Day One: New York City to Du Bois, Pennsylvania - 287 miles

Well, that wasn't so bad. : )

I am exhausted, so I'll try to be brief. You know, brief by *my* standards.

Picking up the car went fine; the van has lots of room and is easy to drive, though I've accidentally set off the alarm about five times. The drive up to my apartment was much easier than I thought it would be; I went up Third Avenue and went left on 57th Street to Eighth Avenue, then through the vortex at Columbus Circle (eep, that keeps you on your toes) and the plan was to go up Broadway all the way to Washington Heights, but naturally there was a street fair beginning at 96th Street. I detoured over to West End Avenue and drove up to where it ends at 106th...and the street fair was still going! So I went another block and turned left on Amsterdam, then back to Broadway at 120th, so that hjhhhhhhhhjjjjjjjj -- ha! sorry, Starbuck jumped on the laptop -- I could wave at my alma mater on 122nd, then north to 168th and the rest of the way on Fort Washington Avenue.

There was a parking space directly in front of my apartment building. I took that as a sign. Four friends generously volunteered to spend a beautiful Sunday afternoon hauling garbage out of my apartment and putting up with my perhaps overly well-planned van-packing directions. (Sometimes I am ruthlessly efficient.) So, a big debt of gratitude to him and him, and also two non-blogger guys. It took a little longer than I'd hoped, but we got everything in the van, and I can even see out the back. I left the city around 4:00.

Honestly, as soon as I picked up the rental car and successfully navigated Manhattan traffic, I started to feel better about this. The first leg couldn't have been easier: just turn right on 179th and keep going for five hours. I stopped briefly at the Borders in Rockaway, New Jersey and bought one of those FM radio thingies for my iPod. It works well until you come over a hill and suddenly there's a station on your station. Next I stopped in Mifflinville, Pennsylvania to grab a quick bite and stretch my legs.

The last 20 miles or so into DuBois (pronounced "Do Boys," which sounds promising, rather than "Do Bwa") were hard because I am so tired. But I'm here and now I'm going to crash and just wake up when I wake up. Tomorrow I hope to be somewhere in Illinois, the longest stretch of the journey to compensate for only going about five hours today.

The cats are fine. Starbuck fell asleep right away even though she didn't have any sedatives, and she seems perfectly content in the hotel room. She's curious, but doesn't seem bothered by any of it. Rocky is hiding behind the toilet and looks very unhappy, but he too slept soundly most of the trip. He had half a cat valium this afternoon just because I was concerned about his freak-out on Wednesday. He doesn't seem angry at all now, just weirded out. I can't say I blame him.

The First Day: We're Off

I can hardly believe the day has come.

I had hoped to write something profound as this chapter (or, more accurately, volume) of my life comes to a close, but I am altogether too addlepated at the moment. I just want to say, as I look back on more than thirteen years of life in New York, that the overwhelming feeling is one of immense gratitude. Yes, there has been a lot of pain and sorrow and frustration and loneliness and anxiety and disappointment, but in a way I'm grateful for all of that, too. These years have been rich and meaningful. I am so lucky. I will treasure and share these memories all my life.

Here's the schedule for the day: right now I'm off to the church I've been attending, St. Bart's on Park Avenue, for one last service. I only found St. Bart's within the last year, but it is an amazing place and it was a major factor that had to be weighed in the decision to leave New York. In addition to the gorgeous building, it has a vibrant, diverse, enthusiastic and welcoming congregation, and certainly the most fantastic clergy team I have ever encountered. I have made some great friends there and learned tons, but it was actually through some of the classes I took there that I discerned that New York itself is at the heart of what has been bothering me and that it was time to move on.

Conveniently the rental car place is one block from my church (purely coincidental). Let's all hope I get the minivan I requested, otherwise the purge of my possessions is going to be more dramatic than I'd like to think about right now. Can I tell you, I am far more worried about the drive from East 50th to Washington Heights than I am about the 2994 miles to Oregon? Driving in this city scares me.

Around one, some generous friends are coming over to help me clear out the apartment and load the fan. Everything is pretty much ready, so I hope we can do this in about an hour. I am aiming to be on the road between 2 and 3 o'clock, and plan to drive only as far as western Pennsylvania today, about four or five hours.

It is highly doubtful that I will be able to get online again today until I get to the hotel tonight. Wish us luck!

The Last Night: For Real

I don't even know where to begin, so I'll start with the easy part and give a big thank-you shout-out to my friend Jere of the blog Jere-Rigged. Jere came over yesterday morning and helped me out for about four and a half hours, dismantling furniture, carrying bookcases up flights of stairs to neighbors and helping me carry tons of garbage and junk out of the apartment. If it hadn't been for his very generous offer to help out and the great work he did, I would absolutely be having a total nervous breakdown right now.

Packing up this apartment has been far more work than I ever anticipated. I had an idea in my mind about how much I could fit in the van, but today I set up a mock van interior in my living room and it became immediately clear that a LOT of what I was planning on taking was not going to be able to come, especially clothing. Right now I am just embarrassed and ashamed about everything that I will have to throw out; here I thought I'd been proactive in going through my belongings and giving things away, but I had more than I realized.

There's so much on my mind right now but there's still so much left to do. The packing is done, but there's still a lot of cleaning up. Right now I am filled with remorse over all this stuff I have to throw out, and having anxiety over finding a job and a home in Portland and whether the cats will be okay with the car trip -- Rocky's doing much better now, by the way -- and even occasionally whether I have made a colossal error. I hope someday this is all just a funny story I can tell a cute guy over dinner.

Slight Change of Plans

Okay, so last night wasn't my last night in the apartment. After talking to the vet today about Rocky's freakout, I decided that with all the change going on, me being gone for a whole night right now might make things worse. The mattress went away today, so I'm sleeping on a pile of quilts on the box spring. Rocky is definitely coming around, but still easily spooked. Poor guy. I did acquire some cat valium for the trip, just in case.

We're getting there. I see light at the end of the tunnel -- or, more precisely, the living room floor is starting to reappear. Tomorrow most of the rest of the furniture is going away.

***

This afternoon I grabbed a quick pizza lunch with a friend who came by to acquire my DVD player and some books. He was going to take some bookcases because he currently lives nearby, but has decided to move again so he's not taking on more furniture just now. He rented a room from a lady who never walks her dog, she just leaves newspapers out for him to pee and poop on. "And," said my friend, "the ironic thing is, do you know what she does for a living?"

"No...," I said.

"She's a professional dog walker."

***

I did get my last piece of mail at this address today. The forwarding order kicks in tomorrow. I received confirmation from the post office; the last line of the letter says, "If you do not speak English or you do not understand this letter, please take it with you to your local post office for assistance."

I mean, if you can't understand English, how helpful is that? (Probably just as helpful as the folks at the post office to whom the reader is referred.) It reminds me of the old Looney Toons cartoon with the eye test where the text gets progressively smaller and the punch line is, "If you can read this...you are Chinese."

The Last Night

Tonight is the last night that I will spend in this apartment, which has been my home since June of 1996. President Clinton was in his first term. I barely believe it. My sofa bed went away on Monday and my bed is leaving tomorrow, so after that there won't be anything soft to sleep on. The Fabulous Jackass, who conveniently lives just six blocks away, has graciously offered his sofa for my last three nights in the city. There's still a lot of packing and cleaning to do -- however, we're getting there! -- so I'll go down late each night and come back in the morning and go back to work.

I love my cats. (You're shocked, I know.) They play hide and seek in the pile of boxes, and take turns being "it." Seriously. See the photos below.



Okay, now for less good stuff. I have bad luck with air conditioners, apparently. I got my first air conditioner in the spring of 2002. (Yes, I lived through New York summers with just fans and fortitude for 8 years.) That winter, I decided I should bring the air conditioner inside. Well, I'm not very skilled with air conditioners, so I went to take it out of the window, and this was the result:


Oopsie. Thank God my living room window is over my building's lobby; if it had been over the sidewalk, like most New York apartments, I damn well might have killed someone.* That thought still haunts me. So this time I paid the super $20 to uninstall it for me. (And I've sold it for $35. Net profit: $15. Whoo! )

When my super arrived, I went to put the cats in the bathroom, since the living room window would be open (I'm on the third floor, which is actually the fourth floor). Well...I'm not sure what happened, whether Rocky doesn't like the super or whether there's just been altogether too much coming and going of people lately, but the poor cat FLIPPED OUT. He positively flew around the apartment making this hideous howling noise. I mean, he was truly in a panic. I've never seen him do anything like that. I only managed to get a hold of him when his collar caught on part of the vacuum cleaner. I managed to get him into the bathroom, but he exacted his pound of flesh. Rather literally.


He seems to be okay now. Still, I think he'll be living in the bathroom tomorrow, since I have three different appointments with people coming into the apartment to take stuff away. I'll just put him in there in the morning and leave him there.

For KR, here's a close-up of Starbuck's collar.


**IMPORTANT** TimeWarner is coming tomorrow morning to take away my cable box and modem, so if I can't manage to find a wireless signal, I won't have internet access during the day. I'll be able to check in at night down at the Jackass' place.

* Extra credit reading: there is a funny story out of it. Shortly thereafter I found myself in line at the grocery store -- or, "on line," as New Yorkers say -- behind one of the building busybodies, who was telling me all the latest gossip. I wasn't really paying attention, until she said, "...and then some idiot just threw his air conditioner right out the window, and it's just sitting there in front of my living room. I tell you, the people in our building are no good." I just nodded my assent.

A Fabulous Night on the Town

My awesome friend Audrey, whom I've known since I was 11 (when we shared the marquee as the White Rabbit and the Narrator in our 6th grade production of Alice in Wonderland), is in town for business this week from L.A. Coincidentally, her younger sister Renee was also in from D.C. for a meeting, so we all went for dinner at a chic SoHo restaurant on Sullivan between Prince and Spring.

I snapped the above photo from the cab as we passed through Times Square.

After our fantastic meal, I uncharacteristically declined the offer to share a cab and instead walked up 6th Avenue a little ways.


I don't know whether the Grey Goose went to my head or what, but I'm still having trouble believing I turned down a cab in favor of a ride on the A train, late enough in the evening that it was making all local stops. I don't know how long it took me to get home, I wasn't really looking at my watch, but it must have been well over an hour; the Empire State Building's lights go off promptly at midnight, and I didn't get home until after 1.

Things were fine up to about 125th Street, then we sat in the tunnel for an age and a half, and slowly inched our way up to 145th, where for some reason we ended up downstairs on the D platform. Then we sat, and sat some more. (That's the last time I turn down a cab ride. Actually, come to think of it, it probably really is the last time.) Eventually there was a completely inscrutable announcement, general confusion and consternation, and everyone got off the train. Apparently there was some problem with the switch further up the track, so there was no more A train for the night. Swell. I went up and found a gypsy cab and collapsed into bed.

Then I woke up at 4:30, panicking about everything I have left to do. I am still hoping to find time to go out into the city before I leave and just walk around and enjoy myself a bit, but I just feel so overwhelmed right now. I've been packing and cleaning and chucking for four days now and while progress is obvious, there's still so much left. I decided that rather than lie in bed and have palpitations I should probably get up and do something productive.

And finally, a gratuitous cat picture.

Now I Just Need a Domestic Partner

Oregon House OKs Domestic Partnerships

The House voted 34-26 in favor of a bill that will give expanded legal protections to same-sex couples in Oregon. Now it heads to the Senate (like the House, dominated by Democrats), then presumably afterward to Governor Kulongoski, who has promised to sign it.

Best quote: "I have met former homosexuals; I have not met former Blacks or Hispanics," said Rep. Sal Esquivel, R-Medford. "I don't believe what you chose to do makes you a minority."

Uh-huh. What a lame quote, as if "minority" is a term that relates exclusively to ethnicity. No, you silly twit, what makes gay people a minority is that there are fewer of them. Hello. Duh.

And you know what? Straight people get "special rights" for choosing to get married.

Hurray for Neighbors!

Last night I was lying in bed panicking about how to get rid of my furniture. I'd always felt like I didn't have very much stuff, but I guess I was wrong. I knew I could always take stuff down to the sidewalk and hope for good weather, in which case someone would rescue it before it got rained on. Or peed on.

This morning I hit upon the brilliant idea of putting little signs in the elevators in my building. I warned people that I didn't have particularly fancy stuff, and also that the place was a wreck (see the photo below...) since I was moving. I had low hopes.

Here's what I managed to get rid of today:

2 bookcases
1 file cabinet
1 desk
2 lamps
1 dresser
1 microwave
a plant
a shoe rack
the sofa bed

and...*drum roll* please...

the litter box.

Seriously, this woman came by and said, "Are you taking that litter box with you? It's nicer than mine." And I said...errmmmm, no...actually...

Only in New York.

Also, the boys who came to get my sofa bed? Ding-dong. Cute! Whoo!

Packing Up

There are two cats in this picture.


I will probably be waaaayyy too busy over the next few days to do any substantial blogging or, alas, blog reading. But I'm still here.

Of course, the cats think this is all great fun. So many new places to hide!

To the Geeks

Wow.

I just got home from my self-thrown "farewell" party. A BIG "THANK YOU!!!" to everyone who came, especially those of you who bought me drinks. It was a great turn out, and it meant a lot to me that you all came to wish me good luck on this crazy new chapter in my life.

Even so, there is a special subset of tonight's attendees (including some who couldn't make it, for valid reaons) who deserve a real debt of gratitude.

A few years ago, as my chosen career was imploding, I was fortunate enough to stumble upon a unique group of friends, whose ignorance of and disinterest in opera was as refreshing and wonderful as their tolerance of my passion for LOTR. You guys have been my rock, and I hope you know that this decision to up and move back to Oregon included major arguments with myself about the wisdom of leaving behind such an incredible network of friends. I love you all, and will miss you all more than I can say. Thank you, a million times over, for your friendship, support, generosity, encouragement and admonishments. If it wasn't for you guys, I never would have known how to even start a blog. I never would have watched Battlestar Galactica. My she-cat would no doubt be named Norma or Adina or Gutrune instead of Starbuck.

None of you happen to believe in God, but nonetheless, I believe God led me to you. You were, and are, absolutely the right people at the right time. This city I can live without; but the 3,000 miles I'm putting between myself and you guys is going to hurt like hell. Do take care, and please stay in touch.

The Geeks:

Derek
Doomed to Flail
Fabulous Jackass
Glennalicious
Fulminous
Useless! Worthless! Insipid!
He Who Has No Blog

And while I'm at it, THANK YOU to the other bloggers who showed up tonight:

Brechi
Crash
Huomiseksi
DJRaindog
Jess
Bokey
TinMan
Hit or Miss
Jere-Rigged

This Just In: Portland is Cool

I'm starting to get ready for the gala farewell bash I'm throwing for myself at a bar in Hell's Kitchen tonight, and I sat down to check email and peruse the latest news, since I've spent the entire day packing, organizing and throwing things out. I clicked over to The New York Times, and noticed that right now the #1 emailed Times article is a travel review called "36 Hours in Portland, Ore".

The verdict?

"Truth is, Portland doesn't want to be Seattle, its highly caffeinated neighbor to the north. With less traffic, better public transportation and Mount Hood in its backyard, this self-styled City of Roses doesn't stand in anybody's shadow. Its vibrant downtown overflows with urban pleasures like chic restaurants, funky nightclubs and spritely neighborhoods crackling with youthful energy, but nobody's boasting. That's another nice thing about Portland."

No More Gay for Pay

Today is my last day at my job with the Homosexual Agenda.

It feels really weird.

The best part is never having to ride the A train to work again. The stress of the commute has been the largest drain on my energy and was perhaps the biggest factor in my decision to leave the City. For someone like myself, who quickly feels overwhelmed in constricted, crowded environments, my daily ride to Wall Street is a one-hour and ten-minute exercise in extreme self-discipline. I am happy to never have to do this again.

I'm also, admittedly, ready to move on from this particular position. It has been great; I've learned tons, both in terms of acquiring and refining professional skills but also in discovering an enormous amount about how our legal system works, civil rights law, and the core arguments why full equality for gay, lesbian and bisexual people matters and how it will be won. I have probably the most congenial co-workers one could ever hope to have, and the work environment is one where I am completely free to be myself. It's a place where my impersonations of Kermit the Frog doing a scene from Raging Bull and Mommie Dearest if it had been cast with Carol Channing are not only tolerated, but requested.

I'm going to miss my view of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Still, I am ready for a new challenge in a new setting, even if that phrase does sound lifted out of one of the three-hundred terribly banal cover letters I received with the applications to replace me.

I also want to extend a HUGE THANK YOU to my parents. Without their constant support -- financial and otherwise -- this entire New York adventure never would have been possible. They have been incredibly, unspeakably generous. Two years ago, when this job was first offered to me, I was on the brink of declining it because I didn't see how I could afford even my very modest life on a non-profit administrative assistant's salary. But they knew how much I wanted this job, and they volunteered to continue to help me make ends meet, just as they did all through college and the time I spent getting my singing career off the ground. So, a big round of applause for them.

Rocky Makes a Friend

Rocky with Agnes Day, the Easter lamb.

More Playing: Zoom!

The sun came out today, though it's still unseasonably cold (it was 34 this morning). On my lunch hour I ran around taking some photographs of things I'd like to remember; this is a little square just off Water Street below Wall Street. Interesting assortment of architectural styles downtown. Being the very oldest part of the city, this area has several buildings dating back to the colonial era.


This is Battery Park, where the boats leave for the Statue of Liberty; the office towers in the back are actually in Jersey City, NJ.


On the left is of course the Statue of Liberty -- I have to say, I will miss being able to just stroll down to look at her on my lunch break -- with Ellis Island on the right.


The Queen Mary 2 was in town today, docked at her berth in Brooklyn. This is the view from the accountant's office at work; you can see the QM2 in the far right of the photo. The Wall Street Ferry dock is at the bottom.


And this is how close I was able to zoom in:


Here's a shot of the full vessel.

More playing

The new camera has a "candlelight" setting.


On Saturday, after attending the morning Liturgy of the Word at my church, I met up with a close old friend who lives out on Long Island, whom I rarely have a chance to see. We went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for a while, then went and had lunch and cocktails and caught up on the events of the past couple of years.

He went back to the Isle of Length around 5:00; the Great Easter Vigil at my church began at 7:00. Two hours wasn't enough time to go home, clean up and get back to church, but it was waayyyy too much time to kill wandering around the City in 30 degree gloomy gray weather, plus I was exhausted from the museum. So...I flaked out and went home and held my own Easter vigil with this little makeshift altar. Actually, it was kind of nice.

Sunday Photo Blogging: Playing Around with the New Camera

Manhattan, Good Friday morning, April 6, 2007.

OMG

Discuss.

Calling All Catholics

My father suggested having my Catholic readers ask St. Anthony of Padua, the Patron Saint of Lost Items, to see if he could intercede on behalf of the contents of the box the post office destroyed.

Today Sucked

Ever have one of those days where it just seems, despite all reason, that everyone in the world is trying to tick you off by being inconvenient, uncooperative, selfish and willfully oblivious? Yeah, that was today.

Well, we'll start with the good news. I bought a new digital camera. The one I've been using was 8 years old, and though I loved it, it was just old enough (by one generation) that it wasn't compatible with my new Mac. Since I know you're going to be wanting photographs of the Cats Across America Tour as it progresses, I figured investing in a new camera was a justifiable expense. I got an Olympus FE-230; I'll let you know what I think of it, but you can judge for yourselves by the pictures I post.

I have NO idea how to work the photo editing program that came with it. In my old program you could size the photo by choosing inches; now I have to choose pixels. This means nothing to me. So, the picture above is HUGE, I'm sure. It's also hard for me to judge since the screen on my Mac book is a lot smaller than I'm used to working with. I need to work on that. Anyway, this photo above is the building where I work -- at least until April 13. I'm on the 20th floor, so it's quite a view.

So after an inordinately frustrating day (attention people at work: didn't you get the memo? I quit. I'm leaving, get it? Stop throwing projects at me!) I got off the subway (another fabulous ride -- I surely won't ever miss the A train!) and there was a message on my cell phone from my father. One of the boxes I shipped home had arrived. Empty. Well, there was a note with it, saying that it had been "received" empty. Well, it wasn't sent empty. It is awfully thoughtful of the post office to go ahead and deliver what's left of the box they destroyed. God only knows where the contents are. According to my index, the box contained "scores/books." Sigh. Some of those scores were rare and valuable. And some just had sentimental value. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. I guess maybe it's worth the extra money to send things UPS, instead. Oh well. This is why we shouldn't attach ourselves to material things, I guess.

After getting the message, I turned 180 degrees and headed in the direction of the liquor store.

Thoughts on Passover

Each year on the first night of Passover, I faithfully commemorate the deliverance of the Hebrews from bondage in Egypt by watching Cecil B. DeMille’s sprawling, campy epic, The Ten Commandments.

I’ve never been under any delusion that the movie is historically or Biblically accurate; for all DeMille’s claims that in addition to the Holy Scriptures he drew from Philo, Josephus and the Midrash in fleshing out the story of Moses, most of it is invented from whole cloth, and I’m not talking about a torn Levite’s robe. Yet I can’t help thinking that DeMille got a lot closer to God’s truth and sense of justice than the author(s) of Exodus.

As I was re-reading the familiar text yesterday morning, I was struck and disturbed by what God was saying and doing in this story. In Exodus Chapter 4, as Moses is about to depart Midian and return to Egypt, God says to him, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders that I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.”

Let’s get this straight: Moses is to go before Pharaoh and make a humanitarian argument on behalf of the Hebrews, and back it up with signs from God, but then God is going to hi-jack the Pharaoh’s sense of justice and compassion and make him less fair and just than he actually is so that God will be justified in punishing not just Pharaoh (for the hardness of heart that wasn’t his fault) but also the many Egyptians – including innocent children – who are neither responsible for the Hebrews’ condition nor in a position to do anything about it. “But you refused to let him go,” God commands Moses to say to Pharaoh, “now I will kill your firstborn son.” This is dishonest and unscrupulous in the extreme.

And it’s not just Chapter 4; three more times the Lord tells Moses “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart” or “I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they will go in after them; and so I will gain glory for myself over Pharaoh and all his army, his chariots, and his chariot drivers.” So God is going to usurp free will and critical thinking in order to be justified and even glorified in inflicting suffering and death on people for not obeying him when they had no choice in the matter.

I can’t accept this. 1 John says, “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.” That’s the God I know and believe in.

Then I woke up today to The New York Times proclaiming that the Exodus never happened.

So what do we do with this story, if it is historically improbable and theologically disjunct?

I don’t have a good answer. I still find truth and meaning in the broader outlines: there is a God who knows your suffering and hears your prayers; there is a God who goes to bat for you; suffering helps us put life into perspective, teaches us things, builds character and gives us insight so that we might have compassion for others; God has already given us all the tools we need to change the world; if you maintain your faith, at the appointed time you will be delivered from your adversity, and at that time your period of suffering will begin to make sense to you; and also, just when you think you’re trapped, sometimes a totally unexpected way will open for you, usually at the last minute.

I know these things to be true, even if they have been presented to us in a historically inaccurate package. A truth is not always the same thing as a fact.

But a God who forces you to disobey him so that he can punish you for it? That’s bullshit.

The Me I Wanted to Be

I want to thank very much everyone who contributed to such a lively discussion in the previous post.

I am sorry that I haven't been able to keep up. As I've said, my mind is preoccupied. I thought once I gave notice at work that things would slow down as I started to wrap up, but it's been as busy as ever. When I'm not dealing with that, my brain is bogged down with hopes, dreams and panic attacks about the move. Every morning, as I step into the shower, I involuntarily ask myself, out loud, "Are you sure about this?"

No. No, actually, right now, I'm pretty damn scared. I am hurting already about the friends I leave behind. I know there are new friends in my future, and old friends who've stuck together despite the years and the miles and the transitions waiting for me on the other side.

As always, the spectre of my unrealized career ambitions looms large over all of this. A new acquaintance came by yesterday to look at some of the furniture I'm giving away. He noticed the framed posters I have in my entry way from some of the performances I did in Switzerland. "Wow, how amazing that you sang with these people!" he exclaimed. Indeed. Then there are the black and white production photos in the hall: my debut, an opera in Zurich, and the world premiere of a Philip Glass opera in Chicago, among others. "These are awesome!" he said. Yeah. They are.

Part of what makes this hard is that this really closes the door on those ambitions. No, I haven't made any attempt at resurrecting my singing career since that awful day nearly four years ago when despair, frustration and financial concerns led me to abandon my dreams and a decade of hard work. Over time, my voice has healed. Physically, I think I could do it again. It's still there. But my heart was broken. I don't have the drive anymore.

So I'm not just leaving a city, I'm leaving a life, a dream that almost was. I should be -- no, I am, I am -- grateful for the opportunities I had. I went further than most. But three weeks from today, as I turn right on 179th Street and point the rental car toward New Jersey and beyond to Oregon, it's not just going to be the George Washington Bridge in the rear view mirror, but the me I wanted to be.

Am I Wrecking Your Marriage?

Is same-sex marriage a threat to heterosexual marriage? Do supporters of same-sex marriage actually simply oppose marriage itself?

Those are the conclusions drawn by David Blankenhorn in the April 2 edition of The Weekly Standard. While he is forced to admit that no one “can scientifically prove that allowing gay marriage causes the institution of marriage to get weaker” and to add that “correlation does not imply causation,” he nonetheless launches ahead based on the discredited research of Stanley Kurtz to argue precisely that the correlation between the legalization of gay marriage and certain statistics about attitudes toward heterosexual marriage implies that gay marriage causes bad straight marriages.

Kurtz is famous for reporting that the legalization of same-sex marriage in Scandinavia resulted in lower rates of heterosexual marriage, higher rates of divorce, and an increase in out-of-wedlock childbirth. The reality is that in Denmark, for example, after a decades-long decline in straight marriage rates, that trend began to reverse itself in the 1980s, and continued to climb after the legalization of same-sex marriage in 1989. The marriage rates in Sweden, Norway and Iceland are higher now than they were before legal protections for same-sex couples were established. The divorce rates in the region are unchanged.

Ignoring for a moment that he’s working from a lethally flawed premise, Blankenhorn makes the assertion that even if correlation is not necessarily causation, there are “recurring patterns in the data” from international surveys about attitudes toward marriage that are significant.

He relies on responses from the 2002 International Social Survey Programme and the World Values Survey. First he presumes either a yes or no answer, then he presumes that advocates of “traditional” marriage will answer the questions a certain way, and then, lo and behold, he discovers that the countries with higher rates of responses that disagree with “traditional” views on marriage are the countries with more progressive attitudes toward same-sex relationships.

The statements to which respondents are asked to agree or disagree are pretty damn silly. For example, Statement 1 is, “Married people are generally happier than unmarried people.” A wise man once said, “Love isn’t the answer to all your problems, it’s a whole set of new ones.” Statement 2 is, “People who want children ought to get married.” I think a clear majority of same-sex couples would agree with that; that’s why they’re suing for marriage. Or perhaps Statement 3, “One parent can bring up a child as well as two parents together.” That largely depends on the two parents in question; as the majority opinion in Hernandez v. Robles pointed out, heterosexuals can have children by accident. Two people not responsible enough to avoid an unintended pregnancy are not necessarily going to be ideal parents. And some relationships – even married, heterosexual ones – are dysfunctional, unhealthy, and unhappy. Only someone with an extremely limited, narrow and simplistic life experience could possibly respond to any of these statements with anything other than a “Yes, but…” or a “No, but…”.

Buried under all this is the unsupportable presumption that the absolute worst, most dysfunctional married heterosexual parents are better parents than someone like Mary Cheney, who has been with her partner for 14 years and has made the conscious decision to raise a child.

Blankenhorn tallies up the responses to these surveys and notes that “a rise in unwed childbearing goes hand in hand with a weakening of the belief that people who want to have children should get married.” That statement may be true, but Blankenhorn ends up resorting to “giving up the search for causation” – his words – in order to claim that gay marriage causes heterosexuals to have children outside of marriage. Huh?

Then he makes the extraordinary claim that “people who have devoted much of their professional lives to attacking marriage as an institution almost always favor gay marriage.” He cites Judith Stacey, professor of sociology at NYU, saying she champions same-sex marriage “precisely in the hope of dethroning once and for all the traditional ‘conjugal institution.’”

Note, please, the placement of the quotation marks above. “Dethroning once and for all the traditional” is 100% pure Blankenhorn. What Dr. Stacey actually said, in testimony before Congress, was, “Subjecting the conjugal institution to this sort of heightened democratic scrutiny could help it to assume varied, creative and adaptive contours.” Then she urged them “to value the meaning and quality of intimate bonds over their customary forms.” [Emphasis added.]

Having worked now for nearly two years for the organization singularly most responsible for the advancement of gay rights in the United States, especially same-sex marriage, I have to tell you that my co-workers are not even remotely cynical about marriage. Marriage – both its legal rights, responsibilities and protections as well as its social and symbolic benefits – is extremely important to us. We are not in any way interested in attempting to “undermine” marriage; “for decades, heterosexuals have been doing a fine job on that all by themselves” – again, quoting Blankenhorn.

Yet somehow we are expected to believe that the gay community’s desire for permanent, meaningful and legally protected commitment is at the heart of the heterosexual community’s myriad relationship failures. In order to make that argument, people like Blankenhorn have to claim that to “value the meaning and quality of intimate bonds” is perverse and less important to stability than genitalia.

Battlestar Shocker!

WARNING: This post contains absolutely no spoilers.

So the Cylons are into Bob Dylan, is that it? Sure, makes perfect sense.

No Reason to Ever Come Back to New York

Okay, that's an exaggeration. I'm sure I will be back to visit New York as frequently as my schedule and budget allows.

I have often joked with friends and acquaintances that some morning in Portland undoubtedly I will wake up and say, "I need a bagel!" and hop on jetBlue and fly back to Manhattan. Of course, they have bagels in Portland. Blueberry bagels and strawberry bagels and apple cinnamon bagels and all manner of heretical, unorthodox bagels. (I may be in favor of openly gay bishops, but I am conservative enough that I am opposed to non-traditional bagel flavors. It's just wrong, folks, and if you don't understand why, there's something wrong with you, too.) But it's not just the questionable new flavors, it's the consistency. Maybe it's New York's godawful tap water, or the pollution in the air, or some ontological mystery, but New York bagels are just better. They're definitive. In Portland, any dinner roll with a hole in it can be called a "bagel."

And so imagine my joy when today during confirmation class, one of my table mates passed me an article he'd cut out from The New York Times about Portland. It turns out H&H bagels are available at Mother's Bistro on Stark Street.

Oy, it's a mitzvah!

PB & A

Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church (essentially the Archbishop of America), attended the 11:00 service at my church today -- not to officiate or preach, just to sit in.

Unfortunately, I didn't know about that until the rector mentioned it during confirmation class afterward. Argh! ++Katharine was just elected this past year, and will serve a 9 year term as head of the American province of the Anglican Communion. Most likely it will be during this time that we will see whether the Communion holds or falls apart, so she has an extraordinarily important role to play. Her very tenure is a threat to certain other members of the church, who have difficulty accepting women as priests, let alone as primates. (That's primates as in heads of Anglican provinces, not the biological order containing monkeys, apes and humans, although there are some Christians out there who dispute that, too.)

I am so bummed -- I would really like to meet her! Maybe someday.

Here's a sample of the PB's wisdom from a recent sermon:

Living in community also requires multifocal lenses, and we've had some small experience here in doing that. We've looked beyond ourselves to the Anglican Communion, and internally toward our varied members. We are trying to see with others' perspectives, and sometimes it can be both painful and annoying. We don't see as clearly or easily when we gaze on unfamiliar depths, when we are invited to hold together both Radner and Grieb, both unchanging truth and continuing revelation.

There are some kinds of fish and other aquatic animals that actually have bipartite eyes - they see at the same time both above and below the surface of the water, and their brains figure out how to interpret those quite different images and make a coherent whole. As a body, we are wrestling with a collection of images - perhaps even more like the eye of a social insect, with multiple facets - but most of us assume that the image we form most easily is the only right and true one. The blesser of the gospel, however, sees more than that one, easy image. The blesser of all invites us into that deeper seeing as well - stretch, strain, imagine, and you, too, can begin to see like the Three do, like the One does.

When we have seen that blessing, however briefly, it begins to rise into more easily visible depths, it comes more clearly into focus and into what we call "normal reality." To see as God sees is to begin to make real, whether it is the work of the [Millennium Development Goals], the work going on now in Louisiana and Mississippi, caring for the homecoming soldier, or liberating those in chains. To see as God sees is to bless what is into the reality of the God's reign.

Let's Hear it for the Bishops

First, apologies that there hasn't been anything of substance on this blog for quite a while, and that I've been really bad about keeping up with other blogs. I even totally fell away from a really interesting discussion going on over at Gary's. I have just been so busy at work with all my regular duties plus wrapping things up and interviewing for my successor and then going home at night and doing research for the trip and planning and packing, that I haven't had much time.

*****

The Episcopal Church is in the news again. You may recall that about a month ago, the leaders of the 38 autonomous provinces that make up the Anglican Communion met in Tanzania to discuss the ongoing tension over the Episcopal Church's attitudes toward homosexuality. The leaders, called primates, issued what they called a "communiqué," in the form of an ultimatum, that essentially called on the Episcopal Church to cease and desist from consecrating gay bishops and blessing same-sex unions by September of this year, or face being kicked out of the Anglican Communion. They also proposed a primatial oversight committee from outside the Episcopal Church to monitor and enforce the demands.

This week, the House of Bishops, comprised of the leaders of each diocese of the Episcopal Church, met to discuss and respond to the primates. They rejected the idea of "pastoral oversight" as hopelessly incongruent with our own church's constitution, as it would be a "delegation of primatial authority," a "compromise of autonomy," a violation of "our founding principles...following our own liberation from colonialism," and "a very serious departure from our English Reformation heritage," because it would sacrifice "the emancipation of the laity for the exclusive leadership of high-ranking Bishops. And, for the first time since our separation from the papacy in the 16th century, it replaces the local governance of the Church by its own people with the decisions of a distant and unaccountable group of prelates."

They did not address the specific issues of same-sex unions and the consecration of gay bishops, largely because the people of the Episcopal Church are not of a single mind on either subject, but also because there is nothing in the structure of the Anglican Communion that allows for foreign bishops to dictate our beliefs or practices. The bishops did unequivocally state, "We proclaim the Gospel of what God has done and is doing in Christ, of the dignity of every human being, and of justice, compassion, and peace. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God's children, including women, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ's Church. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God's children, including gay and lesbian persons, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ's Church."

As far as the survival of the Communion goes, the bishops said, "We proclaim a Gospel that welcomes diversity of thought and encourages free and open theological debate as a way of seeking God's truth. If that means that others reject us and communion with us, as some have already done, we must with great regret and sorrow accept their decision."

During the meeting in Tanzania, Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, asked Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, to come to America to meet with our leaders and discuss these issues. She was told his calendar was full.

I am confident that Abp. Williams' schedule is quite busy, and I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. But somehow I remain unconvinced that he could not make time to accept an invitation to meet with a province that is being threatened with expulsion.

I've Been Knighted!

On Friday we began placing advertisements to find my replacement at work; I've already received well over 200 applications. I'm grateful to have this particular experience right now, because I'm getting ideas for resumes and cover letters that stand out, and it's also helping me form a mental list of cliches to avoid. When I start sending cover letters out, they are going to rock.

Word to the wise: if you say in your cover letter that you are "detail oriented," you probably don't want to misspell the name of the company you are applying to.

So far, my favorite letter of interest begins, "Dear Sir Andy."

I'm Sorry, Did You Say, Bong Hits 4 Jesus???

The Supreme Court is going to hear an unusual free speech case tomorrow. Five years ago, as the Olympic torch was passing through Juneau, Alaska, on its way to Salt Lake City, a local high school principal allowed her students out of class to watch. One enterprising young man, hoping to get on TV, unfurled a banner just as the torch went by -- a fourteen-foot long banner -- that read, "Bong Hits 4 Jesus."

After refusing to take down the sign, the student was suspended for 10 days. He sued, claiming violation of his free speech rights...and has won every step of the way to the high court.

The case basically rests on the question of whether school officials have the right to restrict students' speech when it promotes illegal activity. The principal is being represented by Ken Starr -- remember him? The student is represented by the ACLU -- no surprise there.

Now, if you were a Christian conservative wingnut, which side would you be on? Surprise! According to The New York Times, groups like Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice and the Alliance Defense Fund, taking time out of its usual habits, such as suing an Ohio university that offered domestic partnership benefits to same-sex couples, claiming it violated the state ban on recognition of same-sex relationships, have entered briefs in support of the ACLU's case.

They worry that a ruling in favor of the school board would be a threat to students' religious freedom.

I won't offer an opinion on who's right, here. I'm still laughing too hard. All I can say is, I hope this boy goes on to study marketing. He's got a gift.

When Cows Stress Out

One of the ways I like to pass my time during the hour or so it takes me to travel to and from my job is to check out what people are reading on the A train. There's a lot of pulpy, low-brow stuff -- against which I have absolutely nothing, because the subway is often not conducive to intense concentration. So I see The New York Post, The Daily News, People, In Touch (not the gay porn magazine, the celebrity rag), and stuff like that. Of course there's also The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, TimeOut New York, along with The Nation, The Economist, The Financial Times and other high-brow lefty publications.

The books tend to be sophisticated, too: Dante, Chomsky, Rushdie.

Today, however, I saw a man reading a publication I'd never even heard of, one filled with ads for combines and other kinds of farm equipment -- not something you see in Manhattan very often. As he turned the page, I caught a glimpse of the name of the magazine: Hoard's Dairyman.

The article he was reading was, "Is Your Cow Overbooked?"

Playing around with my new iSight

I guess Starbuck wasn't in the mood.

Surprise! I converted

I had to ponder it for quite a while, but I think I've made the right decision, even if it's kind of scary right now.

No, I'm still Episcopalian.

Still gay.

Still male.

Didn't become a Republican.

I bought a Mac! So, here's to my first post using my new laptop, which will enable me not only continue to hunt for jobs during my 6 day "Cats Across America Tour," but also keep you, gentle readers, updated daily on our travel progress, hopefully including delightful anecdotes and funny photos from America's heartland.

It's Official: Homeless and Unemployed

I turned in my resignation at work today.

America and its Moral Policies

I have a question for Marine General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who told The Chicago Tribune that he believed "homosexual acts" are immoral. "I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way," he said.

So, General Pace, what are your views on:

• Launching an unprovoked war of aggression, including invasion and occupation, in order to force a country at gunpoint to convert to a representative democracy which apparently no one there wants
• Lying about the justifications for the invasion by misrepresenting and exaggerating intelligence
• Spending tens of thousands of lives only to fail at the objective through incompetence and heartlessness
• State-sponsored torture
• Illegal surveillance of American citizens
• Illegal detention of American citizens
• Kidnapping of innocent people from American soil and foreign countries in order to "render" them to other governments for interrogation under torture
• Detaining American citizens in solitary confinement without charging them with a crime and denying them access to legal representation
• Detaining hundreds of foreign citizens at a prison camp thousands of miles away from their homes and making them wait months and even years before even beginning to grant them access to anything resembling due process: a military tribunal at which, among other atrocities, the accused is not allowed to see the evidence that is presented against him
• Executing the mentally retarded
• Spending $2 trillion on an illegal, immoral war launched under false pretenses while 48 million Americans have no access to health insurance
• The medical care the tens of thousands of wounded Iraq veterans have -- or more precisely, have not -- received for the sacrifice they made because of President Bush's lies and delusions

Seems to me no one personally involved in President Bush's War for Terror has any standing to comment on what constitutes moral public policy.

An Evolutionary Explanation for Atheism

I've been giving more thought to the recent New York Times Magazine article "Darwin's God." It occurred to me that if we accept the scientific evidence that "children are born with a tendency to believe in omniscience, invisible minds, immaterial souls," then one possible explanation for the emergence of atheism would be when a person rejects the dogma they have been taught by their family and/or culture because it conflicts with what they innately know to be true about the nature of the Divine. In fact, that's one of the most basic arguments atheists make: "If there were a God, he'd..." Because they know better.

*****

Hello, time change. When the alarm clock went off in the pitch-black at 6:00 this morning, I have to say I wasn't especially enthusiastic about it. Nevertheless, I stumbled out of bed and did my usual Monday yoga routine. Normally the cats start trying to wake me up shortly before the alarm clock goes off so they can have their breakfast. Today I noticed, as I was unrolling the yoga mat, they had both gone back to sleep.

*****

Speaking of The New York Times, I was looking at a men's fashion slideshow (the model is beautiful) when I came across this caption: "Lanvin green-and gray knitted silk tank, $603."

House of Flying Kitties

No wonder my downstairs neighbor doesn't like me. Enjoy!

Sunday Photo Blogging: Happy First Birthday, Rocky & Starbuck!

Today Rocky and Starbuck celebrate their first birthday. Okay, okay, fine, they actually have no idea. I'm celebrating it. They've certainly grown in the nine months since I got them for my birthday! These guys are so much fun; they have such great, distinct personalities and quirks. They are super affectionate and very talkative. Our six-day journey across the United States is going to be quite an adventure.

The promised video is not quite ready; keep checking back, and hopefully we'll have that up on YouTube soon!


They get along so well; they are often snuggling together on the bed or the sofa, or sitting next to each other like this on the window sill, meowing at the pigeons.


Starbuck can be a little moody.

My bud, Rocky.

I think this is basically what goes on when I'm not home.

Below are shots of the kind of shenanigans you'll see in the video. We have this toy, generously given to the cats over Thanksgiving by their beloved Uncle JP, that they absolutely go crazy for. I don't normally advertise on my blog, but this thing is called "Da Bird." It's just feathers on a string at the end of something like a fishing pole, but they go nuts for it. If you have active cats and you're looking for a great toy, I highly recommend it.

No, I am not throwing my cats up in the air and taking pictures of them. They just go flying for this silly toy. Rocky likes to rocket straight up into the air -- he can get to about five feet off the ground.

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Super Starbuck! Look at that form! I gave it a 10, but the judge back there on the sofa only gave it an 8.5.

Rocky, precariously balanced on the banister. It's one of his favorite spots. He likes to sit there and meow at me in the morning. Don't forget to check back soon for Rocky & Starbuck on YouTube!

Note: photos 2, 5, 6 & 7 courtesy of "Uncle JP," who is also our videographer -- a very special thank you to him!

The God of Evolution

Last Sunday, The New York Times Magazine’s cover article – which remained the #1 emailed Times piece for several days – was entitled “Darwin’s God,” and it focused on the efforts to explain the existence of religion as a product of evolution.

The author was careful to say the question is “not whether God exists, which is a matter for philosophers and theologians, but why the belief does.”

Evolutionary biologists have come up against a wall when it comes to the existence of religion; Darwinism teaches that in order for traits to survive, they must contribute either to survival or reproduction, and while the vast majority of the world’s inhabitants – both today and stretching back into the mists of prehistory – believe in the existence of the supernatural, religion seems “to use up physical and mental resources without an obvious benefit for survival.”

Many of the ideas discussed in this article are fascinating and plausible; I enthusiastically recommend it. But I could not help noticing that I did not recognize Christianity in their descriptions of religion. Scott Atran, an anthropologist, feels that “so many aspects of religious belief involve misattribution and misunderstanding of the real world,” and that “religious belief requires taking ‘what is materially false to be true’ and ‘what is materially true to be false.’”

Whoa. No wonder Mr. Atran finds religion inscrutable. I would challenge any of my skeptic/atheist/agnostic readers to identify any belief I profess that is “materially false." True, I hold some beliefs which are beyond the province of empirical scientific study, but by that very distinction they cannot be labeled, even by a noted anthropologist, as “materially false.” The author, Robin Marantz Henig, ponders, “what believer would want to subject his own devotion to rationalism’s cold, hard scrutiny?”

Umm…me? Unlike many of my fundamentalist counterparts, I am not afraid of scientific inquiry. I believe in God, and I believe God is ultimate truth, and therefore I believe any honest inquiry, even a scientific one, leads to God. And I find nothing in any of the theories offered here that gives me significant pause for thought over whether there really is a God. Moreover, I find the research that clearly indicates children are predisposed to “believe in omniscience, invisible minds [and] immaterial souls” is evidence in favor of the Divine. Whether those beliefs take the form of an organized theology has to do with the culture and environment in which the children grow up, but the tendency toward faith appears to be innate and universal, despite having no evolutionary benefit. It shatters the conventional secular wisdom that children are “brainwashed” into religion; it rather suggests that one must be trained into atheism, instead.

And even if there is an objective, purely scientific, evolutionary explanation for why people believe in the existence of God, so what? Scientist Justin Barrett asks, “Suppose science produces a convincing account for why I think my wife loves me – should I then stop believing that she does?”

At the risk of chauvinism, even though I believe all the spiritual traditions of the world contain wisdom and truth, the sophisticated theology of the major faiths deserve more credit than to be casually derided as superstition or easy comfort in a meaningless world. Christianity in particular, while clearly prone to perversion for personal or political purposes, is not simply a refuge for people who are afraid of death, as this article proposes.

SoHo, TriBeCa, DUMBO…WaHi?

This Sunday, The New York Times ran an interesting, if slightly bizarre, write-up of the neighborhood I’ve called home for the past thirteen years: Washington Heights.

Nestled snuggly in upper Manhattan between Inwood (the uppermost neighborhood) and Harlem, Washington Heights has long been the last island bastion of spacious, affordable apartments. That’s why I came up here in the first place, back in 1994: fellow students at Manhattan School of Music enthusiastically recommended the area. Here I could afford (with my parents’ generous help) a large (by New York standards, huge) 1 bedroom that in any neighborhood south of about 125th Street would have gone for at least three times what I paid for it.

It’s an interesting part of the world. I managed to get into a good building right at the central intersection of the “toniest” part of the neighborhood, on Fort Washington Avenue near West 187th Street. When I first moved in, the majority of my neighbors were elderly orthodox Jews – the lady in 3A used to bring me leftover rugelach after her Sunday mah jongg game; the other major groups were the Russians and a surprisingly large population of Serbians, plus a generous sampling of young, white struggling artistic types: musicians and actors, mostly. Get on any northbound A train at 42nd Street around 11:00 p.m. and you will undoubtedly end up with the entire chorus of any particular Broadway musical you choose on its way home to the Heights. Open your windows on a warm Saturday afternoon and there’s a soprano to the south tuning and perfecting her D-flats in “Sempre libera” and a tenor to the north smoothing out the runs from “Il mio tesoro,” or a tuba player across the alley playing “Ride of the Valkyries” ad nauseum.

And then there were, and are, the Dominicans, who are largely the focus of the Times write-up. There are hundreds of thousands of Dominicans in an area roughly one mile square; so many, in fact, that the current President of the Dominican Republic campaigned here – marched down the street in front of my apartment, no less. And little wonder: he grew up here.

The Times article centers on the effects of the gradual gentrification of the neighborhood, which are mostly adverse for the less-affluent Dominicans who have claimed this area for so long. When I first arrived, there really wasn’t much here. In fact, as recently as 2001, I remember a lunch-break conversation with a co-worker who happened to live across the street. “Did you see the new restaurant that’s opening on 187th?” “Yes, it has tables!”

Now there are three very nice, very good restaurants on 187th, plus a diner (meh) and a Chinese take-out (ew…avoid), and an Indian place around the corner. There are several new places down on 181st, with tables and menus and everything, including a Japanese restaurant and the fancy, high-priced (but worth it) Hispaniola, next door to what has to be the best liquor store in all of Manhattan. Seriously. We even have a Starbucks.

Washington Heights has much to commend it; I have always liked the fact that upon surfacing from the subway at 181st Street after a busy day in the craziness downtown, you find yourself in a different world, with (relatively) quiet, tree-lined streets. It’s a family-friendly, community-minded kind of place, liberal and politically active, a place where Jewish people stand outside the supermarket protesting Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. A place where free public yoga classes are taught in the park next to the community meditation garden, just over the monument commemorating the Battle of Fort Washington. At the end of the street is Fort Tryon Park, with its beautiful Heather Garden and panoramic views of the Hudson River, which has been the subject of so many of my photo posts here, and via a short walk, the famous Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art specializing in medieval Christian artwork.

One can’t deny that the neighborhood is changing, however. As I have mentioned before, I walk ten minutes north each morning to the next uptown subway stop in order to get a seat for the hour-long ride to work, because the population of 9-5 professionals living here has positively exploded. According to the Times, 35% of the white households in the neighborhood earn between $75-200,000. (12% of the Dominican households manage that; the median Dominican household income for the neighborhood is $32,800.) My current 600 square-foot apartment was $750/month when I took it back in 1996; with rent-stabilized increases, it’s now $1,023, but after I leave it next month and the landlord renovates it, I’m guessing it will probably go for $1,500.

As Washington Heights becomes whiter and more affluent, there seems to be a desire to alter what the neighborhood is called, to shed the image of a heavily-latino, neglected, crime-ridden part of town (which you can still find if you just cross to the east side of Broadway). A few years ago, realtors were pushing my neighborhood as “Hudson Heights.” The Times says the new hipsters are calling it “WaHi.” (Which, I’m sorry, is lame, yo.) When I was in Los Angeles in September, I impressed new acquaintances by saying I live on the Upper North Side. The best alternative, giving a nod to the significant gay population, comes from drag superstar Hedda Lettuce, who calls it “Upper upper upper upper upper upper Chelsea.”

In my opinion, however, there’s nothing wrong with Washington Heights.

Some Destiny

Raise your hand if you think that's the last we'll see of Kara Thrace.

But I Found What I Was Looking For

On the post below – oh, thanks, everyone, for your awesome suggestions – reader KR (and good friend for…let’s tactfully say a long time) proposed adding U2’s great song “But I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” to my Leaving New York Roadtrip Playlist. It got me thinking.

No, I can’t claim these last few years went according to plan. It would be wrong to suggest that there wasn’t a cloud of disappointment hanging over the horizon, the shadow of what might have been. But that’s probably true of everyone’s life.

I don’t want to give the impression that I’m leaving New York because I’m giving up, that I’m retreating to Oregon with my tail between my legs to lick my emotional wounds. New York has been great. I don’t regret coming here. I’m not angry, jaded, or disillusioned. I’ve just reached the point where it’s time to close this chapter and start a new one.

The story of how I got here is a long and complicated one with several bizarre twists of fate, but I can start with that day in the summer of 1993 when I had the opportunity to sing for Ellen Faull, former City Opera diva and professor emerita of the Juilliard School. Sure, I entertained the fantasy that she would love my singing and arrange for me to go study in New York. But when that actually happened, it was stunning.

I was scared. Me, in New York City? Me, at a conservatory? I didn’t feel ready for either of those things. (And remember, this was pre-Giuliani scary Times Square squeegee-guy New York.) But I said to myself, “Look, buster: if you don’t do this, if you don’t give this a try, you will regret it for the rest of your life.” If I didn’t like it, if it didn’t work out, I could always go home.

Okay, I’m not where I hoped I’d be. But I went places and did things I never dreamed I’d do. I had opportunities and experiences I’d be a fool not to still be amazed at and grateful for. But forget the career for the moment.

New York. There is no place in the world I would rather have spent my 20s than New York City. I went through adolescence in Portland, but I grew up in Manhattan. I am not the same person I was when I got here; I am profoundly changed for the better. The people I have encountered, the friendships I have made, and the wealth of experiences – from exhilarating to devastating – well, I wouldn’t trade them for anything.

Do I have any regrets? I wish I’d had more confidence when I was younger. I was cute; I wish I’d known that and put it to better use. I wish I had not taken my singing so seriously; I wish I would have allowed myself to take a few more risks and had more fun. Oh well.

So no, this is not surrender. This was amazing. I didn’t go as far as I hoped, but I exceeded all my expectations. I come away from this feeling blessed and lucky. I will treasure these past 13 years all the days of my life.

Next Week...

Sunday photoblogging returns, with a tribute to a couple of very special cats on the occasion of their first birthday, featuring Rocky & Starbuck's YouTube debut!

And Every Day, Some Go Away

I'm working on my "Leaving New York/Road Trip" Playlist. Here's what I've got so far:

1. "Go West," The Village People
2. "Into the West," Annie Lenox (from The Return of the King)
3. "Getting out of town," 42nd Street
4. "Another Hundred People," Company
5. "Don't Rain on my Parade," Funny Girl
6. "Tennessee Homesick Blues," Dolly Parton
7. "The Best is Yet to Come," Frank Sinatra
8. "Roam," B-52's
9. "Here I Go Again," Whitesnake

That will probably get me as far as Paramus. Any suggestions? Unfortunately, "Holiday Road" from National Lampoon's Vacation is not available on iTunes, nor is the soundtrack commercially available.

#6 might seem like an odd choice, especially since I'm not going anywhere near Tennessee, but consider the lyrics:

New York City ain't no kind of place
For a country girl suburban gay with a friendly face
If you smile people look at you funny
They take it wrong
The greenest state in the land of the free
And the home of the Grand Ole Opry Tillamook Cheese Factory
Is calling me back to my Smoky Cascade Mountain home

The lyrics from #9 kind of hit home, too.

I also need a name for this adventure. I'm thinking about calling it the Cats Across America Tour. Any other ideas?