Impressions

Fathers

Mon, 12 May 2008 21:20:50 GMT

Climbing the Family Tree: Up Two Generations (from last entry)

Fathers of jdtacv, Mpls 5/10/08

Don't try this at home, kids

Sun, 11 May 2008 14:13:41 GMT

Doorway of jdtacv, 5/10/08

Nate

Sun, 11 May 2008 07:00:18 GMT

markiv1111, Mpls 5/10/08

Podcasts updated and working, I hope

Sun, 11 May 2008 05:08:52 GMT

I just finished completely remastering the Shockwave Radio Podcast page. The automatic downloads and RSS feeds should work. If not, please let me know.

I added two podcasts from the interview with Power Salad in March. The interview with Paul & Storm, previously available as a single, should now be available as a choice in the podcast listing. In addition, I added one of Shockwave's most downloaded shows, Gilligan's Island Theme from 9/10/05, as Brian Westley and I talked about the death of Bob Denver the previous week, and I played five variants of the theme song (but not the actual one), including Gilligan's Island Stairway.

I'll get a few more music podcasts in before the political stuff. Whee!

Not-So-Hidden Minnesota

Sat, 10 May 2008 17:47:50 GMT

While having breakfast with the redoubtable 7ivy7, a group of people (men and women) in vaguely familiar military uniforms gathered at the next table. I asked on the way out, and it was interesting. They wore dress uniforms of Buffalo Soldiers and will be participating in Minnesota Military Expo '08 (Fort Snelling, May 16-17). Official site with a long Flash download.

They had dressed up to have their picture taken. They looked really sharp. I should never go anywhere without a camera...

Hidden Minneapolis

Sat, 10 May 2008 12:53:51 GMT

Restaurants come and go. The corner of Nicollet and 29th has had a series of restaurants, the current one being a very good Vietnamese soup place tucked into a corner that only exists because the KMart cuts off Nicollet (see previous entry) and the city built the one block long Cecil Newman Lane (just South of where 29th would have gone) to aid traffic flow.

Pho Tau Bay, Mpls, May 8 2008CE
sign on what would be Nicollet Ave if the KMart didn't block the way
Way back when, it was a homestyle 'Murrican breakfast/pancake house called The Three Bee'z Family Restaurant. For many years, through several restaurant changes, no one bothered to change the street sign. After all, it wasn't a street anymore. Decades pass. Finally, Pho Tau Bay, est. 1995, updated the sign, above. You can see it as you drive South on Nicollet, before you have to turn on 29th to go around the KMart. But since no one can drive North on Nicollet, the reverse of the sign is less important, and not worth changing.

Three Bee'z sign, Mpls May 8 2008CE

Hidden Minneapolis

Fri, 09 May 2008 18:54:06 GMT

Many people pass by the KMart on Lake and Nicollet (the one that prevents Nicollet from going through). They see the front. Less known is the mural on the back.

Hidden Minneapolis - mural behind the KMart
A door closes, and a battleship emerges
Minneapolis, MN, May 8 2008CE

a closer look at the right half of the mural

Fossil Fuel Clock

Wed, 07 May 2008 13:30:11 GMT

The Fossil Fuel Clock Is Ticking
May Day Parade, May 4, 2008CE
The parade theme continues: After the 35W Bridge collapse and a change of heart about the environment, what can we do now? Let's create a bridge to a more sustainable future.

This will probably be my last May Day pic for a while, as I have finally finished going through the images to decide which to keep. I have other projects to catch up on, and the big ones are for family so won't post them here. But you never know. Requests?

Veggie Queen

Wed, 07 May 2008 01:00:55 GMT

vgqn
Berkeley CA, June 6, 2007CE
Yes, I'm officially 12 months behind in editing picture galleries. This is part of a series taken in last summer while I was in Berkeley on family matters. I published the picture of a gathering of fans at dinner back in June. I decided to pull the fannish pics out of the family gallery and will roll them into a Summer '07 gallery. It will be a while.

So much to do, so many game turns to take, so little energy...

Butterfly

Tue, 06 May 2008 22:25:26 GMT

Butterfly
May Day Parade, May 4 2008CE
Lots of butterflies in the parade, but more than just gossamer wings. She's also on stilts.

A Tarot Reading

Tue, 06 May 2008 17:41:25 GMT

A Tarot Reading
Using a Morgan Deck, minnehaha K does a reading for Mrs. soarhead
flanked by dreamshark and tesla_aldrich
May Day, MN-StF Picnic, May 4, 2008CE
I stayed until just after Mary Jo's reading. Just before I left, I wanted a one card a quickie. I drew Eternal Bliss. I don't know if I'm quite that happy, but today was the first day I walked outside in shorts in a long time. We'll see about the Eternal part...

The Bucket List: Joe

Tue, 06 May 2008 14:10:49 GMT

rvrjoe775 collected more than a bucket's worth of donations
May Day Parade, May 4, 2008CE
The Parade, Ceremony and Festival are all free, and at the end of the parade (not during the themed sections but before the Free Speech section), the bucket brigade comes out. Several fans volunteered to work the crowd.

A Change of Mind

Tue, 06 May 2008 12:08:17 GMT

"What must we do to live
gloriously and sustainably
without fossil fuels?
Time for a change of mind!"
I call this one "solarhead"
dunno what the bees are doing
May Day Parade, Mpls, May 4 2008CE

Kernels of Wisdom

Tue, 06 May 2008 00:06:14 GMT

Kernels of Wisdom
May Day Parade, May 4, 2008CE

"Children carry forward future Being "Beans" -- the seeds of all species.
Adults carry forward kernels of wisdom."
note the detail on the monkey and the fox "kernels"

Mourners Hold Vigil

Mon, 05 May 2008 18:23:46 GMT

Oh, so you want shots of the parade, eh?

Mourners Hold Vigil
May Day Parade, May 4, 2008CE
"Mourners from all nations hold vigil over the shroud of the Tree of Life" says the official guide to the May Day Parade and Festival. The Parade has a theme, which is developed (sometimes haphazardly). The mourners are part of the Change of Heart section. In the aftermath of the collapse of the 35W bridge, some people may be moved to change. Only some, alas.

Mounted Police

Mon, 05 May 2008 16:00:03 GMT

Mounted Police
May Day Parade, May 4, 2008CE
The May Day Parade has always had good relations with the local police. They direct traffic and keep emotions from flaring. This year, as in the past, the police were on foot, on bicycle and on horseback. It's one of the things that makes the festival successful, year after year.

But no cars got towed, even if they were in the parade route. Most cars were gone by the time the parade started, but there were still a few jerks in the way. Maybe the horses crapped on them.

Delia and the Hoop

Mon, 05 May 2008 13:53:22 GMT

Delia and the Hoop
MN-StF picnic at the May Day 2008 celebration, May 4 2008CE
Picture posted by request of pegkerr!

minnehaha K staked out an area that also attracted a small drum jam and several brightly colored large hula hoops. And lots of kids, many of whom tried the hula hoops with greater and lesser success. Delia was pretty good at it.

No one knew what the "RL" on her shirt stood for. (Probably Ralph Lauren, as rvrjoe775 notes in comments.) Back In The Day, we knew what was on our shirt, usually a political statement. In The Day After Back In The Day, our shirts were walking advertisements, and we knew what we were promoting, even if we were just wearing a giveaway and didn't actually agree with the sentiment or use the product. Today, kids will throw on any article of clothing adorned with any text, and not worry about what kind of signpost they're being. Moving gifs on the hoof.

No Homesteading on Lake Street

Mon, 05 May 2008 02:39:45 GMT

"No, I don't care how bad the subprime mortgage crisis is,
you can't build a house in the middle of the intersection"
May Day Parade, Mpls, May 4, 2008CE

I took over 500 pictures with my new camera, and nearly a hundred of them plotzed. For some reason, the image didn't save to the chip. The thumbnail did, so I can tell which pictures were gone. There seems to be no pattern to the phenomena. I dunno.

And I'm not terribly happy with the pictures I did get, for the most part. Maybe they'll look better in full PhotoShop mode with cropping and such. Still, if I get a few dozen really good shots then it will have been a good day. This is one of them, more for the humor value than the technical wizardry.

Doug Wickstrom and friend

Sun, 04 May 2008 16:58:33 GMT

Doug Wickstrom and friend
Blaisdell Polytechnic, May 3 2008CE

MN-StF President lydy ran for the Board on a platform of "Beer and Tigers". When the meetings are at her house, both abound.

Off to the May Day Parade!

Marian Turner

Sun, 04 May 2008 13:20:19 GMT

Marian Turner
Blaisdell Polytechnic, May 3, 2008CE
Playing with the "Party" setting on the camera, this picture was taken without flash. For the most part, the low-light pictures weren't so good; perhaps I need a different setting to get better focus. Still, it was a great deal of fun taking picture after picture that wasn't apparent. Here, Marian is talking to her friend Charlotte (the hand on the lower right) at the MN-STF meeting yesterday.

Iron Man: A good comic book

Fri, 02 May 2008 21:38:24 GMT

The latest comic book to make it to the big screen is Iron Man. Very good when it could have been bad. I haven't read an Iron Man comic in decades, but caught most of the sly references (I think). The 60s comic careens off Vietnam without mentioning communism; the 00's movie careens off Afghanistan without mentioning terrorism. And it works splendidly. And yes, stay until after the credits.

Walking around the Mall of America, visiting the Apple Store to learn about Leopard and riding the escalator past Legoland, I felt naked without a camera. My kit is too large to just carry everywhere, but it's small enough that I can toss it in the car when I'm going almost anywhere. Is a lifestyle change imminent? Would anyone notice?

Bragging about family: brother and uncle

Thu, 01 May 2008 01:06:35 GMT

My brother Joe's blog, climateprogress.org was chosen as one of the best blogs on the environment by Time Magazine.

Meanwhile, my uncle Lee Grodzin's accomplishments as a physicist are being honored,
Neutrino Helicity at 50: A Celebration of the Goldhaber-Grodzins-Sunyar Experiment (that's his picture in the middle of the top left pics).

Go us!

50 Best Cult Books Spam

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 20:06:39 GMT

"Cult books are somehow, intangibly, different from simple bestsellers – though many of them are that."

Inspired by Daily Telgraph's list of the 50 best cult books. I was surprised how many I've read, even as I don't necessarily agree with their choices. Here is their list. Italicize the ones you've read all the way through. Underline the ones you haven't finished. Comments extra.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (1969) Still prefer other Vonnegut.
The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell (1957-60)
A Rebours by JK Huysmans (1884)
Baby and Child Care by Dr Benjamin Spock (1946) Who hasn't dipped into this?
The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf (1991)
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (1963)
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (1961) Saw the movie...
The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger (1951) Read it as an adult, so didn't like it.
The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield (1993)
The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart (1971)
Chariots of the Gods: Was God An Astronaut? by Erich Von Däniken (1968) Dumb and not fun
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (1980)
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1782)
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg (1824)
Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health by L Ron Hubbard (1950)
The Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley (1954)
Dune by Frank Herbert (1965) A great book, though you can skip the sequels
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979) A great radio production (etc.) and the sequels are worthy.
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe (1968) A great bit of journalism
Fear of Flying by Erica Jong (1973)
The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer (1970)
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (1943) What an awful book.
Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R Hofstadter (1979) Currently in the middle of a second attempt to get all the way through
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (1973) Still not sure if I like it
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln (1982) and sequels
I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (1948)
If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino (1979)
Iron John: a Book About Men by Robert Bly (1990)
Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach and Russell Munson (1970)
The Magus by John Fowles (1966)
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges (1962)
The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa (1958)
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov (1967)
No Logo by Naomi Klein (2000)
On The Road by Jack Kerouac (1957) I really hate this book. Bad people doing bad things. Almost killed any appreciation of the Beat Generation for me.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson (1971)
The Outsider by Colin Wilson (1956)
The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran (1923)
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell (1914)
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám tr by Edward FitzGerald (1859)
The Road to Oxiana by Robert Byron (1937)
Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (1922) Read it in HS, too early.
The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1774)
Story of O by Pauline Réage (1954)
The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942) Read it in HS, too early.
The Teachings of Don Juan: a Yaqui Way of Knowledge by Carlos Castaneda (1968)
Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain (1933)
Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1883-85)
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960) Saw the movie...
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an Inquiry into Values by Robert M Pirsig (1974) A great book once you grok that the author is an asshole.

Lois McMaster Bujold and the Media

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:19:10 GMT

Lois McMaster Bujold and two reporters from the StarTribune
I promised not to publish this picture until the article came out
Minicon 43, March 23 2008CE
The online article doesn't have all the Minicon pictures taken by Steve Rice (the man on the right). Book Editor Sarah T. Williams (on the left) wrote the text. I was expecting this to come out sooner (it's been over a month) but they timed it for an Uncle Hugo's signing.

Bonus Lois pic!

Lois McMaster Bujold, photo by Baron Dave
Minicon 43, March 23, 2008CE
She's sitting next to me on the panel "Worldbuilding: Indulgence or Necessity?"

Mary and Tesla

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 07:50:57 GMT

Mary and Tesla, mother and daughter
home of tesla_aldrich, April 26, 2008CE

To 7ivy7, who's lurking: Hello!

Picture taken without a flash. Still learning the ins and outs of my new toy, and there are things that will take some getting used to, but overall I'm really pleased.