To Our ‘Gay’ President

Dear President Obama,

I have to admit you are full of surprises. As I am sure you are aware from your daily perusal of our humble blog, I am critically supportive of you. I worked for your election, cried when Jon Stewart called the election for Obama as part of The Daily Show and Colbert Report’s special live coverage of Indecision 2008, keeping the live show going a few more minutes in order to announce your/our victory, and praised your Obamacare, even if it was far from perfect.

I didn’t expect you to be so deadly cool and take out bin Laden like you did, when many hawks would be squawking at their roosts deciding if to or not.

Still, you will excuse me if I don’t jump up and down on your decision to support gay marriage, or the tribulations that have followed. You see, Mr. President, you simply did the right thing. That’s it.

I appreciate you having the guts to do it in an election year, but the President should do the right thing. You are the President of everyone – the blacks, the Jews, the Hispanics, the whites, the card-carrying NRA members, the religious and the secular. And you are the President of the gay community. You did the right thing.

So to thank you, here is a song that was brought out when it was difficult to come out as gay in Britain, sung by a singer who is not (I think) gay. But Billy Bragg wanted to be a representative of all progressive people and so he challenged us all with this song.

By the way Mr. President, I chose this version because it features the late Kristy MacColl who tragically died 12 years ago.

Thank you for reading this, sir. Always a pleasure. Here’s to another four years.
Alon

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Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at http://www.alonshalev.com/ and on Twitter (@alonshalevsf).

Nuclear Power – Taking It To The Streets

I am spending a lot of time reading up on nuclear power. It would not be worthy of this blog to just say that I have a strong gut feeling that this is simply too risky to use, that it feels wrong, or that every disaster up until now has been, well relatively lucky for us, and the next one might not be so. The reality is that my lack of scientific understanding makes me a poor candidate to offer a ‘factual’ analysis. I have another post or two to share on the topic and I will then move on.

In the meantime, if I cannot glean anything from the scientific front, perhaps there is something to learn from the car bumpers that are in front of me for a couple of hours each day. I have seen a number of variations on the bumper sticker below. It seems that there are a significant number of environmentalists who support nuclear energy. If you are one of these people, I would love to hear from you.

Regardless of whether they are right or wrong, I want to (to quote Stephen Colbert who stole it from my country of birth) tip my hat to them. I appreciate when people take a label but do not then blindly support everything that the label is supposed to encapsulate. To quote Monty Python’s Life of Brian: “You are all individuals,” Brian cried to a crowd. “I’m not,” one replied.

Now I understand that quoting from bumper stickers, Stephen Colbert and Monty Python, all in one post, is probably not extolling my image as a grassroots activist. I suspect that it is a knee jerk reaction to not being able to understand the issue of nuclear power. So I shall leave you with the words of one of our Presidents.

Maybe your desk, Mr. President, but I need to check my renter's insurance is okay with this.

Finally, I would like to finish with one friend’s words of encouragement.  He told me it would be easier to persuade him to stop supporting nuclear power (or oil for that matter) if I can come up with a cheap and sustainable alternative. Thank you, sir. You have given me the strength to continue blogging.

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Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist (now available on Kindle) and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at http://www.alonshalev.com/and on Twitter (#alonshalevsf).

The Red Room

I recently mentioned a local author, Devorah Major, and that she is a member of Red Room. I have crossed paths with a few of their members, all very impressive people, including one of my local favorites, Kemble Scott.

I was surprised to discover that their members include Salman Rushdie, Khaled Hosseini, Thich Nhat Hanh, Stephen Colbert, Tobias Woolf and many more very familiar names.

The Red Room was founded in San Francisco by author Ivory Madison in 2002. From what I can glean from their website, The Red Room was originally created to provide an ideal physical  environment for  writers to sit down and write. Presumably, it was also a place where, in the company of other authors, one could receive support and advise from each other.

Today, The Red Room seems more of an on-line community. Authors have their own Red Room websites and blogs. Services such as editing, web and blog hosting, and numerous courses, are also offered.

Are you a Red Room author? Please share how the club has helped you. For some endorsements of Red Room from their website, click here.

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Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist (now available on Kindle) and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at http://www.alonshalev.com/