I am sitting here gulping, for I have just read one of Real Live Preacher's anecdotes. It was published on The World According to Chuck; there is a foreword by Chuck before the story begins. It is a story about a baby, Everett Joseph Smith, who was born prematurely and who died shortly after. If you haven't already done so, go, read, and be touched.
Last night, Canada took a giant step toward legalizing Gay marriages. It passed through the House of Commons by a 158 to 133 vote. Now all that is required for it to become law is a perfunctory nod from both the senate and the governor general. We will be only the third country, after The Netherlands and Belgium to legalize Gay marriages, and that makes me pretty darn proud.
I do understand the reluctance of many to embrace this change. Marriage, after all, has a certain history and certain connotations. But we simply can't continue to shackle equal opportunity and equal treatment by hiding behind tradition. In Canada, Gay marriage has already been de facto legalized in most provinces by Supreme Court decisions. Discrimination against minorities simply does not legally conform to our Charter of Rights.
The world changes — sometimes even for the better. Most modern, developed nations are becoming more inclusive towards all sorts of minority groups, and I don't think many bother to argue that it is a bad thing. Just this past week, for example, in the case that inspired the film, Mississippi Burning, an 80-year-old Arkansas Klansman, Edgar Ray Killen, was sentenced to sixty years in prison for the infamous murders of of the three civil rights activists way back in 1964.
Just as many still do, I once had my doubts about Gay marriage. I wondered why it was so important in an era when hetero marriages are failing by the bucketload and when all sorts of couples are opting to live in common law relationships? My daughter, however, gave me the answer by pointing out the fact there is no relationship that is equivalent to marriage. Living together is not the same. Therefore, everyone should have the right to enter into such a union.
Of course, she was right, for I have heard this very theme preached in evangelical churches. I have heard them preach that only marriage provides true commitment, that it actually gives people a greater freedom to be themselves in a way that no other relationship does. I say, what's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If you make that argument for hetero couples, then it must apply to Gay couples as well. You can't make the argument selectively. You either believe it or you don't.
It's a difficult leap for many, but it's the right thing to do. Of course, this will not affect hetero couples in any way. They'll get married as they always have done and be just as happy and not feel at all besmirched by the fact that a Gay couple across town may be also be reciting their vows. Let's put away our fears and embrace this progressive development in a spirit of generosity and inclusivity.
The new picture insert method seems to be working well for people. Not only can you insert photos directly into your blog by clicking the icon, but you can place them left, right, or centre. If you find that your layout gets a bit messed up (with a big space at the top), you can try this solution suggested by the Blogger folk.
For me, however, Hello will continue to be my preferred method. Using the direct insert method, as I did above, Blogger seems to resize the photos according its preferences, which may not be my preferences. Hello, on the other hand, gives me a lot of control over the size.
After Sue's comment (thanks for that), I had another look at inserting pictures. You can choose amongst three sizes: small (200px), medium (320px), and large (400px). The above photo is 320px.
I was surprised to read Gina's comments about our postcard yesterday. She lives in California and writes about how green the vegetation looks in our card. Like many others, I have often thought of California as the almost-perfect environment, except for the odd earthquake. But I suppose that such does not exist — although I still have it in my head that New Zealand would be pretty darn close.
When my maternal grandfather migrated to Canada from England, one of his brothers emigrated to New Zealand. For a long time there was correspondence between the two countries. The families would exchange calendars, and it always looked so darn perfect there that I was a fan long before The Lord of the Rings brought the land of the kiwi to the attention of the rest of the world.
On that long-ago night when I asked Cuppa to marry me, she actually feared that I was about to break the sad news that I had decided to decamp to New Zealand. I'll never get there, but I don't regret my choice, for I have found the almost-perfect woman, and there is no Shangri-La anyway. It's like the old saw about finding the perfect church: "If you do find the perfect church, don't join, for if you do [join] it won't be perfect any longer."
However, if I ever win the lottery, which I won't because I seldom remember to purchase tickets, I think I'll take Cuppa and head to the antipodes for a few months and experience the best of both worlds — marriage to the world's best woman and spending quality time in a pretty, darn great geographical environment.
On our last evening with the kids in Ottawa, we went for a little walk in a park by the [Unmighty] Mississippi. I used Cuppa's camera to take the above shot of the westering sun. As the next photo shows, it was still quite light outside, so I used Photoshop to fake a later-hour sunset.
The good news for me, and the who gives a darn news for you is that my back felt well enough to venture the eight-hour drive home today. Not only that, but I managed to do more than half of the driving.
Here's the bad news. Because it was so hot today, we had the AC (as in air conditioner and not Anvilcloud) on all of the way today. That affected our gas consumption considerably. When we drove to Ottawa over three weeks ago, the weather was cool and we didn't need to use the AC. Without the AC on, we managed to drive from Woodstock to Tweed — about 4 hours (220 miles, 350 kilometres) — before refuelling, and we still had some gas in the tank when we did stop to refuel. Today, on the return trip with the AC on, we needed to refuel 66 kilometres (40 miles) earlier, and we were running on fumes by then. That's quite a difference!
While I'm not exactly prepared to forsake the AC, I don't feel terribly proud of squandering resources and contributing (even more than I already do) to pollution and global warming. Yes, I do believe in global warming, Virginia, as does almost everybody on the planet except the present administration in Washington and its more ardent supporters who wear their blinkers ever so proudly. (Sorry, ardent supporters; I shouldn't get all political like that, but I can't help myself at times. Please forgive and resist throwing flames.)
AC has always been expensive. Even in the home, it seems to me that it costs us as much or more to lower the temperature 10 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit in a hot summer month than it does to raise the temperature 40 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit in a cold winter month. The difference is that it's pretty well a case of survival in winter, but it's all about creature comfort in summer.
And yet, I am unwilling to shut it off. What does that make me? An environmental charlatan?
If you refer to this page, the good Blogger folk will explain a new way to post photos to your blog. Despite being announced, this feature does not seem to be activated on my blog yet, but it might work for some of you. Also, for those who have trouble with wrapping text around your photos, there are also some tips on the same page.
Canadian readers might like to know that Rick Mercer has a blog, called strangely enough, Rick Mercer's Blog. He's the irreverent and comedic star of Monday Report who doesn't seemed thrilled about the program's move to Tuesday. I still fondly recall his Talking to Americans and even got some mileage out of it in my last year of teaching. What I like about this endeavour, aside from the writer himself, is that he is just using Blogger/Blogspot and fumbling his way like the rest of us. He has refrained from hiring template designers, using expensive software, and setting up his own domain. Not that there's anything wrong with those things, but this modest foray into blogdom is just sooo Canadian ... eh?
Don't worry folks, despite the last few posts, I can't see Raindrops ever becoming a news blog. I think that I just happened to come across three newsy items that seemed worth sharing.
