This is from the trip we took yesterday to Chatfield Hollow State Park. It’s located in the little town of Killingworth, Connecticut. It was a really nice day and especially nice to have some time to just be with each other. I've had a cold lately and haven’t felt like doing much. This was the first day I felt decent in awhile.

I haven’t posted for awhile. There’s a lot going on in my life right now. I’ll post about it if I feel like I want to vent. For now, I’m just happy that things are looking up for me personally and that I’m getting back to one of my passions; photography.

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Elevation Profile of trip

These were taken last weekend when we went to Newport, Rhode Island to take the Ten Mile Scenic Tour around the bay. Read below to view them either on the map, or through a slide show in Flickr.

NOTE ABOUT THE INTERACTIVE PHOTO MAPPING BELOW:

1) to use this functionality, your browser must support Inline Frames and be configured to display them.

2) If you are a subscriber of email alerts from this website, the interactive map will not work in your email client. You need to click on the TITLE of the email entry to take you to the original entry on the website.

3) The more you zoom in, it will start to separate photos into their true position. If you are zoomed out a bit, it may say that there are 5 photos in one location. If you zoom in on that same location a bit more, you will see that there are actually 3 photos taken in one location, and a few feet away, the other two.

4) The map looks really cool in “Hybrid”.

Crazy day today. For the most part, life is good. Just a few thoughts....

I got this today from Love Makes A Family about the Maryland ruling for gay marriage...

Dear Bill,

We have just learned that the Maryland Court of Appeals has ruled in the case of Conaway v. Deane and Polyak that same-sex couples do not have the right to marry under the Maryland state constitution. Read more about the decision at http://www.equalitymaryland.org/.

This is an extremely disappointing ruling for our colleagues at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Equality Maryland who have worked tirelessly on this case for the last three years. More significantly, however, it harms the tens of thousands of committed same-sex couples and their children in Maryland who have been told today that their families are not worth protecting and respecting.

Although Maryland’s high court has failed to end this discrimination against same-sex couples and their families, the fight isn’t over. Equality Maryland immediately urged their state legislature to do the right thing and pass a bill extending marriage to same-sex couples.

Here in Connecticut, we also expect a ruling soon from our state’s highest court in our marriage lawsuit, Kerrigan & Mock v. CT Department of Public Health.

God, I can’t even afford to emotionally get into this issue of gay marriage anymore. It just takes too much out of me. It’s like it drains the good and positive out of my life and it all becomes negative. I have to at least think in my mind that Kent and I have a marriage just as real as those who were married by the State. I know it’s not true, but it’s the only way I can deal with it. Does that make me a weak person?

Sometimes I think that people just have to try to deal with life’s issues the best way they can. That’s what I try to do... look at the life we have built together, and look at all the good things in our lives. And hopefully by the time one of us is ready to croak, we will be able to have the legal and financial protections that heterosexual married people have, so that whichever one of us survives, the other won’t have to deal with all the legal problems of not having the option of being seen as a “spouse”. ARGH!!!! See... more negativity. But if we don’t care about issues, who will? And what will make things get better?

On my way to work this morning, I listened to the audio recording of the student who was tasered this morning. I later watched the incident. Basically, the student was trying to ask John Kerry a few questions, which Kerry wouldn’t answer. Then they tried to escort him out. He said he didn’t resist, but I can see that he was resisting. Then, they tasered him. That’s disturbing enough to me. But what is more disturbing is the fact that if you say the wrong thing, or if someone doesn’t like what you are saying, that is grounds to be tasered by the police?

This headline says it all: Student Asks Kerry Tough Question, Kerry Watches Him Get Tasered; Free Speech Nowhere to be Seen.

And here’s the video.

I love Fall. The air is so crisp and clean. There’s a slight chill in the air in the morning and everything seems so cheerful and care free. And then you go to work... but that’s another issue. :-)

Yeah I know, it’s not technically Fall yet. But try telling that to my trees outside. They are getting in full swing. We are going to try something a bit different this year for viewing the Fall colors. We are going to take a canoe trip and view them from a river. I’ll probably pack a lunch and we’ll stop somewhere to have lunch, taking photos along the way. I’ll include more details on that later. Then a week after that, we are off to the Portland, Maine area for Kent’s birthday.

On Saturday, after the morning rain showers had cleared off, we went out to Mashapaug Pond to just take a leisurely walk through the wood. Below is the interactive map with the photos that we took. We had a great time.

Then yesterday, we went to Newport, Rhode Island for the 10-mile Scenic Tour. We wanted to do it a few weeks ago but decided to wait for a nice sunny day. Well, that day was yesterday. It was gorgeous out and prime weather for beautiful seascapes. I’m working on the photos and will publish them most likely sometime this week.

Other than that, things are going well. I’m already looking forward to next weekend when we do that final lawn mowing and tidying up around the house to get ready for winter.

NOTE ABOUT THE INTERACTIVE PHOTO MAPPING BELOW:

1) to use this functionality, your browser must support Inline Frames and be configured to display them.

2) If you are a subscriber of email alerts from this website, the interactive map will not work in your email client. You need to click on the TITLE of the email entry to take you to the original entry on the website.

3) The more you zoom in, it will start to separate photos into their true position. If you are zoomed out a bit, it may say that there are 5 photos in one location. If you zoom in on that same location a bit more, you will see that there are actually 3 photos taken in one location, and a few feet away, the other two.

4) The map looks really cool in “Hybrid”.

Yesterday was just awful for me.

Do you ever have days that are so blah that by 11:00 or so you wonder why you didn’t just stay in bed? For me, that’s usually a warning sign of depression that is looming. I’m not talking about “the blues”. I’m talking about a clinically depressive episode that is telling me that it’s going to come out and show itself. Then followed all the negative thoughts that fuel it, followed by feelings of guilt that I’m giving into it, followed by feelings that I am worthless, and boring, and ugly. You get the idea.

Then I go to lunch, not because I’m hungry, but because when you are in a depressive state, you latch on to things, one more thing, one more thing... to get you through the next hour, then the next hour, with the end-goal of it being 5:00 so you can leave work and go home.

I made it to 4:00 and had to go home. It sucked. I got home, which followed with more feelings of worthlessness and just not being motivated to do anything. And that is depression.

With me, it comes and goes. I actually have a pretty good handle on it, and all without medication. For that, I’m proud of myself. And by the weekend, it will most likely be gone. What is my weapon? Well, I plan ahead and plan to do things this weekend. We are going somewhere and will spend the day together. It may be a hike, or a drive. Or a bit of both.

My depression is a battle within myself. I try to the best of my ability to contain it within myself and not spill over onto others, because then, they get depressed because I’m depressed. You get the picture. Kent knows when I’m down. He has his work to do and usually leaves me be. I do what I have to do to move forward.

I am usually aware of the impetus for the depression. It rarely just happens by itself. I can’t help but think that the coming and going of 9-11 had a lot to do with it. I was going to write my thoughts on this yesterday, but I simply was not in a state of mind to do that. And there are some big things happening at work that I’m not at liberty to talk about, that have left me feeling a bit overwhelmed. But I’m a survivor. This will pass.

So yesterday was a bust. I go to pick up my sandwich at my favorite sandwich shop. They all love to talk to me. We talk a bit. I go through the line and at the register, she points out that she’s not charging me for lunch because I look like I’m having a rough day. I say, “Thank you Mama”, the nickname of the little Indian lady that is always behind the cash register. I’m not sure why they like me so much, but it’s nice to see that some people still care for each other.

Well here it is. A few of my thoughts about yesterday...

I wish we would still care for each other like we used too. Now, we are just too busy and too self-absorbed.

I wish they would stop saying over and over again that instead of remembering 9-11, we should finally just “move on” and treat the day just like any other day, because it just lets the terrorists know that they have “won” (this from the radio broadcast on my way to lunch). How can we “move on”. For God’s sake, it was and is one of the big pivotal points in the history of this country -- right up there with Pearl Harbor. Have we come to a point where we want to forget things simply because they are too painful to remember? “What’s too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget...” (from a Barbara Streisand song - God I’m so freaking GAY!). Good people died that day and extraordinary acts of heroism showed itself as the best of what can be... if we just CARE.

I stopped for my moment of silence yesterday. During that moment of silence, when I should have been thinking about the souls we lost that day, I instead found myself thinking of other things....

I thought about my country and the place we are in because of the fucking moron we have in the White House serving as our President. “I want to bring dignity back to the White House”, he said when he was running for President, alluding to the sex scandals of the Clinton Presidency. You know what? I can take sex scandals. They are nothing compare to using the lives and deaths of our men and women in uniform as a simple, cheap political tool. And for what? Iraq did nothing to us. This man is so stupid he couldn’t even get figure out the right country to attack or figure out who the real enemy is. And what is left? An exhausted military put into a situation where there are no solutions. The President has ruined my country. All the while, our real enemy gains strength. And I have to sit in my car on my way back to work and hear that Osama bin Laden has released yet another tape and is apparently doing quite well, telling me that as an American citizen, I should convert to Islam.

I thought about the U. S. Constitution, that allows me to write this without fear of imprisonment, torture, or death. Thank God for the Constitution. Of course, my phone will probably be wire tapped at this point, at the very least, but I’m still allowed to say these things. If I disappear suddenly without a trace, you will know what happened to me.

I thought about the idea that the Bush Administration is just biding their time now until they are out of office so the next President can deal with the mess that they have left behind. Meanwhile, they will keep our troops there, and they will die. My solution; if this is such a noble cause, the President should have no problem at all sending his two daughters there to fight for their country. Meanwhile, we should start impeachment proceedings against him and charge him with “grand stupidity” if nothing else.

I thought about where I’m at in life and that I’m really quite happy, aside from this bout of depression, which will pass. I feel bad for the young people. If I were 18 years old again, what a different world it would be to grow up in. Almost pre-Skynet, if you are a fan of the Terminator movies. Oh, speaking of which, about a week or so ago, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said that violence in movies and video games are causing harm to our youth. This from the man who made his stardom in movies that glorified violence and death. I guess it’s ok if it’s you making the money?

So that was my day. On top of that it rained most of the day. I’m looking for places to go this weekend for a small outing somewhere in the state. Maybe western Connecticut. I rarely get over that way. The leaves are starting to change and I’m getting into my Fall mood. Fall is a great time in New England. It’s quite beautiful here with all the orange, yellows, and reds on the trees.

Today will be better than yesterday, I’m hoping. Hey, and it’s sunny!

I also want to make a special welcome back to Fritz, who is blogging again! I missed you buddy.

I’ve been meaning to write for awhile now, but this last week has been the week from hell at work. New projects, new deadlines, some exciting new things to learn and do. But, it has left little time for anything else.

I was going to talk about the Larry Craig issue in Idaho -- the Senator caught trying to solicit for sex in an airport men’s room. Actually, I wasn’t going to write about him per se, but more on the condition of why men like him do what they do. Let me start out with this. This is from Idaho history dating back to 1955.

The arrested men were no strangers to Boiseans. They were the salesman at the leading men’s clothier, the shoeshine man on Main Street and a warehouseman from a local family. Boise’s newspaper, The Idaho Statesman, responded to the arrests with a series of editorials demanding that prosecutors, the police and the community take action. The newspaper printed lines like “Crush the monster” and “This mess must be removed.”

“It did not seem possible that this community ever harbored homosexuals to ravage our youth,” the paper’s editorial page declared. The newspaper helped to ignite a witch hunt, in which many in Boise sought to rid the community of all of its gay men.

More arrests followed: a lawyer, a teacher, and most sensational, the vice president of the city’s largest bank. The roundup snared consenting adults as well as men who dallied with teens.

By the time snow fell, scores of men had been questioned. Sixteen were charged, including one who was hauled back from San Francisco, where he had fled when the scandal broke.

Of the 16 men who were formally charged, only one, the one who denied it all, who fought the case through a brutal trial, beat the charges. His steadfast denials, coupled with questions about the evidence against him, persuaded the jury to let him go.

The lesson of the 1955 scandal was clear: sexual misconduct — or even the mere perception that one is gay — could ruin a man’s reputation. (source)

In my childhood, my family would talk often about the “Boys of Boise” (John Gerassi’s book), as it came to be called. They always talked about it with such disgust. But being found out (as a homosexual) in Idaho could do more than ruin your life. Being found out in Idaho (and many other states I’m sure), could land you on the other end of a beating, police harassment/arrest, or death. I left Idaho because I had no choice. If I had stayed, I would have most likely ended up like Larry Craig, a self loathing, lying homosexual trying to pass for straight and, as part of that facade, doing everything in my power to show just how disgusting people like that are -- all the while saying over and over again, “I’m not gay!”

My family didn’t accept me. I was studying music. No one knew about my sexuality and the very thought of them finding out was more terrifying to me than death itself.

I was thinking about that this last week as I read about a new study out that states that the suicide rate for teenagers is up by 8% from just a few years ago. As a teenager who was struggling with the awful truth of my sexuality in a very conservative part of the country, the only real comfort I had was knowing that if things got really bad, I had a way out. In other words, I could end my life. How terrible is that, that I would take comfort in something like that?

I chose life instead, but it meant leaving Idaho behind, and finding that life elsewhere. I was fortunate enough to be able to leave Idaho with Kent as we made our way to the San Francisco Bay Area. It was a good place to be away from the fear of Idaho, but presented it’s own set of pressures as well.

The fear that gay people face truly eludes most straight people. And why shouldn’t it? You really do have to experience the fact that some people would rather just take you out behind the barn and use you for target practice. This is truly how I feel and this is why I feel that my country, to me, only consists of about five states -- five states that I feel I can go to and and feel relatively safe. The rest of the states, for gay people, have not found freedom. Sad, isn’t it? But it’s not as sad as living your entire life behind a lie.

So why do some gay men take the chances that Larry Craig took?

True, straight people don’t typically seek sex in public restrooms. But that’s partly because (1) public restrooms are mostly segregated by sex and (2) “quickie” sex is anatomically less convenient for women--which still hasn’t prevented some from joining the “mile high club” in cramped airplane lavatories.

The bigger reason is (3) straight people don’t feel the desperate need to conceal their erotic interests in the way closeted gay people do.

And that’s where gay-rights advocates make a decisive point: the culture of the closet is unhealthy for everyone involved. Lying about one’s sex life makes it easier to lie about other things; it also precludes the counsel of friends in an area where such counsel is desperately needed. (source) Highlighting my own.

The third point is the big one. Straight people everywhere are free to openly show their affection for each other. I don’t have that. I never will. I’ve accepted that. Life is full of things that I’ve come to accept. I’ve come to accept that my nation will never honor a marriage I would have with Kent. I’ve come to accept that in most of the country, I would not be all that safe, so I pay attention to where I go. To me, the thought of driving my car across the nation is unthinkable and dangerous. That would mean that I would have to cross states like Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas. To me, it is exactly how I would feel traveling around the Outback in a Mad Max movie.

But last night, when I was trying to decide if I should write this entry, versus just taking and posting more photos (which I’m sure I’ll do later), a reality came to me. None of this is all that important to me. Not like it used to be. I’m changing. I can see that now. The Larry Craig’s of the world have their life to live (such as it is), and I have mine.

And ultimately, it all comes down to how you live your life and if you are enjoying your life in the here and now. There are many things that a person can do to insure that happens. A lot of that comes with accepting the things that you will never acquire, as I mentioned above, and being ok with that.

The older I get, the more unimportant politics, other people’s flaws, etc. mean to me. I’m more focused on my life. And the whole marriage issue... yeah, I still want to get married to my partner, but I’m not going to lose sleep over the fact that most of society can’t bring themselves to let that happen because the sky might fall. It’s really only my problem to the extent that I let it in. I suppose that’s my way of saying, “Fuck you” to society, and moving on with my life.

Do what you will to me, but you can’t give me a reality as bad as living a lie. And I haven’t done that! I never will.

And right now, I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life. LIFE IS GOOD!

We have arrived!!!!

ok... where to start....

I’ve already told you that we bought a GPS unit to hook to my Nikon D200 (to do this, you need a camera that is GPS aware). I hooked the GPS up to the camera, so as I take photos, the location of the photo is recorded in the EXIF data.

We took our first live trip yesterday to Penwood State Park, a place we haven’t gone to in ten years. Once we parked the car, we hooked the GPS to the camera, and turned on tracking; a way the GPS unit keeps track of your entire hike.

After the trip, I downloaded the photos, as I always do, and prepared them for upload to Flickr. I created a Penwood State Park album, etc. I also uploaded to my website the tracking map file from the GPS unit. With that tracking map file, along with the Flickr photo set ID, I was able to link the two into the map you see below.

The really exciting part of all of this (for me), is that, unlike in the past where I would post a few photos of a trip, along with a link the full album, here...

all the photos of the trip are accessible from this one map
you can click on any hot spot area (the pink numbers), and that will walk you through the photos
if you click on any photo in the “walk through”, it will display a larger image of that photo (click again to go back to the map)
if you click on a photo to enlarge it, at the bottom is a link to the full Flickr album.

And of course, since this is a Google map application, you have the full Google mapping controls built in, such as zoom, hybrid, satellite, move the map around, etc. Here’s the elevation guide (again from the tracking file), followed by the interactive photo map.

NOTE ABOUT THE INTERACTIVE PHOTO MAPPING BELOW:

1) to use this functionality, your browser must support Inline Frames and be configured to display them.

2) If you are a subscriber of email alerts from this website, the interactive map will not work in your email client. You need to click on the TITLE of the email entry to take you to the original entry on the website.

3) The more you zoom in, it will start to separate photos into their true position. If you are zoomed out a bit, it may say that there are 5 photos in one location. If you zoom in on that same location a bit more, you will see that there are actually 3 photos taken in one location, and a few feet away, the other two.

4) The map looks really cool in "Hybrid".

Well, we finally did it. We took a hike today at Valley Falls Park here in Connecticut. We took our new GPS unit with us, hooked it up to the camera, and off we went on our hike. I just took photos along the way as usual. But now, as I take the photo, the camera gets the photo location from the GPS unit itself. I then uploaded them to Flickr and viewed the map. This was the result.

The next thing I want to accomplish is to turn on the tracking feature of the GPS unit. With that, I can upload it and actually have it draw on the map exactly where we hiked. Pretty cool, huh?

Here's a few photos from our day...

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View entire album