The September Just Posts

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Welcome to the latest edition of the Just Posts, the monthly roundtable of posts on topics of social justice and activism hosted here and at Cold Spaghetti.

I have a confession to make. Putting together the Just Posts is hard. I don’t particularly mean hard work, though the act of putting together the list of links and formatting and checking links and so forth is a bit of a chore. Chores I can manage. What I really mean is that putting together the Just Posts is hard on me. Especially my monthly attempt to actually write with seriousness about issues that are important to me. You see, I blog primarily to be creative, to have an outlet to play with words, and to express my silly side. I think about serious issues a lot, mind you, but when it comes down to it, I find writing about serious things to be both mentally taxing and emotionally draining. One problem is that there are a daunting number of issues that I think about, each one of them even more daunting in its complexity. Another problem is that I am a slow writer. The more serious the topic, the more carefully (and slowly) I choose my words.

That being said, I truly appreciate it when others choose to write about topics that make a difference to our world. Reading such posts inspires me. Hearing your voices speaking out edifies me. Knowing that others are also reading motivates me. The individual posts we write may not move mountains, but our efforts combined are part of a powerful force for positive change.¹

I’ll finish up my ramblings here by offering up one of my favorite protest songs from the late, great, legendary Bob Marley: “Get Up, Stand Up.”


Don’t give up the fight.

And now, the all important list: The September Just Posts.

The posts of this month’s roundtable were submitted by:

Thanks so much for reading! We really appreciate your support. And not just appreciate it. We need your support to keep the Just Posts going.

If you have a post in the list above, or would just like to support the Just Posts, we invite you to display a button on your blog with a link back here, or to the Just Posts at Cold Spaghetti. If you would like to have a post included next month, you can find out how to submit posts and all sorts of other stuff about the Just Posts at the information page.
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¹ This seems a good time to mention that Blog Action Day is coming up, a day when thousands bloggers around the world speak out on a common topic. This year’s theme is Climate Change. The big day is tomorrow (October 15th), but there is still time to participate. I haven’t yet committed to writing, but I certainly expect to do some reading.

Spanish toast

A Spanish toast: una tostada con mantequilla y marmelada
A Spanish toast: una tostada con mantequilla y marmelada

Our trip to Spain was full of adventures. We traveled by train, by bus, by air, by boat and by foot and had one rather scary taxi ride. We saw historic landmarks and breathtaking scenery, an ancient palace and some masterpieces of modern architecture, and many more things that I’ll hopefully tell you about soon. Among my favorite memories of the trip, however, are the calm moments we had just enjoying sitting still for a little meal.

In Sevilla, we stayed in an apartment located in a little pedestrian square. A perk of this particular place was that the owner also owned the little bar/cafe down in the square, and breakfast was included in the nightly rate. (I’m ever-so-grateful to az, who helped us pick this place, from among a dizzying array of apartment options.)

Breakfast was served from 7 a.m. till noon. After the first rather stressful morning (during which we found that it didn’t work too well to actually have breakfast downstairs due to the difficulties of wrangling small children out the door before their breakfast, combined with the rush of people breakfasting at the hour of the day coinciding with our ability to get the small children out the door), we found that it was very pleasant to sit outside for a late-morning snack.

The included desayuno consisted of a beverage (such as coffee or cola cao, the Spanish version of hot cocoa), plus fresh squeezed orange juice, and a “tostada.” The tostada was a toasted mini-baguette, which we could get with various toppings. A couple of times, I had my tostada with tomato and olive oil, a popular and tasty Spanish breakfast. Mostly, though, we would get mantequilla y marmelada (butter and jam). The toast was always fresh and hot, and the butter was so sweet and tasty that I rarely added jam. The coffee was excellent, as was the orange juice.

A view of the cafe tables set up in the square.
A view of the cafe tables set up in the square.
The square was shaded by orange trees.
The square was shaded by little orange trees.
The window where we'd order and collect our breakfast. We did, however, need to be cautious as we walked from the cafe window to the tables, as you never knew when a moped might drive along the sidewalk in front of the cafe.
The window where we'd order and collect our breakfast. We did, however, need to be cautious as we walked from the cafe window to the tables, as you never knew when a moped might drive along the sidewalk in front of the cafe.
Phoebe and Theo.
Phoebe and Theo.
Phoebe enjoys the last drops of her hot chocolate.
Phoebe enjoys the last drops of her hot chocolate.
Theo enjoys his crust of bread.
Theo enjoys his crust of bread.

Here’s a little movie of Phoebe and Theo down at the cafe. I warn you that nothing much happens in the movie, but it captures a bit of one of those pleasant mornings.

If I could, I’d go back there in a heartbeat. I’d raise my glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice in a toast:

To the pleasures of a tasty mid-morning snack, sitting in a little outdoor cafe, in a little square, on a beautiful day, in a charming old Spanish city.

(Actually, I probably wouldn’t actually say all of that. But this post was inspired by this week’s Monday Mission, which was to post in the style of a toast. I chose to post about toast.)

the sound of music in my pants

    My pants are alive
    with the sound of music…    ¹

While my pants were off galavanting about Spain, without an iPod in my pocket, the lovely and talented Rima tagged my pants for a meme. A pants meme.

The ensuing weeks of painstaking research (thankfully not pantstaining research), and the reunion of my iPod and my pants, have resulted in the following playlist of pants:

  1. Photographic in my pants–(Depeche Mode. Seriously old school Depeche Mode.)
  2. Shiawase (Happiness) in my pants– Puffy AmiYumi
  3. Anchor in my pants–Trespassers William
  4. Under the Milky Way in my pants–The Church
  5. Crash in my pants–The Primitives
  6. Chains of Love in my pants–Erasure
  7. Trampoline in my pants–Calamine
  8. Pilgrimage in my pants–Nine Inch Nails
  9. Nutshell in my pants–Alice in Chains
  10. Bizare Love Triangle in my pants–New Order
  11. Pianos and Clocks in my pants–Aztec Camera
  12. Protection in my pants–Massive Attack
  13. The Ramblings of a Mad Man in my Pants–FSOL
  14. Welcome to the Fold in my pants–Filter
  15. Overflow in my pants–O Positive
  16. Radio Silence in my pants–Thomas Dolby
  17. The Postcard in my pants–Boris Grebenshikov
  18. Island in the Sun in my pants–Weezer
  19. Bamboleo in my pants–Gipsy Kings
  20. Psychobabble in my pants–Frou Frou
  21. Rockville in my pants–R.E.M.

And now I’m going to go all crazy with the tagging. I tag the pants of the last 10 blog-bearing people who left comments on my blog. (For those of you who left comments and don’t have blogs, why don’t you have blogs??) I’m also going to tag my friend jenny, just because I like to see what’s on her iPod.²

  1. Painted Maypole
  2. antropologa
  3. magpie
  4. Madame Meow
  5. Mary G
  6. Kyla
  7. Holly
  8. girlgriot
  9. azahar
  10. bon
  11. jenny

If you want to join in, the game is played thusly: set your iPod to shuffle, and make a note of the songs that come up. Append the phrase “in my pants.” As many songs as you choose. If you have no iPod, come up with a list of songs of your choosing. If you have no pants, you may want to append instead the phrase “without pants.” Or you can write a 500-word essay discussing your current state of pantslessness.

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¹ Note that the post title song is not on my iPod. But the song, along with “Do a Deer in my pants,” has been stuck in my head. Perhaps I’ll leave it to your imagination what has been stuck in my pants.

² And because I wanted to go all the way up to 11.³

³ Because otherwise I wouldn’t have a good segue to mention going through airport security with a cucumber in my pants.⁴

⁴ Well, not my pants.

The JPs are coming

Justice of the Peace?
Juices of a peach?
John Paul II?
Jello Pudding, Jiffy Pop?
Jumping pandas, jaunty peacocks and jaded parrots?
Jemima Puddleduck?
Jacket pockets, jangling ponies or jingling pennies?
Jiggling parts in jogging pants?

What I’m trying to get at is that the Just Posts will be posted shortly. There’s still a wee bit of time to send in nominations for posts for the September round-up of posts on topics of social justice.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry, I’m used to it.

No, wait. That’s not what I meant to say. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, please check out the JP info page. Or the info page over at Holly‘s. Or you may want to peek a visit to last month’s list.

The Just Posts are open to everybody. We hope you’ll join us!

tired

Remember how I said I hoped to get some recaps and photos from my trip posted soon, and get back to visiting blogs? Well, as it turns out, I underestimated how entirely tired I would be.

In addition to seriously underestimating the impact of jetlag, I’d also underestimated how stressed I would feel coming back to the pressure of home and work responsibilities. Not that our trip was relaxing, mind you. In fact, we were too busy for me to even think about all the work I wasn’t doing on the trip, and all the other random crap we hadn’t gotten done before our departure. It was a kind of decompression to be away from it all, and taxed with merely the day-by-day, and sometimes hour-by-hour, stress of making our way around on very tired feet and getting ourselves fed all the while wrangling two very tired little kiddos.

And now we’re back to the pressures of our regular chaotic home and life, among which are dealing with various home and car issues. Such as a car tire with a slow leak that had been getting progressively worse. For the weeks leading up to the trip, we’d had to pump up the tire 2 or 3 times a day. It would get totally flat within maybe 8 hours. With the hecticness of work before the trip, we just couldn’t fit the time and even brief carlessness into our schedules. So upon returning, the rear tire was still leaking and lurking, rearing its ugly total flatness almost every time I needed to dash out the door to get the kids to daycare, or rush back from work to pick them up. (Mind you, we did really get some good use out of our portable air compressor tire pump.)

I’m happy to say that our car now has new tires. 4 new tires, as it turns out. The tires hold their pressure beautifully, which greatly relieves one pressure in my daily schedule. And we had a lovely Saturday evening out together as a family at a mall eating mediocre food and buying fuzzy pajamas while the car got tired. (Phoebe was very happy that she got to meet some mechanics. She is a big fan of mechanics. She even will tell you as much, given the chance.)

Since I didn’t get any photos of the tire in its flatness, I thought perhaps I could instead share photos of tiredness from our trip.

Phoebe at dinner on our first night in Barcelona, after 16+ hours of travel followed by refusal to nap.
Phoebe at dinner on our first night in Barcelona, after 16+ hours of travel followed by refusal to nap.

Phoebe often got tired from all the walking, and so would hitch a ride on John's shoulders. This is by the river in Sevilla.
Phoebe often got tired from all the walking, and so would hitch a ride on John's shoulders. This is by the river in Sevilla.

She asked to be carried *a lot*.
She asked to be carried *a lot*.

Theo, on the other hand, got to ride in the stroller most of the time. Here he is, admiring the streets of Sevilla.
Theo, on the other hand, got to ride in the stroller most of the time. Here he is, admiring the streets of Sevilla.

Here he is at a street cafe in Barcelona.
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Here he is at the top of Montjuïc in Barcelona.
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His cheeks got to know the buckles of the stroller well.
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And on many occasion, Theo just got tired of being stuck in the stroller.

Theo tiring of the gardens of Alcazar in Sevilla.
Theo tiring of the gardens of Alcazar in Sevilla.

Okay, it’s getting on towards midnight now, and I have a long day of commuting and work ahead. Yes, this post is odd and rambly. But what can I say? I’m tired.

re-entry

Phoebe peers through a gate at Alcazar in Sevilla.
Phoebe peers through a gate at Alcazar in Sevilla.

Hello? Is this thing on?

I’m back from Spain! We flew in late Monday afternoon, got back home by 6:30 p.m. Which doesn’t sound too late, except that we felt like it was after midnight due to the 6 hour time difference. Not to mention (well, yes, I guess I do mention) that it was 17 hours door to door. With a baby. And a three-year-old. Following a late night of packing. Then yesterday I drove my mother back to the airport and returned the rental car (I’ll explain later), then took the train back with Theo. In all, another 6 or so hours of travel. With a baby. So it still felt like a travel day.

And here I am today, totally wiped out, but still trying to get back into things. Trying to catch up with work stuff that I’ve missed, sort out house stuff that was left undone, get my thoughts organized, and make a stab at getting my photos together. I have literally (and I do mean literally) about 2000 photos from the trip on my computer. I have so much I want to (and plan to) share about the trip. For now, the micro summary: the trip was wonderful!

If you are hungry for more details, I hope to serve them up soon. Meanwhile, I’m happy to be able to tantalize you with some appetizers from azahar, who put up a couple of posts featuring our visit to Sevilla: girls night out and mmmm…. (However, I must warn you that if you are actually hungry, you might want to get a bite to eat before paying a visit to casa az; the food photos are likely to torment you otherwise.)

As for reading blogs, I’m a little afraid to look at my feed reader. I’m sure it is full to overflowing. I know that many advocate the “mark all as read option,” but I always worry that I will miss something major. (Have I missed something major?) I hope to have a bit of time to get back online tonight, but for now I think I need to take a nap. I intend to start Theo’s sleep training in earnest tonight, and all intentions will be overridden if I fall asleep again while putting him to bed.

Salutaciós de Barcelona!

Hola, amics! Què hi ha de nou?

Here we are in Barcelona. We arrived on Tuesday. It’s been remarkably hard to find time to even open my computer, so I won’t write much. I haven’t had much chance for sightseeing yet, as the conference just wrapped up yesterday. Shockingly, I have yet to see a speck of Gaudi. Tomorrow will hopefully change that.

For now, I’ll just share a few photos from the conference. Yes, that sounds really boring. Except that the conference was held in this building:
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It didn’t look like much from the outside, but inside, it looked like this:
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The talks were held in this little auditorium…
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…which was full of antique tapestries.
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We got to go outside to the portico/balcony surrounding the courtyard for coffee breaks…
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…during which we could drink espresso and eat our fill of tasty pastries…
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…and go for a stroll in the jasmine-scented rooftop garden, where we could admire the water lily pond and other attractive plants.
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The poster sessions were also held outside on the balconies. (I forgot to get a photo with my own poster up, but you can see the setup.)
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I have to say, of the conferences I’ve been to, this was by far the most pleasant venue. (The conference itself was also great, mind you, and my poster went pretty well. )

The August Just Posts

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Welcome to the latest edition of the Just Posts, featuring posts from the month of August on topics of social justice. Holly (of Cold Spaghetti) and I are pleased to share with you this phenomenal gathering of bloggers who are speaking out about causes that are important to them.

I’d also direct your attention to the blog Violence Unsilenced, a site “shedding light on the epidemic of domestic violence and sexual assault.” The inaugural post of the blog was included in our February Just Post round-up, but the site is still going strong. The site gives a space for individuals to share their own personal stories, and readers are encouraged to leave comments to show their support. Telling personal stories of this sort is extremely courageous, and each of these women (and occasionally men, too), deserve recognition and encouragement. The site provides an important outlet that is not only cathartic for those who share their stories, but can help those who are still grappling with, or (worse yet) living with, their own ordeals.

I confess that only visit the site periodically, but I do make efforts to return and to leave comments. I entreat you to do the same if you have it in you to do so.

Each month for the Just Posts, I have been highlighting a song that speaks to (or perhaps sings to) some of the issues that the roundtable highlights. My selection for this month is Tracy Chapman’s “Behind the Wall,” a chilling yet beautiful a cappella song that tells a story of domestic violence.

And without further ado, here is this month’s roundtable.

The August 2009 Just Posts:

This month’s posts were nominated by:

Thanks so much for reading! We really appreciate your support. And not just appreciate it. We need your support to keep the Just Posts going.

Please drop by Holly’s to see what she has to say this month.

If you have a post in the list above, or would just like to support the Just Posts, we invite you to display a button on your blog with a link back here, or to the Just Posts at Cold Spaghetti. If you are unfamiliar with the Just Posts, please visit the information page.
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9 nine things for 9/9/9

Oh, number nine, you are so fine.

Today is September 9th, 2009. The ninth day of the ninth month of the year. Or 09/09/09.

So, I really don’t have time to be posting this. I’m going absolutely bonkers getting the posters together for the conference. But 9 is my favorite number, and having posted 7 movies on 7/7/7 and 8 things on 8/8/8 it bothers me not to put up my 9s. Plus I’ve actually had scraps of this post drafted for 2 years. So, let’s see if I can spare a few minutes (9 perhaps?) to get this post up.

A list of 9 things:

  1. Revolution #9: A song by the Beatles “number nine…number nine”
  2. “9 times.” A quote from Ferris Bueller. Refers to the number of time Ferris was absent from school.
  3. nine circles: Hell has them. Not actually sure much about it, and I don’t have time to look. Something to do with Dante. Anyone want to enlighten me?
  4. The Ninth Gate (1999): A thriller starring Johnny Depp.
  5. nine lives: it’s said that cats have nine lives, perhaps because they seem to be able to survive rather extraodinary predicaments.
  6. The word for “nine” in French is also a word for new. , 9 = neuf = new.
  7. dressed to the nines: an expression meaning “really dressed up.”
  8. cloud nine: a good place to be. When I finish these posters for the conference, I will be on cloud nine.
  9. And one of the coolest things about the number 9 has to do with math. Have you ever noticed that the digits of any multiple of 9 add up to 9, or to another multiple of 9, the digits of which also will then add up to 9?
    For example:
    9 x 3 = 27 and 2 + 7 = 9
    9 x 5 = 45 and 4 +5 = 9
    9 x 273892 = 2465028 and 2 + 4 + 6 + 5 + 0 + 2 + 8 = 27 (and 2 + 7 = 9)

    How cool is that?

For more than 9 other things about 9, the 9 wiki page is dressed to the nines.

Now I’d best get back to my work before it’s too late. A stitch in time, and all that.