all that's past is prologue...

Living in London in 1987.

Listening to Billy Bragg.

Feeling like only someone who felt like that about that about Thatcher could understand how I felt about Reagan.

Walking up the stairs from the Tube stop and having my friend Fran say "I don't know how someone could break up with you because they thought you were 'too mainstream.'"

Being in a small club (Dingwalls? The Hackney Empire? Somewhere in Highgate? I don't know...) seeing Billy Bragg live for the first time.

Wearing out my live cassette tape of "Talking with the Taxman About Poetry" while drinking cheap wine from the corner store.

Understanding what it meant to be part of a force. Finding myself.

Feeling the importance of a union now even more that I understand it better (hat tip to SEIU).

Tonight seeing Billy Bragg at the Fine Line was part of all that, just *a few* years later.

Magic. Thank you

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I interrupt my blog travelogue to talk about the Amanda Palmer concert last night, a 4-hour epic event that reminded me that compassion and empathy are complicated, and often come from where you least expect it — and simultaneously don't come from where you might.

The scene: a packed O'Shaughnessy Auditorium. The mostly female, overwhelmingly white, audience is varied in age from goth teens to stately grandmothers. The lobby has tables from Planned Parenthood to Amanda's merchants and Patreon tables. Everyone knows they are here for something extraordinary.

And extraordinary it is. The concert is not long because Amanda *Fucking* Palmer plays thousands of songs. It's long because each song is long (6-11 minutes), and because for every song, she sets the tone by telling the story of how it came about. Each story is a nautilus of a piece that winds back around itself and leads you somewhere unexpected. It's an incredible look into how they were written and how her t…

Normally, when we are in New York, we have just a short time so decide to stay in Midtown. This time, though we had an equally short time, we decided to stay with our friends Julie and Neil in Brooklyn and prioritize together time, and I'm so glad we did!

(This is where I admit I had been to Brooklyn just once before in my life, to go to Julie's, and I had generally looked down on it as Not Manhattan and also Way Too Hipster. This trip was a great chance to eliminate those stereotypes.)

When we arrived Thursday, the construction in LaGuardia was causing a huge transportation backup; you had to take a shuttle, which took well over 45 minute, just to get to the taxi stand, which was still better than a 90 minute wait and over $100 fee for Lyft. So we did not get to Julie's until about 7:30, but we got delicious Thai food and then got ice cream at Ample Hills and got a little driving tour of Brooklyn.

Friday we got kind of a later start and took the subway in to go to the Gugge…

Most people are surprised that I really like Miami. I'm not sure why — maybe they associate it only with the party scene, or with the seemingly endless number of famous-in-their-own-mind Instagrammers taking nonstop beach shots as they walk in the sand in a bikini and stilettos, or with a "lack of culture."

But what I see when I think of Miami is a gorgeous beach, where I can lay in a beach chair and watch Beatrix play in the waves in her mermaid tail. Where we can get a few fancy drinks and tacos and sit in a cabana by our rooftop pool. Where we can walk in the warmth along Ocean Avenue and take in the Deco buildings. Where we can eat outside in pedestrian-mall streets with glowing lanterns and where I can eat all the seafood I want, or Cuban food in a courtyard, or even just have a nutella croissant and strong Italian coffee for breakfast while still being outside in the warmth. Where even the chain stores like Lush seem somehow more interesting, and where I can walk t…

Today, when Beatrix was at "sharing time" at school, we were surprised that some of the things she talked about were not just the things we did on vacation, but things here at home too.

For instance, she talked about how she got her hair cut the day before we left. But hey, our hair person is pretty awesome!

And hey, I eased into spring break by attending Bob Mould at the Turf Club with my awesome friend Katharine, who regularly encourages me to stretch my boundaries. It had been years since I had been to the Turf Club! But there we were. lining up as the doors opened, so we could be sure to get a table and to see the opening act — an all-female trio called Last Import that met at She Rock and who were so much fun to watch.



And then Bob Mould came on and he was fantastic! I don't think I've actually seen him play since I was technically legal to go into a bar to do so (hint: that's a long time). But he (along with his drummer and bass) were great — really energet…

Though Beatrix gets lots of long weekends from school (this one was for conferences, in which she did very well, thank you), we are always bad at planning getaways during them. There always seems to be some obligation we have here (usually my work, sigh) that keeps us from being able to go.
But this weekend, even here, we were able to do a few "bucket list" items!
The "corpse flower" at the U of M greenhouse started blooming on Thursday. It only blooms every 3-10 years (we were told the one here is on the frequent end of that cycle), but I had never made it over to see it. Patrick is very smell-sensitive, but we watched some live cam feed of it and psyched himself up, so after meetings on Friday afternoon we headed over.
The flower itself had bloomed for less time than expected, so it was somewhat deflated, even in less than 24 hours. But that was good news for Patrick, because the smell (which really was like rotting meat) was contained. It really was cool to see…