Category Archives: Connections

Kevin Fox Makes Offer To Google They Shouldn’t Refuse

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They really should take him up on this.

Also, I have surrendered; I don’t welcome our Google Plus overlords, but I’ll let them in the house on a hot day and listen politely. And I like the clean “if you like this, please share” icons in Kevin’s post, so will implement that here and at Holy Moly.

And so I put my resources where my mouth is. As the former lead designer for Google Reader, I offer my services to Google, rejoining for a three month contract in order to restore and enhance the utility of Google Reader, while keeping it in line with Google’s new visual standards requirements. I will put my current projects on hold to ensure that Google Reader keeps its place as the premier news reader, and raises the bar of what a social newsreader can be.

Link: My offer to Google Reader « fox @ fury

Scholar in Residence at Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation

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This looks really interesting – you’d be surprised how many members of my immediate family are either going, maybe thinking about going, or at least intrigued by the concept.

Blogging this to be sure that they see the listing, in case they weren’t already planning on going.

Aside from the interesting concept of a humanistic religious community, I’m currently involved in an outreach project for Holy Moly, and one of the goals is getting exactly this kind of press release published. How’s it done? Who’s the contact? I’ve already gotten signed up to do something like this at the Chicago Trib’s “Local Community News” site and I need to make sure we’ve got a login for the Daily Herald. It’s hard to break through the wall and get the right contact there.

Rabbi Binyamin Biber, rabbi of Machar, the Washington, D.C. congregation for Secular Humanistic Judaism, will be “Scholar in Residence” Thursday through Nov. 6 at Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation.

In addition to his pulpit with Machar, Rabbi Biber operates the Humanist Chaplaincy Services of Metropolitan Washington, D.C., conducting public advocacy and education, social-change organizing, counseling, and Humanistic life-cycle ceremonies, including weddings for intercultural and same-sex couples. As a social worker and teacher experienced in working with all age groups, he serves as a veteran community organizer and educator on peace and justice issues, particularly focusing on the Middle East, on sexual minority equality and AIDS prevention, as well as on low-income housing and community economic development.

Biber is also president of the Association of Humanistic Rabbis and serves on the rabbinic cabinet of J Street, the largest U.S. Jewish group working for a two-state solution for Israeli-Palestinian peace and self-determination.

Rabbi Biber will speak on “Naturalistic Spirituality” at 8 p.m. Friday at the Heller Nature Center in Highland Park.

via Scholar in residence welcomed – Buffalo Grove Countryside

My Birthday, Let Me Show You It Again and Again

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We went down to visit with my husband David’s parents tonight, for dinner and to celebrate my birthday one last time. My birthday was actually last Saturday, which was pretty fun as it was the last full day of vacation. We spent the evening with my college friend Arne, catching up and drinking delicious beers at Coopersmith’s Ale House in Ft Collins.

Then on Sep 27, I celebrated my second birthday, because the first year we were dating, David thought that was my birthday. Also, my father-in-law got mixed up and thought it was the 26th, so they called a couple of days later on Thursday, and we celebrated over the phone while David was out of town on business. Also at work, the goofy birthday decoration has been over my desk all week, and I finally got the card that went around our team on Friday, so that makes Sep 30 an official birthday for me now, too.

And now, Oct 1 too. Dinner was pretty good; we went to Lubey’s in Tinley Park, which actually has a pretty charming downtown area.

Done with birthdays now, I think, for this year.

I still haven’t uploaded my photos from the trip, or gone through my tweets to remind myself of what happened when, but I hope to do that tomorrow. We’ll see.

But my birthweek has been awesome fun, at least! Why limit the fun to a single day?

Back In The Blog Saddle Again

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It’s been too long, so I’m just going to start blogging things again.

First up: it has to be said, AOL email addresses are not cool, they indicate that the sender is stuck in a rut, and sometimes people make value judgements about you if you’re using one.

If famous people are still using AOL emails, it’s because they can’t be bothered.

AOL addresses are not a status symbol. This is another example of the sycophantic logic that twists powerful people’s flaws into reinforcing how much better they are than normal people. Mark Zuckerberg’s too busy to buy presentable clothes! Steve Jobs can’t give to charity because it will distract him from the crucial work of figuring out how to make a computer .1 inches thinner. Barack Obama shouldn’t quit smoking, because it helps him run the country better.

The only status an AOL address symbolizes is your status as an old person, stuck in the mid-90s. Whether they are checked at the public library or on a media mogul’s purple Blackberry while flying first class, the AOL address is nothing more than a digital AARP card.

via Is an AOL Email Address a ‘Status Symbol?

Victory: Community Based Housing of Choice for Illinois Disabled Adults

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Some families in Illinois are celebrating tonight. It would be nice if a family member who lives in a group home could benefit from this decision and not have to live quite so far away… due to the extreme length of the waitlist for supportive group housing for disabled adults in Illinois, she was placed in a town several hours away from the rest of us. And maybe it wouldn’t be worth uprooting her now, but at least if it becomes necessary in the future, there may be more options for her and her immediate family.

State officials will begin drawing up plans to move 3,000 people with developmental and intellectual disabilities into community-based housing of their choice, as directed under a federal settlement approved Wednesday that allows for a six-year timetable.

The governor’s office praised the settlement, which will expand services to new residents on a 21,000-member waiting list — but officials offered no answers on how they expect to pay additional costs during Illinois’ fiscal crunch.

“The final cost will be determined by how many people elect community-based care,” said Januari Smith, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services and the Department of Human Services, the defendants in the lawsuit.

“The funds will now follow the individuals, and over the long term, community-based care is less expensive,” said Smith, who said the average yearly cost of a community setting, such as an apartment or group home, is $32,000.

Funding was not the issue Wednesday, though, when U.S. District Judge James Holderman lauded the lawyers for reaching agreement, saying the consent decree holds “great significance” and was the result of fierce negotiation.

“I firmly believe that the state of Illinois, the citizens, have been well served by these efforts,” Holderman said, after hearing from two parents who support the settlement.

The goal is to bring Illinois into compliance with the 1990 federal Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires that people with disabilities be allowed to live in the “most integrated setting” within their communities.

The key here for me is “within their communities.” Just sayin’.

via Illinois disabilities lawsuit settles housing issue – chicagotribune.com.

It’s Not A Weasel: Fuck You, I’m a Marten Meme Involves My Friend Tammy

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Sometime next year I’ll get around to blogging about our wonderful recent vacation to the Olympic Peninsula and Seattle – one of the most fun things was dropping in on my friend Seattle Tammy at her store, Books on 7th, in Hoquiam Washington.

You can even BUY BOOKS FROM THEIR ONLINE STORE, and I happen to know they just got in a big consignment of old cookery books…

Turns out Hoquiam is now famous after a recent incident with a deceased member of the Family Mustelidae put them on the international news wires, and LOLmarten images went viral.

“We’re not all running around here with weasels,” the mayor of Hoquiam, Jack Durney, insists.

His tone is genial, but he admits to a level of frustration as today the Google alerts for “Hoquiam” pile up from national sources, most containing an explanation of the distinction between a marten and a weasel.

“A marten is a member of the weasel family,” helpfully concludes the ur-AP story on the assault by a man also carrying a dead marten.

What Durney wishes national media would ask him about is Governor Gregoire awarding Hoquiam a Smart Communities Award for the third year in a row. Hoquiam’s downtown revitalization campaign won under the “Development Project to Implement a Plan” category. Radio station KBKW reports:

The ongoing project has focused on public improvements to downtown including new ADA accessible sidewalks, street trees, decorative lamp posts and a new riverfront walkway. Hoquiam has seen a burst in new business activity and business improvements through the opening of Tully’s, Levee Feed and Pet Supply, Books on 7th, Pure Clothing, and the 8th Street Ale House to name a few.

via Beyond Dead Weasels, a New Hoquiam Emerges From the Trees | The SunBreak.

HEY YA!!! I was wondering why all the FUCK YOU!!! I’M A MARTEN! shirts suddenly appeared in Second Life (Tammy made some to give away to mutual friends), and I’d seen a few LOLmarten macros in my feed, too.

Only the other day I was commiserating with Tammy about business being slow and recommended she find herself some free publicity, and here she is in the news, sorta kinda, with dead martens asserting their martenhood all over town. Or possibly minkness, as Tammy notes:

The Dave Barry rule applies here: You just can’t make this stuff up. Hoquiam Police Chief Jeff Myers was contacted by the Game Department, as martens hadn’t been seen on the Harbor for 50 years. After seeing a photo, they replied “Never mind, it’s a mink.”

If you love books, Tammy’s shop in Hoquiam is a fun place to stop by – small enough to be cozy, big enough to have an interesting and eclectic selection. We also patronized the 8th Street Ale house for lunch, where she and I enjoyed our Hoppy Bitch Ales very much, thank you.

With all this world-wide attention focused on Hoquiam, it seems poised to make great strides as the center of all your marten-based small predator needs. It’s a cute town, aiming to get cuter with the planned walkway along the waterfront. Drop by sometime soon! If it turns out it really was a mink, that’s okay, too.

In Which I Has Yet Another Pifanee: Friends and Family Matter

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I has a pifaneee!!1!

So here we are, blogging again, are we? It seems the only times I bother to blog are those times when I’m traveling, when I get a burst of blogging energy and also take a lot of pictures which will have to be uploaded, culled, cropped, and commented on.

This time, we’re back in Seattle getting ready for another run at Northwest FolkLife Festival after spending the first half of our trip in Port Angeles exploring the edges of Olympic National Park while living the luxurious high life at Colette’s Bed and Breakfast.

As lazy-blogged previously via Twitter, we got to Seattle (eventually) last Friday, stayed overnight at the Holiday Inn Sea-Tac, picked up a bright red Ford Escape the next morning from Avis, and caught the Bainbridge Island ferry all of the Saturday morning. While bumbling around in the town of Bainbridge, we checked out their weekly Farmer’s Market and found my most favorite-est tea in the world, Yorkshire Gold, at the Churchmouse Yarns and Teas shop. Honestly, I teared up when I saw it prominently featured in their little corner devoted to high-end teas. The first time I had Yorkshire Gold, I was on a walking tour in England with my friend Christine, and as it happens we’ll be meeting up in Bainbridge tomorrow (it’s a convenient midpoint for us as we’re now in Seattle and she’s way out on the tip of the Kitsap Peninsula). This was one of the many epiphanies I’ve had on this trip; they all have to do with re-connecting with friends, families, and former lives.

The time in Port Angeles was wonderful, restful, full of great food, new friends, lots of memories of hikes, the ocean, and even eagles. The memories of our single night at Kalaloch Lodge – meh, that was a disapointment aside from the views. One thing I did manage to do was get in touch with my Second Life friend, Tammy, and we met up today for the first time in “meatspace.” And the other was that I managed to get a postcard sent to David’s and my niece Melissa, who’s very special to us and doesn’t get to spend nearly enough time with family.

She’ll get it in a few days and we’ll try to call her; I may not send my own sister a goldarned birthday card, but at least I got something in the mail to “Me’Liss.” I may have mentioned how Melissa lives several hours away from the rest of our Illinois family and only gets to see all of us at special occasions; we’ll see her next for her sister’s graduation celebration/college farewell party later this month. She doesn’t have access to tools like Facebook and Twitter, and pretty much lives from visit to visit, phone call to phone call. She sends notes by mail too – and it seems we never send her any mail back unless it’s a postcard, so that’s another pifanee I’ve had on this trip: I really must start writing her regularly, it would make her so happy and it’s such a simple thing.

Anyway.

I’ve been horrible about keeping in touch with more distant friends and family for the last few years…

Hi Timmy! How was your birthday?? I suck at birthday cards!! How’s your vacation going? Mine’s good so far…

You know, kind of like that, neglecting people and taking them for granted… and neglecting myself, and neglecting the blog, my (feeble) creative impulses towards writing and photography and so on. I’m getting together with as many Seattle friends as possible on this trip, and I’m going to try to stay in better touch and not simply bounce in and out of their lives every couple of years on our biannual trips here for Folklife.

So, rather than being immobilized by all that STUFF WOT HAS BEEN LEFT IDLE I’ll just… start somewhere. And that somewhere is right here, on this page, letter by letter, word by word, thought by thought.

We’re currently set up in a comfortable hotel suite near the Seattle Center – David even has a little office space he’s set up in, so he can keep up with some of his mailing list stuff that he hosts/administers. We’re here until Monday, but won’t spend ALL of our time at the music stages – most of Saturday and Sunday, probably not Monday as we’ll head home that afternoon. May wander down to the site Friday for the opening, although in all my years of going to Folklife, I’ve never made it to the opening drum circle or hippie hootenany or whatever it is. It’ll just be fun hanging out with a few hundred thousand people, listening to music from hundreds of different pro, semi-pro, and serious amateur acts. I’ll run into more friends, load up on new music CDs to load into iTunes, and get back in touch in all senses of the word.

Meanwhile, I had another absurd epiphany in the QFC grocery store earlier – there were cases of Henry Weinhard’s Special Reserve, the favorite beer of my so-called college career. And there were also cases of some truly great beers from Hawaii, that David and I are very fond of because they evoke wonderful memories from stays on Maui, the Big Island, and Kauai.

Which reminds me… some great hula halaus performing on Friday, must try to catch at least one of them that evening.

Happy Folklife, everyone! Hope to see a lot of old friends and new friends there.

Notoriously Ignored Blog Pfalz Prophets Goes After Bigot Maggie Gallagher

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My friend Pfalz Prophets has been blogging a bit lately on human rights issues for GLTB persons, and this post does not deserve to be notoriously ignored.

Disclaimer: I have sung in church with PP, and attest to his musicianship and scholarly chops.

I discovered a new hate group the other day, the National Organization for Marriage, thanks to my signing up with the Southern Poverty Law Center. Maggie Gallagher, the chairman of the group, issued a standard press release, to which I responded with this e-mail:”It has come to my attention that you are conducting a nationwide campaign opposing laws that grant same-gender couples the rights traditionally given only to hetero couples. Your most recent statements charge that those of us who support such laws are actually engaged in a campaign of hatred, attempting to silence your supporters by labeling them as bigots.”I have quite a great deal to say on this matter, because there are several issues here that need to be disentangled in order to be addressed:

via Beware of Pfalz Prophets: A National Organization for Marriage?.

Disabled Man Dies After Beating By Group Home Employees In Downstate Illinois

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This is disturbing… for various reasons. This man was a member of a kind-hearted and trusting population of Illinois residents, and it’s outrageous that the people responsible for his care are also responsible for his death.

Just last year Paul McCann was contemplating moving from his group home in Charleston to one in Crest Hill to be closer to his family in the south suburbs, his sister said.

But even after spending a weekend at a residency facility blocks away from his elderly mother, McCann decided he wanted to stay downstate, where he knew more people and enjoyed the scenery.

“He said… ‘I want to be with my friends in Charleston,’ said Kathy Slovick, McCann’s older sister. “He put some thought into that.”

Now McCann’s family is struggling to understand what could have led to his tragic death at Graywood Foundation, a facility he called home.

McCann, who grew up in Joliet, was 42 and mentally and developmentally disabled. His death is the second in less than three years where there have been allegations of an attack by employees at the group home, officials said.

via Disabled man fatally beaten in group home, authorities say – chicagotribune.com.