Issues of the day

What a goddamn depressing day. Nothing surprising happened today, but it's amazing that we can be ready for something, brace for it, and still when it gets here it just takes the wind out of the sails and backhands our happiness like that dad did to his kid at the baseball game I went to last night (playfully...?).

It starts with waking up alone, something that mercifully happens very rarely to me. My wife is in Hawaii right now on her last few days of pre-job vacation (is it a vacation if it's pre-job? I guess it is, since she technically worked three days last week, but I'm not sure it fits the spirit). She left yesterday morning, gets back Friday, then flies out on Sunday to go to a company gathering for the new job until next Tuesday. This is not the first, nor the longest, time we've spent apart from each other, but I would always rather she be here with me - selfish, I know.
Dear Alison, please don't take the preceding paragraph the wrong way, I know that we both need our alone times sometimes, and I would never want my ramblings to make you feel bad about going on a vacation that I would have gone on too if our situations were reversed!

It's not only sad to wake up alone, but it always takes me a lot longer (something that would amaze Alison, who knows it takes me a long time to wake up as it is), and I hit the alarm for 30 minutes this morning before finally rolling out of bed. Whenever I do this, I inevitably feel ashamed later for the half hour earlier I could have gotten to work, which would have meant a half hour earlier getting home, and a half hour less of time wasted doing nothing, since I'm obviously conscious for that half hour. But actually getting up is so hard.

Today was an astounding day weather-wise. No fog to speak of when I got up, and it was actually warm enough that I was way too warm when I got down to the Castro on my commute this morning for the fleece I was wearing. In fact, it was a waste to carry the thing today, I never wore it again. Beautiful day; I actually took a walk this afternoon for 15 minutes, rather than eating lunch outside or going out.

But at 10:00 the news came in that the Supreme Court of California was upholding Proposition 8, the ban on gay marriage that the voters of California voted in this past election cycle. I think that everybody who was being realistic knew this would happen, but it hurts the same. I'm not going to go over again how much this sucks (not really my place because I'm not one of the many people the ban hurts, except by making me feel guilty for being allowed by law to marry the person I love), or how people who are anti-gay-marriage are jerks and bigots and such, because that's been said thousands and thousands of times. I listened to Forum and Talk of the Nation today, which both had shows on this topic. It seemed that the prognosis was generally good for the future, from the law professor who asserted that the court's opinion would logically lead to the State of California getting out of the marriage game entirely (something I wholeheartedly endorse), to the Governator (a conservative! Well, a California/Hollywood conservative, anyway...), who said that it's only a matter of time at this point before gay marriage is legal and equal (cold comfort to people today, as I'm sure Johnson's Reconstruction was to black people after the Civil War). It also amazed me to hear the opinions of people on both sides of the issue, from the pro-gay-marriage (It's religion, religion, religion) to the anti-gay-marriage (Marriage is for procreation, never mind that people who are biologically unable to have children are allowed to get married, and gay couples are allowed to have children; or, Why do gay people need marriage? Domestic unions are the same! I can't come up with an apt, non-clunky simile here, so please provide your own). I personally think that religion does have a lot to do with it, although a lot of people are likely uncomfortable with the idea, or all their friends are voting against it (I was in Williams, AZ, a few years ago on a job, and the folks from the City who we were working for chose seeing Brokeback Mountain as a jesting allusion to closeted homosexuality in a coworker, as in "I bet you're going to go see Brokeback Mountain [you big fag]!" I think there are likely a lot of similarities between small-town northern Arizona and much of inland California), or any other number of reasons that are not based directly in religion. Incidentally, those same City workers, I'm sure, don't go to church on Sunday, or, if they do, it's only for show.

I also had a ticket tonight to see City Arts and Lectures tonight with Dr. James Hansen. No, not the late, great Muppeteer, but the famous scientist. The one that spoke out against Bush II-era administrative censorship of scientific results. He had an interview-style talk that ranged over the science of climate change (no slides, and a layman audience, so you can imagine the scientist in me was left wanting more; luckily, he's a big nerd and easily intimidated - the scientist in me, not Dr. Hansen), although it dealt a lot with the political side of things. Every time I see one of these talks I get really depressed about the future, because I remember that everything I do as a consumer and user of energy is completely insignificant to actually solving the problem, and that the changes must be large, rapid, and fundamental to actually effect change. That realization then gets passed on to the cynic in me (who, though brooding and kind of an asshole, usually rules the roost), who declares such institutional changes to be pipe dreams that only the blind optimist believes will actually happen before things like this and this and this and this occur and won't somebody please think of the poor penguin babies?! No, we as a race/culture are far too selfish for that (I was thinking on my way home tonight that the "selfish" appellation is something that pretty much anybody on pretty much any side of pretty much any ideological debate could apply to the other side; isn't that exciting!) to ever occur. And that, my friends, is a depressing prospect when you know what the person familiar with climate feedback processes knows. A questioner in the audience mentioned, and Dr. Hansen confirmed, that the projection with all ice gone from Greenland and the Antarctic, as well as all ice caps melting, is about 70 meters, or 250 feet, of course happening over a long time frame, although the rate will continue to accelerate should we do nothing.

I took the subway home to the Castro after the lecture and surfaced to loud, thumping music and news vans and police everywhere, having entirely forgotten in my bout of inner composition on the subway (plus, I'm reading a thoroughly enjoyable book about Ireland right now, much better than the previous one, but more on that another time). I went to the Hot Cookie for a treat, more to avoid the news cameras on the other corner of the intersection than anything else. I did not buy a chocolate penis. They had a DJ on a flatbed truck cranking out some truly inspiring volume, but the party seems to have happened earlier in the night, if it ever got going (I'm sure it did; I've learned that people who live in the Castro do one thing spectacularly well, and that's party). There were maybe 100 people in the street then (around 10pm), and some of them were still dancing away. I wonder now, if I could be as down about things that really don't affect me directly, how can they be dancing when they've just been officially told by the government that they are, in the words of Dr. Harry Newman, "less than?" I guess they're just optimistic, and at least on this issue I can see some light at the end of the tunnel, with the examples set by good old Iowa (how did I ever make fun of you so much as a child, implying that all of your residents wore these things?) and several northeastern States.

Maybe tomorrow will be better. Maybe a little Baja Fresh or curry in a hurry will brighten my day.