some interesting podcasts that I have been listening to lately.

Gi showed me this incredible ad for a Soviet themed hostel in Germany. Remember the Soviet call to Pioneers to be ready? -- Pioner Bood Gotov! --Vsegda Gotov! That's what the German voice says when you run your mouse over the man's portrait on the website.


I read an intriguing review of Petropolis in HEEB and was sucked into the book from the first page. The story is about a girl from Soviet Siberia who ends up in the US. It's kind of a dark comedy with a lot of vivid, humorous and disturbing details about Soviet life and immigrant life. If you need a summer book to read, I recommend.

This is the kind of stuff that makes Olympia so great. Description reads:
"What you got? is a coalition of folks who believe in youth power..."read more

Today, Garnnett, the 4 year old boy next door came outside when I was putting in a post for the hammock in the back yard. He started making noises. When I finally realized that he was calling my name, I looked up and saw him peeking through the hole in the fence. "My brothers and sisters went camping" he said, "I'm worried they won't come back." I reassured him that they will definitely be back. Then he ran inside the house and returned telling me to stretch out my hand, close my eyes and come over to the fence. I did and when I opened my eyes I saw that he put in my hand an individually wrapped, organic stick of Horizon Cheddar cheese.

Thanks to the amazing Jessie Shulman, Urban Archives just got a new Search page! She did this over Spring quarter for her undergraduate independent study at the Information School. You no longer have to get off the site to search through Digital Collections and I think it is more user friendly than the Digital Collections' interface.

When the father and kids next door were moving in, we exchanged some friendly conversations with the dad. But lately this has changed. It happened shortly after the dad tried to establish Gi's and mine relationship to one another by asking if we were sisters, cousins and as last option if I was Gi's mother. Since then, the dad turns his back to us whenever he sits on the porch.

The other day when i was on the porch, the neighbor kids came over and were hanging out around me when their dad came out, glared at me and then yelled at them "I told you not to go over there! Get back in the house! There are no kids there, you shouldn't be hanging out with adults!"

Now every time we come out of the house, the littlest kids run out yelling mine or Gi's name to say hi to us and pretty soon we hear their dad yell from inside, "Don't go over there! Get in here!"

He barely looks at us or says "hello," so I never get a chance to talk to him. Even when he yelled at the kids in my presence, he looked right through me like i was glass.

I feel awkward because the kids run over to say hi and want to talk almost every time I come home or leave the house. At first I thought maybe he didn't want them to bother us, but it doesn't seem so now. Then I thought maybe he didn't trust white people and that upset me, but I thought that I could just be nice and he'd get over it.

Di said it's obvious -- two white women living together, no kids. He figured out you're queer and he's probably freaking out that he just moved his family next to two queers.

I was pretty upset when the possibility of this finally sunk in.

I was trying to think of my dissertation this morning, but the thought kept creeping into my head "who the fuck am i to be an authority on the fucking Central District?"

then on a bike ride to clear my head, i thought, maybe this is a lesson in empathy.

my dad just sent me this link to a website, Oceans Alive, that explains which seafood is eco-friendly and which seafood is least toxic to eat. i've wanted to see something like this for a while now. glad to see that some of my favorites, like Eel, are still edible.

I saw this eel garden while scuba diving in Dahab, Egypt.

who's the object? as I was snapping pictures, I was being snapped. Here's a photo with me in the Seattle PI. I was going to work that morning of the post below.

TV crews and fire trucks are still out there at 8am.

This morning as i bike past it to work, the house seems to be in a sad shape.

Roberta reports a little more on King 5.

Ohmygod. This beautiful old house just burned down a few houses from us! Our house still smells like camp fire. This two story house was just about done being remodeled and it seems that some ass just set it on fire. It was pretty scary, for a while it looked like the fire was ready to leap over to all the other houses on the block, including ours.

Luckily the people of the burning house were out of town and luckily the neighbors just got home in time to see that the new addition of the house was in flames. Given that this happened at 10pm and that the owners were out of town, this could have gotten completely out of control.

Our fast thinking neighbor Chris got on his roof to spray our houses with a hose to keep the burning and flying embers from setting our roofs on fire. There were about 20 fire trucks and a river flowing in front of our driveway.

Did you know that fire grows twice its size every MINUTE? that's what the firefighter told me. Tonight we go to sleep uneasy knowing that some lunatic set 4 fires in our neighborhood this evening, including a church, a dumpster and a couch. The firefighters said that they could see the new fire as they were cleaning up the mess at the previous fire.

Just checked the news and looks like they have a suspect. Hope it's the right one.

one more that i liked

Gi teaches Beck and I to do cartwheels at Burfoot Park in Oly this weekend. For more pics go here.

This quarter my students and I experimented with Geotagging. Here is one project by Jordan. He researched the histories of the people who the streets and parks are named after in the CD, then took some photogrpahs and mapped everything in Google's MyMaps.

Today it is raining in Seattle. My garden is finally quenching its thirst and the air outside smells like wet earth and worms. I let the smuggled (thanks Gi!) Achicoria (Chicorium intybus L.) grow wild in the garden. Besides the leaves, it turned out to have long convoluted stalks with buds all over, so I let them grow to see what the flowers look like. Wild chicory is sold as Dandelion leaves at our co-op, it is related to the daisy family and the leaves are more tender than the Dandelion's. It turns out that the buds along its crooked stalks burst into beautiful sky blue flowers. Aside from having pretty flowers, Chicory leaves are good fresh and cooked and the root is roasted as a coffee. Its medicinal benefits are said to be liver cleansing, anti-inflammatory and digestive.

In other news, a new family moved into the house next door. They are 7 kids, grandma and a dad.
Gi and I met 6 of the kids this weekend. We planted potatoes in my garden, tasted all the herbs and strawberries, played with cameras and hung out on the porch.
When Gi and I finally told the kids that we had to go inside and eat dinner, they asked if we could come out and play afterwards. I haven't heard that question in a long time and I have to admit that I liked it.

I look forward to coming outside to play this summer.

More SF shots.

Gi gazing at Cameron

David in a tree

Vikki and i

David at home

Beck about to gain hero status by rolling down the hill

For more pics, go here.