THUNDERSNOW and endless Flurries in April limit Mobility

Snowed In?

-- How do you maneuver through the slippery streets of Minnesota winters?  

If pedestrians had clout, the sidewalks would be clear and dry and the cars, not the people, would have to deal with avalanches of plowed snow from the boulevards. It's hard enough for an able-bodied person to slosh through the thoroughfares of the Twin Cities, with routes reduced by snow piles and narrowed by ice. But what about the rest of us? 

It's time for Minnesota drivers to recognize that road-worthy wheelchairs are not in the way of traffic-- they ARE traffic. If a sidewalk isn't shoveled well, it's safer to drive your wheelchair on the side of the plowed street, with the direction of traffic. Regardless of the frustrated drivers who are confused by seeing wheelchairs on the road, taking the street is often the wiser choice because you don't even know if  a cleared sidewalk will have a clear curb-cut at the end. 

Curb-cuts are the vital little slopes from sidewalk to street that are so easily blockaded whenever the plow pushes snow to the curb. In the summer you have to deal with gawking pedestrians who stand right on the slope you need to drive down, as well as inconsistent curb-cuts-- some sidewalks & bike paths leave you high and dry. In the winter, you can't always tell which sidewalks are accessible because the plow's piles are in the way!The city pays shovelers to do the grunt-work of clearing curb-cuts-- be sure to thank them whenever you see them!

It's unfortunate, however, that the city prioritizes the downtown walkways, considering them the most highly trafficked, without getting to all the curb-cuts we need.

  Without a vehicle, you really could be snowed in this winter, especially if you live in a suburban or rural community.

But going out & visiting friends this holiday season & into the new year is still important & quite possible --our communities don't hibernate & neither do we.

So, as you head out into the wind,

bring a flashlight,

remember to charge up your cell phone & powerchair,

& boldly go where few powerchairs have gone before this season.Someone's gotta make those first tracks in the fresh snow!

  Do you have any other tips for winter mobility?

On My Bookshelf...

How did we get here? Why are we here? Is life fair-- or could it be? How long have humans been asking these questions? If we find answers, how can we relate such ineffable answers to each other?

I turn to books for hope-- hope for the secret curiosities in me that I cannot articulate any longer for their complexity. But some authors, older and younger than I, have found their own ways to explain and test the mysteries of the inner life, the ancient, and the interpersonal ether.

I was thirteen when I found Frank Laubach's Letters by a Modern Mystic in a library basement in Fort Worth, Texas-- and soon, Soul Searching by 16-year-old author Sarah Stillman.

 With acceptance of different mystical paths, I found writing to be part of my path. My goal was to get published by the time I was sixteen.

 Once I had met this goal, the poetry anthology and high school yearbooks that printed my words sat on the bookshelf gathering dust. I continue sharing poetry and local news articles in small publications, for the importance of awareness and the joy of recognition and mutual appreciation. But public expression of my thoughts hasn’t answered any questions—it’s just brought forth new ones.

  Can anything said be original? Are popular printed words adding to the world’s collective knowing—or taking away from the creative possibilities that writers could have, in their future struggles to be original? Why is groupthink considered bad and the collective unconscious considered benign?

 The logical urgency of my conscience compelled me to dive into news, and that's what I read, except in the spare minutes between stresses and sleep when I still reach for the spiritual memoirs and manuals.

 If reading my palm has provided any real insight at all, I know that the spiritual dimension will save my life one day. The hope that glimmers just beyond the next page turn is for more than that-- more than a long, healthy life. There is hope for all the lives past, present and future, united in some elusive way... that only stories can get at. The stories that make you feel, question, remember…

 I believe in planting small, private libraries in unexpected places, ruled by curiosity and the honor system. So my collection of pensive memoirs and helpful how-tos on everything from intuition to ecstasy has dispersed-- it's among the donated books in the Augsburg College Women's Resource Center, the Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center, the Germanic-American Institute's little library, a friend's SoulHome lending library, and Little Free Libraries around the city.

  Maybe someone else, thirteen, uncertain and far from home, will stumble upon a new perspective that they've needed.

---

I recommend 

I Love Female Orgasm by Dorian Solot and Marshall Miller

My Life So Far by Jane Fonda

Memoirs of a Spiritual Outsider by Suzanne Clores

The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy by Cyndi Dale

Energy Medicine by Donna Eden

Machu Picchu and You: 

 A review of Return of the Children of Light, by Judith Bluestone Polich

  The fascinating thing about spiritual interpretations of history-- and prehistory-- is the imperative that we don't just absorb it, we act.

After journeying with Polich through these "Incan and Mayan Prophecies for a New World," readers will want to dive into a DNA activation starter kit, like Richard Gerber's Vibrational Medicine or many of Polich's other sources in her research.

  That's because she explains what DNA activation is and what it would look like, in the ancient past as well as in the present-- along with a feast of other curious New Age concepts that will tantalize the layperson. With a foundation of easy-to-understand anthropological research and the rising action of oft-whispered claims from old esoteric texts, each page probes the mysteries of the Incan and Mayan legacies, purportedly hidden away just for our generation to find and decode. Most of the claims are well-cited so you can decode them in other contemporary nonfiction works.

 Polich's slim book is a place to start, though. It helps you actively step into the rituals and practices for modern evolution, stirred up by Jung and the Dalai Lama and circulated by popular authors like Gregg Braden and Michael Talbot.

 Loaded words are explicated, but not before they are given their own spirit and meaning in the first chapter's poetry and historical fiction that ease you into the deeper work of physics, astronomy and theology, seen through the prism of ancient peoples' cosmology.

 Readers who are new to New Age philosophies will still need a general glossary of metaphysics terms at hand. Polich does more synthesis than analysis in this work, which is guided by her amazing personal experiences. See the preface for a disclaimer of some slight bias, found in between the lines.

Take Return of the Children of Light with a grain of salt, or two. Anyone who argues that Quetzalcoatl, Moses and Hermes belong in the same narrow category, or maintains a neutral treatment of Mayan and Incan practices of human sacrifice, raises questions. Polich unfortunately does not answer the implicit questions, rather she dismisses some of them as unimportant because, facts aside, they are a part of our collective unconscious anyway. [...]

Interactive Mosaic Art: piecing together Community

What: Mosaic Mapping Collaboration!

Envision the Twin Cities landscape as a work of art-- YOUR art.

 Come say your piece, and cement your piece into place on this collaborative mosaic work. 

Dig through your pockets. 

Stoop down for that shiny shard of glass. 

Bring something small, something old, something borrowed, and a story told  about your travels here. ADD YOUR PIECE!

When and Where:

All day Saturday February 16 at the Union Depot in Lowertown, St. Paul

214 4th St. E St. Paul, MN 55101  

During the WORLD RECORD-setting largest collaborative Light Bright Display, "Bright Ideas Light Up the Night" you can add to the Light Bright, and add to the Mosaic Map!

February 13  2013, at 6:45 PM

at the Central Corridor Resource Center, 1080 University Avenue W., Saint Paul

Everyone on the District Councils Collaborative can add a piece, before the Governing Council Meeting!

 When and Where you can see it: 

 February 25- March 11 See the mosaic in the lobby of Women Venture economic development group,

 2324 University Avenue West, Saint Paul, MN 55114

March 16  - 31 

See it in the public gallery space of Christ Lutheran Church,

105 University Avenue West  Saint Paul, MN 55155

April 8 -15  2013-- Look for it in the Freeman Building, in the atrium of the Minnesota Department of Health!

Who: You! The Touring Exhibit is on its way to your Central Corridor-area office,

whoever has space for its temporary display!

The State Now Sees Transaction Histories with Impunity

The state of Minnesota can now see your credit and debit card histories, your every transaction, and you'll never know whether they're looking or not.
  The Department of Revenue started using Accurint for Government's new online tools a couple months ago, for extreme scrutiny during its collections processes.
  You can always request a credit report to find out who is checking on your credit and how often, and you can always file a Freedom of Information Act request  to learn what a government agency is saying about you. You can get all records with your name mentioned in them for a very small fee, but it won't include who is looking at your credit or debit card or EBT card purchases, or how often or why.
  At present the public has no idea that someone collecting their fine for a speeding ticket or calling about their sales tax that is due can also know what groceries they purchased and when.

The Bare Buildings of Fall

A couple of my friends are so much quicker at seeing animals than
I-- I have a better eye for special effects in films but they have
better eyes for reality. Like all the deer left in the ditches at the
side of the road, or running along fields hundreds of yards away. Like
eagles and raptors in the sky and squirrels on the road. I am
learning, starting to see animals a little more quickly and clearly --
sadly they are easily overlooked because the modern mind prioritizes
other things.
This morning dawn broke slowly  & elegantly, colors rippling across
the thin cloud canvas that protects my bit of sky.
 A delicate violet blanketed the western horizon, covering the lake,
and above me easing into orange. The pale orange clouds bubbled into
bright orange up by the eastern hill, and below them a bold yellow
stripe broke the gentle cloud cover with its uncommonly optimistic
tint. Birds in the sky stripe seemed to be suspended there, still,
just basking in that beautiful yellow until all was unveiled as the
clear blue of day, unyielding.
 The lake, mysterious as ever, mimicked the sky by showing one
unexpected stripe of calm-- right down the middle, the waters had a
different texture from the waters on either side of the elliptical
lake, in their unnoticed choppy flow. Phalen's contents are unknown,
and they stir the body into inexplicable currents sometimes. Likely
its underwater landscape is like a Cartesian graph, quartered into
four basins, more evident now that the water level is so low.
  The bushes and trees are also revealing more today, more today than
yesterday. The boughs are bare and through them I see large stone
structures on the other side of the railroad tracks which I'd never
noticed before.
  The manmade structures absorb early sunlight, and they stand out to
me as the landscape that's left for the freezing fall. Suddenly I see
that Regions Hospital is a series of angles and curves: spiraling
parking ramp, two rectangles, a curve outward, a bisecting rectangle,
a curve inward. Very artistic-- and for whose benefit?
The Economy Motel is as ugly as ever, but Gillette Children's Hospital
is angled glass like an accordion-folded note unfurling. The law
enforcement building at the end of the street is mysteriously blue
meeting oxidized iron. Why? Why is there a thin rectangular awning of
iron intersecting the front of the building like something alien,
something sliding in from another plane?
  Why is the fence along the sidewalk on the overpass curving cast
iron? It's lovely and black, geometric and dramatic, featuring a
design of squares within squares that's reminiscent of the black
accents on a windowless brown office building: circles within circles,
which hardly anyone ever sees.
  Who has gone out of their way to add curves, designs, and needlessly
tall jutting shapes to the buildings that line the route to work? Such
importance is given to the overpass by its tall smooth fence of
squares, when it could've just been a chain-link precaution there. I
couldn't stop turning my head round & looking everywhere this morning.
  We're so fortunate to live where people have once and will again
value art and architecture.

Lessons from the OUT! Twin Cities Film Fest at St Anthony Main Theater

Marry me, Minnesota? This civil rights issue has come before 30 states before; now it's finally Minnesota's turn to wrestle with a referendum to restrict marriage to the hetero-normative.
 In November Minnesotans will face this question on their ballots: “Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to provide that only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as marriage in Minnesota?” 
 A similar amendment passed in California in the 2008 elections, and we can learn a lot from the story of Prop 8. This story was the first to be told, last night at the 3rd annual Out! Twin Cities Film Festival. More great films about LGBT life will screen tonight and tomorrow night at the St. Anthony Main Theater.
Showings:  www.outtwincitiesfilmfest.com/


Charlie Gage didn't expect to be inspired by LGBT protests in LA; he didn't expect to make this particular
documentary about them either.
 But all the creative steam driving people to act against Proposition 8, a 2008 amendment to California's constitution, drove an incredible story that he captured from the get-out-the-vote efforts to the Supreme Court's Day of Decision on the amendment.
  At the screening of Inspired: The Voices Against Prop 8, director Charlie Gage said that he had just showed up at protests, noticed who stood out in the footage, and contacted these people for interviews. Several of them had said they weren't the type to go out and protest, until Prop 8 passed and gay marriage in California ended. The initial campaign to vote "No" burst into several different organizations, each with their own target group. All or Not at All, the Gay UN, Latino Equality, Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere, and more groups swung into action to support a repeal of Prop 8  with commercials, slogans, websites, boycotts, marches, candlelight vigils, and a LGBT Equality Conference that was organized by young people.
  In the film, there's also a young man who acted alone and organized a protest beyond LA, in the more conservative Pasadena.
  Boycotts against small businesses and large corporations that had given money to support Prop 8 were discussed for their relatively low impact, and Asian, Latino, black and white gay marriage proponents recounted the dissonance between their separate action groups. How aggressive should the demands in the street get? What do people gain by blocking the streets and defying law enforcement?
   It seemed that through all they went through, the new activists gained stronger voices and community organizing skills. With direct actions they changed, and their movement grew. They kept the issue in the news and on the minds of the judges.
Though the California Supreme Court had ruled in May 2009 that yes, the people have the right to change the constitution,  a federal district judge ruled in 2010 that the change was unconstitutional.
  There was no rational or legal basis for the change to the constitution, and it stripped a minority of its rights for no reason. This opinion was upheld by a US Appeals Court ruling in early 2012. Can the majority vote to remove any rights from any group?
  This is the larger issue, and as it awaits a higher court, the marriage restrictions remain in California.

 Today, Minnesotans United for All Families is present at the film festival and in a neighborhood near you. They are counting votes door-to-door and glad for the support of 420 other organizations. To win on this issue, it will take a very large effort beyond the Twin Cities, beyond our comfort zones, cooperation between organizations, and a steadily cool & reasoned approach rather than aggressive tactics.