Yesterday we participated in the No Kings demonstration in Golden Valley. On the way we were speculating as to how many people would show up, given that the main event was downtown. I said maybe a hundred, then I revised it to 400, saying that might be a little high. There were thousands. Lining Highway 55 and Winnetka all the way down to the McDonalds, three blocks. It was great to be part of it. I would have liked to have seen more young people, the crowd was mostly old white folks. I’ve been told that a resistance movement will succeed if it get three percent of the populations demonstrating. Estimates for the country were 5-7 million out on the streets. So we have three to five million more to turn out. Power to the people.

It’s a bright sunny fall day. My shoulder is feeling a lot better and Becky seems to be a lot better.

Yesterday I worked on rebuilding my portfolio site to bring it up to Squarespace 7.1 standards and also build a gallery that doesn’t quote prices.

I’ll continue with the website today, do a little painting and work on my shoulder.

I’ve started monitoring my glucose levels again. That which gets measured gets managed. That’s an aphorism that I heard back in my Yellow Pages days, but I couldn’t think of the last word. Grok to the rescue.

Several days of cool rainy weather has put me in a fall kind of mood. It’s my favorite season, but not this part. I like the part with clear blue skies and crisp clean air, cool but not cold. And them of course there’s the brilliant display of colors. People travel all over the state to see the colors, but in New Hope with all of it’s mature hardwoods, we simply have to step outside. If you live in the Twin Cities you’re living in a hardwood forest.

Went to PT yesterday, I seem to be making progress. At this point I could live with the condition of my shoulder. It isn’t too painful, doesn’t disrupt my sleep and I can pretty much do anything with I need to do. Probably will never pitch in the majors though.

Today I’m going to work on building a new website for my art. I’ll be using Squarespace again. It’s so seamless, not having to worry about updating plugin or which version of PHP I’m using or any of that technical stuff that I used to be able to stay on top of, but don’t really care to mess with anymore. I’m doing it for a couple of reasons. One is that they have an new version and it’s not easy to just convert a site to the new version, 7.1. The other is that I don’t want to show prices or sell directly online. I haven’t had much success with that anyway and it’s kind of a pain in the ass to deal with. Plus I don’t want to show my prices on the site, since they might change over time, and even have different rates for different markets. A friend who sells through a gallery in Texas and Saudi Arabia charges higher rates than he does in the Twin Cities.

Just finished a series of 4 paintings.

Have some tendonitis or something going on in my left foot. Maybe it’s just sympathetic with Becky’s foot. Shoulder seems to be slowly getting better.

Minnesota finally has recreational cannabis dispensaries and one of them is just over on 42nd Ave. Walking distance. I got my medical card, which is going to save me a lot of money on taxes. I should have gotten it a long time ago, I would have been able to get what I need without thinking about getting to Chicago. I was certainly eligible! The med card thing is kind of a scam, I think almost anyone could qualify, especially old folks like me. Who doesn’t have chronic pain?

My ADHD is raging recently. I’m incredibly scattered.

A lot going on right now.

Physically I’m doing well. I can do almost anything with my right shoulder, but there is still minor pain at the edges of my range of motion. And my range of motion is a bit limited. Especially when I try to reach behind me. I’m managing the pain with icing, heat and a tens unit, as well as taking ibuprofen and tylenol. I had physical therapy yesterday and have a new set of exercises to work on. I’m hopeful that I can avoid surgery.

Artistically I’ve been putting the finishing touches on four new paintings and thinking about where to go next. I’ve started playing my guitar more and am fooling around with the major scale as well as the mixolydian. For all these years I’ve been strictly a pentatonic guy, but I can see where adding these scales to my bag of tricks will give me a broader range of sounds. So much to learn, so little time.

I’m having some major anxiety today, something that’s plagued me most of my life, but with better living through chemistry and meditation, it’s been rare the last ten years or so. Except for Covid of course, I got pretty anxious during that period. Today’s mood stems from a few things, mainly though it was Hegseth and Trump’s speech to the generals yesterday, which really makes me fear for the future of our country.

Also I got a little freaky about my work as the board president at the Robbin Gallery. We have a meeting tonight and I procrastinated sending out an agenda and making sure everyone remembered the meeting. There are also a lot of personnel changes. I get anxious whenever I need to influence people. Brings me back to my days as a manipulative shit head kid.

And tomorrow we head for Chicago which is always fun but can also be stressful.

Got some stuff done yesterday including restringing my Strat. It always amazing how new strings make you a better player. Maybe I should change them more often. I did learn a better approach to the task. It’s amazing what you can learn on Youtube.

Weather continues to be wonderful. Also they’re finally finishing up the road construction in our neighborhood after three months of constant noise and streets turned into obstacle courses.

That’s it for now.