Heart surgery scheduled for my dad

He's having a pacemaker put in on October 16. We hope this will help ease some of the heart symptoms he's been having in the past year.

Still, my dad's eighty this year. And surgery like this is no stroll in the park.

I wish we lived closer so I could help my mom. They live in Georgia, and none of us are close by. My sisters are both here in Minneapolis, and my brother lives in New York.

3 Minute Egg

A friend sent me this today:

I wanted to let you know about a video-a-day production created by my friend, Matt Peiken, a former Pioneer Press journalist and editor for the Walker Art Center. He calls it '3-Minute Egg' and the videos are just that: nice, short videos about all kinds of art.

I'm not that into blogs, and don't have a lot of time to spare these days. But I love these. So far, I've learned about the orchestra returning for the beginning of the season, flamenco dancers performing at Minnehaha Falls, improv artists taking a show on the road, and the Franconia Sculpture Park near the St. Croix river. The site says:

3-Minute Egg is "The Twin Cities arts seen," created and produced by Matt Peiken, former staff arts writer at the St. Paul Pioneer Press and managing editor of the Walker Art Center’s magazine.

In our Egg basket, you’ll find local arts and artists across the spectrum of disciplines:

tEGGSt — Literature/books, poetry, spoken word

Sunny Side Up — Visual art and film

The Yolk — Theater, dance and comedy

Egg Whites — classical music, choral music and opera

Hard-Boiled — Rock, jazz and hip-hop

Scrambled — Episodes featuring artists and events touching on two or more artistic disciplines

You can view 3-Minute Egg on many platforms, including iTunes, Facebook, Miro, blip.tv and, of course, this site. Content is always free — just subscribe, and have a fresh Egg delivered to your online doorstep every weekday morning.

I have set it up as an RSS feed: 3minuteegg so you can see the videos on your friends list.

Vote No on Proposition 8

Saw this video on choralreef's blog. She's right. It's wonderful.

( For people like me, who are religious, who support gay rights. )

The Supreme Meme: Lawrence v. Texas

The Rules: Post info about ONE Supreme Court decision, modern or historic to your lj. (Any decision, as long as it's not Roe v. Wade.) For those who see this on your f-list, take the meme to your OWN lj to spread the fun.

Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case. In the 6-3 ruling, the justices struck down the sodomy law in Texas. Controversially, the Court did not deem it unconstitutional under the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment, which could have led to further gay rights reforms such as legalizing same sex marriage. The court had previously addressed the same issue in 1986 in Bowers v. Hardwick, where it upheld a challenged Georgia statute, not finding a constitutional protection of sexual privacy.

Lawrence explicitly overruled Bowers, holding that it had viewed the liberty interest too narrowly. The majority held that intimate consensual sexual conduct was part of the liberty protected by substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment. Lawrence has the effect of invalidating similar laws throughout the United States that purport to criminalize sodomy between consenting same-sex adults acting in private. It may also invalidate the application of sodomy laws to heterosexual sex based solely on morality concerns.

The case attracted much public attention, and a large number of amici curiae ("friends of the court") briefs were filed. Its outcome was celebrated by gay rights advocates, who hoped that further legal advances might result as a consequence. Conversely, it was decried by social conservatives as an example of judicial activism.

Majority by: Kennedy
Joined by: Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer
Concurrence by: O'Connor
Dissent by: Scalia
Joined by: Rehnquist, Thomas
Dissent by: Thomas

100 pushups

Due to some severe personal stress recently, and a bad experience when I made my first attempt at Week 5, I had abandoned the programme for the past week. My conscience has been nagging me, however, so I decided today to restart Week 4 for the third time. I'm switching to the new program, and moving to the third column.

W4, D1 (3d time)
21, 25, . . .

then I attempted the third rep and collapsed after only managing 12. I lay there on the floor of an empty office here in work and thought I give up. I can't do it. It's too hard.

I went to sit back at my desk, very glumly. I can't believe I'm quitting. I put my iPod earbuds back on. I had been listening to my Hope playlist all day, and the song on my playlist was Bruce Springsteen's "Into the Fire" from his album The Rising. I listened to the words, and a lump rose in my throat. It's the song about the Trade Towers, singing to the firefighters as they climbed stair after stair past all the people going down. How could they bear it physically, carrying pounds and pounds of all that equipment--on the way to their deaths?

The sky was falling and streaked with blood
I heard you calling me, then you disappeared into the dust
Up the stairs, into the fire
Up the stairs, into the fire
I need your kiss, but love and duty called you someplace higher
Somewhere up the stairs, into the fire

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love bring us love

You gave your love to see, in fields of red and autumn brown
You gave your love to me and lay your young body down
Up the stairs, into the fire
Up the stairs, into the fire
I need you near, but love and duty called you someplace higher
Somewhere up the stairs, into the fire

May your strength give us strength
May your faith give us faith
May your hope give us hope
May your love give us love

I thought about it hard for several minutes and then decided to try again. This time, I wore the iPod. The music was paced perfectly for the pushups. May your strength give us strength / May your faith give us faith / May your hope give us hope / May your love bring us love I started doing the third set of reps again:

[21, 25, (12),] 21, 21, 32

On the last set of reps I paused several times and went into a downward dog, to rest, but I didn't put my knees on the ground, and I finished the 32--well, barely. That last one was pretty sketchy. I collapsed on the ground and suddenly found myself crying as Bruce continued to sing softly in my ears, about courage, about the ones who served as an example, about never giving up.

This has been a really hard week.