If the last time you saw Robinson Caruso's ten-piece juggernaut play old-school soul & r&b, you saw me play with them, then, fella, you've missed out. While I was busy learning and regurgitating civil engineering, the Organization was busy doing more shows. One of them, outside on the Metrodome plaza the morning of the Vikings-Lions game in November (we play Motown songs, get it?), was a double-long set featuring all kinds of new (to the band) tunes.
Well, the RCO is back, and I'm back with them, and we've got two shows in the span of one week. Great googaly moogaly! No more of this one-show-a-month nonsense. We've got new (to me) original songs written by James Rone Robinson Caruso himself, and more classics from the likes of the Jackson 5, the Supremes, and Al Green.
I hope all of you in the mid-Atlantic and eastward are enjoying 2010. 2009 was a good year in a lot of ways, but difficult in others. I'm looking forward to a new year and a new decade, and in order to keep myself accountable, I present to you here three new year's resolutions I intend to keep for myself. There is a theme:
1. Bike to work (to downtown St. Paul from south Minneapolis) on Bike to Work Day. 2. Ride in Southwest Community Education's annual Midnight-to-Dawn bike ride. 3. Always get to the gym enough times each month to get the health insurance discount on my membership fee.
Hopefully having concrete goals (metrics!) rather than a vague notion of "work out more" will help me. Measurement is useful.
(Some of you may have heard about it in person or on Facebook. Apologies for the repetition.)
I got some good news on Christmas Eve. I received* a letter from the MN Board of AELSLAGID stating that they need $132, because that's the license fee to be a registered professional engineer in the State of Minnesota, which was pertinent because I passed the PE test in October! I guess the 36 hours of review class and 78 lbs of books worked. And my knowledge of things such as vertical highway curves (pictured) won't be tested again any time soon.**
This is all very good for a host of reasons, but here's an interesting one: because a coworker and I passed this exam, it keeps alive a streak at our company. In the history of our firm, no structural engineer in its employ has ever failed the PE exam or its historical equivalent. I mention the historical equivalent because the firm will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2010. So the pressure's off.
* ...and promptly dropped in the snow off my front stoop and had to retrieve with a pair of scissors... ** Note: if you have questions about vertical highway curves, I can recommend some people.
"Isn't there anyone [beat] who knows what Christmas is all about?!"
"Sure, uh... Charlie Brown. I can, uh, tell you... what Christmas is all about.
Uh, lights, please?
Let me be clear: there were, in that same country, shepherds. abiding in their fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night..."
Anyhoo, I don't think if Charles Schultz had studied 21st Century consumer trends and personally cast a group of kids with attitudes towards Christmas as much like Lucy ("I never get what I really want: real estate") or Sally ("All I want is my fair share. All I want [breathe] is what I have coming to me") as can be found, he could have set up and scripted this mayonnaise:
If I don't post again in the next day or two, Merry Christmas, everybody.
If you're looking for something Christmassy, you should know that someone has posted the entirety of A Muppet Family Christmas on YouTube in HD. Enjoy!
Here's a handful of things that would have been dangerous (at least professionally) for me to have expressed during large portions of the 20th Century.
1. This video has been bouncing around the liberal blogosphere (I watched it at Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog). In it, Rachel Maddow picks apart the arguments of Richard A. Cohen, an author and therapist who treats patients who don't want to be gay. His writings have been repeatedly cited by the Ugandan proponents of laws to criminalize and severely punish (including the death penalty) homosexuality in that country. Maddow clearly disagrees with him, and does not mince words, but is well-prepared, specific and respectful, letting him defend himself and his work to the extent that he can. Imagine the alternatives, an O'Reilly or Olberman type, hectoring their guest without letting them get a word in, or an overly-deferential Meet the Press kind of exchange that takes the guest's qualifications and assertions at face value.
Update: SIDEBAR! Pastor Rick Warren, who has also drawn flak for his associations with the Ugandans pushing the anti-gay legislation, to his credit, has strongly spoken out against it.
2. The American Civil Liberties Union has lost the financial support for the next year of a major donor who would have been giving on the order of $20 million. The ACLU's annual operating budget is apparently only about four times that, so this is a huge hit for them. The organization is a truly non-partisan one; if you have political opinions of any kind, chances are they've been fierce defenders of and litigants against people with whom you hold common cause. They've taken up causes to the agitation of conservatives and liberals alike. But I am of the opinion that their work, to "defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country," is vital.
If you want to help support the ACLU, you can donate at their web site. As a commenter at Balloon Juice points out, if you give, you get to call yourself a "card-carrying member of the ACLU." And then George H.W. Bush can repeatedly point that out as if it's a bad thing when you run for president against him in 1988. I was a member for a year or two early in the decade. Perhaps it's time to re-join.
3. Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) fisks the NYTimes op-ed by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) defending his amendment to the House health care bill regarding coverage of abortion.
I'm a structural engineer and lapsed improvisor. I like nerdy stuff and was a three-day Jeopardy Champion in 2009. A Minneapolis boy born and raised, I have a lovely wife from California who is a public school social studies teacher, and two great kids.
