When I was ten, I wanted to run away and find Robert Plant*

Photo from here.

I listened to the Led Zeppelin XM station for awhile on Tuesday and I forgot how much I love Robert Plant. His voice could not be more dreamy, and those jeans are wearing him. Me-ow.

* From the spoken intro of a super ghetto live version of Tori Amos singing "She's Leaving Home."

Overheard on the plane

Redneck Man, to his sister in front of him: "Y'all should renew y'all's vows."

Sister: "Who?"

RM: "Y'all!"

S: "Where?"

RM: "Vail."

S: "Hell?"

This can't be real, can it?

Clearly that image is . . . sketchy. But it's an eBay listing with 4 bids. Wha?

Facebook makes me homesick

I feel a little dumb writing about Facebook on my blog, since I joined, like, 5 months ago and it's kind of grandma to talk about it, but I'm still in the finding people phase of Facebooking, and it makes me miss Fresno in a heart-achy way. It's not like I want to go back, exactly, but it's just a recurrence of that wistful feeling when you find someone you used to babysit and watch Golden Girls with who's all grown up and beautiful and successful and 28, for crying out loud.

Man, we ragged a lot on Fresno growing up. I know I told my parents a million times I would never come back there, never want to live there as an adult. In high school, I had this huge crush on Virginia. My best friend Erin went on a trip to DC once and did the Virginia tourist sites and her family made this corny home movie for me, complete with suggestions of buildings I should live in and a shaky-cam tour of the outside of George Mason University, where I was going to get a BFA in Creative Writing.

I can unequivocally say that North Carolina is a much better fulfillment of that particular dream, and though I am living as far away from Fresno as is possible and still in the continental United States, I feel drawn back. I am surprised, surfing Facebook, how many people I know stayed or went back or have plans to go back (said BFF Erin, in fact, and her Fresno husband Scott). It's not that it's amazing or great, just that it's pretty good, and it's home. Distance from home feels unbearable sometimes, and worse when your parents sell the house and move somewhere it snows and leave behind the pool and the fat cat Soph[t]ie.

North Carolina is confusing old school

Sometime between 1905 and 1915, someone made this postcard (which, was irony a thing at the turn of the century?) and it's sort of what you expect of old school prisoners, with the stripes and the dirty faces and the working on the railroad. It's all very mythic.

So now, North Carolina puts their prisoners in this outfit:

It's kind of an exercise in humiliation. It's comical in a way that seems inappropriate for hearings and court appearances, and it's . . . clownish. The black and white stripes are one thing, but this is a creamsicle. I object.

I like old buildings

Cedar Grove, NC

This is a very good list

Oxford University has come up with the Top 10 most irritating phrases, and I do love a good bit of judgment and mocking. Here we go:

1. At the end of the day
2. Fairly unique
3. I personally
4. At this moment in time
5. With all due respect
6. Absolutely
7. It's a nightmare
8. Shouldn't of
9. 24/7
10. It's not rocket science

Hear, hear! And I would add these:

11. Literally (as in ValleyGirl style, when it is most decidedly not literal)
12. Mom and I's trip is coming up (as in, should be Mom's and my)

Sometimes my job is like this

Ask yourself,

Etemity is a long time . . .

Prop. 8 and the Backlash

I do a lot of fluffy talk on this blog, with an occasional foray into something deepish re: books or whatnot, but ever since Donnie posted about opponents of Prop. 8 banding together to boycott Utah for being 60% Mormon, I am all tore up, as they say. I didn't have to exercise my vote on the issue this time, but one day I might need to, and I need to figure myself out. I'm awake at 7:30 am on Saturday, so clearly I need some sorting.

Of course I am hurt on the first level, because I am a Mormon, but I have gay friends and I love them and I want them to be happy in their lives just as I want that for my heterosexual friends and myself. When I was in California for that wonderful wedding with my immediate and extended family, our conversations naturally gravitated towards Prop. 8, and I will admit to expressing reservations. Not about its content, because that I believe, but about changing the Constitution. I do feel better about changing a state's Constitution than the Federal one, and in general, support a State's rights to handle the problems of its constituency vs. making it Federal.

But knowing that many members of my church were backing it with their time and their money, in addition to the fact that our church's leadership encouraged its support, left me unsettled. It's uncommon for them to choose a side, and in general, our church leaders extend the all-encompassing message to exercise your civic duty and vote your conscience. For plenty of people that is Democrat and for plenty it's Republican; we have Senators and Congressmen of both parties in office, and I've certainly not polled it, but if my circle is any indication, Republicans are not necessarily a dominant party within the American church like Utah seems to indicate.

Nonetheless, the defining of marriage solely between a man and a woman looks and feels like a Republican issue (if the parties are even recognizable anymore), and certainly many people who are socially conservative are registered Republicans. Abortion is the same kind of issue: both are things which are considered morally in opposition to God's commandments - from whatever scriptural or church source you receive them - and therefore, people assert, ought to be legislated away.

From a voting standpoint, I am more comfortable with my personal rejection of those actions than I am of supporting legislation against them solely for morality's sake. In the case of marriage, I think it's useful to factor in some legal or secular argument that it would be in a state's interest to keep the definition of marriage status quo. I like what I read here, in a piece written for the MIT newspaper in 2004, when Massachusetts was having its own battle over the issue. (Thanks to my cousin Cam for the link.) The gist of Adam Kolasinski's piece is that states have a compelling interest to permit marriages that could result in offspring; of course it's not accurate to suggest that all heterosexual couples will have children, but, he argues, "without mind-reading technology, excluding them is impossible." His ultimate point is that it is not the state's obligation to guarantee you a marriage based on your "sexual love."

That may be oversimplifying a tremendously nuanced issue, but it is a compelling point to me, and certainly one that I would research further if my state were to put this measure forward for my vote. So to lump me, and others who have reservations about law-changing, into a mass of people (Mormons and not) who you, Mr. John Aravosis, consider to be bigoted and discriminatory, is wholly unfair. It's one-sided discrimination and it's damaging to your cause.

I understand why people think it looks like discrimination against them; in some cases, it might be. If you look at the long list of churches and organizations and individuals who publicly declared their support of Prop. 8, I'd venture you'd find some people in there who do fall on the side of bigotry and small-mindedness, just as you would find people on the other side of the cause hating Christians en masse. If you are not religious and don't have any interest in that side of the argument, I understand why it looks cruel.

But the whole thing is based on a fundamental truth that we (Latter-day Saints) hold sacred, and I'll explain it as I see it: marriage between a man and a woman only is the unit God has outlined for His children to live in on earth, so that we may also have children and live together as families. Sex is for unification and strengthening of that marriage and for the potential creation of children, so men and women who are not currently in a marriage are celibate. No one is going to tell you that being celibate is easy, not by a long shot, but if you come to this spiritual conviction, then that is what you choose to do, if you are straight or you are gay. If that's your choice, you figure out how to live a happy and fulfilled life regardless. (Those are my own words of the Church's official stance, which you can read here, if you want.)

Barack Obama won this election for a lot of reasons, but I've read over and over that it was in large part because of his supporters' presence on the ground, in getting people registered, out to vote early, and voting for him because they found in themselves some kind of conviction that he was the right candidate for the job. The same thing was done here, this time by sympathizers and members of churches with myriad reasons to support Prop. 8, finding people with myriad reasons to vote for it themselves. So, with the same kind of free speech and democracy in action, it passed, and I know it feels devastating to its opponents. I understand why it does, but people vote on their convictions, be they religious or otherwise, and it's the fabric of our system. Now I've told you mine.

Missing Provo

Just a little, especially after I heard it snowed this week, ugh. I bet Doge is beyond thrilled.

I was reminded by the internet how sometimes (I can't remember why; is it for homecoming?) someone or another hikes up to the Y and puts lights on it, or turns on the lights that are already there. I don't really know. But I used to love that. Those mountains at dusk are nothing if not inspiring. Enjoy for yourself.

Here we are

"You were in there a long time," K said to me. He came with us to his school to vote, and he was right - I stood there at least 5 minutes trying to choose my presidential vote. Ultimately, it didn't make a difference for the electoral outcome, but after being categorized with people like myself (that is: the great expanse of moderate "Undecideds," thrown off voting Republican despite being registered as such by the choice of Sarah Palin for VP, among other concerns) on the news for a million years, I have to say that I was, nonetheless, thankful that I could have a choice.

It was a strange feeling to be not entirely passionate about either candidate (though not the same kind of strange as last time, when it was more like dread), but it still felt important. I liked that it felt important, because it's easy to dismiss your vote. It's a number in the giant machine, sure, and since it's just a directive to an elector, it sometimes seems middling. But it's also your offering to the founding fathers; it's your call to say one thing or the other, and it's your right to keep it to yourself or splash it all over your car and Facebook page. Whatever happens, it's the way we collect everything we've synthesized about someone's ability to lead, make good and moral choices, be a good representative for the millions of us, and do whatever they can for at least 4 years, and to allow a reset to be a motivator for turning some things around.

I don't really want to get into specifics, because the time for debate is passed (not that I really got all that involved in the cause while it was happening), so now what we do is just wait and see what happens. Some of it is sure to be good, some of it might be disastrous, and having the Democratic party in control of the entire free world makes me shake in my boots a little, being a Republican and all, but doing the process is meaningful, and I'm thankful for it.