darxus

This morning I checked section 3 of the eruv. At that point, it was flatly overcast, perfect for checking since there was no glare. I took a new route to work afterward: it turns out the 101 bus stops at the far end of the section. I hadn’t tried it before, but today, someone was waiting, so I figured it wouldn’t be an unreasonable time until the bus came. That got me to Sullivan, then I hopped on the new, revised 85 bus (that was almost the previous CT2, except much less express), which would’ve worked fine had there not been roadworks that involved a detour and extra traffic. Still, I got to work at a reasonable hour, and got to see some new-to-me murals, so overall, a win.

I’d forgotten I’d signed up for a training; it’s lucky they sent a reminder email. It was in person, so I got out of the office, walking halfway across campus to learn more about how to deal with various types of fires (pull the fire alarm, don’t try to stop it unless very confident (people are more important, so get out)), and, interestingly, don’t call 911, but the campus police: they have a direct line to the municipal fire department, which has locations nearby, so they can get to anywhere on campus in 4 minutes. 911 gets routed to Framingham (mid-state), then bounces back to the city, resulting in a 12 minute response time. We covered the various types of fires (flammable types of metal sound particularly hairy) and how to stop them. (But really, get out and let the professionals do it.) And then we went to the loading dock and each got to set off a BC extinguisher, which was very cool, and also LOUD, which I hadn’t expected. I feel like I got another adulting point.

I took a bit of a long-cut back to the office to get some food, and got to pet some grape hyacinths before I talked with my mom on the way (she’s off for an international adventure with one of my cousins).

I realized it was the end of the month but I hadn’t gotten a reminder email about giving blood, so I hopped over to MGH to donate (OK, I took the T, no actual hopping involved ;-P). It took waaaaay longer than usual: they’ve just switched (less than a week ago) from a paper questionnaire to tablets, and it is not yet a faster system. For one thing, when you need half a dozen pages to explain what to do on the tablets, the design of the interface is not good. After help from multiple folks, I got through it, and then it turned out that the answers hadn’t gotten sucked into the system, so the intake person had to redo it all anyway. And it’s also why the email didn’t come: this new system is… not yet optimized, shall we say? And none of the snacks were sugarless or gluten-free, other than the raisins, which I feel are ingredients, not snacks in and of themselves.

And so home to make some food, feeling like the day was far from wasted.

magid

I went to a lunchtime book talk at work today, with co-authors Aziz Abu Sarah and Maoz Inon talking about how they came to be working together towards peace in Israel (and hopefully around the world after that).

Maoz Inon told about how he was on the phone with his parents, who lived just north of the Gaza Strip, at 7:30a on October 7; they were in their safe room, and it was clear something was happening. Five minutes later, he couldn’t get through again, nor reach anyone from the community there until 4p, when he finally talked to a local, who told him his parents’ home had burned down and there were two bodies inside. He and his siblings arranged to sit shiva immediately. One of them (London based) asked the rest of the family to consider standing up for not retribution, but peace. It took days to get to the point of considering it, but they did.

Aziz Abu Sarah described growing up in Jerusalem, attending school at al-Aksah, never sure when something awful would happen. He described always going to school with an onion, because raw onion can shorten the effects of tear gas. His older brother had been arrested for throwing rocks, which he denied until tortured, and after a 10-month sentence, returned home, broken and ill, and ended up dying at just 19 years old. Aziz was 10. He avoided learning Hebrew in school, hating Israeli power, despite being required to learn it. He later realized that if he wanted to do more than wash dishes, he had to learn Hebrew, so he joined an Ulpan class where he was the only Muslim. And because the teacher saw his discomfort and made a point of treating him like another human, with dignity, he started to understand that there are people on both sides interested in peace.

They’d met briefly before October 7, enough to be FaceBorg friends, and that light connection grew into much more when Aziz reached out to Maoz offering condolences after the death of his parents. They started talking, and both had committed to working towards peace, with a goal of 2030 (!). Their organization is InterAct, and they’ve written a book together, The Future Is Peace. The talk included more details about the coalition building they’ve done (with other peace groups in Israel, meeting with Congress (2 years ago 3 senators were with them (Warren, Sanders, one other); now it’s 40), meeting with the Pope, carrying an Olympic torch together in the most recent games, etc.), and the hope that each of us will choose to work towards peace.

Thanks to either a local bookstore owner or my employer, there were free copies of the book available (I hope it’s well written), plus a ‘boarding pass’ card for “global citizen”, on flight “Hope Airlines, flight 203”, destination “Peace” which included an Arabic poem, and the English translation.

Travel Tickets

The day I’m killed,
my killer, rifling through my pockets,
will find travel tickets:
One to peace,
one to the fields and the rain,
and one
to the conscience of humankind.

I beg you my dear killer: don’t
Ignore them. Don’t waste such a thing,
But take and use the tickets. Please
I beg you to go traveling.

- Samih al-Qasim (translated by AZ Foreman)

magid

I know multiple folks who’ve been bitten by ticks and ended up with alpha-gal*, an anaphylaxis-level allergy to mammal-based foods, which sucks mightily (ticks and mosquitos have their place in the web of life and all, but they’d be my first two to vote off the planet if I had the option). And since folks often don’t know they’ve been bitten until they have a reaction, and like other tick-borne diseases (Lyme…), can be difficult to figure out, it’s extra awful.

None of which goes through by brain first when I hear “alpha-gal.” No, instead I ruminate on how it would be fun to read the adventures of AlphaGal and her sidekick, BetaBoy! I still haven’t decided whether these would be superheroes with powers tbd, or ones whose adventures focus on linguistics and various alphabets (perhaps for kids? or a much more clever person would be able to write them for adults?).

* link to Wikipedia; it’s awful that the CDC doesn’t feel like a reliable source these days.

sorcyress

Iiit's still NEFFA!

Gosh I am suddenly weirdly tired! I can't imagine why this might be! What could've possibly caused this?

Actually, the thing I want most right now is like. Playing video games or something silently by myself. It's been a great day but also a _very_ social day. I have had so many wonderful discussions! Short and long, in snippets across a set or hours wandering and hanging out. Real damn good!

(Highlights include a very rewarding bit of convo about the ways SCD is a little too insular sometimes with Jenny Beer, an extremely illuminating fun fact of learning that the concept of clothing that doesn't fit the people wearing it is even more recent than I thought (it's a post WWII factory conversion thing!), and a glorious two hours hanging with Alexander and Willow, including an amazing reading of the most nonsensical academic paper abstract that has ever been written.)

In terms of actual official things I did:

*I started the day by wandering down to Observe the Morris dancers! Muddy River has a zillion people I know on it! WhistlePig has fewer people I know but as I mentioned offhand to one of the other people watching, it has an extremely high proportion of people I have Big Idle Crush Feels For, which makes a lot of sense for the dedicated queer team. I had good morning chats with bunches of people and also got to see an *extremely* new babby, just two weeks out of his mother and small and neato!

*I managed to miss all of the pre-noon things that were otherwise on my "maybe I'll do that" list, but I hung with Lucretia some and had a lovely-but-sad chat with Val about the state of public school education (grr). I did manage to wander back up the hill in time for Susan dG's "Jane Austen's Squares" session, which surprised me slightly by being not Regency (the period in which Austen's books are set) but in fact late baroque (the period Jane would've been dancing as a 15-20 year old!) It's been a hot minute since the last time I've been in one of Susan's classes, and I found it very pleasant to realize just how much my teaching style is cribbed from hers. (I don't know that anyone else would see the parallels, but yeah, there's some stuff there about how to make hard dancing accessible).

*From there was lunch (more siopao!) with Justin dC and Charis, then Justin and I realized we were both interested in Scott Higgs and Jenny Beer's panel on "Better Dancing is More Fun!". Which like. If that wasn't already inherently enough to catch you, they also had Joanna Reiner give a 3-5 minute spiel about some of the good stuff she intentionally does for her floors. MORE AMAZING TEACHERS OKAY?! It was really good vibes!

*Had a half hour of chatting time with friends, where I confirmed a band for my GenderFree SCD class party in June (yay! This was starting to get slightly urgent! I also confirmed a band for the 2027 party, which I hope will be a Bigger Shindig¹!). I also exchanged Important Baby Gossip with Beth, which was extremely fun to do!

*Off we all went to the beginner SCD session, which was quite well taught (nice job Charles!) and also extremely beginner-filled, in a way that feels heartening and also makes me more annoyed at myself that I forgot to bring my flyers. Sigh! But it was fun! And then I didn't bother to change my shoes, just swapped sides of the hotel for the regular-type SCD, except I forgot that the two events were on opposite of the "sometimes events start on the hour and sometimes they start on the half-hour" thing that NEFFA does, which means I danced three _very_ good waltzen first! Okay fine, technically what Bret and I did was some variety of tango, but Monya and I did an _incredible_ Waltz with lots of lead switching and intensity and good non-verbal communication and it felt soooo goodoooo! And Teah was excited to let me lead, which felt good --leading waltzes was like the single dance skill I really felt like I _lost_ during 2020/2021, and I'm extremely pleased to feel like it has come back some.

*SCD was fine! Howard made some _wild_ choices dance-wise, but he fit the pieces together pretty well. And then I found myself outside chatting with Alexander and Willow, and I guess checking the timestamps on the schedule, that's then what I did from about 6:30 until 10. Huh. Nice job!

Ben stopped by at one point which was Very Good, and Tuesday joined for a bunch of it, and it was really lovely. And we did eat dinner-type things, and I did not successfully buy them gelato this time around, but that will be a future adventure maybe.

*Anyways, I had a hard cutoff of 10 because that was Michael Karcher's "Stream of Contraness" 41-dance hash. To Torrent, natch! Apparently they all signed up together and everything, which is very sweet. I happened to encounter a wild Anna Rain, at exactly the right time to ask her to dance and she said yes and I said "but I prefer not too wildly flourishy" and she said "oh yes that's perfect" and it was SO GOOD!

And then I never made it back to the hotel half of the festival like I intended. I chatted merrily with Keira and Charis and Annie and then with Hannah and Ian and then saw Sammy-the-new-musician-we-like-so-much-at-Scottish who was bubbly and enthusiastic and excited to ask me to do the last contra. How could I say no to that? We did an extremely chaotic and energetic dance and it was grand! (oh to dance with nineteen year olds!²)

I wrapped with a lovely conversation and walk with Apollo, and then it was time to drive back to the AirBnB! The fomo is real, but counterpoint, it's incredibly valuable to not accidentally stay up singing until three AM when I've got rehearsal at 9 tomorrow. Speaking of which...off I go to bed, goodnight!

~Sor
MOOP!

1: This year is "Flights of Fancy" (Emily and Dirk Tiede, Beth Murray) and next year will be Torrent (Sarah and Ross Parker, Nadia Gaya). Hellll yes for all these musicians!

2: I am, first of all, too young to be any sort of "gosh did I have that much energy when I was that age" and also yes _yes I did_. And let's be real, yes I _do_, because there was a very good climbing tree at the NAFest a couple weeks ago, and weirdly no one else was in it at any point.

sorcyress

Iiiiit's NEFFA!

I've spent most of the week fucking around in Providence and doing nothing, which has been quite lovely and probably necessary (it's always many bad sign when I don't do anything for a week off) but now I am pleased and excited to be at NEFFA! I am here on my usual performer badge, but that's not really relevant until Sunday morning, so tonight was just lots of wandering around and stopping every fifty feet to say enthusiastic hellos to another person I know and adore.

In terms of official scheduled things that weren't just hanging out and chatting with people or working on my knitting¹ or eating extremely delicious SioPao² here is what I managed tonight:

*Charis and I did the contra medley together! The sound balance was a little off, which is mostly a shame because the band was _phenom_. Whirlwind is Alex Cumming and Jeff Kaufman and my beloved SCD brother Stephen Thomforde. Fuck yes contra dancing to bagpipes! The last dance in the medley was Michael Karcher calling a dance called The Carousel --a rare instance of me liking something enough to actually ask what it was! I should do this more often with contra dances, really³. The progression was a left hand allemande for the Robins that changed the focus between hands-four _really_ marvelously!

*I loitered outside long enough to hear the tent pub-sing going through Rattlin Bog, and decided it was just chilly enough that I would prefer the indoors, so instead I went up the hill and attended...

*Flat Footing Percussive Waltz! What a great concept for a workshop! I like waltzing and I like percussion! I was sadly disappointed by the ratio of saying things to doing things, which is especially frustrating because I did enjoy and appreciate the things that were being said! But it was much less physical lessony than I would've liked and we only got through like 2.5 fairly simple variations.

We did end with time for one freestyle "practice what we've shown you" and I made enough eyes at Susan dG to get to dance with her, which is always fairly delightful. She's got a cross-step workshop on Sunday that I am hoping to go to, it's been ages since I've done either one of her basics classes or cross-step.

I think that was it! I rounded out the evening adjacent to the hotel-bar-pub-sing and talking with new-friend Manya and newer-friend Leee! I mostly didn't sing, but it was very nice to listen to!

I am looking forward to the many things I have circled for tomorrow (including what sounds to be an excellent late-night contra sesh called by Michael and played by Torrent! And lots of Scottish Country Dancing! And getting to observe the Morris Dancers! And other good things!)

I hope you are well, whether you are dancing, or singing, or just resting at home this weekend. <3

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Several weeks ago, at demo team, I was working on something in between dances. I happened to have hit a frustrating point just as Cathy brightly asked "oh, what are you making?"

"Mistakes."

Anyways, I think about that response a lot. I'm very proud of it, even though it's not necessarily a good conversation continuer.

(this footnote is relevant because among other problems, I found that my scarf had slid mostly off one needle earlier today so I had to get it back on and then I did a row and then I realized I had knit when I should've purled so I had to tink it and recount the stitches about thirty times and augghhhhh. But I prevailed! It is good! And soon I will run out of this _awful_ particular yarn and be able to do something soothing and nice like the ten inches I did of lovely blue seed stitch.

2: I asked the Filipino food booth "do you still have your, uh, steamed buns" and they said yes and a very enthusiastic Big Mom Energy woman explained how it was pronounced and confided that her daughters (helping work for the first time apparently) had been calling it a _dumpling_) and I thanked her for the correction and also it was _so good_ damn.

3: On the one hand, I really don't have the time to become a contra caller as well. On the other hand, the barrier to entry is _much_ lower (you just need a kitchen and some suckers) and I would probably be good at it, and it would be _unbelievably funny_ to get good enough that I could eventually get hired at ESCape as their contra caller. I mean, hell, if I'm gonna invest in The Bit I should do this with ECD as well.

This entire paragraph is a joke, but it would be nice to collect the names of good contras and ECDs I like to go with my collection of SCDs.

magid

Today is Earth Day, and tomorrow the weekly (USian) drought monitor updates (link is to the whole US; I generally look only at MA). We’re still in drought, albeit not as badly as some weeks ago, with slow progress as we do get some precipitation.

I was thinking, though, that while we can’t do much about what the weather brings us, there are some things that humans do control that can mitigate (or not), in how we use our spaces.

One example is that paved parking lots mean the skywater we do get is runoff, rather than being absorbed where it lands. If too much of the environment is paved, that can mean flash floods even when the absolute amount of water wouldn’t predict that. I saw that up close and personal years ago when a sudden storm left parts of Somerville underwater (I slogged through water that was half-way up my calves to get to my volunteer shift that day), while Cambridge, which has more unpaved space, was totally fine. (Some parts of Somerville tend towards having the spaces around various houses and triple deckers paved, so there’s no yard maintenance. Which means other challenges instead.)

Another example is how so many places have ‘drained the swamp’ (or other types of wetlands). Fewer mosquitos tend to be a win, but really, there’s a reason for wetlands in a lot of places: they act as sponges that can absorb a lot of water if necessary/available, then release it slowly over time, so it all gets somewhere useful.

A third example is that when soil is reduced to dirt, there’s a much greater possibility of flooding and erosion, because the soil has been degraded so much (from pesticides, fungicides, even commercial fertilizers, also repeated ploughing that disrupts many underground systems, etc.) that it’s more an inert growing medium, rather than a dynamic biosystem with not only plant roots, various underground dwellers (earthworms among them), and microbes, but also mycorrhizal fungi that make soil healthy and able to use the water that comes. As with so many other things, diversity leads to better soil health, leading to more resilient systems, and food with more nutrition.

The world feels like it’s all in flames. Given that, let’s think about rebuilding with systems that aren’t wholly extractive, but regenerative of the planet.

Some related reading:
Paradise Lot, Eric Toensmeier and Jonathan Bates
Wilding, Isabella Tree
Grass, Soil, Hope, Courtney White
Dirt to Soil, Gabe Brown
The One-Straw Revolution, Masanobu Fukuoka
Deeply Rooted, Lisa M. Hamilton
Farming While Black, Leah Penniman
A Call to Farms, Jennifer Grayson
The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer

mark posting in

dw_maintenance

Happy Wednesday!

I'm taking search offline sometime today to upgrade the server to a new instance type. It should be down for a day or so -- sorry for the inconvenience. If you're curious, the existing search machine is over 10 years old and was starting to accumulate a decade of cruft...!

Also, apparently these older machines cost more than twice what the newer ones cost, on top of being slower. Trying to save a bit of maintenance and cost, and hopefully a Wednesday is okay!

Edited: The other cool thing is that this also means that the search index will be effectively realtime afterwards... no more waiting a few minutes for the indexer to catch new content.

sorcyress

Dang, today was really good!

And like......I've been saying for a while now that my hypersimplified political stance is "community is good". And while it wasn't the first thing I did today, it was pretty early in the sequence that I looked at the young woman with the small child standing in Park Street station and looking _extremely_ confused about the lack of a map, and so went over with my phone and helped her identify the station she wanted to be at and which train to get on. Then I sat on a bench and did some knitting until my own train arrived. This wasn't the entirety of the day, but it did set the tone really really nicely!

Before that, I had a lovely long phone chat with my mom as she was driving to her sister's to do more work with their dad's stuff --we organized when and how I'll be going to MD to visit this summer, and then chatted about many lovely inconsequential things. And I visited the post office to mail off a book for a friend (I was point person for a kickstarter a bunch of folks on my discord were excited about). And then it was off to bells, where I arrived halfway through but had a jolly time ringing everything after. Not going to bells very frequently means that we suddenly have an all new crop of skilled ringers and that's quite neat to observe!

Bells lunch was lovely, and taking the T home with Laura lovlier still --I got to hear some of her exciting upcoming plans for adventure! And then I was home long enough to change my clothes and take a quick rest and then off to my work-bestie's old house to help him move a bunch of boxen out of his attic. Originally the plan was three of us and I think he was expecting it to take 2-3 hours. The two of us were handily done in well under an hour and I near melted in delight as he said "you being the stupendous badass you are"¹.

(His attic ladder broke right before moving out, so he'd rigged a quite nice pulley setup with a little handmade cargo net. But I don't think he realized how strong I am, and subsequently how quickly I could get things out of the netting and stacked up in the room downstairs. It was a very jolly time!)

Afterwards, I got to see his new house, which is absolutely gorgeous in every way except that it's diagonally opposite our principal's house (which like, isn't an inherent flaw but is very very funny). And he treated me to dinner, which we did at a nice sushi place on Mass Ave that has set out their outdoor seating --it was just warm enough to be happy, and I think we spent the entire time joyfully discussing Taskmaster. I'm real lucky!

Home again home again, and I managed to kick my brain into enough order to get started the newest bit of knitting project (or rather, the first in a series of swatches for thus) before getting into the car(?!) and driving to the airport. It's Magus and Keira's car, on loan while they were overseas, so we can do grocery runs in exchange for giving them rides to and from the airport.

It was my first time hanging out in the cell phone lot, and that was actually quite jolly as well. "Take your time", texts I, "I have music and knitting" and I did and they were both quite good, which was especially good because their airplane did not have access to any stairs for quite a long time and so what could've been a 45 minute errand had everything worked optimally was actually about two hours. But again, I had music and knitting and that was _lovely_. I only had to work on two of the projects (and listen to my CD twice through) and then suddenly we were back at my house and I was handing them the keys.

Dishes properly done *before* coming upstairs to fuck around, and that's where I am now. I have a few hours before bed, I expect, and while I can never guilt-free do things (there is grading and my desk is a disaster) today really was enough that I feel like I can really relax into whatever else I decide to do with my evening.

Community is good! I am so happy I am a part of mine.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: Call me pretty and I will smile, call me useful and I will melt. I know what I'm about. (5'2" and carrying classic oldest daughter trauma)

magid

This week I’m hosting a tiny Shabbat dinner (two guests) and lunch (one guest).

Today’s food prep:

challah
split pea soup with barley, carrots*, garlic, Impossible sausage, onion, tomato paste
sauted Baby Bella mushrooms for hummus
roasted Brussels sprouts
roasted beets* and rutabaga*
roasted zucchini, tomato, lemon, and onion
roasted garlic
salmon with minced preserved lemon and whole wheat panko
potato salad with dill, parsley, and chives*
improv peach crisp with rice flour, walnut meal, and buckwheat flour topping
ginger cake
green salad with cucumbers and sunflower seeds
beef stew/cholent with onions, tomato paste, diced lemon, diced lime, farro, chickpeas, and Vadavan seasoning

* locally sourced

sorcyress

I'm trying to be better at _stuff_. The warm weather is coming back, so that's helping. I despair a little, wondering if it will ever be possible to put structures into place that actually support me year round.

(I have also been despairing a little, lo these last six months or so, as I stumble over wordsing from 2020 and realize that I was probably mentally healthier then, which is wild considering how much worse certain things were. The end of the world has been fuckin' _hard_, y'all! I'm glad for the ways in which there is good community to ride it through with.)

Next week is April vacation, and I will fuck around town for the weekend, then go down as efficiently as I can to Providence to hang with Tuesday for the week --it only just struck me today that I would most likely be leaving on Monday, meaning I'll be trying to travel on public transit on Marathon Day. I'm sure this will be fine.

(It will not be fine, but I am willing to be very very patient.)

The real tricky part will be packing --I need to figure out if I'm going straight to NEFFA from Tues's, which will be an extra layer of packing. I would also like to not bring an infinity of grading with me, so maybe I can get the tests graded over the weekend? This does not feel likely.

But I am looking forward to being floppy and low-maintenance in someone else's space. Make some food, play some video games, do some knitting, perhaps. Maybe I can bring useful projects that I want to work on down with me, and try and do some of that while Tues is at work. We'll see.

Work proper has been rough as hell, in ways I don't care for. It's non-renewing week, where everyone who didn't get hired back learns this fact, often with very little warning. I am Not Happy about the structures in place that are causing that. It would be nice if there were better ways to cope with supervisors who routinely eat rocks for breakfast and refuse to actually engage with their employees in a way that's remotely helpful.

Also we're t-minus one wakeup until April Vacation and the children are READY for it. Which is tentatively fine, but gosh, it sure would be nice if they were also READY for Geometry along the way.

At least I get to walk home with my work-bestie. That part is lovely! And I had a student trust me with the very early stages of their transition, and ask me today if I would tell some other staff on their behalf (because they felt nervous to do it themself). It felt very honoring!

There is hope for the future, or maybe there is just community and joy right now.

~Sor
MOOP!

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Reading

A pretty decent day

The Future Is Peace

Alpha-gal

Further adventures in NEFFA!

NEFFA Friday

Earth Day

Search maintenance

Community is good and so was my day!

Shabbat food

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January 2019

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