Fort Jay Statue (Unknown Origin & History)

Fort Jay Statue (Unknown Origin & History*), originally uploaded by ronntaylor

I'm on vacation for a week and a half so, along with the Hubby and a couple of friends I visited Governors Island. There are free tours till Sept. 2nd.

Governors Island was the command headquarters and military post for the United States Army from 1794 until 1966. For the next 30 years, it was the U.S. Coast Guard’s largest and most complex installation. In 2003, the island was sold and transferred to two parties: 22 acres, designated as the Governors Island National Monument, to the Secretary of the Interior, and managed by the National Park Service; and 150 acres to the Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation, a corporation formed jointly by the State and City of New York.

Today, city, state and federal agencies are in the planning stages of converting this former military installation into new public parkland and a spectacular destination in New York Harbor. At this time, Governors Island is open to the public on a seasonal basis. Public services and facilities are very limited.

* = Our tour guide, Park Ranger John, explained that the statue is a replica of the old Department of War logo.

Wednesday Is Decision Day For NY Marriage Equality

via Andrés Duque's Blabbeando, comes word that New York State's top court will rule on Marriage Equality tomorrow:

New York's Highest Court to Rule on Gay Marriages

In what one legal scholar called a contest between judicial hearts and minds, parsing of legal texts and private sympathies, New York's highest court is expected to rule Wednesday on whether to permit gay and lesbian marriages in the state.

There are several directions the Court of Appeals could take, lawyers said. The most sweeping would be a clear affirmation of a constitutional right of same-sex couples to marry, which would make New York the second state in the nation after Massachusetts to allow such marriages. In that case, the court could order the Legislature to rewrite the state's marriage law.

Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, suggested that a majority of the six judges deciding the case — a seventh recused himself — are personally sympathetic to what the plaintiffs are asking for. But the issue, he said, will be how they read New York State's marriage law, the state constitution, and legal precedents, which are all different from those in Massachusetts.

"The question will be where will their brains be," Mr. Gillers said this week. "The question is whether they can intellectually do what I think intuitively and emotionally they'd like to do."

Supporters have been waiting eagerly for the decision.

Andrés' post also mentions community rallies throughout the state beginning at 6pm in the aftermath of the court announcement, no matter how the case is decided. I'm very, very hopeful that it will actually be a celebratory march at Sheridan Square here in New York City.

If our side wins, it may mean a wedding date for me and my shorty later this year!! Garnet and Ruby will be our color scheme. *hint* *hint*

The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro

The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro

Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too — great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory....

...Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Goodbye eMac: Apple Intros $899 iMac For Education

Good move, although I think it should have been introduced months ago when many school systems started educational buying for the back-to-school period (Aug-Sept) (via MacMinute)

Apple today introduced a new US$899 configuration of the 17-inch iMac designed specifically for education customers featuring a 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo processor, a built-in iSight video camera and iLife '06, the next generation of Apple's suite of digital lifestyle applications. The 17-inch iMac for education is available immediately and will replace the eMac, Apple's last CRT based computer, providing students and teachers everything they need to learn and create in today's digital classroom, all in the ultra-efficient iMac design, notes Apple. Build-to-order options and accessories include up to 2GB DDR2 SDRAM, 160GB Serial ATA hard drive, iWork '06 (pre-installed), Apple Remote and Apple USB Modem.

NYS High Court: Fuck Equality!!

I'm at a lost for words and really don't want to discuss the decision. Simply follow the link if you want additional info:

New York's Highest Court Sidesteps Gay Marriage

An Inconvenient History Lesson

An interesting article in today's Times about our Spanish roots:

Immigration — and the Curse of the Black Legend

[ ... N]ational amnesia isn't new, but it's glaring and supremely paradoxical at a moment when politicians warn of the threat posed to our culture and identity by an invasion of immigrants from across the Mexican border. If Americans hit the books, they'd find what Al Gore would call an inconvenient truth. The early history of what is now the United States was Spanish, not English, and our denial of this heritage is rooted in age-old stereotypes that still entangle today's immigration debate.

Forget for a moment the millions of Indians who occupied this continent for 13,000 or more years before anyone else arrived, and start the clock with Europeans' presence on present-day United States soil. The first confirmed landing wasn't by Vikings, who reached Canada in about 1000, or by Columbus, who reached the Bahamas in 1492. It was by a Spaniard, Juan Ponce de León, who landed in 1513 at a lush shore he christened La Florida.

Most Americans associate the early Spanish in this hemisphere with Cortés in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru. But Spaniards pioneered the present-day United States, too. Within three decades of Ponce de León's landing, the Spanish became the first Europeans to reach the Appalachians, the Mississippi, the Grand Canyon and the Great Plains. Spanish ships sailed along the East Coast, penetrating to present-day Bangor, Me., and up the Pacific Coast as far as Oregon.

From 1528 to 1536, four castaways from a Spanish expedition, including a "black" Moor, journeyed all the way from Florida to the Gulf of California — 267 years before Lewis and Clark embarked on their much more renowned and far less arduous trek. In 1540, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado led 2,000 Spaniards and Mexican Indians across today's Arizona-Mexico border — right by the Minutemen's inaugural post — and traveled as far as central Kansas, close to the exact geographic center of what is now the continental United States. In all, Spaniards probed half of today's lower 48 states before the first English tried to colonize, at Roanoke Island, N.C.

The Spanish didn't just explore, they settled, creating the first permanent European settlement in the continental United States at St. Augustine, Fla., in 1565. Santa Fe, N.M., also predates Plymouth: later came Spanish settlements in San Antonio, Tucson, San Diego and San Francisco. The Spanish even established a Jesuit mission in Virginia's Chesapeake Bay 37 years before the founding of Jamestown in 1607.

What Uncle Bernie Said

This story about the idiotic inclusion of homophobes for a HIV/AIDS benefit is all over the web, but Bernie sums it up best:

Are Beenie Man and TOK advocating that we become more aware of the risks of HIV transmission so that we won't get infected, only so we can later become victims of a bashing brought about by their hate speech? I'm having a hard time finding the sincerity in their association with this cause.

Blood On Their Hands

There are several bloggers, Gay and straight, that have blogged about the idiotic HIV/AIDS benefit concert planned by LIFEBeat, the music industry's charitable arm. But Keith Boykin's blog is the best place to get more info (same if you click on the above image that I implore you to copy and circulate widely).

I will continue to update the information regarding protests and wider efforts to either get Beenie Man and TOK removed from the concert, or to have the entire affair cancelled. Really, it's the only sensible thing to do at this point. I'm afraid that LIFEBeat hasn't a clue and they'll continue to pay lip service to serious, troubling issues with this conert lineup.

Protest LIFEBeat's Idiocy

Black Gay Community Demands Homophobic Reggae Artists Pulled From AIDS Benefit

What: Press Conference
When: Thursday, July 11, 2006 at 10:00am
Where: LIFEBeat Offices, 630 9th Avenue (bet 44th & 45th Sts), Manhattan, NY 10036
Who: Invited Speakers include: Keith Boykin, Black Gay Author & Board member, National Black Justice Coalition; Christine Quinn, NYC Council Speaker; Marjorie Hill, GMHC; Kenyon Farrow, New York State Black Gay Network; Tokes Osubu, Gay Men Of African Descent; Bishop Zachary Jones, Unity Fellowship Church; Soraya Elcock, Harlem United; Violet Tabor, Minority Task Force on AIDS/FACES and others.
Why: To demand that LIFEBeat cancel performances of homophobic artists Beenie Man and Tok at the upcoming Hearts and Voices Benefit Concert.

More at the above link. It's pretty last minute, so I don't think I can make it. But I'll try my best.

8th Annual Harlem Book Fair

I haven't attended since the summer after I received my Publishing Certificate from City College. I'm sure it will be a fun and inspiring event nonetheless.

The 8th annual Harlem Book Fair
Saturday July 22nd - Sunday July 23rd
West 135th Street, Harlem New York
http://www.qbr.com/

The 8th annual Harlem Book Fair will be held on Saturday, July 22, on West 135th Street, between 5th and 7th Avenues, from 12 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Publishers, writers, literacy vendors will exhibit and author panel discussions will be televised by C-Span's Book TV. This year's program will launch on Thursday, July 13th at the Harlem Book Fair Media Reception, held at Commerce Bank, 300 West 125th Street in Harlem at 7 p.m.

On Sunday, July 23, from 11am to 1pm, the book fair closes with the Harlem Book Fair Author/Book Club Brunch at the Schomburg Library. Authors hold court with lively discussions and readings over brunch in a relaxed, informal setting. The entry fee is nominal. The Harlem Book Fair is free and open to the public. Please email to rsvp@qbr.com to reserve seating for the Wheatley Award program and the Sunday author brunch.

More Of The Same: MS Vaporware

While pundits, Macheads and Microsloth fanboys are simply chattering about MS's semi-official announcement of its Zune "music and entertainment" system, John Gruber of Daring Fireball hits the nail on its head (and of course, it's funny as well)

Magic 8-Ball Answers Your Questions Regarding Microsoft's 'Zune'

Q: So in other words, this has all the hallmarks of a good old-fashioned Microsoft vaporware campaign: wildly optimistic ship date ("this November") and a laundry list of features missing from the iPod and iTunes (Wi-Fi, social networking, a video game mode, adjustable faceplates, and maybe even Sirius and/or XM satellite radio). I'll bet it will ship on schedule, with all those features, and will be lightweight, thin, and get great battery life.

A: VERY DOUBTFUL.

Q: I was being sarcastic. My point is that it's now late July, and despite the fact that there are leaked photos and a features list the length of your arm, no one has claimed to have actually seen a working prototype. And some of these proposed features, like peer-to-peer file sharing and proximity-based recommendations, sound rather like a lot of work. Do they honestly expect to have this on the shelves in time for Christmas?

A: MY REPLY IS NO.

Q: So what they've done is leak a November release date and a fantastic feature list — a feature list that the next batch of new iPods, no matter how cool, are unlikely to match — and hope that people will wait for the Zune. And then even when it misses the holiday season and slips into 2007, and won't include all of the previously-promised features, they'll say it wasn't their fault (despite the fact that the whole point of the Zune platform model is that Microsoft controls the entire system) but that it'll be worth the wait anyway. That sound right?

A: SIGNS POINT TO YES.

I expect Zune to be nothing more than the same tired, weak attack on the iPod's dominance. If... IF it ever comes to past, it'll be delayed by months and will be minus most of its alleged extras.