Boo!

Jumping the Broom

I'm reprinting this in it's entirety from Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish because I like it and think it's important:

Many gay couples are rushing to get married in California, fearful that the Mormon church's Proposition 8 will soon strip gay couples of legal rights in their state. I remain confident that we can win - because we have the best argument. The new Field poll shows it very close - but winnable.

If Obama and Schwarzenegger speak out as they promised in the next two days, that would help. Their silence is deafening. But the experience of these rushed weddings is also profoundly affecting:

In a symbolically loaded part of their ceremony, an African-American friend invited them to “jump the broom.” During slavery, society refused to recognize the rights of many African-Americans to marry. Despite this, marriage — formalized by a couple jumping over a broom — continued to thrive.

Today, we recognize those earlier marriage bans as a gross historical injustice.

The thing that struck me about their ceremony was how viscerally it changed my own feelings about gay marriage. I had always supported gay marriage, but it was an abstract, intellectual support; now it’s personal. And so a friend’s wedding became, for me, the most compelling political event of the year.

And for all of us who are married, the initiative feels like a gut-punch to our weddings, a cruel and bitter attack on our families and the homes we have built and will defend.

Make no mistake: This is the civil rights movement of our time - and like past civil rights movements, its opponents deny its character. They are having a rally in San Diego this weekend to intimidate gay people and our families, and to abuse the Jesus of the Gospels to advance the the power of James Dobson and his political machine. If you think Jesus speaks in the tone of a football announcer, and the central mission of Christianity is to strip others of equality, accuse them of abusing children, and force them to the margins of society, this event is for you.

Pray for them. One day they will realize just how misguided they are.

Amado at Play in Autumn Light

Amado and I went to the High Park the other day and ran around. Fall is the best season in Toronto. I like cell phone pictures because they have an almost accidental quality about them. At least my cell phone pictures do. I never know when the shutter is actually going to snap.

Waaaasup!

Waaaasup! The Pro-Obama version.

And here's the original

Letter from 2012 in Obama's America

This is hysterical, and I don't mean I find it funny. A "Letter from 2012 in Obama's America" from our friends at Focus in the Family (which once was a fairly mainstream organization offering helpful tips on better parenting -- but with dispatches like this they are now becoming part of the extremist fringe, imo.)

Terrorist strikes on four American cities. Russia rolling into Eastern Europe. Israel hit by a nuclear bomb. Gay marriage in every state. The end of the Boy Scouts. All are plausible scenarios if Democrat Barack Obama is elected president. (From MSNBC, "Christian Right Steps Up Attacks on Obama.")

The end of the Boy Scouts? That's scrounging at the bottom of the barrel.

Yawn...

Yawn...

Nevada Ave., East LA - Now

View Larger Map

Street view of Nevada Ave. now. The white house at 154 was my grandmother's house - though it certainly doesn't look anything like it. The new owners have done a lot of work. Same with the orange house to the right. That's where our original family house was, the one we lived in when I was a little kid. My great-grandparents bought it in about 1910. We called it "The Shack." Obviously it's gone now and this new building has replaced it.... Time waits for no one.

Nevada Ave., East LA - Then

Here's an old photo of me from about 1964. I forget if I've posted it before. I look like I'm about the same age as our son Amado. I'm in the front yard of 154 Nevada, which is where my grandmother lived. We lived next door. There's my grandmother's T-Bird on the street I grew up on in East LA. Pretty cool.

Korea Rocks!

Nobody is as fascinated with the rocks of South Korea as Wendy's Cousin Geoffrey. And I mean that as a compliment. See his Flickr journey here.

Bubble Universe

Trying to imagine a bubble universe is a good spiritual exercise:

The bubble universe concept involves creation of universes from the quantum foam of a "parent universe." On very small scales, the foam is frothing due to energy fluctuations. These fluctuations may create tiny bubbles and wormholes. If the energy fluctuation is not very large, a tiny bubble universe may form, experience some expansion like an inflating balloon, and then contract and disappear from existence. However, if the energy fluctuation is greater than a particular critical value, a tiny bubble universe forms from the parent universe, experiences long-term expansion, and allows matter and large-scale galactic structures to form.

These are some of the things that help keep me a daydreamer.

(Photo found here.)

What's on Obama's iPod?

A mellow Obama lets people in Toledo know what's on his iPod: Frank Sinatra, Jay Z, John Coltrane. Oh yeah, and there's some countrymusic too.

Good Morning Toronto XXV

7:06 a.m. For Cathrine Paris, my colleague who died of cancer on Friday.

Turkeys!

It's Thanksgiving weekend here in Canada! We're supposed to be headed up to the cottage, but Amado's sick (bad cold), so we will have to see what happens.

Turkeys from Birdcinema.com

Where Am I?

Well, I'm not partying with these dudes! Once is enough!

These days I'm a little more active in these places:

Twitter: http://twitter.com/AaronMcGallegos (Also updated here in the right-hand column)
Facebook: Aaron Gallegos
and the all new WonderCafe.ca (which we've just relaunched after a summer of work!)

...if you're interested.

Mayan World Tree

I love this image of the Mayan king Pakal descending down the World Tree. (No, he's not piloting a space ship.) Just thought I'd share that.

Carlos Santana to open a church in Maui

Carlos Santana to retire in 6 years to open a church in Maui. From this month's Rolling Stone:

"I'm not sick of what I do, but I find that God gave me the gift of communication even without my guitar and with the ability to get people unstuck with certain sections of the Bible having to do with guilt, shame, judgment and fear."

I love Santana and his shows are incredibly spiritual, but I'm not sure his church would be my kind of place. But no doubt he has a gift of helping people see beyond their own horizons and get beyond their own myopia.

In the early 1980s Carlos Santana was baptized at Christian Life Center (Assemblies of God) in Santa Cruz, Calif. where I went to church and baptized as well. His baptismal statement was beautiful and illuminating. It did exactly what he says above, helping me to get free from some of the theological brambles I was stuck in at the time by pointing the way to a God that was far more than what any church or doctrine could describe.

I found the rest of the Rolling Stone interview sad and disturbing, as Santana describes the deep pain of his recent divorce and his on-going efforts to heal from child sexual abuse. God isn't finished with Carlos Santana yet.

Good Morning Toronto XXIV

October sunrises are the best.

No time to blog right now....

... but I'm with you in spirit!

Mingus

Happy Birthday to Wendy!

You are one beautiful woman!

Eternity

I've been listening to Alice Coltrane's Eternity (1976) these days. It's filled with ethereal beauty, just like her other albums. "Los Caballos" features the amazing Armando Peraza from Santana's team of congueros. Powerful medicine.