Jill Richardson runs La Vida Locavore, a blog about food. Jill writes her heart out about the politics of food safety, and her blog has attracted gardeners and farmers and people like me, who write there too sometimes.

Jill’s brother died last year. He was in his 20’s. Jill posted an essay late this evening about Adam, about how this would have been his birthday. “What can I give him?” she wrote.

Jill’s essay is here:  http://www.lavidalocavore.org/…

Adam died when he was 23. Jill’s essay is painful and beautiful.

I went to a concert the other day and I couldn’t stop thinking about him. He was so into music and he knew so much about it. He would have been happy I was going to a concert.

Below the jump is the music I posted over there. A moment of silence for a fellow blogger, please.

Just a few items. Short, but not sweet.

Court rejects Calif. plan to cut prison population

October 21, 2009

AP

SACRAMENTO, Calif. —  A federal judicial panel has rejected the Schwarzenegger administration’s plan for reducing California’s prison population because it failed to meet the terms of an earlier court order.

In August, the panel ordered California to reduce its inmate population by roughly 27 percent, or 40,000, over two years. The courts have found that prison overcrowding is the main cause of negligent medical and mental health care.

Just for a bit of early morning uplift:

I’d rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.

Listen, wait, and be patient. Every shaman knows you have to deal with the fire that’s in your audience’s eye.

Loved. You can’t use it in the past tense. Death does not stop that love at all.

Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.

Nowhere else in history has there ever been a flag that stands for the right to burn itself. This is the fractal of our flag. It stands for the right to destroy itself.

People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.

Ritual is necessary for us to know anything.

Take what you can use and let the rest go by

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Blogging the past, with thanks to brainyquote.com.

Now, some music.

I got all over the place yesterday, talking to people who blog here; about difficult and highly confrontational subjects.

I’ve done that before, on other blogs.

But what I’m seeing here, is that we don’t lie here.

The more I read people who don’t lie here, the more happy I get about blogging in a community comprising people who do not lie.

So thanks, everyone; for your honesty.

I needed this; starting back when I was involved as a kid, with the Advisory for Open Education, etc. The adults in my life were running that when I was in my early adolescence.

Now, how often do you get the opportunity to use that headline?

I’m out of things to say. But I’m sure many people will do just fine.

UPDATE:

Consider this an open thread.

I found out from new pioneer this evening that there are all these great YouTube videos out (and have been for some time) of the Les Miserables Broadway play.

We’ll start out with “Work Song” and go from there. You can easily find more of these YouTubes by searching for “Les Miserables” on YouTube.  

I’ve been writing to and at and fro and and from and all over the place, with and from and to and for leftist bloggers since the early 90’s, way before there were bloggers..well, we were bloggers then, but the word had not been invented.

I’m now someone who knows some stuff about html, and where to find it. I can even put a photo in a post, and position it some.

But I see more and more that there are really good leftists out there who are sort of into the internet but are foggy and scared about it.

These people have so much to tell us. But still, they’re not only afraid to talk, but they don’t understand the photographic stuff that we work with here on the net, how we can do so many things with  our visuals.

We need these people. We need their help, their love, their photos, their stories.

Lots of them are just hanging around blogs like DocuDharma. I occasionally get a nice email from some great person like that, and I write back to these nice people; this is WONDERFUL.

So, how do we do it; how do we help the shy scared people get up here with the rest of us and recognize that they TOO can format HTML and post photos and not be afraid, not be afraid, not be afraid.

and have friends, have friends, have friends.

Srsly. I’m just starting to do this with BrokenRoots and it’s working. I have to keep my contact private, but, OMG!

There’s PEOPLE out there!

It’s so scary and amazing too!

I’m getting more and more feedback, as I go romping around YouTube and the blogs and writing and yelling louder.

What strikes me most is that I’m quickly running out of time to work with all the feedback I get. This means there are people out there all over the Internet looking and wanting to hear what I write, and what my tribe people write (like Dodudharma people) and contact me about it.

About how we must take charge of our world, and not wait for the authorities or politicians to do so.

It’s blowing me away.

So, how do we fix this to make it even easier for the peoples to help us take over the world and be friendly tribes with each other?

Miep

India floods leave 2.5 million homeless, 250 dead

HYDERABAD, India, Oct. 5, 2009 (Reuters) – Rescue workers used sandbags to stop a raging river from breaching its embankment near a southern Indian city on Monday as floods triggered by heavy rains over the last week left 2.5 million people homeless.

The flooding, described by officials as the worst in many decades in south India, has killed some 250 people, mostly in the states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. At least five million people are crammed in temporary government shelters.

UPDATE: this trial has now been postponed until after the first of the year. I will be covering it then.

Miep

John and Jackie Stower run the Manna Storehouse in LaGrange, Ohio. Last December their organic food coop and homeschool were raided by a SWAT team, who invaded their home with guns drawn, held them and their family captive for six hours, and confiscated a large amount of food. No charges were ever filed. The Buckeye Institute is helping the Stowers sue the The Lorain County General Health District, the Ohio Attorney General’s Office and the Ohio Department of Agriculture. The trial will open October 8 and 9 at 8:30 am.

This is a roundup of news and commentary regarding prisons and prisoners. I have focused to a fair extent (though not entirely) on stories where there is some question of prisoner abuse, or miscarriage of justice.

Homeless activists delay L.A. City Council meeting

by David Zahniser

L.A. Times

September 29, 2009

Activists and the homeless disrupt a council meeting Tuesday while marking the third anniversary of Police Chief William J. Bratton’s Safer City Initiative, which they say has brought overly aggressive policing to skid row. The protest began when the council deferred public comments to continue a discussion on the city’s budget deficit.