Sonia Connolly

I had a good day today. Biked to the farmer's market, and then went to the new year's party at my gym. I didn't know gyms had parties, but this one was fun. Friendly people, and several bodyworkers offering free 20 min sessions (I got a massage!) and free drinks from the cafe next door.

I biked over to the ad hoc Balkan and Georgian singing group that meets once a month, and we successfully sang a bunch of songs, even ones that were newer to us or that we hadn't sung in a while, like Tsmindao Ghmerto. Felt great!

Then I got home and caught up on the news. Augh! Via redbird, I was reminded about the Stand With Minnesota site with lots of organizations we can support to help their anti-ICE effort. I donated some money to Just The Pill.

Adding Minnesota Indian Women's Resource Center via ofearthandstars in comments. They are listed under Organizations Doing Work On The Ground.

On the plus side, I'm so glad we are collectively screaming about ICE, not just passively letting it happen. So grateful for the people bearing witness, physically resisting, and sending support from afar.

I saw this go by on Mastodon, and it stayed with me, so I'm reposting it from Tumblr by nitewrighter. (First few comments are worth reading.)

Me: I don't get it. I thought I was doing a lot better than I was a few years ago. I'm like 10 times more on top of things than I used to be. How does everything feel terrible now?

The Tiny Me in OSHA-approved Hi-Vis Gear Who lives in my brain and pulls all the levers: Boss, it's the fascism. You're completely gunked up with cortisol due to the fact that your entire daily life is now underscored with a haunting awareness of the rapid erosion of your rights, dignity, and any and all social safety nets, and you're also bearing witness to the most vulnerable people immediately being persecuted. This creates a natural stress response that basically means you're going to continue having memory and organizational problems, as well as emotional imbalances.

Me: BUT I HAVE A BULLET JOURNAL AND I MEDITATE NOW.

Tiny OSHA Me: BOSS, THE FASCISM.

I received a notice about this and checked it against classaction.org, so I think it's valid.

Visit www.KaiserPrivacySettlement.com to submit a claim.

Their website is god-awful slow to bring up a Next button when you enter your settlement number, to the point where I had tried it in two other browsers and called the phone number (no human available) before I went back and saw it had finally showed up.

The parties in the lawsuit John Doe, et al. v. Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc., et al., Case No. 3:23-cv-02865-EMC (N.D. Cal.) (“Action”) have reached a proposed settlement of claims (“Settlement”) in a pending class action against Kaiser Foundation Health Plan, Inc. (“Defendant”) and certain related entities. If approved, the Settlement will resolve this Action wherein Plaintiffs allege that Defendant’s websites and mobile applications disclosed their confidential personal information due to third-party software code. Plaintiffs allege that this code was embedded across Defendant’s platforms, including the secure patient portal, and transmitted information to third parties when users navigated these platforms. Defendant firmly denies the allegations, denying any liability or wrongdoing, and denies that Plaintiffs are entitled to any relief arising from this Action. Defendant also maintains that Plaintiffs have not suffered any damages arising from this Action.

2025 but pictured in gingerbread. Amazing art.

I've been getting together with a friend to sing for a couple of years now. We met in the Balkan choir and both have aspirations to sing in a trio again someday. She generally sings low and I generally sing high, although it's fun to swap sometimes. We haven't been successful at finding a third person to sing middle with us, but we've enjoyed practicing choir songs and learning other songs together.

I tend to like song with strong rhythms and melodies, and she tends to like the slow wandering songs with lots of ornamentation, so it's been broadening both of our repertoires. Here are a couple of songs I've been working on at her suggestion.

Zora Zazorila "Dawn is breaking". Here is Eva Quartet sounding fantastic. I listen to them and despair, because I will never ever sound like that, but I can sing my own version, with my own slower and simpler ornaments. Zora Zazorila sheet music



Bozha Zvezda "Lord's star". Here is Kitka singing it on their Wintersongs album, Leslie Bonnett gorgeously singing melody with Janet Kutulas. Bozha Zvezda sheet music



They learned it from Daniel Spassov, and here's his recording. Bozha Zvezda

Those songs are both Bulgarian, but in case anyone is interested in learning more about Balkan singing, Dragi Spasovski is a kind and knowledgeable teacher of Macedonian songs, and he's teaching online for EEFC four Wednesdays in January, 5-6:15pm PT. I just signed up! More info and registration.

O Generous One by Timothy Snyder, a Substack link with more history of Ukraine then and now. Excerpt below.



Excerpt from the article:
“Carol of the Bells” stands out because it arises from a different tradition: that of Ukrainian folk songs, and in particular ancient Ukrainian folk songs welcoming the new year, summoning the forces of nature to meet human labor and bring prosperity. These are called shchedrivky, “carols of cheer” or, a bit more literally, songs to the generous one. The word “magic” is used a good deal around Christmas; this song has its origins in rituals that were indeed magical. And perhaps this is exactly why it reaches us.

Before the advent of Christianity, and for that matter for centuries afterwards, these songs orchestrated and encounter with the forces that could bring what was sought, which was the bounty of spring after the cold of winter. The pagan new year began, reasonably, in February or March, with the arrival of the swallows or the equinox; the carols of cheer were pushed back towards January or December 31st by Christianity -- and one in particular was pushed deep into December by Americans, transformed into a Christmas carol.

The melody that I heard in St. Paul’s Cathedral in Toronto as “Carol of the Bells” is a Ukrainian folk song. It was arranged as “Shchedryk” by the Ukrainian composer Mykola Leontovych in the middle of the First World War, likely on the basis of a folk song from the Ukrainian region of Podilia. The four ancient guiding notes of the melody sound like the dripping of icicles joined by the singing of birds. Leontovych’s lyrics capture the earthy directness and incantatory purpose of the ancient songs. My English translation is no doubt inadequate and a little free -- in Ukrainian, for example, a dark-browed woman is by definition a beautiful woman, and so I have rendered her.

( Ukrainian text and English translation )

The Shocking Crash That Led One County to Reckon With the Dangers of E-Bikes by David Darlington. This is an unlocked New York Times article (posted to the Grizzly Peak Cyclists mailing list) about a bad e-bike crash in Marin County and the political fallout from it. Content note for description of the injury and medical treatment, although the teenager did survive.

The article sparked quite the discussion on the mailing list about reckless e-bike riders on multi-use paths, the pleasures of riding an e-bike and being able to go further and faster without a car, the differences between e-bikes (pedal assist) and e-motos (no pedaling required), and the disingenuousness of the concern about e-bike injuries when cars and motorcycles are far more dangerous to drivers, pedestrians, and the environment.

The person I ride with regularly rides an e-bike, and that has led me to appreciate them more. I look forward to owning one someday when I can't get to where I need to go on my acoustic/manual/regular bike. It's nice to know I have an option other than getting a car or taking lots of taxi rides. And, I still don't appreciate being passed without warning by people on silent fast vehicles who haven't learned bike manners.

Mother of GPS, Gladys West, Finally Gets Proper Recognition by Judith Fogel. Did you know GPS was made possible by a Black woman (who is still alive)? I sure didn't!

Gladys West and her husband Ira were both mathematicians at Dahlgren Naval Base, then called Dahlgren Naval Proving Ground. West was hired in 1956. Her extraordinary contributions to the geodetic modeling of the earth became the foundation for the Global Positioning System (GPS). But few knew how much this Black woman changed the way we navigate.

youfeellikeshit.com, a self-care game by Amanda Miklik, based on a twine site by Jace Harr. Step by step questions to help you feel better.

Using the Arousal-Valence Model to Better Your Emotional Intelligence by Dr. Megan Anna Neff. Some aids to naming emotions for people who find it difficult, including an Unpleasant/Pleasant, High/Low Arousal grid.

Finding the Middle Way in Black & White Thinking with Marbling by Cait Klein.

Black and white thinking is a trauma response that is important to break down for our overall happiness and wellbeing. When we are not feeling safe, it’s easy to slide into rigid thought patterns such as everything is either good or bad, friend or enemy, kind or mean, awesome or awful etc. The reality is things are rarely ever all one or the other, and as we break down binary ways of thinking we allow more space for connection and collaboration to move forward in our lives.

Self Compassion and How The Science of Kindness Changes Your Brain interview with Dr. Kristin Neff, audio with summary.

The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age by Thea Lim.

When I was twelve, I used to roller-skate in circles for hours. I was at another new school, the odd man out, bullied by my desk mate. My problems were too complex and modern to explain. So I skated across parking lots, breezeways, and sidewalks, I listened to the vibration of my wheels on brick, I learned the names of flowers, I put deserted paths to use. I decided for myself each curve I took, and by the time I rolled home, I felt lighter. One Saturday, a friend invited me to roller-skate in the park. I can still picture her in green protective knee pads, flying past. I couldn’t catch up, I had no technique. There existed another scale to evaluate roller skating, beyond joy, and as Rollerbladers and cyclists overtook me, it eclipsed my own. Soon after, I stopped skating.

“To See it All at Once”: Black Southern Placemaking Technologies with Zandria Robinson

It was amazing to me to get to graduate school and to discover that I was a Southerner, and to discover that there was this idea that once all the Black [Southern] people left for the Great Migration, apparently we just didn’t even exist anymore, despite the inconvenient fact of the whole civil rights movement. So I had a bone to pick, and I just continued picking it.

How our noisy world is seriously damaging our health by James Gallagher.

"You have an emotional response to sound," says Prof Clark. Sound is detected by the ear and passed onto the brain and one region – the amygdala – performs the emotional assessment. This is part of the body's fight-or-flight response that has evolved to help us react quickly to the sounds like a predator crashing through the bushes. "So your heart rate goes up, your nervous system starts to kick in and you release stress hormones," Prof Clark tells me.

Women are three times more likely than men to get severe long COVID by Gillian Rutherford.

Through analysis of immune cells, biomarkers in the blood and RNA sequencing, they identified a distinct immune signature in female versus male patients.

They found evidence of “gut leakiness” in the women patients, including elevated blood levels of intestinal fatty acid binding protein, lipopolysaccharide, and the soluble protein CD14 — all signs of gut inflammation that can then trigger further systemic inflammation once they reach the circulatory system.

Opinion | I’m just 16, and I already have too many memories of mass shootings by Lydia Ganser. "It’s easy to offer condolences from afar while doing nothing to stop the guns."

What I Need You To Understand, Notes from Chicago in Late October by Dan Sinker.

There's noise, so much noise, but there's also signal and the signal was that they were here that they were everywhere. Smash and grab jobs happening across the city nearly simultaneously. But the things being stolen aren't jewels, they're lives. Off streets, from yards. One roofer plucked off a ladder. A landscaper thrown to the ground, tackled by a half-dozen men in camo with weapons. Sixteen people on this day. Sixteen people disappeared, from just the northern side of the city and suburbs. More across the entire city.

Unofficial Pluslife FAQ (EN). Very detailed information on Pluslife Covid tests, which are as senstive as PCR tests. Sadly they are not available in the US.

I just learned that the city motto of Oakland is Oakland Love Life, as described on the city's website.

Love Life Acknowledgement (Abridged Version)

We acknowledge that in service to our beloved city of Oakland, and all its citizens, adhering to the city of Oakland's official motto, "Oakland Love Life" we enter into this space committed to embody love as our guiding principle.

We acknowledge Love Life as our motto as we denounce violence in all forms and the conditions that create it.

We acknowledge that when we demonstrate love, we also exhibit respect and kindness towards each other.

We commit to acts of love as an intentional force to generate tangible solutions, in regards to all of our actions.

We recognize as leaders, we must set an example and precedent for those in community who have entrusted us with these duties.

We welcome and appreciate all contributions to this space, and even when expressing disagreement, we request that we lead with love in your heart.

We seek to find common ground, and tangible solutions that demonstrate love for our city, its residents, and all constituents.

We acknowledge that when we lead with love we are able to uplift a thriving city rooted in equity, equality, justice, inclusion, and opportunity for all.

We commit to the action of "Love Life" as our motto and mantra.

Love Life Acknowledgement (long version) PDF.

I'm glad that Oakland is a Sanctuary City, and California is a Sanctuary State. I'm glad that Barbara Lee is Oakland's mayor, with her experience in national politics.