Kos put up the touching story of Ellen, one of the women from whom he bought his house.
My own housing story has strange parallels.
Kos put up the touching story of Ellen, one of the women from whom he bought his house.
My own housing story has strange parallels.
My wife and I moved into our house in Berkeley in 2005, buying it from an elderly lesbian couple as well. We had been looking for nearly two years and had been consistently outbid (remember those days?) The couple had lived in this house for nearly 30 years, but the house was on a slope and had three floors. One of the ladies had hip problems and it was hard for her to navigate the stairs so they had decided to put the house up for sale.
Their realtor happened to be ours as well, and having taken pity on us -- considering my wife was eight months pregnant -- she made arrangements so if we paid the asking price, they would keep the house off the market. We were told the ladies were especially amenable since I had volunteered for the Dean campaign in the Iowa primary. Turned out they were both pretty active in politics. To what degree we didn't know until later.
We moved in a week before the baby was born and they moved up to a retirement community up north.
When we went about emptying the storage sheds, we found crosses with paper plates nailed to them with slogans like "US out of Nicaragua," etc. Over the next couple of years, neighbors would pass by and tell us Lou and Merryll stories. One passerby mentioned that she had met the two women in the hold-up cell after they had all been arrested protesting at Diablo Canyon! Apparently, they were omnipresent characters in protest marches for years.
I'm sure wherever they are, they're smiling at Obama's victory and would do anything in their power to get rid of the odious Prop 8. Anyway, Kos's story brought back fond memories of the two women who made it possible for us to have our child in our own home.