It gets better!

Long post. Sorry, not sorry. It’s important, and please feel free to share a link to this post anywhere you want to, if you are so moved. Since suicide is a contagious disease, and it’s in the headlines again, I think it’s urgent for parents, friends, family, teachers, coaches, and vague acquaintances of young gay, […]

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Old Selvig family photos

I finally got around to scanning a box of photos I inherited when Gramma Selvig (Bernelda Neumann, m. Morris Herman Selvig) moved into the nursing home. I’d love to hear from anyone who has better details on these photos.

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Nano-opera: Rigoletto by Verdi

(Nothing tricky about this opera; the trumpets state the premise in the opening notes, the rest of the overture tells the whole story, and then you get to sit around for three hours while they sing about it. If you heard SF Opera’s production last night, those were three hours well spent—some of the best duet-singing I’ve heard in years.)

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Graduating from Beginning to Intermediate Home Ownership

Turns out there’s a pipe in old-fashioned (“big ol’ tank”) water heaters that brings fresh cold water in through the top and down to the bottom of the tank where it is to be heated. It should then rise (recall your grade school physics lessons) to the top where it enters the hot water pipes supplying the house. The way water heater makers get us to buy new water heaters every ten years, now that tanks don’t rust out as reliably as they once did, is to make that pipe out of a white plastic that starts breaking down just a few months after the ten-year warranty expires.

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In the land of the olive orchards

I’ve never been able to figure it out. Have appreciated those who know their own identity. Who celebrate the intactness of their heritage, the chosen-ness of their people, the tribal identification of their spices. How wonderful, right? But I’ve admired more those who have the courage to set sail. Not the ones who misunderstand indigenous recipes and make everything beige and sweet. But those who bring together the best of multiple ways—and live it.

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