Day: January 25, 2005

Tolerance

Proving once again…well, something, I don’t know, the United Church of Christ issued a press release unequivocally welcoming SpongeBob Squarepants to the UCC after his “outing” by nasty intolerant bigot James Dobson. (Thanks to The Village Gate for the link.) Ups to the UCC for being the one Christian voice to consistently oppose the uncharitable utterances of the wingnuts who monopolize faith discussions these days—no matter how silly they look in responding.

I have to keep remembering, as Steven Waldman puts it, that the religious right and social conservatives “don’t want a religious dictatorship,” “feel they’re under assault,” and “believe that American culture has become an insult to God.” I’m not sure that excuses Dobson from looking for evidence of creeping homosexuality in every animated feature that comes down the pike. Then again, the Rev. Wildmon went after “Lonesome Dove” and “The Wonder Years” in the 1980s (not to mention “Bloom County”), so I guess Dobson is just following in Wildmon’s creepy footsteps.

Snow madness

On reading my tongue-in-cheek take on the “most depressing day of the year” yesterday, George thought I was snowbound and losing my mind. I wasn’t, at least not the former—after a good hour-long session with shovel and snowblower, I excavated both our cars and went out for groceries yesterday afternoon. Unfortunately, I learned a few things about driving in Massachusetts with this much snow.

First, your fellow drivers really don’t know how to drive in snow. They cut people off aggressively in slushy lanes, or else they drive 5 mph down perfectly dry pavement. Second, not every street is well plowed—at least not after two feet in 24 hours. The roads around Fresh Pond, never a joy at the best of times, were narrowed and slushy; Massachusetts Avenue from Harvard Square down to the river was essentially totally impassable, and I’ll need new shocks after jouncing my way down it. (Arlington, on the other hand, did a better job of plowing, apparently because they had wider streets on which to pile the snow.)

This morning I had a taste of the real joy of snow. Lisa had gone downstairs at 5:45 am to drive to Hartford for a client meeting, and came back up a few minutes later to ask me to get the snowblower out. Apparently the snowplows came by during the night and left another two foot by two foot drift at the mouth of our driveway. So I was out at 6 am violating noise ordinances so my wife could get to work. This is of course the flip side of Arlington’s superior plow capability.

It all starts to be a bit reminiscent of the Massachusetts Snow Diary (for the link to which I thank the comments section at Dr. David Weinberger’s blog. Apparently he has a slightly more sour take on the Massachusetts winter experience).