14 July 2026, Tuesday

well, i fell off with my journal entries for quite a while,
there. i guess i did the same thing around the same time last
year, but didn't make it back. i want to try to keep up with 
this, especially now that i figured out how to backup my SDF
files. i had been starting to feel worried about putting so 
much into my logs, without having offline access and a way
of safekeeping them. 

i've always felt like my long-term memory is less than robust. 
sometimes i feel like my life is a sort of swiss-cheese, or
better, a moth-eatern tapestry. there's a big picture visible, 
and some of the smaller scenes are quite clear, but others have
big holes speckling through them. 

writing and photographs and mementos help me keep track of 
where i've been and who i've been, how i've felt and why, 
at different times in my life. when i don't record, things
eventually blur. 

so! today my amateur radio vanity call sign application was
approved, with my first pick! W1HDA. i'm very excited.

some folks in the SDF ham radio bboard suggested that i 
look into Echolink and Repeaterbook, and i did. i signed
up and was validated for Echolink today. maybe i can join the
next SDF monday net.

yesterday i built an addition to my modular case, out of scrap
wood. i was proud of myself because the power input module i
had ordered arrived out of order, and i was able to troubleshoot
it by looking it over and comparing with photos of the same model
i found online. i saw that a little wire coming out of (the ground
pin?) had come unsoldered from the ground wire. i soldered it 
back on, and then it worked! i'm sure it sounds rudimentary to 
folks who really know circuits, but i'm still learning, and 
i've come a long way over the last few years. 

i had ceramics class earlier tonight. last week our instructor
had us working on cylindrical lidded forms, but i returned to 
working on bowls today. i ended up with one plate (a collapsed
bowl that i reworked) and one bowl (i would have liked it to be
deeper). 

yesterday my car overheated on my way home from a doctor's 
appointment. the check engine light came on. luckily i was just
down the street from home and was able to mostly cost home in 
neutral. i feel overwhelmed about this. my partner has been 
working out of town as he got a new job in another state, and 
i have stayed behind to work on music in our home studio (the
livingroom, where our gear is set up). i have a performance 
coming in early fall that i need to prepare for. i will join 
him when we can get a stable place where he is. 

so that means i'm here solo, and we don't have any friends or
family in this town, even though we've lived here nearly three
years. i've had so much car trouble the last couple years, i 
just feel frozen. it's very hard to get around here without a
car. i took the bus to the library today to pick up an internet
hot spot. i'm grateful for it, but the bus has limited routes 
and doesn't run on schedule. 

i dropped my bike off to have a flat tire fixed after pulling it 
out of the basement last week. i guess it was good timing, 
although it will be difficult to get to the bike shop and back home. 
 

last week i took part in a "week of patching" activity organized
by a media artist on mastodon. the idea was that people try to 
create a patch (audio, video, digital, analog, etc.) every day, and 
document it somehow. then we take whatever material we created 
over the course of the week and stitch it together into some
cohesive final creation. i stuck with it every day, but haven't
brought the bits together yet. i got some material i find 
interesting. i'll work on it this week. i kept a patch log on 
my website. 

this past weekend i took the 3 to 4 hour round trip drive to the
nearest city to go to an international art exhibit at a museum 
there. some friends met me, so it was really nice to have company.
we got split up partway through as we gravitated to different things.

i spent a long time in a room devoted to the work of an artist
named Donald Rodney, who was born in 1961 and passed in 1998. he was
born and passed away in England. he lived with sickle cell anemia, 
and documented some of his experiences in hospital for surgeries or
pain management. along with pain and the body, and beingness, his work 
also speaks to issues of race, history, and society. 

i sat at a couple of different film stations and watched with headphones 
on. one was called "Three Songs on Pain Light & Time (Donald Rodney)," by 
Black Audio Film Collective/Trevor Mathison and Edward George. i felt 
flooded with feeling watching Rodney speak, watching others speak to the 
camera as if to him. and many sunflowers, and many grainy 8mm clips 
filmed in British hospitals. 

the other film was called "The Genome Chronicles," by John Akomfrah. 
Donald Rodney's works on display in the exhibit were very immediate, 
innovative, some disturbing, but also purposeful and moving. i was 
deeply affected by the experience. it's powerful to be able to leave
behind so much energy across time and distance.