Norm has a nice video he took at the recent anti-war protests during the Bush visit to Salt Lake City. Thanks to Norm and the other people of Salt Lake City, including Mayor Rocky Anderson, for confronting the administration’s lies and their assertion that disagreement is unpatriotic.

Keith Olbermann link courtesy of The Old Hippie’s Groovy Blog…

Earlier this week when I read Joi Ito’s post about pruning his Shii tree I was struck by the intentionality and the meditative quality of the Shinto ritual he described.

Some connections I made after I read that post… my gingko tree has a similar spiritual value. It was a young tree sixteen years when we moved here. Now it is quite mature, large and dropping more fruit each year, its branches spreading wider over the driveway, over the lawn. While I do not approach the pruning with any particular reverence, this is a tree that demands study and intentionality. Later in the week, my friend Joanna’s kitchen popped up in the San Francisco Chronicle. She gave us some of the marble that she salvaged from the Crocker bank remodeling and we used it in our Berkeley kitchen when we remodeled in the late eighties. Our kitchen was trimmed by hand by a carpenter who had training in Japanese building techniques. Our Berkeley bungalow was not exactly four-square. Each corner of the room was a different height, floor to ceiling. But Nicholas and his team were able to trick the eye when cutting the moldings and the trim in such a way that the irregularities were absorbed by the irregularities they designed into the dimensions of the wood they used.

When he was finished, Nicholas drilled one extraneous hole into the countertop near the sink. He didn’t want to burden us with a creation that was perfect.

A kitchen I have enjoyed since it was finished in the early eighties was featured Wednesday in the San Francisco Chronicle Home and Garden section.

I think it’s been a year or two since we’ve sat in that kitchen chatting with Joanna and Mark, petting the occasional cat, sipping a hot beverage. It’s something I look forward to when we have time to spend in the East Bay.

Ten Questions for Movement Building and Reflections on the Current Period
– By Dan Berger and Andy Cornell

linked via Anne Galloway, a genius, a knitter, and a good person.

Without venturing near the homonymous conversation, I must report the Foo Fighters will indeed perform here in Madison with Bob Dylan on the evening of October 31st. I don’t know if this will draw crowds off the street at the time of the annual Halloween chaos, or rather concentrate them later when the show is over.

I do know that I want tickets!