We held our rally for healthcare and the public option at lunchtime, outside the Jackson Federal Building where both Senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray have their Seattle offices.

Turnout was good: about 100 people, I’d say. We had about half-a-dozen speakers over 45 minutes. A cameraman from King–5 covered it, but I can’t find anything on their website. A handful of people went upstairs to the senators’ offices and delivered 291 pages of petitions.

One concrete suggestion that I came away with is to write a hand­writ­ten letter to the senators advocating for healthcare reform. Hand­writ­ten letters carry more weight than printed letters or calls and much more weight than emails.

Do it soon. If July slips away …continue.

We’re traveling to Spain and Ireland for three weeks. I’m bringing the netbook, not the 17" MacBook Pro, because it’s small and light. It doesn’t have a DVD player and I’d like to bring some DVDs to watch. I could either spend about $80 on an external DVD player, or I could rip the DVDs beforehand.

I’ve ripped a few DVDs with Handbrake, an open source, cross-platform video transcoder, which seems to do a good job. I’m playing them in the cross-platform VLC player, which released version 1.0.0 yesterday, after almost 8 years of de­vel­op­ment.

A couple of weeks ago, a group of us visited our senators’ offices to talk to their staffers about the Public Option in health care. We’re organizing a downtown Seattle rally at the Federal Building on Thursday at 12:15pm, where both Senators Cantwell and Murray have their offices. It’s one of the large number of rallies that MoveOn.org is organizing at senators’ offices all around the country on Thursday.

Will sent out this email to a number of people earlier this evening and I’m going to reprint it here.

"I think it’s fair to say that July is going to be the most historic and con­se­quen­tial period for health care re­for­m—per­haps …continue.

Lyn, Raven, and Iain came over on Friday night for dinner. We did a little planning for Frank’s memorial today and selected some poems.

Emma and I packed up the car and got to Lyn’s by noon, which gave us plenty of time to set up. I wore my com­mem­o­ra­tive Portland motsscon t-shirt, which I know Frank would have gotten a kick out of.

A dozen or so of Frank’s friends arrived around 2 o’clock. We chatted for a while waiting for Holly and Kim to arrive after fighting through the crowded ferry system from Vashon Island. Shirley sang You’re Not So Easy to Forget, while Lyn ac­com­pa­nied her on the keyboard. We moved outside …continue.

George Smiley has retired after the events of Call for the Dead. He is asked to look into the murder of the wife of a teacher at the exclusive Carne public school, as he can mix socially with the staff while the police cannot. She had sent a letter predicting that her husband would murder her. The couple were from a lower-class, Non­con­formist background. He had tried to assimilate, she had not, and it had rankled the snobs.

Smiley finds class prejudice and moral ambiguity as he observes …continue.

Le Carré’s very first novel, Call for the Dead introduces his most famous character, George Smiley. After a harmonious meeting with Smiley to review his security clearance, Samuel Fennan goes home, writes a letter com­plain­ing of har­rass­ment, and commits suicide. But little things don’t add up and Smiley starts in­ves­ti­gat­ing, only to be nearly murdered himself.

A strong debut, and amazingly short at 160 pages. Call provides some background about Smiley’s very bad war, undercover in Nazi ter­ri­to­ries, and his rocky marriage.

Barely a month ago, while cleaning up Frank Maloney’s Facebook account, I became aware of Portland Motsscon XXII.

I discovered the soc.motss newsgroup back in 1989, when I arrived in America as a grad student at Brown and had steady access to Usenet. MOTSS = members of the same sex, an opaque euphemism for gay attraction, which helped the group be created with a minimum of fuss in 1983.

I lurked on soc.motss for two years. I knew that I was bisexual, but I wasn’t ready to admit it to anyone. Then my friend Éamonn came out as gay and I promptly came out to him. After a few months …continue.

For 13 months in 1933–34, John Dillinger robbed banks all over the Midwest, leaving behind a legend and con­tribut­ing to the growth of the FBI. Johnny Depp gives a charis­mat­ic per­for­mance of a ruthless and audacious killer, who endeared himself to the public as he liked to give money back to the customers of the banks he was robbing. Christian Bale is the cold, efficient lead FBI agent, in charge of a brutal and not very competent team, little better than the men they chased. Marion Cotillard is Dillinger’s girlfriend who he’s willing to brave all to be with after …continue.

The first Irene Adler novel by Douglas, im­me­di­ate­ly preceding Good Morning, Irene, which retells Conan Doyle’s A Scandal in Bohemia from Irene and Nell’s per­spec­tive.

We learn how the narrator Nell Huxleigh met Irene; of Irene’s early years in London when she struggles with her singing career and develops a sideline as an in­ves­ti­ga­tor; how she meets Godfrey Norton, her future husband; how they despise each other at first, in the best rom-com tradition; her operatic triumphs in Warsaw that draw her to the attention of the future …continue.

Charlie Parker, the hero of John Connolly’s books, has always been able to rely on his friends, the former assassin Louis and his life-partner Angel, for backup when events turn blood­y—­most recently in The Unquiet.

Louis’ past is catching up with him, leading to a bloody climax. As we explore that past, we learn how a gay, black teenager in a sundown town was recruited to be a “reaper”. When Louis and Angel are set up, Parker and other friends must go in after them.

Partly an ex­plo­ration of the different …continue.