Remember.

From Tayari Jones' blog:

I just received a request for donation for the Women's Prison Book Project. Here's what they are looking for:

Here is a list of book requests we've received frequently in recent weeks. We usually have a few of these books in stock, but we're going to need more in order to fulfill the requests we're getting. If you have any books in these categories, mail it to us or bring it to our drop box at Arise Bookstore. Our address is 2441 Lyndale Ave S, Mpls, MN 55405.

cookbooks

dream interpretation

contemporary African American fiction (especially Triple Crown publishers)

books by James Patterson

Christian topics

I know we have done quite a lot of talking on this blog about so-called "street literature" and Triple Crown books fall firmly in this category. I think that if you have any Triple Crown Books that you are not using and are in good shape, you should send them on. At the same time, I really urge you to send titles that you think would nurture the spirits of incarcerated women. I plan to send copies of my own books, but also books by Eisa Ulen, Sigrid Nunez, Monique Truong, Ravi Howard, and others.

!

Love you!

There is this story about Cyrano that I always love. Cyrano is broke. His money is almost gone, his gloves are tattered, and his life is about to turn for the worse. Still, he attends the theater to see a new show involving an actor whom he thinks is a hack.

He goes to this show, and halfway through the production, he begins to heckle it. He goes so far as to come up on stage, insult the actor, and throw what little money he has to the crowd in repayment for the money they wasted to see the play. Someone says "you can't even afford a pair of gloves, how can you afford to throw your money away" to which he basically replies "Life is about moments".

The way that Cyrano dies is also spectacular. Despite a bleeding, lethal head wound, he put his hat on and makes his appointment with the woman he loves, heedless of his own life, and dies there with her. Romance and honor all rolled up into one.

Passion let him kill a hundred men. Courage let him take that stage, and love let him walk to his appointment when he should have died. But through it all there was the magic of life that drove him. Be it poetry or combat or honor or duty or love, it was magic that pushed him.

Sometimes it's tough to find that magic. Sometimes, it seems impossible. Those of us in the SCA are lucky in that we get to find such magic at a significantly more frequent rate than folks with other hobbies.

.. I finished Leaving Atlanta yesterday.

From MSNBC:

Liviu Librescu, 76, an engineering science and mechanics lecturer. Born in Romania, he survived the Nazi Holocaust and emigrated to Israel in 1978 before moving to Virginia in 1985.

An Israeli citizen, he had taught at Virginia Tech for 20 years and was internationally known for his work in aeronautical engineering.

"His research has enabled better aircraft, superior composite materials, and more robust aerospace structures," said Ishwar Puri, the head of the engineering science and mechanics department.

After surviving the Nazi killings, Librescu escaped from Communist Romania and made his way to the United States before he was killed in Monday’s massacre, which coincided with Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Librescu's son, Joe, said his father's students sent e-mails detailing how the professor saved their lives by blocking the doorway of his classroom from the approaching gunman before he was fatally shot.

“My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee,” Joe Librescu said from his home outside of Tel Aviv. “Students started opening windows and jumping out.”

See also today's post from University Diaries.

I just created a new LiveJournal community for Artisan's Row. Even if you've never been to a Row, please check it out and join if you're interested!

A couple folks have recently mentioned interest in job-type information for the MN/WI area; the following is from our weekly campus newsletter:

( Publications Editor )

Notice of classified exam center opportunities
The next monthly exam center is scheduled for Thursday, April 14. To view the list of exams being administered, the test center location(s) and the application procedures for the monthly exam center, see: https://wiscjobs.state.wi.us/public/links_summary_page.asp?catid=70. The registers created for these recruitments may be used to staff vacancies for the next six to 12 months statewide.

( Classified transfer opportunities (you must already work for the State of WI to apply for these) )

Representatives Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) are circulating a "Dear Colleague" letter that is intended to demonstrate to House Appropriators how important the Sexual Assault Service Program (SASP) is and to request full funding for the program in Fiscal Year 2008. Dear Colleague letters are generally initiated by two Members of Congress (usually a democrat and a republican). These letters are sent to each Congressperson to ask for their signature to show support for funding a particular program or to gather support for pending legislation.

We need your help to get as many members of Congress as possible to sign on to this letter to show that SASP is an important program to all communities across the country.  The Deadline is this Friday, March 16. In 2006, 110 representatives signed a Dear Colleague in support of SASP funding for Fiscal Year 2007.  It's crucial that we show the same level of support for SASP in 2008.

( Background )

Please call your representative today to ask him or her to sign onto the Baldwin/McCotter Dear Colleague letter in support of SASP. Congressional staffers who have questions or want to sign on can contact Elizabeth Pika in Rep. Baldwin's office at 202) 225-2906. If you don't know how to reach your representative go to www.house.gov or call the Capitol switchboard at 202.224.3121, and they will connect you.

If you have any questions, please contact Ilse Knecht, Deputy Director, Public Policy at 703-732-2446 or iknecht@ncvc.org.

( Current signatories )

[Note: We are still uncertain about the Fiscal Year 2007 funding levels for SASP.  Because Congress passed a continuing resolution for the whole of 2007 for all agencies and did not direct how federal agencies are to spend those dollars, federal agencies are still sorting out how they will spend those funds].

{All above text excerpted from an email message forwarded by the staff of Houston County Women's Resources.}

Happy Birthday, saraidh!

I'm sick. Jack shared his head cold, complete with nasty, scratchy throat. I'm not sure if it's worse to deal with the yuck or with the constant gag-feeling I get when I take cold medicine. I'm not sure why I get the gag-feeling, but it's there and rather annoying. *sigh* I tried taking a hot bath, and was stymied by our ( hot water heater. )

To steal blatantly from Cate because I'm almost entirely brain dead at the moment:

So there's this guy who's doing a panel at the MLA, and he's checking to see how a meme or, depending on how you look at it, a chain letter, moves through the blogosphere. We knitters have a rather populous corner of the blogosphere, and one that I think routinely buffaloes those who attempt to study blogs and blogging. Who are all these knitters and what do they want? (Wool.) If blogging is concerned with social change, what the hell are all these people doing talking about yarn? (We'll get back to you when the plans for world domination are available in pdf format.)

Anyway, Jody explains it all in a way that is far more interesting and complete than I have the patience for, but do please play. All you need to do is mention and link to the project, beg ask others to participate, and then ping technocrati. Let's show the MLA a little knitting mojo, eh?

Now go out and propagate thyself on the world.

Edited to add: You don't need to be a knitter to propagate this. You can even hide it under an LJ cut if you don't want to clutter your friends' Friends pages. It's just a little something to see how memes spread across the blogland.

From an email from Minnesota AIDS Project:

Minnesota AIDS Project and Intermedia Arts present a unique event in observance of World AIDS Day on December 1, 2006. Am I? Are You?is an evocative photographic exhibit featuring fifty portraits thatchallenge the observer to determine which 25 of the 50 models areHIV-positive. Twin Cities photographer Justin Thai collaborated withMAP’s Positive Link empowerment program for the project to confront viewers on perceptions of what people living with HIV look like.

Join us for a special reception at 6:30 p.m. on World AIDS Day atIntermedia Arts, 2822 Lyndale Avenue South, Minneapolis, featuring MAPExecutive Director Lorraine Teel and artist Justin Thai in an opendialogue with some of the models on overcoming the stigma associatedwith a positive HIV status. Get all the details on our Web site.

Since 1988 World AIDS Day has strived to increase awareness,education and fight prejudice. World AIDS Day is an important reminderthat HIV has not gone away, and that there are still many things to bedone. Please consider making a special gift to support our work at theMinnesota AIDS Project in honor of World AIDS Day. Make a gift now online or give by calling 612-341-2060.

Photos from Caid Coronation, including a couple good ones of capnlot and one of cayswann.

Also, just a general note since I just realized there are folks here who may not have been around when I first made this decision - I mostly post friends-locked posts here. It's nothing you'd be interested in if you don't know me in person, I promise. If you'd like me to add you as a friend, leave a comment and remind me who you are by the name I know you as - some of you have at least 3 names, and I may only know one of them.

If you want to track my more public posts, I suggest you bookmark my blog at http://prioritizingtheparanoias.blogspot.com. I tend not to post here when I post there, but if you use an RSS reader (I use Bloglines), you can subscribe to public blogs (you can subscribe to LJ's as well, but you won't see any friends-locked posts) and read them all from one page, similar to how LJ's Friends page works.

.. to the idiot who decided that 2:30 on a Friday afternoon was an appropriate time to shut down email access on campus:

Did it occur to you that even though it's summer and there are fewer students on campus, the staff are still largely expected to be here and working all the way through Friday afternoon and that *scheduling* a *planned* maintenance outage for the middle of the day just might be a tad inconvenient?

No love, /vm

UW-L seeks a full-time permanent IS Network Services Sr. position in Information Technology Services. The position will have primary responsibility for virtualization of the university's core servers and administration of the mass storage system, web system and back-up/restoration system. It will also be responsible for other core servers and systems including, but not limited to, the FTP system and other web servers. The position is included in the WPEC bargaining unit in pay schedule and range 07-03.

• Interested individuals at or above pay schedule and range 07-03 may apply for transfer consideration by calling Human Resources at 785-8013. The deadline to apply as a transfer candidate is noon Monday, June 12.


• Interested individuals who are not yet permanent state employees and/or are below pay schedule and range 07-03 may apply by examination. The exam and application instructions are available on the Human Resources Web site. Deadline to apply by examination is 4:30 p.m. Friday, June 16. Direct questions to Human Resources at 785-8013.

Full position description and salary information available on the link. Please feel free to forward to those who may be interested.

Just in case anyone here is interested, I'm about to throw my external frame pack (w/ rain cover), hiking sleeping bag and a handful of other related bits (REI hiker's first aid kit, a stuff sack or two, etc.) up on eBay to see if I can get it out of the basement. It's comparable to this Kelty pack (on the REI website), without the hydration reservoir allowance.

The pack is nearly unused - I think I hiked with it a total of 3 weekends before leaving Seattle - but it's several years old (if I had to guess I'd say I bought it in 1998 or 1999). It's in near pristine condition, though.

The sleeping bag is a hiker's "mummy"-style bag - so it's light, but warm - rated down to I believe 40 degrees (but I'd have to check to be sure). It's poly-filled (not down) and has a stuff sack of it's own. It fits either in the lower internal compartment on the pack or can be strapped (clip straps included) to the frame below the main pack.

I will try to get some pics taken tomorrow for anyone interested. I'd like to get $125 for the set, but am willing to sell the pack and bits for $100 if the sleeping bag isn't of interest. If it needs shipping, I'll split the cost with the buyer. Insurance is up to, and to be paid by, the buyer.