sundries - long-ass, sleep-deprived and Mercury-retrograded for your pleasure

[rm]

We're back! The kitties are fine! The plants even look like they'll revive. But mostly, we're back.

To recap, we experienced the following mishaps:
- trouble getting car to airport.
- car to airport getting pulled over by cops.
- confusion about cash or credit at airport that had me running to cash machine.
- in chaos, tipped driver $10 past what as already generous
- discovered we were at the wrong terminal.
- METRA - late, weird and creepy more than once.
- Left directions to Oriental Institute in hotel room.
- Everything, more or less, about the trip to the Oriental Institute Museum other than the museum itself.
- I got glutened at PF Changs.
- Cab company decided to fuck us over royally the one afternoon we spent in Naperville's downtown and we had to call the hotel shuttle to beg them to come get us.
- Flight home canceled.
- New flight delayed.

It's a good thing Patty and I like each other. A lot. Man! Oh yeah, and we bought lots of cool stuff at Penzey Spices.

After weeks, 33 Chilean miners have been discovered to be alive, but it may take months to rescue them.

The Green Book was a travel guide that told African Americans where they could eat and stay while traveling when segregation was still a typical and open part of life in America (and elsewhere -- the guide included international destinations). It stopped publishing in 1964, the year the Civil Rights Act was passed. karnythia helpfully links us to a PDF of the 1949 edition.

Letting go lessons for parents as students go to college. My parents were horribly over-protective, and made me wear business clothes to my freshman orientation (nearly assuring that I would have another friend-free education experience), but then they went home and everything was fine. Apparently, this stuff is increasingly rocket science.

A great poet and his weird letters to the Montclair Police Department.

Everything you've heard about New York is true: Alligator in Queens!

From the department of Everything You Learned on Doctor Who is True: China gridlock goes on for 60 miles and traps drivers for over a week.

I do not have the time of day for this shit: In case you missed it the Pentagon is surveying military spouses about DADT, wanting to know if they will encourage their partners to leave the military or if they will be rude to gay military spouses or inclined to leave military housing should DADT ever get solved. Yes, whether the spouses of American servicemen and women can act like adults is the latest supposed deciding factor in whether gay men and lesbians will be allowed to serve openly and honorably in the US military.

I remain consistently startled by how upsetting and frightening I find the backlash regarding 51Park. I don't know if it's because I'm a member of minority populations and shit shit scares me, if it's because I had significant exposure to Islam as a pre-teen, or if it's because living and working in predominantly Muslim countries is normal to Patty and something we both may very well do more of. But seriously, the opposition to 51 Park is not okay. (link via reannon).

help_pakistan. Millions of people have been displaced; 25% of the country is underwater; and the $$ aren't flowing in because it's not a tourist destination for Westerners and because of the West's Islamaphobia.

Since 2002, Lisa Spodak has raised almost 150K to fight breast cancer by walking long distances and creating innovative charity auctions of celebrity autographs. It's Avon Walk season for her again. To support her efforts donate at http://donate.lisawalks.com.

ASK MORBO. Do it. Do it now.

I am still in a flurry of stuff I can't tell you, including publication news and my final Dragon*Con schedule and maybe an upcoming performance thing. I can tell you I got asked to neaten up a recent LJ post for HackGender, so that was nice.

Hey, some of you might be interested in the Butch Voices conferences coming up around the country, including in NYC.

Oh god, I have a proposal I need to finish like NOW. Well, this week. Argh.

While we were in Chicago, Patty told me this story that's at least part urban legend/conspiracy theory of some guys during the early space exploration days that found a way to listen in on radio transmissions between Soviet ground control and whatever people were sending into orbit and recorded it all. Some of the tapes were of Soviet efforts before, to our knowledge, there were manned missions, and they recorded things with heartbeats, and one where a woman says "I feel hot" before saying she's going to abort the mission and then the transmission cuts out.

I can't stop thinking about this. Does anyone know more about it? I am haunted by this idea that people were sent up before the technology was ready, not because it just hadn't been tested well enough, but because those on the ground absolutely knew they would die and wanted to see how and how long it would take.

Comments

[verasteine.livejournal.com]

A lot of the 51 Park convo, from what I've seen (which is admittedly much less than you and more than most of my countrymen), is what passes for normal discourse about Islam here, too. And my city is about 20-30% islam, or so says the census, and I work with muslim coworkers and I have lots of muslim customers that I serve, but the public discourse remains unsettlingly them and us, and what we should legislate against and more of that stuff. It's profoundly scary just because it polarises; it's pitting "us" against "the terrorists" (or "the criminals", over here), but that's ridiculous as they are just a group of people, first. Whatever some few idiots might have done/do, just like a few (or more) of my "group" have done.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Looking at that NYT piece about the Green Book, I wonder if you've read Matt Ruff's short story, Safe Negro Travel Guide? It's pretty good.

[eumelia.livejournal.com]

I got into a huge row with a family member over 51 Park, I'll probably write about it later.
The whole discourse is frightening frankly.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Here's where I heard about the missing Soviet astronaut thing.

[rm.livejournal.com]

AWESOME. I AM OBSESSED.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Also, did I leave anything out on the Mercury Retrograde odyssey?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

No, I think you got it all!

[pocketmouse]

I have to say that sounds pretty damn urban-legendy. If you want I can forward it to my mom and ask her what she's heard about this; she's a historian specializing in space history from WII through the 80s, especially the medical/life sciences research, so I wouldn't be surprised if she knows something about this if it is real. And if it is, I highly doubt that it was people/animals sent up because the ground forces knew that they would die and wanted to study that.

[jgcr.livejournal.com]

I think something like those space exploration rumors is the hook for the web tv show pioneer one. i liked the first episode.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

You should listen to the records because OH MY GOD HORRIFYING.

[tsarina.livejournal.com]

But I ask you, where are the hordes of feral chihuahuas? Did they eat all the other alligators?

There's a whole weird conspiracy theory crowd round radio transmissions of the time. I've seen this referenced more than once recently. I'll try to figure out where it was I saw them.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

I'm doing dorm move-in for my oldest on Thursday.
The plan is this: get off work, shower, load the car, drive her over to the dorm, help her unload, hug her, wave at her room-mate and drive home.

Then again, she's only 20 miles away.

[laughingacademy.livejournal.com]

In one of his travel pieces, Robert Heinlein claimed that during a 1960 trip with his wife, Virginia, in the USSR, some very excited cadets asked if they'd heard about the launch. Shortly afterward, the Heinleins' Intourist guide told them that the cadets had been mistaken -- there was no manned mission.

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

I remain consistently startled by how upsetting and frightening I find the backlash regarding 51Park.

Likewise. I think I can attribute some of it to my own secondary-and-high-school experience, in that, though I was at a fairly posh private school, its catchment area included a *lot* of various South Asian communities, and it was pretty much down the road from the main Muslim neighborhood. The only reason our RE class never visited the local place of worship was that the teachers never quite got the logistics of a class field trip figured out.

I did see the beginning of the NYT article on the Green Book below the fold on the front page: I shall have to give it more thought as it's possibly relevant to something I'm trying to write.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link, Bill!

[wcg.livejournal.com]

For the Soviet Space program stuff, check out http://www.lostcosmonauts.com/default.htm.

It's considered 'common knowledge' in the space biz that the Soviets went through a lot of cosmonauts. The people who are in the best position to tell you how much of what you see on the website you linked to aren't talking, but I'd hazard that if you were to ask them at a water cooler they'd allow as some of that stuff really happened.

If I had any current contacts at NPO Energia I'd ask, but I suspect they wouldn't really know any more than I do.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Oh god, my parents dropped me off, gave me a few big, tight hugs, and drove home. End of story.

Sheesh.

Oh, and I was completely disinterested in any of the Welcome Freshmen orientation nonsense. I knew from pretty much the get-go that I couldn't stand anyone on my hall, and that something had gone wrong and that I was supposed to be in interest housing across campus*.

Bah.

*This is actually true. A few months later, the dunderhead in charge of membership said he'd found my application fallen behind a desk, and that I would have been an obvious shoo-in for the floor. I'm still angry at that because my freshman year sucked a lot, mostly to do with my crappy living situation.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I was in special interest housing and terrible terrible things happened, of which you know.

Alas.

But that sucks.

[setissma.livejournal.com]

As an RA, I can tell you that the parents-dropping-kids-off thing is getting increasingly complicated. Every year, our college has at least a few sets of parents who just will not leave and have to be sort of strongarmed by our dean's office, and there's always a lot of intense involvement on move in day; I had a mom last year who refused to let her daughter live in the room she'd been assigned to, and a few other parents who stuck around for most of orientation, which was a pain in the ass. I think it makes the transition a lot harder for most kids, and it's a pain in the ass for residential staff. I've got frosh moving in on Wednesday and I'm really not looking forward to dealing with parents.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

I made it onto the floor for Sophomore year, and stayed there until graduation.

I can't help but want to blame him, in however small a way, for the fact my grades Freshman year were abysmal, because I was a lonely, cracked-out mess because I always felt targeted in my room. You know what's not fun? A ROOMMATE WHO STROVE TO BE EVERYTHING THAT MADE ME RUN FROM DALTON. ::headdesk::

[marchek.livejournal.com]

My parents pretty much dropped me off, help me set up a local bank account and then left. Then again, they did travel all the way from Hawaii to Indiana to do this. What I find funny is that my college is mentioned in the article. I NEVER hear about my college in media.

[4hour-ramona.livejournal.com]

oh i thought that was gonna be the other morbo.

[mercurybard.livejournal.com]

the Pentagon is surveying military spouses about DADT, wanting to know if they will encourage their partners to leave the military or if they will be rude to gay military spouses or inclined to leave military housing should DADT ever get solved
*headdesk*

As a former partner of an American serviceman (enlisted), if the other members of my FRG group responded to that survey, the results would range from "I'm not homophobic, but do they have to be so public about it?" to "BURN IN HELL YOU SINNING SINNERS".

And the missing cosmonaut thing is creepy. And fascinating.

[ladyaelfwynn.livejournal.com]

First off, I'm so very glad I went to college in the late 1980s/early 1990s and had a dad that was pretty much, "Bye, kid! Have fun!" and punted me out of the nest. I got more crap from my grandmother (with whom I lived for a few years after my mom died and dad was working shift work) about not keeping in touch that I did from my dad and stepmom.

Anyways, as a parent of an 11 year old, I can totally understand how today's parents find it hard to just drop their kid off at college and leave. First there's the 18+ years of conditioning that dropping your kid off, anywhere, and just leaving them makes you a Bad Parent. You have to make certain that they make it in the building safely and that you're there for them if anything should go wrong, because if you aren't you're neglectful and deserve CPS come and take your kids away.

Then there's the idea that most of these kids heading off to college were Truly Wanted kids. Not a delightful "oops", 1960s love child, like me! ;-p With birth control easily available for the socio-economic classes that regularly send their kids to sleep away college, most of the kids going these days were planned. And a significant subset are even kids that parents went to great lengths to conceive/adopt. Letting go someone that wanted is hard.

I hope that when we make this trip in 7 years (eep! I hope we'll be able to afford sleep away school!), we'll be able to unload stuff at the dorm, make a trip to the Megamart for those things we forgot, and then say "bye" and leave. And only call once that weekend. ;-p

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Nope, but there's reasons he has that name. <3