Sorry, I Lied.

Just on line to do some plane ticket shopping for a trip in the fall & just thought I'd leave a quick note here -

I promised that my next post would be about kayaking - well, sorry, I lied. Upon further reflection I think that my next post is going to be one in which I try to lay out my thoughts on gay marriage. Believe me, as a straight woman with a fairly conservative upbringing, when I first heard that the mayor of San Francisco was suddenly marrying gay couples, my initial thought was NOT "Oh, that's great", but "Oooh that's just WEIRD". However after a lot of mulling over my thoughts about what makes a marriage a marriage, and how I have seen people, both gay and straight, acting in relationships, and a lot of other stuff, I came to the conclusion that I couldn't muster a rational argument against gay marriage (whereas I can give you some reasons why I believe that polygamy, adults marrying minors, people marrying animals, and all those other things to which the anti-gay-marriage activists claim gay marriage would lead ARE bad ideas - and not just the obvious "because those are really sick", especially, IMHO, the animals & children ones).

I've been considering doing such a post for a long time - but since I'm really a lot more into talking about paddling than politics, I've been sticking with that, and couldn't ever quite find a context for bringing in my thoughts on gay marriage. I know, "it's my blog" - but the fact is that at this point I have a certain small group of regular readers, several of whom are also kayak bloggers, and unless there's been some specific newsworthy event that makes me so screamingly irate at another demonstration of right-wing ugliness that I just can't keep my mouth shut, I'm not going to do the political things. Because a) it actually just pisses me off MORE to write about them, b) I don't feel like it really does as much good for me to write things here as it does for me to write to the politicians or other people who are actually responsible for whatever it is and c) given that at this point most first-time readers are coming in via Kayak Wisconsin, SeaLevel, or On Kayaks (sorry, will link those later this weekend but if you don't know 'em, they're over in my blogrols!) and are probably more interested in paddling than politics, I sort of feel like when they follow a link here & find a rant, it's a bit of an ambush, and probably not even aimed at the proper audience to do any good.

However - all those reasons why I don't indulge in rants unless I just get to the gotta-say-SOMETHING point (which happens!) aside, now that I've posted this thing about the bumper sticker, I feel like this would be the rational time to post this long-considered essay (and it will be an essay) - it would've been out of context before, but now it makes sense to explain.

The actual explanation - well, it'll take some time & some more-disciplined-than-usual writing. I might do this up on the 4th when I have no plans until the evening when I may or may not join some other P 63 hold people to paddle to watch the Macy's fireworks.

side note re the fireworks paddle - ordinarily this isn't something I've EVER thought was a good idea but the proposed plan this year involves paddling to a marina in Jersey WELL before the show starts, then staying there until the initial post-show bigger-boat stampede (which I always assume, unfairly or not, includes a number of motorboaters who've had a few too many beers - those are the ones I'm flat-out scared of) has quieted down. Still a little "mmm, dunno" about it - the 4th of July, Memorial Day, and Labor Day tend to be the 3 days of the year that I just really prefer not to tempt fate & go any major distance in a kayak - at least around here.

OK, gotta go look for plane tix now.