Pics from Nov 15th March on City Hall, Long Beach (prop 8)

Saturday’s march went really well. Everything stayed peaceful, and there were some great speakers. Nobody has any interest in being angry, violent or radical. There were people there from churches, straight Christian families, Gay Christian families, straight people who don’t go to church at all (me), as well as a lot of same-sex couples who would like to get/stay married, and their family and friends.

I don’t know if you can tell throughout the course of the photos, but when we got there, the sun was shining and the skies were blue. It was the kind of day you would be wearing a tank top and shorts and still be hot. The kind of day where I might have gone to the beach if, say, prop 8 hadn’t passed. But throughout the short time I was there (an hour?) the sky started filling with smoke. It was the kind of thing that the crazy flavor of religious fanatics would say was god, gettin angry.

Incidentally, my favorite recent magazine article headline: “You Done Gone And Pissed Off The Queers!” from District magazine.

This is what the sky looked like when we got there,


And this is what it looked like as we were leaving:

If Prop 8 isn’t repealed by March, there is a march planned at the state capital. Anyone interested in joining me?

11/16/08

This is the link I was using last year to get up to date info about the fires:

http://www.fire.ca.gov/index_incidents_info.php

Yesterday it was raining ash on my place in Long Beach. I spent today in Playa Del Rey, and haven’t gone outside. Normally from the loft at my boyfriend’s house I can see across to the hills above Santa Monica, and today all I see is smoky haze. That’s bad even by L.A. standards.
I attended to march on City Hall yesterday and am going through my pictures.

11/07/08

These are some great intimate pics of Obama and his family watching the votes come in and then heading out to give his speech to the nation as the president elect.

Most of my evening today was spent with the Long Beach rally against prop 8. When I got there, I started welling up with tears just like I did the other night when Obama won, but this time it was just the sight of everyone coming together to defend their world. These are all such ordinary people, with families and relationships that shouldn’t have to be defended. I wasn’t even there with anybody, and I didn’t want to stand there getting all blubbery in front of a bunch of strangers. I ran up ahead of the parade before they took off, so I could photograph them coming towards me.








And how cute is this dog?





I had to leave early so I could do a photoshoot, but later I saw on the news that the crowd had swelled to thousands by the time it got to downtown LB. I saw the news last night about the demonstration in West L.A. and wished I was there, but the first time I got my shoulders squished together in the crowd this evening, I remembered how much different things can look from above. I do hope the fight continues though, and I hope we’re all successful in overturning Prop 8. It’s unconstitutional and mean.

And you know what the main thing they chanted was?
“Yes We CAN!”

Little feet

This cute little angel is less than two years old and has an almost 200 word sign language vocabulary. Here she is leaving her tiny footprints at the beach during a photoshoot with her Daddy and very pregnant mommy.

While we were doing family portraits, she showed us the sign for every animal we named, and I asked her for the water sign, and she busted that one out too. It didn’t lend itself to a great pose, but then when you’re 2, everything you do is cute, so it doesn’t matter. I’ll post the pics soon but mommy gets to see them first.

Halloween pics

This year I decided to dress up as a Genie for Holloween, based on the I Dream of Jeannie Genie. I started with a sour cream container:

I cut the bottom half off, padded it with gauze and masking tape and then decorated it like this:

I completed the outfit using a rather nice bra and a pair of knee-length sweats from Forever 21, and a lot of fabric. The bra was a slow and tedious project, but I fastened it around a picture frame, propped my feet on the table, and settled in with a Stephen King audiobook and some needle and thread. On Holloween evening I finished the outfit:

Then I drove through a sea of zombies, because my neighbor was having a really big Halloween party,

And spent the rest of the evening celebrating Halloween with Sarah Palin beauty contestant and the rest of the gang in Playa:

It’s all about the new

Tonight as I was leaving work, I looked up into a sky filled with the post sunset pinks swirling around on a backdrop of deep, dark blue and I started to get excited about the new world we’ll be living in by the end of the day tomorrow. Even the helicopter passing overhead just seemed like part of a colorful celebration about the kind of a world that tomorrow will usher in. This day that so many people have been waiting for for so long.

Tomorrow we’re going to have our first black president, and hopefully, same sex unions will stay legalized here FINALLY. Also, I’m pretty excited about prop 2, the animals one.
But most importantly, guys, no more BUSH! God, that was so embarrassing! Could we not do that again?
And yay, the polling place is just across the street.

In other news, this beautiful family I photographed a few weeks ago just had a baby:

They had a beatiful baby girl, 7 lbs 11 oz. I haven’t heard the name yet but it’ll be something that goes with Shane, Kelli and Shayli. I can’t wait to visit Shane and Kelli again and photograph that baby’s cute new feet!