Woman holding Obama sign on Edmund Pettus Bridge (Selma, AL)

Obama, 2008.

from the historical marker:
On Sunday March 7, 1965, 600 people led by Hosea Williams & John Lewis began a march to Montgomery to take their quest for voting rights directly to Governor George C. Wallace. At the Pettus bridge they were met by state troopers who used horses, tear gas & billy clubs to break up the march.

A march on March 9, led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. met the troopers at the same place & turned around without incident.

The Federal Court ruled the march was legal & with Federal protection 4,000 began the march to Montgomery on March 21. Camping along the road the protestors reached 25,000 in number by the time they reached the State Capital on March 25.

National news coverage of these events secured widespread support & led to the approval of the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches

it is october…and i have just now finished uploading pictures i took in may.

I’m a slackass. I’m ok with this.

Speaking of which, I ran across an old livejournal post about some goals I had set for myself in 2006. Surprisingly, I have accomplished most of them. Since I just turned 31, I thought it would be a good time to make some new goals.

31. I can’t really believe I’m 31. Back in my younger days I never really thought I’d make it to 30, which is sort of hilarious because I was never really very wild. Now my life is a little on the boring side but I think it’s pretty awesome. I have a great wife, a great job, and great friends. I have incredible in-laws and my relationship with my parents is pretty good, too.

31 Goals (to be accomplished before my next birthday)

1. run a 5k
2. finish a draft of TheBook
3. learn Flex well enough to crank out some projects
4. do something active every day
5. late summer road trip (up the california coast? to montana? to the grand canyon?)
6. pay off all of my debt
7. take a picture a day (starting, um, tomorrow)
8. visit my parents
9. run a 10k
10. find an awesome haircut
11. learn conversational spanish (class? rosetta stone?)
12. …and then make plans to go somewhere spanish-speaking (maybe costa rica next christmas?)
13. send a postcard to PostSecret
14. ride my bike 5x/week to work
15. read 2 books a month
16. embrace my musical side (play my clarinet, guitar regularly)
17. hike a week on the AT
18. finish dvd of the parental units interviews
19. take swimming lessons
20. watch a space shuttle launch
21. design (and get) another tattoo
22. volunteer my time freely
23. finish every project currently on my rtm list for work
24. ride the chief ladiga trail
25. write a snail mail letter to the ranch every month
26. send birthday cards to the extended family!
27. get up earlier in the morning and meditate (more days than not)
28. go to a show once a month
29. donate 5-10% of my paycheck to a worthy cause
30. do 100 consecutive pushups
31. enjoy the simple things in life (cultivate awareness)

notes from today

so…I went to Minneapolis. Had a great time (although I’ve been lazy about putting up pictures) and really enjoyed:
1) the weather
2) the free happy hour at the hotel
3) spending more money on alcohol than on food.
4? oh, and hanging out with Lisa, of course!

Today was a really busy crappy hectic day. I spent an hour on the phone with Dell trying to convince them to send me a new graphics card for a machine (no video, put a known good card in and it worked) and the tech said he needed me by the machine (which was back in the lab with the temp video card). Called back around 5 and the rep didn’t even ask me to turn the computer on…just arranged for the part to be sent out. Mental note: It is worthless to try to argue with a Dell rep. Just call back and hope you get someone friendlier.

Lots of people at work have been getting infected with the latest malware. Virus writers are getting smarter - they are writing emails people will actually click on. Unfortunately for me, people are gullible and easily freaked by weird cnn headlines, evites, false mortgage payments, and even a site for the talledega dirt track. (who knew?). C’mon people, just take two seconds to look at the link to make sure it’s pointing somewhere legitimate. Please??

I’m listening to the new album by Brian Eno & David Byrne - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, which is a brilliant title for an album. It’s streaming for the time being at http://everythingthathappens.com/.

Things I’m Not Sure Are Legal:
* The church school up the street that makes the street one-way-only during school dropoff and pickup times. I always ignore the sign (on my bike) because it annoys the crap out of me.
* The Birmingham Public Library downtown’s rule of searching all “oversized” bags before letting you in the library. Seriously, what are they looking for? Usually I just keep on walking and ignore the officer sitting behind the desk, but for some reason Sunday I stopped. Em & I had ridden our bikes, so I had a standard issue Timbuktu messenger bag and she had a sling bag, both of which apparently qualify as “oversized”. The officer said he was looking for “guns, weapons, or contraband” but then didn’t even open up any of the pockets in my bag. Really weird and annoying - so I have to submit to a search to get into a public space? How is that legal?

Agh. Rant off. I’m going to go eat some leftover frittata which I hope is even more delicious cold. Have a good night kids.

It’s you! it’s me! and there’s dancing!

P1010726

I’ve been getting really frustrated at work far too easily. I’m not really sure what the problem is, but I’m blaming it on the heat. It is miserable here. Tonight my elbows were dripping sweat as I walked home from work…at 7:30 pm. Lucky me, I’m headed to Minneapolis for a long weekend.

I’ve been having an introspective sort of week (aka “being hard on myself”). Not much to be done about it - I see myself developing some habits I’d rather not adopt. Mainly, being overtly judgmental and selfish. I’ve been feeling a little taken advantage of by some friends and am trying to find the balance between being gracious and not getting run over. It’s a fine line.

There are two things that have been getting me going in the morning: copious amounts of coffee with half and half(!), and los campesinos! Also…twitter updates by the Mars Phoenix Rover.

…

P1020042

I feel so restless.

totally random

I found an Auggie BBS group on myspace today. That got me thinking about all the folks I talked to endlessly back when I was in college (when the web was mostly text and email was a newfangled thing that most people didn’t really use).

I used to type into that terminal window for hours at a time. The BBS’s and MUDs were my escape…from a lot of things I didn’t have the courage to face alone. Those friendships formed through those words on a screen were lifesaving.

My google-fu is failing me, so Camille Swanson aka sphynx (married to Kevin Swanson, living in Texas(?)), if you’re out there somewhere, get in touch!

“share the road” - kind of like spitting

Trouble at the office, troubled at the bank
I put my hands against the tree line
I know it’s real but it still feels fake
The last thing I remember from that world
Was a drum take clicked out on the tape too slow

Oh what a life we give
Toward obsessions and curled toes
And the death line that’s running
Through our friends as well as foes
And the tree line looks over like a bending ghost
As I go down this road of the bored and boring

No one saw it coming, everyone was shocked
So I bummed my roommate’s helmet
And keep a tight grip on my bike lock
Take the side streets, keep my eyes clocked
Oh, it only takes a second to pass

I’ve had some really nice people
Say some really smart things to me
I’ve had really good people
Bummed out here in this bed next to me

So I sing my life in circles
Through these outrages and I
Have had some really nice people
Have to tell me goodbye
So I give a wish to a nickel, close my eyes and
let it fly and try to stay positive.

Kind of Like Spitting – Share the Road

morning is breaking…

P1010848

While we were in new orleans, our neighbors packed up and left to go to Mexico. I knew that it *might* happen - C. told me tearfully that she hadn’t made up her mind whether to stay or go - all this while I was showing her how to chat on yahoo messenger a few nights before we left - but I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. We came back from NOLA and found a note in our mailbox, saying that she had tried to email but it hadn’t gone through.

Today I logged into yahoo messenger (something I don’t do very often) and found a bunch of messages from her - including contact information for a few relatives. I’m relieved that I’ll be able to get back in contact with her - she was one of those people I felt a connection with even though I didn’t know her very well - and I hope that she and her family are safe and happy.

dream.

I really need to update more. Since my last post I’ve started paddling (a kayak) and Em and I had a fantasmic time in New Orleans.

But now the dream…
My soul was a landscape, with a huge flowing river and beautiful mountains surround it. Off in the distance the sky was burnt red and I climbed over mountains to see what was happening. There was a huge furnace, larger than the mountains, and tens of thousands of people walking from the bottom of the furnace mountain to the top in order to drop a piece of coal the size of a fist into the fire.

Then they walked down to the bottom and started the cycle over again.

tragedy

I got some … expected but disappointing news today. It would have been awesome if it had worked out, but it didn’t, and I’m just a teeny bit disappointed. I’m not sure if it’s that, or that I’ve been having extended conversations about the earthquake in China with my Chinese acquaintances today, but I’m feeling particularly melancholy today.

One lady in particular showed me some pictures she had come across. “I cry every time I see pictures of it”, she said apologetically. She showed me this one after I told her that I thought her government handled the disaster much better than my government (and yes, it made me cringe to say that - I’ve never felt like the government was something I had any say in) handled Katrina - a disaster of much smaller proportions.

A day or so ago, I spoke with a Chinese friend about her life growing up. She is an older woman who was “sent to the country” during the Cultural Revolution. (Her parents were intellectuals who also ended up in the camps, however she was young enough to be ‘trained’ in the ways of Mao so she was treated a little better than her parents.) She told me of working in the rice fields during that time, and of the 1976 Tangshan Earthquake. A dam was weakening upstream of the village where she was staying, so she was evacuated to higher ground while soldiers worked through the night with sandbags. “There were so many people,” she said, “so many that there was no room to sit down, so we stood all through the night alongside the mountain”. “I wasn’t scared - it was exciting! They told us if we heard three BOOMS that the dam had broke. We heard one BOOM, then a little later another BOOM. But the third boom never came.”

She thinks the US is the best country in the world. “In China, we had bread. Here, you have bread, bread, bread, bread, so many types of bread!”.

These conversations put that very small disappointment I had today into perspective.