Maryland Ballot Question 6

I hope everybody votes today!

Almost ten years ago, I started this blog, with this very topic on my mind.  When I named my blog, it was because more than any other modern issue, I was of two minds on the topic of gay marriage, and I hoped someday to be able to articulate my views on it without sounding like some of the horrible people with whom I find myself lumped together. 

Not that I ever had doubts about my opinion of gay marriage; I explicitly think it’s a bad thing.  But I think much of the rhetoric discussing the policy is ridiculous. I was always of two minds as to whether I should discuss it.  I’m opposed to a lot of things for moral reasons, but I don’t think my opposition offends people because I generally keep my opposition confined to my behavior and home.  I really do think it’s immoral that you drink alcohol, or that you co-habit before you are married, or that you steal copyrighted material.  But does that make you mad?  I think it’s immoral that you have tattoos.  You know what, I think it’s immoral that you drink coffee!  Does that offend you?  Probably not, because I don’t try to stop you, nor do I heap public admonition on you for doing it.

Marriage does not ratify a relationship between two people.  It establishes a family, something that society is based on.

I’ve always felt an instinct towards peace, so I usually avoid talking about things that I know will create conflict, unless it’s something that needs to be addressed.  Mine is an attitude of polite social disengagement.  I’d rather err on the side of civility; if we’re still talking, there’s at least the chance we can understand each other.

I have tried to never (and am not now trying to) trying to disparage the instincts, the urges, the desires of any person to feel, do, love, or act however they want.  I take very seriously the scriptural admonition to love my neighbor; what better way can I evince that love than by allowing my neighbor to seek his or her happiness in this world?  In not judging them?  So I have great emotional difficulty in taking a public stand in opposition to behavior that my neighbors claim brings them joy.

So I am no more opposed to homosexuality than I am to the above listed activities.  I think they all, collectively, fail to comply with what I believe are the standards we should strive to live up to as people, as a culture, as children of God.  All of us fail to do that in some way, I think our collective imperfection unites us more than it should divide us.

So why would I speak out against gay marriage?

Because legally defining the romantic relationship that exists between two homosexuals as legally the same as a relationship between two heterosexuals will harm families.  Really.

Yes, I have seen the heartfelt and sublime pictures that demand an answer as to HOW gay marriage could possibly harm my family.  If you think I’m a bigot and an idiot for holding the opinion, then it really doesn’t matter to you why I feel the way I do, or how I feel it endangers families.  That’s fine, I hope you can politely ignore what you feel is my bigoted idiocy, and we can still be friends.

But if you want to know how, please read on.

For what it’s worth, I cannot possibly address all the things other people have said about gay marriage.  I’m sticking to the one thing I think about it, OK?

It revolves around what marriage means to the State, and why it deserves protection/advantage.  Ultimately, the State (Capital “S” State, the government, the system) protects and induces behavior that is advantageous to the State through instituting procedures that promote those behaviors.  Like giving tax breaks on mortgage interest theoretically serves to promote property ownership.  With marriage, I think it's important to ponder *what* behavior is being protected or induced with the promotion of marriage? 

I think that proponents of gay marriage see “marriage” itself as something beautiful and romantic.  It speaks to their perspective on the relationship being a fulfillment of the parties being married.  This doesn’t surprise me, I think this is how most of Western Culture has come to view marriage.  So proponents see broadening marriage’s definition to include their relationship as being a simple matter of equality and fairness.  And though that might be romantic, I also think it is profoundly rooted in the interests of self, rather than in the interests of others.

Historically, marriage was not about the fulfillment of the parties being married; it was about society, reliability, about the children that the marriage would foster, and ensuring those children would be raised in a stable environment. Yes, I know, historically marriage was also about property, about the subjugation of women, about commerce, too.  I’m glad those things have diminished. 

And yes, I also know that there are other things that have damaged the concept of family.  I get the horrific irony that so many conservative politicians oppose same-sex marriage, but are themselves serial philanderers.  I am heart-broken at how flimsy marriage has become, how optional.  It is one of the a la carte options in the changing demographics of “Who are you today?” surveys.  I think making gay marriage legal will serve to make marriage itself even flimsier.

I think a further diminution of the concept (that marriage is about stability for children rather than about what the marrying parties want) really does weaken families.  I think it weakens families in the exact same way that the rise of no-fault divorce has weakened them in the last half-century. I am incredulous that proponents of gay marriage are so smugly dismissive of that concern.  They cannot possibly know how such a change will affect the societal template of what it means to be married, to be a family, to be parents. 

Marriage does not ratify a relationship between two people.  It establishes a family, something that society is based on.

I’m not opposed to gay marriage because I hate gay people or because I want them to be miserable.  I am opposed to it because in my lexicon, it is not marriage.  My instinct for civility and my desire for everyone to be free to find joy urges me to let people do what they will.  But my certainty that this change in the law would harm families overrides that instinct.

I suppose it is a certainty of the human condition that no one considers himself a bigot.  To the extent that a man is bigoted (from the perspective of others), he surely see himself as misunderstood and (more to the point) correct.

I will be voting “No” on question 6, and this is why.

 

The Scale of Almost Everything

This time with annotations (you probably saw the old one here).

I love that it has "Minecraft World" as an object.

And holy scary invertebrates, did you know there was such a thing as a 3 meter earthworm?

Go here right now, and spend ten minutes wondering at the scale of the known universe. Click on the items to get little fact window pop-ups.

Cool Things Make Me Happy

OK, so I love Maps.

And Weather.

I have *TWO* Weather Maps permanently listed in my drop-down address bar in my browser (Weather Underground and Weather.com).

But this map may be the coolest weather map in the history of weather maps.

Sure, zoom in an look at the Hurricane Winds.  Then look at *your* town.

Happy Birthday Sam!

These are some photos of Sam at High Adventure camp a few weeks ago.  He's doing a high ropes course here, they also did caving, rappelling, rafting, kayaking.

Today will be his first church dance!

We are excited he's getting all grown up. :)

Better Gardening with Tools

 Jennilyn is away at her Sister's, watching the kids while Lu and Bob are traveling.  I have a habit I've tried to sporadically cultivate over the years of undertaking some ridiculous project while Jenni's away; I want her return home to be something of a wooing venture.

In the past, the projects have included ripping out an entry closet, building shelves into rooms,cleaning out the garage.

This year, she's told me several times about wanting to get rid of several bushes in our front yard.  I always fuss at Jenni when she goes after large plants without me home.  She used garden shears in the past to try and take off limbs, rather than the lop shears.

This is a pair of garden shears

See the hook? For lopping off things!

She makes fun of me for knowing the difference.  But seriously, have you ever tried to saw at a piece of wood with a pair of scissors?  I admire her vigor, but worry about blisters!

So I applied myself in a vigorous fashion, in honor of how hard my wife works at things. I lopped with great vigor, soon exposing the center of the bush.  But I quickly reached a point where I couldn't get the lop shear hook around the central limbs, there were too many intervening scraggly twigs.

I retreated to the garage (which is still pretty clean from the last out-of-town trip Jennilyn took!) and considered what else I had that could take out thick limbs with limited access.

And I beheld my shelf of power tools!

 Sawzall!  Is there any one of life problems you can't solve?

As I removed great sections of this offending plant, I found that several vines of honeysuckle were strangling the other bushes that we wanted to keep.  I gathered great armfuls of vines, and trudged away from the house, pulling vines off of the bushes and out of the ground as I went.

I reached a point where I had pulled about fifteen feet of vines out, but their collective grip on the bushes they'd infiltrated made it impossible for me to pull them any further.  But that's OK, I had a horsepower solution to this plant-related problem.

I shut the vines in the back door of our van, and drove away. Nearly forty feet of honeysuckle are no match for my small-block Ford V-8!

Take that, invasive vines!

Once I was done, I stopped to review my work.  The gap where a huge bush was now vacant made me happy.

And I was at once paralyzed with the a ridiculous fear; what if I cut out the wrong bush?!  I knew there some Jenni wanted to keep.

 So I spoiled the surprise and texted her a photo.

*whew* I got the right plant.

The two blades on the left are the ones I used this morning.  If you look close, you can see the teeth on the blades are worn completely flat.  It was worth getting that thing down to ruin them!  I had to run to Home Depot for a A/C filter anyway, so I picked up a new package of wood blades, one pictured on the left, the model is appropriately called, "The Ax."

There are two bushes left out front that have to come down, after all.

Beach Day

 We got to the beach nice and early.  There was just a few families on the whole beach.

 After a few hours, the beach got more crowded, and the kids got sleepy after we ate lunch.

 I really do derive a special glee from taking pictures of my kids when they've fallen asleep.

Sam made some friends, too.

The minute I was getting ready to call the kids in from the water to go home, thunder rumbled across the beach and the guards closed it.  So we got stuck in a little traffic leaving, but it was a great day.

Happy Birthday Max!

I don't have the full archive of pictures, but I have a few that I've been scanning.  Look!

You were born the month before your Mom graduated from college.  We lingered in Provo for a few more months, then moved to Maryland.  Here we are posing on the steps with your Uncle John and Jen, with baby Alice, right before we left Utah.

We returned to Utah for a reunion in the summer of 1996.  This picture has the distinction particularly of showing *EVERY*one of us closing our eyes at the exact same time.  Except you, I think, you must be telling us to look at the camera.

 Christmas, later that year (1996).  I remember those matching pajamas!  I think Roxie Jane *might* have still been wearing one of the girl's just a few years ago.

Finally, here you are on your first day of first grade, September 1999.  The time has flown by.

We love you Max!  Happy birthday.

Malaria Day Three; Ibuprofen is Magic

The best news this morning; my blood test was negative for Malaria critters!  I still have to stay until I take my last dose of choloroquine tomorrow, but after that, I can go home!

Well last night was interesting.  The first thing that I want to point out is how *uncomfortable* it is when you have a fever.  No wonder sick babies cry so much!

After I checked in yesterday, I got my first dose of chloroquine, but I also got some ibuprofen.  An hour later, I felt pretty normal.  But over the course of the evening, my fever came back.  This morning, it was all the way up to 101.2, I felt like hammered dirt.

600 milligrams of motrin later, my fever is down and I'm feeling human again.

A super violent thunderstorm blew over last night, and a fire alarm went off. The storm was pretty, but the alarm was obnoxious.  Walking around an enormous empty building while a disembodied voice warns you to evacuate...I felt like I was in a Science Fiction movie.

A side effect of the Chloroquine is increased bruising.  So far it is the only side effect I've experienced. This is from this morning's blood draw for the Malaria smear.  I've never seen my skin that particular shade of blue before.


Can't wait to go home tomorrow!

Record-setting Anniversary

It was a bright sunny day for a wedding.

Too sunny, actually.

It broke records all over Maryland, though you can't tell from the DC weather station.

Jennilyn was a trooper trying to keep the newlyweds looking comfortable for their photos.

Malaria Watch Day Two; No Longer Watching.

I woke up this morning feeling fine.  I had a low-grade fever at 5:30am, but went on to work.

I got a call at 10:15 from a 301 Area code, and had a feeling it was bad news.

"Your blood smear this morning was positive, how fast can you get back to the NIH?"

*sigh*

So here I sit, dosed with my first round of Chloroquine (the side effects look pretty awful, but at least they'll be temporary).

I'm not supposed to check out until 48 hours from now at the earliest, after I have my last dose of the medication.

But I also can't leave until I have two successive negative blood smears for malaria.

First of all, let me assure you this does not mean the vaccine has failed.  I was in a group that took a lower dose of the vaccine, the researchers thought it would probably not prove effective.  So *shrug* I'm a datapoint in *that* part of the study.

Anyone feeling the need to line up and say, "I told you so!" be my guest.  I don't mind.  I knew this was a risk, and I knew this was a good thing, I'm not sorry.

I miss being home, though.  It's so much easier to weather a fever on your own couch.

Can't tell if my growing discomfort is psychosomatic, the onset of the malaria (so far, it's all fever symptoms, achy joints, dry eyes), or the onset of the cure (there are a lot of little malaria bad-guys that are going to die in my blood stream in the next 24 hours, it's going to be uncomfortable while my liver and kidneys flush them out).

If I feel up to it later, I'll write a little about my room.  My roommate. 

Think I'm just going to curl up and take a nap now.

Malaria-watch, Day One

I checked into the NIH last night, and was positive I had the Malaria.

My neck ached, I had a low fever (99.2), my blood pressure (140/95) and heart-rate (100) were elevated.

A few hours later, I was febrile (temp of 100.3); seriously, that's the word the Doctor used to distinguish between the low fever and once I was over 100. So they ordered a blood smear test and gave me some tylenol.  I was certain I would wake up and be confined to the room.

But I woke up this morning and I felt fine! 

I suspect I am walking embodiment of the Hawthorne Effect; I am hyper-aware of every possible malaria symptom now, so every physical manifestation of anything feels like it might be Malaria.  When I clear my throat, if I feel sleepy, if my neck is stiff.

I couldn't find a funny cartoon about observer effects, so here's one about Pavlov instead...

Redwoods!

While in the hills South of San Francisco, the Ritchies took us to a great Redwood Forest Park.

 Sometimes lightning will strike a tree and set the innermost part of it on fire.  Since outside layers are what is really living, the tree continues to stand for years. Which makes for a dramatic place to take a picture!

The grandeur of something this big, this sturdy, was overwhelming.

On the way back to their place for dinner, we saw the tiniest fawn I had ever seen in the wild nursing from its Mom.

Nature is fun!

Never Stop Learning!

In April, I posted about a site where you could self-teach yourself.  But I wished at the time that I could have something like that for learning a foreign language.

And here I have found a website for Learning a language!  A work friend recommended it.

Now I have something *else* to do in my spare time.

Eso si que es!

Surviving Mosquitoes and Posing for Lunch.

I survived the Mosquito Challenge!  Each volunteer was prescribed a tube of Hydrocortisone cream, and I had so many bites (20-25) they gave me an anti-histamine, too.

Two or three hours later, you couldn't even see where I had been bit!   I should have photoed the challenge site when the welts were big and ugly.

Here are some pictures of Suzanna at the cool place the Ritchies found for Emma and Dean's Wedding Brunch.  Suzanna drove almost four hours that day, in record-setting heat, in a stick shift car with no air conditioning.  She's a good sport.

Malaria Update!

Tomorrow morning, at about 5:30am EST, I will be infected with Malaria.  It's part of the Vaccine Trial I volunteered for.  You can read more about the study here.

Friends have expressed concern.  Family have evinced a growing leeriness about my presence.

First of all, it is nearly impossible for me to infect anyone else.  Go read the wiki article about Malaria, it's not "contagious" like a virus. I would have to be bitten by a mosquito of a particular breed, "the definitive hosts for malaria parasites are female mosquitoes of the Anopheles genus."   It's not a mosquito that breeds in Maryland.  So you can't get Malaria from me, and unless you show up with a jar full of non-native mosquitoes, I won't be a vector for your infection either.

I've also been asked about recurrence; Malaria never goes away, right?
 
Not the kind I will be exposed to; I am being bitten by mosquitoes that have the most serious type of malaria, P. falciparum.  That's serious and all, but it means I will not be at risk to suffer a recurrence; if I get it, they treat me, and it's done.  Check it out;

Recurrent malaria

Malaria recurs after treatment for three reasons:
Recrudescence occurs when parasites are not cleared by treatment (See the post-infection process below)
Reinfection indicates complete clearance with new infection established from a separate infective mosquito bite.
Relapse is specific to P. vivax and P. ovale and involves re-emergence of blood-stage parasites from latent parasites (hypnozoites) in the liver.

I'll get bit today.  Malaria has an incubation of 7 to 21 days.  Starting Tuesday July 17th, and for the following two weeks, I will be sleeping in the hospital.  I can leave during the day, but if I start to exhibit any malaria symptoms, they'll keep me.  They'll test me daily for Malaria, and once I test positive, they will treat me for it until I test negative twice in a row.

So I won't experience Recrudescence.  I can't have a relapse.

It's a *little* worrisome, but seriously, life is a serious of calculated risks anyway.  If this works, I did a little tiny bit to make the world tremendously safer.  If it doesn't, *shrug* I'll be feverish for a few days and get paid very well for it.

And hey, free orange juice.

Like Tree Rings. Only with Hydrocarbons...

I don't know how much longer we'll be keeping this.  Poor van, it's seen some rough use.

We've owned it since before Roxie Jane was born.  She's never known a day that the Big Mormon Wagon (license plate) wasn't in our stable of vehicles.

It blew a radiator line just as we were approaching the crest of Parley's Canyon East of Salt Lake, and then coasted the 7 or 8 miles down into the city.

Caught on fire on the way home from North Carolina (where we got the Spencer Yacht logo on the right window), which fire was extinguished by two good-hearted strangers (with extinguishers!)

We've put almost 150,000 miles on it.  Now the brakes are failing.  But I wanted to have a record of all the things it said for us.

We were members of Port Discovery for a year.  Were members several times of the Baltimore Aquarium. 

We are proud of our kids scholastic achievements, proud to be BYU alumni, proud to be from Harford County and to be seen in Aberdeen.

We've camped in it, driven loads of youth dozens (hundreds?) of times to the temple, to the church, to parks, the bay, the river.

We were glad to have its use, even though we've used it up.

Landbeck Women

 My brother-in-law Erik throws a huge cookout every June, his annual Summer kick-off tiki party.  We gather at his house the day after to eat leftovers and celebrate Father's Day.

Here we have three generations of women who married John S. Landbeck.

 This is kind of a funny picture of Grandma Billie, but if you look close over Jenni's shoulder, you can see David Babcock.

It amuses me to catch my kids doing similar things.  Roxie Jane and Emma both sit at the table with their left foot on their chair, their left arm around their left knee.  Seeing Emma and Suzanna relaxing by interlocking their fingers behind their head was just a cute moment.

Banana Slug!

I snapped this the morning of the California reception to show Suzanna.  It was on the stairs going up to Emma's new in-laws' house.

Of course, I can't entitle this blog without hearing the "RingRingRingRingRingRingRing" of a previous meme...

So Many Things to Like About this Picture

I Love to See...Going Inside Again in Ten Days

From last month's trip, it was a joy to be here with my children. Looking forward to going back later this month!

Once in a Lifetime Things

This is what we will be looking for on Tuesday Night next week.  The next time it happens, it will be 2117!  For context, Haley's Comet will be visible again in just 49 years, on 28 July 2061.

Time lapse photo of Venus's transit across the sun in 2004

Most of us have seen a Lunar eclipse.  In Maryland, we were too far East to see any of the recent solar eclipse.

But the transit of Venus across the face of the sun, we're here and alive for this one!

Last week, while cleaning the garage, I began to assemble all of my old welding stuff for Sam to have access to in the Fall when he starts school at Harford Technical.  I found my welding hood, and some replacement lenses.  We'll share it around if anyone wants to come by and see the sights after 6pm.

Fogbow

No rain this morning, just an awesome low-level fog that prismed up this great rainbow to watch on my way to the NIH for my 5th of 6 malaria vaccinations!

Woot!

The Downfall of Western Civilization

I've seen these on cars before, and thought they were silly.

But at the Home Depot the other day, stopping by with my son to fill out a job application, I saw *TWO*!

They weren't together, either.  One pulled in ten minutes after the other.

Get Your Grammar Right

This article, and the article follow-up, are interesting reading for word nerds like myself.

Whether you agree with the author or not, unexamined speech is just monkey noise!

Learning Stuff

Got a strong recommendation for this website as a source of do-it-yourself education.

I'm thinking the next time Sam has a math question, we're going to go here first.

Happy Birthday to US!

Twenty-three years has been awesome, and not nearly enough time. I am grateful Jennilyn likes to take pictures! Temple visits! Holidays! Photobombs! Missed cues! Today is our family birthday. It was "born" on April 19th, 1989.
There have been lots of smooches. Lots of smiles. Lots of great photo edits! But never enough of her, never enough of us. I feel like I will live forever, just to love her.

Happy Anniversary!