Skip to main content
Independence Day! was yesterday (duh), and one of the best celebrations in a long while. Of course we wrap ourselves in glow sticks and launch water balloons at each other in blissful forgetfulness, ignoring the facts. That our country is owned by China, our state is spitting on the Constitution (to its own detriment), and we are missing a president. I mean, they tell me we have a president, but I haven't really noticed any real leadership happening. We have a celebrity, but didn't we already have a bunch of those? Yeah, so there's a lot to be frustrated about. I guess the thing to do is to rise above it. If our leadership sucks, that's just reason for us to be the better man. Or woman. If our country spends extravagantly and stupidly, that's just reason for us to learn sound judgment with our personal finances. And if our nation compromises its integrity by parceling itself out to foreign nations that have little regard for human rights or the health of our earth, why it is possible (though not easy) to boycott the whole business. It just means that we have to be more conscientious people. Scratch that. Conscientious is too tame. We have to be hard-core. We have to be both severe and extravagantly forgiving. We will run the risk of seeming inconsistent, but we will at least be good. Happy fifth of July.

Comments

  1. I would have rather been there. I got tiered of fixing peoples broken costumes and I didn't even get to see anything yesterday.

    Anime people are weird.

    ReplyDelete
  2. but definitely independent. marching to the toot of their own horn, the beat of their own percussion instruments, etc.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

window in the sub

Dear Nathaniel, I am microwaving pie that Mom bought up in Oak Glen this week on her way home from the orthodontist. As I put it in the microwave, I was full of sadness that I was not in Oak Glen with her. Why did I not go? I was working. I want to see the trees turn. I want to wander slowly through autumnal gift shops. Under the water, you cannot sense the approach of the seasons. Even here it is difficult because, after all, it's California. But I can still sense it. After three seasons in Illinois and one in Scotland, it must be with me for good. Or at least for a while. Because I am all abuzz with eagerness for fall and winter, for turkeys and dried leaves and Santa. I should start cooking again this fall. Fall foods are my favorite. Baked squash dripping with melted butter and brown sugar, pumpkin soup... this year, if I have enough money, I will put together a holiday dinner for my friends. And we will drink Scandinavian mulled wine, which is the most wonderful thing I have e...

Fontastic

One of the perpetual projects in my little publishing company's life is the development of our company logo. This is my favorite project, as it involves the use of fonts. And I am rather a font fanatic. I have spent the last few hours trolling dafont.com, which is a wonderful website of free and mostly-free fonts for personal and often commercial usage. Rather than download every font I like, I sketched out my own versions of each of them as they inspired me. I thought I'd share them with you here, and if any of my noble readers have preferences, feel free to shoot me a comment. I am hoping I have determined the font-of-choice by the time the new website is ready to go up. After all, what's a corporate website without a corporate logo? Here are some photos of my most recent selections.

Being a Baker

Working at the Main Library has surprising advantages. Just now I stepped out of my office, walked five paces across the hall, scanned a badge, and walked under the civic center plaza to the elevator that stretches from beneath the earth up to the mayor’s office on the fourteenth floor. I didn’t have so far to go—just up one level to the utilities counter, where a sympathetic, amused woman named Sue shut down my gas payments. It took less than five minutes. I finished packing up my kitchen days ago. My cake pans were in boxes sometime early last week. But as I walked through the underground loading dock on my way back to the office, I was distinctly aware of the finality of what I’d just done. I would never, from that moment on, be able to bake for anyone out of that kitchen. Maybe it doesn’t seem like a very big deal, but I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of a certain identity, namely being “the person who bakes a lot”. I made a tiered wedding cake for some friends (because...