Prop 8 Repealed, and, We're Back!

So, to me, January 2012 will always be the month that I strove to make each piece on this site a more thorough view into a part of our existence and more artfully rendered than the usual brain-drivel that I was used to posting.

I, so used to the day to day brain chatter, even started a second blog just to hold that stuff, or show that stuff, as it were.

Well, times are shifting again, and this blog will sort of return to the original format, but the posting duties will be shared with the Observatory.

Like now, with California's Proposition 8 having been deemed unconstitutional by the 9th Circuit Federal Appeals Court. It was deemed unconstitutional because, well, it is. It always was. I got fired up listening to NPR this morning while moving our cars around the street cleaning schedule. The leader of the Protect Marriage organization was being a total dick and being butt-hurt about the decision. "Proposition 8 was passed by the people of California..." the recorded statement from his nasal voice spewed from the Passat's speakers. Well, 52% of the people. And a campaign fiercely funded by the well heeled Mormon contingent in the state. And pandering to the basic conservatism of the black community that came out in droves to vote for Obama.

52% is not overwhelming. Also, as I was parking and listening to the guy, I yelled at the radio: "Civil rights should not be subject to social fiat!"

Do you think the society would have voted for black people to have voting rights back in 1964?

Also, we've returned to the Western province of California and to our town of Long Beach, and most importantly to our angry-but-now-spazzy feline, Tuxedo.

I plan on putting the posts about Central America, a whole slew of them in the next few days, on the Observatory site. There will be histories, anecdotes, photographs, ruins, Super Bowls, coffee plantations, jungeled hot springs, Norwegians, lonely street dogs that rule entire blocks but are actually homeless, and an event that Corrie called "the most reckless discharge of a firearm" she'd ever seen.

Now, all I need to do is beat this damn dysentery...