This is Halloween!

What Halloween would be complete without The Monster Mash? Chris Rule reposted his original recut, "Scary Mary." I love it!

Here's "This is Halloween" from Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas, a family favorite.


Seriously, I saw Dracula Has Risen From the Grave when it came out in 1968 and I was 10, and spent the next year absolutely sure that he lived in my closet. Only if I slept with the sheet over my head would I be safe.

The Daily Mole, beta

If the Daily Planet is a fabulous aggregator of local new publications (neighborhood, ethnic group, labor, women, all the folks whose interests are not taken seriously by the mainstream media in this town, which is to say most of us), another new Twin Cities media venture is The Daily Mole, put on/out by Steve Perry (former editor of City Pages), Cecily Marcus, and Co. It's a very fancy Wordpress site, with a home page that bills itself as "Twin Cities", and four other categories on separate pages: pop media, talk, multimedia lounge, and listings. I've already posted some comments there as I get a feel for the content. The site is still in beta, and their really interested in responding to their readers' input.

We'll see how it shapes up as a site that can do a lot of what City Pages and VitaMN do on their sites, but better. Their banner says, "A thinky/talky approach to the news!" and "your new virtual watercooler." What I'm not sure of yet is if they will have the kind of in-depth articles that Perry used to write/edit for City Pages, that went into more of the background of local or national/international stories than the Strib did. I think that is the territory that the new MinnPost, scheduled to rollo out on Nov. 8, is staking out with its long list of eminent journalist collaborators. Since this is a daily, it may not be geared to the long read the way a weekly is, but it will bring us multiple feeds that link politics and the arts better than MNSpeak is doing currently. I'm afraid my experience of MNSpeak is of that it has devolved into a bully pulpit for a small, vocal and obnoxious set of commenters who scream at each other and insult folks who aren't members of their club. Attempts to engage their grew tiresome quickly. Maybe the Daily Mole will create a space for smarter conversations. We'll see how they handle the inevitable moment when they have to moderate comments or intervene in flame wars.

We *heart* Frida

Fridamania hits Minneapolis! I went to the opening night party on Friday. As someone put it, too many people! It was like waiting for space mountain. LOL. I lurked by the box office and spied on all the fabulous people in their fabulous clothes as they waited in a a super-long line that snaked around the lobby. Once inside, we waited in line for drinks, for food, and to get into the space where the show was mounted. But it was a fun, happy vibe, with great decorations, good food, and busy bartenders. The show itself is incredible. I have seen posters, photos, or digitized images of almost all the paintings in the show, and some of them in other shows, but to see them all together and to see how SMALL so many of them are changes one's whole relationship to the art. She was a good draughtswoman, with a complex use of color, and the recurring vegetal motif in so many of her painting are fascinating. I plan to return more than once. There are a lot of Frida related activities in town. KFAI's show Encuentros did two programs of music Frida would have listened to. You can stream the shows: in addition to the music, the commentary is very smart. Here's the playlist form the first show: popular dance music of the twenties. I sure do love my KFAI-Radio without Boundaries!

A film series has been programmed in conjunction with the show, called Cinemateca. The Highpoint Center for Printmaking has a show of Mexican contemporary printmakers that I don't want to miss.They are having a workshop on Saturday afternoon that I think my daughter would really enjoy.

Warning: Don't read this if you don't want to hear me whine

My rotator cuff tendonitis coupled with my fibromyalgia has meant that this semester my normal levels of chronic pain have shot way up. It's bad when I just wake up--I spend about half an hour stretching gently in bed, and that helps, but the pain in my shoulder is acute, and doesn't respond to that. After five o'clock at night, I'm in agony. It's hard to be completely present to my child, continue working, or enjoy time with friends when you're in pain. Some things it hurts too much to do: tuck in my shirt in back, put deodorant on my left armpit, write on the blackboard, raise my right arm above shoulder height, carry things with my right hand or arm, put on and take off my clothes, doing dishes, carrying in groceries, carrying laundry downstairs, putting it in and out of the washer and dryer, getting dressed, wiping a counter. I'm turning fifty, not eighty, but my body feels old and crippled.
I'm going to ask the guys to clean my house as my birthday present. Isn't that pathetic?

I have been seeing a physical therapist, and that has helped a little, but the screwed-up thing about constant pain is that it wears down your body and then it wears down your spirit. I'm starting to get to that well-known point where I am having difficulty coping on a daily level. The shoulder pain has meant that the usual exercise that I do to manage the fibromyalgia pain is out, and the fibromyalgia means that I am hyper-sensitive to the shoulder inflammation and slow to heal. I hate the fact that it is preventing me from keeping my house clean (vacuuming is probably the worst for fibro), and it even hurts to write on the blackboard in class. About once a day, I manage to move my arm is such a way that the shoulder joint pinches the muscles and tendons so hard, I want to cry.

The shoulder pain has become so bad this week that there are times when I can hardly bear it. Icing, pain relievers, the exercises my therapist has recommended, all are a small help, but the need to work so many hours in the last several weeks has me feeling as if I'm sliding back rather than making progress. I'm starting to lose brain function from lack of sleep: I blank out on words, my memory is shot, I react sluggishly. Most distressing is that this kind of pain and fatigue can also kick me into a mental space that I've worked hard to leave: cranky, paranoid, snappish. That's scary.

Then there's the fact that the shoulder pain interferes more with sleep, which causes the fibromyalgia to flare up, so that now I have returned to the state where I feel as if someones has been beating me with a stick--everything hurts, all over, but my hands, arms, shoulders, neck, face and upper back are either aching all the time, or feel as if they are laced with barbed wire.

Ironically enough, I'm actually very happy these days. That's the paradox of the physiology of pain-induced depression; I love what I'm doing at work, my family is wonderful, I wake up thankful for my good fortune. But the pain acts as a curtain that I have to push aside, separating me from myself. I'm familiar with this cycle. If something doesn't happen soon to improve the pain situation, I risk falling into the hole of exhaustion and the effects on mood that this brings.

I don't have many people I can talk to about this because frankly, who wants to hear about it? I suffer from the hyper-competent single mother complex as well: if I don't do it, nobody will. That's not actually true, but it's hard to let go of that mind-set.

Coping strategies for the day: hot bath, walk around the neighborhood to buy birthday presents, gentle stretches, ice shoulder, eat healthy food, breathe, leave work until tomorrow. Long term: see my doctor again, try to get back to twice a week with PT, mental health therapist, massage. All those things take time from work. So I will need to talk with my department chair to document my situation, not something I look forward to doing.

Good news: I got a paper accepted to a conference in Ireland! Bad news: I'm not sure how I'm going to be able to write it.
/pity party>

Citizen journalism on YouTube

I just learned that YouTube is more than talking cats and DTWS recaps. OK, I knew it was more, but I had't really looked carefully.
Here is a great use of YouTube for highlighting citizen journalism: CitizenTube is the vlog of Steve Grove, YouTube's editor for politics. He lives in SF, but he went to college at Carleton, the school where Paul Wellstone used to teach Political Science. I'm missing his talk today because I'll be at work, but I can catch up on his vlog.

We miss you, Paul

My senator, Paul Wellstone, was speaking for me when he addressed the Senate about the war in Iraq. I saw him speak in person only once, at a party before he ran for Senate. So many people are mourning him, his wife, his daughter, and his co-workers who were on the plane. We mourn them as people, and I mourn what we lost as a country when he died only eleven days before the election.

Some favorite places

CoolHunting.com posts videos as well as posts about the intersection of art, design, and whatever. Here are two that give you a little tour of Minneapolis.
Enjoy!

The Minneapolis Sculpture Garden at the Walker Art Center.

An architectural tour of Minneapolis.

Twin Cities Media Alliance and the future of newspapers

With the implosion of the two city newspapers and the weekly City Pages, all victims of corporate takeovers that included mass firings and layoffs of experienced journalists, the print news outlets in the Twin Cities have gone down the tubes. Sure, I still pick up copies in the cafes, out of habit, but there's nothing there any more. It's sad and frustrating because I have always loved reading newspapers. I don't subscribe at home any more because I hate adding even more to my recycling, but I would still buy a paper or pick up someone's discard every day.

But the changes in the works in the Twin Cities media world right now are very exciting. Journalists had already been exploring the possibilities of new kinds of news delivery through online formats for the last few years, and now several new groups are moving to reconfigure our media landscape. There will be a forum on Nov. 3 that I plan to attend called "life after newspapers", organized by the Twin Cities Media Alliance and sponsored by the Minneapolis Public Libraries.

One venture that has been around for a little while, that I like very much, is The Twin Cities Daily Planet, which bills itself as "local news for global citizens." It is a site that aggregates stories from the smaller papers and hosts blogs and community announcements. It has a strong component of citizen journalism, and links to a few sites with discussion forums in their Planet Cafe. Here is a list of their media partners. You can get your news in Spanish, Hmong, and Somali on this site as well. It's a project of the New Media Alliance.

The Twin Cities Media Alliance brings together media professionals and engaged citizens to improve the quality, accountability and diversity of the local media.

We envision a participatory democracy in which citizens from all segments of society and especially those who have been traditionally denied access are able to use the media as a tool to share information, hold the powerful accountable, build community, and work together for the common good.

Our community newswire and syndication service, the Twin Cities Daily Planet www.tcdailyplanet.net, features the best work of the neighborhood and community press and local independent journalists, and provides a public forum for engaged citizens. Our goal is to produce citizen journalism with professional standards, and to become a national model for other communities.

Does this happen to you?

If you haven't seen this one on YouTube, you'll have seen it on CuteOverload.

This is more or less accurate. My cat does not understand the concept of the weekend, so there is no sleeping in. And my cat's voice is much whinier and more demanding. The claw poke to the face usually happens on my nose, not my ear. My feet are also a target. There is some sitting next to/on my head with purring. He never feigns sleeping, he always jumps down off the bed and looks at me accusingly.

Annie, the Queen

Annie Lennox had the audience in the palm of her hand from the moment she walked on stage at the State Theater. She began her first set, mostly her solo work, with "No more I love yous" and then did a group of songs from Eurythmics days, but arranged for the piano and her voice. The long string of 80s hits were not neglected, but she ended the show with her Sing project to raise awareness about HIV/AIDs and its devastation in South Africa. She's the queen of performance--with a well-staged show: lights, bits from her amazing videos, her dancing and amazingly powerful and flexible voice. Even from far away, her eyes are incredibly expressive. I lost count of the standing ovations. She seemed sincerely moved by the love and energy the audience was giving to her.
Here are some of her amazing videos from over the years, before they hit it big;

Love is a Stranger

Song for a vampire

"Waiting in Vain"from Medusa

"The Gift"

Bummeration

PEOPLE! There is a whole site where folks post pictures of what is inside their fridge! It's called Fridgewatcher.com, and you can "watch" fridges! from other countries! I need to be amused right now, because I just watched a month of work go down the drain.

I'm too tired and bummed out to take a picture of the inside of my fridge tonight. I went to the airport to pick up a guest I'm hosting for work, only to get a message that she has to spend the night in Dallas due to flight delays (I swear, I had this feeling). Wah! I spent the last four weeks getting funding, arranging a meeting with fifteen! people for project planning, and she won't get here in time.

Well, excuuuse ME!

Sometimes when I was a child, my mother would say to me, "That's an explanation, not an excuse." It took me a long time to understand that she was trying to help me understand the difference between making a sincere apology and defensively arguing that I was justified in say, hitting my brother because he hit me first.

This hilarious article in the New York Times illustrates how often public figures go through the motions of apologizing but end up compounding the original offense.

The New Standards at the Dakota

I saw these guys again last night, for the third time. They don't play around here often-they've had some gigs in New York recently--and last time I tried to get a ticket at the door, they were sold out. So I made sure to call ahead, and had a great view from the balcony of The Dakota (my dinner was splenderific!). They are working on some new material. They didn't mention a new CD, but I assume one is in the works. It'd be great if they recorded their show--I think they are best live, when they feed off each other's energy.
They did a little fashion spread for The Rake Magazine a little while back.

Things that make me want to take out my red pen

For that anal-retentive writer or teacher in your life, here are some hilarious blogs:

The "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks "making fun of bad punctuation since 2005."

Literally, a weblog
An English language grammar blog tracking abuse of the word "literally."

Apostropher Abuse. Because its everywhere! and an apostrophe can't defend it's self!

lowercase L. This one was new to me, but now that I've seen the photos, I will be looking out for those signs that say PlEASE.

Do you know any other snarky language sites?

Anthropology field work on YouTube

Anthropologist vlogger asks folks gathered at a YouTube meet-up "Would you say that YouTube is a community?" The answers are varied and thoughtful. Some of the comments are as well.

The project is part of the work at this site. Exciting stuff!

National Coming Out Week

This semester I came out to my students as a member of a Rainbow Family: I'm a straight woman who co-parents with two men who are married to each other (legally! at least in Spain). I didn't think about it for a long time; it came up naturally when a student said she wanted to study the differences between gay marriage arguments in the US and in Spain. There was no particular reaction, at least not a public one. I've been reading some coming out stories, and tomorrow I'll attend the National Coming Out Day luncheon at the Convention Center. I'll get to sit with co-workers who have become friends through the work I've been doing as an ally on the Transgender commission and as a networkers for GLBT faculty and students. Next week, I'm bringing someone to campus who has been working to incorporate sexualities into university curricula in a number of countries. I hope the visit make possible some new connections, projects, relationships among folks with common interests.

I've been feeling like one of those Tinker Toys, the round part with the holes where you stick the spokes.

John Fogarty still singing against war

Credence Clearwater Revival is the soundtrack of my younger life. John Fogarty has a new record out, but this song is from a few years ago. Still singing anti-war songs.

Here is Credence on the Ed Sullivan show singing "Fortunate Son".


Some folks were born,
Made to wave the flag,
Ooh, the red white and blue.
And when the band plays "Hail to the Chief",
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, y'all.

It ain't me, it ain't me,
I ain't no senator's son, son.
It ain't me, it ain't me,
I ain't no fortunate one, no.

Some folks were born,
Silver spoon in hand,
Lord don't they help themselves, y'all.
But when the taxman comes to the door,
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale.

AAUP report on New Orleans Universities after Katrina

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), an organization that exists to protect academic freedom, has sent out the following message about its report on how Administrations of institutions of higher learning took advantage of the crisis caused by Hurricane Katrina to restructure and fire tenured faculty, without cause or due process:

A few months ago, the AAUP reported to its members on the results of the largest investigation we have undertaken in half a century. We were faced with fundamental violations of academic freedom and tenure not just at one school but across an entire region. Under the cover of unsubstantiated declarations of various versions of financial exigency, university administrators at five institutions engaged in a “nearly universal departure from (or in some cases complete abandonment of) personnel and other policies.” It has been called the storm after the storm, or the perfect academic storm. I am referring to the aftereffects of Hurricane Katrina on universities in the New Orleans area.

Many tenured faculty were fired with scant notice, no meaningful due process, no stated reasons, and no appeal save to the very administrators who released them. Faculty were not consulted about these actions or given an opportunity to suggest alternatives. Some found out they had already been taken off payroll and health care. Departments and programs were closed without appropriate review. While a number of institutions had suffered serious damage from the hurricane, we found no justification for this wholesale abandonment of due process and shared governance. Indeed, as the report eloquently declares, this is exactly the kind of challenge that requires wide consultation and full participation by the faculty before drastic actions are taken.

We believe all members of the higher education community need to know the story of how the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina was unnecessarily compounded by administrative fiat. That is why we are sending this e-mail.

The report is a warning to all of us about how not to handle a crisis, a warning as well about the dangers we face if our shared governance guarantees are not strengthened. Four administrations were censured at our annual meeting in June because of their post-Katrina actions. Negotiations continue in order to gain justice for New Orleans faculty and restore due process to the region.

The full report is available online.

Cary Nelson
AAUP President

Across the Universe

Julie Taymor is fearless. People seem to either love this movie or hate it. Count us in the first camp.

ETA: This Beatles' "Internet Album" is a great site for Beatles' stories!

Georgia O'Keeffe:Circling Around Abstraction

My brain is overheated from the intense activity of this week. I hope to persuade my girl to accompany me to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts to see the Georgia O'Keeffe: Circling Around Abstraction show that just opened. If you go here, you can click on a link to an audio slide show on the left.

"Information is shock resistance: arm yourself"

Alfonso Cuaron and Naomi Klein's film, illustrating the thesis of Klein's new book, The Shock Doctrine. It is necessary viewing.

Milton Friedman's doctrine of economic shock treatment, that Klein calls "the secret history of the free market," is to take advantage of disasters to push through an economic agenda. He said, "Only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces change." The use of systematic violence to enhance or achieve a state of collective shock is not a aberration, but a requirement for the shock doctrine.
Via Professor Zero.

Why I love my job, part two.

Portability. I can take my work on the road. Today is one of those days when I sit down and crank out all those boring letters so I can get them off my list of things to do: recommendations, reports, requests, meeting minutes, student evaluations. Only a few more left to do, but I need a break. Once again, I must sing the praises of the Midtown Global Market! At the Produce Exchange, I was able to buy perfectly ripe red Bartlett pears, not those rock-hard, sad pears I get everywhere else, even at my co-op. Then I went downstairs to the Hennepin County Service center where I got my drivers license renewed without waiting in line. In fact, they called my number so fast, I barely had time to fill out the form. The kind woman took my picture and then said we should take a better one, so my next picture will not be wacky-looking. Then I had a Cuban sandwich from Manny's Tortas. I always think I'm going to try something new, and I always end up getting the same thing because it is so GOOOOOD. And they have Wi-Fi, so I can keep on working while I watch the rain fall outside, and eavesdrop on lunchtime conversations while I chip away at the list of things-to-do. Hey, maybe I'll even have time to read something something today, what a thought!

I've been to the Global Market more lately because my physical therapy center is right across the street. I've been going once a week for this shoulder problem. Last year it was the left shoulder (rotator cuff impingement they called it. Ouch is what I called it). Now it is the right, the writing arm. The pain when I make the wrong move is so intense I want to cry--effectively, a tendon is being pinched between the bones of my shoulder joint. Imagine slamming your hand in the door, but on the inside. Progress is slow, but real. I'm still feeling intense pain when I move my arm the wrong way, but I've recovered a lot of range of motion, and I can see that it will get better. Patience is not one of the qualities for which I am best known, so living with this limitation has been an exercise in acquiring more patience. Ryan, my therapist, is a wonderworker. I am in awe of his ability to do exactly what is needed to help me heal. This is the first time a physical therapist has given me such relief. I think it is because in this office, they specialize in sports therapy, and the therapists themselves seem to be atheletes. My hope is that my shoulder will heal completely so I'll be able to dance without fear again.

October already?

Check out the cool photos of family and friends over at our neighbors' blog! Pets and animal pals are heavily featured.