Day 5 plus a rant

A generally uneventful travel day. Ran in Madison in the morning and was eaten alive by mosquitos. I guess when running around a lake in the hot humid summer, I should have been prepared. After my breakfast smoothie--yes I have been lugging my blender in and out of hotels--I went in search of good coffee. That is my new goal: to only drink good coffee, as opposed to gas station coffee. In Madison, this was trully a quest. In fact, it took me a good 30 minutes of driving to find ANY coffee that had not been sitting in a metal carafe for over 3 hours. I finally found a place downtown by the capital. Caffeinated and ready to go, it then took me about 20 minutes to get out of the one-way-mess that is downtown. I have a great sense of direction so the lost-ness was not a function of not knowing where I was going. It was more a problem of not being able to drive in whatever direction I needed to go because the streets made no sense. Cute city, totally disorganized. Obviously I found my way out eventually.

Again, most of the drive was uneventful apart from the occasional accident and traffic that Chicago tends to produce. Given nothing to write on that front, I want to briefly rant on something that has bee bothering me throughout this trip. If it is not already obvious for those who know me, I am pretty liberal politically. That said, I lived in Utah for three years so I am also very open minded. I have had the opportunity I guess, to listen to christian radio in the last few days, in the absence of NPR. Don't worry family, no chance of my falling for their tricks. What I wanted to say is that these people are idiots! Who listens to this stuff and believes it?! First there was a show about abusive relationships; the radio personality told several 'callers' that they needed to stay in the relationship because it was God's will and something good would come of it. Then there was the barrage of shows about how to 'fix' gay children. Are we back to that again? Come on people. Being gay is no more a choice than is an allergy. These parents wer being told to make sure their boys weren't playing with girl toys; to make sure they were playing 'masculine' games with their fathers, like baseball; and to make sure boys and their moms weren't developing strong bonds. I don't know where to start. Is this really how gay children are being raised? I understand that many people do not believe homosexuality to be accepted by the Christian faith. At the same time, in this day and age, how can people honestly believe that gay children can be raised to not be gay? It's no wonder that so many people are in the closet. And these poor kids! They have a strong feeling of who they are and they are told that who they are is wrong. I could go on forever. I guess that's why it's called a rant, but I'll stop for now.

The other thing that scares me to the death is the abundance of anti-abortion propaganda that is posted on billboards. I've never seen signs that say "Your mother chose life" and "90% of women who had an abortion regretted it later" anywhere other than in the mid-west. It scares me. While everyone is entitled to their beliefs, what someone else believes should not affect what I do with my body. As long as I'm not hurting you, then get out of my face. I suppose that implies that I shouldn't have a problem with the billboards. I think what scares me most is that there are so many dumb people in the world who blindly believe and disseminate this kind of stuff without knowing or understanding the consequences of their actions.

Discuss.

Oh and dinner last night was very tasty: Middle Eastern Food at Jerusalem something in Ann Arbor. I love Ann Arbor. Can I stay here?