Good Bloggin'

My new reader, you know who you are! our email exchange has touched me deeply, inspires me to write today. The young family that lives in the house across the street is particularly loud today, with the criollo music band led by the father practicing at top volume. The impromptu live concert has gone on since this morning, and it's almost 3:00 p.m. now! Good thing I like criollo music (plena, guaguanco, especially). The funny thing is that for the past month, the sounds from there, instead of music, were the pounding, drilling, hammering, whirring dissonance of construction which the young father supervised.

Also, Xian, the Princeton buddy who introduced me to blogging, has sent me an interesting link to a list of futuristic implants, including one that substitutes lymph for butter. Just seeing the word "lymph" in a context that makes people think makes me happy, because lymph is seldom spoken about, anywhere.

The Adventures of Pie Queen has introduced a new drink, the Ladybug!, to me:

"I could live on those Ladybugs alone, a kind of sunset-pink granita/slush
made from pureed frozen watermelon chunks, vodka, lime rind, lime juice, and
sugar. The key is the frozen watermelon, which gives the drink a marvelous
sorbet-ish consistency. And of course, you could leave out the vodka and just
slush around in it all day long."

Children, my niece Lucía for sure, may have fun fixing their own Ladybugs -- without vodka, of course.

"You Wanna Piece of Me?" is Pocho Joe's, a Princeton alumnus, new solo, original show coming to NYC @ the end of August. Yesterday, Joe himself broke the news to Princeton's Pueblo-Latino discussion group, here's what he wrote:

Waddup, Alumni! WOW! If I knew that this discussion group existed, I would've joined a long time ago. I'll be bringing my solo show to NYC for a limited run in August. It is a SHOW THAT YOU CANNOT MISS. You'll understand it on a level that others won't. I talk about being a Polish-Mexican-American from Chicago who doesn't fit in ANYWHERE. I talk about showing up at my first Chicano Caucus meeting, my first Chicano birthday party and my overall struggle with my ethnic identity.YOU CANNOT MISS THIS. I look forward to seeing you there. This is the most personal work I've ever developed for the stage and I KNOW that you'll love it.
Much love,
Joe Hernandez-Kolski '96

Show Dates & Times:
Five shows only!
Saturday, August 20th at 5pm; Sunday, August 21st at 7:30pm;
Wednesday, August 24th at 4pm; Friday, August 26th at 7pm; and Saturday, August 27th at 2:45pm

For tickets:
Ace of Clubs(www.aceofclubsnyc.com)9 Great Jones Street (3rd St. betw. Broadway & Lafayette)NYC, NY 10012

Xian, Daniel and all of you who may have Yahoo! 360 spots you seldom use, now know that you can feed your real blogs into Y! 360! Nice!

Reggie, a Y! 360 friend from the Phillipines, pointed me to Pl8lunch's map of friends on Bravenet. Maybe I should start my own one day.

My brother's daughter, Carmencita, visited today. After drawing on paper with crayons, she wanted to draw on my Dell. Other than launching Microsoft Paint, she did everything by herself, pick the colors and freestyle draw. Those of you may recognize her work as action painting combined with abstract expressionism.

My oldest sister's four year-old daughter, Lucía, lives in Indianapolis, so I see her once a year if at all. Today, my husband and I got news that her photo appeared in the Indianapolis Star, with her face decorated with a Harry Potter temporary tatto and a star.

If you are wondering how many four year-old nieces I have, only two, born nine days apart: Lucía and Carmencita, my brother's daughter.

Y! 360's Greenleaf, who's now working for Zazzle, uploaded this image to Flickr. I picked it as my favorite of all his shots, to find out many others complimented him for it too. Must be I have good taste.

The PatAct (a put-down, of course it is, of the Patriot Act) has inpired the ACLU to start its first blog. Swoon, the ACLU is my hero. Many thanks to PaminDurham for the news.

P.S.: There is a link trap, if you want to follow the PatAct link above, you may or may not be surprised where you wind up. Wink! ... no, this has nothing to do with the love I feel for my readers.

Here's an important message from a fellow member of Brown-Ivy (Latino alumni of all Ivy League schools: Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia):

If you are offended by the t-shirt: “New Mexico, Cleaner Than Regular Mexico,” currently sold in Urban Outfitters stores nationwide, you can take action right this very minute.

You can:

1) Sign the Urban Outfitters Outrage petition at http://www.PetitionOnline.com/urbout05/petition.html

2) Boycott Urban Outfitters and Anthropologie stores (yup, they own
that,too)

3) Sell all of their stock (NASDAQ: URBN) if you own it and invest
your money in a company with some ethics

4) Call their Corporate Headquarters in Philadelphia at 215-564-2313 to
demand the removal of the t-shirt from their stores and web site, as well as a
real apology

5) Write to their President and Chairman of the Board, Richard Hayne and give him a piece of your mind

6) Call any reporters or media you know and tell them how enraged
and sickened you are. Negative publicity will hurt sales and their company
share price, and you know those fat boys are hurt most by an empty
pocketbook

7) Spread the word!!!!You can see this blood-boiling t-shirt at
urbanoutfitters.com, men’s apparel, short sleeved tees, fifth page.

This is not about political correctness or censorship. This is about basic
respect and tolerance. If they want to blatantly disrespect the Hispanic
community and our $700 billion in purchasing power, they can do so at their own
risk. By the way, they’ve pulled stunts like this before with the Asian
and Jewish communities. They think tasteless is funny. They’ll do it again if we
let this slide, so let’s go out there and make them live to regret this
product!

Thanks for your help, everyone.

Me, I've taken steps #1 (signed the petition) and #7: spreading the word. #2, the boycott, I'm starting now!

Maya Angelou offers this nugget of wisdom:

"I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she
handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree
lights."

This one is for all of you have children, nieces, nephews and/or children you care for:

A Bedtime Story for My Nephews by Christian T.S. Crumlish

Once upon the time there were two little boys named Elmo. They were so tired that they kept yawning. Elmo wanted to get up and play some more but Elmo was tired so he closed his eyes. Then Elmo decided he was tired too, so they both went to sleep. The end.

Now we need illustrations.

Scientists now know that for any virus, size matters in its quest to enter a cell. A cell's membrane embraces optimally invaders the diameter of "27 to 30 nanometers... 1,000 times smaller than [a strand] of human hair." If you ever want to invent a virus; of the good kind to help battle cancer, for example, keep in mind those dimensions.

Making the entire "Circle in Square" series @ Flickr seem dull, feast your eyes with another brilliant photograph by Daniel Scally.

You've heard it before, today Daniel Scally of Construct proves it again: photography is his museum-caliber art.

Today it hit me again as I pushed my grocery cart down the aisles that inspired Supermarket Schlock Shock before. My habitual readers must wonder what in Morgan Spurlock's name was I doing @ that market again, the truth my local health/vegetarian food market was closed, my tiny neighborhood market is going downhill rapidly and my husband wanted yogurt for his fresh blueberries. Oh, and bottled water.

My bravery paid off, I found in the shelves, among the nightmarish fare offered by the likes of Kellogg's and Nabisco, a Colombian whole wheat and oat cookie without a trace of High Fructose Corn Syrup as well as Polish MultiVitamin juice and a Spanish OJ that are HFCS-free. Sigh! What will become of American children whose parents are not down with the dangers of HFCS? A cursory look @ all the mothers-with-kids-present carts @ the market tonight, gave me anxious chest pain: boxes of Capri Sun, radioactive-looking cereal boxes and other junk that I would give only to my worst enemy.

Source: http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-ooVnzrU3eqXHKSdB2TQ.j3cMn.tCeQ--?p=1117

Another possible title: "Almost a Cloud for Each Boat"

Gaby and I were joking around in Yahoo! 360, but he did take me up on my request to have the print for a poster. Very nice! Vele dank, het mooie werk, Gaby!

I'm still savoring my simplest-dinner-on-Earth: organic brown rice (no brand/bought in bulk), boiled to perfection w. just the right amount of sea salt, served in a bowl w. extra-virgin olive oil (Hojiblanca) and organic ketchup. To drink? Mott's Natural Apple Juice.

Imagine you were a great danger to your family or work group and your body issued automatically an alert to them to kill you: you'd be a DNA-damaged cell! Scientists @ UC, in collaboration with others, have shown that, under conditions created only by chemotherapy and radiation, damage in DNA results in a "kill-me" signal to the immune system, the first line of defense against cancer.

My headache was the sign, my Fourth of July dinner must have contained, without my knowledge, one of my triggers: High Fructose Corn Syrup, Aspartame or Sucralose. Taking a close look @ all the ingredients in the food I'd had, the culprit appeared: Sucralose in the Joseph's Pita Bread! Why oh why? Lesson learned: I need to start making my own bread, like my husband used to make his before he couldn't anymore.

This posting is for all of you who haven't read it today on the Women-Connect discussion group:

SUBJECT: Help!
DATE: 7/4/2005 3:28:00 PM

Sorry for the cross-posting. My sister, Anna Lewis, is running for Civil Court Judge in Brooklyn. She needs to collect 4,000 signatures of registered Democrats from Brooklyn in the next week. She will hand-deliver or fax the petitions to anyone who might be able to collect signatures. If you can help or have any ideas of how to expedite the process, please call her at (917) 213-4144. She is on the Board of the Mitchell-Lama Residents Coalition. She is also on the Board of the NAACP and has 21 years of legal and community experience. She currently works for an Appellate Term judge. Thank you so much!