redbird | Reading

It was very pleasant in Santa Cruz. Cool to chilly evenings and mild days. Enough riders so it was well worth doing the event. Some of those riders were from a school. It always amazes me how much a riding school is a cult of personality. Sometimes that personality can really ride, and teach others to ride, and sometimes they are clearly doing well with gathering people around them, but actually teaching riding isn't the real goal. This was one of those groups. They all came, they all more or less participated, but they were sloppy, rude and it showed in their scores. One of my obstacles had 4 cones in a row. Beginner level was to walk from the first cone to the second, stop and back your horse 3 steps, and then walk on. Once student rode past me saying that she didn't feel "confident" about doing the obstacle, so she was not going to attempt it. Instead she walked her horse past the cones without stopping or trying to back. OK then.
Then there were the older ladies who came up for "fun" and clearly didn't really care about the obstacles. They were the last group out on the trail, and I'm sure they did have fun, however they also took poorly conditioned, overweight horses out on an 8 mile trail ride with some good steep climbs in it. It took the first group doing the ride 3 hours to complete the ride. It took the ladies more than 5. The first group of riders included 4 riders on horses who had clearly been ridden regularly, and who performed well on the obstacles.
The core group of riders are always fun to judge. They are focused on doing a good job and improving their riding.
It was really nice to have Donald along, even though he was clearly kind of tired from a trip he was just returning from.
Back home there don't seem to be broken pipes or other tragedies, so I'm very happy. It is warm here, but very very dry. Humidity was 17% when I got home.
This week the focus is on getting the solar setup finished. I also need to finish a little plumbing at the water tanks and up near the springs. Oh and get some canning done! Long past time for that.
Had two really delicious Cherokee Carbon tomatoes for dinner. They are bigger than I expected, though still a medium sized tomato. Unfortunately they lack the deep smoky flavor of Cherokee Purple. Even without that extra kick of flavor they were really good.

I had such a nice Readercon!

I went into my last round of programming on just as little sleep as my first because of the fox that screamed in the yard for what felt like all night, but the epically freewheeling breadth of "The Odyssey in 2026" can be gauged by the fact that one of my co-panelists talked about the anarchic receptions of Katerina Gogou and another the diametric adaptational differences between Armand Assante and Ralph Fiennes and a third the modern moralities of Epic: The Musical (2024) while I had the chance for the first time in several decades to mention my master's thesis on the archaic lyric transformation of Homeric motifs. The audience was full of brilliant questions about the oral tradition and the epic cycle and we barely even got into the polyphony of translations. We could have gone another thousand hexameters easy. "Reckoning at 10" came out about half reading and half craft beer-and-cider tasting courtesy of Michael J. DeLuca and his harvesting of post-industrial orchards and spruce tips. I enjoyed the technical discussion and the notes from the audience. The room sang happy birthday to the magazine.

Beyond this point I was already beginning to slump into a pumpkin, but I managed to collapse on a portion of outdoor sofa adjacent to Kate Nepveu and Marissa Lingen and Gwynne Garfinkle and Greer Gilman with interludes of Catherine Rockwood and Michael McAfee and

ckd and Romie Stott. Dean offered me peaches.

choco_frosh had to run off to dismantle the con. I caught Mike and Anita as they were loading out and now I have copies of the phantasmagorically endpapered Trail of Shadows (2025) and the brand-new edition of Strange Wisdoms of the Dead (2006/18). The sole reading I made it to was Michael Cisco's. Briefly there was a Cameron Roberson. I hugged a lot of people.

Then I was a pumpkin that had to run a lot of errands, but so long as the monkey's paw does not curl slowly shut, I have not had a nicer weekend this year and I have not had such a professional one in seven. I will feel fragile about my immune system until some days have passed. I will need to sleep a lot. I didn't remember to bring my four-year-old collection which would have been convention-new. I was asked for my website and my social media and the spelling of my name. I have not felt for a long time that I could rely on either my intellect or my stamina and I am still not sure if I can start again, but I made it through all three days of my panels and loved them. It was like being alive to talk with people. At the moment I am looking forward to NecronomiCon.

Current Music: Haute & Freddy, "Dance the Pain Away"

The Lamplighters, San Francisco's Gilbert & Sullivan troupe, is reinventing itself, due to the financial pressures facing local theatrical groups of all kinds now. No more large-scale productions carted around to big local theaters around the Bay Area; they're commencing small-scale productions in small local theaters in the City. This Iolanthe's entire run was sold out before the first performance, so I can't send you to it even though it'll be running next weekend; all I can say is that they'll be doing Pirates of Penzance in the spring.

The venue was the ODC Theater in the Mission district, just three blocks from the BART station, a small space converted from a brick warehouse by installing a steeply raked bank of merely nine rows of seats on one side. Since it looks like one anyway, the setup was a backstage theater area, with costume racks and other paraphernalia floating around; the setting was simultaneously the London of the original 19C show, with a bit of San Francisco salted in, and the backstage it looked like. Private Willis was converted to a stagehand, and made several nonspeaking appearances in that capacity in Act 1 before his first canonical appearance in Act 2, for instance.

There were a few other tinkerings with the text, mostly to change outdated references. Strephon is now "a parliamentary Costco: he carries everything." When Mountararat says "This comes of women interfering in politics," he's roundly booed, and the conductor, former Lamplighters star soprano Jennifer Ashworth, says, "Watch it, baritone."

The costumes, however, were scarfed from the Lamplighters' extensive costume shop which covers decades of productions, so they were full-scale. Mostly pretty conventional, though the fairies were in dark and eerie hues.

The performances were lively and full of imaginative stage business. When the fairies want to run around but not be seen, they put big signs reading "Invisible" around their necks. The only thing that didn't work was the fairies' ability to control the peers' movements, which made hash out of the "don't go" song. The best singer all-round was Ash Hurtado as Phyllis. Her voice was a quite spectacular combination of the light and delicate with the strong and powerful. The dialogue between Mountararat (John Melis) and Tolloller (Jacob Bronson) where they're trying to negotiate over claims to Phyllis's hand was also quite delightfully done. Iolanthe (Rose Waldman) dominated the show rather than being buried underneath everyone else as often happens. Strephon (newcomer Matt Skinner) was bluff and intense, the Fairy Queen (Sonia Gariaeff) was fierce when she ought to have been, nd the Lord Chancellor (veteran Chris Uzelac) was played with heft but a minimum of eccentricity.

As an experiment, this worked, but I hope they come up with different new and original ideas for subsequent shows.

Posted by naomikritzer

https://naomikritzer.com/2026/07/12/primary-election-2026-hennepin-county-commissioner-district-3/

http://naomikritzer.com/?p=26141

This is a non-partisan primary; the top two vote-getters will advance to the November election. Parties are not listed on the ballot but the DFL did endorse a candidate (incumbent Marion Greene). Here’s who’s on the ballot:

Anthony Abousweid
Abdihakim Arabow Ibrahim
Kevin Chavis
Anthony Walsh
Josh Bassais
Marion Greene

Anthony Abousweid

Anthony Abousweid doesn’t have a campaign website but his Instagram has a post (which I linked) with an image of a campaign flyer type thing that has a bunch of slogans on it. One of them is “Local Focus / Real Results,” but I can’t find anything that would say what sorts of real results he’s gotten in the past, if any. He does have a LinkedIn, which says he’s the owner of Sweid’s Entertainment/Gaming, a trading card shop. He has a GoFundMe to raise money for his campaign which has received not one single donation.

Abdihakim Arabow Ibrahim

Abdihakim is an immigrant who lives in St. Louis Park. He’s an engineer who served on the SLP school board. He also served on the St. Louis Park Police Advisory Commission and the 2020 Census Complete Count Committee. He mentions that he’s a professional engineer, but he doesn’t seem to have an updated LinkedIn so I’m not sure what sort of engineer.

If you are unhappy with Marion Greene, he’s absolutely the most qualified of the people currently running against her! I’m not sure how much he’d do that’s actually different; he talks about affordable housing and public safety (things she’s also a fan of) and under the Environmental Responsibility heading he talks about closing the garbage burner (HERC) “responsibly,” noting that just closing it without a plan would result in more waste going to landfills (which is exactly why the current board has not yet closed it.)

.Reading between the lines here, I think he feels like Marion doesn’t pay enough attention to St. Louis Park. (Might be true. I am not in a good position to suss that out.)

He has endorsements from two of his SLP school board colleagues.

Kevin Chavis

Kevin Chavis pledged to abide by the DFL endorsement and is keeping his pledge. He’s still on the ballot because this year’s Hennepin County Convention was after the deadline to withdraw from the ballot, but he has suspended his campaign.

Anthony Walsh

Anthony Walsh is a lawyer who works for the county as a Community Engagement Specialist. (I’m not sure what that actually involves.) His website has a video of him telling you about all the things he’s done in the last decade, and almost nothing about what he wants to do if he gets on the board, what his political principles are, etc. (He says he is pro youth and family; pro affordable housing; pro affordable child care; and pro employment. In contrast to all those politicians out there who are opposed to youth, families, affordable housing, affordable child care, and employment.)

Fortunately, he has a Wikipedia page with more information. (As an aside, it is hilarious to me that this guy has a Wikipedia page, which reads like it was written by one of his friends, and Kendall Qualls, the GOP-endorsed candidate for Minnesota Governor, still does not. Do you have zero friends, Kendall?) Via Anthony’s Wikipedia page I learned that he tried to run as a third-party (Legal Marijuana Party) candidate in CD 3 in 2024. Note that this was after Minnesota legalized weed. He was blocked from the ballot because the DFL took the Legal Marijuana Party’s “major party” status to court and the LMP lost (he then ran as a write-in.) If you ran for US Congress on the LMP ticket two years ago, you are not a serious person. (Link goes to a 2020 post where I tried to learn more about a LMP candidate and came away with a markedly lower opinion of the party as a whole.)

Josh Bassais

Josh Bassais was the conservative candidate for City Council in Ward 8 last year and I wrote about him extensively at the time. This time around, he was unable to find even one single delegate to nominate him for consideration at the County DFL convention in June and he also seems to have been much less successful at finding people to endorse him, in the sense that he does not have an endorsement sections on his website and I couldn’t find any on his Facebook page.

His website talks about how his career “began in the labor movement” but he’s been in the private sector since 2014. According to his LinkedIn, he’s now a marketing manager in tech. His civic engagement experience is as the president of his neighborhood association.

Marion Greene

Marion Greene is the incumbent, and I generally think she’s doing a decent job. She needs to update her website so that instead of saying “we’re definitely going to write a zero-waste plan in 2022” it says that they wrote and adopted a zero-waste plan. In the last year, she has pushed back on writing blank checks to the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, which resulted in a lot of ginned-up controversy about her but you know, I’m in favor of NOT writing blank checks to law enforcement, so I don’t see this as a negative.

I would vote for Marion Greene. If you don’t like Marion, though, Abdihakim seems vastly more qualified for the job than Josh Bassais!

This seems like a good year to fundraise for a trans nonprofit, so I’m fundraising this year for TIGERRS. I don’t have a Patreon, and a fundraiser lets me see in a tangible way that people value my work, which is really helpful as a motivator. (This project is a lot of work.)

I also have a new book! Obstetrix is about an obstetrician who gets kidnapped by a cult because they want someone on hand to deliver their babies; it’s a story about enduring, surviving, and not giving up. You can buy it anywhere fine books are sold, and Uncle Hugo’s, Moon Palace, and Dreamhaven all (probably) have signed copies. (I also signed copies at Next Chapter, and will be making my way to other bookstores as time allows!)

https://naomikritzer.com/2026/07/12/primary-election-2026-hennepin-county-commissioner-district-3/

http://naomikritzer.com/?p=26141

We're having a heatwave, so of course I've come down with a cold. *headdesk*

(Friday was horrible, yesterday moderately horrible, today mostly boring, expecting to be mostly back to normal tomorrow)

Reading. Bookwise: finished Polysecure (Jessica Fern), which I am continuing to chew on (and looking forward to getting to discuss it with my therapist); two pages of The Genius of Trees (Harriet Rix), which annoyed me sufficient that I have Put It Down Again, Thanks. Will I give it another chance? Maybe!

The cause of my ire: ( an excerpt... )

Two articles I have particularly enjoyed this week: An interactive introduction to the terrific experience of rendering Arabic typography and its technical debt and, from Susanna Clarke, ‘I had been ill for 11 years. I felt like I was about to fall off the world’.

Listening. It has been an Admin: the LRP prep weekend, so we have listened to the next tranche of Hidden Almanac! I could have done without the audio for the District Court Judge debate, but otherwise I continue to enjoy myself.

Cooking. Experimented with incorporating silken tofu in the okonomiyaki (actually with pointed cabbage and carrot rather than broccoli and red cabbage, but same basic recipe) and it... wasn't terrible but it also wasn't a thing I will repeat, probably, absent a need to use up a silken tofu stockpile.

Making & mending. We have WINDOW COVERS. The bedroom experienced <1°C of solar gain over the course of the day!!! That is an Extremely Significant Reduction. I am provisionally declaring plywood + foiled bubblewrap + aluminium foil tape + ratchet straps A Success. (Would I still rather shutters? Yeah, for lots of reasons. Are they worth the sheer amount of hassle? Not at this point they're not.)

Growing. The poblano is really enjoying its corner of the patio; I think the sad small orchid is becoming a little less sad; I have harvested A Goodly Quantity of broad beans for sowing a much larger number of plants next year; the jostaberries are extremely tasty; I have achieved Yet More Raspberries, and I am pleased also with the artichokes. So. Have been managing things.

Observing. Horrid insomnia last night (I have a checklist; I did not run through my checklist; I was dehydrated!!!) did have the upside that I got to watch the adolescent foxes scrapping, instead of just hearing the Enthusiastic Yipping!

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vital functions

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1) I find it interesting that in the era of the reboot, even websites and magazines now fall into that trend. ( Read more... )

2) At the same time, entertainment of all kinds has now infiltrated areas of society, business and governance in a way that has made it less distinct than before. If that gets people to pay attention to issues usually outside of their habits, then I see that as a good thing. But the way that everything has now become a form of entertainment, and seriousness or expertise of any kind is downplayed, seems a lot less of a plus.

3) Pillowfort has announced it will pursue non-profit status and as such is looking for people to step forward and become officers as well as various kinds of volunteers.

"I started Pillowfort ten years ago because I, like many others, was growing frustrated with how shareholder interference and corporate greed was degrading social media platforms. The need for a site like Pillowfort, that puts its users first, doesn’t take venture capital funding, and doesn’t subject its users to corporate censorship for the sake of ad revenue, has only grown since the site was launched nearly 10 years ago."

4) Speaking of Pillowfort,

osteophage posted How Pillowfort Built a Comment Culture Worth Emulating which I find interesting to compare to how DW functions.

5) England vs Norway. ( Read more... )

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Last week's bread mostly held out.

Friday night supper: ersatz Thai fried rice with pepperoni.

Saturday breakfast rolls: eclectic vanilla, possibly a little on the stodgy side, but possibly the latest type of vanilla extract makes them more vanilla-y?

Today's lunch: chestnut mushrooms in olive oil, steamed asparagus in melted butter, Dulce Joya Vine Tomatoes (red and yellow) roasted in olive oil with basil, and cornbread (a little heavy: I think the baking powder, nearly at its use-by date, was possibly affected by weather/atmospheric conditions).

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cooking,
recipes

Saw a phenomenal production of Pippin at the Signature Theatre: I did already love this musical— about a young prince attempting to find meaning in war, hedonism, revolution, power, etc., only to continuously find himself disillusioned and unfulfilled, until he realizes an ordinary life isn't so bad after all— but this was just an objectively outstanding cast and staging. Staged in the round, immersive and intimate in a way that worked so well with the show's meta-theatrical aspects— the ending, when Pippin chooses an ordinary life over the "grand finale" of a spectacular suicide and the Leading Player flips out (lights up! costumes off! stop the music!) and all the typical theater trappings are stripped away, felt especially striking in such a small space. The Leading Player (Cedric Neal) was enthralling to watch, seductive and menacing by turns, and his vocal riffs in "Glory" earned multiple bursts of mid-song applause (X), but literally everyone in the cast was great, 10/10; I kept finding my eyes drawn to different members of the ensemble throughout the show, because they all brought a lot of personality to it. Something about the staging actually reminded me a bit of the Broadway revival of Cabaret— mostly the shabby-chic Pierrot aesthetic of the ensemble Players' costumes, I think, but to some extent the choreography, and maybe also just both being staged in the round? Also, this had fabulous lighting design, especially the ceiling of fairy lights and illuminated constellations on the stage itself, and the apt, warmly sunrise-colored lighting pouring from the four on-/off-stage entryways during "Morning Glow."

Saw What Became of Us, also at the Signature, a two-actor play about two siblings— the elder born in the Old Country and the younger born in This Country— narrating each other's/their intertwined life stories. The elevating concept here is that the production has two alternating casts, with actors of different ethnic backgrounds— I saw its cast of Asian actors, and the alternate cast was Latino; it looks like the original NYC production had an Asian cast and a Middle Eastern cast— which emphasizes the universality of the experiences that the characters describe, even as certain lines (e.g., vague references to political unrest as the reason their family left the Old Country) take on different significance/interpretations when viewed through the lens of different diaspora. Technically also staged in the round, although it was more of a rectangle and with just an open space instead of a stage, cozily set-dressed with what could have been anyone's grandmother's living-room furniture; the actors occasionally passed out "family photos" or otherwise interacted briefly with the audience.

Saw Feeling Afraid As If Something Terrible Is Going to Happen at Studio Theatre, a darkly funny one-man show about an anxious British stand-up comedian fighting the impulse to self-sabotage his relationship with his cataplectic – but otherwise perfect – American boyfriend. (Cataplexy is a version of narcolepsy triggered by laughter, so you can see the problem here, especially since the Comedian is convinced the condition is fatal. I suspect that one reason the show is one 75-minute act is so you don't have a chance to google cataplexy during intermission and spoil the show's punchline.) I'm curious whether actor Steven Webb's performance took any inspiration from Australian comedian Rhys Nicholson, because I could see it, especially in his way of punctuating the Comedian's cringier moments with a sort of full-body scrunch; apparently this was originally performed at Edinburgh Fringe with Samuel Barnett as the Comedian, and I could definitely see him in the role/shades of Barnett in Webb's performance, as well.

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Yesterday was mostly Day Job and minor chores around the house. I cleaned the litter box and when I picked up the bag of clay cat litter the bottom seam burst right out of it. So now my floors are also swept and mopped.

750+ words last night!

Day 12 Tally

china_shop

Day 11 Tally

badly_knitted

goddess47

sylvanwitch

sanguinity

cornerofmadness

dswdiane

trobadora

the_siobhan

( past tallies )

Let me know if I have missed your name at any point. And don't forget you can jump in (or out) at any time.

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write every day

Good morning! I hope you had nice dreams last night! Here's a new story from Sunday Morning Transport, The Seed of a New Dream. May you find your own dreams...and your own way to work around them....ood morning! I hope you had nice dreams last night! Here's a new story from Sunday Morning Transport, The Seed of a New Dream. May you find your own dreams...and your own way to work around them....

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( Ahem! )

I am watching a YT video of people rolling up Warhammer the Old World characters and one of the players just held his phone up to his face. People read ttrpg manuals on their phones? People read double-columned ttrpg manuals on their phones?

What glorious destiny awaits the man whose luck, if not always good, is always extreme?

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

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Last Saturday was a one-day women's ice hockey tournament hosted by the Sheffield Shadows, and Kodiaks sent a team, a mix of both Kodiaks 1 and Kodiaks 2 players.

( ice hockey day )

Sunday morning I drove back to Cambridge, unpacked, packed a picnic, picked up Verity and drove to booked parking near Cambridge (central) station, and we went to see the women's T20 world cup final at Lord's.

( cricket day )

And then it was back to work on Monday, in a growing heatwave (again) ...

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Current Mood: creative

Posted by David Sear, Manoj Joshi, and Mark Peaple, The Conversation

https://arstechnica.com/culture/2026/07/the-real-mystery-behind-moana-after-1700-years-why-did-polynesians-suddenly-sail-east/

The same question drives both the plot of Moana and decades of archaeological research: Why, after centuries of relative stability, did Polynesian voyagers suddenly begin settling islands thousands of kilometers away across the Pacific?

The latest Moana movie is a live-action adaptation of a Disney animated movie of the same name. While the films are fictional, they draw inspiration from the rich seafaring heritage of Polynesian peoples, whose ancestors undertook one of the greatest episodes of maritime exploration in human history.

New climate evidence may help us understand why they embarked on these voyages.

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https://arstechnica.com/culture/2026/07/the-real-mystery-behind-moana-after-1700-years-why-did-polynesians-suddenly-sail-east/

I'm getting more confident at packing. I didn't even do anything Friday night. Saturday morning, packed Dakine in 30 minutes, not much longer for backpack. Whee!

My street has some serious bollards: ( Read more... )

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Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

Don't mourn, organize

Back from Santa Cruz

What's in your heart? What's in your way?

Gilbert and Sullivan review: Iolanthe

Primary Election 2026: Hennepin County Commissioner, District 3

A therefore B

vital functions

Storrie

Reaching the End

Culinary

Recent theater

Heated Rivalry rec

Write Every Day: Day 12

Planting a seed

Guys, I have just thought of the best (worst?) That's What She Said ever!

Egad

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Women's sport weekend

Fandom: Good thing, or BEST THING EVER INVENTED OMG

The real mystery behind Moana: After 1,700 years, why did Polynesians suddenly sail east?

Seoul 10 - bus and new hotel

About Me

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