Where there's a will there's a way

Hot on the California Supreme Court's legalizing of same-sex marriages, at least two county clerks in that state have said they will no longer perform marriages, although they will still issue licenses -- to both straight and gay couples.

The clerks claim the gay-rights issue has nothing to do with their decision, that it's a budgetary move. Pardon me, but that's horseapples. There's considerable evidence one of them has been in e-mail touch on the subject with a hard-right religious group.

And refusing to tie the knot for anybody just to spite some folks smacks of heaving unborn babies out with the bath water.

Happily, Californians are nothing if not resourceful.

Heather Lyon, owner of the Lyon Bookstore in Chino, has announced that she has become an ordained minister of two Internet "churches" -- the Universal Life Church "and, for good measure, the Church of Spiritual Humanism.

"I am prepared to perform non-religious wedding ceremonies here at Lyon Books for any couples who are ready to get hitched. While for some, a church is the best choice of a wedding site, I hope others will appreciate that special bookstore ambience. For me, being surrounded by the wisdom of the ages, new ideas, and the smell of books fills me with optimism and hope for the future. And a wedding is an act of optimism, a leap of faith, a commitment to a partner and the future. Please contact me if you would like to schedule a wedding appointment. Who wants to go first?"

Bravo, Ms. Lyon, and not just for doing the right thing. This is what a full-service independent bookstore is all about. A good one is a temple, a tabernacle, to intellectual freedom and human rights.

My other blog

As if there wasn't enough fiddling to do with this blog, I've created another one -- The Whodunit Photographer.

It's just an ego trip for an amateur photographer with delusions of grandeur. Each day another photo will be posted -- perhaps taken just a few minutes before, perhaps rescued from my archive of backyard-deck and Upper Peninsula of Michigan wildlife shots, perhaps from my roundhouse of railfan photos, perhaps from my hangar of small-plane pictures.

Many will have been seen before on The Reluctant Blogger. I do plan to keep on posting pictures here when there are stories to go along with them.

As always, comments are welcome.

The hell with it.

No more tinkering. Back to the good old Georgia font for this blog. It was a mistake to mess with it. I should have learned this lesson from 42 years of watching wunderkind graphics designers casting bones and reading entrails at failing newspapers.

From Donna Leon to Lee Child

Who are the whodunit writers mystery authors themselves most enjoy reading and learning from? My all-time favorite is P.D. James, whose stately literary mysteries are as guilt-free a pleasure as I've ever experienced as well as an impeccable trove of ideas.

But right now a close second is Donna Leon, whose thoughtful, conscientious and humane Venetian detective, Commissario Guido Brunetti, is one of the best-constructed characters in all mystery literature. Leon also has no peer at weaving threads of plot with sense of place, and when that setting is as beautiful and historic as Venice, the reader is in for an extraordinary treat.

I have just finished Acqua Alta, Leon's 1996 novel about a brilliant art historian and her opera diva lover, and their entrapment in a murderous scheme to fashion and sell fake antique ceramics from China. It was gripping reading for its own sake, but, more important, I soaked up some clever techniques of plotting and characterization I hope to mirror in the next Steve Martinez mystery.

An example is how Leon uses Venice's weather. "Acqua alta," which provides the title of the novel, means "high water," the season when the storm-swollen Adriatic Sea causes Venice's canals to spill over and make the simplest things of life difficult to negotiate. That gives me an idea of how to use the often choking snows of the Upper Peninsula in the next book.

Leon's latest novel, The Girl of His Dreams, published last month, is on the bedside stand. But first I'm going to plunge into a very different sort of whodunit, Lee Child's newest Jack Reacher thriller, Nothing to Lose. If it is as good as his earlier books, you may not hear from me for a while.

Tinker, tinker . . .

Now I'm trying Verdana rather than Trebuchet for the text font. Verdana is a wider and airier font. Is it more readable than Trebuchet or Georgia? You tell me, please.

It's a White-Breasted Nuthatch, isn't it?

My new National Wildlife Federation Field Guide to Birds of North America makes me think it is, and if it is, it's a fairly rare visitor to my backyard feeder. If any of you have other bird books that might confirm that it is a Sitta carolinensis, please let me know. (The photo, by the way, is heavily cropped, slightly out of focus and heavily sharpened in Photoshop Elements, so if you click on it won't look so hot.)

Georgia or Trebuchet?

Since March 1 the headlines and text of this blog have appeared in the Georgia serifed font, but now I'm trying Trebuchet, a sans-serif font, to see if readers will find it more legible. Trebuchet does seem to be airier between the lines.

Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts. Thanks.