yikes!
It turned summer all of a sudden, yesterday. Heat, humidity, clear morning skies clouding up with thunderheads by evening: we had it all. To celebrate, I got heatstroke, or at least something very much like it. I spent all morning here at the computer, working awya to stay out of the sun; it was good plan, and would have been even better if my study here weren't the hottest room in the house, at an easy 85 degrees. Maybe 90, even. Then I went outside and worked in the garden some, and then I mowed the lawn. You'll notice that none of these activities involved me taking any sort of liquid refreshment. So the end result of all this was, about the time I started the only thing I was really supposed to get done--cleaning the house--I started feeling really sick and dizzy. So I went to bed. Leah says when she came to bed I was really hot and sweaty, but I don't know about that, because I was asleep. I was all better when I woke up this morning, you'll be relieved to hear.
So we hear the hot weather makes people crazy, and we sure saw some crazy people today. Some folks from Kansas--Baptists of 'God hates fags' fame--thought they'd come by and warn us that we're all going to hell, and they stopped by our church. They visited a couple different places, for different reasons; in our case it was because we have a gay bishop up there in New Hampshire, Bishop Robinson. Now, he doesn't have a great deal to do with us--we have our own Massachusetts bishops, as it happens--so I don't know why they were picking on us except for the fact that we happen to be Episcopalians. I guess we did vote for the guy in conformation hearings or whatever we are, which I suppose it enough. They're also going to the Lexington High graduation to protest against the day of silence (appropriate enough: they're very noisy folks) and to the middle school here in Bedford, which they don't like because it has a gay pride flag somewhere within its walls.
Now, in advance of this visit we heard all kinds of stories about how confrontational these crazy Kansans could be (apparently they protest all over the country; it's somthing of a full-time job for them). They were supposed to have these obscene signs, and yell out vicious hateful things... so Leah and I were kind of looking forward to seeing them. Sadly, we were disappointed. Maybe the level of confrontation these folks bring is still something in Kansas, but out here on the coast we're way to jaded to be shocked by stick-figure representations of gay sex or shouts of 'Bishop Robinson left his wife to have sex... with a man!' Yup, he sure did. And? All in all, we were not impressed.
The protest did have some small comedic value--as I said, it could have been presented as comedy without any changes, and it wouldn't have been out of place on, say, MadTV. My favorite part was when the shouty woman, who was being ushered away by the cop who apparently told her that her group's scheduled time was up, shouted to us, 'you have been warned!' I laughed out loud at that one. As a whole, though, it could have been better done.