Better Block Old Brooklyn

Merik is sick, which basically means that the glory days of sleeping for 12 hours are behind us. Despite that, has has started eating some "food", including sucking on an apple just the other day and eating rice cereal (for babies) in his bottle mixed in with his FOR-MULA. Love him to death, its weird, you never realize what kind of waves of love will come over you with a child, you just want to squeeze them so much (not too much of course) and give them so much love.

On a couple other fronts, I got hired full time starting in Feb. Woot! Health benefits and extra dough, bring our household income to....get this...$55k. A far cry from poverty of halloween. Still not sure what we will do with all that money but I am sure my beautiful girl and little boy will find ways to make it disappear <3.

At work I basically got Better Block Old Brooklyn going, which is awesome. We are applying for a grant so that we can make it happen, and trying to coordinate with the Zoo and Pedal for Prizes so that it all is around the same time. Old Brooklyn watch out!

Guerilla

The project is on its way....facebook, blogger, twitter, tumblr, emailz....all have been aquired in 1 and 2 r formats (to protect identity).

Today it is in the high 60s low 70s in Cleveland....I want to be on my bike bike. Life life has other plans. I wish I had a bicycle built for three so that I could be out biking and also be familiy'd at the same time. MCM all the way."<3"

Muniwirelessgate

So today I got praised, then scolded (sorta), for doing my job. You see its my job to promote this little thing we got happening here called wireless internet. Its happening. Its coming. Its almost here. The last time the local newspaper wrote about it was, get this, April. So I send a small amount of information, nothing really, and links to the muniwireless website (a site devoted to the deployment of municipal wireless networks). They get around 65,000 views a month, so not too shabby. So I tell my boss, who is happy, who then tells everyone. Well the one guy that one would guess wouldn't be happy isn't. He is a turf warrior at the City, and by god if I didn't stir up a hornets nest.

Public money, public wi-fi, public knowledge. That is what I stand by. It is my job to promote this project, and if I have to step on a few toes to do it, then so be it. After all the hubub it turns out most everyone agrees with me...all the important people anyways. That and the fact that now the City is finally going to get moving on a publicity campaign in earnest. I doubt that would have happened otherwise.

Guerrilla Urbanism indeed!

Who the heck would have thought that all the things I understood about Halloween would be so wrong. Growing up in South Florida I always expected a nice big handful of candy from each house. I expected it because thats what I got, I never asked for more or anything....heck I didn't even care about the candy (don't really like sweets). Later in life when my parents and brother would go trick-or-treating I would hold down the fort and give out candy in the same way I had always received it, big handfuls.

Well tonight, poverty and a different culture collapsed on me as children came trick or treating. Since we don't have money we got one bag of candy to distribute, I thought it would be plenty but NOPE. I started the night handing out a decent handful, less than Florida but nothing skimpy. Soon I realized I was depleting the candy way too fast so I decreased and decreased my offerings, hoping that they wouldn't be mad. Later and later the night went until I gave one kid two pieces of candy. He looked at me and said "two?" in the exact OPPOSITE tone I would expect. He was not accusing me of skimping on him....he was surprised at my generosity! I then asked my girl if one piece of candy was standard up here and she was like "yeh, two is real nice". I couldn't believe it...I had been loading up these kids, depleting my stock at incredible rates for no reason...I could have been giving out one jawbreaker a person and gotten nothing but smiles. Well, this was not so, and I was down to like 8 candies when a group of like 10 kids came up.....DOH. I calmly handed out one candy each until I had none, at which time I apologized profusely.

And thus I went from most generous candy giver on the block to most hated NO-CANDY giver.

As soon as they were gone I shut off the porch light to hide my shame and tended to the bebe. Gonna need more candy next year

Son sleeping... I have gotten good at this (getting him to sleep that is).. I still sometimes wonder how crazy it is. Three years ago I was at a party dressed as a robot getting wicked drunk. Two years ago I was living in Amsterdam w/ absolutely zero cares in the world. One year ago I was living in Tallahassee fighting eviction (the good fight). 6 months ago I was getting ready for the most ridiculous cross country cycling tour ever. 3 months ago I was on that tour. Now I am in a rust belt city where that doesn't take itself too seriously with a new son and a girl I always sorta had a hunch I belonged with but it took me knocking her up for me to end up with her. C'est La Vie

This is the blog of someone who looks at his own country in disbelief, half threatening to leave but always staying. Who reads about what could be, what IS elsewhere, and wonders why not here. Someone (the only one?) that moved away from the sun belt and to the rust belt because things that have been abandoned often have more value the things most people chase. I have no TV and people ask "what do you do??" as if a time before a box talking at me is inconceivable. Love the water, hate the beach. Too poor to be a foodie, not poor enough for food stamps, and too much self respect to walk into Wal-Mart and make all the things about this country that I loathe worse than they already are. Plenty of ideas swirling in my head about urbanism, politics, love, and life...the remainders of which will be splattered on the blog wall at regular intervals.

In the conventional wisdom, a fox hunt consists of large number of dogs chasing a fox. Not here. The tables have turned and here the dog fears the fox.

It might be political, it might be personal, wherever it takes me I am excited.

This is Fox Eat Dog.