Tanka challenge 11/5/08

Another grey dawn
Slinks across the dark hills
To prod her awake.
Hope is a cruel falsehood
In the face of injustice.

They're going to be counting votes on this one for awhile yet....
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081105/ap_on_el_st_lo/ballot_measures

Amid the wailing and gnashing of teeth

Excerpted from: http://cbs5.com/politics/proposition.8.results.2.856642.html
""We pick ourselves up and trudge on," Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said Wednesday when it appeared the measure was headed for passage. "There has been enormous movement in favor of full equality in eight short years. That is the direction this is heading, and if it's not today or it's not tomorrow, it will be soon."

Opponents of the gay marriage ban said Wednesday that legal challenges had already been filed with the state Supreme Court.

San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera along with Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and Santa Clara County Counsel Anne Ravel filed petitions asking the high court to invalidate Proposition 8.

Legal analyst Melissa Griffin told CBS 5 that there was a substantial argument being made by the trio that the matter of same-sex marriage was too weighty to be decided by a ballot proposition.

In legal terms, it's called a "revision," said Griffin, a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner. "This is a substantive change to the constitution and a change of that nature - a revision - has to be made with a constitutional convention," she summarized.

That argument had been made by opponents before Prop. 8 even went on the ballot, but a state Supreme Court justice rejected it at the time, ruling it a moot point because the people hadn't yet voted on the measure. There was no controversy, so nothing to decide, the court effectively said." (Emphases mine.)

And from http://www.mydesert.com/article/20081104/NEWS0301/81105015/1006/news01 "Attorney General Jerry Brown ended speculation about the legality of the 18,000 same-sex marriages conducted across the state since the ban was lifted on June 17 saying the state would honor those licenses."

“This office will defend in court the marriages that have been contracted at the time that the right to same-sex marriage was the law of California,” Brown said at a press conference Wednesday."

I've never worn white. No one has ever gone to his knees and begged me to make him happy. Not to me. Nor, as I stare down the barrel of my fiftieth year on this planet, is anyone likely to. I have spent decades of my life alone. Decades. Once again, I will go home to an empty apartment. I will eat something. I will lie alone.

Not a day goes by that I don't know I'm going to die alone, just as Rich did, undiscovered until someone wonders why I'm not at work or what that funny smell from next door is.

No one to say, "How was your day?" No one to fight over whose turn it is to do what chore. No one to curl up against in the dark. No one to put up with my special brand of shit til death do us part.

Regardless of what the vote tally looks like at this hour, if you are in a committed relationship with the love of your life, your lot is better than many - and you have people in your corner. 

The fight is not even close to being over.

Now go kiss your beloved. Because you CAN.

Michael Crichton.

I was twelve. I was bored. Mom handed me a battered paperback copy of The Andromeda Strain and said, "if any of the science is over your head, come ask me about it." 

I read it. We had a discussion on what pH was and why the two virus survivors' blood pH prevented Andromeda from killing them. Then I said, "So if I had the hiccups for three days, it couldn't kill me, right?" At which point, Mom shrugged and said, "Who hiccups for three days?" 

I found the address of the publisher in the front of the book. I sat down at Dad's old Royal and pounded out a letter to the author, introducing myself and posing my question.

He wrote back. He thanked me for writing. He was impressed that I'd come up with the question, and he said, yes, the physical activity of hiccupping would temporarily alter blood pH and prevent the virus from killing me - until I stopped hiccupping, of course.

The original letter is long gone, lost in a move. But I remember Michael Crichton's kindness to a curious kid. He will be missed.