The full moon has brought fullness--long intimate talks with so many people, old friends and new. Today, a walk in the woods with a friend of thirty years, from my VISTA days, and his wife. The sun hot and dry, insects making clicking sounds in the dessicated Queen Anne's lace, the sky a rich Delft blue. We walked and talked and sweated happily, and then went out and stuffed ourselves full of Mexican food at a little dive-y place a few blocks from our house.

Life is so sweet sometimes, when things come around in the fullness of time. This friend has seen me and I have seen him through more than one death: my mother, his mother, his former fiance, my ex-husband, and friends taken before their time. And here we are still alive, still walking around on strong legs, still drinking coffee and giving each other shit, still recognizably something of the young naive people we were when we met. And life is good.

Which makes today's announcement of a judge shutting down Obama's expansion of the stem cell research program particularly odious. If stem cell research had proceeded apace during the Bush years, my friend Carla might be walking around and drinking in this beautiful day. If stem cell research had gotten going, all the people with M.S. and ALS and cancer and diabetes might have hopes of a healthier life. How can that be bad? How can religious wing-nuts deny scientists the right to at least try to heal some of these terrible diseases?