As I mentioned on Facebook, after work I headed downtown to the ongoing Occupy Wall St. protest. My mental notes:

At 6:45pm, I’d guesstimate 400-500 people in Liberty Plaza on a chilly, rainy Monday evening. About 100 of them might have been in the line for donated free dinners. (Lots of pasta, probably mostly vegetarian, given the audience.) The crowd was impressive for a protest in its third week, in poor weather.

I should have realized this from Google Maps beforehand, but since I’m rarely that far downtown, I was surprised that the plaza is diagonally across the street from the WTC complex. If you walk to the west end and look right, there’s the under-construction “Freedom Tower.”

I didn’t know anyone there, and I didn’t have a sign, so I honestly felt more like a tourist than a protester. The real heavy lifting is being done by the people who are there full time.

There were a lot of people interviewing each other on camera, which seems narcissistic until you remember most of these devices are probably internet-capable, and this is how you get the word out when you don’t have your own cable news network.

For all the complaints that OWS lacks focus in its demands, the signs I saw were pretty narrowly targeted at banks and the rich. Granted, after the 700 arrests on Saturday, there were quite a few jabs at the NYPD, but most of the ire was still directed at Wall St. Lots of sentiment for taxing the rich. One sign protested B of A’s $5 debit surcharges. There was also a “Debt = Slavery” sign, and while I’m not sure of the sign holder’s politics, it’s a libertarian sentiment and gives hope to my belief that there is common ground between the two ideologies.

Code Pink was there (sigh) in the form of a dude draped in a NY Yankees blanket and a half dozen US flags, occasionally chanting gibberish. So, uh, thanks for helping, Code Pink.

There was a library of donated books inside plastic bins to protect them from the rain. Most of the books were politically charged, some relevant and some not. There were also a few bins that might have been there to alleviate the boredom of camping out in a city park for weeks at a time — I saw the final Harry Potter volume among a pile of SF/fantasy books.

The OWS movement is famously leaderless. I gravitated to a drum group that was the biggest attraction not involving food, and at one quiet point, a girl shouted her plan to lead an occupation of the subway in 15 minutes. The drums started up as she and her group walked away, to a handful of cheers. A couple of minutes later, the drums stopped again and someone warned the crowd NOT to occupy the subway, and that there were undercover cops in the crowd, so treat everything skeptically.

Then the drums started again and all that was in the past.

The drum group went to the other side of the plaza when it was time for the General Assembly, which I was curious about. But I couldn’t get close enough to hear anything — and it was probably meant for the permanent protesters instead of me anyway — so I left, having spent about 45 minutes there. If you want to donate to the cause, a weatherproof mic/amp set would be helpful. (UPDATE: Turns out the city requires a permit for “amplified sound.”)

The genius to this protest, if any, it is its tenacity. Had it been only over a weekend, or a day, it would have been completely ignored. But permanently taking up residence, in tarps and sleeping bags? Even for someone like me who has been railing against Wall Street for what seems like eons, that’s an insane level of commitment. And I appreciate it.

NOTE: my grand jury service finished well before the hurricane hit, but this ended up taking longer to write than I thought, as I am quite lazy…

Serving on a grand jury in Queens County is like going to the airport every day, Monday to Friday, for four weeks, but never traveling anywhere. You stand in line to go through security in a large, unpleasant building, take a seat, kill time by reading a book or listening to podcasts or (so help me) solving a 99-cent Sudoku book. Then you go home and do it again the next day. For 20 days.

Except every so often, a group of people will drop by and describe a crime in the most ritualistic, repetitive manner possible. By the fourth week, you will have memorized key legal phrases you’ve heard over and over.

If you’re unfamiliar with them, a grand jury is sort of the opposite of a trial jury in that 1) you hear as many cases as can be scheduled instead of only one, and 2) instead of needing proof beyond a reasonable doubt, you vote on the basis of Legally Sufficient Evidence and Reasonable Cause to Believe (two of those key phrases). If it sounds plausible that the defendent might have done it, then at least 12 out of 23 jurors vote to indict. Otherwise the charges are dismissed without a trial.

The upside is you get to hear a bunch of different true crime stories (if only the legally admissible parts). We probably heard 50-60 cases. But four weeks is a ridiculously long time to be forcibly removed from your life and stuck in a small room in an uncomfortable chair with the same 22 other people. And they’re quite lovely people. It’s just way too much of a life disruption for my taste.

Grand juries are secret, so I certainly won’t be publishing details online, but I can distill some thoughts while being vague on the cases:

Read the rest of this entry »

Hey look, it’s my first YouTube video ever:

Shot with the not-so-great video capture on my digital camera from my balcony Sunday night. I edited out the sound of wind and our voices. There is almost certainly better video of the sun setting on the trailing edge of Irene, but this one is mine.

(Also, no damage, no power outages, everything was normal at my place.)

(Post title stolen from sportswriter King Kaufman.)

Here’s the story of how my 20 years of die-hard Denver Broncos fandom… well, died hard.

I facepalmed my way through the Jay Cutler ordeal after Josh McDaniels took over in 2009, but to be honest, I didn’t feel that bad about replacing him with Kyle Orton. Not after years of watching Cutler drive downfield, pile up stats, then throw red-zone interceptions. So I stayed a fan.

One prolonged defensive collapse and a 2-8 finish later, the rest of the outstanding offensive talent (Marshall, Scheffler) clashed with McDaniels and were traded for nothing.

I got restless.

The last straw came when McDaniels traded several draft picks in order to draft Tim Tebow in the first round.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a strange feeling following the news for the last week. Seeing old familiar locations on the news. Hearing the name of the town I lived in for 7 years become shorthand for “political assassination,” the same way a date became shorthand for terrorism. It must be even stranger for the ones who still live there now, to suddenly be the center of the nation’s attention for maybe the first time (and have a bunch of detached New York media personalities criticize your mourning techniques).

My ex taught at the northwestern Pima Community College campus as an adjunct from 2007-08, the first year the killer went there. (I don’t know if she recognized him, since we haven’t spoken in a long time. Doubtful, I would guess.)

Giffords is the only member of Congress I’ve met face to face. During the 2006 primary, she visited a Drinking Liberally event (as did the other Dem candidates, separately). At some point during the mingling, I ended up talking to her alone, more or less. The sum total of the interaction went something like:

“Hi, I’m Gabby!”
“I’m Mike.”
*shake hands*
*nod, smile awkwardly*
*crickets*
“Well, nice to meet you!”

Clearly a conversation for the ages.

I didn’t vote for her in the primary — she seemed like what she turned out to be, a bog-standard conservative Democrat — but I went for her in the general over her terrifying wingnut opponent.

Then, four-plus years and one vandalized office later… this.

Read the rest of this entry »

Now that I have some downtime, I uploaded the small handful of photos I took at last weekend’s Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear in DC. There would have been more, but my camera’s batteries crapped out before the rally began, and like an idiot I forgot to replace the previous set in my bag with fresh backups.

On the other hand, I was so far from the stage (and yet not even halfway back) that I’m not sure what other photos I could have taken. It mostly would have been more pics of the same very large crowds, maybe a few of people who climbed trees in order to see. It was crazy.