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This is all that remains of the Green Dragon.

Weekend Plans

San Diego likes tourists. They share our sunshine and bring in money. The Village in La Jolla is always filled with Europeans, and Sea World attracts families from all over the country.

But I wish the Westboro Baptist Church would stay away this weekend.

I first had the pleasure of meeting Fred Phelps and his band of hatemongers in 2002, when his group protested the University of Maryland's performance of "The Laramie Project". (Which I recently blogged about.) The campus was treated to a mob screaming hate and wielding equally hateful signs, like pitchforks. These are the same people who disrupt the funerals of gay people who've died of AIDS, screaming and yelling at the deceased family members that their relative is in hell. The depths of their hate is completely unfathomable.

My lesbian co-worker at UMD filled me in on all about this Church's "work." She'd grown up in West Virginia--a place not exactly known for its open-mindedness--and yet the presence of this hate group (you can't honestly call them a "Church") on our campus made made her completely distraught.

This Is It

This afternoon I sat by Starbucks' front entrance, rather than on the side patio. It afforded me a view of the door, and the people who went in and out of it.

There was the couple in a pill box, a top-up convertible Audi. They went in together and came out a few steps apart, the man holding blended brown drinks. The woman drove. Quickly.

There was the woman who hopped down from her SUV, hopped from the curb to the street and then back up to the store’s curb. In her return path, there was less hopping, because there was a cup with whipped cream as tall as the drink.

And there was the skater boy—who’s a Starbucks employee—and his girlfriend, who carried out two pink frozen drinks, and didn’t look embarrassed in the least.

And now excerpts from Gerald Stern's "This Is It":

...
I crawl across the street to have my coffee at the low counter,
to listen to the noise of the saws drifting through the open window
and to study the strange spirit of this tar paper café
...
I listen to the plans of the three teen-age businessmen
about to make their fortune in this rotting shack
...
I watch the bright happy girls organize their futures
over and around the silent muscular boys
and I wait, like a peaceful man, hours on end,
for the truck out back to start, for the collie to die,
for the flies to come, for the summer to bring its reckoning.

100% Egyptian Combed Cotton

The first anniversary is paper, and the second is cotton. Not needing any new beach towels, Bryan opted to get me a box from Godiva. While year ten could be interesting (tin, aluminum), we've decided that, at least for the near future, every anniversary will be chocolate.

What We Say Without Words

At the park this afternoon, there was a father on the swings with his baby son. The son had some sort of developmental disability. The grandparents were there, too, with the grandmother taking video and the grandfather sitting at a nearby table. As Louie and I passed, I smiled at the grandfather in a way that meant I thought his grandson was beautiful, if disabled.

He must get this all the time. He was nice enough to smile back sincerely. And in that smile, and the cock of his head, he told me I'm not the first person who'd felt compelled to be extraordinarily friendly to him and his disabled grandson, and that he wasn't offended.

I was once in a Girl Scout Troop with a girl named Danica, who had Down's Syndrome. We never spoke of Danica's disability, although it impacted all of us--girls, adults, leaders--at every meeting, camping trip, or activity. We knew it was there, but instead of mentioning Down's Syndrome, we'd just ask if Danica wanted to be tentmates.

It Ain't Your Mom's Book Club

Books bring people together. All sorts of communities--prisons, colleges, talk shows, cities--have figured this out and have instituted reading programs. In 2002, I read The Laramie Project along with other University of Maryland students, faculty, and staff.

In 2007, San Diego instituted its One Book One San Diego program. I read--and was profoundly affected by--Enrique's Journey.

The 2010 book will soon be chosen. You can vote by going here.

The candidates:

Dreamers of the Day (Mary Doria Russell)

Outcasts United (Warren St. John)

Song Yet Sung (James McBride)

For Sale: '99 Chrysler Sebring--low miles!

(The guts.)

(The very small working area.)

(The finished product.)

Day Two of Larry and Michelle's Extravaganza of Fun.

The Green Dragon's exterior driver-side door handle has finally been replaced, nearly a year after it broke off. I'm embarrassed it took so long. It makes you think about what people can put up with, adjust to, and/or make peace with. For me, it was climbing over the passenger seat, despite laughter from others.

We consulted these instructions. But only at the start. Four steps in, when my dad was completing the steps quicker than I could read, we decided to blaze our own handle-installation trail, and do it ourselves. And by "ourselves," I of course mean my dad. I think his thirty-one years as a dentist--in which he'd worked on third molars and in other inscrutably tiny spaces--were practice for snapping that white clip back onto the rod.

The whole process took an hour and a half. Which isn't bad considering the instruction's author took five hours his first time.

The car will be on Craig's List shortly. Any takers?