tonight we saw gillian welch and david rawlings from 10 feet away. so good. why don’t i have any of their cds? imagine the stage at cats cradle with an oriental carpet and two mic stands, and a table with a small box with drawers on it. that’s all. jane and i saw them at the carolina theater in durham last fall in the balcony way up. this was very different. palpable.
leaving for new orleans tomorrow. that i’m missing the sils end of the year picnic almost makes me want to cry. but i am also looking forward to re-visiting one of my favorite cities with jane during jazz fest. as is my habit i’ve yet to pack. i return thursday, bringing back my parents from the airport for graduation/mother’s day weekend. crawfish etouffee here i come.
why can’t we (the “we” who are in our mid-twenties) realize right now there is no chance we’ll be rich or famous, that it probably doesn’t matter, and that wishing we were richer or famouser is probably about the least effective means of becoming richer or famouser? what would that do to our “J-Curve” if we could largely avoid the 22 to 42 downward trend in perceived happiness and just focus on solving problems creatively and spending time with friends? just a thought…
so i played in a co-ed kickball tournament with the silskids this morning. we were the “dewey decimators.” we were thoroughly decimated. but we had a lot of sweaty fun. allison even shed blood for the team. the weather was stunning, high 80s by the time we finished. we drank smoothies in the pit afterwards. eventually i corraled the remaining “ballers” (jane, patrick, allison, and kathleen) into my car and went out to the barbecue joint on weaver dairy road, as suggested by todd. which i highly recommend. not so much because their pulled pork was any better than any other pulled pork i’ve ever had, but because they served their bbq with “pickles” (cucumbers in vinegar) and because we sat outside eating and drinking and talking in the shade and in the glorious heat without any urgency or sense of impending anything.
“I feel that most people would consider marriage more than just a metaphor. Whether viewed in a religious, legal, or romantic light, I think that marriage for most people represents a covenant that people come to rely on, and can become the underpinning of their lives and sense of identity.” —el jefe
counterpoint
a covenant is just a fanciful word for contract–one in which almost any two people could go out monday morning and have a marriage license in a matter of hours.
as current american heterosexual marriages only work out 51% of the time, i’d say that’s a damn shabby covenant. it seems that marriage is a dying standard, and knee-jerk heterosexuals want to make it even more exclusive and restrictive.
i can tell you what effect that has on me. i’d sooner do anything else than get married and be associated with a covenant of discrimination. throwing out the baby with the bathwater…? what baby?
and that’s what’s probably going to happen. marriage will either be forced to expand (albeit begrudingly) or it will dig in its heels and be obsoleted by civil unions in their innumerable variations.
one of my favorite websites, Merrian Webster Online, just had an “extreme makeover.” which makes me think about the other online reference materials that i use daily:
