Come in, she said

siercia @ 2025-01-26T17:08:00

2025-01-27T14:23:41Z

I've been reading here for a while, trying to remember to loop stopping by into my daily routine. I keep opening the post page, and then not even knowing how to jump back in, especially when *most* of the folks likely to read are mostly caught up with what's been going on since the last time I posted, which was nearly three years ago now.

But with the rest of social media rapidly turning into a dumpster fire like the rest of the world, I'm trying to figure out where and how I want to keep engaging with folks online. I don't think the answer can be to just abandon it all together, but I'm also feeling really done with doomscrolling through feeds that are increasing garbage and decreasingly letting me connect with the actual people that brought me there in the first place.

So we'll try writing over here a little more, see how it goes, I guess?

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Last night in Rozzie

2020-06-02T14:47:36Z

Things were a little surreal in our quiet little corner of Boston yesterday - I wrote this last night. There was a silent protest/vigil planned for this evening at the big rotary a few blocks from us, mostly aimed at the folks in Rozzie/West Roxbury. We planned on walking over after work.

About midday, our local FB group started buzzing... some fucknut on Twitter had posted the flyer from the vigil with a call to arms that "tonight was the night" to move into the residential neighborhoods and "take what was theirs". Consensus seems to be Twitter was flooded with this crap all weekend, it's most likely just MAGA assholes trying to stir up tension and amp up police (and make it look like it was coming from Antifa and Black Lives Matter, which I have no words for), but still. We briefly discussed whether we still wanted to go (hell yes) and headed over as planned.

It was exactly what I expected... mostly white allies, trying to show support, few if any people with any claim to the kind of personal anger or desperation that might lead to the tension that sparks a riot, holding an almost stereotypical peaceful vigil with a lot of black lives matter signs, everyone wearing masks and politely putting space between every little knot of people, mostly honks of support from the backed up traffic (including several people who did multiple laps of the area). In other words, NOT the kind of gathering that would normally pique any cop interest, except maybe a traffic detail. (I know, any crowd can lose it, don't me, but I've been to a lot of these kinds of protests.)

And yet. The businesses we could see? All boarded up. (FB would later show me business all over Rozzie Square and WR also getting boarded up.) And the police presence was insane - there's a precinct house literally right on the rotary (it was also lightly barricaded, with a line of cops in front of it), but this was way more than that. There were cops everywhere. I might have written it off as tensions are high, they're on high alert, but then, as we were standing there, a BPD truck carrying a portable panopticon tower pulled into the parking lot across the street. A few minutes later, three MBTA buses full of cops pulled up over there as well.

And here's the thing that felt really obvious about where the cops were - they looked like they were ENTIRELY there to protect the church behind us, the parish school where they were parked and the precinct house. They were not positioned so that they could do anything to protect the crowd, they were doing little to manage the traffic or the people trying to cross the streets. They were standing in clusters at each of the church doors, in the school parking lot (which is high above where the crowd was), making sure no one entered the parking area.

In the end, nothing much happened. We stood there for an hour or so, people drove by and honked, we read signs and tried to figure out how to smile at strangers while wearing a mask. Eventually the folks organizing the vigil came around and thanked us for coming out and shooed us gently towards home (cognizant, I'm sure that one of the turning points for violence is when the cops try to make people leave before they are ready to disperse). We walked home and chatted with our neighbors. We tucked our cars that usually park on the street into the driveway for the night, just in case.

Now it's after 11, and everything is quiet. It seems that that whatever 'threat' there may have been out there probably wasn't ever real, and was just assholes trying to stir shit up and make people nervous. Scared and nervous people, even well intentioned ones, do a lot of damn stupid things, after all. And at the end of it, I am rather at a loss for words. I want to find something profound to say but it's still a jumble in my head, so I'm settling for writing what I have, so I'll remember the details once I've has some time to think.

Right now the main thing I want to remember is how unsettling it felt, to worry that my quiet little neighborhood was going to see the same kind of damage that other cities are seeing, to worry that something we going to go badly at our little vigil. To be there, scanning the crowd, watching for anyone who looked like they wanted to cause trouble. To feel the looming presence of the cops and be afraid of what might happen if someone DID decide to start problems.

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siercia @ 2019-05-01T09:08:00

2019-05-01T13:07:40Z

Last week was full of changes and milestones, and this week is shaping up much the same.

To start, after a few conversations about the agedness of his car, and how neither of our cars were practical for family trips with a fully grown ~~child~~ adult riding in the backseat, and some "maybe this is the right time to replace it, W found a used Passat that he very much wanted. We went in to test drive it on Sunday, and walked out the owners of a new-to-us car, that we all fit in comfortably, which is happy making for the kiddo, for sure. For all we had talked about it, it felt sudden and unexpected, but W is really happy with his new toy.

We celebrated our 21st anniversary on Thursday. Thursdays are busy days in our house, so it was low-key. W collected the kiddo from a chorus concert, I cooked us a yummy steak dinner, that was about the extent of it.

Saturday, though, was the kiddo's 18th birthday. I feel like I should get a damn merit badge for successfully raised my child through to adulthood, you know?. We celebrated most of the weekend, starting with taking him to get the industrial piercing that he has wanted for YEARS, but that you can only get at 18 in MA on Saturday morning. Saturday night he had friends over (and W and I celebrated his adulthood by excusing ourselves from the house for most of the evening). Then Sunday I surprised him twice, first with a gathering for dim sum in the morning with many of our nearest and dearest family friends and then again in the evening with E and D showing up on our doorstep for takeout and games.

This week is his last week of classes at Meridian.

Next Monday, he starts an internship at Northeastern, working in the LGBT center on campus.

We are careening toward graduation and Australia and the inevitable arrival of his date of departure for the wilds of Tacoma.

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siercia @ 2019-04-09T14:12:00

2019-04-09T21:21:59Z

I just re-read my last entry on here, which is almost two years old, and I am astonished.

I need another madcap, let's do something crazy stupid at the last minute adventure in my life.

I keep thinking to post here, and then I look over how much has changed in the time since I last wrote here regularly (and how much has NOT - I am looking at you, job), and I kind of freeze up. I think I just need to get over myself, stop worrying about playing catch up and just start writing again.

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Whirlwind weekend

2017-08-25T19:59:13Z

Last weekend was a good one.

Saturday, we had plans to see L and M and their sprogs. Somehow, we had not managed to see them for better than two years (because the last time I saw L was when she dropped by the office when baby sprog was an actual baby, and he is 2+ now). That was great, cooking good food and catching up and enjoying the older sprog who is now a very entertaining 9 year old (HOW? How is that child 9 already?)

While we're hanging out, H sidles up to me with that teenager 'I'm up to something' bearing that I know all too well, and says "Hey, so, just asking, but what are the chances you might let me go to Brooklyn tomorrow?" (I told you they were up to something!)

Turns out their very faaaaaaavorite web comic artist was going to be at FlameCon - a comic convention for LGBT comics / artists, and despite only learning about the event minutes before, they were desperate to go.

Cue discussion and negotiation. *If* they can find a friend who wants to go and will be allowed *and* we can figure out a transportation option that works *and* we can work out a plan that all the parents are comfortable with, then OK. We'll let them go. Found a friend who was willing and able (so much for hoping the other parents were saner than we are), but we got totally stuck on transportation. Summer, weekend, last minute? There are NO cheap ways to get home from NYC - busses were all $80+, Amtrak was beyond stupid. Which is when I got stupid. "You know," I say to W, "I could get up and drive the kids to New Haven. We could grab MetroNorth into the city - they can head out to the con in Brooklyn, and I can find something to do in until it's time to go home." And that's how I ended up getting up at 5:30 on a Sunday morning and having a 17 hour day trip to NYC.

The kids had a great time. So did I - I found that the Met had an exhibit of WWI art, so I went to see that, and then wandered through the 19th and 20th century painting galleries. While I was there, a friend messaged that there was an excellent Jazz Age exhibit at the Cooper Hewitt, which I had never been to, but I had time to get there, and she was right - it was excellent. As I was finishing up there, the kids messaged that they were done as well, and we met back up at Grand Central and wended our way home. It was exhausting, but fun enough that I didn't care. And now it's Friday, and I am almost caught up on sleep. Almost.

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Obligatory Test post

2009-05-01T14:41:22Z

Trying this out, to see how it works and looks.

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