Scott's wanderings

Wonderful wind that makes the wires moan. I was walking under them--they were swaying and making ghostly sounds. In the white pines, the wind was hissing. In the bare trees, it was singing out waves and surf. It was flinging first one handful and then another of black birds into and across the sky--like pepper.

For earlier installments, click here

To: Gina Minetti
From: Justin Landau
Subject: Write-up

Dear Gina,

I’ve tried to be as complete as possible. Let me know if you think it needs more details or if something isn’t clear.

I don’t know how the pilot managed to land the helicopter on the lotus on the ruby lake. I was sure we were all in for a horrific, fiery death, but after about five tries, he actually brought it down on the platform.

It felt like we were in an iron foundry. The air was shimmering with the heat; it hurt to breathe. The captain from the state security services told us to wait by the helicopter and started walking down the platform. At the far end, I could just about make out a little structure, built like one of the old coastal shrines (totally incongruous for the mountains, but then, I don’t think anyone ever thought the government was genuinely attempting to accommodate mountain religious traditions when it built this prison).

“I’m not staying here,” M-- said. “The security guys K-- wrote to me about were always horrible. I’m afraid that man might hurt her.” She ran after the captain, and I followed, fearing not so much what the captain might do as that K-- might already be dead, conditions being what they were, and wondering how to handle the situation if that turned out to be the case. ( Read more... )

There's so much to be grateful for and to give thanks for that I don't even know where to start. Family, friends, health, work, ...EVERYTHING. I am blessed with goodness. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone reading this! Mwah!

***

Clean bill of health at the dentist today. I am completely and totally amazed at how dental technology has changed and improved since I was a child. I don't think I've had anyone stick a needle in my gums in YEARS. I had a check up and cleaning today, and told the dentist that I've been worried about one of my left corner teeth because it's been growing very sensitive, especially to cold and once in awhile gives me a jolt of pain when I bite down on something. I had a filling put in last year, but she took xrays again and said the filling was still in place and there was no sign of a new cavity. So she put liquid plastic all around the base of the tooth and hardened it with an LED light and then added some kind of gel on top of that, and hey presto! it took literally minutes and was completely painless.

***

We are school shopping for Martin. He wants to go to a better school and we are all agreed that we don't want him to go to the county school in Löberöd next year. They start earlier with languages and other advanced curriculum in Lund's county, and we can switch him, even now in the middle of his sixth grade year, without having to pay anything, and that way he won't be too far behind all the other kids when he starts 7th grade, which he would if we waited until fall.

He and Anders went to an information meeting at Kunskapsskolan in Lund tonight and had a good impression. Next week he's spending the day at the Bi-lingual Montessori School in Lund (which is really close to my work and which we know has spots available) and then we'll see which one he chooses. Lots of reasons for making this decision but we think it's the right one.

***

New Moon tomorrow with Martin and a girlfriend. I'm looking forward to it, not least to going to the movies, which we do all too seldom.

***

My arm is still super tender from the vaccination. ow.

Tweaks and enhancements

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4. You'll now receive the Writer's Block Question of the Day in the body of email notifications. To sign up for Writer's Block notifications, visit writersblock and choose the Watch Community option. Next, update your Writer's Block notification settings by checking the box to the right of "Someone posts a new entry to writersblock."
5. Paid and permanent users can now view, add, and edit Notes of commenters. Notes will appear beside the username of comment posters (instead of stars) on S1-themed comment pages.

Send some lovin' thanks to your friends with our holiday vgifts!

Photos of the week

We're so delighted with the immense talent of our growing, global lj_photophile community that we've decided to introduce a poll. Each week, we'll choose a half-dozen photos (based on user comments and staff feedback) and ask you to select a photo of the week. The winning photo will be announced in the next newsletter. If possible, please limit photo size to 350x350 to ensure that images display properly on friends pages. We want to thank you again (and again!) for sharing your passion.

Check out this week's photo poll and more fantastic user content after the jump!

( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks for joining us. To our American friends, have a fantastic Thanksgiving. To all of our international neighbors, we'll eat a little extra for you!

shikuchi got The Talk from the guidance counsellor, I guess, and created this cartoon, which made me laugh. It was like that when I went through high school, too.

( cartoon behind cut, because it's big )

(Here's the cartoon in her journal.)

And earlier, she defined the parameters of cute....

( the cartoon )

(Here it is in her journal.)

When it grows arms, it is no longer cute.

Furthermore, because shikuchi is Queen of Vocaloid Singing and All Things Similar, she found these wonderful videos, "Autotune the News"--news clips, sung with autotune. My favorite is this one. "We get to choose, we get to choose!! Will we choose liberty, or will we choose tyranny?" (It all depends who gets to be the tyrant!)

Have fun everyone.

I got shot in the arm this evening. I have to say, I've been sort of dreading getting the H1N1 vaccination...I never get flu shots, I have always just taken my chances, but I guess something about a) the fact that if I did get sick with it, it would be 2-3 weeks of illness versus (hopefully) 1-2 days of potential side effects from the shot and b) how can you say no to getting a vaccination that the country you live in has bought for every single one of its residents? Not only did they do that, they also took the time to make up schedules for every person in the country AND send them a personalized letter of appointment to come in and get it. It would just be churlish to refuse, don't you think?

Also, don't you think churlish is a word that should be used more often? What a great word! Where have all the churls gone? Long time passing.

"Getting vaccinated" was my to-do list item for today, and since after I came home and fed the kids dinner while Anders was at IKEA picking up Martin's bookcase, they have all three gone to Scouts, leaving me in sole possession of the house for the next hour and a half, I suddenly find myself at loose ends. I'm not bored, like I was momentarily the other day (and by the way, thanks for the fun questions!), but I'm not feeling very motivated, though there are a ton of things I could no doubt be doing. I suspect that what I will do, once I have finished this post, is go Christmas shopping online, and get some of my first family presents dealt with.

We went to IKEA on Sunday, the first time we have braved the new behemoth of a store that opening not too long ago in Malmö. It's terrifyingly huge, and crowded and damned confusing. Luckily, we knew what we wanted and Martin turned out to be a whiz at reading the floor plan map and keeping us oriented, so we were able to get in and get out rather quickly. He now has a new desk slab (a 2-shelf affair that hooks onto the frame of his loft bed), a new dresser and the aforementioned bookcase. He is still in need of new bedding, curtains, and a rug. I have not posted photos because I have not taken any yet...the OCD in me wants the room to be FINISHED before I show off its magnificence to the world.

Plus, the other evening, when Anders was done painting the trees, I went to get his Nikon out of the camera bag, where it reposed, lens down in its padded pocket and upon lifting it up discovered that the lens was completely smashed. IN THE BAG. Anders had no idea how something could have happened to it while in the bag, but there it is.

Have you started your Christmas shopping? Please don't tell me you're done!

Cool stuff: Food flags and Bio-Diversity

Bubbly Burbly Bountiful Birthday Wishes to gnostraeh! And a bundle of belated ones to dbrus and Megsie!

"I'm disappointed that there aren't more students here. It's mostly professors and old people."

That was a cellphone comment I heard last week by a young college woman sitting directly behind me prior to a lecture and Q&A with Michael Lang, the co-creator and organizer of 1969's Woodstock music fest.

"Thanks, kid!"

I should have turned around and told her that I was her age when that event was going on, and, yes, time does march onward -- to enjoy it while she can.

Lang was at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem (NC) to kick off a college book tour of his memoir of Woodstock, entitled "The Road to Woodstock: From the Man Behind the Legendary Festival." I'm not sure what his tour schedule is. Google didn't come up with anything.

His editorial help, as mentioned on the cover, came from Holly George-Warren, a longtime music writer with Rolling Stone magazine and author and native of Asheboro, NC. I had actually spoken with her by phone one time about 12 years ago after I wrote an article about her father, Mr. George, a well-known architect in Asheboro. I'm not sure how I happened to get in touch with her, though.

The Lang lecture was not as heavily promoted as I had thought it should be. About 200 people were in the audience; not near enough, considering his importance in the world of popular culture. He is a monumental figure in the world of music -- and social experimentation -- because of Woodstock and his prominence in the Woodstock movie. I was at work the day of the lecture and happened to be browsing through the "Calendar of Events" section of the paper and saw a three-line mention of the lecture. And that's all. But in my mind, that event suddenly became top priority for me that evening.

I haven't been buying all that many books lately, esp. when they are $30, but I had to purchase this one and get it autographed. And I did, following the lecture, with his signature on the iconic body of the dove sitting on the guitar neck, the image that came to signify Woodstock. This will be a good reference book and a collector's item. The woman next to me, with a digital camera, was gracious enough to take a photo of me with him and email it to me later that evening.

If you want me to email it to you, let me know.

I sat on the front row, directly in front of Lang and the moderator. Both were in the traditional "let's chat" format of two upholstered chairs on stage. Lang was wearing a vest, much as he wears in the movie. And his hair is still as bushy as it was 40 years ago. Other than a few wrinkles and a few pounds, he hasn't changed much.

But he has been busy since then. He produced a concert at the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Woodstock '94 and Woodstock '99 and heads the Michael Lang Organization, which encompasses live-event production, Film and theater production and artist management. He also mentioned that he now has two 8-year-old boys by his current marriage. He was born around late 1944 -- so good luck to him in the energy department with his young brood.

ML is a native of the Bensonhurst part of Brooklyn. In his early 20s, he headed down to Miami's Coconut Grove area to open a head shop. At the time, Coconut Grove was a cool, laidback place filled with artistic types, he said. A dog could spend the afternoon sleeping in the middle of the street and not be bothered. He got involved in some free concerts there and liked the vibe.

After attending the Monterrey Pop Festival movie, he decided to try it himself and organized the Miami Pop Festival. The acts he booked included the Mothers of Invention, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Jimi Hendrix and John Lee Hooker.

"I saw the positive effects of these music fests," he said.

He moved to the town of Woodstock, NY, (about 100 miles west of NYC) in 1968. Woodstock housed a lot of good talent in a very creative and musically robust community, including Paul Butterfield, Artie and Happy Traum, Richie Havens, The Band and Bob Dylan. He started making connections and combining his knowledge of the musical community and his experience with music fests. Richie Havens, for example, would eventually become the first act at the Woodstock event.

Much of the lecture dealt with the hassles he had with "the establishment." The town of Woodstock was a no-go. The town of Wallkill, a "go" at first, turned into a problem as the local authorities, finally realizing what sorts of longhaired freaks they were actually dealing with, rewrote their laws in an obvious effort to ban the fest. One law they passed was "Light will not be allowed to escape the festival site." "Noise will not be allowed to escape the festival site."

Duh!

After the Bethel, NY, location had been agreed-upon, rock entrepreneur Bill Graham (owner of the Fillmores West and East) threatened to derail the fest, fearing it would siphon away his customers. ML smoothed over the waters with him and got, as a gift of a sort for the fest, a local group from San Francisco, with no recordings yet to its name: Santana.

Wavy Gravy (Hugh Romney), head of the Hog Farm in New Mexico, was very important to the ambience of Woodstock -- and the survival of many of the attendees. The Hog Farm was a commune in N.M., and it worked as a group, sustaining large numbers of people. ML figured that he would have large numbers of young people descending on Woodstock who had never even camped out before. He wanted people who could help them through it and help feed them. So, he flew Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm from N.M. to NY on a chartered 707 to handle those issues. Wavy is the one in the movie who announces to the crowd that breakfast for (a half million?) is being served.

As an aside, I had a chance to meet Wavy a few years ago when he was the guest announcer at the inaugural Floyd Fest, a music fest in nearby Floyd, Virginia.

ML went into some detail on the behind-the-scenes finance guys -- and the fact that the Woodstock movie, launched a year later, made $100 million --- none of which he got. He and the other organizers had to sign their rights away for reasons I hope to learn in the book.

Some of ML's favorites at the fest were Joe Cocker, and Crosby, Stills & Nash. The very best act he saw was Sly and the Family Stone, an act he said generated the strongest amount of energy he has ever seen, at the fest and at the thousands of other events he has attended. It must have been a good one.

The Doors declined an invitation because Jim Morrison felt he would be assassinated on stage.

The Rolling Stones were not invited because they were so big. Their presence would have overshadowed the others.

The top acts (the Who and the Grateful Dead) each got $15,000.

Booking Sha Na Na was ML's idea. He had discovered them by accident in a NYC club, thinking he was going to see Van Morrison. They were merely college kids on a lark.

John Lennon wanted to perform but he was not allowed into the country. The Beatles, as a group, no longer existed.

During the Q&A, ML said he did not save that many souvenirs: only his BSA motorcycle (in the movie) and his vest (in the movie). He did not even get a tee shirt.

His two 8-year-olds are into Metallica.

ML said he has eclectic musical tastes, including Coldplay and Arctic Fire.

Woodstock, he said, was more of a social experiment than a pop fest, in which hundreds of thousands of strangers of a like mind came together for a brief time and actually got along just fine.

I asked him what his next new project would be. He said he is planning a Broadway play based on Woodstock. Someone asked, "Like 'Hair'?" and the woman beside me chimed in, "How about "Receding Hair"?"

Somewhere in that resume, ML managed Joe Cocker and Billy Joel.

The Grateful Dead were almost electrocuted during the stormy part of the fest because the Dead's sound guy and manager, Owsley Stanley, who insisted on wiring things his way: the wrong way. Owsley was, at the time, arguably the largest producer of LSD in the country.

A ticket to the Woodstock fest was $7/day or $18 for the whole 3-day event.

Peace,
Karl





I

Right now I am wearing a tee-shirt with "Midnight Moon" on it. That's the brand of moonshine (the legal kind) that Junior Johnson has started selling. He was a pretty famous race car driver who learned his craft as a moonshine driver in the mountains of Wilkes County, in northwest NC. I had a chance to meet him yesterday and get his autograph at the first Carolina Shine Fest in tiny Madison, NC., a celebration of the moonshine culture prevalent in that region for many generations. The fest featured several generations of these hopped-up vehicles, from the 1930s onward, jazzed up enough to outrun the cops. Johnson spent a little time in prison, so he didn't outrun them all the time. Next to Junior at the autograph table was Robert Johnson, his son (by one of his more recent marriages) who has started into the racing circuit, just like his old man!

One landmark of the fest was "Piedmont Distillers," a small company downtown Madison, making a legal form of moonshine, about 80 proof, from corn, yeast and water, including Midnight Moon. Gail and I had a chance to tour it. Coincidentally, CBS's "Sunday Morning" aired a long segment on that distillery, the moonshine culture and Junior Johnson, who was interviewed in it. The company makes Midnight Moon, a lemon-flavored version of it for summer sippin' and something called "Cat-Daddy," that has many of the flavors of egg nog. We enjoyed a tasting of all three. Actually, I think I dug Cat-Daddy the best, with Midnight Moon right behind. Check out your liquor store if interested.

65redroses
Eva is a vibrant young woman with Cystic Fibrosis who survived a double lung transplant. Read about her difficult recovery and personal triumphs over pain, isolation, and fear. Back in school, Eva now works part-time in a children's center and enjoys running and cross-country skiing. A documentary on her story, entitled 65 Red Roses, won three awards at the Vancouver International Film Festival.

meet_other_moms
A warm and welcoming "Add me" community for moms of all ages and backgrounds from around the world. If you're a mom, just post a little about yourself and start connecting with other mothers based on similar hobbies, musical interests, book/TV/movie preferences, or taste in humor! A great way for busy moms to socialize online.

kitchenfaq
Want to share a fabulous home recipe for coconut bread? Suddenly run out of confectioner's sugar with company on the way and need to find out a quick in-house substitute? Searching for tips on what to charge for a custom-designed wedding cake? Whether you're a professional chef, an aspiring culinary wizard, or a happy home-baker, you'll get delicious guidance from fellow and sister foodies.

For other installments, click here

Tuesday 11:10 am

Dear Mr. Dubois,

Mr. Landau is letting me use this little thing of his to send you messages. He’s the guy with the camera. It’s just him, Ms. Minetti, and me that are going to W--. I guess there’s not enough money to send bunches of people with cameras, but Ms. Minetti says it only takes one.

This thing is cool. You can make it do all kinds of stuff just by sliding your finger on it. You’ll get my messages as e-mail, Mr. Landau told me. Ms. Minetti said I should write about anything I feel like. I think she meant when we get to W--, but I’m going to start now.

It will take a long time to get to W--. It will be tomorrow when we get there.

Out the window of the plane, all I can see is a sea of cloud, that we’re up above. It looks like it would be fun to wade in, except there’s nothing for your feet to stand on. Nothing but air for thirty thousand feet, the pilot said.

Ms. Minetti gave me a phrase book, so I can learn to say some things in K--’s language. I’m going to practice now.

---

Wednesday 5:30 pm

We’ve landed. There were lots of people in uniforms and a man in a suit waiting to meet us, and also some people from news stations. Ms. Minetti squeezed my hand and said, “Give them your most powerful smile,” but I could only manage a little one. The man in the suit gave an even tinier one back and said that he was assistant vice minister of something or other and that it was his pleasure to welcome us and accompany us to our hotel. ( Read more... )

Our microwave started singing in weird harmonics yesterday. Strange tones, some as clear as struck crystal, others more grating. You can hear it here (27 seconds)



Later I was listening to some music I got from sovay, a piece called "Plight (The Spiraling of Winter Ghosts)," by David Sylvian and Holgar Czukay, and I realized, this is what the microwave was trying to sing. Whatever winter ghosts were inspiring David Sylvian and Holgar Czukay must have visited the microwave, yesterday.

Today, it's just an ordinary microwave again.

I'm bored. Ask me something.

This is the week we are supposed to give thanks. (At least Americans are; for the rest of you I suppose it's optional.) I'm guessing that there will be hundreds (thousands?) of people on LJ making lists of the things they feel grateful for: home, family, friends, pets, food, health, money, nature, God, freedom, sunsets, and the like. And let me say right now that I too am grateful for these things.

But what I want to discuss today is a different sort of gratitude. Grudging gratitude, you might call it.

I was talking with a friend recently, who rather nonchalantly said something about “All those things you wished for and didn't get, but got something far more wonderful instead.” She said is as if it was a fact of life, a birthright, a law of nature. Like all you needed to do was make daily a “To Wish” list instead of a “To Do” list, and then sit back and wait for the spectacular results.

Trying to uphold my end of the conversation (I do better listening than speaking, but I've learned that I can't remain silent too long), I racked my brain for an example of such an event from my life. Just one. But I couldn't come up with a single instance.

Take gifts. For birthdays and holidays, I've wished for wonderful things. Elaborate, expensive, blow-your-socks-off things. Never got them. Oh, I've received very nice gifts over the years, and I truly thank the friends and family who gave them. But nothing even close to my imagination.

Career. Like most people, I wished to do something great, something memorable (or at least interesting), something to help the world. I ended up with a job that paid the bills and even a little extra in a field that nobody ever heard of. The moment I explained it, people yawned. Not that I'm not grateful, mind you. But reality turned out to be orders of magnitude below my wishes.

Family? Parents, siblings, and orbital relatives were all okay, but nobody did anything extraordinary. Nobody dispensed the wisdom of the ages (and nobody was an ax murderer either). Each had their own truly annoying qualities that I mostly learned to put up with. Husband and children? I've been blessed with both and am eternally grateful. But truth to tell, we're just part of that vast silent majority.

Family gatherings? Travel? School reunions? Exhibitions of my talents in various ways? We all know these can be far less enjoyable than what we wish for. Sometimes they are downright painful.

Like I said, I could not come up with a single part of my life in which reality came anywhere close to my imagination, let alone exceeded it. I always wished for the stars, and I always got mundane, practical, commonplace results. And as I've aged, I've begun to realize that this was the wisdom of the universe. That in my everyday work, family, and pursuits, I was given the gift of grappling with life.

I've grudgingly started to give thanks for this type of life. It's real, it's gritty, and it's what we're here to learn and experience. The gift is what we make of it, not what is handed to us. I understand. Still, just once, I think it would be nice for the universe to surprise me. Don't give me gaily wrapped but practical socks and underwear, don't even match the wish I have in mind. Rather, blow out all the stops and overwhelm me with something so extraordinary, I could say to my friend, “Yes, there was this time I wished for _____, but wow, what I got instead was _____!” And we'd shake our heads in wonder.

Topic For the Week: Do you have an instance where you really wished for something, didn't get it, but got something way better instead? If so, will you tell us about it?

Here is what I am not party to, generally: conversations between men. Today, though, I took the healing angel to get a haircut. Normally I cut it myself, but he asked if this time he could get a barbershop cut (must have been that ounce of ear I took off last time, or the zig-zagging front fringe, or that one bald spot where I went nuts with the clippers, or ...).

Barbershops, it turns out, are a great place to hear conversations between men.

It was crowded in the barbershop. There were five barbers. One was a woman; the rest were men. All the patrons were men--mainly grownups, but one guy with his five- and three-year-old sons.

A craggy guy whose long underwear showed through the worn knees of his jeans (just like my long underwear shows through the knees of my jeans--we are style buddies, he and I, and about the same age, it turns out) came and sat down next to the dad, and they talked, and I pretended to edit, but really I was listening. ( what I learned )

naturesbeauty
Always on the lookout for compelling images, we were delighted to discover this flourishing community of artists who share a love of nature. Honoring the subject with photographs, paintings, sketches, prose, poetry, and
other creative works, you'll be simultaneously riveted to your monitor and inspired to run helter skelter towards the nearest wooded dale.

Quite often during the day I come across things that I see or hear or like that I want to remember to share, but by the time I get a chance to actually sit down at the computer and write, usually quite late in the evening, all those things have long since dropped off my brain radar, lying lost and forgotten on the side of my mental meanderings like single shoes that people pass later on the highway and wonder about. There's no meaning in them, those single shoes. They're just there: road markers.

A million different thoughts zing around inside my head every day, in fact it's incredible how many thoughts must pass through any given brain on any given day. Gazillions! Our brains work so damn hard and yet we blame them for everything we forget: it slipped my mind, we say or, it's on the tip of my tongue...as it if weren't secreted away in some pocket of the hippocampus; merely misfiled. It's there, it's just not always retrievable. If only we had some sort of mental google machine (moogle? broogle? or maybe just this: hahahaha!). A brainiac dewey decimal system.

Anyway, it's the weekend and it's quiet out here now. It's always quieter on the weekends when folks are busy with their families or all the million things they don't have time for during the usual round of work/school/sleep, or just taking the necessary downtime needed to recharge before Monday morning rolls around again.

With all the craziness that is the end of the year for me, a couple of days of quietness sound lovely. I have NO days left this month that don't have something scheduled in them. And then it's December.

Batshit insane schedule
Saturday: man the kiosk for Karin's soccer team, do AWC website updates
Sunday: soccer games
Monday: visit to junior high school with Martin
Tuesday: H1N1 vaccination
Wednesday: Grocery shopping: buy turkeys
Thursday: Dentist appointment & wreath-making class
Friday: Cleaning, cooking, party preparations
Saturday: host Annual Ek Family Thanksgiving Potluck Party!
Sunday: Party aftermath cleanup, get down Christmas decorations, bake cookies
Monday: AWC Monthly Meeting and cookie exchange
Tuesday: Massage appointment (whew!)

That brings us to December 2nd. Normally by mid-November I've already done the majority of my Christmas shopping, bought cards, started the annual Christmas letter. And there are 4 family birthdays to deal with in December as well. This year? God knows when I'll even get started. I just looked at the December calendar and out of 31 days, only 12 are free before Christmas. And considering the list of things that needs to get crammed into those 12 days, I might just need to a) clone myself b) get busy already c) hire a personal assistant or d) have a mental breakdown. Hmmm. Which would you pick?

Gott’im’s Monster by S. Dorman (Dormanheim, 2009)



(Available for purchase here, here, and interestingly enough, from the German version of Amazon, here.)

Gott’im’s Monster is part of a cycle of stories by S. Dorman. The first triad of stories (Return to God’s House, Within Without, and In Winter) sets the scene, developing a place—the small town of Gottheim, Maine—and the people who live there. The second triad (Mystery Gottheim, Gott’im’s Monster, and Balder’s Wilderness) deepens the storytelling with the addition of mythological and metaphysical themes.

These books are self-published. I bought the first, Return to God’s House, directly from the author, and enjoyed it very much. The sensitivity to character and the deft portrayal of the intense, understated drama of a rural New England town made me a loyal fan, so when the author decided to make Gott’im’s Monster available to a wider reading public, I offered to review it.

( Read the review. )

Postcard winners!

We wish to extend our heartfelt gratitude for sending so much joy our way. Frank is still blushing with excitement over the love notes, proposals, propositions, and occasional intimate photos sent from his admirers around the world (China, Norway, Japan, and Poland just this week)! At his request, we blindfolded Justin, one of Frank's BFFs, spun him around in five dozen counterclockwise circles, and asked him to point to ten random postcards/envelopes pasted to the wall. After a brief trip to the bathroom, he chose the following lucky winners, to whom we will give a six-month paid account token (for paid, basic, and plus users) or, for our permanent account holders, a $15 voucher for the LiveJournal gift shop.

So, without further ado, the winners are:

1. seraphene
2. fotog
3. boykitten
4. seshat_6
5. anti_aol
6. lisalees
7. katrinkacat
8. mistyboston
9. _woody_lein
10. another_slender

Bugs, Tweaks, and Enhancements

1. We fixed a bug from the last release that was causing screened comments to become unscreened if they were edited
2. If you happen to be gaming around the corner, check us out on Facebook and be sure to spread the word!
3. We've added new vgifts to celebrate Thanksgiving! Check out our feathered friend, below!

Give more with charitable vgifts

In honor of national adoption month, we're offering a charitable vgift (priced at $2.99) to support Love Without Boundaries, an organization that provides healthcare and adoption to orphans suffering from life-threatening diseases. LiveJournal will donate 100% of gross proceeds from the sale (we'll cover the cost of credit card transaction fees). To learn more about Love Without Boundaries, please visit lj_cares. You can purchase your Love Without Boundaries vgifts in the Virtual Gift shop. We'll keep you posted on how much we raise!

Photos of the week

We're delighted to showcase yet more incredible photos from some of our brilliant LiveJournal photographers around the world. Keep posting (and tagging). And be sure to show some love by commenting on the awesome view at lj_photophile.

Check out this week's photos and more amazing user content after the jump!

( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. See you next week!