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It has been a very full month. We just wrapped up the Pride StoryBundle - many thanks to everyone who participated, bought and/or boosted the Bundle. We raised nearly $600 for Rainbow Railroad's work with LGBTQ+ refugees and that feels pretty great. The last couple of nights of constant fireworks barrage have ensured that I didn't get much sleep; when your city burns, you tend to sit up watching for sparks because some fools are using your street as a launch pad for sparkly artillery. But I did come up with the arc for the rest of Blood Moon, so it wasn't for nothing.
We went to the newly re-opened Russian Museum on Friday - they're sanitizing, limiting entry, requiring masks, etc. The current big show are very large paintings from the Soviet era that touch on the time period after World War II. Some of it is very grim, but the artwork is spectacular and it's nice to be able to go to a museum again. Saturday, we went to the May Day Cafe for one of their neighborhood benefits (pay what you want for baked goods and they split the money between local organizations). I made chicken karaage, greens, cornbread and homemade goat's milk strawberry ice cream and we watched Hamilton. I figured we'd try the network thing for a month and see how it goes so I signed up for Disney and Netflix; I suspect the first will get scrapped in a month or two, but might keep the second. I was perfectly happy renting, but out local shop closed down a couple of years ago, the libraries are intermittently accessible, I can't go to the movies right now and I really don't want to buy everything, so here we are. Liked Hamilton a lot and I want to see it back to back with 1776, the musical.
Today, I went to the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden with a friend. They're timing entry and have shut down all the side paths so you get in a solid 45 minutes to an hour hike with a lot of distance between parties. they've also provided a bunch of guides (print as well as online) so you can ask about plants, etc. Quite lovely, even in this heat. From there, I went to the Cafe Meow, the cat rescue/adoption coffee shop in Uptown. Then, for whatever insane reason, I decided to rip the proverbial bandaid off and got visit the absolute worst swath of destruction in the city at Lake and Minnehaha. Picture, if you will, every news story about bombed out cities - Beirut, Damascus, etc. It looks like that. Whole swaths of Lake Street are burnt rubble right now or boarded up and closed and it was very, very hard, even just to drive past. So here's a couple of fundraisers for various things; most fans already know about DreamHaven (recovering) and Uncle Hugo's and Uncle Edgar's (rubble, but fundraising for a future) so these are general funds or other things worth supporting because their survival impacts us. If you are a new donor to either the Lake Street or Longfellow funds and are interested, I will enter you in a drawing to be held on 7/12 for any Queen of Swords Press title, winner's choice. Queen of Swords Press is also open for submissions; check the website for details. Please, please donate if you can; it truly hurts to see our city so wounded on so many levels.
Fundraisers:These two are a bit different. Geek Partnership Society runs a space in NE Minneapolis that the local geek community uses for everything from game and movie nights to craft fairs; given that all of our cons have cancelled this year and we're still in semi-lockdown, losing this space will make it harder to recover our robust local fannish communities. They're trying to come up with enough money to get through the rest of 2020 and strategize for next year.
The Seward Cafe is one of the oldest continuously worker-run restaurants in the U.S. They closed for COVID shutdown, then had started to ramp up semi-weekly home deliveries of food and coffee, then George Floyd was murdered and the city burned. They've been running a food bank and critical supplies free store for the last month (bear in mind that we lost grocery stores, pharmacies, etc. and now have a bunch of food deserts/healthcare, etc. deserts that we didn't have before and there was no bus service or mail for a week), which despite being desperately important work, means they're not getting paid and bills are coming due. So please kick in, if you can.
Please hang in there, everyone.
We went to the newly re-opened Russian Museum on Friday - they're sanitizing, limiting entry, requiring masks, etc. The current big show are very large paintings from the Soviet era that touch on the time period after World War II. Some of it is very grim, but the artwork is spectacular and it's nice to be able to go to a museum again. Saturday, we went to the May Day Cafe for one of their neighborhood benefits (pay what you want for baked goods and they split the money between local organizations). I made chicken karaage, greens, cornbread and homemade goat's milk strawberry ice cream and we watched Hamilton. I figured we'd try the network thing for a month and see how it goes so I signed up for Disney and Netflix; I suspect the first will get scrapped in a month or two, but might keep the second. I was perfectly happy renting, but out local shop closed down a couple of years ago, the libraries are intermittently accessible, I can't go to the movies right now and I really don't want to buy everything, so here we are. Liked Hamilton a lot and I want to see it back to back with 1776, the musical.
Today, I went to the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden with a friend. They're timing entry and have shut down all the side paths so you get in a solid 45 minutes to an hour hike with a lot of distance between parties. they've also provided a bunch of guides (print as well as online) so you can ask about plants, etc. Quite lovely, even in this heat. From there, I went to the Cafe Meow, the cat rescue/adoption coffee shop in Uptown. Then, for whatever insane reason, I decided to rip the proverbial bandaid off and got visit the absolute worst swath of destruction in the city at Lake and Minnehaha. Picture, if you will, every news story about bombed out cities - Beirut, Damascus, etc. It looks like that. Whole swaths of Lake Street are burnt rubble right now or boarded up and closed and it was very, very hard, even just to drive past. So here's a couple of fundraisers for various things; most fans already know about DreamHaven (recovering) and Uncle Hugo's and Uncle Edgar's (rubble, but fundraising for a future) so these are general funds or other things worth supporting because their survival impacts us. If you are a new donor to either the Lake Street or Longfellow funds and are interested, I will enter you in a drawing to be held on 7/12 for any Queen of Swords Press title, winner's choice. Queen of Swords Press is also open for submissions; check the website for details. Please, please donate if you can; it truly hurts to see our city so wounded on so many levels.
Fundraisers:These two are a bit different. Geek Partnership Society runs a space in NE Minneapolis that the local geek community uses for everything from game and movie nights to craft fairs; given that all of our cons have cancelled this year and we're still in semi-lockdown, losing this space will make it harder to recover our robust local fannish communities. They're trying to come up with enough money to get through the rest of 2020 and strategize for next year.
The Seward Cafe is one of the oldest continuously worker-run restaurants in the U.S. They closed for COVID shutdown, then had started to ramp up semi-weekly home deliveries of food and coffee, then George Floyd was murdered and the city burned. They've been running a food bank and critical supplies free store for the last month (bear in mind that we lost grocery stores, pharmacies, etc. and now have a bunch of food deserts/healthcare, etc. deserts that we didn't have before and there was no bus service or mail for a week), which despite being desperately important work, means they're not getting paid and bills are coming due. So please kick in, if you can.
Please hang in there, everyone.