The Urban Pantheist

Curious George waits in a lull between crowds of kids coming to meet him. Admission to the zoo is only 5 dollars this week, and every day George is in the Tropical Forest to meet his fans. Educators are present with all kinds of activities, including story time.

Sunday was a busy day: the mushroom walk in the morning, and a zoo event in the night. The zoo event was Moth Ball, a fundraiser for our AAZK chapter. This year, like many others, it was a costume party. Since I spent the evening running around organizing stuff, I have very few photos. I was dressed as a female Starfleet officer. I promise to share a photo of that as soon as someone shares one with me.






The big entertainment for the night was a show from Puppetmaster Jake!

Here we are, your 2014 Zoo Crew! This is the largest group we've assembled for a 25 mile ride yet. Ours was also the team that raised the most money for the scholarship (thanks in no small measure to you wonderful people).

( Read more... )

On Monday, I received a phone call at precisely three o'clock.

( But what about Sunday? )

Alexis is quite shy, and does not like crowds. That's why I not only took this picture, but remarked about the event on Twitter. Yesterday we took Preston, our foster puppy, to the MSPCA for Pit Bull Awareness Month. The rescue network that Preston is from was there, and they also brought Happy, (who I absolutely loved) and the director's amazing therapy dog Rosie. Another pit bull rescue org, Braveheart rescue was there as well.

The main event was a screening of Beyond the Myth, a documentary about the negative consequences of recent anti-pit bull laws in the US. There are some unbelievably heartbreaking and infuriating stories in it, especially from the city of Denver. (I visited Denver in 1992 and thought it was a very cool and vibrant city. Since they have passed their anti-pit bull law, which has led to authorities going door to door to seize family pets and put them to death for no reason, I WILL NEVER GO TO DENVER until the law is repealed).

Anyway, Alexis is surrounded by people in that first picture because she is showing off Preston to the crowd that is there to see the movie. Here's Preston being robbed of his already small amount of dignity:


Since we were there for a few hours, I couldn't help but notice this party announcement:

Those radiology technicians know how to get down! I feel inadequate, since I don't even celebrate Darwin's birthday.

My neighborhood was full of trick or treaters tonight. My street is quiet because we're sort of the far end of the town, but a couple streets in there were hundreds of kids. One block (Brooks street) was closed to auto traffic, and several of the houses were really done up with decorations. The highlight was the pirate ship with animatronic pirate skeleton. It's becoming a locally famous event, with people driving in from other neighborhoods and towns. I figured I could find some mention of it online, but I only found this weird youtube fragment:



I saw some great creative costumes too! Probably the best was the kid dressed as the Zakim Bridge, a complicated affair that he had to gingerly maneuver around the other kids. I bet he's a budding engineer or architect and built it himself. I also saw some awesome old school cardboard and tinfoil costumes, including a kid dressed as a giant iPod. Mad props to the kid dressed as a toilet--funniest costume for sure. The unexpectedly common costume was Superman, in fact, the only kid to come up to our house was a silent toddler dressed as the Man of Steel, with his very friendly parents as (I think) Lois and Jimmy.

Alexis captured the fun here.  Seriously, go look at the pictures.  Plus my jack-o-lantern is there.

This should be a caption contest...