Wedge Living: Halloween Crafting & Recipes

There have been some spooky rumors going around about Council Member Andrew Johnson and his mysterious animal control ordinance. This guy is jack-o’-lantern material.

Is @CMAndrewJohnson proposing to round up and euthanize all unleashed cats, lizards, ferrets, weasels, and red hens? https://t.co/qQ9crcJBy7

— MRRderouSVLD (@MRRSVLD) October 17, 2015

wedgi-How Tutorial

Step 1:  Bring Andrew Johnson to meet some of your friends from Linden Hills.
Step 2: Create a template from his reaction.
Step 3: Pull out the guts of your pumpkin, and save them for later.
Step 4: Print out the template and attach it to the pumpkin. Trace by poking holes through the template.
Step 5: Carve out the white space, and scrape the surface off the grey-shaded areas.

RECIPE: Uncle Wedgie’s Extra-Burned Pumpkin Seeds

Now it’s time to cook your pumpkin seeds. Google around for a sriracha-based recipe. Make sure this recipe calls for you to cook the seeds for way too long, and at much too high of a temperature.

Sriracha, vegetable oil, soy sauce.
Perfect.

When the smell of burning pumpkin seeds becomes alarming, your seeds are done. Force-feed them to Pumpkin Andrew like a heavy dose of Linden Hills, giving him a good reason for that horrified expression.

UPDATE: Humans and gourds can coexist.


Clearing Things Up

Some Twitter disclaimers have become necessary:

  1. Pay no attention to that library stamp. I am not a licensed librarian, nor an employee of the Hennepin County Library.
  2. wedgelive.com has never published a Special Senior Edition. And I never will–no matter how many accusations of ageism are thrown my way.
  3. My tweets are not trapped in February 1983, waiting for Doc to help them get back to 2015.
  4. 877-WEDGE-LIVE has too many digits to be an actual phone number, though the first 10 digits will probably connect you to something–maybe an attractive young woman who is just waiting for your call.
  5. Chet Wedgely is a fictional character I created during my recent Linden Hills coverage.
  6. The current @WedgeLIVE avatar is not intended to be a factual statement.
  7. “Wedge DEAD!” is my spooky Halloween name, not a spinoff of popular AMC zombie drama The Walking Dead.
Might be necessary to stop signing my blog posts & start pretending to be an anonymous citywide coalition of concerned neighbor-reporters.

— Wedge DEAD! (@WedgeLIVE) October 22, 2015

Not LHENA-Sanctioned

FYI

LHENA had a board meeting last night. As you may know, I am a board member. During the meeting we learned of two grievances. The individuals attached to these grievances were unnamed (a “grievance” is a new process LHENA uses to resolve complaints lodged against the organization or individual members).

One grievance had to do with a pizza-related social media post (I immediately recognized this as one of my tweets). The other grievance was something else that happened on social media–no content was specified (I also recognize this as one of my tweets).

Hey two mystery grievances just came up at this board meeting. Sounds like they’re against me and my social media.

— Wedge DEAD! (@WedgeLIVE) October 22, 2015

The pizza grievance was dismissed. The second grievance remains a mystery to be resolved later. While I don’t know who’s behind these grievances, I can guess from whose Facebook posse they might be coming. I think the strategy here is to lodge as many frivolous complaints as possible, establish your crew’s reputation as an incredible cast of goofballs, and then really lay the hammer down when I’m least expecting it (save this sentence for a future grievance).

At the very end of the meeting, during the “new business” portion of the agenda (I’m new here, but I gather that’s where you need to watch out for an ambush), someone handed me this motion: an accusation that I used an account with the name “Wedgelive/Wedgedead” to fool people into thinking I’m the official LHENA Twitter account and a demand that I remove all traces of the Wedge newspaper from my website and Twitter. At least half the board was visibly and vocally irritated to have this pile of unexpected nonsense dumped in their lap after a two-plus hour meeting, right as they thought they’d be able to go home.

Totally urgent, emergency, last-minute motion.

Exhibit A: “Today’s Header.” Distributed at last night’s meeting.
Someone thought this motion was a reasonable thing to write, and print out, and show to a dozen other people. Someone seconded this motion, and a handful of people would’ve voted for it, but it was tabled and sent over to the LHENA grievance committee–where I’ve racked up three tweet-grievances in my young career. And this item will probably linger well into 2016. These people are not right. Here’s what one board member said shortly after the meeting, in a private message:
To briefly summarize the history: LHENA published and delivered the newspaper to every home in the neighborhood for free beginning in 1970. I was one of two people involved in a project to digitize the Wedge newspaper late last year. I made the archive freely available here. I did not contact LHENA to ask for permission. I used the archive as the source for a series of posts about Wedge history, like this LHENA episode from 1993, which I recommend. It’s relevant reading.
In April, I ran for the LHENA Board of Directors and delivered a speech at the annual meeting almost entirely premised on the fact that I had digitized the paper: “I gave you an archive of the Wedge paper, vote for me.” I won.
At the May meeting, my blog was made a surprise topic (not listed on the agenda; strange that this keeps happening). I was accused of mistreating a “single mom” (more on that here), and concerns were raised about newspaper copyright. In July, the board settled concerns over the copyright issue by deciding to neither give permission nor demand I remove the archive.
And now we’re talking about it again in October, ostensibly because I changed my Twitter header image to something I found amusing and visually interesting. The Wedge newspaper is one of the most historic/wonderful/hilarious things about this neighborhood. It’s an ongoing source of surprise to me that devoted defenders of the newspaper’s legacy aren’t glad to have it accessible from their phone.

“take down all your creepy posts about LHENA volunteers”

I was elected to the Lowry Hill East Neighborhood Association (LHENA) Board of Directors in April. Before that, I had been blogging and tweeting about local politics for roughly a year. Not everyone’s a fan.

At LHENA’s May meeting–my first as a member of the board–my blog was made a topic for discussion (surprising because I wasn’t on the agenda). During the discussion I was accused by a fellow board member of “publishing the home address of a single mom.” This was an intentionally vague and misleading reference to a blog post I had written about HGTV personality Nicole Curtis’ permit violations at some of her Minneapolis properties (also a threat to single moms: this WCCO story).

In July, a second board member accused me of “stalking” and demanded I delete a tweet linking to political commentary in a public Facebook post. The topic was parking reform (not vacation photos), so “stalking” seemed over the top.

Four days after the “stalking” accusation, I received an email from an unknown sender using an apparently fake name. The subject line was my girlfriend’s name. The message began by saying, “someone is playing your game.” The email contained a link to a Craigslist ad seeking sex; the ad was written to appear as if it came from my girlfriend, using her name, location and description. The email ended with a threat: “take down all your creepy posts about LHENA volunteers etc. Or who knows maybe her exact address, picture or phone # might show up tomorrow in a different category.”

We reported this to the police immediately. In September, all but one of my fellow board members voted to request the police seek a subpoena for Craigslist and Gmail to determine the identity of the person who sent the threat. I appreciate that, though I’m skeptical the police will pursue it.

You might imagine my initial reaction based on the content and timing of the email threat. Yet I’ve been told that it’s offensive to ask whether someone within LHENA has any connection to or knowledge of who might be responsible. It was said during September’s board meeting that this is no big deal; that putting my girlfriend’s name, location, and description in a sex ad is just someone being “snarky.” It’s also been said that the more important issue is all the unfair attacks (never specified, but presumably from me) coming at LHENA over the past year.

Not helping matters, Minneapolis’ Neighborhood and Community Relations Department replied to my initial email reporting the threat by sending a list of social media guidelines. I forwarded the email to NCR, and they gave me a lesson in discouraging participation. It was disappointing to have the city department that oversees neighborhood organizations suggest–in an email sent to the entire LHENA board–that my actions are the problem.

That attitude has carried over to the months-long debate regarding LHENA’s new “code of conduct” policy, with the argument being that the organization has been victimized by social media. Some folks were very adamant about including broad rules against “disparaging” language that causes a “barrier to participation,” and generally trying to define the most stringent possible standard for speech infractions.

I wish there was the same urgency to address those few LHENA board members who have disparaged me as a sort of predator–to the degree someone felt putting a Craigslist target on my girlfriend’s back was appropriate payback. As for barriers to participation: I’m pretty sure the only reason the anonymous emailer knows her name, or where she lives, or that she even exists, is because I brought her to neighborhood association meetings. She won’t be coming back.

The concerted effort to hype me as a menace has put someone close to me in danger, making it harder for her to feel safe in her own neighborhood. I sense too much denial and defiance from the people participating in that effort. This all escalated over a period of months during which I made the mistake of saying nothing. So I’m writing this post as a matter of self defense. My hope is that calling this out publicly makes it less likely to happen again.