Home Saturday

Much of today I hung around the house, periodically logging into Zoom to work on my sourdough with Hannah's coaching. Sunday shall be the baking.

Of course the big news is the continuing Black Lives Matters demonstrations on top of the COVID19 and everything else. I do not feel that I can do much except be distantly supportive but once I retire I will be able to be a full time activist perhaps. I am working on being productive when I am fully in control of my schedule, and not subject to the structure of an employer.
This weekend I am resolved to upload a sample speech for comment to Stage Time University. I do not feel as polished as most who do this, but I have a big problem: engaging with the audience via chat polls requires sitting close to the laptop but that restricts the use of body and gesture. What to do (other than get an assistant to load the questions)?
While I was reviewing some commentary by YouTube's "LegalEagle" I heard a reference to "Ting", basically bill-on-usage phone service. I signed in for an account and when the SIM arrives will try it out. I have had good luck with MetroMile, so I'm willing to experiment with its telephone equivalent, especially since my data usage appears to have been less than a gig a month.

Jack Block Park

Jack Block Park is now open, thanks to easing of the coronavirus restrictions, so we took a walk - not the sweatiest of exercise, but visually very pleasing.

How to make change:
The right lever

A return to today's hot reality:
Black Lives Matter, but not enough, it seems.

I got confirmation my Social security claim was processed; payments to start in September. Apperently you collect the month after benefits are earned. That not really a problem for me, although unexpected.
I tried setting up mortgage autopay but once again ti required me to make this month's payments, meaning, I would end up making two payments this month, which I don't want. I called about that and they could not change it. It's not that bad; I just wait until the payment is made, then a couple days later I set up the autopay. It's just a matter of working out the details.
On the way to the 4pm Black Lives Matter demonstration I passed my bus pals' house, with the chalk poster on the bulkhead; we chatted briefly. One person at the demonstration talked plants a little bit, and I turned her on to the West Seattle Gardeners' group. Another turned out to be Cat Cassady who I knew through Buy Nothing and who had taken a photo of me through the window at the start of the COVID19 shutdown. We did not recognize each other in masks but eventually I asked. She took a selfie of us on Instagram but I haven't figured out how to download it.

Event Organized by
West Seattle Neighbors for Peace and Justice

Meeting Day

In the morning I met Hannah (rhymes with "Donna") and Julie for the usual walk. I saw a collection of wooden bears.

At noon was the WSBA/WPTL program on El Salvador. Because I am so used to producing these programs (but this time was merely supporting Dwight through the process) I had neglected to actually sign up for the thing and therefore had not link. Fortunately the signup process went pretty quickly, and I was able to get in having missed only the first couple of minutes.
Immediately afterwards was a Zoom meeting for WSBA Section leaders, part of a series about improving Section workings generally. This one was specifically about technology.  I feel this was quite successful and I set a report to WPTL's leadership:

Hi Anne And The WPTL Crew

Today there was a Section Leader Zoom meeting on the topic of serving our members with technology. Here's my takeways. 

WPTL is used as an good example, and in particular last month's all-day program.

ZOOM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE MEETINGS:

Many people find Zoom a better than a phone call for EC meetings and the like. This provides helpful visual nuances are helpful, and saves time because it's easier to tell who's speaking, and documents can be presented, reviewed or worked on.

ZOOM ROUNDTABLES:

Some sections (Lo Bono and maybe Solo/Small Practice) are hosting zoom roundtables for members to come and talk things over; 1 hour with little agenda. Ppl seem to enjoy it and we get to know each other better. It's good for networking.

EVENT TIME LIMITS

The On24 tool for webinars can't be used after 5pm because it requires a WSBA staff member.

However, if we want to have an event that goes into an evening using another tool (e.g. zoom, or a law firm's videoconferencing solution) the staff will work with us on meeting the requirements, such as proof of attendee signin.

COMMUNICATION/LISTSERVE:

Some sections have active listserves, mostly for talking about their practice.

Others have very limited utilization. I mentioned that we'd tried getting conversations started but it just didn't seem to work for us. Some use Slack for working on a project, and Trello for project planning.

COLLABORATION:

There was a lot of  enthusiasm for intet-sectional collaboration, and talking over collaboration with each other more generally

NORMALIZATION

We may just have to accept that virtual meetings are the norm now and for months to come. They have advantages for people geographically dispersed

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There were also calls about an issue with a hospital employee, which gets complicated fast. I may have to attend a meeting Monday.

Walk And Rock

We had the usual morning walk with Hannah and Julie, and then in the afternoon I had a long socially distanced walk with Jenn. This is an excellent way to have great conversation while getting fresh air and making my Google Fit app happy. I think I need to order new shoes soon!
In the evening: Stage Time University - both fun and educational.

Red Hen-And-Chicks at Hannah and Julie's

Mixed Green Salad Raised Bed

Clever Plant Markers: Stones!

Tuesday

This laptop computer has been having a problem with connecting with websites for several days now; it just randomly says there's a DNS error. I try again and it usually connects. It continues to randomly connect and disconnect the mouse, and often it's hard to find the cursor. The device may be reaching the end of its useful lifespan, or there may be a problem upstream - I don't know.

Little Free Library
Our Lady of Guadalupe school
Class of 2016-2017

On the morning walk I saw some little free libraries that were especially fun.
I spent much of the day preparing for the evening Toastmasters meeting that I was Toastmastering at. My first theme was something like "What A Spring It's Been!" working off the many extraordinary disasters we are suffering, but as I went on I felt impelled to add a message of hope, until ultimately the theme became "Hope".
I had overprepared because I had not defined who was doing some of the roles (I still remember investaturing new members from my time as President, and keep forgetting that that is someone else's job now - oh well! I had also reworked my speech from last week at SPEAKOUT since we had only 2 speeches, but   as I developed the agenda with Karen we decided that just 2 speeches were fine since we had a lot of business - what with the election I had to lead (more preparation!)
The meeting itself went well; the speeches were fine and the evaluations on point. Franni apparently looked at the Theme and chose as Word Of The Day: Faith.
This impelled me to re-write my closing remarks. I had used a perfectly fine Michelle Obama quote, but the Faith/Hope pairing demanded a send off ending with "Love". I did some quick research on the distinction between the two and came up with something like
"Our Word of the Day is Faith. Faith is trust in something, we at Toastmasters have faith that we can improve our skills, faith in our fellow Toastmasters that they will support us, faith that we can use our skills to improve the world. Hope is the anticipation of something good. Our faith in ourselves, our fellow Toastmasters lead us to Hope that we will improve, that we will help others improve, and the world itself. What is our motivation? We care about this; you could say that we have faith in and hope for improvements because we care for or even love ourselves, our fellow toastmasters, and the world.
The saying is that these are the three things that endure, but I say these are the three things that let us endure: Faith, Hope and Love. And the greatest of these is Love.

Nest, Flowers and a Post

See The Nest?

Roses from Laura and Alex's

Yesterday I took another look at the bird nest Hannah told me was in my tree. It really is interesting, and a lot of it is dryer lint. I started to walk around the block for air, and there were Alex and Laura and their kids gardening. I told them about the nest and they gifted me with roses they were pruning, reminding me to use the petals when they fell to make simple syrup. Excellent neighborhood!
Today I had my morning walk with Hannah and Julie, then did chores (and, honestly, napped) until it was time to shop for FEEST.
The news just keeps getting worse and it is hard to post something positive on Facebook because it seems so trivial. I resolved to do so anyway just for my health or to spite the fascists, but I preceded it with a quip:

Worst Rioting Since 1968
+ Worst Economy Since Great Depression
+ Worst Pandemic Since 1918 = MAGA!

Many of my friends and some of my family liked it, often adding comments. One Chad started going into excuses why it's not Trump's fault, and I just was not interested in debating the point - what a waste of time. Since it was MY post, I have the right and the power to delete comments, and I deleted that one. I messaged him why and he called me a fascist and unfriended me. I comments on my post:
 I have or have had friends and family all over the political spectrum. While I expected Donald Trump to be a disaster as president - and was not mistaken - I know we have had disastrous presidents before (W's invasion of Iraq comes to mind) but throughout we could always talk things over with the opposition on matters of joint interest, such as peace in the streets, prosperity at home and public health. Trump won't do that: he encourages violence on the streets, plunders our wealth and refuses to do his duty to take nationwide measures to fight the pandemic ... and Trumpists still defend his misconduct. I am no longer interested in hearing their rationalisations; I've heard it all and it is worth less than cow dung - because cow dung can fertilize a field.

Just now I shut down one friend who argued that none of this was Trump's fault, he is just the helpless victim of the Chinese or something. I am done trying to reason with people like that; I'm willing to remain friends but I'm done with this sh1t. I messaged him I was not interested, he unfriended me. He unfriended me, not the other way around. If I was not going to let him garbage up the conversation he did not want to have contact with me at all.

He'll just have to live without my pretty pictures of flowers, and I'll have a little more time to help fellow patriots save our nation

Well that got 19 likes so I think I hit the spot! I'm sad he made that choice, the more so that he has a wife or child who works in the medical field and got infected. I'd hoped maybe that would help him re-examine his fealty but I guess not.

Neighbors, Dryer Lint Bird Nest, and Gardening

I gardened, I planted, I discovered that the spade is much better at sodbusting than is the shovel.  I drove no-where.
The only people I came near were Alex and Laura, when I went to tell them about the birds nest in my tree, hanging low over the sidewalk (Hannah or Julie had pointed it out to me when they came by). They were trimming roses and gave me some, with the suggestion of making syrup when the petals fell off.
I blogged a lot of 4freeCLE and watched some YouTube.
This is relaxing, I think.

Zombie Lettuce: I bought a live butter lettuce,
Harvested all but 1 leaf, and
Planted the root. It's back!

Zucchini etc

Bird Nest, Mostly Dryer Lint