Heading home

We’re wrapping up our weekend at Lake Itasca, and I’m about to head south for the beginning of fall semester at UMM, so I’ll just leave you with some miscellaneous writing by other people.

FtBCon postponed

A few of our organizers had collisions with their schedule, so we’re putting off FtBCon for a few months. I’m partly at fault, so blame me — I just got back from the UK, had a week to get everything together, and then looked at my calendar and saw that the date was scheduled right on top of our field experience for incoming biology students. Yeah, I was going to somehow manage an online conference requiring a couple of days of connectivity while shepherding a horde of first year college students around Lake Itasca.

A few others had similar problems with the timing — the end of August turns out to be very awkward for many of us, with academics and students facing other transitions — but I’ll let you all say it’s entirely my fault.

We do have a great lineup in readiness, and it will be even better given a few more months to develop, so none of this is a problem with the speakers, but is entirely due to the distractions that depleted our collection of available organizers.

18 August 1976

“Since the invention of the kiss, there have only been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind.”

My apologies, William Goldman, but that is pure bunkum. Either a lot of kisses deserve the assessment, or I’m the most fortunate person in the world to have seized the title of holding all five.

I remember the 18th of August, 1976 vividly. It was a Wednesday. I was 19, which is a damn fine age to be. I was spending my summer saving up money for college, doing stoop labor at a nursery, spending my days weeding and hauling plant pots and clambering about on greenhouse frames nailing down sheets of plastic. My neck and ears were red — I wore a hat, but even the Pacific Northwest sun will scorch you on those days when you aren’t slogging about in the rain. I wasn’t making much money — minimum wage — but in those days, college was a bit more affordable, so I’d get by.

That doesn’t sound like a glorious summer, I know, but at the same time I’d started dating a girl. Really, when you’re 19, having a girlfriend puts a glowing rosy patina on everything (hmmm…it even helps when you’re 57.) We’d both done some traveling fresh out of high school, and I’d called her up back in June when we’d both come back to our home town, and asked her out on a date, and then we started going out every week, and then more often than once a week. It was a Wednesday, you know. I got off work, cleaned up, and borrowed my father’s station wagon to go out to the pizza parlor.

That’s what we’d do. We’d get together, we’d talk. We’d go places, and talk. She was smart and funny and interesting, and we had good times together. To explain this next bit, though, you have to understand that I have no illusions that this was a simpler, more genteel time, with ladies acting like ladies and gentlemen like gentlemen — it was the 70s. It was a loud, raucous, garish decade, and casual sex was common. But I was a shy nerd with absolutely no self-confidence at all, and she was a serious young woman working towards an academic career.

So on that warm August Wednesday, I was working up my courage to ask for a goodnight kiss.

Stop laughing.

No, really, stop. We were both comfortable with a friendly relationship, you know, and I liked her.

So we’d only been dating for 2½ months, and I didn’t want to be too pushy and risk ruining a good thing for a kiss.

You’re laughing again.

So there we were, at about 11 at night, and I’d walked her to the door of her parents’ apartment, and as she was going inside, I nervously delivered my corny and clumsy line: “I was hoping to say goodnight more properly.”

She laughed…and she started to raise her arm, as if she was going to give me a goodnight handshake, which would have been hilarious and soul-crushing. Then she seemed to think better of it, smiled mischievously, and stepped forward and planted a good one right on my lips. And then she whirled about and went inside.

It was glorious. Thirty eight years ago and I still remember it, and I know I’ll remember it on my deathbed someday.

What made it especially wonderful was the unmistakeable consent — she wanted to kiss me. And afterwards, she looked…happy. I felt like maybe I wasn’t so awful after all, and that maybe someone in the world could actually like me. Every human being needs that, and it’s in our power to give it to others, so I don’t think it’s rare. Maybe it’s more uncommon than it should be, but I would hope everyone can feel it sometime in their life.

It also gives you magic powers. I somehow floated home, and the old station wagon drove itself back to the garage, I think.

Back in the USA at last!

I’m home! I got home around noonish, but I promptly laid down and fell asleep. Man, that was a long trek to get back.

But it was all worth it. I went to Oxford for the World Humanist Congress, an event that occurs every three years and costs a small pile of money, but really, if you want to meet godless folk who walk the walk and represent positive Enlightenment goals, it’s the event to attend to restore your confidence in humanity. This one had excellent representation from mainstream European groups like the International Humanist and Ethical Union, European Humanist Federation, and humanists of Netherlands, Britain, and Norway (the Norwegians were ubiquitous!), as well as humanists from specialist organizations like Defence Humanists and countries where I didn’t find an obvious website, like Croatia, Uganda, and Nigeria. International outreach FTW! In three years, the 2017 World Humanist Congress will be held in São Paulo, Brazil, sponsored by Liga Humanista Secular do Brasil, and I’m going to save my pennies to go — it’d be wonderful to attend one of these where I’m not in a jet-lagged fog half the time.

As long as I had traveled all the way across the Atlantic, I had to make a few more stops; thanks to Maureen Brian for inviting me, and Richard Carter, FCD for ferrying me about, I got to visit Hebden Bridge and get introduced to the lovely Yorkshire countryside, and also had a grand time giving a talk to a good crowd. Also thanks to the Edinburgh Skeptics who gave me the opportunity to get dazzled by the weirdness of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and to babble at yet another talk. Also many thanks to Nick Gotts for giving me the penny tour of the city.

Things were busy at home while I was away, too. My daughter is getting married, and #2 Son learned what he’s going to be doing for the next few years: he’s about to be promoted to captain, and is going to be assigned to a medical support unit in South Korea. All I know about that kind of work is what I learned on M*A*S*H, but I’m happy to see that his job will be all about helping people.

Now I feel like I need a few more naps.