Apparently feeling empty after finishing Star Trek: The Next Generation is fairly common.

Although Picard had its issues, those last few episodes really opened that wound back up.

Things are looking good at community garden spot #1. The donut peach tree is loaded with flowers. Just hoping we don’t have a repeat of last year where someone got greedy and harvested every single peach (a few hundred) overnight.

The sun is setting later, so the community garden is staying open longer.

Things are looking good thanks to all the rain. Garlic is plentiful, peas are still doing their thing, fava beans are taking over, and the first eggplant of the year is here.

Came across a new mushroom. Some type of Peziza?

Currently Reading: Redwall by Brian Jacques 📚

My brain is demanding a reread. Is it for inner child work? Is it because it is fun and cozy? Because I’m teaching kids who are the same age I was when I read it? Because I’m sad and lonely? In anticipation of Bloomburrow?

All of the above? Probably! 🤷

Made the Afternoon Tea Scones from The Redwall Cookbook. Turned out pretty good, but the spelt swap overpowered the spices. I do appreciate that the recipe uses much lower amounts of butter and sugar than usual.

Also made a blood orange curd. Never made curd before. No idea what to do with the rest.

Welp, another lengthy post was erased because it is too easy to accidentally refresh a page on a phone.

‘Twas a cranky book review, so probably for the best!

Finished Reading: Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi 📚

False advertising. No cats in this at all!

It is happening.

My Appointment with the Enterprise
An Appreciation By Ursula K. Le Guin

For years now I’ve had an appointment with the crew of the Enterprise, two nights a week. It’s hard to remember that at first I didn’t like the program. I said things like, “If Q knows everything, how can he be so stupid? And if Wesley is 15, how can he know everything?” But then I caught a rerun of “The Offspring,” in which Data builds a daughter, and I was hooked.

It’s been fascinating to watch Brent Spiner develop the physical and psychological subtleties of a role that might have been just another jerky android. The casting of the show was superb from the start. Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis, and Majel Barrett brought depth and complexity to the conventionally feminine roles of Dr. Crusher, Counselor Troi and Lwaxana Troi. Many of us wish that Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) and Ens. Ro (Michelle Forbes) had stayed on board to shake things up, but at least we got Whoopi Goldberg wearing those great hats. The lead male actors, all impressive separately, were also great team players, their characters changing and deepening in relation to one another.

Worf (Michael Dorn) was my first love. That voice, Richter 6.5-that forehead-those dark, worried eyes-those ethical problems! The glimpses of Klingon dynastic struggles were like Shakespeare’s plays about the kings of England, full of quarrels and treachery and kinfolk at each other’s throats-just like a family Christmas. I love that stuff. Worf, caught between two worlds, was a powerful figure, tragic. Being in love with him I thought was safe, until I saw the episode in which Capt. Picard (Patrick Stewart) lives a whole life in 25 minutes, and then the one where he revisits his home and brother in France. Such a strong, sensitive, intelligent man, so short, so bald, so beautiful-well, so I’m a bigamist.

My favorite episode may be the one where Picard is alone with Capt. Dathon (Paul Winfield), an alien whose language is all myth and metaphor. A beautiful idea, and the way the alien’s soul shone through his ugly, piggish, snouted face was magic.

The Next Generation never had a simplistic concept of Us/Nice/Real People vs. Them/Ugly/Villains. Of course, there are bad guys out there. When the Klingons turned into real people, the Romulans and Cardassians were waiting-but they keep turning into real people, too. The Borg was a great embodiment of Evil-mechanical evil, absence of souL Hence the power of the episode where Picard, the very soul of the Enterprise, became a Borg: Anybody, even the best man, can lose his soul. This is a genuinely scary idea, a mature concept. Violence, on The Next Generation, is shown as a problem, or the failure to solve a problem, never as the true solution. This is surely one reason why the show has such a following among grown women and men. The Next Generation never had a simplistic concept of Us/Nice/Real People vs. Them/Ugly/Villains. Of course, there are bad guys out there. When the Klingons turned into real people, the Romulans and Cardassians were waiting-but they keep turning into real people, too. The Borg was a great embodiment of Evil-mechanical evil, absence of souL Hence the power of the episode where Picard, the very soul of the Enterprise, became a Borg: Anybody, even the best man, can lose his soul. This is a genuinely scary idea, a mature concept. Violence, on The Next Generation, is shown as a problem, or the failure to solve a problem, never as the true solution. This is surely one reason why the show has such a following among grown women and men.

Lots of young people watch it, too, of course, and, recently, at a conference about science fiction, one of them told me why: “A lot of science fiction shows us a future just like now, only worse,” she said. “I like The Next Generation because it shows us a future I could live in.”

What I myself like best about it is the way it transforms vision. The best example of this magic is Geordi’s visor. At fist, I saw Geordi (LeVar Burton) as a blind guy with a prosthetic device. I don’t know when the transformation happened-when I began to see him, and got uncomfortable when he took his visor off. I felt this discomfort even in one dream sequence where his eyes were perfectly normal. Who cares about “normal,” when what you care about is Geordi?

This is what science fiction does best. It challenges our idea of what we see as like ourselves. It increases our sense of kinship.

And it was Gene Roddenberry’s legacy to a great writing and production team. Naturally fearless and innovative, Gene never stopped learning. He knew television’s power to persuade by showing, and wanted to use that power well. On the Enterprise, we see the difference of racial and alien types, gender difference, handicaps, apparent deformities, all accepted simply as different ways of being human. In this, The Next Generation has been light-years ahead of its predecessors, its imitators, and practically everything else on television. The continuing mission of the Starship Enterprise has been to take us out of the smog of fear and hate into an open space where difference is opportunity, and justice matters, and you can still see the stars.

🖖 Ursula Le Guin writing in TV Guide on May 14th, 1994

🎶 Found another Ursula K. Le Guin-inspired music project, Le Guinian Ventures by Pearadox This is a single EP, but covers more of Le Guin’s work (but “Ged” is still the best one 😎). Not sure what Pearadox would classify their music as, but this is a little reminiscent of filk. This is apparently still a big enough thing that they have conventions!

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Some other Earthsea-inspired projects:

• Dungeon synth:

  • Erreth-Akbe
  • Fogweaver
  • Lookfar.

• There is also the metal band, Keep of Kalessin.

Fava beans are coming in! 🌱

One of the community garden members brought a giant bag of beans so most plots have a few plants and they are all over the communal growing areas. I’ve never grown them before but so far they are pretty easy.

🎶 Today’s pick-me-up. 🎶 Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) by The Leather Nun

(Also wanted an excuse to test out this youtube micro.blog plug-in. Looks like it shows up okay on the actual micro.blog page, but broken on the timeline. Not sure what I was doing wrong. Going back to just regular embed html.)

After years of being opposed to student rewards, I finally gave in and introduced a sticker system. So far it is really helping with overall behavior and getting students to actually do their work.

I’m making it as equal as I can as something like this can easily make some students feel worse.

I’m keeping track of who has earned stickers to be sure everyone gets some. Depending on the student they may get one just for turning in an assignment, working on their project most of the class period, doing one thing particularly well, helping clean up, etc. We all have different types of wins and measuring everyone by the same scale will overlook the serious efforts of some.

Well, Static-X covering an Echo and the Bunnymen song certainly was a surprise.

Using earplugs at the mall definitely helps with overstimulation. Still a nightmare though.

I was completely unprepared for how many middle school students would purposely drink the water used while learning watercolors.

This is going to be a long unit.

lol finally picked the dulcimer up from the repair shop and immediately broke a string while tuning.

Completely forgot to buy extra strings while there. 😎🙃

At least it is still playable since it was one of the two melody strings. BUT STILL.

Always been a big fan of coincidences. The last week or so has been all about SPORES.

🍄 Started playing Magic: The Gathering more regularly. While going through my old cards, I found an unfinished black/green deck (inherited from someone else) that revolved around creating spore counters. Still needs a lot of work. Not sure if I will keep it. Zerg rushing with a ton of saproling creature tokens does sound fun, but if I were to go that route I’d rather use squirrels. For no reason other than 💚squirrels.💚

🍄 Picked up and read Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey 📚 from a Little Free Library which had thread (spores) that regularly fall from a cloud in space. It was cute and definitley something a young weird kid would love. Something about it didn’t quite click with me, and the character names slowed me down, but I can’t get it out of my head.

🍄 Started reading Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson 📚 which is also full of spores that continuously fall to the main planet from their moons. The more casual, direct, campfire story-telling writing style is different, but fun.

🍄 Made plans to attend this year’s Wild Mushroom Fair.

This December I really tried to find and participate in festive things. Keeping busy and focusing on people I care about helped reduce the holiday bummers.

One of my goals was to try out new cookie recipes. So here is how that went.
All vegan. Some gluten-free.

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• Eggnog Cookies

  • Wanted to start out strong with something very different. These were very cakey and melted in your mouth a bit. Not overly sweet and a nice bit of spice.
  • Probably won’t make them again, but it was fun.

• Chocolate Peppermint Cookies

  • Used this base recipe but added Dark Chocolate Peppermint Pieces. Nice and simple. A friend who came over couldn’t stop eating them, so that was a good sign.
  • Would make again.

• 1-Bowl Vegan S’mores Cookies

  • These were my personal favorite by far. I’m a big fan of anything s’more flavored, and these were probably the closest thing to an actual s’more I’ve ever had.
  • Will absolutely make again.

• Chai-Spiced Oatmeal Cookies

  • Everyone else in my family liked these the most. They were easy, it just took a while to make the chai-cashew butter due to an old, tiny food processor. Cookies were very good, and there was a lot of leftover cashew butter for toast, or enough for a double batch.
  • Would absolutely make again.

• Chewy Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

  • Something went wrong with these. I have a feeling the aquafaba wasn’t whipped well enough, it difficult to get those peaks when whipping by hand. They ended up being very dense and not spreading out at all. Had high hopes for these, but again I think the issues were just user-error, especially because the recipes on that site are never a let-down.
  • Probably won’t make again, unless I find a better way to whip up the aquafaba.

Today’s harvest. 5.5lbs of bok choy.