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Happy Juneteenth!
Today is Juneteenth. I remember when we lived in Philadelphia, the HUGE celebration every June, comemerating the holiday, Juneteenth. I had never heard of this holiday before. In case you haven’t heard of it, June 19th, 1865 is the date that Union General Gordon Granger landed in Galviston, TX, and announced that former slaves were now free. Philadelphia has a much larger black population than San Francisco, something like 50%. So the Juneteenth celebration there is much larger than it is in S.F. I am somewhat ashamed to admit that it used to go down Fillmore Street, which was very close to our Japantown apartment…we just didn’t know about it.…
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Happy Father’s Day, Dado
I thought that maybe I could have a guest blogger today, to wish her father a very happy Father’s Day. She’s not as verbose as I am, but she loves him VERY MUCH. So, with no further delay, here’s Maya. Happy Fathers Day, Dado! I love you! You are the best! Love, Monkey
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Happy Father’s Day, Dad!
My Dad and stepmom were here last weekend, which is a pretty groovy Father’s Day gift to me. 🙂 They live in Oregon, and so we don’t see them as much as we would like to. My dad is a pretty great guy, whom unfortunately I did not get to know until I was an adult. One day maybe I’ll tell that story, but not today. Anyway, when my dad was here, I asked him about his time in the 60s, about his involvement in the Civil Rights marches, etc. I was right on some things, wrong on others. I thought he had heard Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have…
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School’s Out For Summer
Yesterday was the last day of school for Maya….can’t believe she’ll be in the 5th grade this fall. They had a play at her school yesterday, on Westward Expansion. It was a musical, with touching, sad numbers like “Trail of Tears”, and a rousing number at the end about the Golden Spike. Fun. I may be biased, but I thought Maya did great. She was in the back for much of the play, but for the Golden Spike number, she was in front, looking great. I couldn’t get many pics because there were parents in front of me…but we asked her to recreate a pose for us. 🙂
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I Feel Dirty…
Because I watched THIS last night. I’m surrounded by books, some of them works of great literature, ALL of them better than watching Britney’s veiny boobs hang out of her top. I have DVDs. I have cable, with lots of options. But I watched Britney cry instead. If you have now lost all respect for me, I completely understand. I have, too. I need a bath with some comet to feel clean again, I think.
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No More GUILT
The worst, worst, WORST part of parenting, at least of mothering, is the guilt that society tries to push upon us. L at Homesick Home wrote a wonderful post the other day about her feelings after reading a New York Times article titled “Breast Feed Or Else“. I read L’s post, and I was horrified…horrified that people are actually equating not breastfeeding your children with smoking while pregnant. With going to a bar, riding a mechanical bull, and smoking while pregnant. Give me a fucking break. (Sorry, I tried not to swear there, but no other word worked for me. Get over it.) The current culture has really made a…
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Movie Update
We watched “To Kill a Mockingbird” the other night…it was pretty true to the book, very good, very sad. Too bad they took out the part about Scout and Dill being ‘engaged’…I always thought that was sweet and funny, but they only had 2 hours, so I guess it was best to stick to the main points as much as possible. Also no sight of the rich white man with the black family. Missed him too. I do understand, however, the difficulty involved with taking a book and all of the nuances involved in that medium, and putting it into a coherant narative for people to view and understand on…
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WTF Part II
I’m a bit confused…is our American diet so screwed up that we need all of these products to help us with our intestinal tract health? Is no one pooping anymore? Last week, in my multi-subject post, I mentioned a product that kind of freaked me out called the “Almighty Cleanse“. It freaked me out because there was a God/poop connection going on that was somewhat confusing. Well, even though none of my 4 loyal readers commented on the product or it’s disturbing connection between the Almighty and colon health, apparantly plenty of people found my blog by googling “Almighty Cleanse”. So people are out there, looking this stuff up. People…
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Black Diamond Mines
Maya’s class had a fieldtrip today to the Black Diamond Mines, in Antioch, CA. (That’s Maya’s BEST friend, Jackie, in the picture to your left.) I had never been there before, so I was happy to volunteer to drive some of the kids, and go check it out. The mines were for coal in the mid-1800s, and many men who came to California looking for gold ended up working in the coal mines instead. Actually, though we found out that CA coal is inferior to coal from Washington State or China, so when that coal started coming into CA, the mines closed down, and the cities disappeared. I kind of…
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Reading Lists…
I had a fabulous weekend, but for some reason, not so much in the mood for talking about it today. Maybe tomorrow. So, what else is on this mind o’ mine? I kind of wish I had saved the ‘Almighty Cleanse’ bit or the very cool lunchbox link for today, because I don’t have much. Oh well. I didn’t, and now it’s too late. Well, I was just thinking of going to the library to pick up this book, which is on hold for me, and then I thought I would also pick up Jane-Emily, which was suggested by L on her blog. And that got me to thinking of…
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What About This, is THIS Wrong of Me?
Maya and I were out and about today, and Gloria Gaynor’s disco hit, “I Will Survive” came on the radio…and it took me back to 1999, when this little video was making the rounds at work…I’m sorry, but I just looked at it, and it STILL cracks me up.
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Is It Wrong of Me…
To be thankful that the damn bluejay that used to SCREAM outside my window EVERY morning at dawn seems to have dissapeared? Not that I wished him harm…just that he would move to another neighborhood and bother someone else. Maybe he did. Don’t really care. Now if we can just do something about the guy with the bass cranked up so high on his car stereo that it shakes the buildings…
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Too Many Random Thoughts…
Better grab yourself a beverage and sit down, because I have way too much today, and I suspect it’s just going to spill out in a bunch of randomness. If I were to make a post of each one, and save them for future use, boy, I’d have a lot of posts ready, wouldn’t I? I could use them one by one when we go on vacation or something. But I have faith in my bloggareah, and that I’ll still have other things to tell you all in the future, so I’ll just spill it all now. Some of it is thoughtful and important, some is more of the ‘light…
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Proof of the Apocalypse #2
I found myself agreeing with some guy on MSNBC last night. I thought that was a conservative run station, and probably it is (I don’t watch enough of it to be sure), but this guy, Keith Olbermann, was talking about She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named* last night, and her latest desperate plea for attention…and I agreed with him. Of course, nothing that she has done lately has changed my opinion of her in the least, because I HATE HER and I think she is EVIL and surely has 6-6-6 tattooed on the underside of her tongue (as well as the inside of her eyelids), but maybe, just maybe, this time she has gone too…
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13 Embarrasing Songs – MEME
13 Songs that I LOVED when they were popular, but which it is humiliating to admit to ever having liked now….mostly crap from that pre-teen sentimental era, but a few from later as well…ugh. The things I do for you people. Have You Never Been Mellow – Olivia Newton John. Before she got Physical, she was all mushy and such. This song was on the radio every 5 minutes or so when I was 9. Wildfire – Michael Murphy. Had the perfect combination of tragedy (she died) and horses. Again, I was 9. Run, Joey Run – David Geddes. This one is truly horrifying, but yeah, I liked it. Even…