lauradi7dw

Living in not quite so much ignorance now

2026-05-05T13:08:53Z

Someone on twitter pointed out that the police murders of students at Jackson State was only 11 days after Kent State. Not exactly comparable - police, not national guard troops, other stuff going on, but can be held in the same part of one's mind. I didn't remember it. I am not sure I ever knew about it. Now I do, and you can too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_State_killings

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They're still dead (in Ohio)

2026-05-04T12:08:32Z

https://lauradi7dw.dreamwidth.org/953946.html
and many other years. For some reason I still fixate on that.
I am grateful that snipers haven't been sent to remove Guido Reichstadter* from the Frederick Douglass bridge but a point about Kent state was that the dead students weren't even protesting (or not all) - just walking across campus. It was like the Boston Massacre, in that the occupying troops were on edge and there had been what might be considered provocation (thanks, John Adams) but passersby were killed.

* https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/crime/person-climbs-frederick-douglass-memorial-bridge-top/65-30e5359e-9815-4d1b-a672-f932deaf6615

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forgot to mention yesterday

2026-05-04T00:51:56Z

Similar to the first Saturday of May in the past, after doing all the day's things including Somerville open studios, I got almost home while there were still fifes and drums playing in the park, although the group had dwindled to about a dozen folks by the time I got there. Still cool.

https://lauradi7dw.dreamwidth.org/820311.html

We haven't switched to sword for the summer yet this year. In fact it seems like the weather hasn't switched to summer either. It keeps going into the 40s at night, although flowers are busting out all over.
I did buy a drum I hardly ever practice.

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Did we know that Ask Jeeves was still around?

2026-05-03T10:30:27Z

The site shut down on May 1st, after 30 years. Huh.

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Art made with paint

2026-05-03T02:10:08Z

I often quote Ellis Marsalis, responding to someone who didn't like jazz and who said "I know what I like." EM: "You like what you know, and you don't know much."
I did a whole post about this in 2020, with some instructive remarks from bitterlawngnome.
https://lauradi7dw.dreamwidth.org/619636.html
But I'm still going with my gut reactions, years later. I have decided that I have a scale
1. Actively dislike
2. neutral
3. That's nice, but I probably won't remember it
4. I like that
5. I like that so much that I will go back to the museum sometime to see it again
6. I would like to buy that so I can see it every day (and maybe touch it)

I went to the Tampa Art Museum on Monday (many concert-goers were also spending the day Namjooning
https://lauradi7dw.dreamwidth.org/845822.html so I was not alone). I liked most of what I saw. I learned a lot about the innovative ceramic techniques of Jun Kaneko. I learned about local artists. I took picture, and made mental notes.
This 1970 painting by Alma Thomas would be in category 6, except one doesn't even consider buying something from a museum's permanent collection. My photo doesn't do it justice, of course. I liked it up close. I liked it from across the room, at a slant.

As I mentioned, today was one of the days of Somerville Open Studios. I had not before been to the multi-person studios near the East Somerville T stop. The first building I entered had a lot of art in category 1. A lot of them were nudes. I don't object to bare skin, but in some I didn't like the paint colors and I thought most of them (by many artists) were ugly. But there were a few things I liked, and there was this, by Junggyun Park, that might almost get to category 6 in a more plausible way. I didn't actually ask the price, and it wasn't marked. I didn't like all of his stuff, but a few. I chatted with him about this. These are shrimp from his imagination/memory. There were not real shrimp posing, which was one of the things I asked. He had a smudge (maybe charcoal from sketches?) on his nose. I successfully fought the urge to wipe it off.

Another one that I liked (would be category 5 if it were in a museum) is this, by Zach Faugno-Teig. Why do I really like this one but find all his other stuff (on display and on his website) to be meh, at best?

I liked everything on display by Pauline Lim at Brickbottom*, including not just the paintings but the note on her door (a special dispensation to wear shoes in the room, due to the occasion), her living quarters, and her corsets. I texted Flo, offering to buy one of the paintings for the children, but we decided they're good without expensive art at this time.
I came away with a couple of postcards.
https://pauline-lim.pixels.com/

I suppose it would do me good to figure out why I feel the way I do about individual pieces of art, but for the time being, I'm OK with vibes.

* https://brickbottom.org/

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Possibly useful maps?

2026-05-02T10:49:36Z

Somerville open studios this weekend. Someone by the river gave me a paper map yesterday. She and I agreed that paper might be the best way to go, but there's stuff online, of course.
https://www.somervilleopenstudios.org/
I am not going to try to coordinate with the trolley. Person-at-the-river kept pointing to the map and insisting that Porter is the best T station to use, even as I kept poking the Green line stations depicted and saying it would work best for me. I hope it doesn't rain much. I'm not planning to buy art, just feel guilty about not buying art.

Outdoor restaurant seating in Boston for the summer. A deliberate dearth in the North End. The city thinks streets are too narrow to give permits
https://www.boston.gov/departments/small-business/outdoor-dining-program#map--814496

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I belong there

2026-05-02T03:05:23Z

At a BTS concert with thousands of other fans of many colors and ages. Me looking like me, with a mask and a cooling cloth and badly spread sunscreen (also a custom-printed t-shirt suitable for the occasion that is not visible in the photo).

By the Charles River at dawn on May Day, continuing my streak that has gone on since 1978 (the event itself started in 1974, but I was in NC on May Day 1974-76 and Delaware May Day 1977).
This is a twofer - I have been hanging out in English traditional folk music/SCA-adjacent spaces for my whole adult life. But I'm not the only one - there were eight bellringers at the gathering this morning, including some of the Morris dancers.

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Did I know that acts of congress had secondary titles?

2026-05-01T12:39:32Z

Like Shakespeare ("Twelfth Night, or what you will") or Gilbert and Sullivan ("Iolanthe, or the Peer and the Peri"), the Voting rights act is "An act to enforce the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States."
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/voting-rights-act

So it has to be constitutional, right?

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My favorite version of this song

2026-05-01T12:01:02Z

Explanation of how Steve Goodman came to write the concluding verse at about 2:00

David Allen Coe, gone at 86. I don't think I would have liked him as a person, but that isn't required.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Allan_Coe

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phooey (concert adjacent)

2026-04-30T00:34:44Z

I typed out a very long concert and art museum report but did it right in the composing window here instead of as a document that I frequently saved. I did something or other that deleted the whole post. I couldn't get it back through the history. I'm not going to do it again right now.
I'm just going to put this link here. One of their new songs includes four lines of an old traditional folk song. Have tens of thousands of people including me singing along on Sunday evening in someone's fan cam video (but not mostly the members, who were listening to the crowd)
https://youtube.com/shorts/YmMSKNrqcJM?si=aciiiGrSCIOkDOg6

Have this one too, which is focused on Jimin but gives a view of all the goings-on with the backup dancers at the time
https://youtube.com/shorts/FU-ZwHRdhZA?si=-GkmjSmQQCyGsXuv

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John Roberts must be basking in self-adulation right now

2026-04-29T18:36:43Z

Justice Kagan:

"I dissent. The Voting Rights Act is—or, now more accurately, was—'one of the most consequential, efficacious, and amply justified exercises of federal legislative power in our Nation's history.' It was born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers. It ushered in awe-inspiring change, bringing this Nation closer to fulfilling the ideals of democracy and racial equality. And it has been repeatedly, and overwhelmingly, reauthorized by the people's representatives in Congress. Only they have the right to say it is no longer needed—not the Members of this Court. I dissent, then, from this latest chapter in the majority's now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act."

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I watch other stuff too

2026-04-29T10:54:34Z

Watch is especially the word for this. Thanks to the rec from Derek Guy on twitter for the part that starts at about 4:30. I am amused by the name Yung Lean, which looks Chinese to me, but presumably is meant to be a bad spelling of English. His actual (Swedish) name is Jonatan Aron Leandoer Håstad.

I'd like to hear this on a Depression-era 78. It's good on youtube, though.

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update on #18 (concert adjacent)

2026-04-28T23:32:40Z

A week ago I was told that #18 needed to go.
https://lauradi7dw.dreamwidth.org/1048278.html
I called the periodontist. Wednesday they called to say they'd had a cancellation for the next day (Thursday, two days before I was going to fly to Tampa). My Thursdays often involve driving a friend to Dana Farber (and hanging out with her for the day). We agreed that the tooth opportunity was important, so I was with her for much of the day and then a different friend drove her home. I had looked at the standard guidance for post-extraction. The top thing was "don't fly for two weeks." * I assumed that my appointment would basically be a checkup to see what she thought she could do. Nope. She and the assistant were planning to remove the tooth. I pointed out the no-flying thing and said that I would be flying four times in those two weeks. She waved it away, saying that it's more of a problem with upper teeth. #18 was on the bottom. She gave me a few minutes to consider. I called Flo, who said that if the expert said it would be OK, go ahead. I agreed (with Flo) and agreed (to the procedure). It took about an hour. She prescribed a week of amoxicillin and a medicated rinse (you're not supposed to swish - you tilt your head and let it pool up around the wound for 30 seconds twice a day). I was told to eat mush food for a couple of days, no nuts for a while (a major part of my diet, so that has been hard), and chew on the right side only for quite a while. I don't like the idea of unnecessary antibiotics, but I was going to be far away and it would be a weekend, so I went along with it. I definitely didn't want an infection. When I got to Tampa I bought a tub of yogurt to try to keep some gut flora going.
I told the periodontist that I was going to a BTS concert but would try not to scream. She earnestly told me to scream all I wanted. (I only screamed a little bit). They recommended icing my face and taking ibuprofen. I iced for a day and did the ibuprofen for three. The dissolvable sutures have started partly dissolving. One of them fell out earlier today. I am not done healing yet but am hopeful. I plan to invest in the implant.

*other things on the don't do list I don't do anyway, like drink alcohol or smoke or use a straw

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How many posts can I do in a day?

2026-04-28T19:40:54Z

When Flo was about seven, we went to Hawaii for a week. She kept a journal. Each day had a drawing, a description, and she summed it up by finishing "It was fun."
I went to Tampa (and environs) for three days and nights. I saw Arthur's aunt, his sister, BTS, 60 thousand other fans, and an art museum. It Was Fun. I have mentally composed three posts. Sometime soon...

In the meantime, I would like to say that yes, I too have some conspiracy theories about the WHCD shooting.
https://www.npr.org/2026/04/27/nx-s1-5801423/correspondents-dinner-shooting-unleashes-conspiracy-theories

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Sabastian Sawe!

2026-04-26T12:29:15Z

Sub 2 hour marathon. Fancy shoes, pacers for much of the race, and good weather, but still.
https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a71127166/sabastian-sawe-sub-2-marathon-world-record-london/
An amazing thing is that the person in second place, Yomif Kejelcha, also broke two hours. There was a real race between them toward the end.

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I don't think it's quite that simple

2026-04-24T11:39:34Z

>>We're going to spend the rest of our lives learning over and over that it was all just an elaborate stock market grift<<

- John Fugelsang

I guess it might be almost true about strikes on Iran, because it has become clear that leaks are happening so that specific insiders can profit on it. If he's talking about the Trump administrations in general, it leaves out the solid foundation of white supremacy, and Trump's hatred of everything that is good about the United States. He ran in 2016 on the idea that everything was bad and should be burned down. This time he's really managing to do it, despite being asleep (literally) in many meetings.

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RIP Twinkletoes

2026-04-23T23:33:37Z

https://www.npr.org/2026/04/23/nx-s1-5797482/michael-tilson-thomas-dead

Friends were in the Tanglewood festival chorus in the late 1970s. The version of TT they used was Twinkletoes, not Tilson-Thomas. What a goofy thing for me to remember after five decades. As usual, fuck cancer, especially glioblastoma.

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I'm not easily bored, but...

2026-04-23T00:44:38Z

RFK jr. said in a hearing that "President Trump has a different way of calculating percentages. If you have a $600 drug and you reduce it to $10, that's a 600% reduction."
I am not great at percentages, but even I can tell that that is wrong, and besides, we don't get to fudge to make percentages be what we want.
Chris Kluwe on Bluesky pointed out that one needs math to play Path of Exile. I looked to see what sort of game it is. It is the sort of game that looks so tedious to me that I only made it 26 seconds into the trailer. I still play Duolingo (which is clearly a game) but I can't think of any other computer/phone game I'd care to play besides maybe Tetris for a few minutes. I did wordle for several months when it started. A friend showed me connections, but I'm not going to take up anything like that either.

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I finally did the other end of the process

2026-04-21T22:47:25Z

in 2012 (!) I posted about helping to harvest potatoes at the Interfaith garden
https://lauradi7dw.dreamwidth.org/318368.html

Today I planted potatoes in about the same place. The procedure is pretty simple - dig a trench, cut actual potatoes (with sprouts if possible), put the halves cut side down in the trench about 10" apart, cover with some (not all) of the dirt that came from the trench. I was interested to learn that different potato varieties have different growing duration, so there are three rows that will mature at different times.
It was easier than harvesting them, and easier than weeding, which I don't like doing anyway, because I have the emotional thought that if a non-invasive plant wants to grow, who am I to disagree? I am more ruthless about invasives.

As I worked I was thinking about the kdrama "The Potato Lab," following researchers at a potato research lab. I wouldn't really recommend spending your time on it, but while some of the characters were interesting, while I was watching it I gradually found myself mostly engaged in worrying about the potatoes themselves - there was a storm that harmed the greenhouse. The corporation that funded the research was going to pull out. Stuff like that.

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f-ing teeth

2026-04-21T18:48:52Z

I already have an implant for tooth #19. Today (during my cleaning!) the crown on #18 popped off. Upon inspection, a piece underneath was cracked due to decay (which did not show up on the previous x-ray) and what I have now is the root canal fake roots under the gum plus a few spiky bits sticking up. The tooth has been declared unsalvageable. I was planning to go to the periodontist who removed #19, but the dentist and hygienist think I may need a dental surgeon. I have left a message with the periodontist that I used before, asking if she can squeeze me in for a brief inspection just to say "nope, I can't deal with that" or "no problem, but my appointments are backed up for months." Before either specialist does the removal, I will have to decide if I'm getting an implant or just leaving the space empty. The price difference between implant and empty space would be about $5000. If I leave it empty, #15 would have nothing to chew against but otherwise it wouldn't be too problematic.

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the exercise plan

2026-04-20T01:57:47Z

I ran/walked (in 1:30 to 0:30 intervals) in the Lexington 5 mile race yesterday, finishing in 58:54, faster than I expected. The conditions were good - in the 50s and overcast. I only ran the first two miles masked. I definitely got lungs full of pollen, I hope nothing else bad. I don't guess I could be ready to run Mount Wachusett in a month (the race is 10K, so 1.2 miles farther, and a mountain, not rolling hills). My plan is to get to that distance anyway, probably not much more. From home to the far end of the trail in the Minute Man (sic) NHP nearby is about that distance but then I would have to get back, so closer to half-marathon length to do the RT.
I have (most days) been rowing for ten minutes in the morning.
I (most days) do a minute and a half plank.
I plan (but usually don't follow through) to increase the duration of swinging around a 20+ pound dumbbell to get my strength up for playing the jing.
When I don't forget, I squeeze stress things (neither of them actual balls) to improve my grip, which is terrible.
Continue with tap and Tai Chi and ringing and using walking as transportation some.

The other running thing that I want to maintain but don't do focused practice on is getting from the Red line platform to the busway in about a minute. I did it today, thinking I was about to miss the bus, but the bus actually was ten minutes late, so I could have casually ridden up the escalators to get to street level and had time to spare. Or running to catch the outbound train at Charles/MGH, but that is more complicated because it requires good luck with the crosswalk light. Or running from train level to busway at Harvard. I think those are my main occasions for sprinting.

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This could have been predicted. This could have been prevented.

2026-04-20T01:17:39Z

https://lexobserver.org/2026/04/18/deadly-police-shooting-in-lexington-saturday/

This was the second time in four years that a police officer shot dead someone doing threatening things with a knife in Lexington. The claim was that they tried twice to get the knife away. What did they try? In this case it was an officer from Wilmington, not Lexington, who killed him, but many of the neighboring police forces practice shooting at a firing range at the composting facility on Hartwell Ave. One can hear them from the bike path. I usually yell fuck guns or something similar. It's my impression that they are trained to shoot to kill, not to shoot a knife out of someone's hand, but still, they could have tried something like that. Or gone after him with a baseball bat. I don't know, anything might have been better than killing him. In 2020 I wrote to all my town meeting representatives* asking that they make a local law that the Lexington police not carry firearms. Of the 9 folks, one sent a reply about how hard a choice it would be. Another said that there are crimes in Lexington, so they had to carry guns. I responded that I had lived in Lexington for decades and could not think of a crime that had been deterred by armed police officers. The two murders that came to mind would not have been prevented (but one of them might not have been a murder if we had had better dispatchers at the time. The victim bled to death before anyone was sent. That at least resulted in a much better 911 system). None of the other reps responded at all.
Lexington legally doesn't allow gas-powered leaf blowers, but a number of the landscaping companies ignore that. The enforcement mechanism is supposed to be that a neighbor of the yard being illegally stunk up calls the police non-emergency number, and the police show up (no sirens or flashing lights, since it's not an emergency) and issue a ticket. I hate gas powered leaf blowers with a fiery passion, but would I call the police? Heck no.

* unlike some New England communities, we don't have town meetings that include the whole populace. Instead, we have a representative town meeting system, with folks voted in by precinct. There are standing committees and such. It works fairly well. We also have a select board, school board, and planning committee that get voted on separately.

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A pronunciation flash

2026-04-16T23:21:26Z

I have heard several pronunciations of the new Hungarian Prime Minister's surname. Hungary is one of the family name first places, so as he would think of it, his name is Magyar Péter. How could people not vote for someone with a name like that? It would be like USians voting for Captain America, sort of. Wikipedia has the IPA pronunciation, but also helpfully says the family name is MAHD-yar. I suddenly thought about the gy combination. Years ago I was acquainted with two unrelated people whose surname was Nagy. One pronounced it nay ghee (which is to say, like clarified butter, not like gee whiz). The other person pronounced it Nahzh. This is America. They can do that.

Edit: How is Giertz pronounced Yetch? (I mean, see above, it is what it is, but goodness)
https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/imagining-and-building-with-inventor-and-youtuber-simone-giertz/

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I am not a war tactician

2026-04-16T11:18:02Z

Ukraine currently leads the world in drone bomb production, which includes several varieties. We're not talking about people doing the equivalent of making IEDs in the basement - this is major manufacturing. I keep thinking of the US in WWII, heavily bombing (day and night) munitions factories in Germany. Why isn't Russia doing that? It came at a huge cost in the lives of B17 bomber crews but I don't think Russia is too worried about having their fighters die.

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organizing some shoes and my health

2026-04-14T00:37:04Z

The studio in which I take tap classes is in the basement of an early 20th century public school converted into art/music/dance studios in the 1980s. It's not very accessible, it's not very efficiently heated, etc. Right now there are extensive renovations for accessibility, including tacking an elevator onto the back and doing all kinds of ramp things or something inside. A call went out to all the adult tap dancers (apparently not the teenagers or parents of little kids) to move stuff to be out of the way of the destruction/construction. I got the task of going through all the used shoes (available for sale cheap) to make sure they were in pairs and then consolidate them into big boxes to be moved into the POD. Previously they had been on racks, on shelves, and some other more random places. I ended up with a basket of un-mated shoes, which is sad, and two big boxes of matched shoes (tap, jazz), plus a separate box of little kid ballet shoes that someone else did. And the office staff person's personal shoes, which she managed to fish out in time. I am not a very organized person in general, but at a very basic level this was something I could cope with.
I walked home (about a mile) and stopped by the CVS to get a Covid shot (Pfizer). It is the same formulation as last fall, but I am of an age that I'm eligible every six months, so I went ahead. While there, I stared at the amazing range of sunscreen but left without buying any. Too many choices.

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