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safety pin girl zine's Friends
queerbychoice |
14th July, 2009. 9:23 pm. July Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day
Most of my blooms for Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day today are the last straggling remnants from plants that had previously bloomed much better, so I don't much feel like photographing them in their current state. My foothill beardtongue had completely stopped blooming for a few weeks, but now it's reblooming with a few more dark blue flowers. Both my sticky monkeyflowers are still producing a few new flowers each, but only on the new growth at the tips of their branches - the flowers all burn away in less than a week. Also, their latest flowers haven't been in their original shades of red; the recent flowers have been in increasingly ugly shades of faded red and sometimes orange. It's as if they're trying to revert to the pastel peach shade of the locally native sticky monkeyflowers, but since my red ones aren't a cultivar, just a naturally occurring red-flowering shade from southern California, I'm not sure why the red color would be so uninclined to stick around. I also have a few lingering narrowleaf milkweed flowers, though the stems have all permanently flopped over horizontally, so the plants as a whole don't look too great. And I have some lingering California golden poppies in bloom, though not nearly the profusion I had in May.
I have two new intentional blooms today - that is, blooms on plants I'm intentionally keeping alive, and that haven't bloomed before. One is sort of cheating, because the plant bloomed the day after I put it in the ground. But at least I've managed to keep it alive so far. (Actually, I bought two, and I think one of them might die. But the one in bloom seems healthy still.) Here it is: my new native bush mallow (Malacothamnus fremontii).
( More plants, some of them with flowers. )
Current mood:  pleased.
Current music: House on TV.
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gordonzola |
14th July, 2009. 9:20 am. Co-op developement
I start a course in co-op development today: “From Workers to Owners: Steps to Start Worker Cooperatives”. It’s part the economy and part the recent press our store has gotten, but we are getting calls or emails multiple times a week from people wanting to start co-ops. In addition to the cheese buying, one of my jobs is to field those calls. It’s an online course – and not a free one -- and I heard that 83 people are signed up.
I don’t want to out anyone before they are ready so I won’t name any places or details, but I talked to two incredibly different groups last week. One group of African Americans from an urban area in another state who want to do something – anything – that will help provide jobs and better health in their community. They were information gathering in general, without a specific plan of the type of model they wanted.
The other was an API ethnic group with a very specific idea of taking an existing, successful franchise model and converting it into a worker-owned version of the same thing. I don’t know that business model well, but they seemed pretty sure they could make it work.
It’s almost unfair to have people come for a tour and answer questions about our modes of operation since our blueprint for success is uncopyable. They see the result of nearly 35 years of work, starting in a totally different economy and era, with the good luck to be starting in an industry that – at that time – wasn’t an industry. I think there could be a blueprint. (The Cheeseboard/Arizmendi model is certainly a very good one) We just haven’t figured it out yet.
Historically-speaking I also speak to about 25 groups for every one that actually starts a co-op. I hope that this course – and two other Rainbow workers are taking it as well -- helps provide some groundwork to increase that ratio.
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junkpile |
14th July, 2009. 6:13 am. Hey You!
Hi friends!
Just an FYI to all the zinesters in my life who also create other forms of art, that the information for submitting work to the exhibit running alongside the Richmond Zine Fest is up on our website: http://www.richmondzinefest.org
A gallery full for an entire month with art ONLY by zinesters! Pretty damn cool!
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jetboy78 |
12th July, 2009. 12:14 am. Health care horror
Man, have I been neglecting this thing! I have been super busy, but I have to say, I miss writing.
I'd like to write about my latest Callen-Lorde experience and my new GP (my old one moved), but I think I'm going to spend that precious half and hour I've allotted to something other than school work to write him directly. But I'm still slightly unsure of how to approach this issue, the issue being Doctors Who Don't Understand Poor People.
Long story short, I go in, he demands a bunch of lab work which he later states I "didn't really need, but oh well!" (after I get slammed with a $100 bill). When I tell him that I never come in because the lab work they order causes me so much financial hardship, he says "Well, why don't you have insurance?? Unless you have money, you should qualify!"
I've tried public health programs. I've called government agencies, waited in line in various offices, talked to a number of social workers. I've dealt directly with the clinic that I go to (that he now works at), and had them call numerous offices on my behalf. No dice. Making $390 a week in unemployment can get me at best, a $200 a month health care plan that the city partially subsidizes, but still requires me to pay $200 a month, which is simply out of the question. He refuses to take this for an answer, saying "oh, well, you must have money. Do you get money from your parents?" He then demands that I book a bunch of follow up appointments with the GYN, the dentist, and him, which will inevitably lead to lab work, lab work I most likely don't need and definitely cannot afford.
There is a very public debate going on about this very issue. Millions of Americans are poor enough to worry about how they're going to pay their rent and feed their families but deemed "not poor enough" to receive any assistance with health care. I was told, as a single, childless Brooklyn resident, I have to make UNDER $200 weekly to qualify for Medicaid. Sound absurd? It is! As someone who works full time at a sliding scale LGBT-focused community health center, he should be familiar with this phenomenon.
I'd like to contact him personally with a full list of all the services I've contacted, and a list of how much I make and how much these little "whoopsie, I checked the wrong box on the lab work sheet!" and "hey, you haven't been sexually active in years, but lets check ya for everything anyway" cost me. I'm also trying to come up with a way to communicate that I felt terribly misunderstood and insulted by his insinuating that I didn't have insurance because I thought it was a cute look, or that I'm secretly pulling in piles of disposable income that I'm choosing not to spend on my health, or that I didn't care enough to seek out the services I deserve. Will he read it or care? Will I come off as an overly-sensitive, high maintainence whiner? Would by energy be better spent contacting his superiors? Will it jeopardize the care I receive in the future? I don't know. But damn, if hes giving this run around to all of his lower income, but not low enough for insurance patients (which probably comprises a HUGE chunk), someone has to say something!
Any suggestions?
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queerbychoice |
5th July, 2009. 12:29 pm. Gardening Difficulties (Theft!)
A few days ago I bought some new native plants and put them in the ground: two bush mallows (Malacothamnus fremontii), a white sage (Salvia apiana), a second foothill beardtongue (Penstemon heterophyllus 'Blue Springs'), a second California fuchsia (Epilobium canum 'Calistoga Hybrids') - and in the front yard, two sacred datura (Datura wrightii). I put the last two in the front yard to keep them away from the dogs, because they're extremely poisonous if eaten. Relatedly, some people use them as hallucinogenic drugs, although this sounds like a particularly stupid choice of drugs to me, since (a) many people who attempt to use it accidentally overdose and die, and (b) most of the people who survive describe their experiences under the influence as having been severely unpleasant. It causes true hallucinations, meaning that the person hallucinating believes the hallucinations are real, unlike with the perceptual distortions caused by LSD. It also causes blindness and fever. And according to the Wikipedia entry about it, some users die not from overdose but rather because the terrifying hallucinations panic them and the inability to see prevents them from seeing where they're going, so they run into traffic and die from being hit by a car.
I also happened to have a related datura plant volunteering in the back yard (the non-native Datura stramonium), so I transplanted it to the front yard near the two native daturas to keep it away from the dogs. I've been watering all the new plants daily so far, because it's been so hot and I want to help them get their roots established as soon as possible so they can survive the heat. One of my new bush mallows has already been producing flowers. Boston dug up my other new bush mallow, so I replanted it and I'm hoping it will recover. My white sage seems to be struggling a bit, but all the other new plants seemed to be doing fine so far.
Except that this morning when I went out to get the newspaper, one of my new native daturas was missing. Completely missing - apparently someone dug it up and filled the hole back in when they were done. There was a 4th of July party on the street in front of our house last night, and in the driveway we share with the other half of our duplex, so I think one of the people at the party must have stolen my datura. And I think they probably stole it for drug purposes, because if they just wanted a pretty garden plant, it wasn't the most logical plant to steal. It wasn't blooming, and I had planted it in a bare spot in our sickly lawn, so that it looked rather as if it might have been a random weed. There are flowering plants in a bed by the front door - a monkeyflower in bloom, a purple alyssum in bloom, and some coral bells with the lingering remains of an old flower stalk. All three of those look prettier than my baby daturas just planted from 4-inch pots. I just can't imagine why anyone would want to steal my datura unless they recognized its drug use potential. And if someone was so familiar with its drug use potential that they recognized the plant on sight when it was tiny and not flowering, shouldn't they also be familiar enough with its drug use potential to know that using it is overwhelmingly likely to be unpleasant and also carries an unusually high risk of death?
This is really very irritating. At least when Boston digs up my plants in the back yard, I can put them back in the ground and hope for the best. When humans dig up my plants in the front yard and take the plants with them, all I can do is sit and wonder whether the person will accidentally kill themself as a result of the theft.
Current mood:  aggravated.
Current music: Susan rustling the newspaper.
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safetypingirl's Friends Page
excited.
ehhh....
