elainegrey: Inspired by Grypping/gripping beast styles from Nordic cultures (Default)
Monday, April 3rd, 2023 03:41 pm
Good newses:

We've been generating solar energy since March 22nd! Unfortunately, because of reporting user interface suggesting our import & export to the grid numbers would be available, i assumed we were waiting for Duke Progress to connect. But no, it's been running. Yay! Meanwhile, Duke Power's interface for the smart meter is all FUBAR so it is hard to see the impact.

But yay, solar power!

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Blueberries, apples, blackberries, strawberries, mulberry, and the wild serviceberry are all blooming. The blueberries have been at it a while, as have the wild black cherries. I worry that the cold snaps we had hit at bad times for the blueberries, but there will be some berries, if the bees are evidence and there's no more cold snaps.

The apple in the front yard had been abused by someone right before we bought the house -- cutting off all the branches leaving trunk with stubs. This year it has many blossoms, "covered" relative to any time before. The Aunt Rachel tree in the back has one cluster of blooms. The other two trees, Johnson Keeper and Grimes Golden, don't seem to have any flowers. I know i planted them in a poor shady location, accepting i'd likely have few apples. But some?

I was looking at the mulberry, which had its first flush of leaves freeze-burned. Inside the first pair of leaves i looked at were also some flowers. Fingers crossed.

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Saturday evening i went up to Carrboro to hear my nephew play in his prog metal band. So very very very loud. But very cool to see him, even with the sort of dissonance of the high school senior playing with 30 year olds.

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Dad came over yesterday to help me plan the shed. My sister had shared how Dad had just ignored her telling him about W--'s gig Saturday morning and had gone back to talking about wone of the two women he's fixated on. At some point when Dad was talking to me about the women, i brought up the incident because it's part of the pattern that has been somewhat irritating. Admittedly, he'd come over to help me! But the self centered focus Dad has had for years and years .... well, i was blunt.
He wasn't exactly defensive. He did assert "Well if people aren't sharing, it's prying," but i'd also mentioned how he asks so many questions of strangers to engage with them. I don't know if there will be a significant change, although he immediately asked Christine a question out of the blue about assembling music from tracks after taking his leave. Points for effort, but somewhat performative. But yay, effort! Jeeze. If they had engaged with Christine or my brother's wife decades ago....

This morning i called to apologize. But he seemed to appreciate my comments. Sometimes i do think there are some people for whom nudges are too subtle, blunt might have been needed.

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Edward has a cold and has been sneezing since midday Sunday, appetite lost since Friday. Marlowe has sneezed this evening. I don't think this is correlated with my sense that i now have a cold. Fiddlesticks.
elainegrey: Inspired by Grypping/gripping beast styles from Nordic cultures (Default)
Monday, June 1st, 2020 06:28 am
I've just bought Layla F. Saad's Me and White Supremacy workbook. I'm happy to say all the copies at Powells were gone, as i imagine other people like me finding it hard to speak to the violence against black people that continues month after month.

https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/summer-2019/you-and-white-supremacy-a-challenge-to-educators

I found myself bemoaning "the divisions in the country" at meeting, and i realized as i said it how it painted over the part that distressed me. I realize it seems to underscore the violence against property and not the violence against specific people. "Divisions" was the shorthand i used to refer to the "them" in my mind: the white supremacists all geared up for a race war, but it can be just as easily interpreted as anyone else's us and them -- or the us and them someone believes i have in mind.

And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. -- Martin Luther King, Jr's 1967 "The Other America" speech at Stanford University


I was going to use the tag "white privilege" for this writing, but reflected on privilege's etymology from "private law." The injustice of racism is embedded in layers of legal practice in this country (where i include juries in the practice): it seems far beyond unwritten rules. I'll go with "White Supremacy" and take a step of being uncomfortable.

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Exhaustion in sourcing anything and everything -- is it environmentally just, racially just, just to labor? -- plus the COVID-19 risks.... Well, i suppose the choice to fold in my personal safety as a function is a privilege. Our plastics use has increased with the bagging choices. Weighing my safety against plastic jugs for water (or the reusable tank i filled at the market with the distilled water needed for Christine's cpap), we discussed getting jugs instead of going into the market. I should write the market and ask whether they can take a tank.

I did ask if they could take my LateJuly packaging. They used to have a dropoff, but, pandemic. I just checked with terracycle. You can purchase a box plus shipping plus sorting plus recycling for between 5¢ and 8¢ a cubic inch. I wonder how quickly we could fill the large box. I can also print a free label and mail the LateJuly bags at LateJuly's expense.

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The threshing session yesterday went well. A little hard to keep people talking about their own needs, wants, concerns and not going straight to solutions, but it more or less worked. There is definite interest in a hybrid solution although i don't think folks appreciate the logistical challenge of keeping a group meeting in person equitably connected with a group not in person. But we can discuss that when people get there.