I mean, I think it’s cool. This l’il blog of mine was namechecked at 52 Projects. I’m a big fan, so I’m excited. Thanks, 52 Projects! Speaking of projects, I don’t really have one at the moment. I have an idea for a photo project that might involve collaboration with my son at some point during February, and there are plenty of things I need to get managed to a manageable state before I start my job at the end of February, but I’m not really WORKING on anything. OK, I’m working on a little something for Meghan the Glassblower and her awesome husband, and that has definitely been a project. But I’m waiting for my imagination to fully catch fire, to get engrossed in an idea, to get carried away. I can feel it coming on, because I have this new big project (work) to look forward to, but at the moment it’s kind of like when you open the new bottle of ketchup and hold it upside down and nothing comes out. You know? ***** What I’m watching: Upp Till Kamp (which means “How soon is now?” in Swedish? I think?) - a miniseries about life in a rock band in Goteborg, Sweden during the late 60s/early 70s. Totally great. When the Cue Club shuts down and there’s a riot, you’re just like, yeah! The kids are alright! You need a PAL player to be able to watch it, and I can’t knit while reading subtitles, but it really is good, plus the music is done by our friend Mattias Barjed (of Soundtrack Of Our Lives) He’s also in the miniseries, playing a crabby guitar player named Anders. I’m reading stuff, too, but that’s another entry. Maybe I’ll make new categories on the right hand side over there…

It’s been an excellent couple of weeks. I know, I was really vague when I was writing before and stressed out and all that, but the skies have definitely brightened (despite our sucky weather) and I can report the good news. I’m very excited about my new job (yes! I can keep a secret!), because one of my many tasks will be to run and develop my city’s very large, very popular farmers market (officially monikered Market at the Square - see photo in previous entry). The position opened late last summer and I went through the application/interview process in December/January. People who’ve known me for a long time know how I feel about the Market and food as a community-builder; I’ve also written about it here. To say that I’m looking forward to this job would be a HUGE UNDERSTATEMENT. I’m coming over, City Hall. Of course, this mean that I’ll be leaving the Foodbank in a couple of weeks. I feel quite strongly about the work the Foodbank has done, is doing, and will continue to do; I’ve worked with really great people who know how to get it done… and we have gotten it done under some crazy circumstances. They’ve been an inspiration, and I’ll miss them. So. There it is. The cat’s out of the bag, the beans have been spilled, etc. I’ll have more to say about local food and local markets and suchlike, but do me a favor - if you haven’t already gotten this information to me from past queries, talk to me about your farmers market, if you have one. Is it big? Is it independent or is it run by a municipality? Does it have a website? Does it have its own facility? Outdoor or indoor? Year-round or seasonal? What do you love about it? What could your local market be doing better? Are you a lurker here? SPEAK UP! The comments are right down there! ****** Last night Cody and I headed over to campus to hear writer/philosopher Derrick Jensen speak. I’ve been reading his work for about 6 years - Janna turned me on to his work - and never thought anyone would bring him to campus. Well, I was wrong. And thank goodness, because his talk was excellent and lasted for 4 hours if you included the v interesting Q & A. What’s Derrick Jensen’s thing, you ask? His schtick? His modus operandi? A good start would be to check out these premises of his two-volume opus, Endgame. Here are a few of my favorites, taken directly from the website linked above: Premise One: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization. Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims. Premise Five: The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they control—in everyday language, to make money—by destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called production. If those below damage the property of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of those below. This is called justice. Premise Seventeen: It is a mistake (or more likely, denial) to base our decisions on whether actions arising from these will or won’t frighten fence-sitters, or the mass of Americans. Premise Twenty: Within this culture, economics—not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself—drives social decisions. Pretty heavy stuff! But it’s what he says about hope that really resonates with me: False hopes bind us to bad situations and keep us from exploring possibilities… hope is a longing for a condition over which we have no agency. I know many folks disagree with this notion, and that’s OK. I find his work incredibly positive and energizing and… freeing. At any rate, we had an excellent time at the talk and I turned into a bit of a fangirl at the end, as you can see. You can read, if you like, more about what Jensen has to say about hope here, and you can read another great interview with him here. So - yeah! It’s been exciting. But I still haven’t done my seed inventory.

Details? Forthcoming.

I’ve been upgraded, but my sidebars and theme changes seem to have defaulted to what I had over a year ago. I’ll be playing with it on and off the next couple of days… it was time for some changes anyway. ETA: Changes, schmanges.

I love coming to this little corner of the house after the kids are in bed (or, in Cody’s case, doing teenagery things upstairs). I’ll have more soon, I promise.

[Has anyone else been having trouble with Gmail - both mail and chat functions? It’s been very unreliable for me since Saturday.] I go to the gym every day now except Saturdays. While it’s doing good things for my body (better endurance, better muscle tone) and better things for my psyche (there’s a lot of discipline involved in making oneself get up at 5:50 AM when it’s two degrees outside), it’s doing fantastic things for my brain chemistry. I’m calmer and better able to handle what gets thrown at me every day. Here’s Workout Playlist Three:





Lugengeschichte/Telstar Ponies Love Removal Machine (Peace Remix)/The Cult Nicky’s Sister/Flour Silence, Sea, and Sky/The Chameleons Great Release/LCD Soundsystem Policy Of Truth/Depeche Mode What Is Life/Black Uhuru Tomorrow Started/Talk Talk (London 1986) Search And Destroy/The Stooges So Far/The Soundtrack Of Our Lives Dub Fi Gwan/King Tubby Kitchie Kitchie Ki Me-O/My Midnight Creeps Entirely Made Of Wood/Love Cup The Bottle/Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson Hot Stenographer/Kinski Dream Police/Elope Black Man Land/Prince Far I Mr.Untitled/Union Carbide Productions High Expectation/Stereolab Bury Me/Smashing Pumpkins





[Music has taken such a back seat to events of the last year and a half. I can’t believe it, really, since it was my first love. Every man I ever dated, practically, was involved with music in some way (present man included). I worked in music, wrote about music, interviewed musicians, traveled with them, ran record stores, sold music to record stores, discovered talent and promoted it. I lived and breathed it, the industry, the three chords and the flats and sharps, the destroyed drum kits and the production decisions. I was there when…. When I’m on the treadmill (the treadmill! I sometimes still can’t believe it’s come to this, god) hearing the Smashing Pumpkins, it’s impossible NOT to feel very Chicago in 1991; when I hear Telstar Ponies, it’s impossible NOT to become the me I was in Chicago in 1995, embarking upon the most important relationship of my life with their music as a backdrop (it remains a favorite of ours today). I’m sure I look crazy on the cardio machines at the gym, my face constantly changing with the shuffling of the songs on the iPod.]





The last few weeks have been a trial; I’d like for work stuff to not be such a driver for me emotionally, but I struggle. I’m very sensitive to the vibes, and while I don’t usually let it bother me, when things reach critical mass it can really suck.





So I’m working on it. I’m looking forward to starting my seeds in late February. There’s some sunshine and warmth in my not-too-distant future, too. My little house is warm and relatively clean (Three cats. Enough said). The kids are healthy and happy and thinking for themselves in spite of their daily environment - she writes, he photographs. Jim and I have arrived at that place people always told us about where we can have dinner together alone while the kids are off doing other things; we’re talking more and working together and are in a period of deep closeness right now, having to do both with my improved mental state and our improved communication. Note to self: keep communicating with that guy.





Now playing: U2, Mysterious Ways ETA: I wonder when those first two Smashing Pumpkins records will be remastered so they sound like they did when I first heard them - big, expansive, etc. Maybe I’m just going deaf.

photo by Cody



I wish I had witty things to say, or informative things, or funny things. Nope. No incisive commentary here, no heartwarming anecdotes, no self-deprecating witticisms. No, I don’t really have much to offer up, other than the fact that my life right now revolves around things happening at my job, things happening with me personally (nothing bad, just uncertain), my family, and some of my extracurricular activities. I read blogs and see recipes I’d like to try, plants I’d like to grow. I look outside and wish I’d brought my camera (though I rely heavily on Cody’s photos now - why not? He’s SO GOOD!). There are letters to write and… I don’t know, stuff, mundane-yet-pleasant things that just seem so insurmountable right now because I’m just trying to get through this week, much less this month.



So here are a few small and basically meaningless observations:



The end of Veronica Mars Season Three (also the end of the series) SUCKED. I hated that last episode. Jim was sure we were missing a disc.



It was 68 degrees here yesterday. While I enjoyed it a great deal, somewhere deep in the recesses of my lizard brain I knew it was wrong, wrong, wrong.



I can’t help but note with glee that we’re 1/4 of the way through January, which means February’s coming, and when that’s over, it’s March! Spring! Planting!



I am tired of football on teevee.



By tomorrow at noon my time, I will have gotten something very important out of the way. By Thursday, an important decision having nothing to do with me will have been made and acted upon.



On Friday, I’m getting a massage.

Cody has a Flickr Pro account now. If you’d like to see his work, go here. I think he’s got some really stunning stuff. He took the image above a few days ago in Chicago.



I was telling J the Yogini tonight that January is shaping up to be full of situations. There’s something I feel badly about, there’s my heavy work load at the office, there are some big ups and downs and potential changes is on the horizon. Say what you will about the New Year bringing change and how great that is - I agree, I do - but all at once? It seems like this happens every year in January, this bunching up of situations, but every year I’m surprised by it anew.



This is how I survive Januaries, or at least this one: I just put my shoulder to the wheel, get to the gym every morning, get as much done at work, and be as present at home as I possibly can. January is for getting through.

Oh, 2008, why’d you have to come in so chilly-like? It was one solitary degree when I got up this morning to exercise. One. Degree. The car complained about being started and my feet complained about being outside at all in such weather, but we made it. It’s 5 degrees as I type.



I always thought it was fully corny, the way grownups went on and on about how time flies by (when I was a kid, Christmas seemed to take forever to arrive; summers boringly stretched on forever and ever and ever), but now I find myself quite humbled by how fast it all goes. I’ll be 40 this year; my baby will be 10. It’s been twenty years since I first cast my vote for a President, 16 years since I was pregnant with my firstborn, and three years since we bought our first house.



Damn!



It’s back to business, after a fashion, today - I’ll be doing some work from home this morning, running errands with Lilly in the early afternoon, nursing Jim back to health after a dental procedure later this afternoon, and getting a closer look at those seed catalogs after a thankfully simple dinner (you don’t want to know how much we ate during all the football yesterday). It’s time to start planning what kind of garden we need to grow this year - more flowers and medicinal herbs? Can I really manage a huge food load or should I scale back a little bit (I get all gung ho about it now, but I know myself too well to really believe that January’s boundless enthusiasm will carry over into August)? What about the fruit trees and the berry patches I keep insinuating I’ll be creating? There’s a gulf between what I think I want to do and what I know is feasible. Hm. I’m all about Dreaming Big and Thinking Positively and all, but in keeping with my desire to not give myself any ammo, I may drop a few things off the list, but food of some permanence (fruit trees/plants) is not one of them.



Tomorrow it’s back to work, and Cody comes home from Chicago. I’ve missed him, as I always do, but I’ll be especially glad to get him back. He warms the place up quite a bit.