It's About Time

My local paper did something today that it has never done before: LEFT ME SPEECHLESS, but in a good way.

Actually, the paper is not subscription worthy for a number of reasons. So, every Sunday morning, my two dogs and I walk to our local Albertson's and buy the weekend edition from Luis (or his mother, if he's not there). I bring the paper home and read it from the front page to the back page, nursing my coffee cup and savoring the time that I devote to this sort of indulgence. Sometimes my partner and I will swap sections, reading aloud the best or most outlandish paragraphs, adding our own op ed commentary as we go along.

I always read the front page first and the "Desert Living" section second, which are both dominated by local news. Today, all attention is focused on the wildfires that have already managed to consume more than 78,000 acres. Our nation still hasn't been able to effectively deal with the Katrina aftermath. But this is California, not the Big Easy, and there are a lot of rich, white voters whose recreational cabins are in jeopardy (just 50 homes have burned so far). So the FEMA director is expected to visit sometime in the next couple of days to "survey the damage." However, I digress.

What left me speechless was the Milestone section, which publishes "announcements for engagements, weddings, 25th, 50th, 55th, 60th, 65th, 70th, and 75th wedding anniversaries and other significant milestones." Today, for the first time since I began reading the Sunday paper, (sometime in August, 1999), there was a same-sex couple announcement, complete with accompanying full-color photograph. It's not up on the paper's website, so I retype it here in its entirity:

Burt H. Peachy and Charles C. Spence of Cathedral City were united at the Unitarian Universalist Church on June 3, 2006, in Victoria, British Columbia, and June 10, 2006, in Rancho Mirage.

Charles graduated from Michigan State University where he earned a Ph. D. and did post doctoral work at Harvard and Claremont Colleges. He was a chancellor of colleges in California, from 1995 to 2004, district president from 1985 to 1995 and college president in Iowa from 1980 to 1985.

Burt is a graduate of California State University, Long Beach. Formerly a college administrator and theater director, he is currently president of his consulting company.

The couple is celebrating their 12th year together and say they fell in love because they have
"so many things in common, and a zest for life."

For their wedding trip they went sailing through Greece and reside in Cathedral City.

It's about time.