It's just a reasonable facsimile

I was reading with interest Mary Baker Easton's most recent posts about churches and weathervanes (they are actually one right after the other on her blog).

She didn't mention it, but I do believe the weathervane from the historic Old South Church was once stolen and has been since replaced with a copy (see photo, from when the bell tower was being replaced in Sept. 2006, or photo on the website, with it in place).

Well, the theft of historic icons is nothing new, but I still think it takes a lower form of life to steal from a church (although that's hardly new, either). And I'm not even religious.

Yes, I guess the First Parish Church of Newbury should sell its weathervane and try to make the best with the proceeds. It pained me to go in there a couple of months ago for Sunday service and see how few people were in attendance.

Triple-D, who is why I went in the first place (she was trying to find a church that "fit"), sniffed contemptuously at the paltry number of parisioners present. Her church of choice, Unity on the River, is apparently always full.

"My church has (modern) music!" she exclaimed. Apparently the whole experience was much to "Catholic" for her (the church is United Church of Christ, or UCC). Help save Triple-D from traditional hymns and get her that zydeco beat going.

Is religion also been co-opted by the cappucino-sipping, khaki-wearing, need-for-constant-amusement (or validation) crowd that everyone's been carrying on about? It's just a thought, being thrown out there for consideration ...

A spiritual morning in Newbury

I had an epiphany of sorts this morning. I was at the First Parish Church in Newbury talking with the church pastor, Nancy Haverington and church deacon Erin Stack. The church is again very involved with the city's celebrations leading up to Earth Day.

I put my notebook away and as often happens, we started talking about stuff. In this case, it was that story I posted a ways back about people leaving the church of their upbringing and seeking another message, or faith, or whatever.

As we went along talking, my eyes teared up and walking back to my car I found that I was close to weeping. It could have been a hormonal flux but there was definitely something else there.

As I said back in the previous post, I'm not particularly religious. But I think that there is something in that building for me.

Perhaps it's those 2 endearing women. Both are intelligent and forthright and warm - hugging me upon both my arrival and departure (I knew both previous to this morning). Bingo! - A caring community!

And I think that this is why people belong to a church, aside from the obvious reason. Maybe Obama had it right but just said it wrong. A hug, a good intelligent conversation and a lot of warmth from a church community (or any community) can go a long way to help alleviate day-to-day stress. And why not cling to that?

Not sure about the clinging to guns part, however - but whatever floats your boat, I guess.

I don't think I wanted to cry because I had suddenly found God. What I had found were truly spiritual people who believe in something I don't necessarily believe in - but who still embraced me, welcomed me and offered me their friendship down the road.

We've got a lot of good people here, doing good things here. We should cherish that.

Diamonds on the soles of their shoes

I was reading this story in today's Daily News, about the Christian Science church closing its doors on High St. and two things came to mind:

1. A church in a town is a business, a local franchise if you will, and

2. SENIOR CENTER

Who has about $900,000 to buy this building for a senior center, before someone else snatches it up?

But back to #1: I find it interesting that people don't think of a church as a business, with legitimate business expenses - and the odd tax break here and there.

Churches have always been about making money - when they weren't being political, that is.

Back in the good old days - that would be Medieval times to me - churches went around collecting tithes from the common folk who could ill afford it, by telling them they would be doomed to eternal hellfire if they didn't fork over their last farthing (or whatever coin they used back then).

That was so the bishops and such could have fur robes to keep them warm and toasty in those drafty buildings. Just look at all that jewel-encrusted finery available to the Pope, for instance. Of course, the lowly vicars and priests were living on moldy bread ...

I've oversimplified to make a point but still, churches (in the forest sense) are big business and they are powerful.

That particular local church isn't making enough money? Get rid of it! ... And on and on it goes.

The flip side

Going back to being in the community garden behind the First Parish Church, Newbury - I was there on Sunday morning when the bell started tolling to tell people it was time to get to church.

And although I'm not a religious person, it made me kind of sad to think that, not even 100 years ago, a whole community answered to that bell.

You know that famous quote, "Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for you ...?" Well, it means something slightly different than what I'm saying, but somehow it fits in this case as well.

A balanced perspective on a hot topic

Today I went to Sunday worship at the First Parish Church of Newbury.

The Rev. Nancy Haverington, about whom I wrote here, told her congregation that she had abandoned her planned sermon about Ascension and decided instead to address an issue about which she is being frequently questioned: The Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

He is the pastor of a UCC (United Church of Christ) church, as is she. The church, she noted, is standing behind Rev. Wright.

I can't go into it all here, but I did ask Nancy if I could get a copy of her sermon so if anyone wants to read it, I can send along a copy. She is a very intelligent and articulate woman and I admire her greatly.

The gist of the sermon was to impart where the Rev. Wright was right (theologically and politically) and where she thinks he was wrong (being divisive with his message rather than inclusive, for one; I think it's more ego vs. humility myself). Nancy pointed out that there is a fine line between theology, especially Black Liberation Theology, and politics (since most oppression is born of politics).

She also spoke extensively about the history of Black Liberation Theology (for more information/history on this, click here to go to an article called "A Closer Look at Black Liberation Theology" on the NPR website).

Most of all, she said what was great about this country is that, sure, there were mistakes made; but once the 'evil' things the government was doing (Tuskegee Syphilis Study, experiments on soldiers and Native Americans, etc., cited by Rev. Wright) were made public, the result was change and in some cases, legislation.

In China, for instance, she noted, not only would the 'whistle blowers' have been silenced but the 'evil doing' would have continued.

I was moved in sum by the basic delivery of her message - fair and balanced. Rev. Wright, also an intelligent and articulate pastor, could stand to take a page from Nancy's book.

No use in asking the 24-hour cable news networks to do the same.

M. Cook: The Vatican, gay Americans, illusions of acceptance and Newburyport

After what happened in Chile on Monday, April, 12, what I'm about to say will no doubt irk and unsettle some in Newburyport's gay community, their supposed liberal, Democratic, straight friends and allies, and all those still swooning over President Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and so many other Democratic pols who love the gay community's campaign contributions, volunteer energy, and strong voting history, but who also often leave us high and dry if they think being seen as too concerned about gay rights and gay issues might cost them politically.

In Santiago, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Holy See's Secretary of State, in a desperate attempt to deflect attention from the latest international sexual abuse scandal engulfing the Church of my childhood, and perhaps even Pope Benedict XVI himself, claimed the odd and unnatural tradition of celibacy was not what had fueled the Catholic priest sex abuse scandal. The scandal had been caused by homosexuality.

His exact words were, citing data from studies conducted exclusively for and by the Vatican; "Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and pedophilia. But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true. That is the problem".

The problem with Cardinal Bertone's statement, beyond its lame attempt to put responsibility for the scandal on the backs of homosexual men, as opposed to the pedophile priests the Church hierarchy aided and abetted by simply moving them around from parish to parish and country to country, is that virtually all credible psychological and psychiatric studies make a clear distinction between pedophilia and sexual orientation.

Pedophilia, whether directed at male or female children, has nothing to do with sexual orientation. It has everything to do with power and control.

I suspect a big reason why so much of the Church's pedophilia scandal involves young boys is because young girls, especially in the days when I was a kid, were not allowed to participate in the rituals of the Mass.

Had the pedophile priests been given the same access to little girls as they were to little boys, I'm sure you would be seeing many more women coming forward with tales of horrific abuse at the hands of men who were likely neither gay nor straight, but simply sick.

Sadly, the Vatican's attempts to place the blame for its mishandling of these heinous crimes against children on gay men, and to make this a "homosexual" issue as opposed to a "pedophilia" issue, only minimizes and diminishes the very real suffering many girls and women have endured as a result of being mistreated by pedophile and sexually abusive priests.

But back to the Newburyport gay community, its liberal "friends", and Democratic politicians.

Their silence, not just in relation to this latest assault on the humanity of homosexual people by the Vatican, but on so many other issues pertaining to our lives, is truly deafening.

Months passed, for example, before either President Obama or Secretary of State Clinton publicly condemned legislation proposed in Uganda, legislation that was encouraged and promoted by a number of American fundamentalist Christian leaders by the way, that called for gay Ugandans to be sentenced to life in prison, and even death, for engaging in sexual activity with another consenting adult.

The leaders of all the countries of the European Union condemned the Uganda initiative months before the Obama administration even mentioned it publicly.

When President Obama and Secretary Clinton finally addressed the issue, their condemnations of the legislation were, for lack of a better word, toothless in comparison to their European counterparts.

In the wake of Cardinal Bertone's recent comments in Chile, a spokesperson for the French Foreign Ministry, Bernard Valero, said, "France reiterates its resolute commitment to fight against discrimination and prejudice linked to sexual orientation."

As of this writing on April, 18, there has been not even a mention, let alone a repudiation, of Cardinal Bertone's attempt to scapegoat homosexual men for the Church's crimes against children by anyone in the Obama administration or the Democratic or Republican parties. Not that the silence of the GOP is any great surprise.

Even in the American gay community itself, there have been few voices raised to challenge what is just the latest attempt by a powerful institution to scapegoat and blame gay people for social ills and problems that are, when all is said and done, none of our makng.

Anyone who doubts this scapegoating isn't both deliberate and carefully thought out, whether it's done by the Vatican, Christian fundamentalist extremists in this country, or right wing politicians like Sarah Palin who appeal to the most ignorant and base instincts of the electorate in pursuit of power and self-aggrandizement; and anyone who thinks this kind of scapegoating isn't resonating loudly in some quarters with some people here in America, is a fool.

After nearly two decades of involvement in the fight against AIDS and for the civil rights of gay people, I thought, when I stepped back a little more than a decade ago, the worst of the fight was behind us.

But with all that is happening today, I would say another intense round in the fight is well underway - at least here in America and countries like Uganda, Iran, and China.

Sadly, I think too many gay Americans, especially those affluent enough to live in a community like Newburyport, have grown complacent and more interested in assimilation and "fitting in" than they are activism.

In some ways they are not so different from middle, upper middle class, and affluent Jews in Germany in the waning days of the Weimar Republic who also thought they had "arrived" and been accepted.

And we all know what an illusion that turned out to be.

Michael Cook
Nbpt, MA
& PV de Limon, Costa Rica

I'm off to garden

Today is gardening day, instead of the usual Saturday morning.

I expect there to be many, many weeds in our little plot behind the First Parish Church, but our veggies appear to be flourishing.

Or they were, last time I saw them.

I have to note here that I hear that the people who own the property that abuts the former field behind the church really object to having the community gardens there. They think it's too noisy, or intrusive, or something.

This goes back to people doing what they will with their own property and upsetting the neighbors; although I never imagined someone would be upset about a community garden.

Maybe they should stick a windmill in there and see how that goes over ...

Feeding the world

OK, so since Ari brought up lifestyle changes and extra cash available, I have to comment on something.

Years ago my parents sponsored a starving child in some third world country and today I saw an ad on TV imploring people to help starving children in Brazil. If I did indeed give up smoking and lattes, I might consider doing this, EXCEPT -

What's with Brazil? They can't afford to feed their children?

Why do I ask this? WE can't afford to feed our children!

This is a disgrace. I remember being at First Parish Church a couple of years ago and Minister Nancy showing me photos of a poor child the church sponsors.

"Where does he live" I inquired, expecting her to name some foreign locale.

It was somewhere in one of the Dakotas, I think.

Sink me, what is going on here? We've already got hungry kids and now there will be more because who can afford food in this economy? I think my cat eats better than a lot of people living in this country!

(And if I gave up smoking and lattes, I'd be even meaner than a junkyard cat.)

Elementary notions aside, I agree with the sentiment expressed in this Fourth of July "Our View" column in the Daily. Well, I agree with the first bit (the Declaration of Independence) and the last sentence:

But let today's holiday serve as a reminder that we need to consider very carefully the person we choose as the 44th president in November.

Everything in between sounds like what was taught in elementary schools, in the 60s.

Somehow, as was the case in 1776, the right person or persons have stepped forward when the country was most in need of strong leadership — Abraham Lincoln when the slavery question threatened to tear the nation apart; Franklin Roosevelt who saw it through the Great Depression and World War II.

Well, not the part about Roosevelt, necessarily - we never got that far in history in elementary school. I'm always amazed when people say "so and so really stepped forward." That's their job! What was Lincoln, who was not so much into freeing slaves in any case, supposed to do, hide in the corner with his blankie while states seceded from the union?

As usual, I digress (and take a shot at our beleaguered paper of record). If I'm not willing to fork over 50 cents for a Daily News, I'm hardly likely to fork over $1.50 for some other publication.

Unless it's good for some potshots (might be tax deductible).

Community garden

I think I mentioned before that my friend Elizabeth Rose and I have a plot in the New Eden Collaborative gardens behind the First Parish Church.

I think I'm supposed to be keeping a journal of events surrounding the creation of these gardens ... well actually, they were there last year, too, but have been re-configured.

So I'm going to log it on here.

March 21: We met at the church for the initial prep meeting.

This involved a discussion over coffee and pastries and then going out to stake out the whole garden and the individual plots.

OK, well ... there were too many men with too many tape measures and too many impatient females.

While the men (and a couple of women) were running about with aforementioned tape measures and green metal stakes (these stakes will become very important later), the rest of us tried to figure out where our individual plots were, based on a site map.

Here's a tip: don't think you know where you're situated before the perimeter measuring is done.

One woman, who shall remain nameless, got so disgusted after she staked off and started to work what she thought was her plot only to discover she wasn't even close that she stalked off in anger, never to return.

Elizabeth and I, and the gardeners to the north and south of us, were equally impatient. We measured and staked and measured and staked and I think once again before it was all done.

Then, when it was all done, our plot was only a fraction of what it should have been.

Oh dear! It turned out the measurement from the back fence was off by 3 feet.

Luckily for us, these people know the meaning of the word "community" and we worked it all out with no residual hard feelings.

Elizabeth and I, tired and dirty, retired to Hana Japan for chirachi. We laughed a lot.

Happy Thanksgiving: message from Jeff Krumrine (edited)

Dear Friends,

Sending [an] Thanksgiving email has become an annual event now ...

This year I continue the tradition of volunteering on Thanksgiving Day that I began in 2005 at a church on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., that served a truly homeless population. My first year I worked security instead of as a food server (because of my size not temperament).

This year, like last year, I will be working at the Immaculate Conception Church here in Newburyport. They will be offering a Thanksgiving meal to anyone in the community from 11:00 AM – 2:00PM as well as delivering meals to those that cannot leave their homes.

Please let anyone you know that may be alone this Thanksgiving that they are welcome to attend. Or, have them call Kathy Heywood at (978) 463-3746 and they can request a meal be delivered to them (In Newburyport only, unfortunately!).

The people I will serve this Thanksgiving will undoubtedly be much different than the folks in Washington, D.C., but I believe that kindness and caring are not dependent on financial need. Like many of you, I have much to be grateful for and I need to be reminded of that on occasion. So I take this day to be thankful through kindness.

My wish for you on Thanksgiving is that you are able to take a moment to celebrate the abundance of food on your table, the family and friends that join with you and the safety and comfort of the home where you gather.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Jeff Krumrine

Newburyport, MA

Thanks to Jeff, Kathy and everyone involved for their giving spirit. I did this one year in Boston - there were hundreds of others also giving their time on a holiday - and it was really gratifying.

My very tangled roots (slightly corrected)

I keep thinking I have to take a day off from blogging then ideas spring into my head and I have to write them before they spring back out again.

That happens a lot and is an excellent reason why I should take the personal recording gizmo out of the drawer, replace the batteries, and carry it around with me at all times.

The sermon at the First Parish Church and the talk about Rev. Wright resulted in a lot of thoughts whirling around (after they had sprung into) my head.

I have mentioned on here before that I am, like Barack Obama, of mixed-race parentage. My mother is English-Irish and my (biological) father is West Indian. The other day a woman from Commonwealth Health asked me what my racial heritage is.

This is a huge question for me since West Indians, of course, do not consider themselves 'African-American' (not being Americans at all, you see).

Anyway, that's not my point.

I have lived always with the understanding that some of my paternal ancestors were black slaves and some were white Europeans.

Despite what you may think, it's not easy knowing that even some of your ancestors were enslaved.

Apart from the obvious dismay, also we can't trace my grandmother's ancestors at all. I have no idea who they were until we get to my great-grandfather, Charles Miller Austin, who was of my complexion (light) and was the result, we always believed, of some kind a relationship between a European planter and what probably by then was a freed slave.

All we know about his father is that his name was William Agard Austin and his wife was Harriet Fields. William's mother was called, "Baba." Sounds a lot Irish to me, but that may be because of the song by the Who, "Baba O'Riley."

BUT - lately I found out that, before Africans were rounded off and shipped 'in bulk' to work the plantations on Barbados, Irish 'rebels' were rounded up by the British government and shipped off wholesale to the island (there is a book about it, called "To Hell or Barbados," which I have yet to buy). How this fact escaped my notice for this long is beyond me.

No record was made of their names and they were given to the planters. Most of them died from heat exhaustion. A brief write-up on being "Barbadosed" can be found here.

This probably is what led to the 'brilliant' idea of importing even more people who were used to heat. I'm sure it was a huge irritant to the English planters that the Irish kept dying on them.

In any case, the Irish and the black slaves, seeing as how they had so much in common at this point, banded together, rebelled together and inter-married. In fact, the patois spoken in Barbados, called Bajan, is said to be a mix of Irish and African speech patterns. Few of these Irish were left to be identified as such by an 1880 census.

What did remain was a small population of poor whites, often called 'redlegs', who may be the descendants of the Barbadosed Irish. Since my great-grandfather, Charles Miller Austin, is referred to in some historical documents as a "redleg,"I can only conclude he was one of these.

He was the first "mulatto" to break the monopoly of white plantocracy in the parish of St. John - he bought Eastmont plantation in 1895 and Malvern plantation in 1910. My brother Miller now owns Eastmont, which is where my grandmother was born, and every member of the family has stock in the plantation land at Malvern. Malvern House was sold off years ago, to the Moravian Church.

So, you see, I realized that not only one part of my ancestry involves slavery - but perhaps ALL of it (on my father's side) does. Which might explain why we also can't trace our St. John ancestors earlier than 1723, when one Charles St. John married Isabella Clarke.

(My grandmother, born Lucy Austin, married Albert St. John. I never knew him; he died when my father was young.)

In stark contrast to my St. John relatives, who want to believe Charles St. John was part of the noble English St. John family - even though we can find no evidence of this in the well-documented St. John family line - I believe he either adopted the name or that was the name given to him (or possibly his father) by the English colonial government in Barbados. They probably worked a plantation in St. John parish.

It's a point of contention.

IC sign turns heads

Alerted by Tom Salemi's post about the P. Preservationist site, I checked it out.

In doing so, I noticed a little blurb at the top of the page about the new sign outside the Immaculate Conception Church, on the corner of Green and High streets.

I had been alerted to this sign, and a general negative reaction to it, a couple of weeks ago. I would go take a photo, but I'm just still too sick.

Let's just say it's rather large and I gather that it lights up at night. I'm really kind of surprised that it's the direction the IC church chose, seeing as how it's ... not in keeping with ... the neighborhood? Good taste? You decide.

I gather that the sign falls under the Dover Amendment, since I can't imagine that it would have been allowed otherwise:

The "Dover Amendment" is the common name for Massachusetts General Law (MGL) Chapter 40A, Section 3, which exempts agricultural, religious, and educational corporations from many zoning restrictions. It allows a facility that provides certain services, educational chief among them, to ignore local zoning laws and build the facility it needs to provide those services. The Dover Amendment has allowed many developers to build facilities that were substantially larger than zoning laws would ordinarily allow or which were inappropriate for the neighborhood. (source: Stepps)

I couldn't find anyone who was willing to criticize it "on the record," so I didn't write it up for the Current.

No place for hate?

This city, Newburyport, is supposed to be no place for hate.

But when the LaRouche people appeared again in front of the Newburyport Post Office, the police informed me that they had a right to be there.

Well ... yes, they have a right to their opinion and to assemble. But as I pointed out to one of the officers, they did NOT have the right to the table they had set up on the public sidewalk. They need a permit from the city for that.

He argued with me. I told him I had been told that by someone in the mayor's office. He told me that if the mayor had a problem with it, he (the mayor) could call the NPD and tell them.

After a while, Nancy Haverington from First Parish Church and Ross Varney from the Belleville Church appeared. I had been talking to one of the men peddling their hate and I was so creeped out that I had to leave (plus I had a lunch date).

As all this was going on, a woman I know pulled up in her car and hailed me. She told me she had sent me a message on Facebook about her encounter with these people and could I do anything?

Later I saw City Clerk Richard Jones and he confirmed that they needed a permit. yay

When I got home, I read my friend's message. One of the men had told her that Obama wants her to get breast cancer and die.

Lovely.

What happened to "No Place for Hate?"

Senzeni Na!

Volunteer Opportunities and
Poverty Awareness Fair
October 15-17, 2009

The name of the fair is derived from the Zulu phrase meaning, “What have we done?” and is hosted by the Social Action Committee of the First Religious Society Unitarian Universalist, Belleville Congregational Church, Pennies for Poverty: 2 Cents 4 Change, Inc., and the Poverty Program.

“It’s going to be a great fair,” says Catherine Yesair Gould of Pennies for Poverty. “We’ve got the Jelly Bean Mystery Auction, the Community Choir coming from Boston and 28 tables by local (non-profit) organizations – it’s going to be a great time.”

Ghlee Woodworth will be signing her new book Tiptoe through the Tombstones (I highly recommend it, by the way) along with Fran Larkin, author of 5 Words and Then Some: How to Succeed in This Big Game We Call Life (sorry, haven't read this), from 12-4 on Friday and on Saturday from 9 a.m.-2 p.m. at the Unitarian Church on Pleasant Street.

Newburyport native Kathy Heywood will also be giving a presentation on the power of music to create social change and Ward 4 City Councillor Ed Cameron will discuss homelessness.

For a full schedule of events and locations, click here.

I felt the earth move, under my feet

Yesterday, prior to going to Port Plaza for lunch at Hana Japan, I was at the First Parish Church of Newbury for many, many hours, staking out my claim.

There was a whole bunch of us there, setting up our individual gardens in the community garden they have set up behind the church. My friend Elizabeth and I are sharing a plot.

Much like how things go when I'm with my sister Helen (the one who lives in Malden), it was an adventure.

Our little rectangle of earth is between 2 others to the north and south, so we helped Pat, our new neighbor to the south, measure out her 2 plots. Then we did ours.

Unfortunately, when Jane to our north was finished with hers, we had lost 3.5 feet in ours.

Oh but we were all so good at working with others that we found the problem, it was fixed and Elizabeth and I weren't squeezed out of however many square feet of garden 3.5 feet by 9 feet is.

I've never been good at math.

I'm looking forward to munching garden-fresh veggies all summer ...

Interesting reading

I found this interesting column listed in, of all places, LinkedIn. Apparently it is what my former colleagues at Community Newspaper Company are reading. How the folks at LinkedIn know or even care what my former colleagues are reading is another subject altogether ...

I'm not particularly religious, so therefore religion is a topic I'm not prepared to tackle (unless it's my neighbor's former boyfriend, who for some reason I could not resist bickering with - in a good spirited way on both sides - at every opportunity).

I do, however, know some people who are switching from church to church, striving to find the "right" fit. In at least one case the search is a source of great anxiety.

Ten things I've done that you probably haven't

I'm caught up in all these ... er, memes? ... going around. So taking a clue from a Facebook friend (actually, he's both a blog and a Facebook friend), I'm 'fessing up to these 10 things (read about what may be the start of all this on author John Scalzi's blog, called Whatever):

1. I spent one night and two days on a replica of a tall ship (I've posted about that before).

2. I once drove from Michigan to Baltimore, MD, to see The Cars in concert (disclaimer: my sister Sarah has done this, since we did it together).

3. I was at game 5 of the World Series in 1984 when the Detroit Tigers finished off their incredible season with VICTORY (again, Sarah was there, too).

4. This isn't something I did (looking at the cat), but I once found a dead mouse down at the foot of my bed, between the top sheet and the blanket. I have no idea how many nights I slept with a dead mouse ...

5. I've lived in 3 different countries, counting the one I was born in but was taken out of when I was 3 months old.

6. I once went to rock concerts on three consecutive nights (again, Sarah ... what can I say? We used to live together!). I think this is another Cars-related entry.

7. I rang the church bell at The First Parish Church, Newbury (MA). It was way cool.

8. I have twice been in the building from which the bridge tenders raise the Gillis Bridge over the Merrimack River between Newburyport and Salisbury. It's tall and right over the middle of the river - and the view is terrific.

9. I was on an airplane one time and I was trying to open one of those packets of salad dressing they give you - and the salad dressing sprayed all over the woman sitting next to me.

10. I nearly emasculated Sen. John Kerry one day outside the State House in Boston. I was walking home, swinging my furled umbrella, and he was behind me. He grabbed it just before the point hit his crotch. At least I think it was Kerry ...

I used to believe I kissed the Pope's ring when my mother and I still lived in Barbados, but my mother recently told me it was just some bishop.

Now that I think about it, these things are probably supposed to be more impressive ... like, hey, I met Mother Teresa while feeding starving children in India ... great, now I'm depressed.

No more lists! Unless you guys want to do it, of course ....

Your weekly dose by Michael Cook

As I read Daniel Potoki's recent column in the Daily News celebrating the success he and his friends believe they achieved by gathering in support of the Fire House Center's production of "The Laramie Project" in opposition to what people feared would be an appearance by members of the cult led by Fred Phelps, known as the Westboro Baptist Church, all I could think was, "Mr. Potoki must be very young."

As much as I abhor all that Phelps and his cult stand for, well meaning people like Mr. Potoki played right into Fred Phelps' hands.

The Westboro Baptist Church is a fringe group, even within the most anti-gay elements of the fundamentalist Right.

The fact Phelps and his cultists have picketed the funerals of brave young Americans who have died in our misguided wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because Phelps believes America has become too accepting of gay people, sent even the most anti-gay bigots within the Religious Right into retreat.

They understood the wacky tactics of Fred Phelps and his followers undermined their equally bigoted, anti-gay agenda.

This is all rather ironic for me.

I'm a fifty three year old gay man who came out of the closet long before doing so was either safe or fashionable.

In the 1990's, as the director of AIDS services at a large, regional non-profit organization, I frequently found myself engaged in bizarre political battles that were as much about "morality" as they were sound public health policy.

Those battles, on two different occasions, resulted in me receiving death threats, one of which was deemed so credible my former boss actually asked me to leave Gloucester and my home for a few days until the authorities could determine the true nature of the threat.

One threat, because it came through the mail postmarked Connecticut, required the Gloucester police to actually contact the FBI.

Those years and those battles taught me a lot.

The first lesson was, "You never back down from a bunch of bullies and bigots. If you do, they will ride rough shod over you for ever."

But another lesson learned, and one perhaps even more important than the one above, was to always pick your battles carefully.

Three summers ago I was living in Provincetown when Fred Phelps and his cult members decided to descend upon America's "gay hometown" in all their bigoted splendor.

When the news of their coming broke, community leaders, activists, and ordinary citizens came together to discuss how best to respond.

Amid the voicing of many opinions, in ways that were often heated and passionate, a consensus emerged that the best way to handle Fred Phelps and his cult followers was to just ignore them.

Word went out throughout the community to do just that.

The cultists arrived, took their appointed place on the green across from Town Hall on Bradford Street, were subsequently ignored and, within a day, they were gone.

Fred Phelps and his followers thrive on attention, publicity, and confrontation. They depend on it to maintain the illusion that they are some kind of legitimate force with which to be reckoned.

Ironically, with no doubt the best of intentions, the Daily News, the Current, the young people who gathered in a show of support and solidarity with gay men and lesbians at the Firehouse, and Mr. Potoki with his column, gave Fred Phelps much more attention and "air time" than he could ever have received if those same people had simply followed Provincetown's example and treated Phelps and his followers as they should always be treated - as people to be ignored and pitied rather than people to be confronted, feared, or rewarded with free publicity they do not deserve.

Now, I sincerely appreciate the show of support for gay people the demonstrators displayed, and I was moved that so many young people would take the time to stand in opposition to the kind of bigotry and hatred espoused by the likes of Fred Phelps and his followers.

But I would urge all those good people, especially those young people, if you truly do care about the rights and equality of gay men and women, to be sure you are registered to vote and that you do vote in November.

Here's why.

The Republican/Tea Party candidate running against John Tierney in the 6th Congressional District race, Bill Hudak, has publicly stated, and had posted on his website, that issues pertaining to people's civil rights should be put to popular votes.

He, of course, was referring to the issue of marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples, but such a stand also reveals a lot about how Mr. Hudak feels about civil rights in general, and it is a troubling stand indeed.

In addition, the GOP candidate for governor, Charlie Baker, has come out publicly in opposition to legislation at the State House that would make it illegal to discriminate against transgendered people, much as it is now illegal to discriminate based on a person's race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin, or because of a disability.

Ironically, when Charlie Baker was CEO of one of the state's largest health insurance providers, he supported and implemented just such an anti-discrimination policy in that organization. But today as a candidate, no doubt trying to woo what I call the "New Right/Tea Party" crowd that has emerged within the GOP, Charlie Baker has endorsed allowing public discrimination against transgendered people to continue with his opposition to a bill that seeks to do for all transgendered people in Massachusetts what Charlie Baker once did for his transgendered employees.

Go figure.

Anyway, this essay was not meant to, in any way, disparage the efforts of those people who gathered to offset the bigotry promoted by the likes of Fred Phelps and others on the American Right.

But it was meant to urge those same people to pick their fights carefully, and one way to do that, and not just in relation to gay rights, is to pay close attention to the stands and positions being put forth by those who are seeking real political power in our state and in this country today.

Educating yourselves about those matters, when all is said and done, is far more important than standing up to a fringe figure like Fred Phelps and his cultists who, in the bigger scheme of things, really are more to be pitied and ignored than they are feared or confronted.


Michael Cook
Gloucester
&
PV de Limon, Costa Rica
formerly of Nbpt

Writing and the nature of nature

I love the meetings of our writer's group. It's a diverse group of people of all ages and genre and every time we get together there is at least one new person to meet. We share leads and tips via email and warn each other about potential pratfalls when we get together. Thanks, guys.

At our meeting last night I was talking with Jean Foley Doyle, who is researching the followup to her wildly successful "Life in Newburyport 1900-1950," which she self-published last year.

As I'm sure a lot of people know, the issues that are "hot" today have been so episodically for a century, at least. She told me about the putting in of parking meters and the taking out of parking meters,hotels, Plum Island being breached at the location of the (now former) church, etc.

I'm certain that someday, something will happen out here on this island that is of a dramatic, if not catastrophic, nature. It's a barrier island, and from what I understand barrier islands were formed by nature to bear the brunt of a storm for the mainland. At least that's the theory; it's rather complex and involves the salt marsh as part of the ecosystem of the barrier island.

All I know is, this business of messing with nature started back in the 1600s when colonists began the slow process of disturbing the delicate balance by farming and grazing animals on the island and the marsh. So, no, it's not a recent problem - although I think building huge houses that block the wind does not help the dune structure any. Those colonists did not have access to the information that we of today have - although they could have taken a cue from the natives.

This all reminds me of that old movie, "Elephant Walk." A woman (Elizabeth Taylor) comes to live with her husband (Peter Finch) at his family's tea plantation in Ceylon. The patriarch of the family had previously decided to build his house over the ancient way the elephants walked on their migration, because he wanted the view or something like that. Maybe just because he owned the property and felt he had the right; I don't recall why. But he sure dissed the poor elephants.

His servants regularly chased the beasts away from their ancient right of passage. This worked for years, until the elephants decided they'd had enough of the bullshit, stormed the house, wrecked it, and took a few people out in the process.

There was some romantic plot in there, too, but all I remember well is the stuff about the elephants and how they took particular vengeance on the old man as he faced them in the end.

Those were just a bunch of pissed off elephants in a movie - this is the ocean.

Get your fresh turkey here (or not)

This story in the Daily News reminded me that my elderly neighbor the other day told me that a pair of wild turkeys were on a nest in the vacant lot that's practically across the street from here (there's a fenced-in yard in between).

He's always telling me that he sees turkeys (and cayotes) all over the place out here, but I've never seen - or heard - a turkey in the neighborhood. I do have a bird feeder, so you'd think a turkey in the immediate vicinity would at least wander over to investigate ...

I did see a cayote one night, but it was down by Angie's service station at the other end of Old Point Rd. Seems to me like the 2 sets of creatures would be incompatible in such a small area ...

Anyway, I do frequently see turkeys roaming around the airport, as it is noted in the DN piece that they do tend to cluster in that area.

The piece also reminded me that I've twice now seen crows harassing a hawk.

A couple of weeks ago on the PI Turnpike, there was a hawk sitting on the top of a lightstand and 2 crows were circling it and diving at it while cawing like maniacs.

Last week, when we were at the community gardens at the First Parish Church, a hawk flew overhead, followed closely by a crow that was diving at it ... I don't know if it was the same hawk (or for that matter the same crows - the first one was joined by a second) but my partner in gardening, Elizabeth, and I had a good laugh about the poor hawk and the daring of the crows.

In both cases, it was a relatively small hawk.

The bunnies are innocent

I apologize to the Newbury bunnies that I yesterday blamed for eating our lettuce plants at the Eden Collaborative Gardens behind the First Parish Church.

Rita at the Herb Farmacy informed Elizabeth and me that the most likely culprit was cutworms - and damn if we didn't find them in our little garden plot, just like she said we would.

They eat young plants with small stems.

Luckily, some of the plants are re-sprouting. Of course, we only discovered this after we had bought even more lettuce plants.

We put cuffs around the new plants - you know what came in handy? Those cardboard cup holders they give you now with hot coffee. I had been saving them because I knew someday they'd be useful for something.

If you love salads, check back with me in a couple of weeks. I'll be up to my elbows in lettuce.

I really have to stop laying blame before I have all the factoids.