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Where We're From
We live in
Swampscott, which is one of the smallest towns (land area-wise) in Massachusetts, about 12 miles or so north of downtown Boston on the
Atlantic Ocean.
Swampscott was originally one ward of our much bigger next-door neighbor, the
City of Lynn, until 1852.
Swampscott means "red rock" in the language of the native Americans who lived here before the English colonists arrived in the 1600s.
The town got that name because of the rocks along our ocean shore.
We live in an old house (circa 1840) a few blocks from Kings Beach in the
Lynn Shore Reservation. We bought it in 2004 from a very nice couple who lived here for over 40 years! We're not necessarily the most handy types,
but we're ok at painting, and are getting better at repairing old walls and putting up wallpaper. Jamie is quickly becoming
a gardening expert, and is getting rave reviews from the neighbors!
About Traveling and Transportation
As you probably figured out by now, traveling is very meaningful to us, and we've dedicated a large portion of our Web site
to travelogues of our various adventures together. Without a doubt, we're both very happy to call New England home and have
deep connections to our friends, community, and politics of the Boston area, and the North Shore in particular. However,
we've both come to realize over the years that our journey toward emotional, spiritual, and intellectual wholeness keeps pushing
us to amazing places that each hold a unique key to one more question we didn't even know to ask. Hopefully, as you read
through these travelogues, you might be encouraged to seek out some of your own special keys, even if you didn't know you
were looking for them.
Slowly but surely, we're adding a few other items to the site that we find entertaining. It will probably also be obvious
from a few of our pages that we're both very interested in civil aviation. (We're also plenty interested in other forms of
passenger transportation, but since Clinton works as a transit planning manager here in Boston region, he's already on overload
with trains and buses and streetcars by the end of the work day. Feel free to visit the Web site of the place where Clinton
works -- the
Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization, or that of our region's transit authority -- the
MBTA, if you want to know more about urban transportation.)
Marriage Equality
It's probably obvious from the pictures and writings on our site that we're a couple. But I guess since the rest of our nation
hasn't come around yet to embracing the full freedom of religion that allows for civil marriage equality, it's still worth
proclaiming that . . . we're married. For those of you visiting our site from other states, or other nations in the world
without civil marriage equality, let me assure you that Massachusetts is pretty much just the same now as it was before marriage
equality was made law. Everyone (including us) still gets up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, has dinner, goes to
sleep, and hopefully gets a chance to spend some time with friends on the weekend. Not a single church has been forced to
perform gay marriages if it doesn't want to, and not a single straight marriage has been threatened by ours.
In fact, our communities are just a bit more stable with more married folks around. And no one is forced to jump through
legal hoops make sure that they'll be able to visit their partner in the hospital should he/she ever become very ill. And
a few less people are stuck without health insurance. And oddly enough, our state budget benefits from just a few more couples
experiencing the "marriage penalty" when they do their taxes! Bottom line, we're glad that Massachusetts can be
the first to prove to America that gay marriage is far from threatening, and frankly, it's not all that exciting on the grand
scale. But it sure is wonderful to know that, at least here, two soulmates can share in the privileges of a civil marriage,
no matter what their genders are.
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