A gold church and a quiet library

Posted on by Liz

My adventures today were very mild, as I am going out to dinner later and didn’t want to exhaust myself. So, I stuck to the Old Town area near the Plaza Grande.

Hot chocolate and a plate of tiny cheese empanadas on the Plaza – I had planned to write but instead ended up sitting with some tourists from Paris who didn’t want me to eat my breakfast alone. They were spending 5 weeks in Ecuador, must be nice! Then, I went to check out the tour of the Presidential Palace but found that I have to make a reservation (giving my passport number!) a day beforehand. This was easy to do over email and now I’m planning my visit to be tomorrow morning. It seems that the tour is accessible (more or less) and at one point if you are a wheelchair user you get ushered into the President’s private elevator. If I bump into President Moreno in his private elevator, I will tell him about Whirlwind Wheelchair International, an org that teams up to help create sustainable local wheelchair factories and maintenance (with disabled people at the helm).

Everywhere I go in Quito I get stopped by people politely asking me for information about my powerchair! My ability to discuss the chair in Spanish is slowly improving. The guards outside the Astronomical Observatory finally reaped the benefits of my practice as they told me about their family members who could really use a powerchair. I don’t think there are even powerchairs sold anywhere in Ecuador. I described the light weight cheap ones that can fold ( se puede plegar!) but the prices upset them (the cheapest I know about is around $1000). I wish it were not so hard – putting a motor on a wheelchair! It doesn’t have to be hellishly expensive!

Right next to the Plaza I found an accessible entrance to the Centro Cultural Metropolitano. The ground floor didn’t have a lot going on, and I couldn’t get into the library or its reading room, or the bathrooms, but there was an elevator to the 1st floor. Some great art exhibits there (and you can get the staff to unlock the actually accessible bathrooms which are for employees only, in theory). The building is pretty & there are historical plaques everywhere about the history of independence & a bit more about the French geodectic survey expedition.

My favorite art exhibit was called De vuelta centro del mundo by Antonio Bermúdez, with a lot of postcards of Chimborazo which he bought online exhibited next to the eBay order forms, packaging, and mail envelopes. I love that sort of thing!!! Of course, as a tourist myself I felt right at home in the display of 100 year old postcard kitsch and the strange diaspora of the Chimborazo postcards going all over the world and then getting bought & mailed around the world right back to Ecuador. Excuse me while I put a stamp on myself and jump into a mailbox! But seriously I thought of the long poem “Carta de viaje” by Elvira Hernández (that I translated, with footnotes longer than the poem almost) and felt very happy looking at the exhibit.

I could also get into some of the smaller sections of the library (though not the bigger, juicier looking main reading room + stacks) so I camped out in the social sciences, looking through an armload of books on the history of the petroleum industry in Ecuador. “ecuatoriano, defiende tu PETROLEO!” had the best title but “En la lucha por el crudo” had the best cover design. I then found some folklore books, which were great, and I’d like to go back another day to sit & read them. This also looks like a good place for me to sit and write and work on some things, since Quito doesn’t have much of a laptop using cafe sitting culture and I don’t want to be a complete boor.

Just one building down from the Centro Cultural, there is a side gate which guards will open for you and your wheels, into the giant golden baroque cathedral, or church, whatever it is, called Compañía de Jesus. Holy shit, it’s beautiful! It is covered in gold! Scary!!!!!! There is also a sort of… coffin monument thing with a statue of Quito’s first saint.

Lunch by myself in a super fancy restaurant, well, outside in its sidewalk seating anyway (I picked it for this feature since EVERY restaurant has steps — maybe the President will let me know the best places for lunch… hahahhaah… Surely he must know?!) It is called Purísima & the food was great, for the price of a sandwich and a coffee in San Francisco I had 3 courses and a fancy soda (seltzer + blackberry syrup, if mora = blackberry, anyway, it was good) I like the herb that was in this, it wasn’t celantro I don’t think but had a more funky flavor. The waiter said it was called something like aniyuyu though I cannot figure out what it really is. My soup had tiny potatoes, crunchy fried corn bits, quinoa, at least 3 kinds of lumps of tasty cheese of different textures, and a quail egg. Also served on super amazing china (from an enormous china soup tureen with gilt handles) and the tortillas were wrapped in silk. It was a little OVER THE TOP for my seat on the sidewalk! Wow!!

Wandered home again – Old men seem particularly amused when I grimly face a steep curb and then surmount it, bumping slowly like a tiny, purple haired tank. They get a twisted grin of disbelief on their faces and occasionally laugh outright if I go “beep beep.” (I have also been beeped at by them.) Young men on the other hand just rush to try to push me up the curb (which doesn’t work – i have to come at it a certain way – and then they observe the resulting tank action and we exchange polite compliments and thanks.)

I have skipped the ice cream today since lunch was AMAZING.

Day 2 in Quito

Posted on by Liz

Today I wandered north through some parks, and then to some kind of marketplace for crafts which felt like 200 booths all selling the same exact stuff. I bought some tiny pouches and a stuffed guinea pig made of alpaca wool (for the cat). I ended up at a water park (where I had some delicious street food) and then the Jardín Botánico which was great but almost completely empty of people. I spent a while in the orchid house then at the bonsai exhibit, and then took the C1 Trolebus back to the Plaza Teatro near our hotel. That may not sound like a lot but for me it was a fairly intense experience since I have to pay a ridiculous amount of attention to the pavement. (An opportunity to feel smug triumph at every single street crossing.)

I ended up going down Guayaquil again around 4pm – past the gauntlet of young women offering ice cream and the stream of every single person walking by holding an ice cream cone. I had just bought a pastry as big as my face at random from a street vendor and it turned out to be full of pineapple which is my favorite so I was spared the pressure to have ice cream too. Everyone holding the ice cream or one of the huge pastries would give a little nod of shared satisfaction with the afternoon. I had wondered yesterday if the “stroll around the plaza eating pastries” custom was just on Sundays but no it seems to be every day. It’s great.

Past the Plaza Grande going down Venezuela, I noticed a huge long ramp winding down to La Ronda which is supposed to be a cool street to visit. So, I took the ramp but it ended in a plaza with no way to get out except from a bunch of stairs. Back up the ramp! And then I was in such luck because coming out of Plaza Grande was a fabulous parade.

Marching bands, dancers in costumes, women holding candles in what was probably a religious way, little kids in fancy dresses, etc. A good parade! I especially liked the grotesque comedy dancing police.

I am scoping out cafes and restaurants and shops where I can get in (not many!!) Found a level entrance grocery (Tía of Central Quito) and a pharmacy (for cold meds and kleenex for Danny). Most shops have a steep step up or down to get in and I cannot leave my powerchair in the street so, no go. My best bet for cafes is anywhere that has outdoor seating on a plaza. The restaurants near Teatro Bolivar look pretty good so I might head there today. I have seen nowhere with people doing laptop things in a public place San Francisco cafe style (sadly, since that’s what I feel like doing right now)

I have to tell the story of using the Trolebus. Google Maps is not super helpful though it does show the stops. Maybe there is a local app for the trolleys (Trolebus, Ecovia, and Metro lines though each of those has sub-routes I don’t understand yet.) These are just regular large buses, the long kind with flexible sections in between cars, but you board from a glassed in platform, paying up front at a little booth. It’s like, 15 or 25 cents or something, very cheap. Some platforms have an exit side and an entrance side, and the exit side has those revolving iron things that won’t let a wheelchair through so you have to exit out the entrance (potentially assisted by a guard). The entrance is a turnstile but you can fold one of the turnstile prongs down to get your wheelchair past it. The bus itself at least on this first ride did not pull up very close to the platform so I had a huge gap to go over. Fortunately I have huge tires and i thought it looked JUST possible so I gunned it and jumped the gap. People around me conferred and one guy offered to help which i accepted and so by the time I was positioned to make my death defying LEAP about 4 people’s hands were on the chair just in case. (Very kind actually!) The bus was crowded but no worse than San Francisco at rush hour (nicer, really). And the same young studenty-looking man and his girlfriend made sure to let me know the right stop to get off at and helped clear the decks for my dramatic backwards exit. Was any of this wise? MAYBE NOT. Tune in maybe tomorrow when I will attempt to ride the bus again to some random destination!

On the way back to my hotel around 5:30 I stopped to get the last bit of sun in San Blas Plaza and maybe catch a pokemon (I am sending Ecuador Pokégifts to everyone!) A little kid maybe 5 or 6 years old was riding his bike around the plaza & he came up to me to ask about my chair. I explained the controls to go faster or slower on one side, the battery life, and the joystick (I said “palanca” because i have no idea what the right word is, and that seems to suffice) And then he patted my lap and said “can i drive” and unceremoniously climbed up into my lap. That was unexpected and slightly weird but also a lot of fun — I like small children. I worried what his attendant grownups would think but no one swooped down on us. He drove us around and around the plaza with us both giggling until I said I had to go. “Es muy divertido!” he said as we shook hands and exchanged names. My theory is that maybe he has a relative who is a wheelchair user and, well, no boundaries because he is 5 years old and very brave and confident.

Meanwhile Danny and his colleagues are meeting up with people in support of Ola Bini who as near as I can tell was bizarrely scapegoated just for being the sort of nerd who likes crypto and uses Linux and Tor. Hello… that would be like, nearly every open source engineer I work with…. People misunderstand hacker culture so badly.

Roaming around Quito

Posted on by Liz

I forayed out this morning not sure what the city would be like. I took Ave. Guayaquil into Old Town and the first thing that struck me was being harangued by people on the street to take some ice cream. The little ice cream shops have soft serve machines facing right onto the sidewalk, and the young women staffing them prepare a couple of ice cream cones (held in a napkin) and offer them to people walking by or people in cars. (50 cents.) A lot of people strolling around in Old Town had ice cream cones. Cannot fail to mention the vendors walking around wiht a sort of ice cream castle on a tray, cones stuck into the top of the castle, who would stop and scoop you out some of the castle. I think it is meringue not actual frozen stuff. Another variant on the soft serve was what looked like fruit sorbet being made by hand in a giant copper bowl.

The sidewalks were cobbly and narrow in places and curb cuts weren’t consistent but I could manage OK. I think because it was Sunday the streets were mostly shut down so I could just go in the street anyway. Every little plaza was nice to sit in & had its own street vendors who sing or chant with varying degrees of skill. Sometimes just a guy looking super desperate with a single package of socks trying to sell you a pair of socks for a dollar. Families were strolling around probably after church, indulging their children, eating snacks, listening to street musicians. It was really idyllic!

Most shops have a step to get in (though, really, most shops were shut because it is Sunday) but I did find a pharmacy without MUCH of a step and got claritin and kleenex for Danny who is either sick or having allergies/altitude sickness. I had lunch in Plaza San Francisco in a little tourist cafe where the food was excellent and I could sit outside. The bathroom there was kind of almost accessible but not really. (Ditto for the bathroom in the tourist information building on the Plaza Grande). Back to lunch: I had a fritada which was huge, cheap, and delicious, with juicy grilled chicken, garlic maiz blanco, a sort of onion-tomato curtido, thin avocado puree with toasted maiz on it, platanos maduros, and a mildly spicy pepper sauce, kicking back with that and a coke sitting right on the Plaza.

I must have gone around the Plaza Grande like 5 times just kind of wandering and then sitting in different places to look at the town and watch people go by.

You can get a haircut for 2 dollars and lunch (huge) for $5-10.

The Museum of Precolombian Art was accessible and had the only (mostly) accessible bathroom I’ve seen so far in Ecuador. By which, it had a hand rail and I could get into it in my wheelchair though a bigger one than mine might not fit. So, if you’re a wheelchair user and you need the bathroom check out this museum (which is free). Not to neglect the actual museum, which was excellent and super fancy, with a lot of ceramics and a few gold oranaments and pretty good explanatory signs (along with a booklet on the exhibit you could borrow). The ceramics from the Chorrera culture were especially fabulous. I didn’t see a shop, alas, (as I was hoping to buy a replica bird whistle.)

I liked the guy with a puppet show of joropo musicians, and the people further up the street playing huaynos (or something close to that) and everyone dancing in the street. A jolly woman in one of those andean lady bowler hats with a peacock feather grabbed my hair and complimented me, dancing a bit (I did not mind) But aside from that only a few people went slack jawed at the sight of me. No one fake-jumped out of the way (what a nice luxury) And no one else had brightly colored hair – perhaps they are all in the other tourist area where there is “night life” and where the gay bars are. I will go there later in the week and find out.

The guys who drove us from the airport to our hotel at midnight were very negative on the idea of my going on the trolebus (it is too crowded, and not “exclusive”) but it looked OK to me, maybe a bit crowded but not impossible. I will likely try that tomorrow, either from the Plaza del Teatro or the Plaza de Bolivar in the other direction. (with my eye on going to the big park that has a botanical garden.)

The whole day was very relaxing!

Traveling slow

Posted on by Liz

It was a good decision so far to break this trip in half. We did one short flight to Houston, stayed in the airport hotel, and will take off later today for Ecuador. I had a swim last night in the hotel pool so I even got in some exercise. This is in theory going to mean I’m not physically destroyed at the other end of the trip (and then on the way back we’ll stay in Houston a few days to visit my parents and grandma). So far so good!

I am planning to fritter away some time in the airport this afternoon before the flight playing Ingress and Pokemon as I ride the tram around and around. Perhaps also an airport “spa” leg massage.

Silly songs

Posted on by Liz

Day 3 of DWeb Camp. Judy and I sang our translation of the Free Software Song into Toki Pona (only got through the first verse though…)

o kama poka mi mute o pana
e sitelen pali pi ilo sona
sina mute li ken pali e ale,
jan pi pakala pona o

Then I showed off me and Danny’s Hackernationale and a bunch of us sang it in the geodesic dome! (I need to re-do the syllables which aren’t always correctly under their notes, there)

Then, somehow, we ended up on the floor of the dome collectively writing a filk version of Sweet Caroline, which we then performed in the EFF Lounge at midnight! Here are the lyrics!

Sweet Copyleft
(lyrics by Liz, Leez, and Judy)

Where it began, I can’t begin to knowing
But then I know it’s growing strong
First GPL,
Then came Creative Commons,
Who’d have believed you’d come along
Files, touching files
Reusing them, remixing me, remixing you

Sweet copyleft,
License never felt so good
I’d be inclined
To share everything I could

but now I
look at the net and it don’t seem so lonely
we filled it up with all of us
when i create,
the code flows out my fingers
We make so much when I remix you
nodes touching nodes….
touching nodes, touching nodes, touching nodes

Sweet Copyleft,
license never felt so good!

Earlier in the day I got to play with a Waffletone, which is kinda like a Monome but with mechanical keyboard keys! The github repo is a beautiful and elegant marvel of great documentation!

DWeb Camp Day Zero and One

Posted on by Liz

Day Zero at DWeb Camp. We drove down Highway 1 stopping in Moss Beach to look at a strangely cheap vacant lot to try and figure out what is wrong with it (On the fault line, a weird shape, has a utility pole smack in the center of the tiny property.) Saw a huge hawk in the tree next to the utility pole and then realized I had dropped my car keys somewhere in the tall grass. If we buy this vacant lot and park a derelict trailer on it and build cinderblock library and a tiny house from a kit, I shall name it Keyhawkia. (I never found the keys but Danny had a spare.)

I brought an entirely unnecessary cooler and bag full of food. There is abundant and delicious vegan food 3 times a day! Our glamping tent is comfortable, equipped with a foam mattress, a wooden crate, and a battery powered lantern. I brought a Yeti 150 battery hoping to heat my early morning coffee with it, a solar lantern, a second lantern to charge off the Yeti, my two wheelchair batteries, and about a million different charging cords.

Met a ton of people, passed out some copies of my zine, and helped wash and sanitize some loads of thrift store dishes. Went to bed and as soon as I laid down realized my body was screaming in pain – oh fuck! Vowed to lie down and rest more during the day the rest of the time here.

I was saying to some of the mushroom farm people that, everyone coming here is used to being the person who just does stuff directly and feels super confident and capable of being in charge of whatever, and so we are about to have a physical manifestation of decentralized activity and it will surely be a bit hilarious. (So far, from day 2, definitely true).

Day One. Woke up at 6am, made lukewarm coffee using my Yeti and a car charger travel mug. Sat in zero gravity chair before it was fully open, falling slowly and gently backwards, and actually set the coffee mug down without spilling it AND no one saw me fall over.

Over the afternoon a couple of hundred people arrived. It started to feel festive. The “Mesh Hall” now looks like Noisebridge complete with “sans flaschentaschen”. Lots of discussions of Scuttlebutt and also of Kazakhstan. I love seeing everything take shape.

I pedantically corrected the sign for Shiitake Camp with a sharpie, adding the second “i”. The kerning may bother someone but it wasn’t a bad job of insertion given the spontaneous nature of the action! Danny laughed at me…Guys sitting by the sign somewhat bemused…

Set up my tarp outside the tent so that my wheelchair has shelter from the dew – within 5 minutes I found some pointy iron rods which Bill, who is amazing, told me were foundation rods. People passing by had sledgehammers, extra tent spikes, a hatchet which broke while being dramatically used in exactly the way you should not, so that the sharp end is about to embed itself in your forehead – All was well and my wheelchair is protected from the elements in the night. While I took a short nap, someone (probably James) left me a little roll of cord to tie up the tarp! Miraculous!

I washed more dishes and spent the day mostly loafing. (Under my tarp lean-to.)
Did some crosswords in Portuguese with Seth (I don’t know Portuguese but faked it from knowing Spanish) – relaxing and fun.

Could not hear or see most of the opening circle stuff but some of the talks made it to the outer fringes. At one point I gathered that people were sticking a branch into a fire pit and then saying a word in their language and maybe explaining the word’s significance (to them? to the moment? to their culture?) and I had a saucy suggestion to Danny as to what his special representative British word should be. 10 points if you guess it!

Day Two – The showers are amazing in this upper camp. Huge compared to my bathroom, a handy bench to change on, everything rather beautiful in that people-who-have-spent-years-living-on-communes wood shop way with shelves constructed of sections of tree trunk and attractive large pebbles as decor – Lots of Dr. Bronners soap to share. We had a nice camaraderie in the shower this morning as I complimented someone’s tshirt which said in scrolly print, “Brats push to master” and she then explained it to the people in the bathroom with us (Christie the biologist and her daughter) who were not familiar with version control software or its jokes. (“Good bois push to branches” I guess would be the alternate version.) “I’m blogging this” – my sudden declaration from behind the shower curtain after like 5 solid minutes of explanation of the joke.

My yeti battery heated the travel mug of instant coffee beautifully today. It takes a while. The trick is falling back asleep after plugging it in so that you aren’t waiting tediously for the water to hot up.

Plans for today: set up a little zine making workshop. Get set up with scuttlebutt. go to some discussions or talks. Work on my small text adventure game of this event and then put it up somewhere in the hackitorium room if anyone has a spare computer to display it on.

Better make it count

Posted on by Liz

This news anchor absolutely went bananas on the air cussing out Vladimir Putin. (Full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfTCNniSy-8)

“Giorgi Gabunia, a presenter on the main commercial TV channel in Georgia, used highly offensive language in a message to Vladimir Putin on Sunday. He went on to insult Mr Putin’s mother.”

Now undoubtedly he had good reason to be a hero and let his anger fly on national television, now reported all over the world. And it seems likely he will suffer for it. I wish him luck. To honor his anger I went looking for translation of his speech. The best clue I had was that part of it was “walrus c—” which surely would be, as the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue calls it, “the Monosyllable”. Googling “walrus cunt” got me several interesting leads!

Here’s the first translation:

Good evening, dear viewers. You are watching the main Georgian TV channel Rustavi 2. We start the program “P. S.“, and I am the host of this program George Gabunia. First of all, I would like to say a huge, huge Hello to our great friend — Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Vovochka, bitch you podzabornaya. You dog shit. You fucking walrus’s pussy. There is no place on our beautiful earth for such a wretched creature. A freak like you. You’re a stinking payback. Fuck you, Volodya. Fuck you and your slaves. I fucked your mother. Oh, your mother’s dead. Oh, sorry. Oh, please. So let her burn in hell with you and your father. I wanted to shit on your grave. Amen.

There’s some awkward bits in there!

Here’s another translation I found deep in some forum:

Good evening, dear viewers. You are watching Georgia’s main TV channel Rustavi 2. We are beginning the program Post-Sciptum and I am the presenter Georgiy Gabuniya. First of all I want to send a gigantic – gigantic hello to our big friend President of Russia Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Vovochka (dimunitive and disrespectful way of addressing someone named Vladimir), you bitch who sleeps under fences, piece of dog shit you, you walrus’ cunt, in our beautiful land there is no land for such a miserable creature, for such a freak such as yourself. You are a stinking occupant. Go to asshole, Volodya. Go to hell together with your slaves. I fucked your mommy. Oy! Your mommy is dead. Very bad. Oy let’s not talk about it. Let her burn in hell together with you and your father. I want to shit on your graves. Amen.

While I don’t know a word of Russian… I bet that “stinking [something]” is something like occupier or invader.

For context, here is a Washington Post article that goes a bit further than the BBC, illustrated at top with a photo of a protestor yelling while burning a photo of Putin.

“The on-air rant, broadcast Sunday evening, came after two weeks of violent anti-Russian demonstrations in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, culminating in a Russian government ban on direct flights between the two countries. The ban took effect Monday, disrupting travel for thousands of passengers.”

and let’s not forget the actual recent war,

“Ties between the neighbors are at their worst point in years. In 2008, hostilities erupted into a brief war when Russia backed the breakaway South Ossetia region, and Russian troops invaded Georgia proper. Relations gradually got back on track, with trade and tourism between the two fully reestablished by 2013. ”

Bonus, here’s an extremely contentious Wikipedia article on the history of Georgia-Russia relations and extra information on the Georgian language(s), which arew interestingly unrelated to other language families!

So far, Gabunia has been suspended from his job for two months.

A good adventure on the road

Posted on by Liz

On the road by myself this morning to Calistoga I pulled off of 101 figuring I could have a little Olompali State Park lookaround. So I’m on San Antonio road, parallel to the highway, and passed a young person with a backpack…. thought a second, stopped & stuck my head out the window. WANT A RIDE! I screeched out the window after a quick assessment. The young person ran to catch up looking absolutely gobsmacked and hopped in. Rather than drag them to the park I figured we were on the back road to Petaluma (where they said they were headed). After some consultation of maps (young Tad was walking to Bodega Bay) I offered to take them to Santa Rosa where they could take 12 to the coast. Offer accepted!

Our mysterious encounter continued and I hoped my tacky dance music was acceptable (“Hashtag this you basic bitch!” was blasting, which felt wrong for my new friend somehow.) I mentioned the land and the Mushroom Farm as a conversational hook to no avail (My first guess of eco-farm-hippie was wrong.) An observation on some sort of Path (terminology that I don’t remember) was made. “So… Buddhist? Hindu? Krishna?” Yes to Krishna! That explains the cute lil dots and stripes of white face paint. “I’ve always liked the story of Krishna stealing the butter and his mom telling him to open his mouth and she looks in his mouth and instead of the stolen butter there is the whole world and the whole universe!!! Enthusiastic agreement from Tad. When you are first on the path, you’re like a child seeing the forest from a child’s perspective! Then, the next stage, you’re like a mother holding the child in her lap, in the forest (on the path?) and you have to be both mother and child, to yourself! Enthusiastic agreement from me. Priest and poet journeying together! We entered historic Petaluma.

Somewhere in downtown Petaluma they offered the thought that I should see Scott Pilgrim (movie, full title escapes me) which I had not. “Is that.. uh is that by the guy who did Slacker?” No. But Tad loves that movie. I was like Tad, my friend, I lived that movie and knew everyone in it! Turns out Tad was a street kid in Austin for some time. We high fived for love of Austin at a streetlight. How about the movie Waking Life? Yes! Tad loves it! I think it is a little sad but beautiful. Why sad? Because, I take it to be all a dreamlike mind journey in the moment between a car crash and death (feeling a little weird to say this to my hitchhiker as I, a stranger, drive my FMINIST-mobile.) “I’ll have to watch it again! I didn’t notice that!” Tad had left the hari krishna festival in Fresno (to go their own way still a personal follower of krishna) and it was an uneasy path and difficult but worth it.

When I said I love trains, they quoted Buckminster Fuller on public transit. Hahahah, lovely. I explained about 4D Timelock and the towers and airships. Also I was offered a Bob Dylan quote (always stick your tongue out at babies) and something about the Grateful Dead.

This young puppy, voice barely breaking, utterly charmed me. I dropped them off by the side of the access road to highway 12 in Santa Rosa, offered $20 bucks “because you’re a holy pilgrim, and to get some food and water!” (I thought of giving more but did not want it to be weird.)

We are now Facebook friends. An auspicious start to my mini-vacation at the hot springs. Wow I do love life quite a lot. A small human connection. All of these moments should be valued and held close to our hearts.

On the horrible human rights abuses perpetrated by the USA

Posted on by Liz

Just a note that it is completely horrifying that the US government continues amping up its focus on concentration camps, detention centers, etc.

AND also, no one at all should be in prison or jail as it currently exists and this is just one more manifestation of an unsustainable multigenerational injustice of the growth of the carceral state, or prison industrial complex, or both. Abolish prisons and abolish ICE. This is the greatest horror of our time and country and it has been so for all my life. Ethically I should probably focus whatever of my energies aren’t going towards my job in open source software, into fighting the carceral state. Must think about how to do this and look for good organizations to join & support. Donating to bail people out is one thing, for immediate relief of a few people, but it needs huge legal, cultural, structural changes to stop what’s happening and try to undo the incalculable harm…

kthanxbai, Just had to get that off my chest.

Back on my bullshit!

Posted on by Liz

I’m back from my trip to Seattle, Vancouver, Whistler, and beyond! Now that I’ve taken the Coast Starlight train to all its destinations I can’t wait to take some more long distance train journeys!!

Danny has often pointed out to me how I go down a social class for every bag I’m carrying and it was even more true for this trip. As I went from my friend Els’s house near the giant geodesic dome thing in downtown Vancouver, to the train station, at 4:30am, laden with giant backpack hanging off the back of my wheelchair, smaller backpack at my feet, and duffel bag balanced on my lap, a little group of maybe 30-somethings was heading away from the crosswalk I was approaching. One of them veered off towards me holding out a bag. “Would you … would you like breakfast?”

Now…. what a question since I was just looking around wondering if anything was open so I could get a muffin or whatever before getting on a 3 hour bus to Seattle where I’d get back on the train. Perhaps this young man had been at some sort of … early meeting rife with donuts, or was a baker carrying home some fresh pastry and a MAGICAL CROISSANT was going to appear for me.

Thus I paused a bit, consideringly, and said “Um… what is it?”

“It’s my leftover McDonald’s pancakes. Please, take it, go on!” (Earnest eye contact, look of deep and pained concern.)

Maybe I should have taken it so he could feel good about himself but I did not and I may have giggled inappropriately without explaining but I did smile and was as nice as possible at 4:30 am on the street. Then I passed through a sort of encampment in the park and at the train station a cab driver was screaming at a definitely homeless dude who was asking for change and so I gave the homeless dude my leftover Canadian money mentally attributing it to the nice man with the free bag of (gross!) Mcdonalds pancakes.

Completing my downwards journey to squalor I then just flat out laid down and fell asleep on the (relatively clean) floor of the bus.

p.s. I did get breakfast from a nice man in the train station who opened a tiny cafe at 5am and sold me a slice of lemon cake!!!

p.p.s. Wait staff in Vancouver AND Whistler sensitively offered me a straw, multiple times! They lean over and say it with soulful discretion, while making eye contact and touching my arm a little! “Would you like a STRAW, ma’am?” (They have HEARD that disabled people have this whole straw thing so…….)

More about the amazing adventures on my trip later !!! A little at a time!!!

p.p.p.s. CRIPS!!