Baby steps into gay life ('75)

During my summer of traveling around Western Europe (1975), I felt free and totally unknown, and I played with being gay. I had accepted privately that I was gay, I avidly followed gay news, I had been a spectator at the Hollywood gay pride parade, but I hadn't told anyone or done anything.

On this trip, for the first time, I knowingly set foot in gay bars, I went to an all-gay porn shop, and I tried cruising. I never actually hooked up with anyone. Especially with cruising, I was frequently paralyzed by not knowing the "rules" (as well as not knowing the language!). I scoured Amsterdam's red light district twice looking for a male prostitute in a window, but I never saw one.

I kept notes on my gay-related activities on separate pages in my trip journal, and I ripped those out after the trip so I could show the rest to everyone. The gay pages went into my permanent personal diary, and I reviewed them for this note.

Cathedrals, monuments, and history ('75)

Transcribed from my travel diary from my summer in Western Europe in 1975:

[After visiting Notre Dame in Paris] With every additional monumental cathedral I see ... [I believe more strongly that] God's greatest cathedrals are his own natural ones.

So much of the stuff that Paris is famous for relies on historical, religious, artistic, and linguistic background that I lack to be appreciated.

For myself, it would mean more to see a Garden of the Symphony or Chapel of the Sonnet or Palace of Imperialism or Monument to Mercantilism with appropriate scenes depicted in the stained glass or the statuary and with a fitting degree of ornateness of design, etc. ...

[In Venice] I can't believe bare shoulders would truly offend God.

My dependence on language ('75)

Transcribed from my trip diary of my summer in Western Europe in 1975:

[Paris was the first time I had been alone in a place where I didn't speak the language.] Not knowing the language is going to be most educational. For a perpetual reader and listener like me, this throws me way off balance. My entire usual mode of observation, conversation, sign/ad/map/label/instruction reading, etc. is inoperative. I haven't fully recovered from the shock.

And I notice again how when confronted with a foreign language (any), I instinctively respond in any language. That is, I'm muttering bits of English, French, German, Spanish, even Hebrew.... It's as though my mind only has two channels: English and (all/any/every) Other.... I can't get past "Parlez vous Anglais?" if the answer is "Non." ... [or] understand an oral price or date or day .... The data that would most interest me in a foreign culture are mainly communicative – newspapers, TV, ads, speech idioms, casual conversation...."

[In Berlin,] There are very few English newspapers, magazines, and books anywhere. The stores that say "International Press" may have a few, but seem to specialize in pornography.

Western Europe trip - '75

In Regents Park, London

In the summer of 1975, against my grad school academic advisor's wishes, I went to Western Europe for about six weeks. I knew I wouldn't have a block of free time like this again for decades.

I visited London, Paris, Rome, Florence, Venice, Vienna, Munich, Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam.

I used a backpack, a Eurail Pass, and I stayed in hostels and with friends of friends.

Oh, and in the photo above, that's one of my mother's purses I used throughout the trip, long before the popularity of the murse.

I kept a diary, including a detailed accounting of my spending. Here's the summary page – $1100 for everything, including air (click to enlarge):

(Click the image to enlarge it.)

From my diary, here are a few excerpts about London:

[On my third day in London, ] I finally found a water fountain! Outside one gate to Regent's Park, there was a very nice one engraved, "Erected by the Municipal London Drinking Fountain and Horse Trough Association." And it didn't work!

I fell in love with the British Museum.

[I saw several West End plays,] ... Alec Guinness in A Family and a Fortune ... Paul Scofield in The Tempest.

Three additional blog posts are also from my trip diary – about language, about cathedrals, monuments and history, and about taking my first baby steps into gay life.

On boycotting Target (April '11)

This letter of mine was published in the Los Angeles Times in April 2011:

Only one thing can get me to return to a Target store: The corporation must routinely tell politicians, "We really like your economic and tax policies, but we won't donate to your campaign until you also support gay civil rights."

Harris: "The Case Against Faith" ('06)

Newsweek Nov. 13, 2006 The Case Against Faith by Sam Harris

 

[excerpted; full text at the link above] 

... 44 percent of Americans are confident that Jesus will return to Earth sometime in the next 50 years... nearly half the American population is eagerly anticipating the end of the world.... this faith-based nihilism provides its adherents with absolutely no incentive to build a sustainable civilization—economically, environmentally or geopolitically.... 

Much of what people believe in the name of religion is intrinsically divisive, unreasonable and incompatible with genuine morality... Religious people will devote immense energy to so-called moral problems—such as gay marriage—where no real suffering is at issue, and they will happily contribute to the surplus of human misery if it serves their religious beliefs.... [stopping stem cell research] 

We have elected a president who seems to imagine that whenever he closes his eyes in the Oval Office—wondering whether to go to war or not to go to war, for instance—his intuitions have been vetted by the Creator of the universe. Speaking to a small group of supporters in 1999, Bush reportedly said, "I believe God wants me to be president." Believing that God has delivered you unto the presidency really seems to entail the belief that you cannot make any catastrophic mistakes while in office. One question we might want to collectively ponder in the future: do we really want to hand the tiller of civilization to a person who thinks this way?... [Sadly, yes, "we" apparently do! Grrrr. -- RH] 

We are living in a world in which millions of Muslims believe that there is nothing better than to be killed in defense of Islam. We are living in a world in which millions of Christians hope to soon be raptured into the stratosphere by Jesus so that they can safely enjoy a sacred genocide that will inaugurate the end of human history. 

In a world brimming with increasingly destructive technology, our infatuation with religious myths now poses a tremendous danger. And it is not a danger for which more religious faith is a remedy.

More bumperstickers ('06)

Be nice to America or we'll bring democracy to your country.

Bush: Like a rock, only dumber.

Annoy a conservative: Think.

Ignorance and arrogance is a bad foreign policy.

Which God do you kill for?

Of course it hurts, you're getting screwed by an elephant.

Love Thy Enemy strongly implies not killing them.

Hey Bush supporter, embarrassed yet?

When fascism comes to this country, it will draped in a flag and carrying a cross.
- Sinclair Lewis

If you want a nation ruled by religion, move to Iran.

America: one nation under surveillance

You can't be pro-life and pro-war.

Nothing is less patriotic than lying to your country.
Impeach Bush.

Jesus was a bleeding heart, long haired, peace loving, anti-establishment hippie freak with strange ideas - everything conservatives hate.

At least in Vietnam Bush had an exit strategy.

I'd rather have a president screwing his mistress than screwing his country.

They that can give up essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
- Ben Franklin

Rich man's war, poor man's blood.

We're making enemies faster than we can kill them.

If you support Bush's war, why are you still here? Shut up and ship out!

I think, therefore I am liberal.

The Republican Party, our bridge to the 11th century.

Torture is not a family value.

You voted for Bush?? Are you evil or just stupid?

Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents' Dinner ('06)

Satirist Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in April 2006.
The full video (24:10) is here
The full transcript is here

Excerpts:

I give people the truth, unfiltered by rational argument. I call it the No Fact Zone. Fox News, I hold a copyright on that term.

I believe the government that governs best is the government that governs least. And by these standards, we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.

Though I am a committed Christian, I believe that everyone has the right to their own religion, be you Hindu, Jewish or Muslim. I believe there are infinite paths to accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior.

Reality has a well-known liberal bias.

Fox News gives you both sides of every story: the president's side, and the vice president's side.

But the rest of you, what are you thinking, reporting on NSA wiretapping or secret prisons in eastern Europe? Those things are secret for a very important reason: they're super-depressing. And if that's your goal, well, misery accomplished. Over the last five years you people were so good -- over tax cuts, WMD intelligence, the effect of global warming. We Americans didn't want to know, and you had the courtesy not to try to find out. Those were good times, as far as we knew.

But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!

I've got a theory about how to handle these retired generals causing all this trouble: don't let them retire! Come on, we've got a stop-loss program; let's use it on these guys.

Jesse Jackson .... Very interesting and challenging interview. You can ask him anything, but he's going to say what he wants, at the pace that he wants. It's like boxing a glacier. Enjoy that metaphor, by the way, because your grandchildren will have no idea what a glacier is.

New press secretary, Tony Snow. Got some big shoes to fill, Tony. Big shoes to fill. Scott McClellan could say nothing like nobody else.

On language, thought, gender, and direction

("Finally!" some readers may feel, "a blog post that's closer to what a blog post should be!")

Today's New York Times Magazine has a feature article on "Does Your Language Shape How You Think?" by Guy Deutscher. Deutscher is a linguistics scholar at the University of Manchester, and the article is from his forthcoming book, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

The article touches on three issues of great interest to me. (I was a linguistics minor in grad school, and I probably would have been a cognitive science major had there been such a thing at the time.)

First, the article starts with the ideas of Benjamin Lee Whorf, about how language might affect our thinking. I first read Whorf as an undergraduate (not for any assignment), and I was so intrigued by the idea that I applied for a Watson Fellowship to travel and research it. (I didn't get the Fellowship.)

Second, one of the "case studies" the article discusses is the gender of nouns in many languages, one of the impediments to my foreign language learning. I strongly resist the illogical genderfication of everything. Deutscher writes,

[O]nce gender connotations have been imposed on impressionable young minds, they lead those with a gendered mother tongue to see the inanimate world through lenses tinted with associations and emotional responses that English speakers — stuck in their monochrome desert of “its” — are entirely oblivious to. Did the opposite genders of “bridge” in German and Spanish, for example, have an effect on the design of bridges in Spain and Germany? Do the emotional maps imposed by a gender system have higher-level behavioral consequences for our everyday life? Do they shape tastes, fashions, habits and preferences in the societies concerned? At the current state of our knowledge about the brain, this is not something that can be easily measured in a psychology lab. But it would be surprising if they didn’t.

Third, Deutscher discusses the remarkable directionality of an Australian aboriginal language:

In order to speak a language like Guugu Yimithirr, you need to know where the cardinal directions are at each and every moment of your waking life. You need to have a compass in your mind that operates all the time, day and night, without lunch breaks or weekends off, since otherwise you would not be able to impart the most basic information or understand what people around you are saying. Indeed, speakers of geographic languages seem to have an almost-superhuman sense of orientation. Regardless of visibility conditions, regardless of whether they are in thick forest or on an open plain, whether outside or indoors or even in caves, whether stationary or moving, they have a spot-on sense of direction. They don’t look at the sun and pause for a moment of calculation before they say, “There’s an ant just north of your foot.” They simply feel where north, south, west and east are, just as people with perfect pitch feel what each note is without having to calculate intervals.

That's me!

It's slowly diminishing, but I've always amazed people with my sense of direction and place, particularly how strongly it was tied to my memories of events. If I half-remembered something, one of the first pieces that would come to me would be what direction I was facing, then whether I was indoors or out, where the door or highway or downtown or other landmark was, and that would usually pinpoint where this took place, which would remind me of everything else -- when it occurred, who was there, who was speaking, etc.

My sense of direction was weaker when I was a passenger in a car or boat or plane, and, if I couldn't pin down the directions at all in a memory, it usually was something that happened in a dream or when I was stoned! (Those were the days!)

My sense of direction is not as strong now as it used to be. I'm not sure why.

On boycotting Target (Aug. '10)

This letter of mine was published in the Los Angeles Times in August 2010:

Most of my clothes are from Target, but no more. Why in the world would I want to contribute to those who would deny my rights? I will instead use what little leverage I have to support those who support me.

Political actions have consequences.