Five Things

I've been shorthanded at work for the last month and a half- hence my lack of posting. In celebration of National Coming Out Day (tomorrow!) I have previously blogged about my own coming out- but I've now told most of that story (the bits of the story are here, here, and here. UrSpo recently did a post that serves nicely as a meme appropriate for a day dedicated to honesty in identity. The question is simple:

What five things would you pick to symbolize yourself?


1. Leon. This should surprise nobody. I have spent over half my life with the man. He has helped me to become the man I am today and my life would be greatly impoverished without him.


2. A butterfly net. Butterflies have at various times of my life been my hobby or my career, but they have always been my passion. Most people who know me strongly associate me with them. My current net has accompanied me across the country, and to many exotic places including Ecuador, Malaysia and Mexico, so it also represents my love of travel.

3. Home made cheese. Although a relatively recent interest, cheese making represents a lot of what I like about food and cooking. The end result is something that I really enjoy sharing with family and friends. For me, cheese making appeals to both head and heart. My heart responds to the nurturing aspects of making something good for people who mean a lot to me. For a while I was teaching the process to a friend and felt similarly about that experience. My head really enjoys the chemistry involved.

4. A Spo-shirt. This object is really about friendship. UrSpo makes fabulous Hawaiian-style shirts, and I am the proud recipient of several of these. A handmade gift such as this (or, for example, jam or tomatillo salsa) is a beautiful expression of friendship. I choose this item both as a specific emblem of my friendship with Spo and as a more general symbol of the importance of friendship in my life.


5. Bluff Spring Fen. I got the Fen at about the same time that I got Leon. It has been a joint project and a labor of love for nearly thirty years now. I would have had no idea when I started volunteering there, but the fen has influenced huge parts of my life: where I live, my job, my marriage. As with all great loves it has been the source of both joy and heartache. My decision to become involved remains one of the most fulfilling transformative experiences of my life.

Happy Coming Out Day to all!

100 Things Meme

It's so hard to keep an insect blog sparkling and appealing during a long Chicago winter. Plus I'm bored- the holidays are over. Key West is still weeks away. The weather is just dull. A meme might liven things up. This one's from a pretty cool blog called Guadalupe Storm Petrel. I found it when I was doing a Google search on island endemic birds. It's a random list of thigs one might do. I've bolded the ones I've actually done.

1. Started my own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than I can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland/world
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis- This is noteworthy?
10. Sung a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched lightning at sea
14. Taught myself an art from scratch- Cheesemaking!
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown my own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitchhiked (sadly, no racy stories)
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb- Gary Lee or Gary could probably help me achieve this one.
26. Gone skinny dipping- occasionally with others.
27. Run a Marathon- But Leon has. Twice.
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse Two, actually.
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise - but not until about a year ago.
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of my ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught myself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied - being gainfully employed for an uninterrupted 25 years helps.
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing - Mostly during grad school. I gave it up. Too many wasp stings. Try injecting yourself with epinephrine while dangling from a rope some time.
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight- sadly never in a romantic context.
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had my portrait painted I may be cheating a bit here. It was pastels rather than paints. I was 12 at the time.
48. Gone deep sea fishing - but I've fished in the ocean many, many times
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain- Um, once was even with a girl.
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie- Nope. Not all of us can experience the glamor of being a cowboy zombie.
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching- I've even seen the whales.
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma -but my blood has been unwelcome for many years.
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check :-(
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy - My stuffed elephant Tuzzy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square- Years ago, it was pretty seedy back then.
74. Toured the Everglades- Does canoeing count?
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London- Briefly, from a taxi while driving from the train station to Heathrow.
77. Broken a bone -two, actually. Not at the same time.
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle- The driver was straight, but I still enjoyed hanging on while speeding through town.
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person Edited to add: My Dad and I even had to carry Chilmark Girl back from Bright Angel Point (she was recovering from mono).
80. Published a book- Only a chapter
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had my picture in the newspaper- yeah, Media Madness and all that. (A lot of the links on that page have expired).
85. Read the entire Bible- not in one sitting, of course.
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating - Trout
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury- For one afternoon. Then the defendant (an insurance company) settled.
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one- too many.
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone- OMG I just got a new iPhone!!!
99. Been stung by a bee- Once it even resulted in full-blown anaphylactic shock.
100. Ridden an elephant

55/100. Not bad.

The Hurricane Season: August-November 1979

This is the third year that I have been blogging on National Coming Out Day, and I provide another installment of my recollections here.

I moved to the Chicago area in late June of 1979 to begin pursuing my doctorate from the Department of Biochemistry at Northwestern. As I have previously mentioned, part of my decision to come to Chicago involved the fact that I needed to come out here. I had struggled with life in the closet enough to know that it wasn’t a winning proposition. By the time I arrived in town, I was completely committed to starting the process.

But what to do? I didn’t know how to come out. It wasn’t something that there was a how-to manual for, especially that long ago. I did spend part of that summer in the HO section of the university library, being generally unimpressed with what I was reading. I was pretty sure that I wasn't interested in being a flamboyant party boy. That decision undoubtedly served me well- although nobody had yet heard of AIDS, 1979 would later prove to be a very dangerous time. I remember wondering a lot where I fit in. It was pretty clear that I felt outcast in the straight world. Was there room for me anywhere in the gay life?

In August of that summer, I was reading the classified ads in The Reader, Chicago’s local alternative paper. There was an ad by an organization called the Mattachine Society advertising a discussion group for gay men the following Tuesday. Mattachine, I would later learn, was a very early gay rights organization that dates back to the early 1950s.

I went. I still remember the evening vividly, down to what I wore (my green alligator shirt). The discussion was warm, sometimes goofy, and only a little bit political. The men ranged widely in age and in personality. There were overtly queeeny types (still quite scary to me that early in my own process) and guys who I felt that I might have met even in my old home town. I remember the frisson of first seeing unrelated men kissing socially. I also remember seeing my reflection in the window of the El car on my way home and wondering if I was somehow different now.

I would return to the discussion groups faithfully each week for several years. Those guys did so much to calm me down about the whole process. Many were important examples to me of how one could be out and proud and lead a rich and productive life. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

The summer of 1979 was one of great change for me. I felt very alone for much of that summer. I was far from home and the people I knew and loved. I was living in a large city for the first time. It was the summer that I would gradually grow accustomed to being on my own. Perhaps because I missed the ocean, I remember thinking at one point that it’s when hurricanes make landfall and come into contact with people that they dissipate. I spent that summer by myself, feeling far out at sea like a hurricane-- gathering strength.

March 28, 1979

October 11 is National Coming Out Day. In celebration, I offer a rememberance of the day that I decided to come out of the closet.

In March of 1979 I faced a time of scary decisions. I was in my senior year in college, finishing up a very successful undergraduate career. I had just gained acceptance at 4 doctoral programs in various biochemistry departments around the country. I should have felt that the whole world was before me.

I was actually miserable. In part I was in the throes of unrequited love. My friend C and I had been close for about a year. He was smart, handsome, and funny. I was competely smitten with him. He, of course, liked girls. To further complicate matters, iwe were attending a very small college in rural New England. I knew only one other gay person. I feared the prospect of a lonely, miserable life spent in shame. Was I doomed to fall in love with, and be frustrated by, straight boys for ever?

Spring break came. I did not go to Ft, Lauderdale or Panama City. I went to Massachusetts to spend the week with my family. I wanted to spend time not lusting over thinking about C, not trying to fit in socially with people whose lives were taking them in very different directions from mine, but instead trying to figure out which of the four schools that had accepted me would be the one that I would attend.

When I am in need of emotional healing, I turn to the natural world. So on Wednesday of that week, I borrowed my mom’s car and drove down to spend the day on Cape Cod. I planned to drive down, eat fried clams, walk in the National Seashore and think hard about my school choice. Two memories from the drive remain vivid. I heard for the first time a song called Sultans of Swing by the then-unknown group Dire Straits. I would follow their music for decades to come. Partway through Boston, a news bulletin came on the radio announcing that there had been some sort of malfunction at a nuclear power plant outside of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The news spoke of little else for the rest of my journey- and for weeks to come.

I walked a lot that afternoon- over dunes, through maple and cedar swamps, and along beaches. It was chilly enough to keep me going as a means of staying warm. But instead of thinking about school choices, I found myself thinking about C and the pain of not knowing if I could ever find happiness with another person. I thought of how tired I was of feeling isolated. I wanted the pain to end, and realized that meant taking a very different approach from the hiding and being afraid that had dominated the last six or seven years of my life.

The funny thing is, even though I was thinking about things that had nothing to do with the main decision in front of me, my thoughts that afternoon led to my choice. If I was to get beyond my uncomfortable isolation, I’d need to find other people like myself. Were there any? Were they all weirdos? It was a chance I would have to take.

Of my four grad school options, two were clearly the preferred ones. I had received handsome (and very similar) fellowship offers from the departments of Biochemistry at Northwestern and the University of Rochester. I knew enough to realize that my immediate future lay in a city, and that there would be more prospects to come out in Chicago than in Rochester, NY.

The decisions I made on March 28, 1979 would affect the rest of my life to a degree that I could only dimly imagine that day. I would accept Northwestern’s offer and move to Chicago. I would try, if only tentitively, to come out of the closet. And I would come out on my own terms, letting nobody else dictate what that would mean. These decisions, which would prove to serve me extraordinarily well for the rest of my life, were made in beautiful surroundings on a day where it seemed almost possible that the world could end in nuclear holocaust;

Happy National Coming Out Day to my gay and straight readers alike.

Happy Anniversary to Me

In the comment thread to the post below, I replied to a comment from Pablo by saying:

The opportunity to do this particular kind of work was my main motivation for taking the Museum job.

My comment reminded my that my first day on the job here was July 13, 1997. Today is my 10th anniversary here. It's been quite a decade. I remember being very apprehensive when I first took the position, in no small measure because it included a hefty pay cut. I kept wondering how long it would take me to really seriously wonder if I had made the right decision to leave the biotechnology industry. Apparently that number is greater than 10 years. After a decade, I still feel like I have the job that I was born to do, and it gives me a great deal of pleasure to share my work with my fellow bloggers.

Pieces of Eight

I have been tagged for a meme by Dr. Benton Quest. It's simple: List 8 things about yourself.

1. I drive a 2004 Honda Civic hybrid.

2. The only president of the US that I have seen in person was John Kennedy. It was the summer before he died. I was 5.

3. I did not see the Pacific Ocean until I was 28.

4. My first view of said Ocean was in Lima, Peru.

5. I can't stand Blue Cheese. This is unfortunate, because it looks really fun to make.

6. Despite having grown up where lobster is abundant and (relatively) cheap, I have never eaten it. Allergic.

7. I don't understand the appeal of graphic novels.

8. If I could live anywhere in the US, it would be in southeast Arizona.

March 26, 1982

Twenty-five years ago today, I had my very first date with Leon. We still consider this date to be out main anniversary. We had met several months earlier, and had been talking to each other at the social hour after church every Sunday evening. We went to dinner (Fritz That's It in Evanston) and to the movie theater to see On Golden Pond. My main regret of the date was my choice of restaurant. Not that there was anything wrong with Fritz', but if I had known at the time how much Leon loves Italian food, I would have suggested Dave's Italian Kitchen, instead. Still, we remain together, so the restaurant choice couldn't have been all that bad.

Some time during the date, Leon mentioned that the next day was a Fen workday. I asked what this was, and managed to wheedle an invitation to accompany him. Leon thought that I was just trying to spend some more time with him (well, OK, there was an element of that), but I genuinely was interested. The next day I joined him and we headed out to my first visit to Bluff Spring Fen. It would be at least a year before he would figure out that I had a significant interest in the Fen independent of my interest in him. All these years later, it still amazes me that we had our first date and I "met" the Fen all within a 24 hour period. How could I have known at the time the degree to which that one day would affect my life for decades to come?

My Midlife Crisis

A lot of my fellow bloggers- at least those that blog in the same circles I do- have been asking a lot of bigger, more introspective questions this week. It's all gotten me thinking. On top of that, I had a new visitor, Rhea, who recently left me a comment. Her blog has a fair bit to say about the mid-life crisis, and includes a rather nifty definition of the phenomenon:

"Discontent with life and/or lifestyle that may have provided happiness for many years. * Boredom with things/people that have hitherto held great interest * Feeling adventurous and wanting to do something completely different * Questioning the meaning of life, and the validity of decisions clearly and easily made years before * Confusion about who you are or where your life is going."

Ten years ago, I was in the throes of my midlife crisis. It largely revolved around my career, though the upheaval influenced a lot of other areas of my life as well. I’ve blogged before about some of the things that led me to a career in science. For a long time, I traveled a road that I had mapped out fairly early in life. When I was in high school, I already knew that I loved science, especially biology, and planned a career in it. In college, I started wondering if I could make a living as a field biologist, and discovered that I really, really loved chemistry. So I redirected my efforts towards becoming a biochemist, with an eye towards grad school and a career in the biotechnology industry. And proceeded to do just that.

For more than a dozen years after grad school, I worked for a biotech firm developing DNA technology for use in medical diagnostics. The picture at the top of this posting is from that work. It's white blood cells (mine) stained with a piece of DNA whose sequence is frequently deleted in colon cancer tissue. My work involved the DNA labeling technology used on the specimen in the photo.

Throughout my time in the biotech industry, I continued keeping a hand in the field biology world through my volunteer work at Bluff Spring Fen. This was very successful and rewarding work for me. By the mid 1990's, I was growing disillusioned with my biotech job. I was unhappy with them and, frankly, by the end of things they were not happy with me, either. I was considering re-locating to a different part of the country to take a job with another company.

Throughout this time of turmoil, I would often wonder about making serious change of direction in my career, and following my passions for prairie, ecological restoration and butterflies. I was unable to see a way to turn it into a paying job, and the quotation from Rhea's blog nicely reflects my state of mind back then. One day, I got a call from an acquaintance who was then the president of the Chicago Academy of Sciences. They were building a new museum with a butterfly exhibit. Would I comment on the plans?

I agreed to have a look at the plans, and promptly forgot about it all for a couple of weeks. One night, just before bed after a very bad day at work, I remembered the plans. I wondered about the possibility of creating a research effort in local butterfly conservation attached to the new museum. Needless to say, I did not sleep well that night. The next morning, I called my colleague and said that my comment about the new exhibit was, "are you staffing?" Three months later I had agreed to what was then a frighteningly large pay cut and began my first day of what has become my dream job.

When I took the new job, I worried that I would always look back and feel that I had made the wrong decision by not moving to California. The reality has been that I have always felt a strong sense of having made the right decision. I realize that this sort of story does not necessarily lead to a happy ending. I'm just glad that it did for me.

Autumn Excursion

Woodstock, Illinois

This weekend was absoloutely beautiful in Chicago. It was the kind of clear, pleasant weather that makes me love autumn. On Sunday, we made an excursion to Woodstock in McHenry County for some autumn events. If the picture of Woodstock looks a little familiar to you, that’s probably because the town featured heavily in the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray.

















Musical Wallpaper

We picked apples (a bit of a disappointment), and met up with our friends Gary and Gary Lee who were working the Weaver's Guild textile show at the old courthouse. Gary is an old-timey musician and plays a mean hammered dulcimer, among other instruments, for the duo Bear Creek. He provided what he called "musical wallpaper" for the event. Gary Lee is a textile artist who was demonstrating spinning techniques. Several of his pieces were in the show- some even won awards.


















"Dr." TJ* Fuffle Fresh spins the hits for you

*Thread Jockey

















Textiles at the show. The gray skein of yarn under the chair is Gary Lee's.

















Gary Lee's knit shawl. This one won a prize!

After the show we had dinner together. Good food, good friends, good fun- it was a very pleasant day.

Why I am a Gay Scientist

This is an essay, slightly modified, that I wrote several years ago. I was planning on posting it next Wednesday as a celebration of National Coming Out Day. The events of the Mark Foley scandal have left me totally disgusted, and I wanted to share something about taking pride in, and responsibility for, who you are. Foley has done neither, despite the increasingly hollow claims of his spokesman that he takes full responsibility for his actions. So I'm posting this a bit early. Happy coming out day to all.

A few years back, I went to a professional conference for people developing medical diagnostic tests. One company had just developed a new cancer test in which positive results were revealed by the development of a vivid pink color. To promote this new product, the company was giving away plastic test tube racks in the same shocking pink color. I wanted one. As I explained to a (straight) colleague while showing her my new treasure, "it’s what every gay scientist needs—a hot pink test tube rack."

My colleague took issue with my humor. Why, she asked, was I calling myself a gay scientist? In her mind the two phenomena were in no way related. I may be a scientist, and I am most certainly gay, but my friend felt that unless I am actively pursuing some sort of scientific study of sexual orientation- a la Simon LeVay, perhaps- then I have no business calling myself a gay scientist.

Something similar, though more nefarious, happened years ago while I was still in college. I made the mistake of talking with the school psychologist about my struggles to come to terms with my sexuality. Among his significantly unhelpful efforts was the question "when they wake you up in the middle of the night and ask what you are, do you tell them that you are gay or that you are a biologist?" There was, of course, a right and a wrong answer to this question. If my reply had been "I’m gay," the implication was that I was placing too much emphasis on that part of myself, and that I would do better to self-identify more strongly with my prospective career.

My response to both of these situations was similar. I felt as though an uncomfortably schizophrenic existence was being required of me: in this compartment of my life, I’m gay, in that compartment, I’m a scientist, in this other compartment I love cats. In truth, I’m a gay scientist who loves cats-- and who has a bunch of other attributes as well. By identifying two particular attributes and describing myself as a gay scientist, I am integrating two aspects of my life that I consider of greater importance for self-identification.

Believing that it is important to self-identify as gay does not mean that I subscribe to the notion that gay people need to emphasize our differentness- that being alien and out of step with the mainstream are somehow important facets of being gay. Actually, I’m pretty solidly assimilationist. And while I’m not part of the radical crowd, I don’t want to impose my own assimilation on anyone else. Furthermore, I’ve been increasingly uncomfortable with attempts on the part of some in the assimilationist camp to minimize the importance of sexual orientation. For example, in an otherwise excellent essay entitled The Fear of Being Ordinary, conservative University of Minnesota Law School professor Dale Carpenter lauds a trend in movies of the 1990’s towards depicting gay characters as ordinary people. Unfortunately, he proceeds to opine that "in a better world, that last attribute [being gay] would be among the least important facts about the characters."

Excuse me? What prompted this drift from suggesting that being gay is one attribute among many to relegating it to the least important of one’s personal attributes? While I remain enthusiastic and optimistic about the progress that gay people have during my lifetime, I also feel that it is important to recognize the challenges that gay people everywhere have risen to in order to achieve happy and fulfilling adulthoods. These achievements are appropriately sources of Pride, and are very much to be celebrated. Suggestions of neglecting to do so feel uncomfortably like invitations to return to the closet, though I am certain that Carpenter did not intend that particular implication.

In my own case, the pairing of my sexual orientation with my scientific viewpoint is important if for no other reason than that the former contributed to my early interest in the latter. In part, nature and science were safe refuges from what was, during my formative years, a Terrible Secret. In contrast to navigating the dangerous social waters of being gay in high school in the mid 1970’s, working with plants and insects meant dealing with things that did not judge me. The most that I risked in studying them was contact dermatitis.

By providing an eminently rational framework for looking at the world, science also provided me with something critical: the ability to consider the seemingly unthinkable possibility that the rest of the world was wrong. The world could be approached through observation, evidence, and analysis. There was a remote possibility that it was OK to be me.

The result of all of this was that I succeeded in transforming a serious challenge- being gay in a highly homophobic environment- from something frightening and difficult into something that pointed the way to a successful and rewarding career. When I insist on defining myself as a gay scientist, it isn’t out of a sense of victimhood, but rather a sense of survival and accomplishment.

Would I have become a scientist even had I not been gay, or had being gay been a nonissue during my adolescence? It is, of course, impossible to say. What is clear is that being gay did have a profound influence on my interest in science. For that reason, I will forever be a gay scientist, and will continue to proudly use my hot pink test tube rack.

Feeling Meme

Being new to blogging, I'm just getting used to some of the terminology. Apparently a meme is a series of questions that gets passed around from blog to blog and people compare their answers. Ur-Spo is a friend who blogs at Spo-Reflections and has recently created the Feeling Meme. Reading the questions of the meme, it's pretty obvious that we're dealing with a psychiatrist here (...so, Douglas, how do you feel about that?). Well, here's my stab at the "feeling meme.:

The most joyful I have ever felt. October 1999 at the grand opening of the museum. My dad and brother flew in from Massachusetts to attend the festivities. My partner came into the city for it, and we were also joined by my friend Rebecca. A lot of friends and acquaintances from Chicago drifted in and out throughout the day. I was just over 2 years into my career change, pleased with what had transpired, feeling very much that I had made the correct decision, and sharing the moment with friends and family.

The most angry I have ever felt. Several years ago, we had a temporary employee in my department. She was trouble from the word go. Always getting into arguments with staff. Making wildly unreasonable demands. I was not her direct supervisor, but rather her boss’ supervisor. In a disagreement that she had with her boss, she wrote a memo to the president of the museum (my boss) claiming that the project had been very poorly managed by her boss and myself. She claimed that when confronted by her about this I had become very defensive. She had actually not said a single word to me about her concerns with the project. That she would lie about me to my boss infuriated me. Two weeks later, she had a shouting match with a museum visitor in a public space. The visitor was angry enough to find out whom to write to complain about it. Appropriate action was taken on my part.

The most at peace I have ever felt. Early mornings over tea while camped above treeline in the High Sierra wilderness. There’s something peaceful about the stillness of that time of day combined with the stark beauty of the landscape. Oddly enough, one of these "most at peace" times for me occurred on September 11, 2001. It would be four days before I would hike back to civilization and learn of the attacks on New York and Washington.

The most shocked I have ever felt. When in high school, the dad of one of my classmates was murdered by her mother. If I recall correctly, a kitchen knife was used. I’d known this classmate fairly well, and had even recently been to a party at their house.

The most embarrassed I have ever felt. No way. There’s no way that I’m going there in a public Internet forum.

The most sad I have ever felt. My mother’s unexpected death in an auto accident. 'Nuff said.

The most frightened I have ever felt. Airplane ride from the West Coast to Chicago. Somewhere near Denver we encountered really heavy turbulence. The plane would dive, engines straining heavily, then labor to climb back upwards. We would abruptly drop vertically, and pitch sharply from side to side. I was terrified. It only lasted about 10 minutes.

Anniversary

On Saturday, my partner and I will celebrate our third wedding anniversary. On August 26, 2003 we were formally and legally married in Victoria, British Columbia. I thought that I would take the opportunity that this event presents to deviate a bit from my usual entomology and ecosystems maunderings and write a bit more personally.

The ceremony took place on a rocky shore overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca. It was a gorgeous sunny day, and we could see the Olympic Mountains in Washington on the horizon. The ceremony was performed by the Canadian equivalent of a justice of the peace, called a marriage commissioner. I loved that: this person is someone who "commits" marriage. It was not a long ceremony. We read poems by Whitman, and I read a piece from Stephanie Mills" In Service of the Wild comparing acts of ecological restoration (something that my partner and I have done together the whole time we have been coupled) and the love that people have for one another. The poem that we read jointly, from Leaves of Grass, reflects the fact that we have been bound together not only by our love for each other, but by our love for the prairie:

The prairie grass dividing
Its special odor breathing
I demand of it
The spiritual corresponding
Demand the most copious and close
Companionship of men

Afterwards, the friends who served as our witnesses joined us for high tea at the Empress Hotel in Victoria. I offer that detail for those who feel that I have insufficient points on my gay card.

When we first married, many people asked us if we felt "different" now that we had tied the knot. We usually respond in the negative- that we have, in fact, been married for a long time now, and this was just a formality. I’ve been amused by a lot of the rhetoric coming from the gay right about the value of marriage as a social engineering project to "settle down" gay men into stable relationships. It’s particularly ironic to me that we, two left of center gay guys, came together into a stable relationship out of our love for one another. We have maintained it in part through our own senses of personal responsibility (a characteristic erroneously claimed by the political right as their own exclusively). At the same time, a bunch of gay folks on the right politically are pushing the government to step in and function in a way that, in other situations, they decry as "the nanny state." We did just fine for around two decades before tying the knot, thank you, and settling ourselves down was not among our goals when we married.

We married because we wanted to. We married because we (finally) could. Above all, we married because we love each other. Unfortunately, we did not marry to get any of the legal benefits because, alas, Illinois shows no sign of moving towards recognizing our marriage. And as for the federal government- well, with global warming, I don’t see signs of Hell freezing over any time soon.

Next posting, back to bugs and slugs.