Like many children of the 1980’s, I was raised on the folk music of the 1960’s. Car trips were spent singing Amazing Grace, Union Maid, and the John Birch Society in three-part harmony. (the story of how I was almost fired for teaching a camp full of girl scouts the Arlo Guthrie song Coming Into Los Angeles should be saved for another time- in my defense, it was raining, they'd been stuck inside for a week, and I was out of uplifting friendship themed songs)
I was shocked to get a Pandora update telling me that the Chad Mitchell Trio had updated their classic John Birch Society to the new George Bush Society. You know what? It still scans. Isn’t that a revolting state of affairs.
Today I took the coward’s route out and did not defend a young Muslim woman. I am ashamed.
I am a fairly average looking Caucasian woman who uses public transportation in Minneapolis/Saint Paul every day. While I mostly fly under the radar (ipod on, hood up, bag on lap) I have gotten used to dealing with uninitiated social contact. Through practice I have learned to successfully deflect people hitting on me, making rude remarks about my appearance, calling out my ‘attitude’, or crowding into my personal space. Humor balanced with defensive body posture usually works pretty well, but there are times when walking down the isle of the bus feels like a judgmental gauntlet of Dickinsonian proportions.
All the technology of Al Gore and our new century has brought me is a collection of renditions of Celine Dion songs done on harmonica.
Some are sort of touchingly earnest and some are just... touched. All improve on the original.
No, seriously. Relevance and more amazing harmonica songs behind the cut.
"We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain."
--Henry David Thoreau
I sat outside a stripmall cafe with my laptop and an iced coffee at 8:30 in the morning, looking up directions on their wi-fi. I was finally leaving Las Vegas, escaping the crush of the crowds and the time-share salesman who had threatened my life. I was going to look for the Joshua Trees.
My adventures, thoughts on evolution, and lots of my photos of Joshua Trees, Desert Flowers, and the Toiyabe National Forest behind the cut!
I scooped up a test handful of snow while walking home yesterday afternoon. This is an almost unconscious action honed fine from a childhood centered in the upper midwest. The snow was good. Really good. Heavy with water but not soggy. Fine particles mostly, but able to bond into a solid iceball with heat and pressure from gloved hands. A preliminary test pitch at a brick wall showed a rounded splatter pattern with the majority of the snow sticking in a flat circle at the point of impact. Excellent. A little too excellent. With feet heavy from more than just the weight of my waterlogged trouser cuffs, I waked to the door... and stopped. What good is life when you refuse to act when the opportunity presents itself?
So, I made snow cats.
More pictures and my reason (a call for positive political action) for sharing them with you are behind the cut.
They took my trousers and I’m pretty sure they googled me. My crime? Wearing a t-shirt that proclaimed a dangerous revolutionary sentiment in the airport. More below. (Get your minds out of the gutter!)
So, you think that you had a crappy New Years? No date but pootie and the pizza delivery guy?
Mine was crappier. I went with my family to the annual Hustisford Toilet Bowl Pre-game Parade and did my duty as a stanch citizen journalist.. Which is appropriate as the internet is a series of tubes.
Head below the cut for more photos and alleged humor.
If a photo is worth a thousand words, here are about 17,000 of them- give or take a few adverbs.
These are my photos from today's (Saturday, 10/28) protest on the State Capitol front steps with A.N.S.W.E.R. (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism). It felt great to get out in the cold and work for change!
In telling B.D.'s story, G. B. Trudeau has done more for the troops than almost any cartoonist. I was pleased to see him add The Sandbox to his site at Slate.com. The Sandbox is updated with blog entries from our troops overseas and I've added it to my daily blog browsing.
One of yesterday's entries broke my heart and I wanted to share it with you. It speaks of courage, forgiveness, and humanity. A friend of mine is back from Iraq and he's slowly coming out of himself with the help of his vet center and all of us who love him even though he's changed a lot. He said it was mindblowing to be kind to people and be shot at the next day- but that you couldn't help being kind. I didn't really understand what he meant until I read this.
Part of the blog is behind the cut along with a link to the rest of it. It's a long read, but worth the time.
