Ha

The MSBA, our voluntary state bar, informs me I could get a 50% discount if 90% of the attorneys in my office joined too...  Herding fifty-some cats...  That would require skills way above my pay grade.

Speaking of shimmering fantasies, I just finished "The Spell," by Allan Hollinghurst.  Enjoyable, not exactly lite but lighter than his other novels that I've read.  Those were later, and had loftier ambitions, won Man Booker and all that kerfuffle.  It was nicely gay, not how straight people might write gay in trying to imagine gay life. 

The competition and understanding between the gay father and son were more interesting than the movies I've seen that tried to explore that.  What if the son's your average low level drug dealer and enjoying his sex appeal to the full- not the usual "keep it positive" special issue.  And not as out there as QAF because not TV in the age of sensation. 

Nicely done, overall.  The characters were a bit stilted at times, but in ways people truly are, in their heads.  They had self-consciousness and lack of it in human doses...

Oh, Shirley

The Shirley Jackson awards are nice and all, but honestly, no one writes horror on her level these days.  In a way, it can't be done anymore because we believe too easily in what she convinced us of, the mundane horror of daily, normal life.

The Lottery has been done, now.  The Hunger Games doesn't have that effect.  What horror story can, aside from real life, which is more horrible.  There are a million goth girls playing at being Shirley and Plath now.  Sunniness is more shocking.

"The story created outrage on publication in 1948 in The New Yorker, described in letters to the magazine office as “gruesome” and “a new low in human viciousness.” But Jackson preferred to quote the letters she received from readers who “wanted to know where the lotteries were being held, and if they could go watch.”

 From Open Letters Monthly 

This is less unbelievable in the era of reality TV, cyberbullying, school shootings, and Google Glass.

Typical summer Saturday morning

Making sourdough squash, kale, corn pancakes (mostly) and strawberry raspberry  jam from the garden while listening to the Clash on Teenage Kicks (The Current 89.3 FM).  Then biking to the Farmers Market if my back will let me. 

Had a little pain after trying to lift the balky dog up the stairs, after pulling a calf muscle running fast in hot hot heat.  It's thrown my running schedule off but, except for the pain, I'm happy for a little break.  The last few weeks I've been tired in the 90 degree heat and unable to go run in the gym for various reasons.  (It's not much cooler there, but no sun beating down.)

I have been reading the bio of Lopez Long, a Sudanese lost boy who ran for the US in the last two Olympics, and just broke the indoor American record for the 5,000m.  The video is worth watching, if you google it- nice surprise kick ahead of the leaders.  The book is interesting, tho a little too fawning on W.

I'm now reading Alan Hollinghurst's The Spell.  So far it's pretty captivating.  It meanders with lots of scene description, but he has this style that makes that sort of gripping, very 19th century.  Working on a novelish thing that delves into the spiritualism and poetry of that era, so it fits.

It's hot...

The faucet has been dry when I turn it on.  But the write-a-thon process seems to be helping.  Today I got a slow trickle of ideas for rewriting this thing I was trying to work on.  Sigh, sometimes it's sooo sloooow.

Not everything changes overnight...

Besides the ugly news from Russia and Poland, there's been a steady stream if stories of hate crimes in WI, as well as their poltical madness.   Recently from BigGayNews:  "The Pioneer Press reports that the organizer of what would have been Wausau [WI]’s first gay pride parade has cancelled it, saying he has experienced a wave of ugliness in the community. Daxx Bouvier, who is from California but owns a home in Wausau, said that he made his decision to cancel the parade following the negative comments from a Wausau City Council member and a number of articles in the local media caused people planning to be in the parade to be concerned for their own safety. Bouvier said that he does not plan to organize any future gay pride events in the city."

More @:  Big Gay News 

It's a little like having formal rights at work all of a sudden but still having to navigate the same ignorance and hostility every day, along with enjoying the camraderie of the same friendly, supportive people.  Changed, yet not at all.

Score one for the birds

The ridiculous rain from the previous month's storm made the walking path part of the lake/wetlands.  The ducks and egret were happy.  I misjudged and got sloshy shoes for the next four and a half miles.  Oops...

My first raspberries came in, though.  They're loving the downpours alternating with 85+ degree days of full sun.  Now I have to add picking twice a day to the schedule, if I can't con others into picking and eating all the berries.  The birds got more aggressive about them last year, and took all my pears (and rabbits or birds took all my peas this year) so we'll just have to see.

Eight miles

I ran across the bridge and down the river on the St Paul side to Crosby Farms, which is river level.  The water is high, so much of it is closed off.  The Limestone outcroppings on the bluffs are cool.  There's a covered-up cave outlet, which I did not realize, even after reading Greg Brick's book about Twin Cities caves.

It took a long time, at 80-plus degrees and rising, but got 'er done.  The two Somali guys who stopped, dropped, and.did pushups every half mile are hardier than I, and twenty years younger, I might add...

I was listening to the SF Squeecast but then Lopez Lomong's book Running for My Life.  Listening to his description of running away from a Senegalese rebel camp after being taken from his parents at age 6, running all day and night with no food or water to a Kenyan refugee camp, I could not complain about eight miles and a little heat...

Nectarine raspberry

The dogs were less happy.

Midsommer

Finally some good weather is making the garden and lawnmower-obsessed Minnesotans happy.  I biked home 7.5 miles, with a nice downhill several miles, and may have to try the to and from next.  I may take the wimpier path to, though...

The dogs don't like fireworks, but I am following my family tradition of making ice cream, albeit soy and without the old blue hand cranker.  The GF's son returned to his home briefly from fighting that deadly AZ wildfire, so there's something to celebrate. 

I'm not happy that the sequester has left them shorthanded and low on needed big equipment, though.  It's one thing to defund us desk jockeys, but drowning first responders in the bathtub is just plain destructive in all ways.  Shortsighted is blowing in the wind.  You don't need a weatherman to tell...  Just headlines.

I'm reading a bio of Mark Spitz and Borderliners by Peter Hoeg side by side.  Both studies in authoritarian pedagogies, it seems to work better for sports, when the pupil is very very driven, as well as physically gifted.  Borderliners has an interesting obsession with theories of time, as well as psychology, but it is weird, as in purposely obscure.

I have to get to work, to meet my write-a-thon goal of one hour a week.  While I actually have some free time. This experiment in triathleting is hard on the schedule.  Fun though, so far, though swimming is still eluding me.  It's harder than it looks... Kind of like writing.