August 24, 2002

I’m taking a break from wrestling with updating a calendar of events in Quark. I don’t even know how to use Quark. I just plowed into an old issue of the magazine on disk, copied the old calendar into another Quark file, and am cutting and pasting. It’s a wonder I get anything done at all using technology.

My name is Elaine of Kalilily and I’m addicted to blogging. I could have taken a walk, went down to get the mail, read the newspaper. But instead I’m still here at the keyboard. Blogging. Help!

I was over at Blog Sisters keeping up with the great stuff over there and wound up Commenting on several posts. I want to repeat here some of what I said there.

I am part of a group of 6 women who often take vacations together -- sometimes not all of us go, but often we do. We usually go to the ocean, rent a house, and have just the kind of days you describe, although sans kids, since all of ours our grown. Sometimes there are men in our lives and sometimes not. We have had some marvelous -- in every sense of the word -- times together. We laugh until we pee in our pants; sit under the moon, drink wine, and conjure a safe and magical world; share the cooking, clean-up, planning with ease and humor. We always come back wondering why we don't live like this always. And the answer is usually because it would be very different with the men around. I just finished a very powerful post-apocalyptic novel about two young sisters surviving together, returning to some primal-female connection -- "Into the Forest" by Jean Heglund. My ex-husband sent it to me because he liked it and thought I would like it even better. I heartily recommend it.

Meanwhile, vactioning with women friends (and kids) is terrifically relaxing, liberating, and satisfying!

And, about sexism and blogging:

For me, it all boils down to intention. The same look, the same word, the same movement can be sexy or sexist, depending on the doer's intent. Granted, it's hard to know what's in someone's mind and heart unless he lets you/us know. Personally, I don't think Doc had any particular intention. I think he was thoughtless about what he posted. Personally, I wish that he had been more thoughtful about it, as he is about most things he says.

I guess I approach blogging as I approach life and child-rearing. We have rights, but along with those rights come responsibilities, especially important when those rights get into the faces of other people and of major survival (not just physical) issues. We can choose to ignore those responsibilities, but if we make that choice, then we'd better expect consequences -- reactions and responses from the others affected by our choice. Heh. I made the choice of letting my "righteous indignation" get in the way of choosing the best way to phrase some things on this issue, and I got called on it, even by my son. He sure gets it, and he reminds me when I forget.

And now I return to the Crone’s misadventures in Quark.

August 23, 2002

I'm not the first to need a break, and I won't be the last. I've got some projects on my plate that need my attention, and I need to hang out with some real guys for a while. (Gotcha with that one, didn't I?) I mean real-life flesh and blood male friends in contrast to virtual.

I've entered into an agreement with one of them to take over half the work of putting out the regional dance magazine that he started and is struggling to make a go of. And we're going to take some dance lessons together. I'm opting for Argentine Tango (With full recognition of the sexist origins of the dance and full understanding that art and life are not necessarily the same. But it is a sexy dance. That's why I like it.)

I've also made a commitment to edit a mystery novel written by a previous Significant Other, with whom I actually lived for a year at one point, so that we can run a condensed serialize version of it in the magazine. The story takes place at a ballroom dance weekend. (We've stayed friends, and so we've agreed to go out and hit some hot local dance spots in the meanwhile.) I've got deadlines to meet and some relaxed social and non-sexist interactions with real-life real male friends to look forward to.

Interestingly enough, I enjoy the company of my male friends in some ways that are very different from how I enjoy my female friends' company. We do different things together, talk about different things, and laugh about different things. Different but equally enjoyable.

So, I might not be posting much here for a while. Except maybe on Blog Sisters, where there are issues being discussed that I care about very deeply. But I'll be checking in. This is my unreal life, after all. My life in Kalilily Time.

Carry on my wayward sons, [sic]
For there'll be peace when you are done....
Kansas

I know how committed you are to free speech. I know how intelligent and articulate and creative you are. I know how technologically innovative you are. For those qualities, you have earned my deepest respect. You have earned your professional reputations on the Net in general and in blogdom in particular. Professionally, you are men of vision.

Perhaps, on a personal level, you have wives with professional careers that you wholeheartedly support – even to the extent of sharing the household chores and child rearing. Perhaps you have daughters whose aspirations you encourage, whose safety you protect, and whose strong spirits you nurture. Perhaps you go to church, teach your sons to treat others, including women, the way they would like to be treated. That is not to say that you don’t laugh a lot, kid around, act silly, say and write witty things. Being a good human being and having fun are not mutually exclusive.

I makes me wonder, however, why, in the weblogging community, you choose to give the impression that you are stupid privileged white men who get their jollies by demonstrating their lack of understanding of the bottom-line impact on the lives of women that thoughtless sexism perpetuates. They say that if you’re not part of the solution than you’re part of the problem. Well, you can argue that, I suppose. It’s possible to isolate oneself and not actively contribute to either. But you haven’t done that. Instead, you have chosen to post things like this and this and in some of the Comments here. You have chosen to be a part of the problem.

The point is not that words have power and therefore should be chosen carefully. You can choose to use any words you choose to use. What I find disturbing is that intelligent, visionary men choose to use the words they choose to foster attitudes that are destructive to the humanity and spirits of women. Why would you choose to do that?

All you have to do is go over to Blog Sisters to get some idea of how sexist male attitudes toward women affect the lives of both women and children, how attitudes that demean the worth of women contribute to the obstacles that women not-of-privilege have to face just to survive -- and that even women-of-privilege find make their lives more difficult.

Why would you choose to do that?

August 22, 2002

At Linda's request, I'm going to tell my rebirthing story. Now, don't be confused. "Rebirthing" is nothing at all like being "Born Again." And, from what I've been able to read on the Net, the current methods of doing "rebirthing" are nothing like they were when I did it.

Let me preface this story by explaining that I have always enjoyed experiences that lead me to more self-discovery. Like most people, I find that I fool myself even better than I fool other people. Like most, I've gotten pretty good at denying, rationalizing, ignoring, blaming etc. etc. So, every once in a while, I need to find a way to hold up the mirror of truth to my own soul. Of course, being a dedicated dilletante, I don't just find one system for doing this kind of introspection and stick to it; I like to try out new ones all of the time. Transcendental Meditation, Yoga, Chi Quong, Tai Chi, guided imagery, self-hypnosis, sacred psychology, feminist spirituality, poetry therapy, active imagination, rebirthing........ Basically, they are all ways of getting oneself out of usual patterns of "thinking" and allowing one's natural intuition and wisdom to find a way through all of the nasty noises of our conscious and critical and constricting minds.

So, for a while I took a lot of workshops. I took so many that I got so good at some that I started to give workshops of my own -- a kind of hybrid of feminist spirituality and guided imagery and active imagination and poetry therapy ....... Someone once said that you teach best what you most need to learn. How true. How true.

O.K. Rebirthing. I went through the process almost ten years ago, but from what I remember, this is how it went. I went to an introductory meeting and made the decision to commit myself to a three consecutive 10-hour days of a rebirthing workshop. I was paired with a buddy, and the agreement was that we would help each other through the process, which took place over a weekend. The process involved long periods of meditation -- some guided, some not -- and, of course, "sharing." That was pretty much what we did on the first day. On the second day, after more and deep meditation and increasingly emotional sharing, etc., we were guided to to re-experience our own births -- to feel ourselves in our mother's wombs, listening to what people were saying about us, feeling the physical sensations of safety and warmth being violently disrupted, etc. etc. I don't know what happened on the third day, and here's why.

August 21, 2002

A long time ago (by some reckonings) or not so long ago (by others), I decided that I wanted two twin beds that could be linked together somehow to make a king-sized bed. Because? Because I knew that I would be moving at least several more times in my life, and it's easier to move smaller beds and mattresses. And sometimes I am in a relationship and want a big bed available, and sometimes I'm not and prefer sleeping alone in a single bed and using the other bed to pile my clothes on until I get around to hanging them up. When I'm not in a relationship, I tend to let my housekeeping skills (meager at best) to really slide.

O.K. Now, cut to another scene, happening simultaneously, wherein I decide to take a re-birthing workshop, since I'm always looking for ways to help me understand who the hell I am and why, for example, I want two beds that have the choice of either being together or apart.

Don't know much about the complexities of the politics (big picture) of the Internet, but I imagine that the freedoms we hope to continue enjoying and exploring here are preserved and protected in the same way all freedom is preserved and protected.

So I quote here from a post by Stanford Law Professor Lawrence Lessig as part of a blog conversation the purpose of which is irrelevant to me. What is relevant is what he said, some of which is quoted by b!X (which is how I found Lessig's entire post), and some of which (the part that I think is most important) I quote here:

My point is that if this community does not begin to spend at least as much time as it spends watching Hollywood movies fighting Hollywood, or to spend at least as much money as it gives DSL providers on those who fight broad based control , then this extraordinary space that you..... built will be taken away. Not by superior blogs, and not by witty /. postings. But in the old-fashioned way: through regulators who have been bent by the forces of those who can and do buy Washington.....

You say I should stop complaining, and open up a blog..... I say that in addition to blogging, and coding and whatever, we've got to do something that matters to these people who think a blog is a typo. You, or we, or someone has got to get this community to deliver a different kind of message. One that east coast coders can read; one that says: we won't let the freedom we ..... built be regulated away.

And it's not just a matter of getting to the point where everyone in Congress has his/her own blog, although that certainly wouldn't hurt the cause -- if, of course, their blogs all had a Comments feature and if we all used it. Heh.

August 20, 2002

Heh. George Partington's got the goods on Frank Paynter in his intervew with the prolific interviewer himself. The microscope gets turned around and Frank shows his warts and all.

If you know Golby's blog, you know what I mean. No matter what, you should go and trip out with Mike in the interview he did with Frank Paynter. It's Golby at his careening finest as he zips through life, the universe, and everything sacred -- all to the tunes of Bob Dylan. Part I is here. Part II here. Keep an eye out for whatever whips by next.

August 19, 2002

My mother is obsessed with the Pope. Of course she is. She's 86, Catholic, and Polish. She's had the Global Catholic Network filling the television screen full-time since Wednesday, when the Pope began his visit to his homeland.

Hey, we all have our obsessions, and she's certainly welcome to hers. But what's driving me crazy, is she tries like crazy to make it mine. She wants every episode of his trip videotaped, but, of course, she doesn't know how to work a vcr, even if I set it to the channel and tell her to press "record" when she wants to start taping.

And it's not just the Pope. It's everything she believes that I don't; everything she sees as desirable that I don't. It's been like this all of our lives. So, why, my friends often ask me, am I doing this.

Why do I live across the hall, almost constantly available to someone I wouldn't have as a friend if she weren't my mother? My only answer is -- because she is my mother. When I needed her financial support she was there for me. When my kids got sick and I had to go to work, she got on a train and came up to take care of them. She's my mother. In my family, we take care of our old people for as long as we can.

It just seems so bizarre to me these days. My country's a mess. We are on the verge of destroying the planet. Yet, each day of my life is a separate reality, a world unto itself -- decisions to be made, appointments to keep, food to prepare. I do what has to be done and find small ways to give myself something to keep myself going. I blog. I take sewing workshops (just started making a "bog coat"). I get ready to sell my shawls and hats at what probably will be my last craft fair. I begin taking over a partnership in a local dance magazine for which I write -- which will mean more writing, more editing, learning how to do some things in Quark, and getting out to cover dance events in the region. I keep trying to create a life that has creative meaning for me around an existence that has at its core major responsibilities for taking care of someone who adds very little to what my life is or can be.

I tell my friends that, if there's such a thing as karma, I'm building up some major stash of it. And, if there isn't, well, I guess I will feel that I'll have done what I believe was the right thing to do. Because I do believe in the golden rule. Because I can't save the world, but I can make one person's life -- at least the last part of it -- a little easier.

But I'm sure glad this Pope stuff is going to be over today. Then she can just play the tapes over and over again. She does know how to press "play" and "stop."

Burningbird pointed to an Open Letter to America from a Canadian published in the Baltimore Chronicle that holds the mirror of truth up to the face of America. I don't disagree with anything he says. No wonder I'm depressed. This is only some of what he sees reflected out to the world by this sad excuse for a free democratic nation:

With your government's support, crooked multinationals like Monsanto buy up the world's water supplies, and take possession of the world's vegetation through Frankenstein technology already known to cause illness.

These very same money men are the ones who, through unmonitored and unrepresentative world committees, are driving countries like Argentina into hopeless debt and social upheaval. These greedy overlords are creating strife and suffering on a scale too tragic for words in nation after nation. Just look at Africa.

Read the rest here. It's the end of the world as we know it. And I don't feel fine.

August 18, 2002

An interesting comment from a female friend of mine, whose male live-in significant other has just finished undergoing treatment for prostate cancer, which included injections of female hormones. He tends to be a pretty aggressive guy, and he reported that he could actually physically and psychologically feel his aggressiveness diminishing as the hormones took effect. Just another example of how we are at the mercy of our biology and chemistry. (And maybe how we don't have to be if we don't want to. And I'm not advocating that aggressive men take female hormones!)

As b!X quotes from a Harper's article by Lewis Lapham, who refers to the Wall Street Journal's reference to America's lost "ethical compass," I think about how so many of the "compasses" that we humans have built to guide our journeys are also lost -- or at least malfunctioning. The religions that were supposed to point the way toward moral, caring, inspiring behaviors don't work when and where they're most needed. The educational systems that are supposed to point the way toward meaningful, fulfilling, life-enhancing work and life-enhancing lives have lost the sense of that direction. The sciences to which we look for answers and solutions are being swept away by the greedy seas of politics and markets. The family, clan, and tribal systems that once guided, protected, and nurtured our hearts are rusting away.

So, what do we have left? Maybe only our individuals selves and what stabilizing connections we can forge with other individuals. Maybe only our shared readings of the stars to keep us from drowning (or from drowning alone). Am I feeling Apocalyptic? Yes I am.

Meanwhile, I'm glad that I gave b!X a subscription to Harper's for last Christmas/Solstice. He always pulls out the really good stuff.

August 16, 2002

On the surface, she's probably as unlike me as possible: she's younger, I'm older; she's loves the cutting edge of various technologies, I'm lucky if I can put the code in for a link without screwing it up; she's not into "girly" things; I color my hair blonde, wear make-up, and have closets full of clothes and shoes (including sexy ballroom dance stuff); she's not into having kids; I'm really into my two and my new grandson; she likes Tolkein, I like Zimmer Bradley. She's happily married; I'm once-married-long-ago and now happily single. She probably drinks coffee (don't all techies?) and I only drink tea. But I'll bet that if we sat down with each other across our libations of choice, we'd find that we laugh at the same things; want the same things from the world in general and the opposite sex in particular; and have very strong senses of who we are, where our strength and "power" lie, and how we want to exercise them. We also use our voices, clearly, confidently, and appropriately. I it would be interesting to find out how those voices harmonize in a two-way conversation. It's not likely to happen, given where we live and how we live. But I still think it would be way cool!

Dorothea Salo makes the following comment on Blog Sisters to Denise Howell's post (see previous post here):

I really want to feel cynical about the rah-rah aren't-women-great tone of this article. I really do. I really do.

I know some great guys and some terrible women, I admit. (I left my last job in large part because of a real dragon lady.) Still, I have to admit I think this article is on to something. Whether it's all she's cracking it up to be I'm not sure -- but there's a nugget of truth there

And I add the following:
Having fought the good fight back in the seventies, having worked for a dragon lady and a superb female manager (but not one male boss who could hold a candle to the latter), and now watching and reading about where women in the workworld are today -- their struggles, their frustrations, the attitudes toward them -- I see that we haven't come a long way at all. The "good" guys out there understand what's going on and don't perpetuate the "good o'l boy, boys-will-be-boys" crap. The rest of 'em? Well, I for one am not going to let them get away with it. We should have the right to own our powerful female sexuality and not be demeaned for it, even in a (supposedly) spirit of public playfulness. (I do, however, believe that anything goes in private between consenting adults.)

I repeat all of this here because I think it needs to be repeated. Over and over again in many different forms and forums.

August 15, 2002

(The title of this post is a Comment to Halley's Suitt's well-written piece.)

My thanks to Blog Sisters colleague Denise Howell who quoted a section other than what follows from an excellent article by Margaret Heffernan in the August edition of Fast Company: The Female CEO ca. 2002.

I'm using the following quote because it describes just one of the many effects that sexist male attitudes have on women who really don't want to be treated as 'babes' (well, except maybe in some playful private moments.)

'Neutron Jack' Welch and 'Chainsaw Al' Dunlap may have inspired men, but macho leadership styles continue to alienate women. The Boom Boom Room of Smith Barney was more luxurious than the cubicles of software startups, but I've talked to too many women in both environments who have been -- and who continue to be -- subjected to routine sexual harassment. I've even unwittingly hired some of the perps -- liberated guys who definitely know better.

The truth is, the macho exhilaration of coding through the night holds no charm for female engineers. For women executives, racing rental cars around the hotel parking lot is not a cheap thrill. But you will find women enduring these events -- sometimes even competing to join them -- because they know that it's where the important information always surfaces. When women are asked to name the most significant factors that are holding them back from advancement, the top two answers are 'exclusion from informal networks of communication' and 'male stereotyping and preconceptions of women.'

Nuff said.

August 14, 2002

Tom Shugart, one of my contemporaries in Blogdom, is still trying to get a Comment feature on his weblog, so I often simply email him such things. Here he refers to what I sent him in one of my emails. And I point this out because it supports the direction of my ruminations about what kind of men are truly attractive to women, make us want to open our arms, our hearts, and our other body parts to what they offer us and the world.

....I get taken up short by something like this and then really get annoyed -- at the everything from the juvenile attitude and form of expression to the impact that such (even though small potatoes compared to what we get in the popular media) has on how the world objectifies women. And then I wind up in an email blitz that really doesn't change anyone's mind and wastes too much of my time and energy on such "boys will be boys" posturing.

Maybe it's because someone at Blog Sisters recently referred to the Native American focus on the Seventh Generation. The Native American Seventh Generation philosophy says that decisions you make today (and also the behavior you model) should take into consideration the impact that these decisions (behaviors) will have on the next seven generations to come after us.

I've been gathering up the children's books that I still have from when my kids were young to give to my grandson. (I know that he's not old enough yet, but I need to make room in my bookshelves.) I have copies of an illustrated two-volume set of Grimm's and Anderson's fairy tales that were mine from the 1940s, and a Mother Goose book that was my daughter's in the 60s. At b!X's request ages ago, I sent him his Winnie the Pooh and Dr. Seuss books, so Little Lex is on his own for them.

Oddly enough, b!X called me tonight asking if I still had a book that he remembered from his childhood that included the rhyme about Winkin, Blinkin, and Nod. I had been looking all over for that book but hadn't been able to figure out what I did with it. As we were on the phone and he was describing the book -- big, blue, in a slip-in cardboard cover -- I looked over in the corner of my bookcase, and there it was: a 1955 edition of The Illustrated Treasury of Children's Literature, edited by Margaret Martingnon, still in great shape. He's trying to track a copy down so that he can read the stories to the toddler that he takes care of. Our family heirloom copy, of course, will go to Lex. But I think first I'm going to read through it, again, myself.

I wish that I knew what became of a large-sized nursery rhyme book I had as a kid. The one thing I remember was a rhyme about a girl who played with matches, and there was an illustration of her running away with her hair on fire and a look of sheer terror on her face. And another about a girl who was always stretching her neck and watching what everyone else was doing. The illustration at the end was of this girl with a neck so long that she had to wheel her head around in a wheel barrow. I had nightmares about those rhymes for years. I can still visualize the illustrations. I'd love to look at them now and see if they're still as scarey as they seemed back then. I have a feeling I got rid of that book because I didn't want my kids to have nightmares too. Hmph.

As final note, one of the books I left as part of my bookcrossing.com stuff was picked up and logged in on that site. This is so cool!

August 11, 2002

Remember Abbie Hoffman's struggle to get his book by that name published and distributed back in 1971? No? Well, you can read about it here and also download a free copy. Abbie has won out after all.

Good ol' Abbie came to mind as I was formatting the book marks that I inserted into the books I'm leaving around as my part in the BookCrossing project. My lead line is 'Take This Book.' Not quite the revolutionary spirit that Abbie tried to stir up, but the best I can do at this point.

I left two books in different rest rooms at the Empire State Plaza in Albany, one in my doctor's office, one at a shopping center bus stop, and one on a bench at the entrance to a Hannaford supermarket. I have a whole pile of more books that need to have bookmarks inserted. I never throw a book out, even if it's one I couldn't stand to finish. This just seems like a great way to get all these paperbacks out of my already crowded little apartment and not feel guilty about getting rid of them.

It's a far cry from what Abbie had in mind, but I think he probably would think it was a pretty good idea anyway.

Don't blame me. Shelley started it, but I'll be damned if I'm going to be left out.

So, I'm contributing a body part to the accumulating pile being offered (to Rage Boy's voodoo gods perhaps?) to get the ol' guy back at his keyboard. Too bad that Gary Turner beat me to offering the septum; I have a newly revamped one and am very aware of mine at the moment.

Instead, then, I offer the commonly ignored and uncommonly inelegant elbow, both the sensuous, sensitive inner and the sad, age-roughened outer. Let's bend some elbows in honor of Rage Boy and bellow a few "get off you ass"es in mellow sodden harmony.

I've given you the elbow, Rage Boy. Nudge. Nudge.

Join the campaign. Follow Shelley's supportive lead and get the word out to Gonzo Guy.

August 09, 2002

Over on Blog Sisters, lots of posts telling stories about the abuse of women by men and the systems they control, from personal stories to newspaper accounts. And it is not just the women whose hearts and souls are forever damaged; the children of those families have to struggle with psychological wounds for the rest of their lives.

These are disturbing stories, but stories that need to be told and heard. In his book If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him, Sheldon Kopp has a section likening the story telling that goes on in the Canterbury Tales to the kind of story-sharing that we all need to do as fellow pilgrims on our journey through Iife. Like Chaucer’s travelers, we keep each other company for a while, fellow pilgrims sharing our stories, laughing, crying, and learning with each other.

I know that there are plenty of men who are not abusers. I know that there are men who also have been hurt, whose hearts yearn for the same safety and loving connections for which women yearn. I know that there are male bloggers who post on their own sites about personal issues. At one point, Blog Sisters’ creator issued a challenge to the guys on the Blog to form a Blog Brothers – a gang blog where men could engage in conversations about the challenging or disturbing of painful parts of their personal lives – the kinds of conversations women seem to be much more comfortable having but from which men could certainly benefit just as well. All we heard back was silence.

But that was before some of the younger and more open male bloggers took their places on the blogscene – guys like Richard Cody, Tom Bolton, George Partington, Ray Sweatman. So, how about it guys. Might it be the right time to give the Blog some deeper insights into the male heart? Might you be the brave ones to stand together next to the Sisters and show another other side of the human story?

What we are called is what identifies us. Names. On Blog Sisters, a couple of lengthy posts about names -- about decisions to hyphenate married names – or not; to take the husband’s name – or not. What we call ourselves is important. Our name identify us, calls up an impression or image in the mind of someone hearing or seeing our name.

I posted before about b!X. When my daughter was little, we called her Missy. When she was in college, she informed us that she wanted to be called Melissa. It was important to her. It was a statement of her adult identity. When she married, she chose to take her husband’s last name. Her choice. Her reasons. It was important to her. When I got divorced, I kept my husband’s last name because I wanted to keep the same last name as my children. Even after they were grown, I kept the name because by then that’s how I was known professionally. I didn’t want to confuse my public identity.

I never liked the name Elaine. My mother named me after the daughter of a friend of hers, and I never liked the girl very much. There are other Elaines who show up on Daypop. So, I think from now on, in blog Comments and other places in this community, I’m going to identify myself as Elaine of Kalilily. I noticed that some bloggers do that already, and I like that. It gives me a more specific identity. Elaine of Kalilily. Yes, I like that. It sounds important.

Well, at least www.blogsisters.com seems to be taking over my life these days. With our fearless leader and founder, Jeneane Sessum temporarily shifting her focus to family matters, I've taken over some of the daily stuff that she handled by herself for so long.

So many new members! So much discussion about choice! Lots of young moms creating their individual voices on our ever-growing gang blog.

But where are all the old-timers, our steadfast standbys, our loquacious ladies of the best of the Blog? Come back! Come back! The Sistahs need your nerve and verve too! We haven't changed the world yet!

But we are sure still trying!

August 07, 2002

Last night I went to a retirement party for a guy to has worked for General Electric for the past 40 years. I've known him for the past 15 or so as a ballroom dancer, having met him at a dance that was held despite a major northeast snowstorm. We were among the handful of dance fanatics who refused to let a mere snowstorm keep us off the floor.

Last night, I found out that he has been instrumental in both creating codes for the programs that power nuclear submarines and crucial in the processes for de-bugging codes written by others. He's a physicist by training and a brillinant programmer by talent and choice. I never knew that. I only knew that he loves to dance.

I went to the party with a long-time on-and-off dance partner, Nat Friedman, who retired last year from teaching mathematics at the State University and who is internationally known as a sculptor and an innovator in teaching how to integrate math and art. Many of our dance friends have no sense of his life off the dance floor.

I know lots of bloggers as bloggers. I know a little more about some of them from Frank Paynter's lively and probing interviews with them. One of the things I enjoy about blogging is witnessing the continued unfolding of the details that make up the personalities who populate the Blogosphere -- especially the ones who are not already well-known as net entities.

All that we are is so much more than we have time to share through our blogvoices.

While it's not that we bloggers are trying to hide, but let's face it -- most of us look at our blogs as pesonal space, like our own private house made out of glass, where anyone can look in, but we reserve the right to decide on whom to invite in beyond our front door. So this information from b!X disturbs me. I don't want my personal blog to make me the target of marketers. Of course, I know that it's started already, with stupid spam irrelevant-to-me emails about making money on the net. That's annyoying enough.

I like the idea of personal blogs avoiding and ignoring the mainstream activity of the Net, of constantly reinventing themselves, playfully experimenting in some uncluttered corner of the web. I don't like publicists invading my space. But maybe I have no choice. Bummer.

August 05, 2002

No, not religion. Blogging. Tom Shugart raises a point in this post that's been nagging at the back of my brain for a while. He asks:
I wonder--had the internet been available in the '60's--would the power of the protest have been deflected by people taking out their outrage in a flurry of blogposts? Would they have had the illusion--and only the illusion--of empowering themselves and changing history through the act of cross-blogging, when, in actuality, the only force that could have changed anything was the years of dogged determination, blood in the streets and campuses, defections to Canada, banishments from the family, willingness to spend time in the slammer?

Most of us use weblogging to create conversations with others who have similar inclinations and opinions. And these conversations give us personal encouragement and sustenance. In some cases, they even give us the support we need to make changes in our personal lives. But I don't see them making a big difference in the larger political world.

I wonder--if insightful, energetic, and vocal bloggers like b!X didn't have the Net, would they be actively working with Ralph Nader or with environmental action groups or some similar change-oriented organziations? Like Shugart, I'm wondering if blogging just gives us the illusion of being engaged in changing the world -- just a new version of opiate dreaming.

While this is going to sound contrary to my strong feminist persuasions, I have been known to admit that the two most useful skills I ever learned are typing and sewing. I can type as fast as I think. That's why I blog so much. I am fleet fingered, and, in my previous career as a writer faced with constant deadlines, I have found the typing skills I learned in high school to be invaluable.

In my role as mother, in my interests in costume construction, in my obsession with wearing clothes that fit well, in my years of gaining and losing a few pounds here and there, knowing how to sew has come in very handy as well.

I like to make something out of nothing, to take an old idea and give it a new spin. I like to work with color and texture, form and function.

That's why I also knit and crochet. When I retired, I officially registered as a small business so that I could sell what I make. I thought I would do a few craft fairs every year, and the first year I did. But I learned that what I really like is designing and making stuff. What I hate is the record keeping and the hard physical work of setting up and taking down a craft booth and all of the tedium that goes along with standing around all day waiting for someone to buy something. This October, I'll be doing my last big craft fair. At least I think that will be my last.

So, what exactly to I make and sell, you wonder.

One night several years ago, while I was still employed full-time, I saw Ally McBeal wearing a kind of short, snug-fitting lacey poncho. It looked like a circular shawl that you could slip over your head and it wouldn't fall off your shoulders. After a few false starts, I designed and made one of my own and wore it to work. That very day, two people asked me to make one for them. And so I did, and the next thing I knew I was getting more and more orders. So, I made a whole bunch of them and started a little craft business to sell my "spiral shawls." This is an example of one.

Last winter, in an effort to use up leftover yarn, I made a washable rolled brim hat that is adjustable. Then I made several and gave them away to my friends -- who wore them to work. Yup. People asked them where they got them etc. etc. Over the past several months, I've completed two dozen of my Indestructible Adjustable Hat, which I also will sell at the October craft fair.

I'm one of those people who can't just sit and watch the world go by. I have to keep my hands busy. If I don't, I eat.

Now I'm crocheting a Winnie the Pooh bear for my grandson and a sweater vest for my mother. I suppose I could clean the bathroom or weed out my books or organize my pantry. But those things don't make my hands happy.

August 04, 2002

Not that I know much about sailing; I've only been on a moving sailboat three or four times in my life, and always as a non-crewing guest. But I do know that when the winds are blowing every which way, you spend a lot of time tacking back and forth.

That's kind of how I feel as I read Frank Paynter's post about Tom Shugart's post about blogging about the war, not blogging about the war, and sometimes finding our little blogboats blandly becalmed.

I, too, get so tired of mentally wrestling with the absurdities and complexities of this War on Terra. That Big Picture is so damned depressing. How much more satisfying to blog about more pleasant things -- sweet grandsons and plans to see Bonnie Raitt and Lyle Lovette at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center tomorrow night.

And then I think -- this is boring. I'm even bored with myself. Why am I bothering to blog? We all go through these cycles. Big Picture. Little Picture. Boring Picture. Back to Blogging. It's the flow. We go with it.

I will blog about the war and link to posts that support my convictions about it. I will continue to tell my story. And I will bore myself. I will spend a lot of time tacking back and forth on this vast and windy BlogSea.

August 03, 2002

Marek left me a voice mail message this evening while I was doing my daughterly duty and getting my mom outside for some fresh air and socializing. He called to tell me that he got the get-well-we-love-you t-shirt I painted for him. He also blogged about it. You're welcome, Marek. I'm so glad to see you're out there again blogging those dots for us all to connect. Jeszcze raz!

August 02, 2002

One of my Blog Sisters pointed to this article about research linking a single gene -- that is affected by abuse in childhood -- to violent behavior by men.

The article states that The gene's effects were more difficult to study in girls, because it is found on the X chromosome. Females have two X chromosomes, while males have an X and a Y. Thus, in girls, the version of the gene found in one of their X chromosomes could cancel out the effects of the other. That may help explain why females in general are less prone to violent and criminal behavior, the team said.

What's interesting about the study is that, while the genetic potential for violence seems to be there in males, that potential needs an early environmental trigger to become active.

As the article explains, Simply having that version of the gene did not guarantee a boy would grow up to be a criminal. According to Terri Moffitt of King's College London and the University of Wisconsin, who helped lead the study, Its relation to aggression only emerged when we considered whether the children had been maltreated...... This suggests that the best strategy for preventing violence is to prevent child abuse.

Seems like a good example of how nature and nurture are the yin and yang of personality development.

August 01, 2002

(I also posted this on Blog Sisters.)

The gist of the program was that, according to studies that used MRI technology to track energy surges in the brains of males and females exposed to the same stimuli, the brains of each gender function differently. The result is that we respond to our world-based experiences differently. However, we can learn to find greater common ground. That's where nurturing, teaching, and modeling come in. I think that we all agree that we can learn to minimize the innate differences between genders so that we can work together to build better relationships and a better world in general; the problem, as many here have verbalized, is getting the guys to figure out how to neutralize some of that aggression-triggering testosterone. (And it's not that women are not also affected by their own testosterone levels. However women tend to have much lower levels than men.) Again, biology dictates where we begin; but the rest of our brains, in concert with our hearts and souls, can chart a much more positively connected course for our shared lives.

Burningbird (Shelley Powers) has resumed blogging, for reasons as valid and varied as were the reasons she stopped.

What got to me about what she had to say about why she changed her mind were two quotes from well-known bloggers. Comparing those quotes is very telling about the personalities of those who verbalized them.

Dave Winer: From there, I want to start an outline about what a weblog is, because there's more to say. Maybe it'll be a three-column table. In column 1, a topic. For example: Fact-checking. In the second column, how centralized journalism does it; and in the third column, how it works in the weblog world. That way, if someone understands how fact-checking works in the print world, they have a basis for understanding how it works when done in the open.

Dorothea Salo: Blog however you want, whenever you want, as often or as seldom as you want. Use as much or as little of the technology as you care to. Adhere to common blogging formats or not, as you choose. Watch the big bloggers or not; pay attention to bloglomerations or not. If you feel you need permission to do any of these things, you’ve got mine, no questions asked, not least because I don’t believe you need it.

Shelley remarks that both quotes encouraged her to return to blogging (for much different reasons, of course.) Whatever it takes, I say.