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| Detroit Zoo - First zoo trip - 5 yrs 9-10 months - October 1967? |
Hey, Mom! Talking to My Mother #1119 - Gallimaufry - October 1967 - Detroit Zoo - photo series one - Throwback Thursday for 1809.27
Hi Mom,
I like this picture of us. Apparently, it was cold, but it's a good photo. This look, your modified Jackie K look, your care with your hair and your sun glasses, it's one of the ways I remember you best. I know I am not making such a public display of my grief, but there are times, like looking at this photo, when I miss you so much! I have noticed that other people have the same waxing and waning grief with their loved ones. It's normal, I guess.
So I have been fighting a virus that has snagged its slimy claws, and so, this post is late, and so I did what I have done before, posting Throwback Thursday on Sunday. In this way, I stay on schedule as I just posted blogs for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday yesterday (Saturday).
I was going to only post one Hey Mom post this week, but then I dug out an old draft post from 2016 and didn't change the header and footer, so it's a HEY MOM post, though not the usual reprint feature. I am planning a reprint of my post on the Eerie comic magazine, but I wanted to update it with more stuff about its companion, Creepy, and I haven't managed that yet.
So, some kind of plague is in our home and it has taken root in my system. I am feeling better now, but I tend to feel better in the morning because I just had a lot of sleep (eight hours starting at about 8:44 p.m. and lasting until about 5 a.m. when Ellory woke me up) and COFFEE, which is magic.
As usual, this blog entry has become a gallimaufry of ends and odds. I am giving my students the word "gallimaufry" this week in class. It derives from a French word for hash, stew, or ragout.
So my life is a lot of teaching and grading, and my productivity is lessened with trying to fight back this virus. I am hoping that if I can get caught up on grading that I can maintain the schedule better and get back to doing more of the things I love, like biking, reading, coding, and some other things that would make me happy, like redeeming all the digital coupons in the huge stack of comics, balancing my check book, and logging a bunch of receipts to track spending while catching up on recorded episodes of The Young and the Restless.
So here we go, Mom. It's show and tell time in the gallimaufry.
In other news, I just bought a copy of Björk's Utopia, which I had already listened to a few times on Amazon music.
Here's this great article from The Guardian on Björk, which I may have to copy and share:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/nov/12/bjork-utopia-interview-people-miss-the-jokes
Here's a tidbit:
Another idea of utopia came about because, in these scary Trumpian times, she wanted to show that optimism is a choice. “He got elected when I was two years into the album,” she says, “and I felt like, OK, it’s really important now to be intentional. If you feel this world is not heading the right way, you have to be DIY and make a little fortress, over here to the left.”
I don’t know that I got all this from one listen, though the sense of wildlife, physical space and bliss was very strong. My notes say things like “epic, full of nature”, “rattle (monkey sounds)”, “flutes gorgeous, beats tough, transcendent”. I did get the idea of a new place, of women supporting women, of rejecting old systems (in Tabula Rasa, she sings: “break the chains of the fuck-ups of our fathers”). There’s also – excitingly – strong hints of a new lover (Blissing Me: “I fall in love with his song”). And the feeling of the end of a difficult relationship, of moving forward (Sue Me). Though I may well be being too literal. Björk laughs when I quote lyrics at her, and ask her about her love life.
“It’s pretty active, I’ll leave it at that,” she says. “I think it’s still too early to be too specific. Look, I’m happy that people are still listening to me after all these years, but sometimes I feel people misunderstand the lyrics. People miss the jokes. A lot of it is me taking the piss out of myself and being, what do you call it, self-deprecating…”
I love Björk!
I have followed her musical career avidly since the Sugarcubes and the ground-breaking and for me earth-shattering song, "Birthday." It's worth a listen if you don't know it (see below). Though my favorite album by Björk is Homogenic (1997), there are many close seconds, including Debut (1993) and Vulnicura (2015), which I did not know was leaked online three months before its release date.
I find her art fascinating. She's always pushing the boundaries but in her own way, very unique and an individual. She is what Jung meant by the end goal of the Process of Individuation.
I am a devoted fan.
Anyhow, Björk has been making Utopia since she finished her last tour. It started, she says, like many of her albums: as both a reaction against her previous album, and a following-on from it. Released in 2015, Vulnicura was bleak. It dived into the misery of her break-up with artist Matthew Barney, her long-term partner and father of her daughter, Isadora. Its centrepiece, Black Lake, had Björk at her most vulnerable and bitter, with lyrics such as “I am one wound, my pulsating suffering being… You fear my limitless emotions, I am bored of your apocalyptic obsessions… You have nothing to give, your heart is hollow.” “The saddest song I’ve ever written,” is how she describes it to me.
Here are the links I have open for my own future reference.
http://ecd.clark.edu/classes/class.php?SKU=F129 - this is a link for a Javascript class at Clark College. I might take it.
https://2018.cascadiajs.com/ - This is a link for the CascadiaJS conference in Seattle in November, and they have scholarships, plus a Hacker Train to take from Portland. Scholarship application deadline is tomorrow.
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/ - I have not been keeping up with my newsletter and blog reading as I like, but I have David Brin's blog open a lot meaning to either share content here or just read some of it.
https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781948120067?aff=NotAPipePublishing - This both a book -- The Supernormal Legacy -- by an author I met at RCCC and a publishing company I discovered at RCCC. There's a bookstore in Vancouver where I can buy a copy. I am kind of surprised that they do not have their stock at the SF book store I have featured here on the blog -- Interstellar Overdrive.
https://www.paulduffield.co.uk/firelightisle/1 - Paul Duffield's The Firelight Isle, which I have been meaning to read and just stare at longingly and think about taking a break from all the work and I don't.
https://forum.pythonistacafe.com/ - You can only get into this Python community if you subscribe and pay, which I did, and I want to ask about my Python-Flask error, but again, busy.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=how+to+sew+a+button - Because I have to sew on a button.
And then there's this because any time I venture into social media, like You Tube, the platform shows me something I am going to like.
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| Nasa.gov |
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| https://thenewdaily.com.au/life/science/2018/09/12/mysterious-radio-signals-alien-galaxy/ |
Scientists searching for signs of extraterrestrial life in the universe have discovered 72 unidentified signals emanating from a galaxy three billion light years from Earth.
Researchers at the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) in California found the signals, known as fast radio bursts, or FRBs, while using artificial intelligence to examine 400 terabytes of radio data from a dwarf galaxy.
The nature of the object emitting them is still unknown, with theories ranging from highly magnetised neutron stars, blasted by gas streams near to a supermassive black hole, to suggestions that the burst properties are consistent with signatures of technology developed by an advanced civilisation, SETI said.
The following was "stolen" from my student Peyton:
“‘You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”- Wayne Gretzky’ – Michael Scott
GALLERY OF SOCIAL MEDIA EXPOSURE
I love that in the last two years violence against women and sexual assault/harassment has beebn receiving the great attention it deserves as a social issue. Even major league sports have taken heed to the brutal, violent, misogynistic behaviors of men that they have enabled by looking the other way and/or imposing no consequences.
One of my favorite Baseball players, Addison Russell, is currently "suspended" (what they call administrative leave) as an investigation for claims of abuse against his ex-wife. The Cubs are in a playoff race, so this is really not a good time to have a key player (though an under-performing one) away from the team.
Here's the issue and why his ex felt she needed to wait to share.
Ex-wife of Cubs' Addison Russell details abuse allegations
BLOG POST
It's good to see institutions working to not institutionalize the violence, especially after the success of the #metoo movement, which exposed a great deal of terrible violence and abuse and ruined a few careers and rightly so.
And now, courageously, Christine Blasey Ford has stepped forward to reveal Supreme Court justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh's sexual assault of her from 1982 and how it has affected her since.
These are conversations we must have as a culture if we have any hope of ending the "rape culture" in which we have been living forever.
Just looking at the me too hashtag Twitter feed is heartbreaking and upsetting. As are posts like this next one.
And then just some stuff I am trying to clear out of the folder that I posted before...
Thank you and good day to you.
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Reflect and connect.
Have someone give you a kiss, and tell you that I love you, Mom.
I miss you so very much, Mom.
Talk to you tomorrow, Mom.
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- Days ago = 1184 days ago
- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 1809.30 - 10:10
NEW (written 1708.27) NOTE on time: I am now in the same time zone as Google! So, when I post at 10:10 a.m. PDT to coincide with the time of your death, Mom, I am now actually posting late, so it's really 1:10 p.m. EDT. But I will continue to use the time stamp of 10:10 a.m. to remember the time of your death, Mom. I know this only matters to me, and to you, Mom.
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