Zelda Rae Katz was born late last night at 10:45 pm. She was calm, collected, and 9 lbs 7 oz. Â Sam did great even when we were kept in the recovery room for hours over blood pressure worries.
She’s hungry and strong!
We are recovering at Mt Sinai until Friday. Can’t wait for MAX LAZER to meet her and we hope you can meet her too!
Look at this cool little sweater Sam made for our soon-to-arrive daughter! I’m so excited to meet her!
Finished Walkaway last night. It’s the hard utopian bit of wonderful you need in dark times. To live in the first days of a better nation, you have to build and believe that you can be in that nation before it is supported.
In Walkaway, the rich keep getting richer, the poor get poorer, the middle class is gutted out of society, fearfully scrambling to keep out of poverty and ignoring how close they are to being out on the street. Automation keeps progressing and the uber wealthy don’t need surplus people.
There’s no death camps, there’s just no jobs and no safety net and no healthcare for the unneeded.
So some folks walk away from money and just do for each other. That’s a threat to the base of a greed-sick society, so that society moves to protect itself.
The police are sent to deal with these terrorists and thieves.
The walkaway road is very hard and very dangerous and some people die.
I’m more energized than before to act to fix the place where I love, because what I do matters. (You too.)
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(Of course I weighed it. 13 pounds)
sometimes the ways things break
It’s a beautiful misty spring morning and I climb the stairs out of the Q train. I look up and see one of those magical New York sights. The clouds are hanging so low that I can see them actually flow through the trees of Central Park.
I’m struck still. This is so rare and beautiful. Â I’ve got to share a picture of it with you. You need to see these low clouds hanging out in the park, slowly ambling by.
Of course, then I turn around and look behind me, because who can trust beauty to just be simple and perfect.
Macedonian band named for a book by Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays on media and control by governments.
The song is good as just sounds, but better when you read the lyrics.
Download the mp3 for free from the Bernays Propaganda  Bandcamp page.
Just a few things to note.
Across the street from me, the Macy’s is being renovated. The pace of change in the whole neighborhood is crazy, but the interior of the Macy’s is getting changed, they are tearing out and rebuilding the floors above the store, the parking garage catty-corner is getting torn down- it’s a lot.
And it’s loud. SO LOUD. The folks running the projects were doing demolition all through the night.
I’m on the board of our building so people asked me how to get this to stop. I had no clue. I just told them to call 311, report the noise repeatedly and lets see if our combined hectoring led to anything. Eventually, we posted a sample of text for folks to make it easier – they didn’t have to figure out what’s important to say, just read what we posted. Of course, I didn’t have much hope because who’s going to listen to some folks like us when there’s a big developer behind the renovation?
I was wrong. We got their night permit suspended. One of the reasons cited was the volume of calls from our building.
Our voices mattered.
Just like they did when we rejected the initial proposal for Ryan/TrumpCare. And they will keep mattering.  This is good, but it is also a responsibility. I grew up with a lot of cynicism about participation in the political system – lots of folks in my generation figured the game is rigged. So why play?
The game might be rigged, but you’re definitely fucked if you don’t play. If you fight you get some wins. That matters.
So now I’m more committed to doing my bit. I can’t do it all, but I can make some calls each day at lunch with 5calls.org. I can join in and support groups like Tech Solidarity. I can donate cash to campaigns that need it. I can phone bank. I can text Resist Bot and send short messages to my government representatives. It’s NEVER been easier to have some effect.
And your voice and actions matter too, friend. It’s time to make yourself a schedule or an appointment of small sustainable things you can do every day. Please take 10 minutes today to think about what matters to you and come up with a small, easy to keep up with plan. Call me if you need any support. Please tell me about what you decided! Sharing your experience helps keep you energized! I will talk through it with you!