A gay couple was named "Couple of the Year" in Lincoln City, Ore., a small, vacation/retirement community of 6,300 people. The award was given to Rick Brissette and Dan Beck on April 13 during a "Community Days" celebration sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce.

"Rick and I both arrived in Lincoln City about 15 years ago from opposite corners of the country," Beck told the assembled crowd. "We found, not only each other, but a community that just said no to the hate being promulgated in our beautiful state."

In an email announcing the award, Beck said that it "is sponsored by Lincoln City’s newspaper, The Newguard, and when our names were announced by its publisher, a rather conservative man who just moved here, the banquet hall erupted with cheers, applause, yelling and general pandemonium. People were genuinely as surprised, thrilled and blown away as us. Our friends were jumping up and down on their chairs screaming. Afterward, the reception line felt like those one sees at weddings. People I did not even know slapping me on the back saying, ‘Congratulations. You guys deserve it. It’s about time. Maybe some day this kind of thing will not be so unusual.’"

The ground rules that are accepted for interfaith dialogue should be applied to dialogue between progressive and conservative Christians, Rosemary Ruether suggests in The National Catholic Reporter (4/12/02).

"For years I have been a part of interreligious dialogues, between Christians and Jews, Christians and Muslims and Christians and Buddhists," Ruether says. "Certain ground rules have evolved that help make dialogue possible. Each side must give up the assumption that they are out to convert the other side to their faith, that they alone have the true faith and the others are heretics, idolaters or demon-worshippers. Each starts with an attitude of mutual respect for each other’s faith. They assume that there is some truth in both religious perspectives and both are partial and historically constructed, although pointing to deep truths. Each can learn from the other both to more deeply appreciate the other’s faith, and also to better understand their own faith. ...

"I would suggest that the same presuppositions that make dialogue possible between religions are also necessary for dialogue between Christians, even Christians in the same denominations. Dialogue is impossible if some Catholics start with the assumption that those of the other side are stupid, perverse or evil, and that your group alone has the fullness of the truth, that the goal is to make the other side either submit to your fullness of truth or get out of the church.

"Such presuppositions, unfortunately, are exactly the presuppositions of right-wing Catholics and Protestants with regard to the liberals of their churches. It is these presuppositions that make dialogue impossible.

"What is to be done? I believe it is essential that neither side gain the power to drive out or silence the other side. Each must continue to coexist within their churches, even if it means constructing distinct media of communication, educational institutions and networks to maintain one’s own existence. We must continue to clarify not simply the surface points of difference, but the difference of presuppositions. This will not lead easily to a new consensus, but rather to a clarification of the depths of the differences. But most sides must continue to exist and to try to communicate."

"Aging is no longer just a first-world issue," United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan told the United Nations’ Second Assembly on Aging, held in April in Madrid (The New York Times, 4/9/02).

In an article on the Assembly, Emma Daley wrote, "Three-quarters of the people over 60 live in the developing world, while even rich nations have long wondered how they will continue to finance pensions and health care for future generations." The United Nations estimates that the number of people over 60 will rise to two billion in 2050, from 600 million today, with the ‘oldest old,’ those 80 or older, increasing to 350 million from 70 million.

"For many millions of older people, especially the rural poor in developing nations, food, water, electricity, medical care and security are still in scarce supply. The United Nations Population Fund commissioned a study of the elderly in South Africa and India, and concluded that urbanization, migration, the breakdown of traditional social structures and the AIDS crisis has forced many older people, especially women, into extreme poverty and isolation.

"Thousands of older people who once expected to be supported by their children have instead watched them die of AIDS, leaving children to be cared for by grandparents who do not even know how the disease is contracted and who have no money to pay for food or medicine."

The popular television show The West Wing "fetishizes workaholism," writes Susan J. Douglas (In These Times, 4/29/02). "Overwork is made to seem exciting and glamorous. Watch the way the camera moves. People in The West Wing – because they’re so important – are always walking at a brisk pace up and down the halls, in and out of offices, in groups of at least two, and the tracking cameras virtually jog to keep up with them. ...

"Millions of us have, over the past 15 years, been asked to do a lot more at work, in exactly the same amount of time, often with fewer resources. This speed-up has often been accompanied, and made possible, by downsizing and layoffs. It also imposes enormous stress on family and personal life. But we’re supposed to feel that the busier we are, the more important we are, and tough shit for those out there without a job.

"The West Wing celebrates liberal politics and even, at times, social justice. Yet it also canonizes the expectation that staying late at work is more important than going to your kid’s science fair – or even seeing an old friend."

Although Americans now recycle almost a third of our waste, we generated twice as much trash in 1999 than in 1970, according to a Christian Science Monitor Earth Day report. The report included the following statistics:

• In one year, recycling allows aluminum companies to save the equivalent of more than 19 million barrels of oil – enough energy to supply the electrical needs of Pittsburgh for six years.
• Recycling one glass bottle or jar saves enough electricity to light a 100-watt bulb for four hours.
• Making cans from recycled aluminum cuts related air pollution (sulphur dioxides, for example, which create acid rain) by 95 percent.
• Making recycled paper generates 74 percent less air pollution and 35 percent less water pollution, and uses 64 percent less energy than making paper from virgin timber.
• If all morning newspapers in the U.S. were recycled for one day, 41,000 trees would be saved and 6 million tons of waste would never end up in landfills.
• Every person in the U.S. receives junk mail that represents the equivalent of 1-1/2 trees a year. If only 100,000 people stopped their junk mail, as many as 150,000 trees annually would not be cut down for paper production. (One tree can filter up to 60 pounds of pollutants from the air each year.)