[personal] Weekend report, and what dreams did come
Whew. This weekend I:
- Went to a protest in support of the Wisconsin public worker unions
- Dined with a friend Friday night, then saw True Grit
- Brunched with a friend Saturday morning and did a bunch of walking
- Dined with a friend Saturday night and saw a jazz/klezmer group live
- Hiked part of the Cape Horn trail in the Columbia Gorge Sunday morning
- Advised and assisted
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=1)
the_child on preparing for her art showing next weekend
- Attended an Oscar party Sunday evening
- Wrote 5,100 words on Sunspin through all this
- Had strange dreams last night
Busy much?
The dreams last night were hilarious. As best as I can reconstruct them now, I was trying to arrange a social date for davidlevine. I stopped at the Philadelphia Zoo to sort out the details, borrowing a clipboard from their membership department.
As I sat on some empty steps to make notes about this date, I was trampled by a crowd of zoo patrons rushing to see an IMAX showing of some nature movie. I was so discombobulated by this that I threw down my clipboard in frustration. That narrowly missed a manager from the zoo office.
The Zoo Police took me into custody for attempted assault. I was informed that as my alleged crimes had occurred on public property, I would be charged with terrorism related offenses under the Patriot Act, and that Homeland Security was being called in.
For some reason I still had the run of the zoo offices at that point. Various writers and editors kept wandering in. I pled my case to the trio of Gordon Van Gelder, Tim Pratt and Ben Rosenbaum. Gordon told me I should be more careful with my clipboard next time. Ben said fifteen years in prison was a small price to pay for a just and peaceful society.
I wound up in the IMAX auditorium still looking for someone who could help me out. At that point the Zoo Police decided I was trying to effect an escape from custody by hiding in the crowd. They started a panic sending in a SWAT team after me, while loudly telling everyone I was a violent criminal threatening further violence.
I woke up laughing at myself. All that so David Levine could have a date?
What did you dream last night?
Tags: Art, Books, Child, dreams, Funny, Movies, music, nature, Personal, Publishing, Sunspin, Washington, weird, Writing
Posted: 6:47 am Mon February 28 2011 | Comments(4) |
[photos|personal] Hiking Cape Horn
Yesterday, J, T and I headed up the Washington side of the Columbia Gorge for the relatively new Cape Horn trail. It’s a 6.8 mile loop with over 1,000 feet of elevation change. I wasn’t worried about the distance, but I was worried about the elevation, as I am still getting back into shape post-chemo. Walking up hills is no longer pathologically difficult for me, but continues fairly tough.
Boy did we not suss that one out quite right.
On arrival, we discovered a sign saying that part of the loop was closed through June to protect peregrine falcon nesting grounds. That’s hard to object to, so we figured on about a 5 mile out-and-back instead of the full loop. There was snow on the ground at the trailhead, while the track held about 1/2″ of fresh powder.
The trail went up.
And up.
And up.
Primitive trail, snow deepening to 3-4 inches, some pretty steep passages, and between the slip-and-grind of walking in fresh powder and the unremitting “up”, I really struggled hard. It took us an hour to make the summit at Fallen Tree viewpoint. That was 1.3 miles with 800 feet of elevation gain, us being mostly slowed by my dilatory pace and need for frequent breaks against the effort of climbing.
Still, I made the summit, damn it.
At that point, my incipient vertigo (a problem of aging, I didn’t used to experience this) incipiated like crazy. For one thing, we’d crossed a couple of knifeback ridges with the fresh, slippery snow on the trail. A misstep would have produced a fall of several hundred feet one side, and about fifty feet on the other. For another thing, several of the overlooks were just rock and air fifteen hundred feet over the depth of the Gorge. Amazingly beautiful.
Going back down those knifeback trail segments was a real experience, let me tell you. I still have some numbness in my feet from the chemotherapy, so my footing is a bit iffy at best. That was exacerbated by tromping along in snow. I enjoyed a real adrenaline rush with that ‘taking my life in my hands’ feeling.
Later on, away from the cliffs, we took a fork in the trail down we hadn’t followed coming up and found a long, steep section that I finally just had to buttslide downhill 80 or 100 feet on the snow rather than risk my footing.
We were out a little over two hours all told, making about 2.5 miles. Not exactly a land speed record, but it was a fun, tough, and very demanding (for me) hike.
Some photos… Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: Cancer, health, Personal, Photos, Washington
Posted: 6:33 am Mon February 28 2011 | Comments(0) |
[photos] Your Monday moment of zen
Your Monday moment of zen.
Golden Gate Bridge from Fort Point, San Francisco. © 2007, 2011, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Tags: California, Photos, zen
Posted: 6:24 am Mon February 28 2011 | Comments(0) |
[links] Link salad would be a great name for a rock band
the_child, Mother of the Child and our friend Holly King are showing in the Southeast Portland Art Walk next weekend — They’ll be in Holly’s home and studio, #38 on the art walk map. Holly will be showing cast glass and mixed media sculpture, Mother of the Child will be displaying watercolors and pencils, while the_child will be offering prints and note cards of some of her digital artwork.
The Tolkien estate over-reaches — Ah, trademark enforcement. Thou shalt not speak the name of the Master.
HarperCollins Puts 26 Loan Cap on Ebook Circulations — This won’t end well. (Via danjite.)
Cops: Orlando Man Sabotaged “Whac-A-Mole” Games — Weird headline, weird story.
Cats Adore, Manipulate Women — I plead the Fifth on this one.
Dero Nazi saucer jocks in snow — A striking Sunday fantasy image from x planes.
Red Snow Moon Over Edmonton — In which APOD demonstrates that Edmonton is actually the mouth of Hell.
How To Turn A Laser Into A Tractor Beam — Physicists work out how to generate a backward pulling force from a forward propagating beam
The World Oil Politics of the Libyan Revolt
Why Wouldn’t the Tea Party Shut It Down? — The politics of the Federal budget.
The G.O.P.’s Abandoned Babies — Republicans need to figure out where they stand on children’s welfare. They can’t be “pro-life” when the “child” is in the womb but indifferent when it’s in the world. Mmmm, family values. Remember kids, reload and it will all be okay!
?otD: What’s your favorite possible name for a rock band?
2/28/2011
Writing time yesterday: 1.75 hours (2,600 words on
Sunspin)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.75 hours (solid)
Weight: 251.8
Currently reading:
Dead Iron by Devon Monk
Tags: Art, Child, Cool, Culture, Libya, Links, Personal, Photos, Politics, Publishing, Science, Tech
Posted: 6:23 am Mon February 28 2011 | Comments(0) |
[personal] Keep them dogies rolling
Yesterday morning I whacked out 2,500 words on Calamity of So Long a Life, met a friend for brunch, walked a few miles after, vegged a bit, then went out for dinner and klezmer music with another friend at the Rogue Brewery.
Here’s me bottling what I got, courtesy of mlerules.
All rights reserved, used with permission.
The food was good, but we were mildly disappointed in Klezmocracy, the band, because while they were quite a good jazz band, they played exactly one song I could recognize as klezmer, which is what we thought we’d come to hear.
This morning I’m off shortly with friends for the first Gorge hike of the 2011 season. I was going to be cooking momos this afternoon, but that got crosswise of an outing this evening, so the cooking is postponed. Busy play day, at any rate.
Tags: Books, Calamity, Food, music, Personal, Portland, Writing
Posted: 7:08 am Sun February 27 2011 | Comments(0) |
[photos] Your Sunday moment of zen
Your Sunday moment of zen.
Golden Gate Bridge from Fort Point, San Francisco. © 2007, 2011, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Tags: California, Photos, zen
Posted: 7:01 am Sun February 27 2011 | Comments(0) |
[links] Link salad hums “Bei Mir Bistu Shein?”
Jade de Jay Lake — What appears to be French flap copy for Green, with a positive recommendation at the end. The French edition uses the Dan Dos Santos cover.
The Perils of Prediction — The Mumpsimus is interesting about the film 2001.
Juana la Loca — A fascinating squib on art and history from James Gurney.
Neglected graves home to ‘invisible dead’ — A sad piece of African-American history.
The Quarter: 1903 — Shorpy with an old photo of an even older, neglected French Quarter courtyard.
A close-up of Saturn’s moon Hyperion — It’s like a wasp nest in space.
The Problem With Question 36 — Why are so many of the answers on the U.S. citizenship test wrong? Curious and weird.
?otD: Klezmer or big band?
2/27/2011
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (2,500 words on
Sunspin)
Body movement: Gorge hiking to come
Hours slept: 6.5 hours (solid)
Weight: 254.0 (!)
Currently reading:
Dead Iron by Devon Monk
Tags: Art, Books, Cool, Culture, Green, history, Links, Movies, Personal, Photos, Politics, race, Science, weird
Posted: 6:59 am Sun February 27 2011 | Comments(0) |
[movies] True Grit
Why did I wait so long to go see True Grit?
Go. Now.
That is all.
Tags: Movies
Posted: 7:53 am Sat February 26 2011 | Comments(4) |
[photos|politics] In which I go to a political protest
Yesterday tillyjane a/k/a my mom called me up and asked me to go to a protest in support of the Wisconsin public sector unions. I hemmed and hawed about skipping out on my writing time, but decided that the novel would still be there after the opportunity for civic participation had passed. I figure there were about four or five hundred people there once it got going, a mixture of teachers, nurses, trade union guys and political activists. The weather was clear and quite cold, so I did not last through the entire rally.
There are some aspects of the union movement I am uncomfortable with. My father was a U.S. diplomat, so I did not grow up in a household where labor issues were much on anyone’s mind on a daily basis. My first awareness of unions was the Teamster’s strike, back in the mid-seventies, when scabs were being killed. Specifically, a non-union bus driver who ran into a brick-on-a-rope trap at an underpass, if I recall correctly. That and Jimmy Hoffa. My next awareness was a cross-country family trip to a major theme park that arrived after months of planning and weeks of travel and promises to find it closed due to an employee strike. Let’s just say I wasn’t emotionally primed as a child to see unions as a force for good.
At the same time, I like forty-hour work weeks and paid vacations and benefits packages. Those things did not become standards in the American workplace thanks to the Invisible Hand of the market, or to competition between employers. They became standards because of decades of risky and sometimes fatal union activism. Even if you’ve never paid union dues in your life, even if you believe that unions are satanic tools of the socialist Left, if you work for a living, you owe them a great deal. Unions have done far more for you than your employer ever would have left to the magic of market self-regulation and unfettered capital. That’s a perspective that’s utterly lost on most rank and file conservatives today.
I don’t know if this is a Martin Niemoller moment in our society or not, but I went to stand with the Communists and the trade unionists yesterday. What have you done to protect your freedom?
A few photos… Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: family, Photos, Politics, Portland, Wisconsin, Writing
Posted: 7:38 am Sat February 26 2011 | Comments(1) |
[photos] Your Saturday moment of zen
Your Saturday moment of zen.
Golden Gate Bridge from Fort Point, San Francisco. © 2007, 2011, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.
This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Tags: California, Photos, zen
Posted: 7:16 am Sat February 26 2011 | Comments(0) |
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