Onward, upward, thruward

1. The snow has stayed on the ground here long enough that we're finally Acquiring Some Sleds in anticipation of going sledding with friends next weekend. It is so wonderful to have a winter feel like winter again.

2. Hosted a neat new-to-me game yesterday with some close friends and a potential new friend I met through my Awesome Neighbor friend. We all had a great time! We immediately rolled right into plotting More Fun Like This Soon. It's good to be exercising my making-new-friends muscles again.

2a. The game being Molly House, with its gripping shifts between personal queer joy, community delight, and pressuring fears (constables, rogues, and gossip all threatening to trigger police raids of the central molly houses),( I would be fascinated to play it again... )

3. I am looking forward to some quiet time at home tomorrow, I say, also having ambitions of Bake & Roast All The Things, do my taxes so I can get my solar panel credits reimbursed (yay, solar!), and maybe get some extra time in at the local studio before my pottery class starts.

Bonus: This being the cold hard dark slog time of year, it helps to have something joyous to move to. I went and looked up what all the musicians I last bought music from (mostly 5+ years ago) have put out in the last few years since, and bought the latest album of each. So far I'm particularly enjoying Wu Fei & Abigail Washburn's debut collaboration merging American old-time music and Chinese folksong, and the latest from MEUTE.

Have you been listening to anything particularly good lately? What is bringing you joy, defiant or otherwise?

Pick a thing or two that sums up how you're doing today, this week, in general, and tell me about it in the 5-7-5 syllables of a haiku.

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Signal-boosting much appreciated!

1.) Yesterday we hosted an playreading brunch with a fun group of friends - may it be the first of many more! This time we did Tom Stoppard's "Arcadia".

I used to host regular playreading potluck dinner parties years and years ago when I lived in a co-op, and losing access to rooms of a size where 8+ people might cheerfully cram themselves on various chairs and couches and floor nooks with cushions was one of the griefs I carried with me from that co-op's breakup. I'm glad to be restarting now.

2.) Today I had the the mindblowing joy of seeing 'Noli Timere' ('be not afraid') at ArtsEmerson.

Calling it an aerial dance doesn't quite do it justice; you can see the local trailer here or read a great WBUR feature about it here. ("In a time defined by uncertainty and distance, this piece isn’t just about resisting the gravity that weighs on us, it’s about choosing to catch each other when we fall, to carry each other through the invisible webs that bind us.")

3.) We have had an entire week+ of snow on the ground, and a foot of it is still here!

This delights me for many reasons, not least that this means another year of the invading fire ants being killed before they can establish themselves. Every winter we get at least ten days in a row of freezing weather is a winter I heave a big sign of relief.

Unbreaking Team @ the Unbreaking: This week at Unbreaking, January 16

Beginning in late November and escalating through early January, the Trump administration has sent 3,000 ICE and CBP agents into Minneapolis–St. Paul. For comparison, the “Operation Midway Blitz” surge in Chicago deployed about 300 federal immigration agents. The Chicago metro area’s population is roughly 2.5 times the size of the Twin Cities’, so the Minneapolis–St. Paul operation has sent about 10 times as many enforcers into a much smaller population center.

Kelly Hayes @ Organizing My Thoughts: Choosing Each Other in a Time of Terror

Trump is waging war on our communities, and we don’t need “better training” for our attackers.

Scott Meslow @ the Verge: How much can a city take?

The most heartening thing about this deeply disturbing moment is seeing how consistently and forcefully Minnesotans of all demographics have been pushing back.

Fred Glass @ Jacboin: The Citywide General Strike Has a Rich History in America

In response to the killing of Renee Good and the ICE invasion, the Minneapolis labor movement has issued the nation’s first citywide general strike call in nearly 80 years

Andrea Pitzer @ Degenerate Art: Into the abyss

You can’t reform a concentration camp regime. You have to dismantle it and replace it. We have a thousand ways to do it. And most U.S. citizens—particularly white ones—have the freedom to act, for now, with far less risk than the many people currently targeted.

ETA: Naomi Kritzer @ Will Tell Stories For Food: How To Help if You are Outside Minnesota

If You’d Like to Donate Money
Contact Your Senators/House Rep
Write a Letter to the Editor
Hassle ICE-Supporting Businesses
To Learn More About What’s Going On in Minnesota, Read Minnesotan News Sources
Push Back on Disinformation
Send Words of Encouragement
Get Ready For This Bullshit to Come to You
Talk About Immigration, and Make it Clear You Think It’s GOOD

No one really believes Donald Trump is going to last. At the rate he's been declining, it would be a minor medical miracle if he survives to the end of his current term.

( Read more... )

tl;dr Who wants to live subject to immoral leaders and exploitive self-sabotaging systems? We are capable of better, and we do have collective powers to choose better and deny support to worse. Let's exercise those powers while we still can avert most of worst.

Pick a thing or two that sums up how you're doing today, this week, in general, and tell me about it in the 5-7-5 syllables of a haiku.

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Signal-boosting much appreciated!

What will happen after the moral equivalent of the battle of Yorktown?

I think we should have another Constitutional Convention.

( Read more... )

What rights and rebalances would you fight for? What values would you wage peace for?

Pick a thing or two that sums up how you're doing today, this week, in general, and tell me about it in the 5-7-5 syllables of a haiku.

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Signal-boosting much appreciated!

Marianne Kuzujanakis: Book Review: “Take Joy” by Jane Yolen

it is so important to understand that writing is a way of thinking and existing, and not just an act of doing

Kelly Hayes: From Aspiration to Action: Organizing Through Exhaustion, Grief, and Uncertainty

It’s easy to pass judgment on ourselves and each other for what we’re “already doing” or failing to do. But as an organizer, I’m concerned with what might motivate or allow people to act differently.

Sasha Chapin @ Sasha's Newsletter: How to like everything more: on the skill of enjoyment

In my experience, high-level enjoyment, like a sport, is composed of many interlocking micro-skills that must be trained individually, but which reinforce each other. This is not how enjoyment is taught—the only tip people typically receive re enjoyment is to “be mindful.” I think this is a suggestion to adopt what meditators call “one-pointed focus,” a form of concentrated, narrowed attention on a small portion of conscious experience. It’s a mediocre suggestion for a couple of reasons. First, this is hard to do well, even for seasoned meditators. Second, it is far from the only enjoyment-producing mental motion.

Liz Neeley @ Liminal: Week 19: What now & what’s next in science and higher ed

Everything is terrible, but I brought you some plums.

Pick a thing or two that sums up how you're doing today, this week, in general, and tell me about it in the 5-7-5 syllables of a haiku.

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Signal-boosting much appreciated!