Dan Pallotta

2.04.2005

Friday, February 4, 2005

Thank you for the many supportive e-mails in response to yesterday's post. I love hearing from you all so keep writing. Wish I could respond to all the e-mails, but its not possible in any meaningful way. Please know that I read every one.

Beyond my feelings about the President's stance on gay and lesbian marriage, there was something much larger going on within me as I watched his address. I remember when I was a kid - 6 or 7 - every night my parents would watch Walter Cronkite. It was always stories about the Vietnam War. Images of soldiers and helicopters and fires. Walter Cronkite always had the same tone of voice. I recall this feeling - hard to describe - not just that all this news was sad, but that the world was a boring place. Nothing ever changed in the Walter Cronkite world. It was a monotone, monotonous, same-story-over-and-over-again world. It was a broken record. It was lifelless. Mind-numbing. Demoralizing. Rusted, is the image that has come to mind to me all these years. Nothing ever changed and nothing ever would. Whoever was running the Walter Cronkite world wanted it to stay that way. I had no interest in this world. Bored me to tears. It was so unimaginative. Dull. Stiff. Rigid.

I remember my friend Bobby's Da - I never really knew what he looked like because every time I went over there his head was behind the newspaper, reading about the state of the stasis, instead of playing with Bobby.

And most of all, this world was authoritarian. "This is the way the world is and this is the way the world will always be and don't mess with it."

George Bush's speech brought back all those same feelings - the imposition of a stasis. While he talked about hydrogen cars and he talked about AIDS, he said nothing exciting about either of those things. He pointed to no daring adventure on which we could all embark to do anything about these things.

The difference between him and, say, Walt Disney, was Walt Disney showed up on TV every Sunday night and said, "Here's a map of DisneyWorld - here's what it's going to look like, here's what you will be able to do there, and this is the date when it will open." Steve Jobs says, "this is the amazing stuff you're going to be able to do with you movies and pictures and music with the new software and this is when it will ship." John Kennedy said, "We are going to go to the moon and return safely to the earth and we are going to do it before this decade is out." (paraphrasing) And we did. George Bush says maybe we'll go back to the moon in twenty years, maybe not.

I don't want to live in the Walter Cronkite world. I don't want to sit back and do nothing bold for fear that we might make a mistake, or that we might not meet our goal. I'd rather have a hundred interesting failures than never to try anything new. It is an oppression of the most severe kind to take away peoples' imaginative sensibilities. But this is what the system is doing to us - repeating to us over and over again that everything is the same and everything is going to stay the same, with maybe some new paint on the trim, like a few changes to the tax code - isn't that exciting? Chnages to the tax code are to the human spirit what walking is to an eagle.

If we really want to bring freedom to all the world we have to free peoples' imaginations. We have to free our own. We have to stop the interminable stasis. Not to have a dream is a horrible thing, and right now, America has no dream. America needs a dream. America needs a hundred of them.

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2.03.2005

Thursday, February 3, 2005

Last night, in his hour-long littany of his own personal certainties, the President stated that, "...we must never turn away from any citizen who who feels isolated from the opportunities of America." This came just three paragraphs after he stated that, "For the good of families, children, and society, I support a consitutional ammendment to protect the institution of marriage."

My partner and I watched the President's hour-long list of his personal certainties, then we sat down at the dining room table.

We have begun the process of adopting a child. We spent the last week gathering photos of the two of us with our families, with our nephews and nieces, our friends, our grandparents, and the God-parents to be of our adopted child for purposes of creating little photo books that will go out to potential birth mothers from whom we might adopt, so they can get a snapshot of our lives. All week we were running back and forth to Kinkos making laser copies, ordering prints, cutting copies to fit the books, and buying orange and blue yarn to hold the books together - orange and blue to match the orange and blue lettering we used in the book. Last night, after the President's address in which he completely isolated us by telling us all that the good of children and families would be harmed if we were ever married, we sat down at the dining room table for two hours to paste in the pictures, punch holes in the pages, and tie them all together with the blue and orange yarn. When we were done, we had twelve little books sitting on the table ready to go out to whoever might have an interest in allowing us to be the parents of their baby for life. Those books sit on the table as a symbol of our love for that child, and our hopes and dreams to build the same kind of family and life to which all the rest of America, and indeed, Iraq, and Iran, is entitled.

Prior to the President's address, I spent the day packing up the room in our home that has been my office to make room for the baby - for a crib, baby blankets, toys, and stuffed animals - a metaphor for making room in our own lives for the sacred presence of a new life.

Today my partner is heading out to buy groceries to bring to a school in Watts tomorrow where he is teaching two classes to elementary school students on how to prepare vegetables and eat a more healthy diet.

Who the hell are you, Mr. President, to tell me or anyone else that my life with my partner is a danger to children, families and society? You who want the state to stay our of peoples' lives? You who talk about a free society - an "ownership society," where people control their own destinies. Who the hell are you and on what authority do you infringe upon my sacred right to be a father and to love another human being? Who made you an authority on what is good for children? Who made you an authority on what will be good for my children?

For that matter, Mr. President, who made you an authority on how we will achieve peace in this world, or how we will expand the economy, or how we can best secure the future of all the nation's children? What great goals have you set for the end of AIDS in the world or the end of hunger in the world on a definitive timeline? What timeline have you set for curing cancer or ending homelessness in the United States? What deadline have you set for the transformation of the American automobile fleet to hydrogen or solar power? Everything is off in the distance, on some horizon for which you cannot be held accountable. You are all full of confidence when you talk about far-away abstractions like liberty for all the world, or when you get on your moral high horse to invade my home, but where is your chutzpah when it comes to setting some specific goals that can be measured on your own watch?

Why don't you go pick on someone your own size? Instead of preying on my partner and I and our new little nursery, why don't you set a date for the end of world hunger, and really do something for children? Why don't you use the power of your office to make sure all kids in America get health insurance? I'm quite sure that a little kid dying of leukemia today with no access to health care would regard that as a helluva lot better thing to do for children than using the power of your office to come after me and my partner. And I'm sure his parents would regard it as a helluva lot better way to protect their family.

I will not subjugate my future to your confidence. I will not abandon my children to your certainties. I will not betray my family to your arrogance.

You go too far, Mr. President. We might be able to put up with you flushing our international reputation down the drain, but we will not put up with the likes of you impugning our ability to raise children or to love one another. There is a point in every abusive relationship at which even the most self-loathing person rises up and says "enough is enough." And once they have, there is no amount of manipulation that can stop them. They are a force to be reckoned with. They are an idea whose time has come.

Pick on someone your own size. If you continue down this path, you may well find that, unbeknownst to you and your kind, you have Mr. President, you have.

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2.02.2005

Wednesday, February 2, 2005

What makes you think that Howard Dean's ideas or George Bush's ideas or Paul Wolfowitz's ideas for how the country ought to be run and in what direction it ought to be headed are any better than your own?

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2.01.2005

Tuesday, February 1, 2005

Happy February. Woke up this morning feeling that I just don't fit in. As if this should be a revelation! Ever feel that you just don't fit in - that you would love to live in a fantastic world where we are feeding the poor and healing the sick and building solar cars and testing the limits of our potential and supporting one another in reaching our dreams, but no on else seems to want to create that kind of a world? That your tendency to see things differently and to wonder why is unwelcome in a world of rigid certainty and unwillingness to change? Like you were born a hundred years too soon or something? Well then it is a good day for another serving of Emerson's essay on self-reliance. I'll pick up where we left off last week:

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day.__'Ah, so you shall be misunderstood.'__Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood..."

Have a good day today and remember that you are not alone. There are a lot of us who feel we don't fit in. And deep down, the ones who do everything right so they'll fit in - they don't feel like they fit in either.

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1.31.2005

Monday, January 31, 2005

A few tips for having a happy day today:

1. Don't try to solve all the future problems of your life, or even the problems you are imagining for yourself tomorrow;
2. Especially don't worry about money or about being homeless - just for the day today. You are free to go back to worrying about those things tomorrow if you decide you really like it;
3. Don't torture yourself, punish yourself, be mean to yourself, or be judgmental of yourself. If you do, don't torture yourself, punish yourself, or be mean to yourself because of it;
4. Don't call yourself stupid;
5. Don't compare yourself to other people. You have no idea what their lives are really like, or what pain they carry inside;
6. Don't judge other people, or yourself;
7. Enjoy something in nature;
8. Call someone you love out of the blue and say something really nice to them;

Happiness is like anything else. If we focus on it we can bring it into being. This is all a reminder to myself at 4:30 in the morning when I'm worrying so much I can't sleep. So definitely don't compare yourself to me! There, I'm reminded. Hope it was as good for you as it was for me. Back to sleep now.

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Sunday, January 30, 2005

A great reminder from a freind of mine:

Anxiety is a sign that you have lost faith.

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