I THOUGHT it was 7 AM when I woke up today. According to my alarm clock, it was. I was tired when I woke, but when am I not? I thought to myself “Quit being such a baby. Considering the time change, it’s actually past the time you would normally wake up…in fact, you’d have already worked half an hour by now!” Determined to start my new (later start) work schedule off right by taking a morning walk, I got out of bed, sleepily donned my walking clothes, and greeted the dark dawn. Then I looked at my phone clock. The one that automatically sets itself for DST. 6 AM. hahaha. Well, ok, then.
I’m kind of excited to see how this new schedule treats me. There’s something about a schedule change that is invigorating. For the next three months, I’ll have Saturdays off (where I used to have Sunday off) and my start time is two hours later. Of course, my end time is also two hours later, and with 10 hour days, that pretty much eats my entire day…but if I’m disciplined, and continue to get up just a little later than I used to wake up, I can pack some really good exercise, reading, and a nice meal into that extra two hours in the morning so it doesn’t feel like all I ever do is work. And having three days off in a week is really helpful. As is starting this new schedule immediately after DST, when I’m still used to time being an hour later than it actually is.
A lot of my friends are doing NANOWRIMO. I’m not. However, I’m hoping to have the content for the first issue of my zine done by the end of the month, so I can do the layout the first week of next month and get it printed by the solstice. If I can get the first issue out by January, I’ll be happy. I’m probably going to do a WePay campaign…or maybe even a kickstarter campaign…to raise money for it in advance, because I am broke. BROKE. BROKE. And both of the kids still need ALL OF THE THINGS.
Anyway, I’m pretty sure the name of the zine is going to be “Oyster Lexicon.” It will be an alphabet of the things I love, and the first issue will include letters A-F:
A-Artichoke
B-Birds
C-Chicago
D-Dancing
E-Eyeglasses
F-Feminism
It will be a full-color zine with drawings and hand-written text. And I’ll probably do postcards to go along with it, and sell them for a bit extra. Maybe if I do a kickstarter, I’ll throw the original art in as a perk. My hope is that I will at least break even, and maybe even make some extra for the next issue or just to have for various art projects I’d like to do, and the zine library.
The zine library, which I’m planning to open up at least 1-2 times a month with a reading room and discussion topics. I’m super excited to finally know people I can actually talk to for advice and planning for this, and hopefully we can bring the various zine libraries around Austin (two others that I know of – maybe more that I don’t) together to create some sort of database. What I’d REALLY like to do is have an IZDB – like the IMDB – a database that includes zines, zine producers, zine contributors, and zine topics, with everything cross-referenced and maybe even sample scans.
These are my big plans. So, it’s sort of like NANOWRIMO, only more like LOZILIMO (local zine library month) for me. ❤
A note to you: You are you. You are not the situation you are temporarily occupying. I love you for you. Not for what I can, nor in spite of what I cannot, “get” from you. ❤ Me
Fresh Bread.
Nothing much happened today, really.
There was breakfast and reading.
Oatmeal and Wendell Berry
And a long walk through the neighborhood, complete with horses at the school.
Horses in the schoolyard, part 1
Horses in the schoolyard, part 2
Vultures in the road
Vultures in the road
Interesting shadows.
Interesting Shadows
And, of course, pomegranates.
Pomegranates
I visited with a Score mentor about Education Never Ends. Business plan is the next step.
Met up with some superheroes at City Hall who were fighting to keep our elected representatives from transferring power over our publicly-owned utility to an unelected independent board…and also feeding people.
Fight the power, after eating a well-balanced and nutritious meal!
And came home to my messy house. I’m thinking I might at least try to clean the kitchen tomorrow. I’m also thinking my room needs some work – particularly if I’m going to be working from it. No reason why I can’t rearrange things so I have a window next to my desk. And a freaking treadmill.
I have a lot on my mind – most of which I probably won’t be able to talk about for a long time. It’s still sorting itself all out up there.
***
Some links for you:
“Exxon is and will always be a bully,” said David Turnbull, Campaigns Director of Oil Change International. “Instead of engaging their critics appropriately, Exxon uses its billions to hire high-priced lawyers to make scary-sounding but unsupported legal claims to suppress criticism. It’s a window into how they have preserved billions in taxpayer handouts for their industry for so many years.”
This is the second time Exxon has bullied this advertisement off the air. In February, Exxon sent a cease-and-desist letter to Comcast only hours before scheduled airings during State of the Union news coverage.
The resolution by the Oglala Sioux Tribe, which is a 1934 Indian Reorganization Act government, explicitly supports the traditional Black Hills Sioux Nation Treaty Council’s resolution approved unanimously on Feb. 18, 2012. The earlier resolution states: “The Great Sioux Nation hereby directs President Barack Obama and the United States Congress to honor the promises of the United States made through the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie treaties by prohibiting the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline and any future projects from entering and destroying our land without our consent.”
The traditional leaders’ resolution, argues against the dilbit pipeline on the grounds of international law, citing the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. http://www.indianz.com/News/2013/009206.asp
Meanwhile, the entire community of Mayflower, AR has been radicalized:
At this early stage of the game, real answers to what’s going on in Mayflower would be hard to come by, even if a mega-corporation wasn’t on the ground in full damage control mode, and local and county officials hadn’t largely ceded jurisdiction to them, with workers and Faulkner County deputies barring the public and media from the scene. The emerging picture, though — a picture that includes wildlife coated in oil, devastated ecosystems in ExxonMobil’s “restricted areas,” residents who say they are sick, and the still-ticking time bomb on the shores of Central Arkansas’s primary water source, Lake Maumelle, where the Pegasus Pipeline comes within 600 feet of the shoreline — might be even uglier than a neighborhood coated in crude. http://www.arktimes.com/arkansas/will-mayflower-ever-be-the-same-after-the-exxon-spill/Content?oid=2797633&showFullText=true
Here’s the lesson I keep relearning: We don’t control what other people think of us. Even if they are really, really wrong. Even if what they think of us is hurtful to them. Even if I fully accept another person’s shortcomings and difficulties – that’s no guarantee they will accept mine.
But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t accept other people…it just means everyone has their limits.
Love openly. Err on the side of kindness. It really fucking hurts to trust. I know. But trust anyway. Stay in touch with loved ones. Pay attention. STOP WORRYING. It really is true that within the margin of error and certain parameters, everything really does turn out ok. But don’t forget those who dwell outside of those parameters for whom things do not turn out ok. When taking risks, consider them, as well as yourself. Don’t confuse luck for skill. Don’t mistake circumstance for predestiny. Give more credit than you accept. Worry is negative goal setting. DON’T GET INVOLVED IN RELATIONSHIPS UNTIL YOU UNDERSTAND FULLY WHAT YOU ARE GETTING YOURSELF INTO. It’s not selfish to conserve your own energy, provided you don’t make promises you can’t keep while preserving that energy. Be nice to your mama.
Dude. That’s good advice.
Good energy (ar ar. SO sorry about that! I didn’t even realize that was there until I proofread, and I just can’t bear to remove it.) (By the way, The Tao of C told a pun-joke today that went like: If you don’t pet this kitty, it will be a cat-astrophe! Like Apocalypse Meow!” hahaha!) in the room today as I stood with representatives from a broad coalition of environmental, economic, and social justice groups in objection to the changes the Austin City Council proposes to make to Austin Energy. Namely, putting control of our public utility, as well as its assets, in the hands of an unelected board. In other words, transferring the LITERAL power out of the hands of the people. I was honored to stand among such a dedicated and committed group of people. I think the next few months are going to be very interesting in my life. I have a lot to learn.
City Council meeting this Thursday should be interesting. It’s estimated that the issue will come before the council between 5 and 7 PM, but that time is not set in stone. Childcare and food will be provided, for those who wish to join us (I say us, but I might have to be late) in opposing this change vocally and in numbers.
Clean Energy For Austin
On the way to that press conference, I ran into a client of the program I once ran. We stopped to smell flowers, and I convinced her to come to the press conference and hold a sign.
PJ Sniffing flowers.
Got my new glasses.
Please ignore my messy hair!
Got some hair dye. Had a good dinner…
Peanut tofu over a bed of sauteed collard greens
I’m writing perfect poetry
In my mind and disappears like smoke
and Tiny bursting dynamites of hope.
Tomorrow is jury duty and hair dying. ❤
***
I want you to think about this:
Vista Grande High School Principal Tim Hamilton ordered the school — with a student population of 1,776 — on “lock down,” kicking off the first “drug sweep” in the school’s four-year history. According to Hamilton, “lock down” is a state in which, “everybody is locked in the room they are in, and nobody leaves — nobody leaves the school, nobody comes into the school.”
“Everybody is locked in, and then they bring the dogs in, and they are teamed with an administrator and go in and out of classrooms. They go to a classroom and they have the kids come out and line up against a wall. The dog goes in and they close the door behind, and then the dog does its thing, and if it gets a hit, it sits on a bag and won’t move.”
While such “drug sweeps” have become a routine matter in many of the nation’s schools, along with the use of metal detectors and zero-tolerance policies, one feature of this raid was unusual. According to Casa Grande Police Department (CGPD) Public Information Officer Thomas Anderson, four “law enforcement agencies” took part in the operation: CGPD (which served as the lead agency and operation coordinator), the Arizona Department of Public Safety, the Gila River Indian Community Police Department, and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).
It is the involvement of CCA — the nation’s largest private, for-profit prison corporation — that causes this high school “drug sweep” to stand out as unusual; CCA is not, despite CGPD’s evident opinion to the contrary, a law enforcement agency.
“To invite for-profit prison guards to conduct law enforcement actions in a high school is perhaps the most direct expression of the ‘schools-to-prison pipeline’ I’ve ever seen,” said Caroline Isaacs, program director of the Tucson office of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker social justice organization that advocates for criminal justice reform.
This protest comes on the heels of TWAC, a weeklong gathering of almost 100 female and transgender activists to share skills and campaign information, and organize opposition to the prison-industrial complex. Prisons and immigrant detention centers, GEO’s primary investments, target poor people, people of color, and transgender individuals. As female and transgender organizers, we are more vulnerable to violence within these institutions. GEO has a clear record of human rights abuses within its facilities. https://earthfirstnews.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/twac-storms-prison-industry-giant-geo-group-hq-in-boca-raton/
A Tar Sands Blockader disrupted the Valero Texas Open in San Antonio this afternoon during the PGA golf tournament. Douglas Fahlbusch was a standard bearer for the event and used the opportunity to bring attention toManchester, a low income, predominately Latin@ community in Houston’s toxic East End where Valero operates a refinery that consistently violates EPA and TCEQ (Texas Commission for Environmental Quality) laws and regulations.
Once the tournament reached the 18th hole, Doug changed the sign, ordinarily used to display the players’ names and scores, to read “TAR SANDS SPILL. VALERO KILLS. ANSWER MANCHESTER.” He refused to leave the green and was dragged the entire way off the premises by police.
“Business as usual is over, between the BP spill, the current Arkansas spill, and daily life in Manchester,” Fahlbusch said. “Why won’t Valero tell the Manchester people what it is they are breathing every day?” http://www.tarsandsblockade.org/20th-action/
As is this:
ALLEN, OK – Tuesday, April 9, 2013, 9:00 AM – Oklahoma grandmother Nancy Zorn, 79, from Warr Acres, has locked herself to a piece of heavy machinery effectively halting construction on TransCanada’s Keystone XL toxic tar sands pipeline. This action comes in the wake of the disastrous tar sands pipeline spill in Mayflower Arkansas, where an estimated 80,000 gallons of tar sands spilled into a residential neighborhood and local waterways.
Using a bike-lock Zorn has attached her neck directly to a massive earth-mover, known as an excavator, which has brought construction of Keystone XL to a stop. Zorn is the second Oklahoma grandmother this year risking arrest to stop construction of the pipeline, and her protest is the third in a series of ongoing civil disobedience actions led by the Oklahoma-based coalition of organizations, Great Plains Tar Sands Resistance. http://gptarsandsresistance.org/2013/04/09/3rd-action/
Which explains the praise for the pipeline organizers in this article (complete with throwdown in comments):
The movement to stop the Keystone XL pipeline has gone far beyond what anybody at TransCanada ever could have envisioned when it was first proposed. At Platts’ The Barrel talk at the recent AFPM meeting in San Antonio, a panel of experts all had different views on whether the line would be approved or rejected in the coming months. Ask 10 people in the oil business and you’ll get 10 opinions. (Given the recent ExxonMobil spill in Arkansas, those 10 opinions today might be different than they would have been a week ago.)
But if the protesters lose, and Keystone XL gets an Obama administration OK, it certainly isn’t for lack of trying or organization. They’re highly organized, and they know exactly what they’re doing. http://blogs.platts.com/2013/04/07/golf-protest/
RT @ShelliWms: This is long…Just something I needed to say. I’d like to tell you about the REAL Texas:
I’ve spent the last 50 hrs watching… 4 months ago
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