Ordinary Time Out in Queens... Sunday I went out to a church in Queens to sing for a service. Being the only attorney in New York who sang at the Wagner Festspiel in Bayreuth, I sometimes get singing jobs even now. Anyway, this is a truly beautiful church painted with bright murals in a lively area filled with Italian Pastry Cafes, Polish Pork stores, Mexican Restaurants, Irish Gift Shops and cheap supermarkets. Theres even a chaotic National Wholesale Liquidators set behind a parking lot over on nearby Northern Boulevard. When we finished the service, some second sopranos invited me for coffee at one of the Italian Cafes on 30th Avenue. I got a latte and a cream filled pastry for 2.85 - both much better than Starbucks, and we sat down to discuss the Choir Scene. They are raising a volunteer choir to sing at St. Patrick's Cathedral in commemoration of Police killed in the line of duty and need strong voices, because one of their New Jersey contingents can't make it this year. I said yes, because its a good cause. We all agreed the acoustics are bad, but it's a chance to sing at St. Pats, which has its own cachet. One of the ladies at the table had a lilting Brogue, and told us about the vicissitudes of handling the family farm in Ireland. It has a thatched roof and you can' find anyone these days at a reasonable price to fix a thatched roof. After coffee, we moved out into the sunlight. We were in the wind and it was cold, but there were people sitting at the outside tables along the Avenue. Getting into my car, I drove over to Queens Boulevard to look at a construction site that is of professional interest across from the Georgia Peach Diner. Sitting in the warm car, the side of my face felt hot, as if a space heater was aimed through the open car window. I suddenly realized the heat was soming from the strong early spring sunlight flooding the inside of the car and hitting the side of my face. The thermometer at a BP station on Queens Boulevard read 25 degrees F, but spring is on the way!

GAY MARRIAGES AND AWOL ...I don't want this election to be about Gay marriages and Bush's going AWOL for several months in 1972. It looks like the right thinkers are going to pump this gay marriage business into another knee jerk issue like abortion. Instead of being happy that people are getting married and committing themselves to a lifetime relationship, they act like its some kind of a slippery slope- if they let the gays get married, then all of a sudden masses of straight people will turn gay. Your mother will suddenly want to abandon your father and go off with her best friend from high school. Your boyfriend will see married gay guys and suddenly change his sexual orientation and start picking up men. This whole idea is moronic. All the gay people I know knew they were gay since the age of 12 if not earlier. Why would we deprive someone of the benefits and recognition of marriagebecause of an accident of birth or early childhood conditioning? Everyone in our society deserves the same honor of full rights and responsibility that come from being a member of society. Speaking of responsibility, why are the lefties so interested in Bush skipping out of the Guard to work on a political campaign in Alabama? Vietnam was an unpopular terrible war, and many people, especially the more left leaning socially responsible types, did what they could to stay out of it. But with all this recent history to chew over, why bother with something that's tired meat? How about the environment, the loss of jobs, the failure to secure our container ports, the war in Iraq, the mess that followed, and our country's unpopularity in the rest of the world. I was in Europe when Bush turned his back on the Kyoto Accord, and his unpopularity overseas shot up right then. Every time they showed him on the TV my landlady would start into a tirade about "my president." Europeans softened up after 9/11, but we totally blew it in the windup to the war in Iraq and its aftermath. The war is widely perceived in Europe as stupid and blatant imperialism. The problem is that we are all responsible for what our country does, not just the few in Washington. Go overseas. When people perceive you as an American, they want to talk about your country's foreign policy, like you personally just thought it up. No I don't want this election fought over gay marriages and Bush's attendance record in the Air National Guard thirty years ago. There are real issues here that need to be addressed.