Ramblin' with Roger

We may ask general questions like “How are we doing?” or more specific ones like “We are writing a story about people who collect stamps. Do you know someone we should contact?” or “The President signed new tax legislation today. How will the changes affect you?”

I don’t know why I signed up – I’m shy, retiring, and have no opinions on anything, as you well know – but sign up I did. So the second thing they send out by e-mail (don’t remember the first) was to ask about how gypsy moths were affecting our lives. It so happened that I did have a little tale to tell.

Gay Prof was stymied trying to post pictures on Blogger. I wrote: “I’ve been having the same problem, off and on, with Blogger with stuff from the Internet. 9 out 10 times, it’ll say that it’s downloaded, then the image doesn’t really load. I’ve had more success downloading from my computer, so I’ve been saving the image I find on the Internet to the computer, THEN downloading from the computer. Try that.” Of course, now, that isn’t working, either, as evidenced by a lack of a graphic on THIS post. Anyone else having that problem with Blogger recently? More to the point, does anyone have a SOLUTION, short of getting rid of Blogger?

Someone else had a link to a bad e-mail address, which I noted. THAT was fixable.

I’m a Christian, but I just don’t get the obsession of certain people trying to decipher Revelation in the manner they do. Is The UPC Code The Forerunner Of The “Mark of the Beast”? Well, no, the article says, but computer chips are.

Haters of our 40th President pointed out that Ronald Wilson Reagan had six letters in his name. No, he PROBABLY wasn’t the Antichrist.

I was very interested in the post from Gay Prof last month about gay marriage. One of the things he wrote: “What concerns me is that the discussion of same-sex marriage is largely being shaped without our input.”

My heterocentric (is that the word I want?) self was a bit surprised to read that. People I know, including a member of a lesbian couple who is at the heart of a legal challenge by 44 couples suing for equal protection under the law. Elissa (in the picture on the left with partner Lynne) works for a local library.

Yet, I do recognize that well-meaning people DO assume what is best for others, not understanding how patronizing it can be. (I suspect men do this to women more than occasionally, e.g.)

So, I’m really curious:

1. To you, the idea of gay marriage is:
a) an anathema to all that is good and holy
b) a plot by breeders to make gays “be like them”
c) going too far, but those domestic partner arrangements are good enough
d) an idea whose time has come
e) irrelevant, because marriage is just a statist construct anyway

I choose d.

2. If gay marriage is allowed, how, if at all, will it affect heterosexual marriage? The suggestion that gay marriage will somehow threaten to destroy “the family” as we know it mystifies me. I must be rather thick, because I just don’t get it.

3. A local story that has caught my interest is this one: Empire Blue Cross insurance policy covers the domestic partner of a same-sex couple but not an opposite-sex couple. The complainant notes: “Empire’s own standards for domestic partner requirements — as posted on the company’s Web site — were the same for opposite-sex or same-sex couples. He said this policy was discrimination.” Presumably, Empire’s rationale is that opposite-sex couples could, if they chose to, get married, while same-sex couples don’t yet have that legal right.

How do you feel about this case? Does giving domestic partner insurance to opposite sex partners threaten marriage? I’m ambivalent, for I see Empire’s point, yet, based on the application of law, I think they’re wrong legally. Moreover, I’m in favor of getting closer to a universal health plan, and domestic partnerships, for either gay or straight couples, works in that direction.

BONUS: What makes a good marriage? And/Or: What makes a marriage work?

My answer: Compromise, but not on core values. That you share those core values.

We don’t get a lot of earthquakes, as they do in California. I’ve felt only two in New York in my life, both 5.1 with the epicenter far north of here, in 1983 and 2002. (See page 29 of the PDF.)

We can get tornados, but we’re not in the alley that lies in Midwest.

We’re not in the desert Southwest, where brushfires threaten homes.

We’re not along the Mississippi River’s flood plain, which devastated homes in the 1990s, although there can be localized flooding.

While we had 26 inches of snow in a March 1993 storm (and more in a March 1888 event, but I wasn’t around then), a lot of the snowstorms tends to go off the coast in recent years. The lake effect snow that sometimes hits the area from Buffalo to Syracuse, and especially north of Syracuse, usually doesn’t reach this far east.

And we’re not in the Gulf Coast or the southeast Atlantic Coast, where hurricanes are likely to strike.

All those conversations about whether to rebuild, from SF in 1906 to NO in 2005, just haven’t applied.

So it was disappointing to learn that in the 2006 hurricane season, which officially started yesterday, not only is likely to be as intense as the 2005 season, but also that it is much more likely to strike the Northeast. Now I’m 150 miles from NYC, so it probably won’t hit us directly, as it might in Long Island (where the major insurers are REFUSING to offer any more flood insurance). I remember, though how a major storm (I’m thinking Andrew in 1992, though it may have been Hugo in 1989) can really pack a punch, even inland.

Actually, the strangest weather pattern I ever experienced in Albany is something called a derecho. No, I’d never heard of it before either. On July 15, 1995, I was awakened by a wind that felt as though it would shatter the glass of my bedroom window. It passed through, but not before knocking down a bunch of trees in nearby Washington Park. Elsewhere, it toppled a tree that nearly killed a member of the church I then attended.