Today's Mighty Oak – Page 22 – Blog and portfolio

Wherein I talk about two bits of legality

Mike The King of Spades August 11, 2018

Two bits of legality today, one good (but currently probably futile) and one bad.

First the bad. A jury in South Dakota condemned a man to death because he’s gay. There’s an additional step in there, but that’s what it comes down to. A gay man is a convicted murderer, but the jury sentenced him to death because they felt “he would enjoy” life without parole in an all-male prison.

Jurors cited his orientation with disgust and said they didn’t want to send him ‘where he wants to go,’ and the Supreme Court refused to step in to take up an appeal. Currently (and I just learned this) jury deliberations are kept secret, except when there might be racial bias involved in sentencing. The same does not apply for sexual orientation or gender expression.

Putting aside the sickening notion of the death penalty, the entire episode is disturbing and vile and quite frankly sickening.

But onto some better, if unlikely to pass legal news: Democrats have put forth a bill to put a federal ban on the ‘gay panic’ defense.

A few states already bar it, but this would ban using ‘gay panic’ as a defense in federal court. Gay panic, for those unaware, is the idea that someone can be found innocent of a crime (usually murder or the like) if they were hit on by a person of the same sex and they ‘acted out of panic.’ So total bullshit.

Do I think this bill has a chance: no. But, it’s good to see at least recognition that these things need fixing.

All my best,

Mike

Even the lowest whisper can be heard over armies…when it’s telling the truth.

Mike Yesterday's nut August 8, 2018

Alright, let’s see what we have today. First up, I might have actually linked to this before, but did you know that we have a plan in case we ever find Nessie? Now you do!

If you haven’t seen it already, stop everything you’re doing and watch the new Randy Rainbow song:

There’s going to be a Baby Groot Chia Pet!

The Downton Abbey movie is finally confirmed and moving forward!

Remember all that money Jill Stein raised for a recount, yeah, she’s spending it on her legal defense for her involvement with Russia. Raise your hand if you’re surprised. Nobody? I didn’t think so.

Gay ‘conversion therapy’ is torture. Full stop. And there’s a feature film about it and it looks powerful:

Queen Elizabeth II is a master stateswoman. She greeted the President last month while wearing a brooch given to her by the Obamas.

Speaking of Britain, an artists has created a portrait of Princess Diana using diamond dust and HIV+ blood:

And in infuriating news, the Health and Human Services have removed all LGBT references from the ObamaCare website. The erasure continues.

Integrity USA celebrates progress made at the General Convention.

And finally, Stranger Things 3 has a great new promo!

GAP Trail Relay week 2

Mike Gayt Analysis August 6, 2018

Getting back into the groove of a training plan, here’s what I did this week:

Monday – Cross training – 35 minutes(+) of gardening and landscaping. Got some good work done, still a ways to go, as it is seemingly never ending!
Tuesday – 4 miles – Ran early so I could finish as the Frontrunners were starting, as I had to drive to Ohio early the next morning.
Wednesday – 35 minutes tempo run. As I’ve found out, HH classifies things as tempo runs differently from other coaches, but his plans have worked well for me, so I’ll go with it. His (and my) tempo runs are a gradual increase of speed throughout the entire run, with a short cool down at the end, peaking at 10K pace.
Thursday – 4 miles – Had planned to go with the Frontrunners and then join for happy hour after, but my sinuses/ears/head were all stuffy and making me dizzy, so I opted for a run on the treadmill just to be safe.
Friday – Rest
Saturday – 4 miles
Sunday – 8 miles, in pretty hot and very, very humid air in Schenley before going to an hour-long yoga class on the front lawn of Phipps Conservatory. Thankfully, the instructor, based on the amount of small kids (it’s free, family-yoga) and the weather, had us doing extra stretching and no balance work this time.
Cross training – I didn’t write this in last week, but I’ll include it going forward: I do the r/bodyweightfitness Recommended Routine on Saturday, Monday and Wednesday. It’s a new routine, and I moved too quickly through one of the progressions on Saturday, so took it easy Monday and Wednesday, but it’s still good to know I’m making some progress, even if my core still needs a lot of work!

I also took advantage of the early MOVE pricing (MOVE seems to be the theme this year) for the Pittsburgh Marathon and registered for the full this morning, so I’ll be training for marathon number 2 come winter!

Camp NaNoWriMo 2018 July 31

Mike Yesterday's nut July 31, 2018

Today is the last day of Camp NaNoWriMo, which has been a lot of fun! My goal for the month was to update my site, as well as get back into the habit of writing each day (not for work).

And I’ll say that was a success. There were a few days where the writing was a little different (setting up the podcast page, for example), but I was still creating words. In the process, I got the portfolio section organized, mobile editing set-up, added a new blog and did some other cleanup work.

This week is the second week of my training plan for the GAP Relay, so I’m actually good to be able to take a bit of a breather, but I’d like to continue writing more regularly. I also want to dive in and get back to work on Warhol’s Phone and The Great and Secret Show.

But for now, I’ll raise a glass with the other members of our Camp cabin, the Drunkest Slytherpuffs, and enjoy the feeling of meeting my goal. Thanks for reading along.

Camp NaNoWriMo 2018 July 30

Mike The King of Spades July 30, 2018

I’m returning once again to write about my bishop, as well as the General Convention. This comes with some baggage. Not only did I write about this earlier this month, but it’s also something I discussed at Global Entropy

The bishop did put together a good summary of the actions taken at the General Convention (a summary of just the same-sex matrimony resolutions), which I really do appreciate. Gears of any large organization take a long time to move, the Episcopal Church is no different. It’s disheartening, especially since waiting to be fully accepted by your own church hurts, but it’s what we’re dealt, so we can just try to urge things to move along faster.

However, what threw me for a loop, and what I didn’t catch during my first wiring about the General Convention is this:

3. Established a Task Force on Communion Across Difference [A227].
Background: The language of this resolution was drawn in its entirety from Resolution B012 as originally offered. The commission establishes an on-going channel of communication to explore a way forward together, and to avoid future conflicts.
The 2018 General Convention:
• Set membership at no more than 14 clergy and laity, half who believe marriage is a covenant “between two people” and half who believe marriage to be exclusively “between a man and a woman”

This is, again, as we saw in Pittsburgh, bullshit.

Once again, the process is based on the forced inclusion of those who believe I should not have access to the same sacraments as other people in the church. The bishop writes:

steps were taken to include LGBT people more deeply in the life of the whole Church, and to honor their relationships

I’d love to know how (thankfully not me, as I’m not on any committee), having to sit in a room and defend your right to God’s love to people who want to force you into a loveless life honors and includes us?

The Episcopal church is leaps and bounds ahead of others, and has always been a home for me. My parish is easily one of the most liberal in the country, and I’m proud of that fact, but this kind of process drags us all backwards. This did not work in Pittsburgh, although I expect the larger church, with such a small committee, will have no problems filling up either side of the ‘debate.’

And for me, I’ve always been much more of the ‘doing’ rather than going to church every week, and that won’t change. I go, especially when I need a bit of recharging, but I’ve always been drawn more to the community events and volunteer work I can do through the church.

All my best,

Mike

GAP Trail Relay week 1

Mike Gayt Analysis July 29, 2018

I’m part of the Pace Oddity team for the GAP Trail Relay, to prepare, I smashed together a Hal Higdon half marathon plan and a Ragnar plan. Here’s what this week looked like:

(Sunday) – 5 x 400 @ 5K pace – Did this speedwork early due to schedule
Monday – Had a doctor’s appointment, hence why I added in the Sunday to this week just to give myself some wiggle room, as well as ease back into a training plan.
Tuesday – 4 miles – Ran with the Frontrunners in Schenley
Wednesday – 35 minutes cross training – Did the AMT machine at the gym after our relay team meeting
Thursday – 4 miles – I’m part of a research study through Pitt, and after my surprisingly intense assessment, headed to the gym to run away from some of those feelings
Friday – Rest
Saturday – 4 miles – Ran the course of Open Streets, which was a blast!
Sunday – 7 miles

Camp NaNoWriMo 2018 July 29

Mike Yesterday's nut

Today wraps up my first week of training for the GAP Relay, I’ll be keeping track of my training through the Gayt Analysis blog. And also in good news, it looks like I’ll be able to get my photo galleries up sooner than I thought. It will still take some time to get that all sorted out, so probably not by the end of Camp NaNoWriMo, but I’m still excited about that!

Otherwise, this has just been a weekend of adulting, lots of laundry, work around the house, and some relaxing on the deck. I did however, get supplies to make dairy free root beer floats, so that will be happening tonight, and I’m very excited for it!

Camp NaNoWriMo 2018 July 28

Mike Yesterday's nut July 28, 2018

Another quick update, from my phone (I’m so excited I can do that!)

Enjoying the weather this weekend with a lovely run at Open Streets Pittsburgh, and then also bottles the beer I brewed, so in two weeks, just in time for the Ultra Team Meetup, I’ll have a Scottish Ale!

Camp NaNoWriMo 2018 July 27

Mike Yesterday's nut July 27, 2018

Just a quick note, today was another one of those ‘behind the scenes’ days. I did some updates that were more involved than I thought, but should be working fine! When I add things to the portfolio section (or others in the future), they won’t show up on the main page, leaving that just for announcements and blog posts.

I also added a sticky post directing anyone to the three main parts of the site, now the last piece of the puzzle is getting the photo galleries up and going, but that still maybe be a few weeks due to APIs and development of plugins and whatnot. But overall, I’m really happy with where I’ve gotten the site in this month, so I’m calling Camp NaNoWriMo a success!