The green vans of the heating contractors are outside again. I wonder if this means the heat and water will disppear again without notice. Pavlovian conditioning - the mere sight of the green vans makes the heat shut off whether the guys touch it or not.
I ran into Tom & Julie this morning at Starbucks. Julie may be the last person in America who believes I can write this damned novel. I don't believe it anymore. She brought me a clipping from US News about how the Christian Right is opposing environmental education in the Arizona schools on the grounds that environmentalism is paganism. This is the same state that banned Julie's book on the Salem witch trials because they didn't want to teach kids to become witches. Remind me not to move to Arizona.
Safe surfing. Last night as I rambled the web, I ran across a fair number of sites claiming to be safe surfing and dedicated to providing/promoting safe surfing. I'm glad there are so many people keeping the fiber optic cables clean for kids, but I get nervous about this self-censorship thing - let's censor ourselves before big brother does. I can see the well-meaning motivation but I also see the danger of creating a society so repressed that all the vitality drains out by itself without the government having to lift a finger.
For the record: I am lesbian. Two of my five brothers are gay. Just by putting those two sentences in this journal (not to mention countless other references) I've violated some people's notion of safe surfing.
For all I know, the folk in Arizona regard the Audubon Society as unsafe surfing since concern for the environment is pagan.
Safe is such a Motherhood and apple pie word. Who can be against something safe? But in our zeal to protect our children from the truly dangerous things out there, let's not make ourselves so bland, innocuous, stifled, and lifeless not to mention closeted, that we fade away.
I can't believe I just wrote the above. But so it goes. I wish you all risky surfing in challenging waters.
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