gay spirit diary

Jack Dawson and Josh Thomas, wedding night, Dec. 6, 1990

I have written two pieces on the final illness and death of my lover and husband, Jack Dawson, a eulogy and a thank you letter, but I’m struck by how inadequately I describe him. I’m a professional writer; can I not apply my wordsmithing skills to a subject I know better than any other?

What was it about him that made him special; that made me marry him?

Why, on his last day on earth, did ten people go to him, none related by blood? How is it he touched so many people with his goodness?

Some of the gang from Simon Says, a Cincinnati Gay bar, were there that last day; he worked there in some minor capacity, counting the money, making bank deposits. When he was done he would hang out awhile; the crowd at Simon’s became a substitute family, for which I thank them all.

But even being “family” isn’t enough to get most barflies into the hospital room of a man who’s dying; Americans avoid the dying, we don’t go and sit with them. Yet several friends from Simon’s were there, and the owner sat with him till the end.

I’m very grateful; I couldn’t or wouldn’t be with him. I was told he wasn’t conscious, “heavily sedated.” I wasn’t going to go for one last look at him if I couldn’t do anything for him. Something about that just strikes me as obscene. He would not have liked being on display when I hadn’t seen him in a couple of years—though I’m equally sure he was glad his day-to-day friends were there.

The necessary elements for me to visit him were beyond his power: looking into each other’s eyes; holding each other. If we couldn’t do that he wouldn’t want me there.

The last time we saw each other a few years ago, I was shocked by the tenderness we felt for each other; it was almost confusing, disorienting, how dear we still were to each other. I remember a thousand gentle touches and whispered thoughts. We clung together and spoke softly. We hadn’t lived together in ten years, we’d both “moved on with our lives,” and yet… there he was, and I loved him; there I was, and he loved me the same way.

Where did he get such sweetness? It was a gift from God, which can’t otherwise be explained. It was Jack’s own personality that attracted so many people, and when I consider the hard knocks he got growing up, that “personality” also seems a decision, a whole series of choices he made along the way. He would be himself; he would be considerate of others; he would listen; he would care.

Everyone from the bar who traveled to that hospital room was on the receiving end of Jack’s caring at one time or another; multiple times.

And so was I on the receiving end of it for eight great and miserable years. He put up with a lot from me. Life with Josh was exciting and maddening, either easy or hard, no in between; he called me “high maintenance,” but for eight good years he maintained.

We never fought, not once. We disagreed plenty of times, but we kept talking; we were fair to each other. He raised his voice to me twice in eight years; both times I dropped what I was doing and rushed to him, because if Jack was yelling at me I had to have screwed up bigtime.

By yelling I mean two sentences at most, not a prolonged screamfest. The minute he got my attention he went back to a reasonable tone. That was a very good thing about our discussions; we were always fair and considerate. I had to do most of the emotional work when we were young, but he would cooperate, he would answer, he would help move us to a resolution.

The illness that resulted in multiple amputations was of course a huge challenge for us. He probably wasn’t as disclosive as he could have been, but half the time he was just struggling to survive. When you’re sick you’re not up for relationship therapy, you want to go to bed.

The illness, vasculitis, not only messed up his body, it screwed with his head. It scrambled his sexuality in ways I’m not sure he understood. I didn’t either. I was 35, young and cute when he got sick; we never had sex again.

The last year we were together was the happiest year of my life; I didn’t see the separation coming, and I was devastated. But he wanted to come back to Cincinnati, and he needed to be independent, if he was ever going to regain a sense of self. He never said it that way, but that’s my conclusion. He was getting way too comfy in that wheelchair, having me do things for him. I’m proud of his independence since then.

Our separation was the most amicable one in the history of Gay America. We worked everything out in one night, then we took our time. I was able to set him up in his own apartment back at the Roanoke, the same fleabag apartment house I rescued him from years before. He loved Clifton and did very well there for years.

We kept in pretty close touch, although our contact diminished as the years went by. All his friends know that when he was hurting physically or mentally, he tended to isolate himself.

When a person is depressed and will not say so to the closest people he has, there isn’t much you can do. It is horribly depressing to watch your body parts get chopped off; he went through that 8 or 10 or 12 times, we lost count. He went from being a good amateur athlete to being a “crip” in one year. It’s a hard adjustment and it does play on your mind.

So I suppose he did the right thing and cut loose the high-maintenance, high-ambition lover; if it saved his life I’d have voted for it too. It’s not his fault I was never the same; I’m not sure he was prepared for the permanent commitment I brought.

The thing I am proudest of and take no credit for is his advocacy for people with disabilities. He made it his mission to tear down the barriers for others with mobility problems. It came from the same place in his heart and his values that gave rise to his earlier Gay activism. Not only was he not going to suffer in silence as his rights were denied, he spoke up for everyone else. He led his city as he’d led his community. As LGBT people we’re very aware of our pain and suffering, and how they’re derived from politics and big business; we’re not so aware of the pain and suffering of others, the people even less visible than we are. Jack was aware. Jack was a leader.

I need to linger a moment on a word I just wrote; about his values. They were what made me fall in love with him.

My probing questions on our first official date, at that restaurant on Ludlow Avenue as I “measured him for loverhood,” revealed what made Jack Dawson tick. I’m a liberal Democrat; he was a liberal Democrat. I’m an Episcopalian, he was, uh, not. He was raised Catholic and saw through it before he was ten. But still when we came to be married, he was cool with my faith, especially if his pal Wayland Melton could officiate.

Jack was openly Gay and believed he had a responsibility—that we all have a responsibility—to make things better for the next generation of LGBT people. He wasn’t interested in material goods or the latest pop culture. He wasn’t, in short, the kind of fag you see portrayed in fag fiction, superficial and heartless and selfish. He knew better than that; he saw better than that even in the bar crowd at Simon Says. He looked for the good in people, and he found it.

He also understood evil. And though doctors might remove his toes and feet and ankles and shins, they could not remove his backbone. He kept that to the end. He had courage from his brainstem to his ass.

He was loyal to me, protective of me, kind to me, loving; and in my horrible grief which runs deeper than I can fathom or write about, I will always cherish our last visit with all our tenderness. We sat together in the same church where his memorial will be held. We went to a restaurant afterwards, snuggled and whispered. The next day we went to Simon Says and had a few drinks so I could see the new life he’d built, the friends he’d made, so we could have a few last hours together before I drove home to Indiana. I picked him up at his apartment to go to the bar, and while he was getting ready I noticed a piece of mail with his new name on it; I knew he’d changed his last name from Ferguson back to Dawson after his adoptive mother Kitty died, but I didn’t know he’d added a new middle name. I asked about it.

“Oh,” he said, “I didn’t tell you? It’s for you.”

No, mister, you didn’t mention it, when it’s only the most important fact in my Gay life.

We separated, but we never broke up; he named himself Jack Thomas Dawson to show he was still married to me.++

Jack Thomas Dawson on our wedding night, 1990.

Dear Jack,

Thank you for being in my life.

Thank you for chasing me down at a party on December 6, 1985. I can still picture us sitting there on the couch that night, in your apartment on the third floor of the Roanoke. I sat on the left end, you sat on the right, we faced each other and talked for two hours after everyone else had left.

I didn’t want to go to that party; Liz had to talk me into it. Then once I met you, I didn’t want to leave.

I did, though; I’m kind of proud of that. I got home and told her, “I met someone.”

The next day I called and asked you for a date. You said yes. We met for dinner at a restaurant on Ludlow Avenue; again, we talked for hours. I was measuring to see if you were lover material; thank you for letting me do that. That was the night I fell in love with you.

I don’t remember whether we went home together or not; I know it didn’t take long.

I remember that antique bedstead you had, with the curved footboard. I remember that awful mattress. I remember discovering, that first week, all the sports trophies you had in your closet. You were a champion in bowling, baseball, softball, volleyball, darts, golf, so many sports; at Western Hills High School you were “the fastest white boy in Cincinnati.” You got a track scholarship to Miami University, but it didn’t pay all the bills, so you enlisted in the Navy instead.

Thank you for serving your country.

They taught you to repair electronics, put you on an aircraft carrier and shipped you to Vietnam. It wasn’t as dangerous as the Army, but it wasn’t any piece of cake. You got through it and made it home in one piece. You enrolled at UC, worked your way through college and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice.

You were one of the brave ones in the city’s first Gay Pride March. It was a demonstration then, not a parade; it was a political confrontation with a narrow-minded city. You had a right to speak, a right you fought a foreign war to defend; and so, with your body, you spoke.

All of Cincinnati thanks you for that.

I was impressed with you, buddy; you’re my hero.

We made a great pair for awhile; you among the first marchers, me the first openly Gay person to use his full name in the newspaper.

I asked about your trophies; you told me modestly about your feats. You belonged to competitive teams in all the rec leagues, and I said, “Wouldn’t it be nice to play on an openly Gay team for a change?”

It was December, but we started making plans for a Gay softball team; we paved the way for the Greater Cincinnati Sports Association, the Cincinnati Alternative Volleyball Association, the River City Softball League, the FrontRunners, the bowling leagues; we did it, buddy. Every Gay and Lesbian athlete in town thanks you for that.

We sponsored a team—the only one with women and men, along with a Straight guy—and I got to watch you play. We finished second in the 8-team Gay league and you got elected to the All-Star Team. We went to Cleveland and played in an all-Gay, all-star tournament. I was so proud of you. Part of that was because of your athletic ability, but I saw something even more important: how well-liked you were among all the players.

It was true then and it’s true today: everyone who knew you loved you. You let people see your heart, and everyone knew you were good as gold.

Thank you for marrying me on our fifth anniversary.

I have to laugh for a second, remembering that crazy wedding in our apartment. People were invited for 7:00, and I wouldn’t let them in at 6:59, I wasn’t ready yet! But Fr. Wayland Melton came to officiate, my mother and Martha Weyand came, her daughter Peggy was our Best Woman and Bob Lauterwasser was our Best Man, and so we did the apostate deed. We weren’t the first in town to have a same-sex wedding, far from it, but now it’s legal in California. Soon it will be legal in the Episcopal Church.

Thanks for saying yes, and showing up on December 6, 1990. I still have your ring, dude; I’m still wearing it. I promised you forever and I meant it.

An e-mail from Scott says the hospital has just summoned him; I guess you don’t have much time. But you have lived well, mister; thank you for that.

We made a great team for eight years. We put out a real Gay newspaper. Our stories made an impact; Mayor Luken didn’t get to replace AIDS expert Dr. Evelyn Hess with a money man on the Board of Health. While I was chasing stories, you were selling ads; we were united in purpose, to help liberate LGBTs in Ohio. Liberation hasn’t come yet, Jack, but you and I speeded it up. Thank you for that.

Thank you for all those hours together in the office, debating, discussing, trying to understand the issues, personalities and politics we faced. Thank you for your always cogent analyses. I constantly relied on your judgment. Whether it was the Reds and Bearcats or Jerry Falwell, Phil Burress or the Preble County Strangler, you were always there for me with logic, wisdom and emotional support. So what if you couldn’t write your way out of a wet paper bag? You were in every story Gaybeat published.

Thank you for all the times you made me laugh. When people asked me how I could be in business with my lover and hang out together 24/7, I’d just point to you and say, “He’s got this dry wit that gets me through the day.”

When you got sick in 1987, not that much changed; yes, your body did, but your mind didn’t. Your soul didn’t change; if anything it deepened.

Where once you’d worked with desperate people with mental illness and homeless issues, you came to work for another kind of people equally desperate—for freedom. You were always there for them; on their behalf I say thank you.

For speaking out for Gays in the military on “The Fred Andrle Show,” thanks and a salute.

For taking care of your mother Kitty in her last years, thank you.

For your outspoken advocacy for people with disabilities, for serving your city and surveying all the barriers to mobility and dignity downtown, thank you.

For being a friend to Peg and Scott and so many others, thank you.

For being an instrument of peace in a violent and hate-filled world, thank you.

For documenting the human rights struggle in photographs, thank you. For publishing the truth about us for eight years, thank you. Man, all of Gay Cincinnati says thank you.

For gracing my life with your grace; for loving me when no one else seemed to; for welcoming me back every time after our separation; for simply letting me know you, Jack, for spending time with me: thank you.

The phone hasn’t rung yet; but I’m praying my eyes out that when your time comes, God welcomes you to heaven with these words: Thank you, Jack, you did great!++

July 3, 2008

(Tim O’Brien/Mother Jones)

Today on The Huffington Post, columnist Hilary Rosen, in a piece called “Why Do We Stick With Her?”, nudges along the conversation about sexism and gender in the presidential campaign. It’s about the only sensible comment I’ve seen yet, and really does help us all a bit.

Rosen gets the question wrong, but I admire the column. A better question is why no national conversation on gender, when Hillary Clinton’s campaign would seem to have been a perfect time to have one.

Rosen tries to explain the passion of Hillary supporters at this late date, when Barack Obama all but has the nomination sewn up.

After establishing her own bona fides, Rosen quickly starts invoking the “sisterhood,” but before your eyes glaze over she actually says something enlightening—by comparing the impact of Bill Clinton’s seemingly racist comments on African-Americans to the impact of other commentators’ openly sexist remarks. It’s the impact, not the intent, that matters, Rosen says; one more layer of slime after all we’ve been through (as females and/or Black folk).

So this “passion” of Clintonites, in the face of bad news, comes from a hope that they can be heard, so that we have a real conversation about gender.

Rosen credits Obama with stimulating a helpful national discussion about race, and I agree; his Philadelphia speech was masterful.

But there’s been nothing similar out of Clinton on what the actual experience of American women is and why we need to go beyond the status quo by electing her.

I wouldn’t want her to give a big Feminist speech (I doubt my mother would like that), but it would be great to have her take a serious look at the lives, experience and history of women in America.

But she doesn’t seem able to give that speech. As smart as she is, I’m not sure she’s able to craft a speech sufficiently balanced, nuanced, principled and generous for a group as huge as “American women.” For all they have in common, they’re also an incredibly diverse group, while the experience of African-Americans is framed on all four sides by slavery and racism.

It’s one thing to decry that we haven’t used this year’s opportunity for a national conversation on gender; it’s another thing to point out that she hasn’t made it happen. She’s actually avoided it.

Look at how she’s run: as a macho, pro-war Commander in Chief; as an anti-war liberal; as a weepy female in New Hampshire and a gun-toting hunter in Pennsylvania. In Indiana she even tried being a boilermaker for a day, and got praised for her “testicular fortitude.”

Her role model in this campaign isn’t Susan B. Anthony, it’s Margaret Thatcher. There’s no other way to explain her vote to invade Iraq on trumped-up claims, propaganda and war fever. Hillary decided long ago that for a woman to be elected, she had to be tough, like Thatcher, a right-wing warmonger who ended up hated by the British.

When Clinton got elected to the Senate, her top priority was landing a seat on the Armed Services Committee.

If we look back on 2001 we can see her strategy for 2008. But it didn’t work. That’s why she’s lost to the anti-war Black guy.

The Clintonites are right that sexism has been a constant undercurrent in the campaign, although they’re way off the charts in blaming it for her woes. Yes, it is demeaning to have airport souvenir shops selling steel-clad Hillary nutcrackers. I saw them a year ago, but the “joke” just filtered down to smalltown Indiana, as a woman friend gleefully told me about a week ago. It may have been mildly amusing 18 months ago, but please.

Who does Hillary have to blame for it, those mean sexists or her own machismo?

That said, there’s no excuse whatever for male hecklers at a campaign rally to interrupt her with an order to “Iron my shirts!” Jeez, what idiots. I’d have admired her if she’d turned to them and said, “I might iron your shirts if you could prove to me you’ve got anything in your pants.”

And yes, there have been too-frequent mentions of her looks, her hair, her pantsuits and all that. It’s undoubtable she faced a double standard—but she wasn’t prepared for it. We’ve also been subjected to occasional outbursts from White males on MSNBC, from Chris Matthews, David Gregory and others. We’ve had TV comedians saying anything for laughs, but that’s their job.

Again, there’s been no national conversation about why it’s in our economic and political interest to eliminate gender bias. The problem with discrimination is, it costs us money. We should be freeing up every girl scientist, astronaut, poet, mathematician, teacher, engineer and entrepreneur to do and be the best they can; we need the contribution of everyone here.

I haven’t heard that out of Hillary Clinton, have you?

Wangled a seat on Armed Services. Voted to invade Iraq and never apologized. Sent 4000 working class Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis to their deaths. All so she could be the first woman president.

Then went weepy. Played the victim card. Played the race card (”working Americans, hardworking Americans, white Americans”). And now has a rabid following of really pissed-off women and the men who love ‘em.

My only reply: she let women down.++

There is one thing that every African-American has worried about since Barack Obama came on the scene: that he’ll be shot.

In fact, they were initially reluctant to support him, partly so he wouldn’t get hurt.

Newspapers wrote about this, asking whether he was “Black enough.” As if 50% Kenyan blood isn’t enough.

There were also concerns that he wouldn’t get enough White votes to be viable. Black folk didn’t want to get their hopes up about the new kid in town.

But he won in Iowa, one of the Whitest states in the Union. That changed some people’s minds. That got some people excited, across the spectrum of so-called “race.”

(There’s only one human race. We just come in colors, that’s all.)

Obama had some selling to do; he had to introduce himself, make the pitch and close the sale. He is not as good a closer as I would like; but he is one hell of a pitchman. He can sell ice cubes to Inuits.

As the campaign progressed, he sold more and more voters of every race, color, creed and nationality. His win in South Carolina was huge. The Black folk in S.C. believed in him, and that sold African-Americans in other states.

It also raised hopes among White folk that maybe we could end our long national nightmare. He reeled off 10 straight wins, and by huge margins.

Then Hillary Clinton found a way to stop him, in collusion with the media, by raising doubts that he could win among the “White working class.”

She even said this out loud, to the nation’s largest newspaper, citing a questionable report that he was weak among “working Americans, hardworking Americans, White Americans.”

I have written previously how much this statement disgusts me.

But just look at it aesthetically; “working Americans” wasn’t good enough, she had to make them “hardworking.”

And “White Americans”? Is that a club I can join? Is it like the Rotary or the Lions? Who are these White Americans? Why has nobody ever invited me to a meeting? Is there a secret handshake I have to practice? Do they wear special White underwear?

Well, that obscene remark was good enough to give her an 11,000 vote win (out of 1.2 million cast) in Indiana, but not good enough in North Carolina. She won by landslides in West Virginia and Kentucky, but he carried Oregon convincingly.

So now she raises the spectre of assassination.

It isn’t even the first time; she’s done it at least twice before. This time was in front of a newspaper editorial board; there is no chance she didn’t know what she was saying.

(Interestingly, the all-White, all-male editorial board didn’t bat an eye.)

I’ve seen most of that long interview; she was actually quite impressive most of the time. She really does know the details of public policy, and she can be quite charming. The one time they threw her a curveball and she had to back off without committing herself concerned the perennial Western question (this was in South Dakota) of water rights. I was glad she didn’t promise to dam sixty-leven rivers just to pimp for votes.

But assassination! She brought up Robert Kennedy’s assassination as a reason she should stay in the race!

My God, this person is heartless. How dare she mention such a thing.

Hillary Clinton, with all the studied casualness in the world, stuck a dagger in the heart of every Black American, every Baby Boomer, every Kennedy fan and everyone who hopes for racial peace and justice in this country, which is most of us.

She’s worse than a bottom-feeder; she’s a predator.

I remember where I was in June 1968 when Bobby Kennedy was killed: watching ABC News coverage of the California primary. He won, gave a nice little speech, then didn’t even make it out of the hotel.

This was less than two months after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated; less than five years after President Kennedy was killed.

It seemed as if the racists would kill everyone who stood for justice; that they’d stop at nothing. That year it felt like the United States would collapse.

And yesterday, Hillary Clinton invoked the very destruction of American society to pimp for votes from South Dakot’ns.

It is time for her to retire from public life. Not just quit the presidential race; she needs to get the hook.++

Sen. Barack Obama and his adoptive parents on the Crow Reservation in South Dakota May 19.

In all the back-and-forth about the Democratic primaries, superdelegates, the convention, etc., I wonder if we’re not missing something crucial: the world economy is headed off a cliff.

Ford Motor Co. is cutting production and won’t turn a profit in the foreseeable future. GM has taken almost a $3 billion loss as a result of one minor strike (which it was probably content to wait out). Gasoline prices are now $3.999 per gallon in my Indiana hometown. American Airlines charges $15 for one suitcase. Air France/KLM, Europe’s largest carrier, is cutting as fast as it can. My friend the car salesman is wondering if he’ll have to file for bankruptcy.

The candidate who addresses the economy as it actually is today is likely to be the next president.

This goes way beyond Sen. Clinton’s call to suspend the gas tax for three months (the perfect paradigm for her manipulative campaign, one empty promise after another, Annie Oakley, bang-a bang.)

Oil is headed ever higher; the latest projections say $140 a barrel soon. Is it time for the United States to buy Nigeria and everything in it?

You’ve heard of corporate takeovers; why not national ones? A little merger fever with some petro-dictators might be a good idea. What would it cost to buy Brazil?

Oil company execs have taken a beating this week on Capitol Hill, but it’s an empty ritual; they don’t control the price. Speculators have been blamed, but the Secretary of the Treasury says prices are the result of supply and demand. China’s demanding more than ever before, and they’ve got money. U.S. consumers are now having to outbid them, when their money spends just like ours does.

Meanwhile Clueless George, the politician we’ve all forgotten about, is driving down the value of the dollar. Does anyone remember when Euros were worth less than dollars? Today a Euro costs a buck fifty. I guess I won’t be visiting Amsterdam this summer.

We can’t go on this way. Everything we do—the entire world economy—depends on moving goods and burning gasoline.

You’ve heard about the rice shortage in a few places; what happens when it disappears from the grocery where you shop? Better head to the potato aisle while you still can.

From The New York Times:

The Transportation Department reported Friday that in March, Americans drove 11 billion fewer miles than in March 2007, a decline of 4.3 percent. It is the first time since 1979 that traffic has dropped from one March to the next, and the month-on-month percentage decline is the largest since record keeping began in 1942.

I don’t mean to be alarmist; the current bubble in oil prices will pop eventually and prices will decline. But this is no way to run an economy. Why does Bush need cheap dollars?

The war in Iraq. You know, that war we’ve forgotten about too. That little trillion-dollar expenditure is starting to add up to missing rice.

I hope Sen. Obama will pause long enough in his travels to spend a day huddled up with his economic team, then come out with a comprehensive plan for What Will Change On Day One.

My sense is that people are eager to know.

A great plan, communicated by a great speaker like Obama, might well be enough to win working class White votes. Clue: they eat potatoes and rice, chicken and beef; they buy gasoline. At least they hope to someday.

The whole country’s starting to hurt bad. We need those 5 million new jobs in green technology and infrastructure now, not six months from now.

Get us out of Iraq, Sen. Obama; open up the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge if you have to. Polar bears have a constituency, but it’s dwarfed by homo sapiens in the USA, people who expect to eat.

The political task this year is not just winning the nomination, it’s driving Clueless George out.

Just as Barack has quit talking about Hillary, he should put McCain on hiatus. The issue is getting rid of George W. Bush.

Nothing else matters; the man is driving us over a cliff. This is an emergency. Shove him out of the driver’s seat, put on the brakes, steer a different direction, keep us from going over the cliff.

Show us now that you’re ready to drive this bus, Barack; there’s only one way, by throwing Bush under it. He’s your opponent; shove him out, make him resign.

Drive his poll numbers so far down that he can’t go anywhere; so even White House reporters don’t bother to show up. Create the conditions where the old lions of the GOP have to march to the White House and say, “Time’s up. You’re done.” They did it before with Nixon; they’ll do it with Bush if only to save themselves.

Drive out Bush and Cheney both, leaving us with a caretaker government under the first woman President: Nancy Pelosi.

You can do it, Barack, and we’ll back you; aim higher. Aim for the Presidency itself.++

California plaintiffs Stuart Gaffney and John Lewis

Today at 10 a.m. Pacific Time, the Supreme Court of California declared that Lesbian and Gay couples have the right to marry, and that the state’s attempt to prevent them from doing so violates the most basic principle of equal justice under law.

Proposition 22 is unconstitutional.

I expect the reaction of most Americans is “Okay, the other shoe has fallen. Now we’ve got Gay marriage. I wonder what’s for supper?”

Politicians are already weighing in, and no doubt the decision will stoke all sorts of debate in the media, at least until Britney Spears pops off again.

Meanwhile over at the Church of the Gay-Hating Anglicans, people are running around screaming “The sky is falling! It’s the anti-Christ! Run for your lives! America is doomed!” Several welcomed the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, the day the Empire of Jesus Strikes Back. One even predicted civil war.

Feh. Over this, dude?

Get a freakin’ life. The world outside my window shows the grass still growing, the trees all leafed out, the winds calm, the earth at peace.

I expect that in the homes of the Lesbian and Gay couples I know, people are wondering about supper too.

Bart and Tony (!) may be having a discussion, “Whaddaya think? You wanna get married?” But the rest of us in the other 49 states (and 194 countries, including Taiwan) are not directly affected. This doesn’t mean it’s not momentous news; it is.

It will also have a serious impact on the Episcopal Church, which is having to spend way too much time fending off the Church of the Gay-Hating Anglicans.

What the decision shows Episcopalians is that we’re not far off in our understanding of what justice requires. The Supreme Court of the most populous U.S. state has come to the same understanding, by a different set of ideas, by secular law.

This is a great day.

Disclosure: I married a wonderful guy named Jack in Cincinnati on Dec. 6, 1991, our fifth anniversary, with the giving and receiving of vows in front of 40 friends, presided over by the late Fr. Wayland Melton. My mom was there! I’ve got pictures.

Jack and I eventually separated, but we haven’t been divorced, and if he needed me I’d be there for him. I didn’t just promise Jack in those vows; I promised God as well.

I always wanted to get married, but for many years I held out, until the Church got its act together and approved Gay marriage. However, a major illness intervened, and I married Jack to let him know I’d always be with him.

He survived his illness, thanks be to God. But certainly it screwed up both our lives; ruined our business, destroyed my career. We had to let everything go, but I love him to this day, and he loves me.

I’m currently writing a novel in which a Gay wedding occurs in Chapter 1. Two guys marry each other, all alone, with only God as their witness. Catholic theology believes that the marriage partners perform the wedding, and the priest only blesses it. The novel doesn’t articulate the theology, it just describes the action the two guys take.

So what about Bart and Tony(!) in California? They’ve been together for decades. They are serious, church-going Episcopalians. Should they do California’s civil marriage once it goes into effect in 30 days?

Well, they should do whatever they want to, whatever God tells them to. It’s not up to me to advise them on so personal a thing.

But I wouldn’t be surprised if they wait, as I once wanted to do, until the day they can walk together down the aisle of their parish church, to reiterate the vows they’ve been living all this time—to do it in front of their friends, in front of the altar, and to receive the priest’s blessing on God’s behalf.

That will likely take legislation at the General Convention next year in… California. If it passes, it will probably come with another waiting period, as if people don’t die while they’re waiting.

Of course, we also know that the Church of the Gay-Hating Anglicans (and Mormons, Catholics, Presbyterians, Baptists, Fundamentalists and Holy Rollers of All Sorts, ad nauseam) hope to talk California voters into nullifying the Supreme Court decision. I haven’t seen any polls; some worry about a backlash today, which the Gay-Hating Church is hoping to take advantage of.

Voters can overturn this decision, but they can’t overturn “Equal justice under law.”

The same idea that makes you equal to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett makes Bart and Tony(!) equal to you. Pretty good idea, most people think.

You can’t repeal equality. It’s foundational, in California and everywhere else. Heck, the Supreme Court of California is dominated by Republicans, and even they can’t repeal equality.

My crystal ball for seeing into the future is cloudy. But I seriously doubt that most discussions over the supper table tonight even mention Gay marriage.

(An online poll, the unscientific kind, on today’s L.A. Times, got 17,000 votes by mid-afternoon, and Gay marriage was winning, 83% to 17%.)

So if I were advising Bart and Tony(!), here is what I might say.

As long as your health is good, and you’ve taken advantage of all available legal protections for your relationship and your estate, wait.

As prayerful, Christian guys, it will be a lot more fun to dress up, and walk down the aisle of your parish church, and kneel at the altar, and be solemn in making and receiving your vows before God and your friends, and receiving the Church’s blessing.

Then, when you stand and turn and behold your friends in Christ, beaming back at you as the music plays just for your special moment, your joy will be complete.

Isn’t that what we wish for all our friends when they get married? Why should same-sex couples be any different?

The good news is, Bart and Tony(!) made their vows long ago, and now even the California Supreme Court gives them its blessing. Heaven is singing today; alleluia.++

Pocahontas County, West Virginia: almost heaven.

I am predisposed to like West Virginia. It’s largely rural; that’s a good thing. It borders Ohio, my home for many years. I’ve met a lot of guys from Wheeling, Huntington and Charleston in Gay bars in Columbus and Cincinnati; nice, fun-loving people. (It’s also a state where Gay people absolutely must move to the cities, and they mostly do.) Much of the state is mountainous and beautiful, except where the coal companies have blasted the tops off the mountains and ruined everything for all time. Coal operators are lowlife scum and everyone in West Virginia knows it.

Still, it’s a great place for whitewater rafting.

And tonight West Virginia voters are going 70-30 for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama, the soon-to-be Democratic nominee for President. How wacky is that?

I see nothing wrong with West Virginians being contrarians. They get to vote and make their opinions heard like everyone else. If they like Sen. Clinton they have the right to say so. But what else are they saying?

According to exit polls (I admit, you have to extrapolate somewhat), West Virginians are voting race tonight. That’s why Hillary told USA Today what she did last week about “working Americans, hardworking Americans, white Americans.”

Here’s some exit poll data reported by The New York Times:

The West Virginia electorate included 2 in 10 white voters who said race was an important factor in their vote and more than 8 in 10 of them backed Mrs. Clinton.

I haven’t been this ashamed of an American politician since Jesse Helms. But West Virginians ate it up like slop at a pig trough.

Someone should remind them that they seceded from Virginia and got admitted to the United States because they opposed slavery.

Tonight they’ve completely reverted to the last dying gasp of White Power.

Again, The Times:

More than half of voters in West Virginia said they would be dissatisfied if Mr. Obama won the nomination. Half said they believed he shared the views of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. Half also said Mr. Obama was not honest and trustworthy, and half said he did not share their values.

She won under-30s. She won college graduates. She won affluent voters in West Virginia. (Only 2% of voters there are African-American.)

On electability, 6 in 10 voters said Mrs. Clinton has a better chance of beating Mr. McCain in November than Mr. Obama does. Indeed, in the heat of battle, fewer than 4 in 10 of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters said they would vote for Mr. Obama in November.

Of course she won old, White rednecks, which most people probably associate with the state. In my experience, that association is really unfortunate; it’s a bit shocking to read comments on the blogs at The Times and find out how often the most blatant, ignorant anti-Southern stereotypes are repeated in America’s most sophisticated city.

Even there people substitute image for thought—so why should I be surprised when they do it in West Virginia?

All in all this is not a good night for America, much less peace on earth. Hillary Clinton lives on to fight another day, when really she should shut the fuck up.

There is utterly no excuse for invoking race in 2008, when she lived through 1968 just like I did. This candidate is a total whore.

But then, that’s why Bill Clinton married her.++

It’s Mother’s Day, the Feast of Pentecost, cold and windy, five days after the Indiana primary, which Hillary Clinton won by 11,000 votes out of 1,264,456 cast.

Publishing the exact number is important, because these are individuals who made up their minds and took action; Hoosiers exerted themselves, drove or walked to the county courthouse, the fire station, the union hall, the community center, the church or synagogue or temple. They voted their hearts and minds to select a leader and direct the future of their country for the next four years.

You have to admire that. The only day I ever wear red, white and blue is on Election Day. Not the 4th of July or Memorial Day or Labor Day, only on Election Day; that’s the day for patriotism, sez me.

Slightly over half of them, 637,814, voted for a candidate I can’t stand. What’s up with that? How does it happen that they see the world so differently?

In Hillary Clinton I see a politician who will say and do anything, no matter how underhanded, to get elected. They see a “woman who’s done so much.”

Huh? What’s she done exactly?

I see someone whose résumé consists of being First Lady. When that wasn’t enough, she decided she landed in Bosnia under sniper fire, only to be greeted by a schoolgirl who read her a poem and gave her flowers. Then they kiss-kissed.

Hillary voters see a person of courage and strength; I see a bald-faced liar.

They see “a fighter” who’s “in it to win it.” I see someone who divides voters by race and class—and that’s unforgivable.

I wonder whatever happened to the “reality-based community.” There are still people who believe in George W. Bush; doesn’t that fry your mind? There are also people who believe we never landed on the moon, but where I come from they’re called crackpots.

How to explain a Hillary voter? Is West Virginia going to fall in line now too?

Will Kentucky vote for this person? Ain’t there no common sense in Kentucky? What’s to become of us if there’s no common sense in Kentucky?

The 2008 campaign has been so revealing, it’s staggering. Clintonism has completely fallen on its face. What we’ve learned is that Bill and Hillary Clinton, who made 107 million dollars since leaving the White House, now position her as the shot-and-a-beer working class gal. Is there no common sense in Pennsylvania? How about Texas and Ohio? They fell for this shit!

If there ain’t no common sense in Texas we’re all doomed. Thank God there’s common sense in Carolina.

Bill Clinton is the biggest whore there ever was, a hundred and seven million bucks’ worth. So we should elect his wife? What is this, Argentina under the Perons?

I don’t want Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton. Even more, I don’t want Bill tramping the back stairs of the White House looking for a blowjob.

The man is trailer trash. He’s gifted, but he’s scum. Where did that $107 million come from? Why won’t the Clintons release the donor list from his presidential library?

I’ll tell you why; they’re scared of the disclosure. They don’t want you to know who buys and sells them.

Hillary not only married this man, she stayed with him through all this crap. She should have done like my mother did and ditch the guy.

If she had any self-respect she’d have thrown him out on his ass—THEN run for Senator for New York. That would have created a whole new narrative, not this recycled BS from 1992.

(Everyone knows provincial New Yorkers love carpetbaggers; they actually feel complimented, like it’s just desserts when someone from Arkansas or Massachusetts moves there to take advantage of their gullibility. Bobby Kennedy? No problem! Arkinsaw? Of COURSE you want to move to New York!)

I broke with Bill Clinton in 1993 over “don’t ask, don’t tell,” shut-the-fuck-up. What a despicable policy.

He was goaded into it by Lesbigay activists who overreached—the same Lesbigay activists (dominated by “it’s our turn” Lesbians) who endorsed Hillary because she’s a woman—once again proving themselves complete losers. How long will the Gay community follow these failed politicians?

Generals threatened to quit Bill Clinton’s government to keep the military all Straight (except it never was, isn’t now and never will be). He should have told ‘em “Sayonara”—but he was too weak. He caved instead.

So would she, the minute she encountered opposition. Focus groups are all she knows. If you can’t manipulate people into backing you, throw in the towel, live to fight another day and hope you don’t get impeached—but if you do, manipulate that!

I had the great pleasure of sitting out the 1996 campaign, and since I’d given up TV by then I didn’t have to watch a single Bob Dole Viagra commercial. Bill Clinton didn’t need me to win, so for the first time in my life I refused to vote for president. No red, white and blue for me that day, I wore black.

Now we’ve been through the W. debacle and Hillary’s vote to approve the war in Iraq, so that Republicans couldn’t accuse her of being soft on terrorism.

That’s why she voted for it, so she could run for president with an insurance policy—and everyone in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, Indiana, West Virginia and Kentucky knows it.

Four thousand soldiers dead for nothing? She doesn’t care, she’s “ready from Day One.”

Some of those kids are from my home state and my home county. I don’t give up their lives easily to the coldest, most calculating and selfish politician in U.S. history.

She’s every bit the trailer trash her husband is. Except she’s deadlier.

She and Bill made a deal; I supported you, now you support me. Everyone in America knows it, including voters in the upcoming states and Puerto Rico. Ain’t there no common sense in San Juan?

Hillary Clinton has been running for president since she was an undergraduate at Wellesley. That’s why she picked her husband, when she knew he was scum.

She was determined to be the first woman president, but now she’s lost. Ignominiously. The certain front runner, the one with all the cash and connections. The one we owed it to.

Sorry, honey, Americans don’t owe you a damn thing. The surest way to lose an election is to assume we owe you because you had pillow talk with your philandering husband.

Now you’ve lost to a Black Man; half-Black anyway. Poor Hillary! Victimized by a male yet again. Ain’t fair! Gotta be sexism! Glass ceiling and yadda yadda!

I take pleasure in Hillary Clinton’s loss, but only because she’s a Clinton and not because she’s a woman. I remember my mother today, and what she’d be thinking now. (She died in 1995.)

She was feminine and feminist, and she wouldn’t have dreamed of burning her bra. (Note to history: very few women actually did that. It was a sensational TV stunt, that’s all.) My mother entered an all-male field, pharmacy, that’s now mostly female. But when she first started out, she was so unusual that AP ran a story focusing partly on my worthless dad, “a pharmacist’s mate without stripes.” Months later Mom got fan letters from Wyoming; we were awfully proud of her. She was smart as hell, totally opinionated, conservative from the get-go.

I’d like to have a president like her, especially if she was disinclined to war.

My mother wouldn’t at all have approved of Hillary’s ideology, but she would definitely have been glad that a woman pushed America to the limits to win the White House. My mother was an athlete, a golfer, she understood winning and losing. If you lose you don’t govern; if you win you get a chance to.

But I can’t see my mother voting for her; in the primary maybe, but not in November. She’d have had too many visions of Bill Clinton skulking around looking for blowjobs.

My mother was patriotic enough to vote for the person who is best for the country. I can’t imagine Mom voting for someone with so little honesty or personal integrity as Hillary Clinton.

I want a woman president who makes me proud of this country, not ashamed of it after this ridiculous, unnecessary war.

I want a president who tells us the truth, even if it makes her look bad.

I want a president who never abandons her core beliefs, not one who throws them to the four winds. Hillary Clinton hates guns, but she told Pennsylvania she was the next Annie Oakley. And enough suckers believed her.

You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool Mom.

She’d vote for John McCain, just like she voted for Ronald Effing Reagan despite having a Gay son vulnerable to AIDS.

She wasn’t a fundamentalist, she was an Episcopalian (and I’m forever grateful to her for that). But she didn’t mind at all when Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson anointed a Hollywood actor as the next coming of Christ. Jeez, Mom, get a grip!

I broke with my mother politically in 1964, Johnson vs. Goldwater. BTW Hillary, the Goldwater Girl, was right that LBJ passed the Civil Rights Act that year, not Martin Luther King Jr., who didn’t control a single Senator. Lyndon Johnson was a fantastic president who got mired in an unwinnable and senseless war, all because he was afraid of what the Republicans would say. (And this was before Fox Noise.)

But the way Hillary gave Johnson credit was inelegant at best, another time of playing the race card; the White man did it, the Black guy didn’t. I am so ashamed of the Clintons for playing up racial differences, the one unforgivable sin. They’ll do anything to win, even scraping bottom for the Bubba vote.

There is no excuse EVER for playing the race card, which the Clintons have done ever since she started losing. It’s just sad. Everyone knows her opponent is African and American. She didn’t have to say a word, BUT SHE DID. Over and over and over.

The day after she barely won the Indiana primary, she cited a questionable AP story and told USA Today it “found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

In my lifetime that’s the lowest politics have ever gone. I’ve lived through George Wallace, the Ku Klux Klan, Sunday School bombings in Birmingham and Lester Maddox; I certainly never expected to live through Hillary Rodham Clinton.

It’s time to pronounce the truth: The Bitch is toast.

Being a woman didn’t make her The Bitch; being Hillary Clinton did. She is the most despicable candidate in my lifetime, a pure cynic. Part of her hates America worse than Jeremiah Wright. She thinks we’re all idiots, easy to manipulate.

She decided long ago the way to win was to be the Iron Lady like Margaret Thatcher. What she found out was that people don’t trust her, they don’t believe her. She lost Walter Cronkite, just like Johnson did; she lost America. We have repudiated her.

Thank you, North Carolina!

Now about my mother: I’d have voted for Mom if she’d ever run for something, even though she was a Gay-hating homophobic Reaganite; she was honest and had personal integrity. In some ways she was a great human being; she certainly made me what I am, and my Straight bro’s too.

My father’s biggest slam against her, repeated endlessly in countless fights, was that she had “high standards.” Something wrong with that, dude? You want low ones?

So let me apply the standards I learned.

Hillary Clinton is dishonest, utterly lacking in personal integrity, far from “completely vetted,” dangerous on the world stage and unqualified to be president. She and her husband have completely tarnished the Clinton “brand” and history will judge the result. They’re total sellouts, anything for money and power.

I predict the first woman Prez will be completely different, very cool, of a new generation, working for change, and she’ll roll her eyes at comparisons with previous females.

We don’t even know her name yet, but the day she flashes a little cleavage, American men will roll over, play dead and say “Yes ma’am!”

That will be a woman, as Hillary Clinton (with all her supposed “testicular fortitude”) is not, and with any luck this New Woman will be a president for us all, overseeing a new Era of Good Feelings.

I hope to live to see it, but it might be 20 more years thanks to Hillary’s toxic campaign. Her biggest mistake was thinking she had to man up, thus sending 4000 Americans to death for her own ambition.

Can a cold, calculating human being ever get more cynical than that?

She cost the lives of a hundred Indiana boys to further her own ambition. May God have mercy on her soul.++

episcopalians-for-obama

Sign I taped to my car window; it’s a PDF, so feel free to download it and print it out.

As a Hoosier I find it fascinating to look at the Indiana results county by county, knowing this state much better than the talking heads on TV. I suppose they were reasonably well-prepared, but the best advice to tourists is still “Eat where the locals eat.” Dan Abrams on MSNBC particularly annoyed me; he should have been glad viewers had a reason to stay up and watch him.

No one in Indiana was surprised when Lake County waited till midnight to report. They always want to be the kingmakers to prove how important their non-Hoosier county is, so they always wait; the mayors hold back their results till they know what all the other cities have—in case they need to find 300 more votes for their candidate. The longtime mayor of East Chicago finally got ousted for bribing voters in a concrete-pouring scandal; new sidewalks and driveways for supporters, nothing for homeowners who wouldn’t trade their votes. Even the Catholic Church went along and got a new parking lot out of it. Lake County is all about bribes and corruption, which is why it isn’t Hoosier at all.

Still, Lake is only 26% Black, yet Obama carried 57% of the vote; that’s some White people! So what if they’re in Chicago’s media market? They like the guy.

Clinton won the White rural vote downstate. She was seen as the conservative candidate. The difference in her margin in the rural counties shows a geographic split; 60-40 in the north (2-1 in my home county of Newton, one south of Lake) and up to 75-25 in southern Indiana. I suspect some of that southern support has a racist tinge, as the Clintons repeatedly played the race card. (Maybe that’s true in northern rural counties too, but I hope not.)

Obama won the cities by amazing margins: Indianapolis better than 2-1. He got a lot of White votes in Marion County, which is only 26% Black. He also picked up two collar counties, Boone narrowly and rich, White, fast-growing Hamilton County 61-39. That Hamilton result stunned every Democrat in the state.

Obama won Fort Wayne, the second largest city, with 56%; it’s a mostly-White city, only 12% Black, with a Republican mayor. Doesn’t fit the pundits’ profile; Obama in a landslide.

He dominated the big college towns (Purdue and Indiana) in Tippecanoe and Monroe; that’s the youth and faculty vote joining the townies. He won South Bend, with a much smaller university (Notre Dame) and a large industrial base. He won neighboring Elkhart County, which is industrial and agricultural; Elkhart County has $121 million in assessed ag value, ranking #2 in the state.

Down south he won Switzerland County, which is 99% White, 3-1, while next-door neighbor Ohio County (98% White) went 4-1 for Clinton. I don’t know anyone with an explanation for that—unless some great volunteers in Switzerland County made the difference.

Obama won rural Steuben County (98% White, Angola’s the county seat) in the northeast corner 56-44, another anomaly. Yay, Steuben and Switz!

Thus world-famous Hillary Clinton won backward Indiana by 11,000 votes out of 1.26 million cast, a week after Barack Obama hit rock bottom. Not an impressive showing for the kitchen-sink strategy of the Gentlewoman from Arkansas and New York.

You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool Hoosiers. The next President of the United States is Barack Obama.++

The last three days have been home improvement time at my house. On Thursday my carpenter installed a new, energy efficient back door. This eliminated a 1950’s storm door that no longer hung correctly and the 1922 back door that was original to the house. One day a few months ago I was down on the kitchen floor with a view of the back door, and I could see daylight underneath. I stood on my little step stool to look over the door and yup, daylight there too. Cold air was blowing through the old-fashioned keyhole, where Sherlock Holmes could have squinted inside to see what I was doing. No wonder I was paying $700 a month to heat this house!

I wadded an old towel along the bottom of the door, stuck a piece of Scotch tape over the keyhole and ordered a new door. It fits tight as a drum, though the carpenter had to rebuild the frame, which was an odd size. That was cheaper than ordering a custom-sized door. Fortunately the carpenter is a smart guy, and before I ordered he asked me what I wanted the door to “do”: just be an energy-efficient entrance and egress? Make a fashion statement to neighbors and the home’s next buyer when I get ready to sell? Open a window to my backyard so I could enjoy it? Or protect my privacy?

The answer turned out to be that I want the door to open itself when I’m coming in with a load of groceries or luggage from the detached garage. Every time it rains I have to set down my shopping bags on the wet porch and fumble with keys. So my head gets wet, the bags get wet, and one time I managed to drop my keys, which fell through the crack between my wooden steps and the house. I never did find those keys, but I did have an extra set.

So for the new door I bought an electronic lockset with a 30-foot radio signal. I can stand in the garage doorway, hit the button, pick up my grocery bags, shut the garage door behind me and dash into the house, using my elbow to unlatch the back door. Cool!

We figure I’m the first person in town to have a remote-controlled back door. Everyone else has a big high-def flat-screen TV, but I’ve got a door that actually improves the quality of my life.

Friday the overhead door repairman came up from the nearest city 50 miles away; that’s life in a small town, the trip alone cost me $60 plus the service call at $140. But an hour later I have a functional garage door again. Six weeks ago I plowed into it while backing my car out; I hit the button to raise the door, it started and stopped but didn’t raise up all the way, and boom! This left me with a garage door that wouldn’t raise or lower and a nice scrape on the roof of my Accord. It was embarassing, and the empty garage told all my neighbors I wasn’t home. I’m glad to get the thing fixed, even for $200; the door is better than ever.

Since it’s April I have been eager to get out into the garden. I’ve done some prep work on warmer days lately (above 50º F.) but I’ve really wanted to get something into the ground; in April a farmer’s thoughts turn to planting. (And with dirt like ours, honey, we’re all farmers here, even when we live in town.)

At Murphy’s Food King, the local grocery, Colleen has started her garden shop. The lean-to greenhouse is up in the back of the lot, the 20-pound bags of mulch are piled high and the first shipment of flowers has arrived; pansies of course, because they love cool weather. So now is definitely the time when gardeners’ juices start flowing.

I recently learned that it’s okay to start radishes and scallions before the last frost, as soon as the ground is workable. It’s also a good idea to stagger their planting by a week to 10 days so you don’t end up with more veggies than you can deal with; I’ve never heard this before. Last year my friend Peter sent me lots of vegetable and flower seeds from Holland, and I planted a couple of rows of radishes and onions in May, after the last frost (I live in Zone 5). I was delighted with the results, but now it turns out I could have planted much earlier, and then kept planting every 10 days and had produce all summer long. Isn’t the internet a great thing? (H/t University of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign Extension. Their gardening pages are much more practical than Purdue’s, which are all about science and academic credentials instead of how to grow radishes.)

Yesterday it rained, but today is sunny and 60º, so I’ve just spent an hour or so clearing this year’s radish and onion bed, which last year grew petunias. It’s a small bed, 4′x3′, right next to the back deck with a western and southern exposure, lots of afternoon sun. I’d already removed most of the petunia stalks. I gathered up all the pine bark nuggets I put down last year and threw them underneath my lilac bush nearby; its leaves are ready to pop any day now. I used my little hand claw to break the soil, then dug deeper with my hand trowel, uncovering bunches of earthworms; what friends they are, nature’s own aeration machines. I didn’t hurt any of them, and they all burrowed their way back into the dirt, no doubt wondering what the human was up to now. Neighbors on both sides of me were out and we all said hi.

The soil in this bed is a little different from the rest of my yard, which is incredibly rich black loam—the reason to live here, some of the most fertile soil on earth. The northern part of this county is largely sand, blown down over the eons from the Indiana Dunes of Lake Michigan. But our south county dirt is black gold, wet and rich, the kind you love to get under your fingernails. This little bed, unlike the rest of my yard, has a little clay and a little sandy loam. One of the things we learn in this county is how to distinguish among soil types, and here’s one of our bragging rights: two years ago a team from our local high school won the Soil Judging National Championship—and yes, signs into our town announce this as if we were basketball stars.

The small amount of sand and clay in this bed is not enough to worry about. Once I turned the topsoil, I stuck two fingers in, making two rows every 3-4 inches about a foot from the house; I could have planted more but I wanted to save room for the next batch ten days from now. I dropped two of Peter’s scallion seeds in the first row, then two of his radish seeds in the second. Covered them up, stomped them down with my sneakers, then watered a little from my garden can with the diffuser. Sat on my butt and smiled at what I’d just done.

Cleaned up my tools, went inside and wrote this. Smiled again.

It’s not so good to use year-old seeds which may not germinate. That’s why I planted two in each hole. But I expect that most will come alive and in a month or two I’ll be cheerfully carving radishes into rosebuds and chopping green onions into stir-fry. The great news is the advice from UI-UC, keep planting! Once the sprouts appear I’ll add another couple of rows and lay down some fresh pine bark from Murphy’s.

In the heat of summer it will be important to harvest my radishes and onions as babies, because the longer they’re in the ground the hotter they’ll get, and I’m not one who likes hot stuff. I’m a Hoosier; this is a temperate zone and we like things fresh and sweet. Better to get them while they’re small and tasty; I remember my Grandma’s icicle radishes in July, inedible even though you’ve got to clean your plate. Those things were nasty.

I’ve started my garden! Praise God from whom all produce flows.++