2012 that was

As an exercise in reflection on 2012, I looked at the first post of each month. This has been a year of transformations in my household, many of them wonderful, exciting, and joyful. And at the end of the year, I have had to buckle down to finish a task undertaken a while ago, but not yet completed. I'm ready for 2013.

January. We were in Spain for the holidays last year, too. We took a day trip to a restored wetland that has become a place where flocks of cranes and all kinds of other birds and wildlife are flourishing. Restoration, new life, possibilities!

February: I posted the Ted Talk by neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, because he writes (and speaks) so beautifully about the sense of self and our physiology. I'm working on changing up my meds so that I can live with my wonky brain chemistry in a healthier way.

March: "8: The Play" Same-sex marriage was to be theme throughout the year, up through the elections. It feels as if a corner has been turned. I can't/won't become cynical.

 April A death: Adrienne Rich. I owe her a lot. Rereading "Diving Into the Wreck."

May: another death, another formative context; Tomás Borge, the Sandinista revolution. Idealism, degradation. Can we pardon those we feel betrayed us?

June: commencement speeches (from Laurie Anderson, from Neil Gaiman)  for my high-schooler's graduation.

July: for me, this was the year of modest, but joyful gardening: a new rain garden in front, tomatoes and herbs in back.  Tending my garden, rooting out invasive species:

August: Another death: Chavela Vargas, lived to see the world ready to celebrate her (public) coming out in her eighties.

September: a year of dance, a moment when my pop culture TV fix unexpectedly gave me with a shot of genius: Axis Dance Company's performance.

October: the video for "Get your cray on" by K-pop idol G-Dragon.  Where do fandoms and pop culture meet up in acts of translation/opacity?

November. By the time election day arrived, I felt like Shamus the dog in this political ad Montgomery Burns made for Mitt Romney: quivering, whimpering, desperate to escape ("another jumper).

December: The Pixies, then and now. I only learned later that the performance I saw last year was by  people who had created a second chances for themselves after breaking down and breaking up. "Where is My Mind?" (1988).

1988-2012. Twenty-six years

Midweek round-up: political metaphors, animal antidotes, Velvet Underground

Everyone and their brother has embedded this; let me jump on the bandwagon: Montgomery Burns gives  his explanation of the "fiscal cliff."

Are you as tired as I am of the misleading metaphor "fiscal cliff"? George Lakoff, UC Berkeley professor of Linguistics and author of many books about metaphor and the embodied mind, tells us how it works, and why it is so hard to get rid of it.

When I am feeling particularly stressed out, I have found that visiting the site ZooBorns always makes me feel better. The videos of this lion mother with her four cubs have been especially lovely.

Wow, Science Friday, the NPR show that I love, has a Spanish-language blog!

Velvet Underground, live in 1969.
Set List:
1. Heroin (0:00)
2. Move Right In (8:26)
3. I’m Set Free (13:12)
4. Run Run Run (17:49)
5. I’m Waiting For The Man (25:39)
6. What Goes On (34:35)
7. I Can’t Stand It (39:05)
8. Candy Says (45:23)
9. Beginning To See The Light (50:10)
10. White Light/White Heat (56:00)
11. Pale Blue Eyes (61:42)
12. Sister Ray (68:10)

Ways I use Twitter #1

This morning I am in a cafe where I will begin to work after reading the paper (the physical paper paper that I picked up by the dirty dishes bin) and browsing my Twitter feed for stories that interest me.

Here's the harvest of about five minutes of scrolling back in my Timeline, in the order  I clicked on links to open these stories up to read later, after I've been good and brought my Inbox to zero. The mix is both trivial and serious.

I read Alan Sepinwall's reviews of TV shows because he is a big Community fan, and a good TV writer; he is reviewing a new show called Bent. Should I watch it?.

One of my favorite dancers, Harry Shum Jr, is on the cover of Bello magazine (he's also on Glee, but I like him for his work with the online series, Legion of Extraordinary Dancers. He's too young for me, but my high-school self would have been madly in love with his fine self.

DanceSpirit magazine has an article on Bob Fosse's choreography:
"It’s crucial that you develop an ability to control your movement while still maintaining a strong sense of intention." LOL at these captions on his "Mexican Breakfast", the dance that inspired Beyonce's choreo for "Single Ladies." She has always acknowledged this influence, by the way.
Fosse dancing with Gwen Verdon:

RuPaul's Drag Race is one of our new favorite shows! we watched Season 2 on Netflix, and are breathlessly awaiting an explanation of WHY Willam was unexpectedly kick off the show this week for "breaking the rules." DRAMS! Our S2 favorite Pandora Boxx is doing show recaps, yay!

For more serious visual culture blogging, I usual find something interesting on The Sociological Cinema blog: today it's a story on the gender policing of young boys.

I want to watch this documentary on indigneous people in Argentina, Runa Kuti. The filmmakers have generously made it available to watch online, and I'm going to order a copy for our library.

The President of the University of Minnesota drew my attention to the existence of SERU, the Student Experience at the Research University survey, which he is promoting on Twitter (and of course through other means) to get of all undergraduate students to provide insights for both administrators and reseachers. I had never heard of it before; now I plan to check out some of the data from past surveys.

PBS announces its line-up of documentaries in its POV series. There are quite a few of interest from or about Latin America, that might end up in my teaching portfolio. I've already seen the mGraniagnificent film Nostalgia por la luz, and I'm excited to see Granito, a film I missed in a recent film festival, about bringing the Guatemalan dictator Rios Montt to justice.

In Digital Humanities news, the WSJ has story about how the Folger Shakespeare Library is becoming a model of how to combined the traditional archive with digital access and outreach in an article about "Shakespeare in the digital Age.

Why has the Pentagon tried to scrub the web of information about the man accused of massacring Afghan civilians in their beds? His family has had to be relocated for their protection. They are also his victims.

Atlantic blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates digs deeper into how the Florida "Stand Your Ground law," already a bad idea in and of itself,  has been further perverted in its application by the courts  to mean "the last man standing is right:"Your side is irrelevant if you are dead." Following up, opponents of the law predicted how it could be used to justify racially-motivated killings like that of Trayvon Martin when it was passed.

OK, to work!

Saturday morning favorites

We had lunch at Cupcake yesterday, where we saw their gingerbread rendition of their wonderful bakery-restaurant.
Things that make me happy on Saturday morning, cruising through my blogroll:

• Birdchick has more pages of rabbit disapproval! And her blog has the usual amazing photos of birds plus videos of starlings asking for kisses.
• Astronomy picture of the day shows the trail of the shuttle Discovery against the Orion nebula and Rigel glowing brightly.
• Dancing salsa On 1 or On 2: can you spot the difference? Even if you can't, the two videos are awesome.
• SF Mike gives me a dose of my hometown: the politics, the music, the beauty, the characters. Check out the gorgeous photos from Golden Gate Park.
• "Playground to posse: what's your quack-pack?" ZeFrank isn't just funny, although he's always funny, when he's talking about space and MyPlace.
• MPR reports that S.Dakota Senator Tim Johnson is recovering well from his brain surgery. No, he did not have the same condition as Blas, but we are all thinking of him in a new way and hoping his recovery is as complete as Blas's has been.
• La Scala aficionados booed the tenor singing Radames in Aida after a "rather labored Bflat" leaving the soprano to sing the duet alone, and was fired. Silvia Poggioli reports, and she always makes me happy.
• Hey, sometimes my "Miss Crabby Pants" letters to the STRIB editors pay off! Here's what they had to say about the City Council vote on the budget and the need to fully fund the Minneapolis Public Library system. No, I don't think they just heard from me, but I know that a lot of us bombarded them with letters, and it made a difference.
• Leo is learning to make the bed, but he hasn't figured out how to run the vaccuum yet.