Saturday, July 19, 2003

We took a little picnic to Clifton French Regional Park.  You may know it better as Medicine Lake.  It is part of the "Three Rivers" Park system.  You may know this better as Hennepin County Parks.  They must be trying to throw off the search engines.  The park is small but well appointed.  I have never seen a more awesome playground.  It has hundreds of feet of nets to climb on.  The nets go up about 40 feet into the air and all interconnect with the other climbing equipment.  The beach is nice, but I have had beer cheese soup clearer than that lake.  They have these huge barriers around the swimming area that look like those booms they put out during oil spills and they pump fresh water into the swimming area.  And my kids' favorite game is to zoom around with the water at mouth level, slurping up the topscum like little wetvacs with these big grins on their faces.  Lake Nokomis is so much clearer!  I think the storm water ponds they put in around Nokomis have made a huge difference. 11:02:50 PM    comment []

What time is it when we can't get a catholic church in Minneapolis to avoid buying sweatshop produced goods?  For the Basilica block party a week ago, they ordered several thousand T-shirts.  The Basilica's peace and justice committee requested that they buy the shirts from a shop held to some kind of labor standards, but the block party folks said that those t-shirts cost too much.  So, the t-shirts were purchased from a sweatshop.   Meanwhile, the Basilica asked one of the bands hired not to perform because their lyrics were "risque".  The band actually got paid not to perform.      Their definition of "sweatshop", the name of the band, the lyrics in question and the provider of the t-shirts are unknown at this time. 10:22:01 PM    comment []