P o c k e t CT

“Do you want to go to Quaker Meeting today?”

“ummm,” I stall “well let’s look at the whole day first”

There is a possibility that may take four or more hours of driving. Its purpose is to be supportive of someone, more than participating in her roofing party. I managed to do the support part in a phone call making the trip less necessary. Then I have to quickly assess what I want.

“Well if I go you know I will be going as a spy. Are spies welcome?”

“of course” he is laughing.

I branch out into the story of Karen in Fez wanting to go into the mosque. There it is forbidden for tourists to go into the mosques. Karen is beside herself with curiosity, albeit spiritual curiosity. She somehow, and without lying once, convinces the carpet salesmen that befriended us that she may just want to convert. So he will take her to the gorgeous white tower with the intricate designs of plants painted and carved into it. She learns what to do: the washing, the recited Arabic, the kinetic parts of the prayer. She finds appropriate clothing. We arrive early and they leave so that I am alone when the call to prayer is broadcast. At the time I had no idea that it is recorded and was envisioning gristled old men singing into microphones across the ancient city. Their voice reverberating off the sun drenched stones of the buildings, walls, streets. I sit in the sun and wait. When they return, Karen is radiant. “I felt the same God I always feel.” She tells me that for all the practice she was somewhat clueless in there and all the women helped her kindly. That the space was incredibly beautiful and the style of prayer had a certain satisfying aspect. We then made plans to head to Marrakesh and continue our exploration.

I have told Christopher about this before.

“So what will this be like if I go?”

“Well basically you go and sit and wait for God”

“Wait? Like a queue? A God queue? Is this like a Russian line for toilet paper?”

“No, it is more like take a number. More like the DMV. You take a number and sit on a bench and wait”

Which was true. Except that the DMV doesn’t have cushions on the benches and it isn’t inappropriate for me to pull out my iPhone to read blogs to pass the time while waiting if I get bored. I didn’t get bored however, I just got flat butt syndrome that took a long walk after to cure.

It is National Mole Day! At first I was excited to celebrate rodents or maybe eat Mexican sauce that has chili, nuts and chocolate but I looked up the holiday and found that it is all in celebrate of the unit of measure the Mole.

602,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or 6.02×10²³

You might notice that today’s date is 10 – 23 and this is celebrate from 6:02am to 6:02 pm.

So how are we going to celebrate this exceptionally large number today? In looking for ideas I came upon a chemistry teacher’s enrichment activities to make up mole jokes with the following examples
Write an original mole joke. 3 examples follow: (2 pts)
1. What is chemical nonsense? Mole-arky
2. What does Avogardro wear when it is cold? Thermole Underware
3. Where did Avogardro stay on vacation? A Mole-tel

Other people seem to want to contemplate just how huge this is by playing with making a mole of something everyday. Like these swiped from Wikipedia:
1 mole of marshmallows would be enough marshmallows to make a 12 mile thick layer of marshmallows covering the entire face of the Earth.
A mole of popcorn kernels could be spread uniformly over the USA if the thickness of the layer was about 9 miles.

To not neglect the little rodents I will send you this artistic treat 700 Mole-Men Begin Surfacing on Flickr
and to not neglect the Mexican sauce I may suggest enchiladas with mole this evening.

Any other ideas for how to celebrate Mole day?

Evaluate Your Life Day was Sunday. I woke bathed in late morning sunlight, tangled up in sheets with Christopher, blissed from an all day contra dance Saturday and chatting about silly things. Then I remembered something important.

“Oh it’s a holiday today. Today is Evaluate Your Life Day”

We started discussing what that means. Maybe because Christopher is often teaching in high schools and colleges he went down a pass fail path. Why does it have to be pass fail I wonder. He said he immediately thought of the Pearly Gates. Somehow my silly little brain went right from pearly to pearly plastic tampon applicators and I had a vision of getting to the gates and realizing it was all chinsy and that some angel with wings falling apart would be mulling over the pass fail of your life.

“Oh those gates are just made of plastic anyhow, that is why they’re pearly.” was all that made it out of my mouth from that thought.

He then informed me that if he gives another sermon that will be in it. I’m certain the just how that will be looped into what ever else he is delivering will be insightful and entertaining. I can’t figure how that will be worked in, but maybe that is because I know it came from marrying tampon applicators with a cryptic description out of the book of Revelations.

After enough giggling I got out of bed to announce to Diba and Nancy the theme for the day. Nancy looked at the word “Evaluate” with significant suspicion. She was assuaged with the definition that I googled up. “To draw conclusion by examining” that seems a little less scary. There was talk about how Evaluate Your Life for some people first inspires Evaluate Your Relationships. We started breakfast, traded massages, did some partner yoga had a few more people wake up or show up to join the conversation. After delicious breakfast we walked to Fiske Pond and threw logs and whole trees in for the 13 year old puppy that accompanied us. The sun was close and so warm I probably could have sunbathed if the wind stayed still. I picked cranberries, popped them in my mouth with a stomp and pucker for their grand sourness. We wandered back when hungry and ate more delicious food and then had to send all the lovely people on their way.

So at the end of the day looking, at that day, I concluded that I am surrounded by wonderful people.

Monday I evaluated my work life and concluded that I love my job. Maybe by the end of today I will conclude something else and tomorrow it will be on to another theme making this Evaluate Your Life Week!

What aspect of life do you want to evaluate?

Last weekend I was lucky to be able to go to the Technology in the Arts Conference hosted by Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh. This was an offering so up my alley that I had a ridiculously hard time deciding on the break out sessions. On all of them there were at least two that I wanted to be at and on one there were four I wanted to clone myself to attend. So I armed myself with business cards and set out for Pittsburgh.

At the airport just off the plane I saw two large LC monitors one had an advertisement but one showed this.

Is this a premonition? – gosh I hope not.

I got on to the bus from the airport and got to my hotel with 15 minutes to spare until the first session. I had signed up for Online Video – it is easier than you think. The idea for the hands on workshop was that we would see some demos of effective video in the arts, learn a few tips, go out and shoot and then come back compile and post. My batteries were dead in my camera but I had a pile of them lucky enough it was a just out of the charger pile. I haven’t used my camera in a while so there was some doubt. I paired up with someone who worked for a dance company and headed outside. I asked a taxi driver if we could video him and was coldly shot down. Started feeling a little shy do decided to shoot the other conference attendees. When we got back it was on to Windows Movie Maker to string some stuff together. My camera shoots in MOV file type and none of the machines were loaded with quick time so we couldn’t do it. The instructors camera was the same deal so he quickly switched to his normal video making program Vegas something to do it. Now instead of a hands on workshop I am in a demo. Then he is having all kinds of technical problems with his machine. We wait and I am impressed with this guys attitude about the hiccups. He is unruffled, but I have been in the same place and it is tough having the room waiting on tech annoyances. After it is up he explains that he recently updated the version of the software so the whole screen looked different. He did a fine job considering. In the question and answer I ask about file formats and a software that can deal with getting files from many cameras, extracting dvds and dealing with different copyright lock downs. (I am not breaking copyright I am marketing events that are coming to town.) He basically validates that dealing with all that is a mess, there is no magic key software and that I should insist on standard formats. hmpf.

The next hands on session had all the laptops downloading a windows update at the same time so the internet was debilitated and no one could get into the software.

I don’t think the hotel internet ever really recovered. Presentations that were planned without it went off without a hitch. Many of the presenters were changing what they were doing on the fly. All with grace but I was feeling for them. The closing speaker was in IT at the Brooklyn Musuem and talked about curating the exhibition Click She would have walked us through the site live to show the interesting results of this exhibition but when the time came the bars would barely move. “I hate technology, I hate technology” as she switched to her screen shots, which to her annoyance don’t scroll.

So I learned lots from the conference which I am putting into a presentation for the rest of my coworkers and a few peers. Personally I learned that in my field there is a definitely a love hate relationship with technology. It is wonderful and fun when it works and keenly frustrating on the flip side.

Pittsburgh was sweet, although I saw way too little of it.

I thought the fountains looked freakish and toxic but I learned it was about breast cancer awareness

One of the presenters I was chatting with has a terrible form of OCD that forces him to turn paper napkins into flowers if they are around. He made three.

This tree was confusing to us at night since it was blooming in October! During the daylight I realized it was ceramic.

Last year I wrote about Columbus Day being a celebration of being aware of propaganda and commonly repeated lies.

This year I am renaming it altogether.

So what am I celebrating that I am in the know about this year? I think given the state of the country’s economics I am going to celebrate that knowing that big debt is not good thing to do for yourself and for your country. I keep thinking that what we have now is a direct path from when Reagan made credit card interest tax deductible to inspire higher balances. When my dad was talking about it one night I remember vaguely thinking “How can this be good?” My father’s explanations of production and cash went over my head, so I just remained suspicious. Later when I was broke and in college I ran the idea of supply side economics, known as “trickle down economics,” through the testing economic universe that lives in my head and thought “poohtuckey this is going to trickle down diddly squat to me or anyone else.” I see the path meander to when George W. Bush told us to go shopping after September 11th with a straight face. At that time I spit my grapefruit juice all over my deck.

This idea that shopping, even without thought is beyond a past time, but is in fact patriotic, has become ridiculously prevalent. I was at a lunch at a conference Friday and the table was chatting about what the economic changes will mean for arts organizations and personally. A woman was saying that she was taking out all the cash from a fund that has been losing money for a good long while. She said she can better serve her personal economics and stimulate the local economy by remodeling her kitchen with the remaining cash. A man at the table said “How patriotic of you.” He was darkly laughing at the concept that it is patriotic to spend money. The fact that the humor doesn’t need explanation proves my point on its ubiquity.

So today I am celebrating the hopeful demise of this particular concept in the world. Maybe we are at a change like when we were discovering that cigarettes are actually not so fabulous for your health. Hooray for wising up a little bit.

Like last year, now I want to ask you – What are you thankful that you know better about?