"doo be doo be doo"

I don't know if Old Blue Eyes did a doobie before going on stage, though it's generally accepted that his crooner buddy Bing enjoyed a toke or two.
     Honestly, except for the perpetual indulgences of fear and bigotry marijuana law reform is long overdue. And we don't ahve to wait to enjoy the reform movement. This summer, in northern Ontario province, HempFest will take place from 24 through 27 August, 2006. Since pot smokers can be notorious procrastinaters, now's the time to plan to take part in this high-spirited gathering.
     As you may guess from the map, the gathering is in a cetral a location as anywhere else in the world. It's at least in the north western hemisphere [lucky for blokes like me, who live in that quadrant of the planet, and have the wherewithal to go, I guess].
     Better bring along plenty to eat, since you aren;t close to any SuperStop'n'Shop, Safeway or Loblaws.
     Anyway, happy 4-20.

coal miners ~ calling it as I see it

For me, these pictures are pleasing to the eye. Pictures of miners by social documentary photographer Milton Rogovin. Mining is not considered a glamorous occupation.
     My grandpappy was a coal miner, worked down in the shaft mines of West Virginia. When he was older, he "graduated" to work up top running the convever belts from the tipple to the rail cars that carried the coal to distance cities. Folks in New York and Chicago, you can be certain, they didn't want to know how they got their buildings heated.
     He never spoke badly of the work he did, but whenever anybody amongst his kids and his kids children asked about the mines and what it was liek to work there, you could quickly tell he didn't want us having anything to do with the mines. Eventually, he died of black lung disease.      Although largely forgotten and ignored [except when some horrible disaster happens that the mine operators can't keep from the press] these men [and the occasional woman] are true heroes indeed. They risk their lives ~ in the short run by going into the mines, in the long run by slow death caused from incomprehensibly hard working conditions ~ so the rest of us can heat our houses, enjoy plastic, steel, and other products made from these things.
     Few, if any out there even think about the miners. And why should they? They are invisible.
     Officially, slave labor may have legally ended, but until the mine operators are cut down a few pegs ~ not rewarded so finely, for gross indifference to others' lives [and this is so be the operators come from USA, China, Somalia or anywhere else] then slavery, in my mind, will still be practiced and tacitly endorsed.

firearms and fags

Towle Road writes with some skepticism about the gay gun rights group Pink Pistols, but seems to share a perspective that firearms are, some, well, queasy stuff to talk about anyway. I would disagree.
     This is not to ignore many straight guys' misconceptions about homos. First-off there's the mistaken idea that those of us who are "that way" are somwhow either to "sensitive" to even put our dainty fingers on a loaded gun [ignoring, for the time being, the play on what a "gun" might be, especially if loaded] or that the only reason we'd own a firearm would be to defend ourselves.
     On this topic, the sometimes erroneous Wikipedia gets it right, firearms ownership is not a "liberal versus conservative" issue.
     And, at least among urban gay folks, there seems to be the presumption that none of us like hunting, fishing, trapping or other outdoor sports [save, perhaps, the ever popular cruising, a type of hunting in its own right] just by virtue of being same-sex affectional kind of people.
     So the errant myth continues.
     Mind you, a person won't be very successful doing a google search to find hunters who happen to be gay. You'll get everything from links to porn sites, gay bashers, homo bars named "Hunters", but a serious search to find people who want to talk about hunting and firearmes of like mind, well, forget about it. Maybe, you stumble across the page about England's King Edward II, who was gay, and who hunted [but who gets a write-up that castigates him as being a screamer, so the stereotype doesn't go too far from what some folks still believe nowadays]
     But we're out there. But you're likely to find us in local hunting clubs, target ranges or second amendment rights groups. We, too, might even be members of the NRA [though I quit long ago out of anger to the garbage that national leaders toss at us, and because I got sick of listening to homophobic crap from some of the same.
     Truth be told, when I go to my local hunt club or target range, it isn't usually te sexual orientation of the participants that seems relevant at all.
     And in some respects that's too bad. Not only would men and women who aren't homo-oriented see that there's yet another commonality for some, but the mythic macho world of hunters might become more aware of the realities of gay life, not that it affects what you're going for in the woods.