Man, I love this American Experience. I know it sounds dull. Just showing on PBS is enough of a taint. I tend to put off watching them for weeks at a time, till my tivo entries dwindle down and there's nothing left, and then . . .

They tend to amaze me.

Just finished Kinsey yesterday, which was infinitely better than last year's film, and actually more entertaining.

Today, just whizzed through Lost in the Grand Canyon. Didn't actually watch it, because my tivo grabbed it from a strange station with no picture. Can you imagine a film more deserving of pictures than an exploration of the Grand Canyon. But it was still enthralling as radio.

Fascinating story of John Wesley Powell, who led the first group to explore it.

I didn't even know it was first touched by white people so recently (1869). I've actually stood at the last place any whiteguy had ever been to till then, at the confluence of the Green and Colorado rivers. (At that time, the Green and Grand.) Man. None of us had ever gone there before.

Does give me pause.

As then there's this quote from Powell -- hmmmmm. I'm going to give you a taste of where they were at in the journey from the transcript, ending with his quote that has been haunting all afternoon:

On July 21st, the 59th day of the journey, they passed the point where the Green River merged with the Grand. They were now on the Colorado. From here on, there was no way out -- no settlements, no chance to re-supply, nothing, until the end of the canyons, hundreds of miles downstream. The rapids were bigger and more perilous than ever.

"We have run 13 miles today in which we passed 35 rapids," wrote Bradley. "The constant banging on the rocks has begun to tell sadly on the boats. They are growing old faster, if possible, than we are."

They patched the boats with pine pitch, but could do nothing about the rot and mold that had, by now, destroyed most of their food.

Michael Ghiglieri: The rations were dwindling, they were on half rations and then they were on less than half rations, and mostly this meant eating dough balls of flour. And the prospect of actually starving to death was real.

Narrator: "The sun is so hot we can scarcely endure it, "wrote Bradley. "It heats the canyon walls like an oven. A walk out to civilization would be almost certain death."

Michael Ghiglieri: Every single day was a little worse than the day before. And, of course, they didn't know where they were. So, they didn't even know how bad it would get.

Narrator: By the middle of August, they were more than a mile deep in the earth. It was brutally hot, no game to hunt, no fish in the muddy river. This was the Grand Canyon. Barely ten days of rations remained. Even Powell was starting to worry.

John Wesley Powell (v.o.): We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not. The great river shrinks into insignificance as it dashes against the walls and cliffs that rise to the world above. We are but pygmies, lost among the boulders.

A slightly different version of it closes out the show:

We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not. With some eagerness and some misgiving we enter the canyon below.

Different idea, just as important, equally powerful.

On an ordinary day, the lost in insignificance idea would shake me harder. It hits you hard when it hits you out there in the Rockies. But I've felt that one many times already, and to the degree you can, I've begun to understand it.

But it's the other one that's been on my mind all afternoon. ". . . with some eagerness and some misgiving, we enter . . ."

Wow. Haven't done enough of that in awhile. (Oh course virtually my entire family would roll their dozens of eyes simultaneously at that, and say I've done way too much of it, but that's a whole nother problem. The source of one of the great sorrows of my life, actually, but another time. ) But it's scary, this writing, sometimes. The misgivings just grow and grow and grow over time. And I definitely don't know the distance yet to run, or the obstacles still to explore. I guess that's what makes it an adventure.

OK, plunging back in right now.

If I'm good, maybe you won't see me for a little while.

At 10:23 p.m. this evening, Jeff Greenfield finally uttered the words on my lips all day long, "First of all, at some point, we will remind ourselves The Supreme Court is not the abortion court. There are really significant things . . ."

Thank you!

Yes, obviously, abortion is a major issue in America. And in particular, a key issue for any future supreme court. But please. Our freaking narrow-minded media. Seems like one issue is all they can focus on at one time.

There are a hell of a lot of issues the supreme court will rule on, many of them critically important to us, and most of them completely unrelated to abortion. Could you people please widen the discussion here just a tiny smidge?

Newsmodels. I tell you.

So help me out here. Has Larry Kramer always been nuts?

For straight people or younger gays or non hardcore gay activists--i.e., just about everyone--he's some legendary gay activist, apparently. I've heard his name repeatedly through the years, but typically from goofballs too strident and boring for words, so I never found the stomach to look into what the heck he was all about.

I did skim a speech that I think he delivered months ago, which sounded pretty chicken little. But I'm watching him right now on Charlie Rose, and the man is clearly out of his mind.

He's got a book out called The Tragedy of Today's Gays, and the tragedy as he explains it is that "We don't have a friend anywhere . . . We don't have anything . . . They hate us! The problem is people hate gay people. And it's getting worse."

Larry, Larry, Larry. You live in a different world than me.

Sure, some people still hate us, but it's getting better by leaps and bounds.

Some people can only see the dark side.

This guy . . .

Next, he sites a Kinsey statistic that 40% of men have sex with another male at least once during their lives. Aside from the well-documented flaws in some of Kinsey's sampling, so what? Lots of people experiment. He leaps to the conclusion that these guys all love men to some degree and hate themselves for it, so they persecute us in retaliation. Good lord.

And now he's saying the government is using AIDS to try to exterminate us.

I realize the guy has been through a lot. Friends died all around him in the AIDS epidemic, he nearly died himself. That could send you over the mental edge, I suppose. Is that what happened? Or was he always beamed in from another solar system? I'm sure some of you people can help me out in the comments.

Here's the thing, though. Why would an intellectual show like Charlie Rose spend time on such a nutcase? As a sop to gays? I think we can do better.

It's as bad as the networks that put on ghastly Ann Coulter.

Kind of infuriating. Sorry, straight people. Please disregard that madman flapping his arms around the curtain insisting there is no curtain. Every family has their crazies.