A hasty post--having too much fun!

We've been too busy having fun for me to blog properly about our time in SF so far, but it has been splendid!
Highlights: Saturday morning on Stockton St with all the Chinese grannies shopping for live fish and greens whose names we don't know; a thorough visit to all the Japantown stores where the child found exactly what she wanted in the anime/manga category, and I bought a copy of the movie Sakuran, directed by Mika Ninagawa; shopping, cooking and eathing with my mother who graciously hosted a gathering for a few friends in town for the MLA; walking with my nephew in North Beach and drooling over books at City Lights.

Today we will do our favorite walk down by the bay at Crissy Field, and then try to outfit the girl who has grown 2" in the last 18 months.

Here is a little view of the "specific ocean" and Seal Rock, so named because the sea lions used to sun themselves there, but now that they can hang out in the much more sheltered docks by Pier 31 to amuse the tourists, they don't go to the rock any more. .

Dim sum love

Yesterday, we had dim sum at a restaurant in the Richmond (34th and Balboa) called Shanghai Dumpling King. Fabulous, crowded, cheap, delicious! Everything I miss about living in SF, so just the thing to do on my trips here. They are famous for their "soup dumplings" which are made in such a way that a little bit of broth is sealed in with the dumpling filling. We also had two orders of the "sugar egg puffs"--like the pastry of a cream puff (without the cream), an eggy, custardy puffed dough, sprinkled with sugar. So so good!
Today we will join the throngs of shoppers on Stockton Street in Chinatown, then make our way to the Ferry Building for the indoor part of the market.

Atmosphere "When Life Gives You Lemons..."

We are grooving with Atmosphere, Twin Cities' own. Love the song "Sunshine" but also the catchy "You":



Some other new favorites from 2008 include Cloud Cult, Weezer, Estelle, Kate Nash, Gnarls Barkley and a host of others. Thanks for the music, folks!

Siami arrivati

I'm so glad to be with my family! Finally filed my grades, finished the draft of my MLA talk, and we managed to make it to the airport and only had a one hour flight delay. Yesterday was my nephew's 21st birthday. We had dinner together at SPQR, a great Italian place on Fillmore (we are big fans of their Brussel sprouts!) before his friends came to get him. The plan was to blindfold him and take him somewhere. I guess we'll find out where they took him when we go over to my sister's place for Christmas Eve dinner.

I am so grateful to fresca for stepping in at the last minute to help take care of Mr. Leo. Thank you!!! She is thinking about Tina Modotti lately, and that reminded me of this old post.

!Teruel existe!

Caution EARWORM alert!
I share with you a video that was sent by email from a friend who has this bumper sticker on his car: !Teruel existe! It's a parody of the cover of "Rivers of Babylon" as done by Boney M. which I have now discovered, thanks to this incredibly thorough article in Wikipedia, to be one of the most popular musical "acts" in the world: x (whose first hit, Daddy Cool, is forever engraved on my brain because I was living in France in 1976 when it was a massive, monotonous, inexplicable hit.)


Chicóoo!

Updated: this is a clip from a satirical TV program that gives an insider's perspective on life in Aragón ("Oregon"), Spain. You can watch clips from the programs online, now in its second season Oregontelevision.com.

Let The Right One In

Let The Right One In. See it while it's still in theaters.

Some days it's a struggle

As we pulled into the Lund's parking lot, I saw an older woman inching through the muddly slush with a walker. I said cheerfully, without thinking, "There I go, in a few years!" My daughter was horrified: "Way to see the worst of things," she said. What I didn't say to her was that I had a flash of fear and awareness, of how hard it had been to get around with my broken foot a few years ago, of the limits of the last two years of physical therapy for my shoulders and hip, of recognition of a relative's rheumatoid arthritis, the news that two dear people had recently suffered the same broken bone in a shoulder through falls: my own fear that what is currently a manageable chronic pain syndrome could engulf my life as it has those of others. And of course, one day I will probably be unable to walk without support. It's a question of when, not if. We all decay and die.

I told her that I was grateful for my health, not expecting the worst, but she wasn't buying it. On the one hand, it could be said that I was seeing the worst. On the other, I was also (at least internally) feeling grateful for my health. But I was also repeating a gesture I'd seen my mother make many years ago, when she said cheerfully, "I'll be one of those ladies pushing a shopping cart in the Tenderloin" and we, her daughters, had reacted with the same horror at what seemed like a fatalistic expectation of the worst, but now, I see, was a kind of magical conjuring: "I'll say out loud what is my fear, and thus dissipate its power over me." Because my mother is not one of those homeless women on Ellis street; she has worked hard and taken good care of herself. And I am doing the same. But the power our words have on our children is not only that of our muddled intentions, and I need to remember that.

After thinking about this incident, I recognize that lately I have re-activated my "cynical defense mode." It's a form of shielding myself from all the pain that I'm afraid would overwhelm me if I really held it in consciousness without defenses. On some level, the jokes about shoes flying at Bush make me laugh, but the reality of the torture inflicted on the shoe-thrower horrifies me. The recognition that his rage is felt by millions who contemplate the deaths of all those killed and maimed as "collateral damage" in Iraq is almost too much to bear. And after the long drawn-out struggle to elect a person who symbolizes our desire for change, the pain that I hear from so many who feel betrayed because Obama has invited an activist for bigotry, Rick Warren, to read an invocation at his inauguration is also my pain (but think how many people would scream if he'd invited Rev.Wright!). I can't shut it all out, and sometimes I feel as if I am écorchée vive. But I am most profoundly aware of my gratitude because I am trying to be mindful of my fears, and transform them into compassion. Unfortunately, what I am doing to defend myself is experienced by others as cynicism at best and anger at worst, but certainly as negativity and not compassion. (So I talked to my daughter about this and we hugged each other and reminded each other that we love each other very much).

My hat's off to Phoenix Woman for reminding us all that along with Rick Warren, another person who has been invited to participate in the inauguration is Rev. Joseph Lowery. She linked to this incredibly thoughtful post by a young man named Matt who describes the effect that Rev. Lowery had on him.

MN Stories is back!

I have long been a big fan of MNStories, the vlog site, and missed it while Chuck Olson and co. put their time and energy into making The UpTake the awesome home of citizen journalism that it has become. Now the site is back and even better.

From the "about" page:

"HISTORY: Minnesota Stories was founded in 2005 by Chuck Olsen, and was one of the first regional videoblogs of its kind. The New York Times even said it was "one of the best" videoblogs, and the site got a lot of attention from Twin Cities media. The site was on hiatus during much of 2008 while Chuck focused on co-founding The UpTake, a video citizen journalism organization. In November 2008, MN Stories was reborn as a video sharing community where anyone can upload video and participate. We hope you like it."

like it? we luurrv it!
Here's a story about citizen response to assaults on bikers on the Midtown Greenway:

I like this story about local blogger Ed Kohler and his one-person gang graffiti clean-up efforts:

Z is for zapatazo

"This post brought to you by the letter Z" over at The Mex Files.

The Young Turks bring us this update on M. Al Zaidi (who is still in custody, although it is not clear whose, or where, but his brother says that he has been savagely beaten and he faces trial) and the reaction to his act both in the Arab world and elsewhere.

Estimates on the number of civilians who have died as a direct result of violence during the course of the war in Iraq vary widely:

In November 2006 Iraqi health ministry estimates ranged from 100,000 to 150,000 dead. This contrasts with a survey of Iraqi households in the Lancet, which suggested about 655,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the war by July 2006.

A survey published by a UK-based polling agency Opinion Research Business in September 2007 suggested up to 1.2m people might have died because of the conflict.

The campaign group, Iraq Body Count, said the civilian death toll by October 2007 was between 74,000 and 81,000, although it has warned many deaths may have gone unreported.

Another survey, published by the New England Journal of Medicine in January 2008, said approximately 151,000 civilians had suffered violent deaths between March 2003 and June 2006. This World Health Organization study was based on 9,000 interviews across Iraq.(BBC Special Report, Aug. 2008).

Bush's reaction? To laugh, make jokes, and leave. Never a word to acknowledge that at least 200 civilians have been murdered in Iraq this month alone. Dick Cheney admits that he authorized waterboarding and torture on national TV. WHY have these men not been impeached? Kucinich presented articles of impeachment earlier for both Cheney and Bush earlier this year.
Why no impeachment?

Oh, yeah, we had to elect Obama.

The Pew Hispanic Center

The PEW Research Center bills itself as supplying "the numbers, facts and trends shaping your world." Funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts (oil money) the Center founded a separate project called the Pew Hispanic Center in 2001. The Pew Hispanic Center conducts polls, publishes fact sheets,, and reports on various topics.
I looked at one report on internet usage among Latinos in the US: while higher rates of going online seem to be correlated with education levels and English proficiency, I learned that the cell phone is an alternative mode of connecting for many immigrants:

Some Latinos who do not use the internet are connecting to the communications revolution in a different way – via cell phone. Fully 59% of Latino adults have a cell phone and 49% of Latino cell phone users send and receive text messages on their phone. Looking at the numbers in a different way, 56% of Latino adults go online, 18% of Latino adults have a cell phone but do not go online and 26% of Latino adults have neither a cell phone nor an internet connection.

.

Between Here and There: How Attached Are Latino Immigrants to Their Native Country? is a report that gets behind the data and looks at how data concerning specific activities might be indicative of a level of attachement (and ideas of citizenship) to native countries and the U.S.
I am sure I will be sending many students to this site for the kind of data they are looking for as they do their research projects.

Release Al Zaidi

THIS IS THE FAREWELL KISS, YOU DOG! "This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog," the journalist shouted (in Arabic), Steven Lee Myers of The New York Times reported in a pool report to the White House press corps. Myers reported that the man threw the second shoe and added: "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq." Journalists at the scene said the hurler was Muntadar al-Zaidi, a reporter for Al-Baghdadia TV, an independent satellite channel based in Cairo. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

As Chimpy McChimpersons smirked his way though the press conference in Iraq, we were getting official confirmation of what we already know: yes, indeed, the war has been a giant rip-off scam for Cheney/Bush cronies, an abject military and political failure, and the death of multitudes, and destruction of the infrastructure and economy of an entire country.

Like many, I laughed to see the shoes flying at Bush's head: laughed because finally someone had the courage to speak truth to power. His gesture expressed eloquently the feelings of millions around the world.

But now what? What has happened to this journalist who was himself kidnapped an tortured not too long ago? Baghdadia TV, his employers "fear for his safety" and demand his release. He has been bloodied and beaten as they dragged him from the room by his hair, and is being held in custody as Iraqi citizens and journalism organizations demand his release

Has he been tortured again? will he end up in a prison like Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo?

“Al-Baghdadia television demands that the Iraqi authorities immediately release their stringer Muntazer al-Zaidi, in line with the democracy and freedom of expression that the American authorities promised the Iraqi people,” it said in a statement. “Any measures against Muntazer will be considered the acts of a dictatorial regime."

The journalist's exact whereabouts were unclear, although one Iraqi official said that he was being held for questioning at Mr al-Maliki's residence, his shoes having been kept as evidence.

While people laugh and cheer at the multiple videos of his gesture, will those of us far removed from the conflict think about what he said as he threw those shoes, and the violence that continues to kill, maim and traumatize the people of Iraq? Juan Cole tells us what acts of violence have occurred while this is going on.
Michael Ware on CNN reports:

Sunday morning coffee

Sunday morning browsing: here are some things I like today because they helped me discover new and interesting blogs.

Nezua has illustrated a new book which I intend to buy: Gods, Gachupines and Gringos: A People's History of Mexico by Richard Grabman who blogs at The Mex Files.

Chutry talks about end-of-the-year movie lists which clued me in to the existence of this collective culture blog the new critics.

And also connected me to Dr. Mabuse who informs us that The Criterion Collection (of great movies) has "gone hulu", meaning they are putting up links to an online film festival allowing us to watch some of their amazing and fabulous movies on line for free through their "auteurs" social networking site. Yay!

Fibromyalgia and the potential benefits of rTMS for relief of chronic pain

Blas saw an article in the Zaragoza newspaper El Heraldo de Aragón about a new treatment involving "transcranial magnetic stimulations" or TMS for people with fibromyalgia. Apparently, this treatment has been approved in Europe and is now being used in a few cities in Spain. It appears to have a huge success in alleviating the symptoms of pain and fatigue that afflict those of us with fibromyalgia, not permanently, but for significant periods of time and without side effects. I had never heard of this before, so I started digging.

First, I found this recent summary of how FM is being currently understood by the medical profession in the abstract of this article in the Oct 2008 issue of The Neuroscientist: "Fibromyalgia: A Disorder of the Brian?" Scientists have finally succeeded in using brain imaging techniques to detect specific differences in the brain images of people with FM and those without: "Fibromyalgia can no longer be called the 'Invisible' Syndrome":

"The researchers confirmed that patients with the syndrome exhibited brain perfusion abnormalities in comparison to the healthy subjects. Further, these abnormalities were found to be directly correlated with the severity of the disease. An increase in perfusion (hyperperfusion) was found in that region of the brain known to discriminate pain intensity, and a decrease (hypoperfusion) was found within those areas thought to be involved in emotional responses to pain.

In the past, some researchers have thought that the pain reported by fibromyalgia patients was the result of depression rather than symptoms of a disorder. "Interestingly, we found that these functional abnormalities were independent of anxiety and depression status," Guedj said."

This is important because for decades, people with FM have been treated as hysterics, malingerers, attention-seeking neurotics. For years, people with FM were angry and defensive that their symptoms were being dismissed as "all in your head," meaning "not real." This has changed somewhat, but I am still stymied by the fact that when I have a flare-up and must cut down on my work, I can't expect my colleagues or students to understand what is wrong or how they can support me.

Various types of TMS are now being studied for their usefulness in treating depression, migraines, Parkinson's disease, bi-polar disorder, cravings for alcohol and cocaine, as well as chronic pain relief and therapy after brain injuries such as stroke. A 2006 study from the Mayo clinic by Dr. Shirlene Sampson, et al, on a few patients pointed to the potential benefit of of repetitive cycles of TMS (rTMS) for relief of the chronic pain of fibromyalgia. Results of a larger 2007 French study on rTMS and fibromyalgia (published in the journal Brain) were based on an increased sample size and more systematic review of data. (Full text here). The blog Neuromod reviewed this study within the context of this emerging field called "neuromodulation." One of its major journals is the year-old Brain Stimulation (I love these journal names!).

Another study reviews some of these early research trials, and I've found calls for clinical trials specific to the use of rTMS for fibromyalgia that are being conducted now in the U.S.and France. Researchers are also now trying to find out how to refine their techniques of rTMS (where to apply it, what it seems to affect, etc). One hypothesis is that this treatment alleviates pain in people with FM because it reduces sleep disruption (maybe by correcting the alpha-wave disruption of delta waves in sleep cycles).

I've looked at some of the discussions of whether or not these non-invasive, non-convulsive, less expensive (but still experimental) treatments are as effective as ElectroConvulsive Treatment (ECT) or "electroshock therapy" (which still horrifies me because of past abuses, although I realize that for some people with severe depression that is resistant to all other treatments, it can be more effective than medications).

It is surprisingly difficult to find out who specializes in treating fibromyalgia in this area; in spite of the fact that I have a very sympathetic and competent doctor who has been great for me for the past fifteen years, my symptoms have been worse these past few years and the overall degradation of my quality of life is taking its toll on my resilience. I'm going to keep chipping away at finding more about new treatments and access to them in this area.

Backgrounder for understanding today's news about Blago and Chicago

It's here! wOOt!

When my daughter goes to college, what will she find?

Professor Zero dixit:
"Real conditions are that we are either hot members of the Academic Industrial Complex with hobbies of our choice, or tutors to the privileged classes with hobbies of our college’s choice, or activists in popular education with hobbies resembling the day jobs of hot members of the Academic Industrial Complex."
I will be thinking about this as I grade, as I write my paper for the MLA, and as I prepare my classes for spring, knowing that only 1/10 of the searches in our college can go forward, leaving many positions unfilled, departments that are already understaffed falling farther behind. In the short and long term, the politics of disinvestment in higher education promoted by our current governor and legislature (because they can't override his veto) have made the conditions of work at my institution--for staff, students and faculty--more difficult. Paying for college at our state's land-grant university without leaving with at least $25,000 in debt, has become an unreachable goal for many. Our fiscal realities are completely and utterly at odds with the professed goals of our administration.
In other words, we can either think big and meet the challenges, or we can collectively continue to advance blindly as if this were still the 20th century.

The Wire, season 6

I gave myself an early Christmas present and ordered seasons 1-5 of The Wire from Amazon because they had it on sale for half price. So when I woke up to the stories of Illinois governor Blagojevich's arrest, the profanity-aced transcripts of conversations recorded on wire-taps, I was not the only person who thought, it's just like The Wire!!! Immediately followed by the thought "why is The Wire over?" so sad!
Each season of The Wire featured the song "Way Down in the Hole"

I like all the versions of the song.

School spirit!

Today was the last day for one of my classes. I was so impressed by the progress the students had made. I feel like celebrating! Even though I never walked through my own college graduation, I did attend this very football game in 1974, and whenever I feel peppy about college, I remember this:

How did we end up at the MOA on a Sunday before Xmas?

I fell on the ice last week, so hard that I broke the phone that was in my bag. Although I had been too cheap to purchase insurance, it was close enough to my contract renewal time that the guys at the phone store got the company to approve a deal whereby I would get a discount and a rebate on a new phone. I got the same kind of phone, but upgraded to the latest model which has video. While we were at the Temple of Commerce using a gift certificate that could only be redeemed there, we saw this unsual ...what, "mascot"? puppet? guy dressed up in a costume with a giant head handing out flyers?

So I can shoot video and email it to myself, then post it on the blog. Maybe there is a way to post directly, but I haven't figured that out yet.

Gen. Shinseki to head Veterans Affairs, or "Eric was right!"

Obama has named retired General Eric Shinseki to be the head of Veteran's Affairs. What an excellent choice! Here is a clip from the award-winning documentary No End In Sight: Iraq's Descent into Chaos, which reminds us of Shinseki's principled stand before the invasion of Iraq, and the disastarous consequences of a war declared and led by people with NO military experience!

My father spent fifteen years as a doctor in the Army during the Viet Nam war, performing surgery on the seriously wounded, and I grew up surrounded by the awareness of life-threatening injuries and the long and painful recovery from them. I lived for years in Berkeley where veterans of the war often ended up living on the streets because of inadequate attention to their needs. This, along with my study of U.S. military history in Latin America (both covert and direct), have led me to despise the political leaders who have ordered or condoned such actions with little regard for the cost to military personnel and civilians. It has also led me to have little patience for the public and media support of the seven years of this ill-advised war. The scandals about the shoddy and substandard service given to veterans under the Bush administration, are a national shame.

It is precisely for that reason that those who serve in the military as professionals with integrity are needed to help us fix this mess. I note with interest that this career military man (West Point, etc) has an MA in English literature from Duke University). I wish I could find out more information about that! My cynical army-brat heart feels hope that this appointment will bring substantive change.

James Fallow gives us the details on how Shinseki warned civilian leaders that if we went into Iraq we would need to have hundreds of thousands of troops to ensure security and control. When he retired, four months after war was declared, he had been publicly rebuked for this stand. As he demonstrated in his Atlantic Monthly articles at the time, (collected as Blind Into Baghdad, an excellent account of how we screwed up the beginning of the war that never should have started in the first place) Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, who were in favor of a fantasy video-game style army, publicly rebuked and attempted to humiliate him. I say attempted, because Shinseki has shown exemplary integrity in refusing to ever comment on the conduct of the war, never earning a penny on the pundit circle saying "I told you so" or in any way bad-mouthing the institution he served for decades, having been wounded in Viet Nam. All this in spite of, or rather because of the fact that he had an uncle who served in WWII as one of the many Japanese-American soldiers who served in spite of the fact that the U.S. had interned them and their families in camps.

Let us hope that this former Army chief of staff, who enjoys the respect of his Army colleagues, will be able to do what it takes to shake up and modernize Veterans Affairs in such a way that all those whose bodies and minds have been shattered by their war experiences receive the care, support and understanding they and their families need.

Blook: Qu'est-ce que c'est?

How does digital media reproduce what print media does, and how does it make something new? Audiobooks are a highly successful way of delivering a book's text to a listener rather than a reader: someone who is blind, someone who is driving, someone who likes the sound of the human voice and the experience of having someone read out loud, all welcome the audiobook.

The written text of a book can be hosted online, and the existence of digital libraries. Project Gutenberg is one of the oldest, in which books in the public domain are digitized and made available to the world as ebooks. These are works that originally appeared in print, as opposed to material created in a digital format or "born-digital." Some copyrighted material is also being made available in online formats by publishers. A book published by a University Press may also be housed online as a way to bring readers to that press's site or to promote scholarship in cases where the author sees the opportunity to keep the work alive, long after the usual print runs have ended.

But I just discovered the existence of a word I had never heard before today: blook. Here's the wiktionary definition:

1. A book serialized on a blog (weblog) platform.
2. A book about blogging.
3. A printed book containing content which first appeared on a blog.
* 2006: "'Blooks are the new books, a hybrid literary form at the cutting edge of both literature and technology,' said Bob Young, founder of self-publishing site Lulu which organised and sponsored the prize." US cook wins blogging book prize BBC Online, 3 April 2006.

But, as it turns out, the term has been in existence since before the advent of blogging, as the Wikipedia entry details: blook was a term coined to refer to objects made to look like books, but which were not (a shortening of "looks like a book". There is more than one contender for recognition as the originator of the term, but I'm more interested in learning about the variety of things to which it might refer. There is a "Blooker Prize for Blooks" (formerly called the Lulu Blooker Prize) that has been in existence for about 2 years, and serves as a great introduction to a number of "blooks" out there.

An expanded idea of the blook comes up in this article in the Guardian about a phenomenon in which writers of non-fiction books essentially keep writing: the dedicated book blog (what Graeme Thomson calls, with a wince, the "blook") but here he is talking about the extension of a bounded text (print object or its audio or visual reproduction) into a site that acts as a repository for related material or acts an extension of a conversation about it. "A new stage in the life-cycle of content" is what the Blooker Prize site calls it, and that will have to do for now.

Ana Clavel's two book related sites are examples of how the creation of a book also inspires the creation of art, installations, events, and post-publications conversations: Cuerpo naúfrago and Las Violetas son flores del deseo.

"A good book blog (or – must we? - "blook") becomes a supplementary text, a place to explain, elucidate, apologise, dig deeper."

He gives as one example the blog/blook of Alex Ross, the music critic for the New Yorker, has won The Guardian First Book award for a work of non-fiction for The Rest is Noise. His "blook" extends the book itself with audio files, a little video about the book, an archive of reviews, and other features that function, as Thomson says, like the special features of a DVD, and an expansion of the world referenced by the book over time.

Cuttlefish!

Now TWO people have recommended this Nova program "Kings of Camouflage" about the cuttlefish: an invertebrate with a big brain. You can watch videoclips from the show here. The webpage has a very cool interactive feature where you can find out about cuttlefish anatomy. Researcher Jean Boal says that octopuses are harder to work with than cuttlefish; she makes them sound a little like the cats of the invertebrate world!

"Cuttlefish are great to work with because they don't stick themselves to the bottoms of tanks like octopuses do. And you don't have to house them separately like you do with octopuses—you can put them together in one large tank, which is much easier for cleaning and maintenance and feeding and all that. In terms of their performance in experiments, octopuses are unbelievably erratic. One day they will be brilliant and for the next five days they'll act like they don't know anything at all. So it actually takes pretty intense statistics to figure out what they know and don't know. In the past, I've had more consistent performances from cuttlefish, although sometimes they like to be erratic, too. In general I've had an easier time interpreting their performances, and they are more consistent than octopuses are."

Cuttlefish bonus: The Digital Cuttlefish

while I"m grading, enjoy these cephalopods

Indonesian Mimic octopus:

Pulpos "suave inteligencia"

Rachel Maddow gives thanks! and so do I.

Knows where the bodies are buried? check.

I'm trying not to join the screaming chorus of frustrated leftists who are Monday quarterbacking Obama's appointments. I even understand why we can't appoint, say, Dennis Kucinich to this position. But Robert (unindicted co-conspirator) Gates is still dirty dirty dirty.

I want to hope that Obama's agenda will be implemented, sooner or later. As Al Giordano at The Field reminds us, our new foreign policy team has some promises to keep regarding this hemisphere, too.

Venus, Jupiter and the Crescent Moon in conjunction tonight!

Thanks to the power of Twitter, (conjunction!) I learned about a rare astronomy event, the "Celestial Frownie Face" explained here at National Geographic: "Planets, Crescent Moon to "Frown" on Skywatchers Dec. 1" Yes, tonight! there will be a relatively rare "planetary convergence", meaning that, if the sky is clear, one will be able to see Jupiter, Venus, and the crescent moon with the naked eye, clustered together. This has nothing to do with their actual distance from each other but rather with what they look like from Earth.

Birdchick has actual photos of this event in the Minnesota sky. Thanks to her tweet, I ran out and was able to see it as well. Bob Collins has posted another photo at MPR's Newscut blog, but from Kenya. So amazing! I hope there are some more photos posted, maybe at NASA's site, Astronomy Picture of the Day.

But never mind the astronomy, what do the astrologists have to say about this important event?

Go see Milk!

It's a great movie! My daughter and just got back from seeing Gus Van Sant's movie "Milk" this afternoon, along with several hundred other people who crowded into the theater with us. It's a faithful and lively depiction of what happened 30 years ago. I wrote earlier about my memories of that time.

Want to know something about how the film was made, about the extras, how Castro Street was remade in its own image, (and the SF gossip and backbiting--yes, I remember that too)Mariva has a wonderful post about being an extra in the movie has a huge set of links.

The uncanny parallels with the fight against Prop 6 which drives much of the movie, and the recent success of Prop 8 in California mean that we don't just see a biopic about someone who died a long time ago; we see both the progress and the struggles still being waged. This moving speech by the Republican Mayor of San Diego, Jerry Sanders, is a testament to the power of change. He is visibly struggling to maintain his composure as he comes out as the parent who wants his daughter and her partner to have equal protection under the law.

Go see it. Sean Penn inhabits the role. I didn't see him at all on the screen, not like Nicole Kidman's Virginia Woolf where I was always aware of her NOSE.

Dreams made flesh

TED has a YouTube channel and a blog. But I got this via email from an extraordinary dancer named Florencia Tacetti, who teaches tango here in the Twin Cities. Thank you, Florencia!

From the video description:
"Pilobolus dance company members Otis Cook and Jennifer Macavinta perform the sensuous duet "Symbiosis." Does it trace the birth of a human relationship, or the co-evolution of a pair of symbiotic species? That's left for you to decide. Gorgeous, organic choreography blurs the boundaries between the two performers, who use the body's own geometry to lift, move and combine. The music, recorded by the Kronos Quartet on Nonesuch Records, is a compilation of works: "God Music" from Black Angels by George Crumb, "Fratres" by Arvo Pärt, and "Morango ... Almost a Tango" by Thomas Oboe Lee."
From the comments: "The director for "symbiosis" was Michael Tracy in collaboration with Otis Cook (in the video) and Renee Jaworski."

Winter larder

I haven't been the host for Thanksgiving for years, because I'm always going to one branch of the family or another, or to a friend's orphan potluck extravaganza. But after we got home from Bemidji, I got the urge to stock the pantry and cook, so we made the rounds of our favorite purveyors today (Produce Exchange, the Wedge) and I cooked up:
sweet potatoes, fresh cranberry relish, roasted root vegetables (turnips, parsnips, carrots)a big pot of chili and another big pot of lentil stew to freeze. There's a big bowl of fresh fruit, and some salmon to broil tomorrow.
I do not own a crockpot, but perhaps I should get one and try out some of these recipes at A Year of CrockPotting, if only because I love these sites where people dedicate themselves to doing something every day. I've already posted about Roger Ebert's suggestions about how to cook things other than rice in my rice cooker, but I think a pot roast is more suited to ye olde crockpot. I have a copy of Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life but I know that for the next month I'm going to be sprinting to the semester finish line, so I may need to save it for the plane to SF. Laying in supplies so we have some healthy food to eat makes me feel prepared.

Undoing misogyny and sexism: two men speak out

Richard Rodríguez writes at Salon on "Why Churches Fear Gay Marriage" and I think he nails it. Remember, homophobia is a weapon of sexism? It's the changing role of women and the family that are the threats to patriarchal power, and gay families are the scapegoat for those challenges over women and children as property. (via Blabbeando)

Nezua at the Unapologetic Mexican also writes about the ways that misogynist ideas of masculinity are crippling for heterosexual men as well as everyone else in this post, "!Oye! I Contain Muxitudes"
It begins así:

"CRUCIAL COMPONENT to undoing misogyny and sexism is revealing to men that we are sold an illusion. The “man” they would have us be is an unnatural and dangerous one. It is a fanged, bereaved, lie. It is the shifting shape of oppression with a wolfskin slung over its eyes. It is a shroud."

But here's something to make me feel optimistic: Al Giordano on the appointment of Melody Barnes by Obama to a key role in coordinating the work of domestic policy agencies. Here's a sample of how she thinks in an opinion piece she wrote "What a Progreessive President Might Say" as a counterpoint to a Bush State of the Union speech. Read it. It's lovely!

"Lizard People" voter comes forward!

A follow-up on the story of the Lizard People ballot in the Senate recount: I was driving to work and heard on MPR that the man who had written in "Lizard People" on his ballot has come forward, in part because he was fascinated by all the fuss.

Davenport, a contractor who lives in Bemidji, Minn., says that's why he finally decided to come clean.

"I mean, it was on 'Hardball,' and there was serious discussion about it, it's ridiculous. If Lizard People, in plural, is written in on the ballot, I don't think it should be taken seriously, whatsover, and this animosity is just wonderful," said Davenport.

To prove he did it, Davenport provided Minnesota Public Radio with biographical information that matched public records. He also provided a handwriting sample. But there is ultimately no way to know for sure that the ballot really was his. But he says everyone who knows him personally could see it really was.

"The handwriting is mine, hands down. Even my dad saw it, and he's like that is your handwriting, there is no doubt about it. I think it would be pretty easy to, with my handwriting sample, to prove it was mine," said Davenport.

David Brauer picked up on the story on his blog, and MnIndy also picks up the story. Brauer used a picture of the Gorn captain (seen above) from Star Trek to illustrate his post: "The Gorn are a warp-capable bipedal species," we learn from the Star Trek Wiki.

"Please Read the Letter"

Krista mentioned on Twitter that "Please Read the Letter" by rock legend Robert Plant and bluegrass star Alison Krause was her current earworm. I'd never heard the song, so I went looking. I had no idea that they had made a record (I still have to call it that, not CD) together last year, called Raising Sand. They talk about working together in this little video. The song "Gone, Gone, Gone" was a country hit. I love getting a glimpse of two musicians who come from different worlds but who connect through "roots music." The awesome producer T-Bone Burnett put together a collection of songs that shows off the way their voices meld together.
Here's a live version:
Here's the CD recording with lyrics. And here is the Plant/Page version. I'm going to have to get both, I can tell!

Remembering George Moscone and Harvey Milk

I have seen the preview for the Gus Van Sant film Milk, starring Sean Penn as murdered San Francisco politician and gay activist Harvey Milk. The likeness to Milk is uncanny, and it has brought back many memories to all of us from San Francisco who are old enough to remember those events.

San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk and the city's Mayor, George Moscone were assassinated on November 27, 1978. Thirty years ago, I was 21 and a senior at UC Berkeley, working at a donut shop early mornings before classes. Someone came running in breathless, with the news that Moscone and Milk had just been murdered by Dan White. My visceral reaction is probably what people felt who were adults when Martin Luther King, RFK or JFK, or Malcolm X were murdered. For me, these were the leaders of my town's alliance of politicians who were working for change, and their assassination was frightening and felt personal, an attack on those who represented me and people like me. I left work and went on campus for class, and then to a Talking Heads show at noon on Lower Sproul Plaza. The first song they played was Psycho Killer. Did they know?

We watched the national news that night with this report. In those days, George Moscone was better known, as a native San Franciscan who had come up through the Democratic party ranks with a cohort of political allies. He opened city politics up to people who were not part of the moneyed old guard who promoted an aggressive development agenda (which Diane Feinstein would carry out when she became mayor), but his allies did not hold a majority on the SF Board of Supervisors, so the political conflicts were bitter. Days before the assassinations, the news had broken about the Jonestown massacre in Guyana (Jim Jones had been active in SF politics before he fled with his People's Temple followers because of accusations of corruption). Randy Shilts' book The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk tells both the story of the person and of the movement, the coalitions, the incredible changes that were taking place at the time. Apparently, another film is in production based on this book. If both films are as good as the "dueling biopics" about Truman Capote, that will be great. Will they freeze Harvey Milk as "St. Harvey" gay icon? or reminds us of Harvey Milk the canny coalition builder, stubborn ballsy activist, who saw his work as part of a larger struggle? Milk the advocate of rent control, union rights, police reform? One of my vivid memories of the aftermath of the killings (because we can't forget that the MAYOR of the city was also murdered, not just Milk) was the gloating of the San Francisco police, the t-shirts, the police riot. This wasn't just a lone crazy who suffered from depression; this was a politically motivated killing, egged on by a culture of homophobia and reactionary hatred of "hippies" and all the changes they (we) stood for. Dan White served five years of a seven-year sentence for two political murders.

I want to connect my memories to more stories of what actually happened, before I see the movie and it reshapes those fragments and feelings. The GLBT Historical Society site is one place to start, as it contributed archival materials to the film, and also reports on the premiere and gives a link roundup of SF reactions. The Bay Guardian has a special issue. The San Francisco Chronicle also has a collection of links, including this photo gallery

The documentary filmThe Times of Harvey Milk (1984) won an Oscar. Using archival footage and interviews with friends, neighbors and colleagues, it situates Milk in the stories and conflicts of the times, not just his work as a gay activist, but his partnerships with a new coaltion of change agents in San Francisco politics. A kind soul has posted clips on YouTube is you want to see the documentary before seeing the feature film.

Duffy Jennings, one of the SF Chronicle reporters who was on the scene, also reminds us of George Moscone's legacy:

Moscone had his critics, some with good reason, but he loved San Francisco, a passion I share as a fellow native. An entire generation of San Franciscans today knows little about him other than the convention center bears his name.

He fought against racism and for civil rights, against downtown power brokers and for neighborhoods. He opened the doors of City Hall and the seats of power to people from all walks of life, regardless of race, gender or sexual orientation. As deservedly iconic and significant as Harvey Milk has become to the gay community, it was Moscone who broke down the barriers.

His was a remarkable story in its own right. Perhaps on one of these anniversaries, Hollywood will give us a movie titled "Moscone."

For more on Harvey Milk and the Castro Street neighborhood the way it was in the seventies, visit these pages: Uncle Donald's Castro Street
UPDATED: a first-hand account by Lesbians against Police Violence

Lizard People FTW!

The recount for the Minnesota Senate seat is underway. MPR posted some images of the ballots about which decisions are to be made, and readers got to weigh in with their opinions. A popular image is of the ballot marked "Lizard People." Instead of filling in the bubble, as you can see here, some people drew circles, made checks, underlined, or...just did something else like write "Lizard People" wherever you could enter a write-in candidate. Because Minnesota law decrees that it is the duty of the recounters to submit all ambiguous (or challenged) ballots to the scrutiny of the Canvasing Board for final determination, someone will have to decide if this ballot from Beltrami county should be counted for Al Franken, or "Lizard People." So far (as of Friday Nov 21 at 4:24 PM) the "MPR voters" have indicated their desire that this vote should count for Franken, but 9% (a total of 9392 our of 110098) this this ballot should go to "Lizard People."

And thus, says Paul Schmelzer, a new internet meme is born!

There is now a Twitter account for fakelizardpeople. If, after the recount is over, the votes are tied, the race will be decided by a coin toss.



Just for fun, here is the cutest lizard video I've seen, recently posted at Cute Overload

The magical pot

Today, I brought lunch to work in my Zojirushi Mr. Bento lunch carrier extraordinaire. I had some leftover roasted Cornish game hen, from a local producer, steamed green beans (ditto) and a wonderful Honeycrisp apple.

Yes, I have Zojirushi my Rice Cooker, the simplest model available. So does Roger Ebert, film critic and blogger extraordinaire. I love love love his paean to the Pot, as he calls it, and his exhortation to us all to get on it: "The Pot and How to Use It" As a bonus, Ebert posts this wonderful short film made by students in which the Rice Cooker plays the crucial role of "magical agent" (a la Vladimir Propp's ideas in The Morphology of the Folk-Tale)

My reintroduction to physics

Last night, my daughter asked me for help with her Foundations of Science homework. She had to define and apply some very basic physics concepts. I did not study physics in high school, although I did do advanced math and biology. In college I thought I would major in Physiology (I don't even think they have a major called Physiology any more) and took the science majors versions of Calculus, Organic Chemistry, Inorganic Chemistry, Biology, and Physiology. I enjoyed them and did well. At the same time, I was happily completing the requirements for a Comparative Literature major. Why did I end up not finishing a science major too? The adviser told me I had too many credits, and I took Physics. ARgh! I think I got a B (which for me was crash and burn) and I'm sure I memorized all the definitions and equations, but I didn't really "get it" enough to make the lab anything but brutal. Who knows, if I had taken physics earlier, I might have ended up being a science nerd instead of a book nerd.



In retrospect, I see now that if I had had ANY kind of introduction to physics at the high school level, as my daughter is having now, it wouldn't have been such a surprise when I took the class in college. I was also reminded last night of how my particular learning style needs a different approach than the dry traditional approach of all my science classes in college, except for Physiology I in which our professor, Richard M Eakin, dressed up as famous scientists and acted out his lectures about their most important ideas. There were probably 500 students in that class, and we were mesmerized. We loved it, and we learned. (The series was filmed and archived here as Great Scientists Speak Again)

Equality for all

My family is a rainbow family!

Shop local during the recession

As I was driving home, I heard a story on MPR about how some predict that Wal-mart and Costco are going to do well this Christmas because of the recession. That ticked me off. I will continue to buy from local artists or businesses so that what tiny fraction of the wealth I have to spread around goes to people who live here or make things here.

Coming up after Thanksgiving is the No Coast Craft '08 Craft-0-Rama, Friday Dec 5 and Sat Dec 6, 9-5, at the Midtown Global Market. On Sat. at 2 there will be a team competition called the Craft-a-thon! There will be four-person teams and their challenge will be to take the material given them and "upcycle" them into something on the spot. I may have to go just for that. It's free to browse, and of course there are all the yummy things one can eat at the market, especially the sweet and savory pastries at The Salty Tart.

The Craft-o-Rama vendors are listed here. I like these tote bags made from recycled vinyl billboards at Drive-By Bags, especially a yellow one. One of the artists who will be featured is Amy Rice. I love her work and I'm seriously thinking of buying something, although the big pieces really aren't in my budget; I'm hoping she has some smaller prints at the event. We saw a show of hers at Cafe Barbette and fell in love with her stenciled paintings on wood and metal.

When he said "Change" he really meant it!

Woke up this morning and blam! discovered that MNSpeak and The Rake Magazine (online) have merged into Secrets of the City. Hmmm. Change, scary! They have to work out a few glitches, but seem to be open to suggestions from the regular users. I'm more like a regular lurker, but until they get their comment features back in shape it may be harder to lurk.

My favorite geeks

My favorite TV show right now is not Dancing With the Stars, which I've found quite disappointing this season: it's The Big Bang Theory, a comedy about four super-geeks and their neighbor Penny. It's hilarious in part because it reminds me so much of people I know (including me). The four friends are the type to play Klingon Boggle, are so engrossed in playing Halo that they ignore invitations by beautiful women, all want to dress up as The Flash on Halloween, and try to resolve their disputes by playing Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock. Sheldon is played by Jim Parsons; when Sheldon smiles, which he only does on one episode, he bears a striking resemblance to Jose Luís Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain's Prime Minister. His roommate, Leonard, is played by the guy who was Darlene's boyfriend David on Rosanne, and Sara Gilbert has a role in the show, too.

Join the Impact!

Because of work today, I wasn't able to go to two different events: a talk by one of my very favorite writers, Sameul R. Delany, and the protests that were organized today in all fifty states about the passage of Proposition 8 in California, which institutionalizes bigotry by amending the state constitution to prevent same-sex marriage, although the State Supreme Court ruled that it should be legal, and over 50,000 couples got married in California between that ruling and November 4. The Mormon Church and the Catholic Church have been working together for over 11 years to prevent the legalization of gay marriage, and pumped millions of dollars and volunteers into the effort to pass Prop 8. Regardless of what your feelings may be about whether or not marriage should be the top civil rights issue for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people when there are so many other problems to face, this mobilization of bigotry on the same day that an African-American was elected president, has wounded and angered many gay people and their allies, families, and friends. JoinTheImpact.
Behind all the legal arguments, there are the heartbreaking stories of couples who have suffered because they do not have the legal protections of marriage.

Today, demonstrations took place in about all over the country, in cities big and small: at this post on Pam's House Blend, read the comments for great stories about many of these places! In spite of what seems to have been universally bad weather, there were large turnouts. For more news, go to the Join The Impact! site

An Obama Regional Field Director's campaign diary

(via Micah Sifry Tweet)
An Obama campaign field organizer from California is sharing her diary about the experience at Daily Kos. She was a volunteer with the Obama campaign before August when she was asked to take on the responsibility of being the Bay Area Regional Field Director.

From where I stand now, having lived that job more profoundly than any professional role I ever held, I understand that e-mail as a demarcation. The woman who received it doesn't really exist anymore. This was the beginning of 96 unforgettable days that literally changed my life.

I can't wait to read the next installments!

Braces coming off!

Someone who lives at my house is happy because the braces are coming OFF! first half today, and last half in a week. Woo Hoo!
Here's how Ryan Higa celebrated on YouTube (you wouldn't believe how many people have posted happy videos about getting their braces off!


Milk Crisis by The Go! Team, and they are based in Brighton, England. Part of the song is in Japanese.

Closing Guantanamo?

That Rachel Maddow, she's one smart cookie!

Change toward Latin America?

Speculation on the Obama cabinet and appointments will replace the campaign as hot topic for the next two months. Latin Americans, like the rest of the world, hope for change. But what is an Obama/Biden policy with respect to Latin America likely to be?

Here is what they (the Obama/Biden transition team) say on their website.
Some clues about changes in a policy with respect to Cuba are discussed in this article: easing of travel and remittance restrictions, negotiations over lifting the embargo and the release of political prisoners in Cuba, are some of the important points. Sorting out the intricacies of Cuban, Cuban-American, and Washington discourse can be a royal pain, but it's clear that some kind of change will come; the question is what and how fast.

This blog by "boz" follows Latin American politics, and before the vote, he posted to discuss some of the more nuts and bolts issues for diplomacy toward the region: who will be appointed to specific positions with power or influence over our policy in the region? Boz has now updated this post at TPM with a list of the positions that could be re-staffed or filled. It's a reminder that the President not only sets policy, but makes appointments that affect how the policy is (or is not) carried out.

Friday, yay!

LOL!
Poor Obamaholics are going through campaign withdrawal (via the Onion).



Survived a curriculum committee meeting, a faculty meeting, and managed to eat lunch! Now I'm going to cruise the Twitter updates because I'm finding that it's a great place to get news, like my customized RSS feed.

First stop: kottke.org where he has some "Obama bits and loose ends" including an amazing video made with all the newspaper front page announcements of Obama's victory . Cool work!

"The O-list" (via MnIndy) is the New Republic's list of thirty people who will influence Obama or be part of his inner circle. Its a fascinating story of how the Obama campaign succeeded in creating its own center of power:

Simply put, the president-elect has led a revolution within the Democratic Party, replacing an establishment long dominated by Clintonites--and, more recently, by progressive bloggers and billionaires--with a new establishment, one constructed in his own ubiquitous image. This list represents our attempt at making sense of the new hierarchy--your guide to the men and women who will dominate progressive politics in the Age of Obama.

Consider the source for spin, but the analysis looks juicy!

How do we get the official Change.Gov site to meet up with with Change.org? Change.groovg?

Must end with schadenfruedelicious Palin jokes, via Mock,Paper, Scissors: Letterman's top 10

What next?

Obama/Biden transition team's website is up~ Change.gov is going to be the direct-to-the public face of the next phase until inauguration. The Obama campaign team has used new media effectively to fundraise, organize and communicate. But we took him at his word: Yes, we can. Emphasis on the WE!


The Pointer Sisters (Oakland!) sing that great Alain Touissant song "Yes we can can!" Gaylord Birch on the drums is ah-MAZE-ing!

Al Giordano of The Field and Micah Sifry are joining a group tonight, including the team from 538.org (my heroes!), at DePaul University in Chicago to talk about "The Shaping of the Presidency"--that is, what do people do next if we want this to be a social movement, and not just another presidency? Stay tuned!

Behind the scenes on the campaign trail

Newsweek had reporters behind the scenes throughout the campaign, on the condition that they wait until after the elections to publish. Here is the "Secrets of the Campaign"series, with some wonderful glimpses of the people: the candidates, their staff, their supporters, the decisions they made, their spats and celebratons. There will be seven parts in all; parts 1-4 are up now. Very worth reading!

This segment on how the Obama campaign successfully used New Media is fascinating:

To the casual visitor, the New Media department at Obama headquarters seemed at once ultrahip and painfully earnest, a touchy-feely, emo sort of place where people talk about saving their souls and use lefty academic jargon like "agency." One reporter described the sentiment toward the candidate as a sort of "Lincoln 2.0." The frat brothers over in Communications liked to joke about whether the geeks in New Media were still virgins.

When it came to what they actually did, however, the nerds of New Media were cold realists. "We never do something just because it's cool," the campaign's official blogger, Sam Graham-Felsen, told a NEWSWEEK reporter. "We're always nerdily getting something out of it." He showed off the Obama '08 iPhone application. With its deep Obama blues, correct fonts and glassy graphics, it looked like an electronic bauble for the well-heeled voter. Closer inspection revealed a sophisticated data-mining operation. Tap the top button, "call friends," and the software would take a peek at your phonebook and rearrange it in the order that the campaign was targeting states, so that friends who had, say, Colorado or Virginia area codes would appear at the top. With another tap, the Obama supporter could report back essential data for a voter canvass ("left message," "not interested," "already voted," etc.). It all went into a giant database for Election Day.

Early that summer, the campaign made the unorthodox decision to announce its vice presidential pick via text messages sent directly to supporters. It wasn't just a trick to do something flashy with technology and attract media attention. The point was to collect voters' cell-phone numbers for later contact during voter registration and get-out-the-vote efforts. Thanks to the promotion, the campaign's list of cell-phone numbers increased several-fold to more than 1 million. (Among the registrees: one Beau Biden, son of Joe.)

"I don't care about online energy and enthusiasm just for the sake of online energy and enthusiasm," said Chris Hughes, head of New Media's social networking. "It's about making money, making phone calls, embedding video or having video forwarded to friends." There was nothing starry-eyed about Hughes, who had been the Harvard roommate and later partner of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and made his first millions before he was 24. His goal was to make old techniques—like call centers and getting polling information to voters—more efficient. "When computer applications really take off, they take something people have always done and just make it easier for them to do it," he said. "And maybe bigger."

During the primaries, the sight was familiar at vast Obama rallies. Before the candidate appeared, a campaign official would come onstage to urge audience members to pull out their cell phones to call or text their friends and neighbors. By the thousands, people of all ages would spread the electronic word—and dollars and votes would follow. Joe Rospars, the director of Obama's New Media, noted, "We didn't invent the idea of our supporters calling one another. We just made it a lot easier." Rospars had written a blog for the Howard Dean campaign in 2004. Under Rospars, the Obama campaign had basically perfected Dean's 1.0 tactics with an important twist. Dean was all about creating a national network, but in Iowa he failed to build a true grass-roots campaign. In Obamaland, where the sayings of Saul Alinsky resonated ("think globally, act locally"), the emphasis was local—neighbor to neighbor, friend to friend, family to family. Joe Trippi, the unorthodox political genius who created the Dean Internet juggernaut, often said that if the Dean campaign was like the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk, then Obama was the Apollo program—in other words, in one cycle skipping over commercial aviation, jet travel and supersonic transport to go straight to the moon. (Asked about this analogy, Rospars replied evenly, "Not really, if you consider that Kitty Hawk was a successful flight, as compared to something that blew up on the f–––ing launchpad.")

The power of the Obama operation could be measured: doubling the turnout at the Iowa caucuses, raising twice as much money as any other candidate in history, organizing volunteers by the millions. (In Florida alone: 65 offices, paid staff of 350, active e-mail list of 650,000, 25,000 volunteers on any weekend day.) The ultimate test would come Nov. 4. In the meantime, there were indications of a great storm brewing. At the end of August, as Hurricane Gustav threatened the coast of Texas, the Obama campaign called the Red Cross to say it would be routing donations to it via the Red Cross home page. Get your servers ready—our guys can be pretty nuts, Team Obama said. Sure, sure, whatever, the Red Cross responded. We've been through 9/11, Katrina, we can handle it. The surge of Obama dollars crashed the Red Cross Web site in less than 15 minutes.

My vote counted.

I loved taking this picture!

The day after the election

In the last several months, I have been moved and comforted by the stories I have been able to read because of blogs and online media. Sometimes they were the posts of the bloggers, other times they were the comments buried in a long contentious thread. They made me hope and believe that this election could not just bring new people to power, but make a difference to all of us. The connections, friendships, partnerships, collaborations, witnessing and shared strife and celebration are what will enable us to move, to act, to create the change we need and want. Some of the most important changes were in the hearts and minds of people who decided to vote for a democrat or a black man, or just to vote for the first time. Thank you, everyone who worked so hard to make this possible.
Dancing in the streets!

Back in 2001, I signed onto the MoveOn.org mailing list. Here is what MoveOn.org was able to do as a mobilizing force in the last several years. Here's their "It could happen to you" ad about "your brain on hope."

Nezua's words always move me, and this post is particularly powerful.

Jeff Chang reminds us of the extraordinary efforts to register and mobilize voters through the hip hop movement.

What does the press around the world have to say? Check it out at Watching America. And here are some fabulous pictures, courtesy of Huffington Post!

Professor Zero turns us on to this fabulous version of "This Land is Your Land" by Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings.

Sing it!

I have a sense of physical relief, of cleansing, of spiritual renewal. I want to sing!!!
Here are some songs. This one is in honor of his Irish ancestors.


He inspired, but we responded. It's about us, now.

Very inspirational AmpFiddler Sly and Robbie "Black House"
The Mighty Sparrow! gives us "Barack the Magnificent"

A comprehensive Obama playlist here

I voted!

I had the idea that I would get up super-early to be first in line, but that was unrealistic--I'm not a morning person. Then I thought I'd go with my daughter after school. But I couldn't wait, and after I dropped her off, I went back to my polling place. There was a line, but the folks who work there are wonderful; they were out making sure that the same-day registrants were in one line, and people like me who were already registered could go to a different line. I'd say there were a few hundred waiting to register, but it was moving fast and everyone seemed patient and happy. Inside, my section of the alphabet had the shortest line, so I got my ballot right away. I took pictures of my votes! and then waited in another line to put the ballot into the machine. On the way out, I ran into my new downstairs neighbors, who were registering at their new address. They are in their early twenties, and so were a lot of people in the line. I think the whole thing took me less than half an hour. Now I'm walking around at the University and everywhere I see little red "I voted" stickers! Go, kids! Show those pundits who sneer at the younger voters for not turning out that they will be WRONG this time!