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morning bluebird

Listening to:	Sonya Kitchell
Reading:	too many at once
Weather:	52, clear and gorgeous

Brisk and beautiful this morning! I got up around 6:30 and looked out my bathroom window to see an indigo bunting, the most stunning of the bluebirds, sitting in my mock orange tree right at my eyelevel. Then he flew away. I grabbed my camera and went out to the porch for a while, but he never reappeared. Perhaps he was just reminding me that there's a cool world out there early in the morning that you can't see other times of the day. So get out there and have a look. You can bring your coffee.

Is Mumia Abu Jamal podcasting? I was listening to U92, WVU's radio station, in my car yesterday and heard some kind of mildly groovy music with what I initially thought was some kind of mellow rap on top. Quickly I realized it was the usual gangsta shit, it was political commentary about how wrong this war in Iraq is, and how we must have the courage to continue to actively oppose it. That cool steady voice was Mumia. Remember the beautiful photo poster of Mumia that hung in the window of the Pathfinder, the Socialist Worker's Party bookstore, on Walnut Street in the early 90's? The beatific smile, long beautiful dreads, eyes that mesmerized. Little toddler Livi just loved that poster. "Is that Mumia?" she'd say every single time we walked by.

I had the privilege of working with a great group of folks to produce a benefit for Mumia's legal defense fund, back when I was in law school. We had several bands (can't remember who), and showed a video of Mumia speaking that had just been taped days earlier. The group included members of the Bruderhof, whose leader is Mumia's spiritual advisor. These cats are very very interesting. It's an Anabaptist community, kinda like Amish or Mennonite, but very different in some ways. The girls wear homemade clothes, skirts matching their headscarves, so they are easily identifiable on campus. But being on campus is a big clue to what's different about them - they deeply support education and higher education of their members, a radical difference from Amish, I think. They are also a very activist community, especially around issues of non-violence, opposing the death penalty, and peace. All cool, right? But they also support sexual purity, that little nagging thing that bugs me about all the great spiritual movements. Dang it, why would your benevolent god give you that stuff if not to enjoy? Anyhoo, it's abundantly cool to see these bright-eyed, gingham-dressed ponytailed pure smiling little white girls waving Mumia banners.

Today the cable dude is scheduled to come install my DVR and upgrade my cable modem and crank me up to the 1.5mb pipeline. Yee ha. I currently have the slowest freakin cable speed possible, I think, around 385k. I'll be honking fast when that dude bids me adieu.

But then it's off to my Dad's for a visit. We're going to cook out on the deck and sit around and shoot the shit all weekend. He wants to talk to me about his assets and whatnot, and get me on some signature cards at the bank, so we'll stay through Monday afternoon, probably. He goes for radiation treatments starting the end of July I think, so I guess he's thinking about his mortality. I'm a little squeamish about all that, but if he's got courage to be thinking about that stuff I won't let my self stay on the comfy couch of denial.

Happy Birthday West Virginny! Monday is WV Day, the state's 142nd birthday, party on, Garth!

Rushmore: a mini-review. Watched the movie Rushmore last night, and I enjoyed it. Excellent music and groovy use of music in the film, not totally unlike how Hal Ashby used all that stellar Cat Stevens in Harold and Maude. Very out front. Interesting odd little film, a little Napoleon Dynamite feel to it, but not quite as much, and definitely not as kickass as that one. But certainly worth a watch. Teen weirdness movies are up my alley, perhaps largely because I'm living with so much teen weirdness right about now. Interesting characters, Bill Murray, funky relationships, good recipe for entertainment.

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