The Packbats' Dreamfeed

D sent me the link to Bruce Springsteen's new song "Streets of Minneapolis" about half an hour ago.

Both emails in my inbox since have been about this.

All that D told me about the link he sent me was "Well here's the most Erik thing ever." Apparently my friends agree.

One of them is also in Minneapolis and says ICE is on their block today.

At work this morning, when a colleague said they were off on holiday and worried that they were changing places in the U.S., my manager took the opportunity to tell me that for all that's horrible, Minneapolis and Minnesota are showing the world how to handle a thing like this and I must be proud of them.

And I am. I nearly choked up at that.

But also, I wish they didn't have to be. Normal life hasn't been possible in Minneapolis for months. Fundraisers I've contributed to have sometimes had grim updates about people who've disappeared, either directly to ICE or by having to make the horrible choice to "self-deport" which is another way the fascists are getting what they want.

I have to save reading Margaret Killjoy for when I have tears to spare. Some of them are happy tears, some are accompanied by real laughter and knowing smiles (having to bring the car battery in the house overnight like it's a baby animal!), but so many tears.

The shortest version of what I saw is this: a few thousand federal officers are occupying Minnesota right now. They’re in Minneapolis, St. Paul, the suburbs, and even some of the smaller towns. No one wants them there—I’ve never seen a community half so united as the people of the Twin Cities.

ICE is there to kidnap black and brown people. They’re not subtle about their racism...

In response to this, many vulnerable people have essentially gone into lockdown... The networks that are looking out for them are far and away the largest, most organized, and most successful networks like these I’ve ever seen.

Since abductions happen quickly—often stealing people in two or three minutes—the response needs to be just as fast. And it works because when people hear whistles and car horns, they start looking out. They come out of their houses.

It works because everyone knows what is happening is wrong, and everyone is willing to risk their lives to protect people.

Time after time, ICE has tried to abduct someone, only to be scared off by Minnesotans in pajamas and crocs.

But this spirit of “if your car is broken by the cold, strangers will save you” was presented to me by multiple people as the spirit that animates the resistance to ICE. Some people are trapped in their houses, so other people try their hardest to help them, whether or not they’ve got enough experience, whether or not they’re ready...

This style of organizing works because the overwhelming majority of people in the city are very actively opposed to seeing their neighbors kidnapped. There is no shortage of people willing to yell at ICE.

This afternoon, my phone got stuck in a boot loop. It was bad enough when I was looking at it with utter confusion, but when D finished work and I could ask him to have a look at it, he looked just as baffled. Uh-oh!

I missed it immediately: my day is so much easier to get through with podcasts or audiobooks to keep me company. I struggled more to eat lunch (leftover balsamic mushrooms, on toast) without the distraction. There was a nice "like in the old days" element of having to read my library book and being left to just Wonder if an email I was waiting for had arrived or not, but it was difficult when I didn't have anything to drown out ambient noise when I was trying to relax. I do understand why separate mp3 players are having a resurgence (though I'd want a podcast player as well as an audiobook player and that sounds Complicated).

When D and I went to walk Teddy, V was upstairs so I wanted to lock the door. I grabbed their keys instead of mine, probably because I'd done that yesterday when they and I had been the ones going out and D had been upstairs working. But this time, by the time we got back to our street, the Tesco van was in our driveway, earlier than the time slot we'd been given. Poor V had had to scramble and move stuff to open the kitchen door and the side gate, and pile all the groceries on the dining table. We got back in time to put everything away but they were clearly exhausted and I felt absolutely awful at having inadvertently locked them in the house (my keys were right near the door but they didn't know that so it didn't actually help) and made them deal with an extra hurdle because Tesco was so early and with no earning.

I slept very badly last night and had an early start, going with D to his latest dental hospital appointment, so by the time I finished work I was feeling really gross and thought I'd lie down for a bit. I ended up falling asleep and waking up only when D told me dinner was ready and he'd sent our apologies for queer club which had already begun by that point. Oops. But it was kind of a relief, not to have to go anywhere else today; I was feeling gross even despite rhe nap and being around people felt difficult.

After we ate, D said he suddenly had a craving for a root beer float, and I said that thinking about ice cream made me want ice cream all of a sudden. We couldn't get root beer on such short notice but we did drive to the Co-op and get Ben & Jerry's cookie dough ice cream. D had had a big day with another minor oral surgery so early in the morning, we'd been good and a treat seemed like a good idea. It'd been a while since we'd done something silly just because we can.

Today I:

• woke up late. I, very unusually for me, was so tired when my alarm went off that I set a new one. For some reason, I decided to make it five minutes before my first meeting, my team's usual check-in. So yeah, I did not make that.
• got dressed and downstairs eventually, triaged email and Teams messages.
• did my morning chores: open the curtains, empty the dishwasher, make breakfast for me and a pot of tea for the household...
• got halfway through the dishwasher when my work phon rang. Actually rang, not a Teams call. How odd!
• remember as the guy starts talking that I agreed to do an interview but forgot to put it in my calendar
• the interview is with rail industry press rather than my usual audiences of general public or politicians, so I got to drag some of the technical vocabulary out of my brain.
• had a little cry at lunchtime about Alex Pretti
• had two absolutely brutal meetings this afternoon, for a total of three hours: more technical stuff. I have looked at so many diagrams of train stations...and there weren't any breaks in that 2-hour meeting!
• walked Teddy with V, as a nice antidote to all the thinking and trying to decipher engineering diagrams (some of which were labeled by hand).
• made dinner by chopping all the veg in the fridge that needed using up and roasting it (some wrinkly peppers, half a head of rubbery broccoli, a few carrots I didn't know we had, mushrooms that were best before last week...) into a serviceable dinner
• helped D do a Tesco order for tomorrow
• read too much news
• had a shower
• went to bed late and now can't sleep

I had a dream about Gary last night so I miss him extra today.

But D and I saw many cute and happy dogs when we were out helping a family member, and we got home just in time to do our usual Teddy walk.

I miss my dog, but there are so many good dogs.

In the dream, I was showing someone who was frightened of dogs how carefully and delicately he'd take a treat from my hand (which is exactly how he'd do it in real life too). And the dream-person was happy about seeing this and it made her relax. It was really nice.

I went to lift club this morning and left it not feeling briefly euphoric as usual but instead nothing at all. I had seen cool people, I'd done the best exercise my body has available to it, and all this only got me up to about neutral.

I went to the RNCM, for the first time in at least five years but probably longer, to see a brass band with angelofthenorth. It was such a treat thar she'd sorted this all out for us. Great to have someone to talk with afterward: we had practically opposite rankings of the four pieces we'd heard which amused me. As she was listing hers, someone a few rows ahead who was also getting ready to leave overheard and said "I thought exactly the same!"

I told her that I didn't feel like I was thinking a lot about Minneapolis but looking at how poorly I'm functioning at everything, it's clearly taking up a lot of my usual abilities. Background radiation, she said, and yes that's it exactly.

This afternoon, V filled their pill boxes for the upcoming week had noticed that they didn't receive more of something that they thought they had. (They're so contentious but with so many prescriptions -- especially when they're low on spoons for an extended period (flare? new problem? just coincidence? no way to know!) -- it's easy for something like this to happen.) And of course it's one with hideous withdrawal symptoms. And of course it's the weekend.

I was fully prepared to leave D to make dinner while I was on hold waiting for NHS 111, but I found out you can do this online now! So I spent a relatively painless few minutes typing things into the website and then D drove us both to the pharmacy. After a bunch more questions, which luckily I was prepared (enough) for, we emerged victorious with three days of meds, enough to get us to a weekday when this can be sorted out properly.

We had takeout for dinner.

And then I saw that ICE have executed someone else. My brain and body seem to have shut down at this news.

I'm very glad that V has their meds now. They were so stressed and miserable at the thought of having to go without them. They take them in the evening so I'm glad we could figure out a solution before the meds were even overdue.

Tomorrow will be a busy day being helpful to V's relative who's clearing out his mother's house. I'm looking forward to the physical labor for something I'm not emotionally invested in.

I hope I sleep.

For reasons I am too tired to get in to, there ended up being no need or reason for me to be in London for work today. The thing I had been dreading didn't happen...not today anyway.

I sorta got my wish of not working much today. Viva la huelga. I got home in time to walk Teddy this afternoon, and both of the others could make it too. It was Vee's first time in a while and Teddy was beside himself to see us all.

I spent some time being annoyed by having bad to pointlessly stay away a second night. I could only conclude that the real reason I had to be here today is just so I could watch Heated Rivalry last night (it's on HBO in the U.S. so not easy to get here). And that cheered me up.

I did an interview that might become part of a radio piece on e-bikes as pavement obstacles for blind people today.

He'd done some reconnaissance before I showed up and had found the most e-bikes I have ever seen in one place, taking up most of a pedestrianized side road. We came around a corner to this nest of chaos and all I could think of was "If we were in a science fiction movie about aliens invading the Earth, and the aliens were Lime bikes, I feel like this would be their mothership."

He pointed his microphone at me and said "Say that again." Ha! I gotta watch my goofy metaphors better.

So if you ever hear someone on the radio say they found the giant egg all the Lime bikes hatched from...uh, that's me.