happify

Not to brag, but fully in the throes of ending my two decade boycott of Hennepin County libraries. The books and people and place are still home, but the HCL borg seems to be a bit less forgiving of my righteous anger over the suburban takeover of my city library system.

Looks great! Are you following a recipe? I think my main tip that maybe isn’t mentioned is to have a tray under your jar, to catch overflow as it bubbles (even if you’re going with a jar you burp).

I also used up all the freezer lemons (insides left from zesting, a bag a friend dumpstered) to make the next batch of deodorant that should last for maybe the next two years?

I'm trying one jar without garlic, just to see how that flavor profile differs.

I've also roughly measured the weights and added salt per recommendations, rather than being completely unmeasured in salt-proportions as I have been previously (except in my topping off brine--that's 1T salt:2C water)

Heading into year five of making ferments. I've finished up a jar of sauerkraut and am starting the jars of my own hot pink ferment, which has proven to be popular with other humans too (purple cabbage, carrot, onion, radish, turmeric, ginger, garlic, sometimes cucumber or watermelon rind).

I’ve returned to these both again and again when I’ve needed to calibrate and ground myself, especially when I’ve felt bleak and bewildered by hate, oppression, and apathy around me.

I find the first more energizing/motivating, and the second helpful for resolve and connection in loneliness.

Back in the day, my church’s social justice group started every meeting with this poem/prayer, which I really love in that setting. For me, since ~2002, it’s mentally been paired with Otto Rene Castillo’s Before the Scales, Tomorrow.

Considering the relationship between concepts of permaculture and the Prayer of Archbishop Oscar Romero (assassinated in 1980 after calling on soldiers to “stop carrying out the government's repression and violations of basic human rights”). (The poem was written by another priest after his death.)

Very confused by this whole thing (same as with the very secret PW vehicle parade) and embarrassed for them. I assume this is strategic to make it seem like the whole anti-transit/Nicollet Mall debacle has some basis, but their facade isn't facading (facadding?).

It's in trying to navigate the new and emptier world that I've realized how deeply embedded and languageless all of this is. How truly destabilizing the slow erosion of it has been. How dangerous and flat I find the rhetoric/strategies of the dominant culture around me.

Part of my absence On Here has been trying to turn what little I know into words offered in love while in the wordlessness of the grief from the loss of and separation from those who've lived this way and loved me this way.

Wanting to gather with people with this as a core understanding (or an understanding we're working towards). Book/support/nourishing group, kind of? Bowls of rice + lentils, mending + conversation on the regular.

Listening to the Sense Making in a Changing World podcast and daaaamn does it resonate with the culture I was raised with (but struggle to articulate/find) and the way of being that I practiced while caring for and walking with my father for so many years.

www.buzzsprout.com/978904?

it seems minor, but the headline for stuff like this should be "fact check: most mass shootings are carried out by cisgender people"

you don't repeat the other side's argument, even when it is to negate it

The tone of art-/writing-class critiques (as I've experienced them) is something I really appreciate being part of, on both sides. Editing (aka productive critique) as a practice is very much a love language in my family of origin and I miss that form of collaboration right now.

I've really appreciated the discipline in having consistent times to meet/write, as well as the way my own practice shifts when I'm engaged critically with people whose work resonates with me.

I'd really love to replicate that. Also open to similar broader art-making groups.

My knowledge of such things is both archaic and v basic. I took all poetry-writing classes offered at the U from beginning to advanced (required to submit work to get accepted) back in the day. I did some writing group things with friends around that time that eventually petered out. All solo since.

Looking for recommendations from folks about how to find a (poetry-)writing group to join either IRL local to Mpls or online.

My preference would be fairly committed to the practice + some process to make sure we're a good fit (application? idk) but not in an exclusionary/pretentious way.

Today, 4-6 pm. Express your concerns and confusion!

Was surprised to see my settings were set to autoplay, given that I hate video generally and am proactive in seeking out ways to make it all stop always (I want text only, maybe images!). Not sure if it got reset or if I somehow missed turning it off, but either way, double-check things friends.

This is what I was thinking, though I'm not sure I've seen images of this concept in situ before!

Cobblestone sidewalk in Sweden with tracks for wheelchairs, strollers, people in heels, etc.

Or we could do actual pavers and install them well. We could have the aesthetics + the driver-calming impacts without placing them where they impede people walking or using wheelchairs or biking.

I think the preference really stems from a puritanical desire to hide away the messier/decay aspects of life, including infrastructure. The move away from home-repair of the car and the move of the car to the front of the house as status symbol (suburban development) are in line with my theory.

Mpls friends! A friend of a friend is missing. If you see a silver 2006 Camry, with JMV license plate, please lmk!

Thanks for clarifying on the Red Cross thing—their language seemed way more for profiteering and I wasn’t sure. Wish there was a stable Mpls donation location.

No post-work appts available at Sociable Cider Works for blood donation. How do Mpls folks who donate regularly generally do so, especially those who're O- (or even O+)?

I'm not eligible and don't even know my type, but v willing to bribe or pressure friends + family who're more universal types.

The Forgotten Medieval Craft of Cloth Staining Podcast Episode · Haptic & Hue · 04/04/2024 · 39m

Here’s the Haptic and Hue podcast episode for those interested. I’m pretty tickled to stumble across walking culture to reclaim in a conversation about textiles.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/h...

Learned via a podcast on staining fabric of walking as a measurement of time for dyeing. How amazing (and retrospectively intuitive) is that?!?!

If you don't have clocks, how do you communicate smaller units of time in recipes? What's something that is ubiquitous and fairly consistent? WALKING <3

A lot of people are asking what MPD is doing while there are hundreds of cars getting their windows smashed in.

I have an answer... they are tied up tackling the crime on the empty streets of Uptown: