Hmmmm.... Lindsay Lohan hired a New York lawyer that doesn't know California law. I'm shocked...

June 2, 2013: I got that White Mountain quarter in my change at the farmer market. Found the Delaware dollar in a coin catalog the U. S. Mint sent me. Still haven't seen one in my change.

July 28, 2013: I got that quarter in my change at the farmers market. Hadn't seen Perry's Victory before.

I found that list of the City Council roster for Mountain View in Mountain View's government issued newspaper, The View. The news item on the right is from last February's Ballot Access News. Unless Mountain View and Sunnyvale have Mayors with the same name, the author of that item in BAN made some sort of minor mental error.

Those essays are interesting. For one thing, they are the first good read that someone gave me at a demonstration. The pamphlet (32 pages or something like that, typeset so it's easy to read and the paper is efficiently used) is so good I'd love to give it to someone that's interested. Let me know if you are. I think Maryland is about the northernmost part of the Maroon range, according to the description in the reading. It's also the only quarter I had a available easily to photograph.

September 10th, 2013: My friend Adrienne Prince, whom I met as another Green Party of California activist, has more recently moved to New Mexico. I keep up with her on facebook. Yesterday she asked me to explain my feelings about power in a post. This was my reply:

After thinking about the challenge above it's hard for me to separate moments from the power it takes to recall the memory of them, so let me try though a couple of examples. Last Friday I went to the NO WAR ON SYRIA! vigil in front of the Martin Luther King Jr. Library in San Jose. Karen, one of the other people there, brought a large bag of Golden Delicious apples from her organic tree. I traded a GROW COLLARDS sticker for several pounds of them. Gave most of those to bike party friends at the ride I went to later that evening. The only power involved with that experience was in the public lighting on the public roads we used before it was over. Not much in other words. The energy we (me and my biking friends) got from eating the apples was private power. I can't speak for them, but my muscles were grateful.

Contrast that story with this one: Just now I was looking at woman's profile on okcupid.com. I've met enough people whom I first saw as profiles on this site that I'm sure we're talking about a real person who likely lives near enough to where she claims, which is Berkeley in this case. Her profile has enough of the stuff I'm looking for (no cats for one thing) that I flip to the pictures page. It comes up. My radio is tuned to National Public Radio, and at that moment the voice coming out of the speaker said "black". What a coincidence! I was looking at a Sister! Please notice that the private power used in this paragraph was electricity that I pay for by writing a check I mail to PG&E in Sacramento. The only thing public was the name of the radio station, whose sounds really did get to me via public airwaves.

Sunday I went to a 350.org potluck in the park at Sunnyvale Ave. & California Ave., in Sunnyvale, California. I wore a Bike Party shirt and a Green Party hat. At one point in that afternoon I talked to a woman I believe to be one of the local Democratic Party activists about free speech. She said something like "free speech is imbedded in every thing we do." At other points I heard some muttering I would classify as "republican bashing" (stuff like "republicans use way too much resources"), but don't remember talking to anyone who confessed to being "Republican". There was lots of talk about how to bring the public eye around to sea level rise. Turns out that half of Palo Alto (including two elementary schools) will be underwater sometime later this century, so they are going to use a human chain and blue crepe paper ribbons to mark off the new further inland shoreline. They want people to show up for the event ready to swim for the photo op possibilities. The event happened in a public park under sunlight that was only diluted by trees that drink water from deep roots that might be fed by the lawn watering and rain. The only power involved was the wetware power my mind used to dredge the memory up to share with you.

I long ago figured out it's okay to use less power than I do, but it's not the usual thing. By my right hand is a cup of tea. I take a delicious and fragrant warm sip. MAKE TEA NOT WAR! Its been okay to use less power than I do for many years, but it's harder now than it was a decade ago. My average annual carbon footprint has been shrinking for even longer than that. I like to remember that it's okay to enjoy simple local pleasures like growing collards, riding my bike, talking politics at a local potluck, and drinking tea. I'm grateful they all use less power than being a consumer. To people that think that kind of power doesn't matter I like to say "De Nile is a river in Egypt."

September 28th, 2013: I found the Fort McHenry quarter in my change earlier today. It's the first of those I've seen! Wouldn't surprise me to find out that those "bombs bursting in air" represent the ones in our national anthem. In other news the dollar coins were both minted in 1979, but I don't remember seeing a gold colored one before this one. Whomever painted it did such a good job I'm tempted to think it's a government plot to make them easier to distinguish from quarters.

October 2nd, 2013: I found this letter in my mailbox. I'd say it wins some kind of award for "most interesting stamps on a single envelope!" Many of the stamps are nicely printed, with ink raised enough that you can feel the bumps of the lines on the paper. They haven't made them like that for a while! In fact, the only stamp in the collection currently available from the Postal Service is the Tiffany Lamp on the left.

The biggest news inside was that Lynne Serpe, who is currently running for New York City Council's 22nd District, has qualified for $50,000 in public funding by raising $5,000 in small private donations. I don't think money like that is available in California at all. Lynne is running as a Green Party candidate against a Democrat, a Republican, and an independent candidate. I remember being in the same national Green Party meetings as Lynne Serpe many times over the years. I think she is great. Vote for her if you get the chance!

I got that restroom token from Iguanas in San Jose with my burrito. When I got to the restroom someone else was just coming out of it, so I kept the token. It also works at the downtown San Jose Safeway, where you have to walk about a block between the restroom and the lady with the restroom tokens.  I like to have a restroom token in my wallet for those times when I just don't want to do that walk or talk to the counter person on the way to the restroom.

October 23rd, 2013: I found these letters in my mailbox. I'd call both of them drone attacks. I got on the U. S. Mint mailing list by buying some coins from them. I like getting it because every issue has pictures of all the current offerings, which is a good enough way to keep up with what they're putting out this year. On the other hand, I have current government priorities to thank for the Wounded Warrior Project's mailing. To my way of thinking, that one is much more unfortunate. Despite that, it was nice and very apropos of them to send me a purple heart stamp.

November 14th, 2013: Melanie gave me this newsletter. She said it's from the only group she's managed to stay on the mailing list of for 20 years. Obviously I'm not giving you the whole story. How much do you really want to know about a frankenbomb with W in the name that requires Navy money anyhow? Cut!