Hey, folks, I've got a link for you to follow.
Contact Governor Schwarzenegger.
I know most of you aren't residents, but As Goes California, So Goes the Nation, right?
...Please?
See, if you go to that link, and click "Have a comment," put in your name and email, and scroll down the "choose your subject" menu to "Gender-neutral marriage/AB 00043" it'll take you right to a handy page where you can send our gov an email. If on that page you click "Pro," and leave him a nice little note asking him to sign--not veto--our run for redefining marriage without gender pronouns (i.e. legalizing same-sex marriage), it would be a very awesome thing of you.
The text of the bill can be found here, and it's very, very good. It makes the argument well.
Please. As wonderful human beings, would you do this?
LOVE!
P.S. I would consider it a wonderful birthday present, if you did.
Friday, September 21, 2007
Monday, September 17, 2007
Jury Duty? Really?
I have to start checking to see if I have to go in for jury duty. I'm scheduled to be on call this coming week.
I don't want to do it.
Now, it's not that I begrudge a civic duty. If they wanted me to, I'd direct traffic or file papers or do something like that. And it's only partly that my partner's Ex-Wife works at the courthouse. But, I mean, really. . . you want me to help decide someone's fate? I don't want to. I'd gladly sit in the court all day for a week, it's just the responsibility of it that I don't want.
Part of it is that I couldn't, in good conscience, recommend that anyone be sentenced to waste in our prison system, whether or not they're guilty of whatever crime, so I'm not going to be able to take the weigh-only-the-facts oath. I am, in fact, a budding prison abolitionist.
Do you think that if I tell them that they'll let me go? Will I have a chance to tell them that?
I'm hoping they'll just dismiss me without cause. I'm 24*, I'm very visibly a total hippie, I've got a nice fat summa cum laude degree, and I'm a secretary for a Fucking Non-Profit™. I'm signed up for newsletters from Unmarried.org, the Human Rights Campaign, the Organic Consumers Association, the Arbor Day Foundation, and the National Home Gardening Club. I've gone to protests, signed petitions, and go to union meetings for fun. This afternoon it's going to be writing-my-state-representatives-time, to try to encourage them in this whole moratorium-on-the-death-sentence thing.
One side or the other is going to consider me a liability, you know?
Here's hoping.
LOVE
EDIT: Called in, and I am off the hook! But you all knew that.
*In five days. Happy birthday to me. . .
I don't want to do it.
Now, it's not that I begrudge a civic duty. If they wanted me to, I'd direct traffic or file papers or do something like that. And it's only partly that my partner's Ex-Wife works at the courthouse. But, I mean, really. . . you want me to help decide someone's fate? I don't want to. I'd gladly sit in the court all day for a week, it's just the responsibility of it that I don't want.
Part of it is that I couldn't, in good conscience, recommend that anyone be sentenced to waste in our prison system, whether or not they're guilty of whatever crime, so I'm not going to be able to take the weigh-only-the-facts oath. I am, in fact, a budding prison abolitionist.
Do you think that if I tell them that they'll let me go? Will I have a chance to tell them that?
I'm hoping they'll just dismiss me without cause. I'm 24*, I'm very visibly a total hippie, I've got a nice fat summa cum laude degree, and I'm a secretary for a Fucking Non-Profit™. I'm signed up for newsletters from Unmarried.org, the Human Rights Campaign, the Organic Consumers Association, the Arbor Day Foundation, and the National Home Gardening Club. I've gone to protests, signed petitions, and go to union meetings for fun. This afternoon it's going to be writing-my-state-representatives-time, to try to encourage them in this whole moratorium-on-the-death-sentence thing.
One side or the other is going to consider me a liability, you know?
Here's hoping.
LOVE
EDIT: Called in, and I am off the hook! But you all knew that.
*In five days. Happy birthday to me. . .
Thursday, September 6, 2007
False October
We had an Autumn day, yesterday.
There's something I'd like to point out, about the Summer we've been having here in lovely, moderate, seasonless California. Namely, the Central Valley thereof. Namely, Turlock. That is this: Turock has had 25 days at or above 100˚F (the usual was 10-14 days of 100˚F+, until Madness set in). There was one week, late June, where the temperature was in the low nineties, but since May, that's it. It's been upper nineties and above. We have broken 4 records, this summer, and that's only the ones I'm sure of and checked, not the ones I suspected. We've had half the normal amount of rainfall, and only a quarter of the regular snowpack. So we're also headed for a drought, to complement all of our wildfires.
And the wildfires bring us here, to Autumn.
After a week and a half of no day where it was under 78˚ by midnight, or after 10 am, and where the high temperatures ranged from 101-106, it has all of a sudden not broken 90 for two days. Yesterday morning it was fucking cold, for August.
The sun was bright, the sky was hazy, it was 62˚F, the sky was hazy and the air was crisp. And smoky.
Because the valley is On Fire.
But at least I could pretend it was because it really was Autumn, and people were building fires in their fireplaces, and the joys of October were just around the corner. It was a very good day, apart from the ash in the lungs.
There's something I'd like to point out, about the Summer we've been having here in lovely, moderate, seasonless California. Namely, the Central Valley thereof. Namely, Turlock. That is this: Turock has had 25 days at or above 100˚F (the usual was 10-14 days of 100˚F+, until Madness set in). There was one week, late June, where the temperature was in the low nineties, but since May, that's it. It's been upper nineties and above. We have broken 4 records, this summer, and that's only the ones I'm sure of and checked, not the ones I suspected. We've had half the normal amount of rainfall, and only a quarter of the regular snowpack. So we're also headed for a drought, to complement all of our wildfires.
And the wildfires bring us here, to Autumn.
After a week and a half of no day where it was under 78˚ by midnight, or after 10 am, and where the high temperatures ranged from 101-106, it has all of a sudden not broken 90 for two days. Yesterday morning it was fucking cold, for August.
The sun was bright, the sky was hazy, it was 62˚F, the sky was hazy and the air was crisp. And smoky.
Because the valley is On Fire.
But at least I could pretend it was because it really was Autumn, and people were building fires in their fireplaces, and the joys of October were just around the corner. It was a very good day, apart from the ash in the lungs.
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