It is a great event for a great cause. If we don't preserve our history and our culture, who will?
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Stonewall-National-Museum---Archives---Celebrates-Our-Stars-in-November.html?soid=1102026594214&aid=VvLDiFE0VYs
Tickets available at stonewallnationalmuseum.org
Saturday, June 18, 2011
War and the Wimps Who Wage It
Glory, patriotism, honor, valor, courage, and heroism, all adjectives with positive connotations referring to war. How is it possible to continue to use any of these words to describe any aspect of the process of war, men killing other men? The more proper nouns for these associated adjectives are brutality, injury, maiming, raping innocent victims, killing, slaying, and slaughter only to mention a few that more accurately describe the process of war. It is the barbaric destruction of the human dignity of both the attacker and the victim. Where do find the hubris to use any other words to describe it?
I can the remember the morning I sat in front of my television set watching with shock and horror the destruction of the Twin Towers, and the confusion that followed within myself with no desire for reprisal or revenge, only thoughts of how to stop the animals that would perpetrate further atrocities on American soil. Who did it? Al Queda did it so what the f***k were we doing invading Iraq, thought I, when the perpetrators were in Afghanistan? We had inexplicably supported Saddam Hussein in his dictatorship of abuse of human rights only years before. I was to learn much later the despicable motive of Bush, personal "glory", power, personal gain, and simple reprehensible, inexcusable vanity of wanting to be a "war president". I remember the passage of the The Patriot Act, and the power it gave this despot to snoop into people's private lives, example, vindictively dangerously exposing Valerie Plane because her husband did not agree with his slaughter of innocents for personal gain. How can he among others complain about Wikileaks if he believes so strongly that what he did was right?
All of these words, valor, honor, courage, patriotism were as in the previous history of war, see Tostoy's comments in War and Peace, to be used again as camouflage for what is really going on, senseless killing out of a leader's vanity that the American public without question supported.
We had a president who from the day he took office was secretly looking for a reason to invade Iraq. For what purposes? Primarily, ego, power, pride, and personal gain, his family being in the oil business and the Vice President being in oil and the business of waging war professionally with mercinaries. The American public is guilty, because it supported him. None of these efforts directed at Saddam Hussein had anything to to do with the defense of this county. Only the search for Ossama Ben Laden had anything to do with the prevention of future attacks.
It is no wonder Muslim countries in the Middle East hate us when we have exploited and destroyed the lives of their peoples for superfluous reasons when they have done nothing against us.We now have the blood of many thousands of people in the Middle East on our hands as well as destroying many of their lives by destroying everything they own when they have done nothing against us. That blood is on our hands, and yet we protect George Bush and do not arrest him and Dick Chesney or turn them over to face charges for their war crimes. We do not even immediately stop operations against countries we have no business bombing, poor third world countries we invade solely at the whim of out current president and against the law, Barack Obama. He continues to involve us in the private struggles of other countries.
There is nothing valorous, honorable, heroic, or courageous about invading third world countries to soothe the ego of our current president. Turn Bush and Chesney over for their war crimes and stop Obama from killing innocent people in an undeclared war at tax payer expense. These wars are reprehensible, abominable, cruel, base, cowardly, disgraceful, ignoble, deploreableable, wicked and evil affronts to the human dignity discounting any belief we might have in the value of life.
War has an insane quality about it that has been recognized for centuries. Can not a little reason prevail over our egos?
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Imaginary Numbers
Imaginary Numbers
by Grover Lawlis, MD
Imaginary numbers, what are those?
Sounds like the result of blow in your nose.
Not really, not at all true.
Out of them grew
How to explain the link between
the Cosmos and the String.
They could maybe explain
Why water swirls down a drain,
Karma is how touching one thing we suspect
another far away in time it will effect.
Like a pebble dropped in our emotional pond,
ripples through the whole of the soul.
What can a shooting star be?
A beautiful firework for you and me?
Or might it collide with our orb of protection,
And take us all out in sudden extinction?
Like it’s once said to have done,
And it caused an Ice Age, all life gone.
Yet, we seem so safe in our air balloon cocoon.
To what do we attribute this great boon?
Imaginary numbers, much is defined
by this attribute, this agility ability of our Mind.
copyright 2011 Grover Lawlis
Saturday, February 5, 2011
About Being Gay and Religious Community
I found this blog through my partner, Nate Klarfeld and it so expresses feelings I have had that I decided it was worth posting:
"One Thing
by Ely Winkler
In a recent interview that can be found HERE, I was asked two very difficult questions that I will go into this post and the next post. Shout out to the awesome YU Beacon and my interviewer for letting me share this."
I was asked if there was one thing I could tell the Orthodox community, for all to know, what would it be. Coming to the answer to this question took some time. There is so much I want the Orthodox community to know- that I want to have a “normal” life like the rest of them, that just because I’m gay doesn’t mean I’m any different from them, that I plan on living an Orthodox lifestyle to the best of my ability, that being gay was not planned, expected, or asked for- but none of these were really just one thing for me to tell the community, so here’s what I went with:
'That being gay is not a choice. It’s not something I ever wished for, and not something I strive to push on anyone who is uncomfortable with it.'
I did not choose to be gay or ask for it or beg for my life to be more difficult. I wished and cried for the opposite. I simply tried to live a “normal” modern Orthodox life, like all my friends, but found myself attracted to the same sex instead of the opposite. After too much pain and struggle, I realized that just because I was gay, I was not going to allow that to stop me from living the “normal” modern Orthodox life; I just hope to do it with a man instead of a woman. Being gay, for almost all individuals struggling is not a choice- if it were, why would we choose the other path? Why would we want to go against the Torah? Why would we beg and plead for communities to accept us for who we are?"
This is something the Orthodox community needs to recognize, because too often people are cast aside or hurt and not accepted. Why? Because it's viewed as something that is more or less in our control, and it's not. Just like a heterosexual's attraction towards women is not in their control, so too for the homosexual, the attraction is not in their control. For all these reasons I had to use this one thing to tell the Orthodox community- being gay is almost always not a choice. Just some food for thought."
--
When will we all learn to live and love in peace?
Hugs to all of my readers and thanks to Ely Winkler for these expressive paragraphs,
Grover Lawlis
"One Thing
by Ely Winkler
In a recent interview that can be found HERE, I was asked two very difficult questions that I will go into this post and the next post. Shout out to the awesome YU Beacon and my interviewer for letting me share this."
I was asked if there was one thing I could tell the Orthodox community, for all to know, what would it be. Coming to the answer to this question took some time. There is so much I want the Orthodox community to know- that I want to have a “normal” life like the rest of them, that just because I’m gay doesn’t mean I’m any different from them, that I plan on living an Orthodox lifestyle to the best of my ability, that being gay was not planned, expected, or asked for- but none of these were really just one thing for me to tell the community, so here’s what I went with:
'That being gay is not a choice. It’s not something I ever wished for, and not something I strive to push on anyone who is uncomfortable with it.'
I did not choose to be gay or ask for it or beg for my life to be more difficult. I wished and cried for the opposite. I simply tried to live a “normal” modern Orthodox life, like all my friends, but found myself attracted to the same sex instead of the opposite. After too much pain and struggle, I realized that just because I was gay, I was not going to allow that to stop me from living the “normal” modern Orthodox life; I just hope to do it with a man instead of a woman. Being gay, for almost all individuals struggling is not a choice- if it were, why would we choose the other path? Why would we want to go against the Torah? Why would we beg and plead for communities to accept us for who we are?"
This is something the Orthodox community needs to recognize, because too often people are cast aside or hurt and not accepted. Why? Because it's viewed as something that is more or less in our control, and it's not. Just like a heterosexual's attraction towards women is not in their control, so too for the homosexual, the attraction is not in their control. For all these reasons I had to use this one thing to tell the Orthodox community- being gay is almost always not a choice. Just some food for thought."
--
When will we all learn to live and love in peace?
Hugs to all of my readers and thanks to Ely Winkler for these expressive paragraphs,
Grover Lawlis
Saturday, January 15, 2011
Debbie Friedman and the Tragedy of the Closet
Debbie Friedman and the Tragedy of the Closet
I once attended a Debbie Friedman concert at a synagogue near where I live and heard she was lesbian. I was told that the woman with her was her partner and always wondered who this person was. I want to publicly state that whoever she is I am with her in her loss and sorrow and wish everyone could have known both Debbie and her partner.
She was much loved and will live on in the beautiful music she produced that became a part of our Jewish life. At a time when we see so much anger in our country against those who are different or who differ it is a particularly poignant moment, a moment when at the same time a Jewish democratic congresswoman's life is in such peril. I abhor the violence that has taken place and the discrimination in America that made Debbie feel her relationship was in some way less than. We are indeed a backward undeveloped country with many in our country who are naive enough to think we are still a world leader. We lead others solely in military might which is not leadership. I also pray for the backward thinking American public that they may truly come into the light to address their shortcomings.
I once attended a Debbie Friedman concert at a synagogue near where I live and heard she was lesbian. I was told that the woman with her was her partner and always wondered who this person was. I want to publicly state that whoever she is I am with her in her loss and sorrow and wish everyone could have known both Debbie and her partner.
She was much loved and will live on in the beautiful music she produced that became a part of our Jewish life. At a time when we see so much anger in our country against those who are different or who differ it is a particularly poignant moment, a moment when at the same time a Jewish democratic congresswoman's life is in such peril. I abhor the violence that has taken place and the discrimination in America that made Debbie feel her relationship was in some way less than. We are indeed a backward undeveloped country with many in our country who are naive enough to think we are still a world leader. We lead others solely in military might which is not leadership. I also pray for the backward thinking American public that they may truly come into the light to address their shortcomings.
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