On this day . . .

. . . seven years ago, K was born. Happy birthday, sweetheart.

Photos from CONvergence

I’m not going to fill the blog with photos, but the link to my CONvergence 2009 walking-around-photos is here:

CONvergence 2009.

May Day 2009

Every year the Powderhorn Park neighborhood of Minneapolis, in collaboration with In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater holds a May Day Festival. I described this, over and over again yesterday, as a combination Pagan Beltane Ritual to bring back the Sun and a Socialist Demonstration of Worker Solidarity. Lest anyone think I am exaggerating, I quote from the Heart of the Beast website:

“HOBT’s MayDay Parade, Ceremony, and Festival has always been rooted in two important traditional celebrations—the celebration of the Green Root of Earth’s green energy rising in Spring, and the Red Root of human work energy rising from mind, heart and hand.

Our theme this year celebrates the merging of the red and green energies of the world. We cheer on the great merging of the human social justice movements with the environmental movements to remember humans as responsible relatives of the earth.

As we experience the failure of our economic systems built on debt, consumer waste, the theft and sickening of earth resources, we gather to rebuild an economic system that protects and sustains our Earth as a ‘Common Treasury for All.’”

My family and I went this year. It’s actually the first time in the eighteen years I’ve lived here that I’ve made it to the festival. But Tern and K were in the ceremony, singing/performing with One Voice Mixed Chorus. One Voice was apparently invited by HotB to participate, partially in honor of Pete Seeger’s birthday.

So here commences the photoblogging. Cavorter and I took, oh, about 250 photos. Of those I kept about ninety. One set is here. It’s of the various people we saw passing by, of the crowd, of the families, of kids and grandparents and scooters and dogs. The complete set of the ceremony itself is here. It contains photos I didn’t link to. Feel free to go look at that if you want to skip my commentary!

Photos follow!

Five-Inch Onagers

Onagers 09

My kids recently built onagers. It was cool.

Photos follow!

Photoblogging April 2, 2009

I see this around sometimes, the idea being you take pictures of your day and show them to your friends. Your internet friends, that is. Who don’t see the day-to-day of it all. I have two radically different sorts of days in my life — the days I am mostly at home, and the days I am mostly at work. Wednesday and Thursday are my days off, so this photo account is of my day off.

J and I homeschool. We both work, we both have hobbies, we’re poly and we both have other relationships. When I do this internet meme, when I do the photoblogging, I am always struck by how much these facts are evident in the pictures. My kids are ever-present. On work days, my work is ever-present. Our hobbies festoon our home and activities, the fact of homeschooling pervades the images, our partners and relationships and dates are either in the photos or present in other ways.

When I was younger I wanted to be Mysterious. I have to laugh at the photos of my day, at the presence of the things I value, the structure of my family’s life so clearly delineated. If I ever was Mysterious, I’m not anymore.

I present to you in all its mundane transparency, yesterday.

Love and adoration

1. My son, M, has been saving his allowance.

M is five and half years old. And M has . . . great difficulty, sometimes, maintaining a train of thought or focusing on a goal. Yet despite this issue, he has saved his money for six weeks to buy the Nerf N-Strike Longshot CS-6.

I’m so proud of him, working hard to achieve a long-term goal, I don’t care what he bought.

M loves this gun. He loves it. I just now told him to say goodbye to it and put it away so we can do school. I gave him five minutes. He hugged the N-Strike, and kissed it, and tucked it in, and made sure it knew when he would be back. It reminded me of nothing so much as me, saying goodbye to Barda at the door. “I love you, I miss you already, when will I see you again!”

2. In other news, Tern got two Sondheim musicals for cheap at a library sale — Assassins and Bounce. I can’t wait to listen. Even — no, especially — to Bounce. I love Sondheim’s failed musicals. Merrily We Roll Along is one of my favorites.

3. I’m a contributing editor at Fantastic Fangirls, as most of you know. Here’s today’s essay on Casey Bullocks-Femur from Strangers in Paradise: http://fantasticfangirls.org/?p=635