Psychedelic carnival hijinks

The poster for my neighborhood Catholic school's fall carnival.  Think it wad painted in the 70s or 80s?

Already?

Busy week

Thurs: It's ridiculously windy today, as in newspaper boxes pushed over by the wind downtown windy.  I'm on the lightrail listening to a cell phone conversation in Somali and watching a guy multitask picking his nose and texting.  I'm wondering if I will blow away while running around the lake and what would be a better route for an easy four miles.

The morning darkness until almost 7 a.m. has me getting there and working later and I am preoccupied with trying out new methods for doing my job faster/ more productively...  Ready for the weekend to whiz by...

Fri:  Here I am back on the lightrail platform, doing it all over again.  The run went ok except as it got dark there were all these creepy young dudes hanging around the park in little groups on their bicycles, smoking and clearly enjoying the way runners and bikers were cutting a wide swath around them. Glad I only had to run 3, it turned out, which does not require going around the lake or too far down suddenly deserted streets...

Read the City Pages' not very informative (quite structureless, in the way of the new internet-influenced journalism...) article about the teen suicide epidemic in Anoka-Hennepin school district right before going to bed and had weird dreams.  People are always saying how it's so much better  for the queer kids and there are so many resources and the web and all, or how they personally have not faced real harassment or discrimination for being LG or B (usually not T...), and why are there so many whiny, negative social issue complaint queer fictions... I am often annoyed by the repetitiveness of queer fiction, poetry, and especially that sad artifact of crappy funding structures called queer film, but why the stories about bashing, abuse, assaults, etc. are so prevalent I get.  People have a need to tell those stories because it's cathartic and they're still needed on the readerend.  Hence the popularity of a grim story like Brokeback Mountain.  I tend to get impatient with some of my favorite writers' impatience with non-sexy fun queer fiction.  Getting to sexy fun ueer is not always sexy or fun, and.people have to work that stuff out.  The influence of highly intolerant community

"leaders" of late makes this hardly a moot issue. 

 The Big Gay Race is one attempt to address this.  It's always nice to run in a queer-leaning crowd, a break from the usual scene.  And a worthy cause, soon to be bigger news as the battle looms...

Anyway.  Tired.  Ready for the weekend and enjoying the fall colors and fall cleanup season of toil and back trouble... Maybe a little grumpy, eh...  Someone has to balance out my carefree, leaf-loving dog...

 CP Article link here 

Skies

The wall of smoke from the Boundary Waters fire up north, seen from downtown, and the morning sky.

The state of lgbtqetc characters in YA

Found the link on the wyrdsmiths blog:

 YA gay-friendly? Not. 

 Well maybe not as dire... 

Malinda Lo's take 

Stuff to think about...

California dreamin'

Officially a running geek

But only to be able to eat cake...  The Baker's Wife is too close to my house.

Great big sky

Went for a morning trail run, taking the light rail to Fort Snelling and running down the wooden stairs and then along  the river back to the Minnehaha Falls.  Now watching "Into the Wild."  It's pretty damn good a second time. 

Each time I've watched it with a mother of 20-something sons.  Luckily the one son's not at all into wilderness and the other knows a hell of a lot better how top survive in it.  And has a job that gives enough of a taste of it anyhow.  It's a slightly excruciating look at families though...

Man, there are some beautiful landscapes in this movie.  Makes me want to go back West and hike.  I've been missing the Arizona mountains since driving in Idaho and Utah.

Might have to build a fire later.  Perfect fall weather.  But I have a bunch of library books to plow through, all about punk rock history, and another rented movie, the Alan Ginsberg biopic "Howl."  Plus a little wood repair and painting, thanks to an anxious dog not happy about the fair going on at the Catholic school down the block.  And writing, and salsa canning.  The weekend gets away from ya...

Punk economics

Quote of the day:  "Slavoj Zizek reads Hegel in order to argue that demanding purity- for example, cultural productions or expressions totally free from commodification- is akin to ' positing the presuppositions' that will prevent one from having to act."

-quoted in Punk Productions: Unfinished Business, Stacy Thompson, SUNY Press, 2004, so far quite interesting.

This may seem apposite to the current flow of constant accommodations and compromises, but I'm researching the 80s and 90s subcultures and their socio-political analyses and practices.  It's right on point.

First frost

Brrr.  Lots of grumbling among the hearty Minnesotans.  Then they start complaining there's not enough snow for skiing.  I have been researching where to go skiing, myself.  It started as researching trail runs, but the trails will become ski trails sooner than I will likely get out there...

Change of the season

It is suddenly brisk out.  Fast running is much more fun in cool weathet, IMO.  The sky has been really colorful the last couple days, especially over the lakes.  The other day the rising sun turned the downtown skyline metallic orange over Lake Hiawatha, with hundreds of Canada geese squawking on the shimmery water.  And the full moon has been out too.  A few leaves on the ground and tonight possible frost.  Time to go to the Kingfield farmers market for cider and donuts...

Grain elevators

One of my literary and visual obsessions.  From a Sunday bike ride down Hiawatha Avenue.

Potentially awesome

Or possibly one of those "issue" movies that gets it all wrong and wins an Oscar precisely for that reason.  Albert Nobbs, a new Glenn Close movie. 



A review from Telluride:

"Introducing a screening on Friday night, Ms. Close, who is a producer and writer of the film, said she had spent twenty years trying to bring the project of adapting the Irish writer George Moore’s short story to fruition. (She appeared in a stage version in 1982). Albert Nobbs, played by Ms. Close, is a woman who has spent her whole adult life passing as a man, and who works as a waiter in a turn-of-the-century Dublin hotel. It was hard to believe that the radiant blonde movie star at the microphone and the taciturn, red-haired, slightly Chaplinesque figure in the movie were the same person, but such incredulity is part of the pleasure we take in great acting. ..."

I guess my question is what the takeaway is.  Many of the primary historical figures who got recorded, i.e., got caught or didnae hide, have been chalked up to economics - making a living in a man's time.  There's often been more there but the history of what is now called transgender and of cross-dressing lesbians for whom economics was not the only motivating factor has often been suppressed or obscured.

I want to be excited for a new movie, there are so few that truly do that these days, but I'm skeptical here.

Congrats

Bernice Donald is Confirmed to the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals By Martha Neil Sep 6, 2011, 07:11 pm CDT

"A longtime federal judge in Memphis, Tenn., breezed through the U.S. Senate confirmation process today with bipartisan support for a seat on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. After 30 minutes of debate, U.S. District Judge Bernice Donald was approved by a 96-2 vote, reports the Commercial Appeal. She will be the first African-American woman to serve on the court, reports the Associated Press. ..."

"The daughter of a domestic worker and a self-taught mechanic, she is a graduate of the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law. Donald, who turns 60 later this month, was a judge in Shelby County General Sessions Court before she was appointed to a seat on the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in 1988. President Bill Clinton nominated her in 1996 to serve on the federal district court bench. She was serving as secretary of the American Bar Association when she was nominated by President Barack Obama last year, a White House press release notes, and she is a member of the ABA Journal's Board of Editors. ..."

"In addition to her many other qualifications for the job, Donald has a "balanced judicial temperament" that will likely help promote collegiality among her 6th Circuit colleagues, law professor Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond tells the Commercial Appeal."

Collegiality... a lost art.  Why AZ makes new admits take a class.

80sfest

Saxophones, skinny Brits, lots of gray hair in the mosh pit.  Tom Tom Club and the Psychedelic Furs have aged very well.  The cover of "Sexy Thing" and the rendition of "Psycho Killer" by Tom Tom Club rocked.

The Future of Work

...is already here.  Walking towards the library, I see a guy resting on his arms on the edge of the enormous bucket he's standing in, ready to go up in the crane to the very tall roof of the library.  And texting...

There's an interesting future of work story in the September issue of Redstone SF: The Jenny.  Brought me right back to my days at the O.G.

Not long ago I went to a con panel about technology - e-books was the topic, and the participants were saying that a paperless office was in the future.  I kept my mouth shut, but much of lawyering these days is all-electronic by court order, and I currently work within an all-electronic, very record-heavy environment.  Impressed every day at how well it works, despite the usual glitches (one would have with paper too one way or another).  

Panelists are often very focused on their own narrow slice of experience, anyway.  Just never say "Never" on a panel...

The State of Health Care in the U.S.

Lava Hot Springs

We got stuck, because someone tried to jimmy the lock of the one car door that the key worked in, and we had to wait for the GF's son to come into town from working on the fireline in N Idaho, get a ride from a friend, and bring the good key.  Many drunk teenage boys tailgating in the parking lot made this less fun.  But the hot springs was nice, and the river was hopping.  Only four ambulances had to come...

Caribou National Forest

The tiny speck in the blue sky is a raptor -there were alot, though more of the black and white birds that no one can name are everywhere in the mountains around Pocatello.  Lots of ATVs, very polite though.

Nggghhh

I actually have nothing to complain about, except  high altitude really is harder.  In the 5k I beat an 8 year old who was very upset to be passed by several old ladies, but he had to stop to tie his shoes.  I also beat a family except the teenage son, who made the break before I did to leave mom and sis in the dust.  Unsure of the time, could be respectable for all that training, or not.  Will have to see.

Correction: I got third in my age group, female.  Yay races with small pools of non-marathon, half, and 10k more seeerious runners... Ya gotta pick right.  Based on the times, the 5k route, which felt slightly uphill for a good bit, does not confer the advantage the downhill bits for the full and half marathons do...  Yay.  Wish I had broken 30:00 tho.  It seems so slow a time for how much work it was.

The barefoot marathoner made it to the end in one piece, so it was a good day.  No broken bones, only a slightly enlarged Baker's cyst. 

Cough, cough.  Time to nap.

Ah, the wild west...

I sort of miss it.  The land, yes.  The social graces, not so much.  Water wars, not at all...

Running the gap - pre-race scouting

Unique swag.  Gorgeous views.  Quite the winding downhill route.  Thankfully it's cold in the a.m. hours.

Disaster season

My east coast family appears to have been damn lucky and emerged from the earthquake (!) and hurricane with minimal damage, aside from evacuating for several days.  It's very strange to be finally enjoying good weather while the rest of your family is in the deluge and your employer is closing offices left and right and managing crisis on one half of the country. 

I would feel guilty enjoying the relief but we've had our share of flooding, tornadoes, and tweens killing each other this summer. 

My neighborhood was undergoing a three-day spree of boys in a car driving up and down the streets smashing all the car windows.  Let's just say the NH online forum was a-hoppin', especially after they caught the lads red-handed...  What's going on in the stars?  Some crazy opposition IIRC...