two Republicans, have recently come out in favor of marriage equality, bringing the total of Senators favoring repeal of DOMA to 50.

And a slew of conservative commentators in the last few weeks, including even the vile Rush Limbaugh, have said It's over, gay marriage is inevitable, let's move on to another issue. That's just pretty damn amazing to your Head Trucker.

Andrew Sullivan, who has not yet turned 50 years old, reacts to the dizzying changes in the swiftly shifting landscape of social acceptance for gays:

Queering the South for Equal Marriage

There's a movement now afoot to raise awareness and promote marriage equality all over the Southland by sending couples to apply for marriage licenses in places where there's just no possibility of getting them - yet. Take a look at these two boys applying to get hitched at the courthouse in Morristown, Tennesseee, population 29,000, way to hell and gone up in the Smoky Mountains. And have a kleenex handy.



My stars, fellas, I remember a time when it would have been worth your life, just about, to pull something like that in a small-town Southern courthouse. But wasn't the clerk lovely about it? Not everybody would be, even now, but the times they are a-changing even in the land of cotton. An overview of what's happening across Dixie:



Read more about the We Do campaign and find out how you can help at the Campaign for Southern Equality. Or check out more videos like these at their YouTube channel.

Meanwhile, Matt Baume of AFER updates us on marriage progress in the rest of the nation this week:

Convention Recap: Three Speeches

For reasons I'll explain in a later post, I missed watching the convention this week, but overnight here I've been catching up with the major speeches and things. Probly all you boys have seen these already, but in case you missed them too, here's my three favorite speeches from the convention.

1. Zach Wahls pays a short but fervent tribute to gay families and "My Two Moms":



Money quote:

Mr. Romney, my family is just as real as yours.

2. Bill Clinton demonstrates that he still has the golden tongue when it comes to oratory, and teaches the Republicans a little something about arithmetic:



Money quote:

Don’t you ever forget, when you hear them talking about this, that Republican economic policies quadrupled the national debt before I took office, in the 12 years before I took office, and doubled the debt in the eight years after I left, because it defied arithmetic.

It was a highly inconvenient thing for them in our debates that I was just a country boy from Arkansas and I came from a place where people still thought two and two was four.

It’s arithmetic. We simply cannot afford to give the reins of government to someone who will double-down on trickle-down.

Now, think about this. President Obama’s plan cuts the debt, honors our values, brightens the future of our children, our families, and our nation. It’s a heck of a lot better. It passes the arithmetic test and, far more important, it passes the values test.

My fellow Americans, all of us in this grand hall and everybody watching at home, when we vote in this election, we’ll be deciding what kind of country we want to live in. If you want a winner-take- all, you’re-on-your-own society, you should support the Republican ticket. But if you want a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibility, a we’re-all-in-this-together society, you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

3. The honeymoon being long over now, there's not the same excitement about Obama's campaign this time around - but he still had your Head Trucker in happy tears by the time he finished:




The money quote, which references the gays three times, among other things:

We don’t think the government can solve all our problems. But we don’t think that the government is the source of all our problems, any more than are welfare recipients, or corporations, or unions, or immigrants, or gays, or any other group we’re told to blame for our troubles.

Because, America, we understand that this democracy is ours.

We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which asks only what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.

As citizens, we understand that America is not about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us, together, through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. That’s what we believe.

So you see, the election four years ago wasn’t about me.

It was about you. My fellow citizens, you were the change.

You’re the reason there’s a little girl with a heart disorder in Phoenix who’ll get the surgery she needs because an insurance company can’t limit her coverage.

You did that.

You’re the reason a young man in Colorado who never thought he’d be able to afford his dream of earning a medical degree is about to get that chance.

You made that possible.

You’re the reason a young immigrant who grew up here and went to school here and pledged allegiance to our flag will no longer be deported from the only country she’s ever called home, why selfless soldiers won’t be kicked out of the military because of who they are or who they love; why thousands of families have finally been able to say to the loved ones who served us so bravely: “Welcome home, welcome home.”

You did that. You did that.

If you turn away now--if you turn away now, if you buy into the cynicism that the change we fought for isn’t possible, well, change will not happen. If you give up on the idea that your voice can make a difference, then other voices will fill the void: the lobbyists and special interests; the people with the $10 million checks who are trying to buy this election, and those who are making it harder for you to vote; Washington politicians who want to decide who you can marry, or control health care choices that women should be making for themselves.

Only you can make sure that doesn’t happen. Only you have the power to move us forward.

Those of you who watched the convention live will recall that after the President and his family took their bows, they were joined onstage by the Vice-President and his family - and the song playing at that time was this one by another pair of your Head Trucker's favorites, Brooks and Dunn. This song sums up all that America means to me in these two simple lines:

We all get a chance,
Everybody gets to dance

I hope it means something to you fellas, too.

Gay Dads in Penney's Catalog and Other Milestones

Dallas dads Ted Koch and Cooper Smith feature in an ad in the latest catalog from J. C. Penney, along with the two kids they adopted at birth, Claire and Mason.  Sweet.

My word, how times have changed. The family lives in the Oak Cliff gayborhood and was featured in a 2009 article in the Dallas Voice.

Among other reflections it makes me remember, more than forty years ago now, some painful Sunday mornings as a young teenager, already aware of my sexuality, listening to preachers rant on and on and on about the homosexshuls and how totally evil they were, drug addicts all of them, and rapists and molesters and thieves and murderers too, all of them depraved and deserving of death and eternal condemnation, yada yada. I reckon most of you guys know the drill.

And I remember sitting there, in the silence of my heart saying NO! That's just not true, it can't be true. It certainly wasn't true of me. But I had no evidence at the time about anyone else, didn't know and never saw any other gay people - but that's where I began to realize the difference between the truths I was taught and the truth that was within me.

Thank God, today's teens don't grow up totally isolated and disconnected as I did; and there's now plenty of evidence against all that ignorant, hate-filled, fundamentalist bullshit. So gay kids today have a much better chance of happiness than we did, and I'm glad.


The law is following, slowly, the change in attitudes as well: today another federal circuit court held DOMA to be unconstitutional, violating the Equal Protection Clause. It was a very cautious ruling - overly so, I think - but it adds to the weight of evidence and argument that our side will present to the Supreme Court, which is where this issue, so vital to our fundamental civil rights, will be decided. Soon, I hope.  (PDF of today's ruling here.)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

And one other milestone:  Retiring Congressman (D-Mass.) Barney Frank came out 25 years ago today, which had to be a damn scary thing to do, but aren't we glad he did:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Encylopedia Britannica Ends Printed Edition

A sign of the times: after 244 years of publication, the Encyclopedia Britannica has published its last edition on paper. It's still available online, for $70 a year - but even so, your Head Trucker can't help but feel a little sad that this venerable, once-prized work has gone the way of stagecoaches, clipper ships, and steam locomotives. At its peak in 1990, the print edition sold 120,000 copies; the last edition, 2010, has sold only 8,000, with 4,000 left in stock at $1395 a set, if you want to get one.

As a business professor once told the class I was in:  economics wins out every time.  The Britannica's sales shrank in the face of much-cheaper digital rivals like Encarta in the 1990's, and of course the free, though untrustworthy, Wikipedia in the last decade.  And then, of course, there's the simple fact of speed and convenience:  we collectively tend always to choose the faster, easier way to go somewhere or do something, don't we?  Which is why I'd bet a hundred dollars not 19 out of 20 of my truckbuddies reading this have ever taken a train trip (amusement park rides don't count); and a much lower percentage have taken one in a Pullman.  Believe me when I tell you:  it was the only way to travel, and still is, even on the wretched Amtrak.

Now your Head Trucker will admit that in the last few years, he has rarely bothered to get up from his desk chair and actually go open a volume of his two sets of encyclopedias; still, it's a comfort just to sit here and glance up at them, the gold embossing on their spines still gleaming modestly after all these years, the safe, secure repository of facts, the distilled essence of the accumulated labors of the human mind, toiling down through the centuries towards the light of knowledge.  It's enough to know that they are there if I need them, and I wouldn't trade them for a speckled pony.

I began the encylopedia habit early, and I think that was great good fortune.  When I was 7, my mom traded a funky vibrating-massaging lounger - one those of new space-age things that seemed so cool at the time - to a girlfriend for a set of the 1962 World Book Encyclopedia.  Which was an enormous boon to to this only child:  for years thereafter when there were no other kids around to play with, which was more often than not, I could amuse myself quite nicely with reading through the World Book volumes, surfing them, if you will, as we do the Internet today, skipping with fascination from Soap to Sarcophagus to Swahili to Silhouette and on and on and on.

I soaked up a lot of geography and history that way, by a sort of osmosis instead of careful study; still, I think it helped a lot to make me usually one of the smartest kids in school, grade by grade, and it certainly stimulated my innate love of reading.  There was also a smaller companion set of Childcraft, a soft-and-easy encyclopedia for really young kids, which of course I disdained because I wanted to learn all the grown-up stuff - nevertheless, it contains many wonderful old folk and fairy tales, and poems, with beautiful illustrations - unlike the gruesome, maniacal fare that is pumped into kids now, with predictable results.

By the time I was in high school, I would have liked a set of Britannica - but after the parents divorced when I was 10, finances were tight on both sides, so that wasn't ever a possibility. But long after I'd finished with all my schooling, in 1995 I was thrilled to discover a complete set of the 1964 Britannica in a book sale at the public library - and to my astonishment, the price was only $10 for the whole set, which looks just like the picture at the top of this post. Of course I immediately grabbed a cart and loaded it up with the 24 volumes, paid the fussy queen at the reference desk who sneered silently at my purchase, and trundled merrily home with my treasure. Which for several years thereafter, I dipped into time after time, luxuriating in it. Booklover - what can I say?

Though I will tell you that the Britannica's editors made a very bad mistake in 1974, when they got the deranged idea of dividing up this precious resource into a Micropedia, Macropedia, and Propedia. None of which made any damn sense to anyone outside the editorial offices, and which made it damn near impossible to look up anything at all in subsequent editions. Which is why I prize my 1964 set all the more; plus the fact that many of its articles are written by experts in their field. The article on relativity, to take but one example, was written by none other than A. Einstein. I didn't understand the theory of relativity any better after I had read his article than I had before, but still - fellow booklovers will understand the delicious feeling of being able to meet the great and the good right there on the page.

Not that anyone cares about that sort of thing now except a few cobwebbed antiquarians like me. Crowd-sourcing, the hive mind, the Borg - ah yes, that is the way of the future that will lead us all into, not Truth, but Truthiness, in Stephen Colbert's famous bon mot. In a world peopled with special snowflakes, all sparkling, fragile, and enormously sensitive, pained and distressed by every little interruption to their ceaseless hum of self-congratulation, how dare any snowflake appear larger, smarter, or better than anyone else? How dare any blade of grass grow a millimeter taller than its neighbors? How dare anyone be uncool? Or different? How dare they!

And so the world moves, by its own volition, from dumb to dumber to dumbass - quite merrily, and nobody minds a bit. Grammar, spelling, multiplication tables, cursive writing (it's so haa-aarrd!), Latin, French, poetry, music, art - all these have now ceased to be taught in both elementary and high schools, with rare exceptions. Why should they? We have the Internet! We have Wikipedia! We don't need to actually know anything, or remember anything. We have digital memories!

No doubt a day is coming soon when memory itself will be as devalued as my encyclopedia volumes, for can you not forsee, my friends, the coming digital implants in your brains - why would you need to remember even your own name, when with a wink and a shrug of the left shoulder, you can call up the entire contents of Wikipedia, Facebook, and every single episode of The Simpsons? All endlessly replaying through what's left of your neural cortex, and continually updated in real-time by 7 billion of your fellow men, all wired together like you in one giant, omniscient, undeviating World Mind?

Oh and of course, all the porn you could ever want, 24/7, without even having to flip a page or click a mouse. Tell me, my friends - who could ask for more?



An interview with Jorge Cauz, president of Britannica:

You Go, Hillary

Your Head Trucker is feeling mighty proud of our Secretary of State today, after making the historic declaration that "gay rights are human rights" before the United Nations yesterday in Geneva. Rachel gives the scoop:

And here's the entire speech, if you want to see and hear it:



Or read the transcipt of this landmark speech here. As Rachel says, it's worth your time.

Also yesterday, President Obama issued a memorandum to federal agencies about the need to use American foreign aid and diplomacy, including granting asylum to gay and lesbians.  Offical text of the memorandum is here.

It warms your Head Trucker's heart to hear these breathtaking statements - I am old enough to remember when homosexual was a word only whispered in public - especially since of late it has been so dispiriting to think about the anti-gay forces at work around the world. Wayne Besen of Truth Wins Out says:

The list of countries that recently declared war on sexual minorities include: Russia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda, Iran, and Zimbabwe. For the contemptible despots who run these underachieving nations, fomenting homophobia makes political sense. By turning homosexuals into bogeymen these rulers can conceal their corruption and appear moral through the blessings of craven clergy. . . .

But today’s actions by the administration and Clinton’s speech were different. The words were spoken with true vision and encrusted in values. There was clarity and passion, and no one was left wondering where our country stood on the rights of LGBT people.

This was one of those times where our nation demonstrated true international leadership and made me incredibly proud to be an American. It was stirring to witness our country act decisively as a force for moral good. There was no patronizing that relegated the LGBT community to the role of liberalism’s unwanted stepchild. There were no carefully crafted and focus grouped code words that sugarcoated the abuses – just the honest truth spoken from the heart. . . .

The stunning events in Geneva mark the moment Barack Obama secured a national LGBT vote for his 2012 re-election campaign. Today we felt hope – but more importantly, we witnessed monumental change.

Amen.

Of course, some buttheads still don't get it, and probably never will. But oh let's do hope history hurries up and puts them on the shelf before too long.

BTW - your Head Trucker is not old enough to remember this date as a "day that will live in infamy" - no really, I'm not - but he does vividly remember it was exactly five years ago today that the Canadian Parliament voted for the third and final time to affirm equal marriage in that country.  I watched the roll-call vote live, with tears running down my face, as member after member rose to vote on that historic occasion which finally ended all debate on the matter in the True North.

Canada, perhaps even more so than the United States, is a nation of immigrants now, and I was struck by the many different ethnicities represented by various Members of Parliament, from the four corners of the globe.  It seemed to me that this was like a United Nations, joining together people from all over the world to ratify the equal respect and dignity of gay people.  And I will never forget that moment.

So here's to better times for all of us queer people, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, and all the fabulous colors of the rainbow.

Update: Be sure to read John Aravosis's excellent post:

Leave Hillary alone: Her UN speech was freaking great

What Happened to That America? Part III

"That America" - the phrasing suggests a political answer, doesn't it?  The question is not "What happened to that time" or "What happened to that way of living," but rather focuses attention on the polity rather than the era or what we now glibly call a "lifestyle."

And your Head Trucker would have to say that in large part, what happened to change the political entity comes down, as suggested in the first two parts of this series, to two words:  television and mendacity.  Or to be more clear:  the ubiquitous medium of television exposed and brought straight into everyone's living room the mendacity, the pretenses, the lies which "that America" was based on.

"That America" - the one you see in the old commercials for shiny new Chevrolets and Frigidaires, Cheerios and Doublemint, the limpid vision of little pink houses and chummy small towns we can now conjure up at any time of the day or night to revisit - that America never existed.  It was a sanitized, spiffed-up, heavily censored imitation of the real America:  designed to entertain and reassure us, but also to sell products and prime-time minutes by stimulating our desire for more products, and more fashionable products, even ones we didn't know we wanted.

Now there's nothing wrong with entertainment and theatrical illusion per se - old Aristotle, who wrote the book on Greek drama way back there, and defined art as "the imitation of life," held that even the most gruesome of those tragedies had a beneficial effect on viewers by first causing them to feel pity and terror, and then allowing the purgation of those feelings, which he thought would have a good effect on their character, making the audience wiser, more thoughtful citizens.

But it's very important, especially in this era of non-stop entertainment and illusion by media of all kinds that we be able to distinguish the imitation from the life.  It may be that people who look back uncritically to those TV shows and commercials with a sentimental feeling, remembering at the same time how safe and lovely the world seemed through the eyes of their childhood, are failing to remember the many other facets of "that America" which were deliberately left out.

Continued after the jump . . .

No Problem, Y'all

Even though the Southland is still firmly in the grip of rightwing fundamentalism, attitudes about the gays are changing, slowly but surely.

As witness - OMG! - this bi-racial same-sex wedding announcement in the Columbia, South Carolina, newspaper.

And then there's this Texan's response to the gay weddings last week in New York City:

Honk to Andrew Sullivan.

Growing Up at Last

Andrew Sullivan posted this note from a reader the other day, and it so stuck in my mind as being so deeply revealing of the profound change taking place amongst us that I had to go back and find it again. The relevant excerpts:

I am a 27-year-old gay man, and consider(ed) myself very post-gay and post-marriage since I came out (late, a few years ago). I thought that if society didn't accept me, I would define my relationships myself, that I would forge a new world, a new type of relationship. . . .

You talk about this [marriage equality] being a generally conservative movement, that it is about people in love wanting expansion of a traditional institution to them. But no one talks about the influence this has on single gay men.For the first time since I came out, I feel forced to look at the fact that I am not just in this for dating, for sex. Maybe if I were older, I would already have an identity hardened against being defined by society, and it would not matter so much. But we are on the way to a world where society will accept my relationships, and I will not be able to use outsider status as an excuse for any behavior. . . .

I waver between a deep gratitude to New York for accepting me, and being spiteful for making me grow up. But I suspect that the former emotion will be the lasting one.

Of course, there always have been and always will be people who don't want to marry, and those who should not marry. Gay, straight, or otherwise. But notice how the opportunity to marry vividly changes the landscape for us.

It would be very interesting to come back in a hundred years for a day trip and take a peek at the outworkings of all this, wouldn't it?

Come out of the Closet, Mr. President

Maureen Dowd in the NYT:

Obama is “evolving” on the issue of gay marriage, which, as any girl will tell you, is the first sign of a commitment-phobe.

Maybe, given all his economic and war woes as he heads into 2012, Obama fears the disapproval of the homophobic elements within his own party. But he has tried to explain his reluctance on gay marriage as an expression of his Christianity, even though he rarely goes to church and is the picture of a secular humanist.

While picking up more than three-quarters of a million dollars from 600 guests at a gay and lesbian fund-raising gala in Manhattan on Thursday night, the president declared, “I believe that gay couples deserve the same legal rights as every other couple in this country,” even as he held to his position that the issue should be left to the states to decide.

. . .

With each equivocation, the man in the Oval Office shields his identity and cloaks who the real Barack Obama is.

He should draw inspiration from the gay community: one thing gays have to do, after all, is declare who they are at all costs.

On some of the most important issues facing this nation, it is time for the president to come out of the closet.

While we're on the subject of marriage, here's Cynthia Nixon, speaking last year at the New Yorker Festival:

Gay people who want to marry have no desire to redefine marriage in any way. When women got the vote, they did not redefine voting. When African-Americans got the right to sit at a lunch counter alongside white people, they did not redefine eating out. They were simply invited to the table. And that is all we want to do.

Then and Now

It all changed so fast, didn't it?

Honk to Joe.My.God.

Lacrimae Rerum

I've been meaning to post this for some time now, but not until this minute have I gotten around to making the necessary scan.  The oldest thing I own is a scrap of paper:  a single leaf from a notebook kept by my great-grandfather nearly 140 years ago. 



He was 24 when he recorded these verses.
Click to enlarge.

I'll tell you how I came to possess this.  My grandparents were the sort of hard-working country-bred people who, though literate, were not the type to keep much reading material lying around, save for the daily newspaper and the family Bible which sat for years, largely unread, on the telephone table in the living room.  But behind the front door was an old homemade cabinet with doors that fastened by a chunk of wood that pivoted on a nail - a thing of utility, not beauty - repainted every few years in the same tan color as the living room walls, but mostly ignored. 

Until one day in my early adolescence, when I decided to explore the contents.  The cabinet held three shelves, full of old herb catalogs and physical culture magazines dating back to the 1920's - my grandfather was a great one for believing in home remedies, and was acknowledged by all to be the family expert on such things - as well as some dusty religious books and tracts, old letters, and the odd catalog of tools and useful implements.   And the stray outdated textbook or novel, doubtless acquired when my father and his sisters were young, and long since forgotten by them. 

Some of these things were interesting to read by themselves.  But the most exciting find I made was three books:  one seemed truly ancient, with what seemed a home-made black leather cover, cracked with age, the pages of which were nubbly, not smooth like more modern paper.  It seemed a book of songs or poems:  I remember one verse was in celebration of "Washington, and Adams too," so it must have been from somewhere around the year 1800.

The second find was a much-worn but still tightly bound copy of Noah Webster's famous blue-backed speller, from the mid-19th century.  It seemed that every lesson began with an illustration of a short morality poem; the one I remember drew a contrast between two schoolboys, Punctual and Dilatory I think.  Naturally, Punctual was the one who succeeded while Dilatory fell by the wayside.

And the third of these antique treasures was the little notebook of my great-grandfather's that I mentioned above:  made of ruled paper, no more than about 3 by 5 inches, missing a cover but painstakingly filled on nearly every page with neatly written quotations from poets and playwrights, along with the occasional note of the price of corn, a home remedy for some ailment, a remark on some unusual weather, or even the exact tally of the nationwide popular vote for a presidential election, culled from a New York paper he must have subscribed to:  the collected musings of a young man who, though he never got further than the 8th grade, if even that far, was nevertheless of keen mind and had an ear for a well-turned phrase, a pleasing poem.

As I do, though I lived in more fortunate times and was able to get a good education.  Which for me, looking at his jotted fragments of thought, reveals a link across the centuries, a testimony of the continuity of something human, some essence of spirit.  I never knew the old man - he died half a century before I was born - and I don't feel particularly sentimental about him.  There are others I might have ended this year's postings with, more near and dear to my heart, starting with my own dear parents and others.  But somehow it seems fitting to end the year with this small bridge across the river of Time. 

Alas, having made these rather exciting discoveries - for even then, I was more interested in the past than the future - I made the great mistake of telling everyone in the family what I had found.  It was not long before some more senior relation confiscated all three treasures - "for safekeeping," of course - and I never saw them again.  Doubtlessly, they have long since been bequeathed to some other descendant, who may very well care little for them and be unaware of their significance.  Since I am the last of my grandfather's line to bear his name, I would have felt it only right that they descend to me - oh but some things are not worth the fight and feud that would result, you know what I mean, fellas?

How this single page came to rest among my keepsakes, I have no idea now.  I certainly would not have torn it out of the notebook.  Perhaps it just came loose on its own, and I stuck it inside another book to preserve it.  Whatever the facts were, I'm glad I have this charming little memento of a bygone day.  The famous Lewis Carroll poem about the crocodile is just the sort of thing I delighted in as a child - and still do.  How gratifying to find that it appealed to my great-grandfather as well.

Tonight, I am struck by the last quotation on the back of the page, which is from Gray's Elegy, written in 1750 and immensely popular for the next two hundred years, until the advent of our jet-fueled, damn-fool era.  Since it is partly obscured, I reprint the stanza here; and if any of my truckbuddies is familiar with this classic work, or will take the trouble to read it, I think you will agree that it also is fitting to end the year, and these reflections, with.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Farewell to All That

It's been all over the news lately, but in case you haven't heard that Kodachrome film is no more:



Now, a note for posterity: Kodak made a number of varieties of film in addition to Kodachrome, which was used by people who could afford expensive cameras - the kind you can adjust the speed and aperture of - to take slides or movies or professional photos. Certainly a lot of middle-class people did, but some families, including mine, never had such fancy cameras. The Kodak film I always used to take snapshots with had a different name - and come to think of it, what was that? - Kodacolor, maybe. Not the same thing as the much-lamented Kodachrome, which was much more expensive.

In fact, my family never even used color film until the very late 60's - black and white film was cheaper, say $1.50 a roll compared to $2.50 a roll for color - so my parents stayed with that, and the black and white TV sets too, for a long time. It was what people were used to, you know, and for that matter, most magazines and books had only b&w pictures on the inside pages until the 1980's (except perhaps for colorful advertisements - and also excepting Playboy and that ilk).

So I never used Kodachrome, and its demise touches me only tangentially as a sign of the times, the inexorable flow of days and years, the unending loss of the present moment, the familiar, the expected. There's a comfort in the usual patterns of life which is always being eaten away at the edges, as the waves pull at the sands of the seashore. Everything in this mortal life is transitory, impermanent as a dream no matter how solid it may seem. Including our very selves and all that we hold dear.

Be that as it may, there are compensatory additions from time to time. Who now could do without a microwave oven? Which I recall was, forty years ago, strictly a luxury item, very expensive, which took me a couple of decades to see the use of. Now I use it all the time, practically every hour of the day when I'm at home: a most useful invention.

Cell phones are another great convenience - even though your Head Trucker still hasn't figured out how to take a picture with his, and doesn't much care. I marvel now that we used to take long road trips to see family and friends perhaps a thousand or more miles away - and embarked merrily on the journey, trusting only to God and Chevrolet against the chance of being broken down and stranded on some lonesome stretch of highway, far from any help. I don't even go to the grocery store now without my phone, but we were braver in those days.

Your Head Trucker has, however, gotten the hang of using a digital camera, and boy howdy, what a treat it is. I've had my little Kodak C-330 for five years now, and I dearly love it. In my teens and young adult years, I used to have a vague hankering to learn photography - at one time there was a PBS how-to show on the subject that I used to watch sometimes. But it required a really good single-reflex camera to start with, which was beyond my pocketbook for many years. Then too, it seemed to be de rigeur that to be a real photographer, you had to have your own darkroom and know how to use it - which required more expense, and space that I never had anywhere I lived. So that was a little daydream that never went anywhere.

But the digital camera was a revelation. Suddenly, for only $150 or so, I found I could take endless pictures from all angles in all kinds of light, and actually produce a few that were worth keeping - all quite easily and cheaply. You can even see the picture on your camera screen as soon as you take it, and know whether to try again. And no counting frames, or worrying about how much it would cost to develop all the photos you took - very liberating, and a new creative outlet that I've enjoyed immensely. A very good change, despite all the laments over the passing of film: the expense of film and equipment made it a hobby only for the affluent.

And then, of course, there's the internet, which is quite frankly a godsend to anyone who lives in the sticks as I do. And for people who live in town, too: an unending source of entertainment, communication, and creative endeavor that as far as I'm concerned is an unquestioned necessity now. In recent weeks, for unrelated reasons, both the ex-roommate and I have each experienced a few days without internet service. And we both agree, it was nearly unbearable - just as much as if the water were turned off.

Which is odd, when I stop and think about it. I perfectly recall life before home computers - I used them at work a long time before I got one of my own, in 1999 - and how I was quite content to come home and in my leisure time read a book, call a friend, or simply flop in front of the TV. But now times have changed, and I've changed. Life is that way; the tide is always tugging at you, pulling you on, whether you will or no.

So we must always be balancing the losses against the gains, and adjusting to the shifts and turns of life. And always, human life is a mixed bag of blessings and curses, advances and retreats. Just yesterday, for example, surfing through Wikipedia with no particular goal in mind, as I am wont to do, I stumbled across this paragraph in an article about a British politician most Americans have probably never heard of, Roy Jenkins:

As Home Secretary from 1965–1967, he sought to build what he described as "a civilised society", with measures such as the effective abolition in Britain of capital punishment and theatre censorship, the decriminalisation of homosexuality, relaxing of divorce law, suspension of birching and the legalisation of abortion.

Perhaps all that is well and good - but it did give me pause. More than four decades later, is our Western civilization really a more "civilized society" than it was before the 1960's?

PRR ad, 1948

Or merely different? Human nature never changes, merely the outward forms and fashions. All our scheming, inventing, and rearranging may make the world more comfortable in some ways - but convenience is not quite the same as progress - is it?

Only one thing is certain:  you can't go home again.

DADT Is Repealed

Menelaus supporting the body of his fellow warrior Patroclus,
the lover of Achilles in The Iliad

The final vote began at 3:02 p.m., Washington time, and the result was declared at 3:30:  the Senate voted to repeal DADT by 65 to 31.  Eight Republicans voted with the Democrats; all the nay votes were by Republicans; one Democrat did not vote.  So the measure passed by more than two to one.

Thanks be to God.

Whether you are in the military or out of it, or want to be in it or not, this is an historic moment, one for great rejoicing - because this action by our elected representatives secures our equality, our civil rights, much more firmly in American law and culture. Now it will be much harder to argue that gay men and women who have openly fought and bled and died for their country should be denied any of the rights and freedoms common to all Americans.

Today we are all a little more equal, a little more free, a little more normal, as the world conceives that to be.  And I have lived to see this day. Joy.


Wounded American troops in Afghanistan, 2007.
Which is the gay one?
Who cares?

Caution:  Before anybody gets too exuberant, keep in mind that today's vote, while tremendously significant for the future, does not accomplish all that is needed at one stroke, but begins the process. The Wall Street Journal explains:

Passage of the repeal does not does not immediately revoke the policy. Before "Don't Ask" is officially ended, the president, the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff must sign a letter certifying that the necessary policies and procedures are in place within the military for gays to openly serve.  [note from Russ:  this means the Pentagon will have to work up all those things first, and in quadruplicate, natch, which will take some time to do; and they may stagger implementation across the services.]  Full repeal would take effect 60 days after that certification letter is transmitted to the congressional armed services committees.

Advocacy groups warned that gay service members may still be discharged during that interim period. Aubrey Sarvis, an Army veteran who is executive director for Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, a group that provides legal advice for service members affected by the ban, said, "Gay, lesbian and bisexual service members posted around the world are standing a little taller today, but they're still very much at risk because repeal is not final."

The State of the Union, 2010

9:24 p.m., Texas time: some reflections on what I particularly noted in the President's address to Congress, which he just concluded. The New York Times has the full text here; curiously enough, I couldn't find it at whitehouse.gov.

First of all, listening to him speak so honestly and directly, so clearly and rationally, well, I have to tell you, boys - I felt some of that thrill once more that I felt on Election Night, 2008, and on Inauguration Day last year.  And I thanked God once again that we have such a brilliant, eloquent, and thoroughly admirable man as our President; someone to be proud of, very proud, down the long annals of American history.

Now you fellas know I have at times been critical of Mr. Obama's words and deeds, or the lack thereof, in this past year, and I'll continue to criticize when and where I think it deserved.  But that's my privilege as an American, which I bought with my vote; and it's your privilege too, under a free government ruled by laws, not men.

Overall, I thought it was a very good speech; could have been a little more fiery, but the tone seemed noticeably more assertive than in some speeches.  A couple of deadpan-humor lines I appreciated:

To Congress, on working together:  "Let's use common sense.  A novel idea." 

Another laugh line, about the bank bailout:  "I hated it.  You hated it.  It was about as popular as a root canal."

After speaking about American efforts to help Haiti, and support people in other countries:  "America must always stand on the side of freedom and human dignity."

"We abide by the notion that all are created equal, no matter who you are or what you look like.  If you abide by the law, you should be protected by it.  If you adhere to our common values, you should be treated no different than anyone else."

"Our administration has had some setbacks in the past year, some of them deserved; but nothing compared to what many families are going through.  What keeps me going is knowing that the spirit of determination and optimism, the fundamental decency at the core of the American people lives on."

I especially like the vigor of his concluding words, delivered with some of that old fired-up, ready-to-go spirit he showed in the campaign:

"We have finished a difficult year.  We have come through a difficult decade.  But a new year has come.  A new decade stretches before us.  We don't quit.  I don't quit.  Let's seize this moment - to start anew, to carry the dream forward, and to strengthen our union once more."

A couple of surprises, for me anyway:  he plans to get more nuclear plants built.  I know there's always a risk with that, but how else can we realistically meet the nation's energy needs?

And he wants legislation to forgive your student loans after 20 years, 10 if you go into some unspecified "public service" jobs; and he wants to end the privileged (or should I say bloodsucking) role of banks in giving student loans (I well remember the sons of bitches charged me 9 percent on mine) and to increase Pell Grants, which in my day were called Basic Grants; and increase every household's tax credit for college education:  "no one should go broke because they chose to go to college."  A-fucking-men to that. 

And of course I applauded when he said, "This year, I will work with Congress and the military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are.  Because it's the right thing to do." 

Oh my God, I have lived to see this day:  not only did the President of the United States mention gay people in his State of the Union address, he also openly acknowledged their human worth as well as their patriotism.  You young'uns under 40 cannot know how thrilling, how deeply moving that is for us guys who vividly remember an America where the word "homosexual" was damn near unpronounceable - almost always spoken, if at all, in a low whisper by straight people:  an ugly, repellent, shameful thought.

As I quoted from Andrew Sullivan the other day, it behooves us even in the midst of our struggles for equal rights, always to be "insanely happy" that we are living at one of the rare periods in human history when being gay is not a ticket to the gallows or the stake.

But back to the President's address:  I was disappointed that he did not speak more forcefully about getting healthcare reform passed, specifically, though he did call for the parties to keep working to pass the legislation.  But I did appreciate very much his acknowledging that Americans are fed up with the totally irresponsible behavior of banks, corporations, the media, and Congress.  And I liked very much that he took both parties to task: 

To Democrats, I would remind you that we have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve some problems, not run for the hills. And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that sixty votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it's not leadership. We were sent here to serve our citizens, not our ambitions.

All I could think was, my God:  an adult in the house.  Finally.  A responsible parent.  Or at least, a fair but firm schoolmaster. 

Well, God bless him.  What a helluva tough job he has, made doubly or triply worse - as he reminded the audience - by the financial and military mess made by his predecessor.

And though I reserve the right to criticize, I did ask myself:  if it were me, standing at that podium in his place, just what in the world would I do, what could I do, that would be a bit better?

I had to admit - not a damn thing.  Because the task is beyond my powers and above my comprehension in many ways.

But I do believe Obama is up to the task.  Certainly much more, way much more than his predecessor, for which we can all thank God heartily.  Obama acknowledged tonight that he has made some mistakes in the past year, and no doubt, being human, he will make some more.

But fellas - when all is said and done, I still have hope for this country as long as Obama is in the White House.  And I am still so damn proud that this intelligent, moral, compassionate guy, this thoroughly decent man, is my President.

You should be too.