Blame Don

My brother asked me the other day if I still blogged. I replied, “Of course I'm still blogging.

Just infrequently.”

Why has it been over two months since I've written anything here? Well, several reasons I think.

First of all I fear that anything I have to say would be stultifying obvious, or has been said already by many others. A very recent example: OF COURSE Christians did horrible things in the name of Christ. That’s a fact. So why does the right wing get all hot and bothered when President Obama says so? I suppose it’s because they simply don't like unpleasant facts.

Take climate change. That was an unpleasant fact. Republicans and conservatives denied its existence until they realized they were the only people left on the planet still doing so.

I've also hesitated to write because everything I’d say is so depressing and so redundant. As the Aurora, Colorado, shooter’s trial gets underway I've thought about gun control and bemoaned the fact that nothing ever changes. I mean, how is it at all possible that Sandy Hook changed nothing? TWENTY CHILDREN MURDERED BY GUN-TOTING MADMAN and yet nothing changes? What the fuck is wrong with us?

I've also been busier than usual, at least in the last month since I've been auditing a Yale class, LGBTQ Cinema with Ron Gregg. It entails a Tuesday night screening, a Wednesday afternoon seminar and LOTS of reading. And not just reading, but academic reading that is at times a real slog for me. Talk about through a glass darkly! I sometimes read entire paragraphs and have no idea what I’ve just read. I read it again and am still lost. Are these Yale kids way smarter than I, or do they just fake it?

But the real reason I fail to post more often is my nearly 50-year friendship with Don. Back in 1965 when we were beginning this remarkable journey we used to talk on the phone for hours. When I complained that I had no privacy, using the phone out in the hall, he gave me a 25-foot telephone cord so that I could lie in bed and talk to him. I told him about everything that happened in my life and we talked about everything imaginable, sometimes, literally, for hours.

Fifty years later we still do, though the medium has changed. We still talk on the phone regularly but we exchange email constantly, all day long most days. (Don has not picked up the texting thing yet, so we use emails back and forth like younger people use texts).

There are days when I might send Don ten or more new emails and each of those might become a thread with many back and forths.

After all that typing and all that sharing, is it any surprise that I don’t hit the blogosphere as often as I might? I'm worn out. I have nothing left to say. Don is the perfect sounding board and offers a bonus the blog does not: nearly instant feedback.

But my loyal fans might have missed me, so I'll try to be here more often.

Let me first email Don the news.