clockworkfish

Cathedral

Two things:

Firstly, I find myself merging two songs: the title line from The Dance Exponents song "Christchurch, in Cashel St I wait", followed by the chorus to Regina Spektor's Fidelity: "and it breaks my heart, and it breaks my heart". They seem to flow together particularly well.

Secondly, on the GNS website, I ran into this photo of damage to the Christchurch Cathedral spire from the 1888 North Canterbury earthquake:

My initial reaction to people saying Ronald Regan is their hero is an intellectual reaction similar to spluttering coffee out my nose in disbelief. To me Regan was a disaster for America, and a buffoon*. Apparently not everyone agrees.

For example, this guy is busy thinking Regan is awesome and is also running for the Republican nomination, as their first openly gay candidate. So (despite a residual coffee spluttering effect) I hope he does well. And there is reason to think he might do quite well. Other than being a seasoned strategist and first out of the blocks, there are enough queer Republicans who will donate to his campaign for him to make quite a stink. And (as he says in the interview) simply by being out and comfortable in his own skin, he is very likely to help some poor sod in a conservative community - where no amount of Wellington liberal, living-room debate will have any effect at all.

* I should read up on this period of history. My lasting impressions of Regan were strongly influenced by the no-nukes tanty and his penchant for selling weapons to violent people all over the world. I doubt that is the full picture. Perhaps he's actually even worse than that.