Archives for April 2005

My children are the best part of me. I am no different than any other father or mother who cares about their family. They are my hope and dream for the future. They are my legacy and I take great care to try and do the best that I can to guide them and teach them how to be people of character, how to navigate the obstacles life produces.

One of the ways that I can help them is to teach them to recognize that they are part of many different communities. They are Jews with all of the joy, hope, promise and pain. They are members of a proud family that just celebrated the 91st birthday of a great-grandmother. They are Americans, citizens of a land that has worked hard to meet the goals and ideals of many. They are human beings, creatures of incredible strength and wonder, witnesses to amazing acts of courage and terrible acts of horror.

They are the moon and stars of my sky and wish them nothing but good things. I only hope to do as much for them as my parents have done for me.

Here is yet another topic that I wasn’t going to blog about.

“When I was seventeen
It was a very good year
It was a very good year for small town girls
And soft summer nights
We’d hide from the lights
On the village green
When I was seventeen”
Frank Sinatra- It was a Good Year

The story of Charles and Camilla grabs me. I am not real familiar with all of the details, but it appears to be the classic story of unrequited love. An intense love that you feel for someone but cannot share because life doesn’t allow you to. In this case it appears to be a question of his duty to England to marry a virgin so that he could become king that prevented things from moving ahead, or so I was told.

Maybe I am wrong, all I know is that I can get behind that intense, do anything you can to be together kind of love. It is the kind of thing that many people experience with their first love, but not everyone is able to maintain that.

“When I was twenty-one
It was a very good year
It was a very good year for city girls
Who lived up the stair
With all that perfumed hair
And it came undone
When I was twenty-one”
Frank Sinatra- It was a Good Year

When you are young and unattached life is filled with endless possibilities, you can’t imagine not having time to explore them, to seek out the crevices and determine what lies beneath the surface. The urge to move and investigate the world and its people is strong, but in time many people decide that it is time to find a partner to join them in their search.

“When I was thirty-five
It was a very good year
It was a very good year for blue-blooded girls
Of independent means
We’d ride in limousines
Their chauffeurs would drive
When I was thirty-five“
Frank Sinatra- It was a Good Year

When you are just a little bit older and somewhat settled down it is easier to look at this kind of passion, a torrid affair and smile at the memory of being able to just run like that without regard for anything but satisfying that craving.

It is not a matter of regret or disappointment with your station, but an understanding that for a while you are in a position that doesn’t allow that kind of spontaneous and impetuous behavior. The days in which you had the ability are not so far removed that you cannot remember them, in fact they are close enough that you can taste them, but like the fruit Tantalus chased they are just out of your reach.

There is a title that is somewhat misleading. Read the following article and you will see that English is continuing to advance around the world as one of the preeminent languages.

GENEVA (AFP) – Switzerland’s traditional multilingual society is being stirred up by the growing use of English at work as well as some immigrant languages in the home, according to official studies released.

While the country’s three main native languages — German, French and Italian — are holding ground, just 60,500 people can speak the declining fourth language of Romansh — a drop of 8,4 percent over a decade ago.

English was used by 21.7 percent of people in their workplace in 2000 against 15.9 percent a decade earlier, the studies based on the last Swiss census five years ago found.

English has overtaken French as the second business language in the German-speaking east of the country, and is replacing German in companies in the French-speaking west of the country.

German is the majority language in Switzerland, spoken by 63,7 percent of the country’s 7.4 million people, followed by French (20.4 percent) and Italian (6.5 percent) in the south.

The growth of new immigrant communities has added to Switzerland’s already complex linguistic landscape, but not to the detriment of native Swiss tongues, the studies by the federal statistical office said.

The use of foreign languages at home has grown from 13 percent to 16.6 percent of the population, with Serbo-Croat and Albanian now used more than Portuguese or Spanish.

However, immigrants were also more inclined to learn native Swiss languages from the first generation, and mastered two languages to a greater degree than their Swiss counterparts, according to the data.

About two-thirds of foreigners declared a Swiss language as their primary tongue in the census, an increase of 16.7 percent over 1990.

While the use of Italian has declined by 1.1 percent in a decade, the studies said that was largely due to the return of immigrants from neighbouring Italy to their homeland, or the integration of their children into local French and German communities.

The use of native Italian in the southern canton of Ticino has grown, unlike Romansch in the neighbouring Alpine region of Graubunden.

The encroachment of German from the north over the past decade has continued there, eroding the ancient fourth national language’s territory to the point that many experts now fear it is endangered.

Only 35,000 people — 0.5 percent of the population — listed Romansh as their first language in the national census.”

I am a big proponent of multilingualism and am not interested in a world in which only a few languages are spoken. It would be a tragedy if there was only one language.

I am slightly irked right now, I say slightly because I am not willing to waste a whole lot of energy on this.

The topic is gay marriage and it came up because of Miriam’s post about a wedding she went to in which two women were married. Some people are so threatened by the idea of gay marriage that they will come up with any and every argument that they can think of to try and prevent it.

The last time I brought this up I was accused of being gay, which is partially true because it is fair to call me a lesbian trapped in a man’s body. If anything I am a man with an overactive libido and an exceptionally strong attraction to women, I can’t get enough of them. But that is not relevant to the conversation.

To me this comes down to a basic question. Does gay marriage hurt anyone? I have yet to see how it is a problem. It doesn’t mock or devalue my marriage. It doesn’t promote homosexuality, it celebrates the love of two people.

And in the context of celebrating that love and the commitment that they are willing to make to each other I have nothing but warm wishes for them.

Just so that it is clear if either of my children turn out to be gay I will love them no less. I prefer that they are not gay, but in large part that is because I know of the discrimination and hardship that they will face if they turn out to be gay.

In regard to adoption of children I would prefer that they be placed in a loving home with two loving parents. In order I would prefer the typical nuclear family but given the choice between a loving gay couple and a straight one that is not so loving the answer is easy.

For that matter if you have a poor straight couple and an affluent gay couple assuming that both couples are stable and equally loving I might opt for the affluent because of their ability to provide for the child.

I am moving to Wisconsin because at last we can rid the world of those pesky felines. They are among the most irritating and worthless creatures I have ever encountered. Feh!

“Residents in 72 counties were asked whether free-roaming cats — including any domestic cat that isn’t under the owner’s direct control or any cat without a collar — should be listed as an unprotected species. If listed as so, the cats could be hunted.

The proposal was one of several dozen included in a spring vote on hunting and fishing issues held by the Wisconsin Conservation Congress. The results, only advisory, get forwarded to the state Natural Resources Board.

Statewide results were expected Tuesday.

La Crosse firefighter Mark Smith, 48, helped spearhead the cat-hunting proposal. He wants Wisconsin to declare free-roaming wild cats an unprotected species, just like skunks or gophers. Anyone with a small-game license could shoot the cats at will.

At least two other upper Midwestern states, South Dakota and Minnesota, allow wild cats to be shot — and have for decades. Minnesota defines a wild, or feral, cat as one with no collar that does not show friendly behavior, said Kevin Kyle with that state’s Department of Natural Resources.”

“AUGUSTA, Ga. – All the images paint a picture of Tiger Woods returning to the pinnacle of golf. A shot that ranks among the most amazing ever at Augusta National. The intense face bursting with raw emotion when the winning putt dropped on the 18th hole. His fist punching the air with an uppercut, his roar drowned out by a delirious gallery. The red shirt beneath a green jacket.

Woods won the Masters for the fourth time and returned to No. 1 in the world Monday.

CBS Sports said the overnight television rating was 10.3, up 41 percent from last year and the highest for a final round at the Masters since Woods won in 2001 to become the first player to sweep all four majors.

The victory Sunday at Augusta National put him back on track to go after Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 majors. Woods now has nine majors, tied with Ben Hogan and Gary Player, and he is still only 29.

But there was something different about this victory.

Woods no longer looked invincible with a final-round lead in a major, spitting up three shots on the final nine holes. No one feared him, least of all Chris DiMarco, who outplayed Woods in every aspect of the game except when it mattered — with a putter in his hand.

Having gone nearly three years without a major while retooling his swing, it appears that this might be the start of a new era for Woods. If that’s the case, it might be different in one area.

Nothing seems to come easily.”

I think that this is just utter foolishness. Tiger might have gone a few years without winning a major, but that is not such a big deal to me. If you look at his age it is obvious that he is still young and has decades of competition ahead of him if he so chooses.