Jane Lynch weds her life partner

One of our favorite actors, Jane Lynch, recently married her life partner, Lara Embry, a clinical psychologist. Becky and I first discovered Lynch's comic genius in the Christopher Guest film Best in Show (2000). Our appreciation grew with her performance as Julia Child's sister in Julia & Julia, and during the four seasons of The L Word, where she played a tough-as-nails, sexy lawyer. More recently we've howled at the outrageous cheerleading coach Lynch plays to perfection on Glee.

Becky and I wish Jane (49) and Lara (41) much happiness as a couple as a moms to Lara's eight-year-old daughter Haden. For the full New York Times story, click here.

Crash Course

Is The United States on a crash course? According to Dr. Chris Martenson, red lights are flashing all over the dashboard, yet we keep driving down the freeway instead of pulling over and rethinking our trip, our speed, and our gas-burning vehicle.

Yesterday Nancy and I attended a presentation at the Minnesota History Society co-sponsored by the Legislative Committee on the Environment and the U of M Institute on the Environment. Martenson painted an alarming picture of the economy, energy, and environment.

Given the exponential growth of population and need for energy we humans are in a fix. He believes that massive changes are ahead of us in the next decade or two as we face economic upheaval, energy demands that cannot be met with fossil fuel, and dwindling resources that require ever more expense to extract fewer and fewer minerals from the earth.

"It's not a problem," he says, "it's a predicament." Problems have solutions, predicaments require management. But instead of tackling the challenges--for example, putting money into a Manhattan-type project to come up with an energy/economic system that can replace the mess we have now, the U.S. government continues on the path toward insolvency.

Bottom line, we need to shift our paradigm of what constitutes a fulfilling life. We need to use less energy, fewer resources, and shrink the economy. (Europeans use half the energy per capita that Americans do and still have a satisfying lifestyle.) We need government to start dealing with the hard problems. We cannot sustain an economic system based on consumerism, debt, and continual growth.

Martenson offers a free three-hour course on his website (www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse). Nancy and I were riveted by his twenty short, clear, engaging chapters. I encourage you to check it out and share The Crash Course with others who would like to know what they can do about the probability that the next twenty years will be nothing like the last twenty years.

Becky

Beer from the Brau Brothers

Our favorite brewery is located in Lucan (pronounced LOO-CAN), Minnesota, population 220, a forty minute drive from Fort Ridgely State Park where Nancy and I camped last weekend.

Brau Brothers occupies a large red utilitarian shed at the edge of town. Outside is a pond used to drip-irrigate the nearby 600 hops, each plant requiring 6 gallons of water a day. A hops plant can grow up to 12 inches daily, curling up a rope in a counter-clockwise direction as it follows the sun's movement across the open prairie sky. Adjacent to the hops yard is a barley field. While it's fun to think that the Braus raises their own beer ingredients, these fields provide a miniscule percentage of their brewing requirements. They do get most of their grain locally, however, from a distributor in Kasota, near Mankato.

Dale Brau, the father of the three brothers who run the brewery, showed us around and gave us generous samples of ice cold beer. (Being the designated driver, I switched to Schell's 1919 Root Beer after the first round--how classy to offer premium root beer on tap!)

The brothers, Trevor, Dustin, and Brady, started the company in 2006. They bought repossessed brewing equipment in Virginia and shipped it to Minnesota on three semi-trailers. The beautiful copper vats line one wall of the building.

Nancy and I had our first taste of Brau Brother's Cream Stout one night at the Guthrie Theatre a couple of years ago. We immediately loved its rich, smooth depth --and have sought it out in local liquor stores every since. We tasted the Ring Neck Braun Ale and wow, does that slide down easily! For me, it's a toss up between the Cream Stout and Ring Neck. Both are fabulous.

For the first time the company is offering a light beer to answer demand. We don't care for light beer, and this one met our expectations--thin. But if forced to drink a light, I'd choose Old No. 56, named after Dale's newly acquired fire engine made by Forstner Fire Apparatus of Madelia--our home town! If we didn't already appreciate Brau Brothers, we would now with a little fire truck from Madelia scheduled to start pumping samples of their micro brew at the Lucan BrauFest street dance next weekend.

A Nine-Holer at Fort Ridgely

We continued our yearly exploration of Minnesota state parks at Fort Ridgely, where we tried out our new tent. Although this park is only 100 miles southwest of Minneapolis and was less than an hour from Madelia the whole time we were growing up, neither Nancy nor I had ever been there. What a gem!

Situated on 478 acres of rolling hills on the north bluff of the Minnesota River Valley, Fort Ridgely is home to a crucial part of state history. Here the Dakota Sioux in 1862 rose up to fight the white men who were treating them so abominably. The fort became a retreat for hundreds of settlers as the small garrison, led by a 19-year-old lieutenant, fought off four hundred Dakota. It was this uprising that resulted in the Sioux being banished from the state.

Walking at sunset around the historic area that contains the foundation of the barracks and reading the descriptive plaques explaining what happened during the 3-day battle, Nancy and I were struck by the beauty and sacredness of the wide open spaces, the wooded ravines, and the reddening sky. It seemed hard to believe that as the Dakota were engaged in a struggle for their culture here in Minnesota, the United States struggled for its survival in the Civil War.

The commissary is the only military building left standing--its strong granite walls now houses a museum run by the Minnesota Historical Society, featuring an 18-minute video that is well worth the watch. Several picnic shelters and bathrooms were built by the CCC in the 1930s.

What makes this former military site doubly remarkable is that it is now wrapped by a golf course! Nancy and I played a round, although Nancy quit after three shots because her sprained thumb hurt too much to play, but she made a good caddy for me. The 1927 nine-hole par-35 course was renovated last year, and it is a challenging beauty. The hills are so steep that from the first tee, you descend 33 stone stairs to the fairway. There are plenty of woods, ponds, and high prairie grass in which to lose balls, but with few players and no carts , the course is leisurely. In fact, at the third tee, we lounged for several minutes under the oak canopy, enjoying the big blue sky, fresh breeze, and gorgeous view.

Tick season had passed, and mosquitoes were few, but we witnessed an infestation of tent caterpillars. They dropped from the trees with a splat onto our tent, table, and toes and crawled around. If we shifted position in our camp chairs, we had to make sure we didn't squash one.

Ridgely Creek runs along the campground, gurgling at night and providing a convenient place for kids to take a dip. There are miles of hiking trails and horse trails. Near the oak-shaded picnic area, a historic cemetery holds the remains of settlers and the soldiers from the Dakota uprising.

Fort Ridgely State Park is a winner. We want to return again and again!

Ellen DeGeneres and Our Wives

My sister Pat keeps us up-to-date on the Ellen DeGeneres show. Last month she told us that Ellen was rapping about her “wife name Portia,” and the audience cheered. This week, she saw Ellen and Portia on Oprah in their first interview as a married couple.

Becky and I watched a wonderful You Tube clip of that interview. Oprah’s pride in the couple, Ellen and Portia’s palpable joy with each other, and all three of them so comfortably saying “wife” helped dispel the painful memories of the snickering I heard when lesbians began using that term a few years ago.

After our wedding, in September 2008, Becky and I started introducing each other as spouse rather than partner. But watching Ellen rap and seeing Oprah celebrate this legally married couple, Becky and I have begun calling each other wife. It feels wonderful. I wonder how much of other people’s discomfort with the term was a reflection of my own.

For those of you who missed hearing about our marriage at San Francisco City Hall, here are photos of me and my new . . . yes, wife!

Nancy

(P.S. Thanks for Becky's sister Vicki Bohan for taking these pictures, ensuring that we had a visual record of this momentous event in our fifteen-year relationship.)

The Unknown Suffragist, Part 2

Sally Roesch Wagner, the executive director of the Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation (http://www.blogger.com/www.Matilda%20JoslynGage.org) said in her lecture at the Esoteric Quest for Inner America conference that Gage, the 19th Century feminist and radical thinker, developed an intimate relationship with the Native peoples in Upstate New York. Gage was even adopted into the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) nation.

Gage saw that it was the Haudenosaunee women who chose the chiefs. A man was automatically disqualified if he had committed murder or theft, or if he had abused a woman. The women made sure that the tribal chief had the best interests of their community at heart, rather than self-aggrandizement and power.

The women of the early feminist movement could see with their own eyes that unlike themselves, who had no status and who were considered property rather than persons, tribal women enjoyed respect and power. Gage believed that the Native people embodied the principles needed to transform society from one that oppressed women to one that was egalitarian, fair, and free.

In fact, many 19th century reforms were inspired by the Iroquois. Dress reform was taken from the Oneida women, who wore leggings. Food reform was inspired by the fresh fruit, vegetables and whole grains in the diet of the Iroquois, who lived much longer than their white counterparts. Birthing reform was based on Indian women who had a healthy diet and exercised and who did not labor under the notion that the pain of childbirth was a deserved punishment due to Eve’s transgression.

Sally Wagner commented that even the holistic medical movement reflects Native American values. Conventional Western medicine, she noted, is based on religious principles—surgery and drugs “exorcise” the demon of disease. The Native Americans believe that the body is basically healthy and that effective medicine naturally supports the body and soul to regain health.

Wagner’s inspiring lecture made clear that the intersection of religious doctrine and political power is deadly. It crushes independent thought and democratic principles, while sanctifying the oppression of women and other “minorities.” The esoteric philosophies so popular during the mid-1800s attempted to transcend religious dogmas. In the end, the egalitarian principles of the Iroquois Nations were critical to the radical thinkers, feminists, and spiritual nonconformists of what came to be known as the American Renaissance.

Becky

The Unknown Feminist, Part 1

Three women were at the heart of the women’s suffrage movement in the mid-1800s: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage. Who the heck is M. J. Gage? Well, without her The Wizard of Oz might never have been published. But more on that later.

At the conference Nancy & I attended last week in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York (An Esoteric Quest for Inner America: Exploring the History and Renewal of the American Soul (http://www.blogger.com/www.EsotericQuest.org), we heard a powerful lecture by Sally Roesch Wagner, Ph.D., on the early feminist movement, and Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826-1898) in particular.

Both Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage believed that religious doctrine is the basis of women’s subjugation. The Sin of Woman is the foundation of Christianity: If Eve had not laid lips on that apple there wouldn’t have been a need for a savior. America’s Founding Fathers adopted the Blackstone doctrine based on the Church of England canon law, which stated that a woman who marries loses her personhood and becomes property of the husband, giving divine sanction to men’s oppression of women.

Gage’s anti-religious radicalism, and that of the early suffragist movement, has been white-washed by historians who focus only on the work for voting rights. Later Gage broke with the mainstream women’s rights movement over the issue of religion. Her call for the dismantling of the Christian church is still radical—you do not hear many contemporary American academic or public figures talking about the need to do away with religion.

Gage’s more popular contribution to our culture was through her son-in-law L. Frank Baum. She encouraged him to publish his Oz chronicle. A slice of that story has become famous, but in the 14-book series, his vision of a matriarchal society based on social justice came directly from his mother-in-law.

Gage’s own book, Women, Church, and State (1893), was banned by the U.S. government. An analysis of the rise of patriarchy (including sexual abuse by priests), it is a clarion call for freedom from religious dogma. The opening of her book salutes the Native Indian culture from which we still have much to learn. More about that in the next entry!

Becky