Tag: ABC Wednesday

E is for Equality

Booker noted: “I shudder to think what would have happened if the civil rights gains, heroically established by courageous lawmakers in the 1960s, were instead conveniently left up to popular votes in our 50 states.”

 

The news that made the recent headlines in terms of marriage equality in the United States was that a federal appeals court ruled Proposition 8, the California plebiscite overturning gay marriage, violated the Constitution, setting up an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, or possibly not. Meanwhile, the Washington state legislature passed a bill legalizing gay marriage; here is part of the debate. Also, New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch has vowed to veto efforts to repeal that state’s same-sex marriage law.

Discussing specifically the California judicial ruling, writer Mark Evanier noted: “I still wish this thing could be settled by a vote of the people rather than to reopen silly arguments about ‘judicial activism.'” And in an ideal world, I would tend to agree with him.

But I was struck by something that Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, New Jersey, a Democrat, said. He broke with Governor Chris Christie, a Republican with whom he has previously been aligned. Booker opposed Christie’s call for a gay marriage referendum, and his threat to veto a gay marriage bill because, as Christie put it, “I need to be governed by the will of the people.”

In response, Booker noted: “I shudder to think what would have happened if the civil rights gains, heroically established by courageous lawmakers in the 1960s, were instead conveniently left up to popular votes in our 50 states.” He submitted that leaders are elected to make difficult decisions, not submit to a public referendum. “Equal protection under the law – for race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation – should not be subject to the most popular sentiments of the day. Marriage equality is not a choice. It is a legal right. I hope our leaders in Trenton will affirm and defend it.” You can watch Booker here.

I was fascinated by a lengthy article in Salon: The making of gay marriage’s top foe: How Maggie Gallagher’s college pregnancy made her a single mom, and a traditional marriage zealot. “The organization she founded in 2007, the National Organization for Marriage, helped organize the successful effort in 2008 to pass Proposition 8 in California…

“Gallagher’s opposition to gay marriage seems to have very little to do with gay people, indeed with people at all. What really excites her is a depersonalized idea of Marriage: its essence, its purity, its supposedly immutable definition…For Gallagher, gay people are the enemy only insofar as their desire to marry is yet another attack on Marriage…”

Except that marriage had already been on the decline, at least in the United States, long before the first gay nuptials. I suspect it’s a function of children with divorced parents being less likely to tie the knot. It’s almost ironic that gay couples, for whom marriage had long been out of the question, are now a growth segment in the matrimonial business.
***
A brief history of the Gay Rights Movement.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has filed a legal challenge to the (so-called) Defense of Marriage Act.
***

ABC Wednesday – Round 10

D is for Dominion

I’m a “replenish” kind of guy.

When I was growing up, Canada was referred to as a dominion. It achieved that status, rather than as a colony, per the British North America Act of 1867: “Whereas the Provinces of Canada [i.e., Ontario and Quebec], Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick have expressed their Desire to be federally united into One Dominion under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom …shall form and be One Dominion under the Name of Canada; and on and after that Day those Three Provinces shall form and be One Dominion under that Name accordingly…

Title to the Northwest Territories was transferred by the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1868, and the Province of Manitoba was the first created out of it, and the first province created by Ottawa instead of London, in 1870.” Other provinces joined after that point, all without need of the permission of the crown.

Apparently, dominion status ended in 1982 “when the British and Canadian parliaments passed parallel acts – the Canada Act, 1982 ([UK] 1982, c.11) in London, and the Constitution Act 1982 in Ottawa. Thereafter, the United Kingdom was formally absolved of any remaining responsibility for, or jurisdiction over, Canada; and Canada became responsible for her own destiny. In a formal ceremony on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, the Queen signed both acts into law on April 17, 1982.”

But in that period between 1867 and 1982, Canada declared war on its own, in 1939. And subsequent to 1982, “the federal government continues to produce publications and educational materials that specify the currency of these official titles.” So I’m still not 100% clear I understand all of this correctly. (The picture, BTW, is from a 1945 Dominion of Canada $50 Eighth Victory Loan War Bond.)

The other reference to dominion I grew up with came from Genesis 1:28 of the Bible: “And God blessed [ Adam and Eve ] and God said unto them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” (KJV) Some folks seem to focus on the “subdue” part, and find that using up our natural resources is OK, that God has given permission. Others tend to focus on “replenish the earth” and believe that having dominion over the earth means to be a good steward of the earth. When the United Kingdom had dominion over Canada, it meant that it had a responsibility to care for it, not to merely exploit its resources. I’m a “replenish” kind of guy.

ABC Wednesday – Round 10

C is for Collective Nouns

Recycle Congress in 2012.

From JEOPARDY! episode which aired on 11/11/11.

A large group of families that are related, it’s from the Gaelic for “family”. Answer below.

Here’s something someone e-mailed me, with some modifications, about collective nouns:

We are all familiar with a

Herd of cows (also the term, not necessarily exclusively, for antelope, boar, buffalo, chamois, chinchillas, deer, donkeys, elephants, elk, giraffes, gnus, goats, hippopotami, horses, kangaroos, llamas, moose, oxen, pigs, seals, walruses, whales, wolves, yaks, and zebras)

a Flock of chickens, (also camels, sheep, and various birds – including seagulls?)

a School of fish (also porpoises and whales)

and a Gaggle of geese.

However, perhaps less widely known are:

a Pride of lions,

a Murder of crows (as well as their cousins the rooks and ravens),

an Exaltation of doves.
And, presumably, because they look so wise:

a Parliament of owls.

Now consider a group of Baboons.
They are the loudest, most dangerous, most obnoxious, most viciously aggressive, and least intelligent of all primates.
And what is the proper collective noun for a group of baboons?

Believe it or not …a Congress!

A CONGRESS OF BABOONS!

Go green. Recycle Congress in 2012.

(Does this suggest that places with parliaments are smarter, more civilized – or if you prefer, civilised?)

The JEOPARDY! question: What is clan?

ABC Wednesday, Round 10.

B is for Baghdad

In the next millennium, Baghdad was captured by various groups, including the Fatimids, the Mongols, the Ottoman Turks and finally the British.

 

When I was growing up, Baghdad sounded wonderfully exotic and ancient. After all, it was in Mesopotamia, that area between the Tigris and Euphrates, which is “widely considered to be the cradle of civilization.”

The meaning of the city’s name may be a “Middle Persian compound of Bag ‘god’ + dād ‘given’, translating to ‘God-given’ or ‘God’s gift’…A less probable guess has been Persian compound Bağ ‘garden’ + dād ‘fair’, translating to ‘The fair Garden.’ Regardless of the derivation, I had believed for some time in my youth that there was a literal Garden of Eden at one point, and it was located somewhere around there.

While the city’s roots date back to ancient Babylon, as a settlement as far back as 1800 B.C., in 762 A.D., “the caliph Al Mansur commissioned the construction of the [modern] city… Mansur believed that Baghdad was the perfect city to be the capital of the Islamic empire…In its early years, the city was known as a deliberate reminder of an expression in the Qur’an, when it refers to Paradise.” So it may have been the perfect place in the three major monotheistic religions at different points.

But in the next millennium, Baghdad was captured by various groups, including the Fatimids, the Mongols, the Ottoman Turks, and finally the British in 1917, during World War I. In the spring of 1941, a coup was launched against the pro-British Kingdom, replaced by “a pro-German and pro-Italian government”, but two months later, “the Mayor of Baghdad surrendered to British and Commonwealth forces.

“On 14 July 1958, members of the Iraqi Army under Abdul Karim Kassem staged a coup to topple the Kingdom of Iraq. King Faisal II…and others were brutally killed during the coup. Many of the victim’s bodies were then dragged through the streets of Baghdad.”

Baghdad prospered for a time, but war, first a nearly nine-year struggle with Iran and then a brief conflict in 1991 and a considerably longer war starting in 2003 with the United States and its allies “caused significant damage to Baghdad’s transportation, power, and sanitary infrastructure.” (And no parade for the US troops coming home is imminent.)

There was this 1987 German movie called Bagdad Café, which I saw at the time. “The film is a comedy set in a remote truck-stop café and motel in the Mojave Desert. The plot is centered around two women (Marianne Sägebrecht and C. C. H. Pounder) who have recently separated from their husbands, and the blossoming friendship which ensues…With an ability to quietly empathize with everyone she meets at the café, helped by a passion for cleaning and performing magic tricks, Jasmin gradually transforms the café and all the people in it.” It was a charming film; here’s the principal song from the movie, Calling You by Jevetta Steele, the soundtrack of a Roger Ebert dream about Illinois cornfields after one of his surgeries. The film was made into a short-lived 1990 US TV sitcom starring Jean Stapleton and Whoopi Goldberg.

Somehow, the notion of Baghdad as a place of greater understanding and cooperation appeals to me. I don’t know if the performer here is from Baghdad, but he is from Iraq and has a wonderful, hopeful story. And there’s seldom too much hope.

ABC Wednesday, Round 10

A is for Allergies

I started on a weekly regimen of allergy injections called immunotherapy, which, ideally, will lessen or eliminate some of the ailments I had been experiencing.

 

I was feeling pretty lousy in the spring, worse in the summer, and not so great in the fall. Sneezing, scratchy throat, watery eyes, off and on for months. So I decided to visit my daughter’s allergist. After the doctor took my health history, a nurse treated my arms like pin cushions in trying to ascertain what, if anything, I was allergic to.

The good news is that I am NOT allergic to any animals or any foods; so no peanut allergy, like my daughter has. The bad news is that I am allergic to – and no, I don’t know what they all mean – ragweed, mugwort, pigweed, plantain, sheep sorrel, grass, ryegrass, timothy grass, June grass, red top, sweet vernal, ash, birch, elm, hickory, maple, oak, poplar, and willow. In other words, I am allergic to tree pollens, which begin to appear in the US Northeast in mid-March and are present into June; grass pollens, which appear in late May and are present through the summer; and ragweed pollen, airborne from mid-August through September.

One course of action would be to remain in air-conditioned buildings from late February to October; hardly practical, and boring to boot. The other option is to start on a weekly regimen of allergy injections called immunotherapy, which, ideally, will lessen or eliminate some of the ailments I had been experiencing. I started in December, because the idea is to build up the immunity over time, so when allergy season kicks in, I’ll be less affected.

I get shots in each arm once a week, with gradually increasing doses of treatment. I could do as often as thrice a week if I had the time; if it’s less often than once every couple weeks, its efficacy is lost, and I have to start the regimen all over again. The most difficult part, actually, is waiting around for 30 minutes AFTER the injections, to make sure I don’t have a severe reaction, which, as they like to let you know, could be anything from an itchy throat or runny nose, to chest tightening or hives, to, in rare instances, drop in blood pressure, shock and even death.

So far, so good.

Allergies by Paul Simon, a minor hit, #44 in late 1983

ABC Wednesday – Round 10

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial