Archives for: July 2012

Link: http://www.actnowny.org

Ever since I read in astronaut Sally Ride’s obituary that she had been in a committed relationship with Tam O’Shaunessy for twenty-seven years, I’ve wondered how O’Shaunessy must feel now. I don’t know how Ride set up her estate, but O’Shaunessy won’t be receiving any survivor benefits from the military because it’s prohibited by the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Besides, they were not even married. Can’t do that in California.

Things have improved some since the AIDS epidemic of the eighties when lovers were not allowed into hospital rooms, because we read that O’Shaunessy was at the side of our nation’s first woman astronaut through her long bout with pancreatic cancer.

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My days in the Four Corners are numbered now after a two-month sojourn. I paid a visit this morning to our local pond, which is famous among the cognoscenti but now drained down to primordial sludge in anticipation of water from a new artesian well. The occasional bubble rises to the surface, but I couldn’t photograph it, because I forgot to charge a battery last night. So be it.

Here in Utah, there’s a petition going around asking Governor Gary Herbert to outlaw fireworks on the Fourth because of the fire hazard.

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