October 29, 2003

A while ago, Blogger offered free sweatshirts to BloggerPro users (which is what I was before switching to MT and which I guess I still am in their records). I ordered a Large, since I like my sweatshirts baggy. I washed it. I should have gotten an X-Large.

Everything seems to be shrinking -- the clothes I buy, the distances over which I reach out, the time and energy that I have to take care of the things I have to take care of, the spaces in my spinal discs through which the nerves wind their (not so merry these days) ways. I’ve even managed to get my weight and my blood pressure to shrink a little. But I just can’t seem to budge my midriff.

Everything feels stuck in the middle.

And that’s why I’m going to take a break from blogging -- something I never thought I would ever feel like doing.

I’ve got to start physical therapy for a herniated disc and check in with a neurosurgeon to make sure that I I don’t need surgery. When my new Dell computer arrives, I have to set that up and transfer files from my old barely functioning machine. Gotta do some house cleaning, especially my refrigerator, which hasn’t been cleaned out since I moved here three years ago. Maybe if I get rid of the clutter, I’ll feel better, be able to clear out my head as well, start thinking creatively again, start writing again the way I used to, with clarity and craft -- with personality and purpose -- with poetry.

So, with this post, my weblog shrinks, temporarily, into nothingness, the Void before the Word.

Don’t forget me. I’ll be back. Bigger and better, I hope. Except for my midriff, for which I will continue to have other eternally-springing hope.

October 28, 2003

My dad (deceased now for almost two decades) enjoyed being a public figure in his community, and he enjoyed being a community-builder. He served as toastmaster for all kinds of banquets and dinners and had a store of jokes for every occasion. He liked to get things done, liked to help others, and, while he used the "system" to succeed in his efforts, he didn't abuse it. While he was comfortable negotiating and compromising, he never (as far as I know) lied or manipulated or try to put one over on any one or any system. When his mother and his father started to fail physically, he was there to help them remain living in their home until they died. And he was with them when that happened.

In many ways my father's genes live on in me -- and, as I see more and more -- in my kids. (Except that I don't have that sense of humor.) There is little in our lives that we feel paranoid about and feel needs to be hidden from public scrutiny. We don't lie on forms that we fill out, don't try to hide who we are, what we believe, or what we do with our lives. And we don't try to make each other into people that we're not.

For many years, I know that I disappointed my dad. When I married, I eloped so he was never able to have the big Polish wedding bash for me that I know he looked forward to. Eventually, as I matured, I found myself following the example both his genes and his actions set for me. And I also see them reflected in b!X's life -- all that "civic responsibility" stuff that was such a big part of my dad's life.

I often think how different my life would be now if my dad were still alive and well and living in Sun City or some such place, organzing and helping and making everyone laugh at the absurdities of life as a senior citizen.

Instead, I am beleaguered by his genes, struggling, as he must have as well, to care and help and get thing done while still trying to hold onto personal vitality and integrity and hope while surrounded by the tendencies of very different genes.

My dad died in his early seventies. That's less than a decade away for me. I sure hope that there are some of his genes that didn't make it this far.

October 26, 2003

I'm on my laptop, which doesn't have half the software that I need to so stuff that I want to do. But my other computer still isn't working right. I guess the cute young guy who said he fixed my machine was as incompetent as he was adorable. Maybe it's time to junk my old machine and start over. Blech!

Meanwhile, I know there's all kinds of stuff going on among various blogger friends that I wish I had the energy to reach out and do more than link to. But I'm so tired. Tired of using every ounce of energy to be patient with my mother, who insists that she can hear just fine and see just fine, despite the fact that all of her medical exams show that such is not the case. Tired of not having technology that does even the simple things that I want it to do without locking up everything else. Tired of having all kinds of ideas that I want to write about and not having the solitude to think those ideas through and craft them into actual sentences that might interest someone.

Man, I'm outta here. Gonna take a hot shower and try to figure out what to do. What to do. What to do. Next.

October 23, 2003

Without question an Internet pioneer. He bust onto the scene in 1995, in the earliest days of the Web, to lead a major online protest against the Communications Decency Act. His "Hands Off! the Net" petition, which garnered more than 100,000 signatures at a time when the entire net population was not much bigger, was a landmark moment. In the process, he defined the basic methods that online organizers and viral-marketers employ to this day.- ----- Jonah Seiger

That's my favorite son to whom Seiger, co-founder of Mindshare Internet Campaigns, is referring. Jonah Seiger worked on Internet-related public policy issues with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and with Congressman Edward J. Markey (D-MA) on the House Subcommittee Telecommunications and Finance from 1993 to 1994.

That's where his path crossed with b!X's, as b!X put his energies into being one of the masterminds behind the first response to the Communications Decency Act (for which he was featured in Rolling Stone magazine).

My path crossed with b!X's on October 25, 1969 when he slipped out of me -- already loudly commenting on the cold bright unnerving world around him that continues to amaze him and frustrate him and make him care enough to say so. And that was just the beginning. In high school, with the early Mac he bought with money left to him by my Dad, he created, edited, and published (with xeroxing support from yours truly) the "Myra Stein Underground Press," a publication named after a legendary teacher in his school who supposedly left her classroom one day and no one ever saw her after that. He started another underground newspaper on his college campus, and today his weblog, The One True b!X's PORTLAND COMMUNIQUE is (in his own words)

the culmination of a long-standing desire to maintain what is best termed a "civic weblog" based in and on the city of Portland, Oregon.

As a civic weblog, The One True b!X's PORTLAND COMMUNIQUE focuses on neither personal details nor meta-blogging about weblogs, but on the politics and culture of the Rose City -- from local government at City Hall, to architecture and design, to economic development, to livability issues, to local activism, to the Portland music scene.

Whether an item consists of commentary upon stories from other news sources, or original reporting on local events, The One True b!X's PORTLAND COMMUNIQUE is an experiment in independent civic journalism as practiced on the Web.

I figured that, since I forgot to mail his birthday card, what with all that trying to get various machinery of mine up and running, the least I could do for his birthday was to publicly acknowledge my pride in who he has become. I think that, as various bloggers debate the contributions that blogging technology will continue (or not continue) to make, particularly in the area of journalism, b!X is demonstrating exactly how a weblog can be used to empower a local community. Independent Civic Journalism. Yes. After a lot of us personal bloggers fall by the wayside or coalesce even further into small in-groups, after the metabloggers slip farther off onto the edges of the net to continue contemplating their blognavels, independent civic journalists will be the ones to prove the fundamental value of weblogs to keeping citizens informed, connected, and involved.

Now, I'm not saying that b!X is the perfect son. Far from it. (And I've always been a far cry from the perfect mother, too.) He doesn't keep in touch, and most of the time I have no idea what's going on in his life. And he needs to find consistent employment. On the other hand, he got me into blogging, designed and hosts my weblog, and got me to figure out how to post this from my laptap, since I haven't had a chance to reconnect my big machine (which is fixed, or so the cute young geek technician told me). And he's ethical and moral and supports Howard Dean.

And so I send loving birthday wishes across the country to my son, b!X, who, for sure, makes this bloggermom proud.

(I'm posting this two days early because I'm heading out to Boston early tomorrow for what probably will be the last visit with my grandson for a while. )

October 20, 2003

This is not your resident crone speaking. This is, in fact, said resident crone's dutiful son, The One True b!X, posting on behalf of your regularly-scheduled Kalilily to explain that due to computer troubles, she may be offline for a currently-indeterminate length of time.

On the other hand, she may successfully plug her laptop into her cable modem and be back before you know it.

Either way, you have all been properly notified of the goings-on.

Carry on.

October 19, 2003

I'm telling you, Michael Moore and Howard Dean would make a great team for changing the direction in which our country is being pushed. Look what Moore's doing now and send him Howard Dean's name.

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you got 'til it's gone

While, for the past month, my mother's been hearing old Polish songs that she insists some neighbor keeps playing just about 24/7 (right!), for the past several days, I keep hearing the Amy Grant version of "Big Yellow Taxi" played on my radio.

Every once in a while in my life those two lines from the song pop up in my head. I never knew what the title of the song was until I started noticing it aired and announced recently.

The point here is that so much is going, going, soon to be gone -- Big Picture and little picture. Some of it's invevitable. The slow erosion of time's flow. My mom's vision and hearing. My teeth. (And now I've got some sort of "foot flop," and I'm going tomorrow to get an MRI to try to find out what's going on -- or rather going -- in my spine and/or knee.) That's the little picture that, when we're young, we don't want to look at. That's why it's important to enjoy what you have while you have it.

In the Big Picture, the Bush administration is doing its best to metaphorically turn every possible paradise into a parking lot.

OK, America, all together now, let's sing:

Oh, now, tHEy paved paradise and tHEy put up a parking lot
Shoo-bop-bop-bop-bop
Hey, steam rolled paradise and put up a parking lot
Shoo-bop-bop-bop-bop

Don't it always seem to go
That you don't know what you've got till it's gone
They paved paradise and put up a parking lot
Shoo-bop-bop-bop-bop

On the other hand, in the "Hi and Lois" cartoon in today's paper, their son Chip observes "Life is like drivin' down a highway full of potholes, looking in a rose-colored rear-view mirror." While that probably is true in many circumstances -- especially little picture ones, it's definitely not true of the nature of our Big Picture natural environment.

And, while I'm pointing to today's local paper, you've got to take a look at Diane Cameron's column, in which she fashions a political metaphor out of one of my favorite personal icons: shoes -- ending her pointed analogy with:

My husband and I were in Canada last week. Walking through the high-end shops on Toronto's Bloor Street, I explained to him about women's footwear; how some shoes are stylish to wear while others are beautiful simply as objects. The difference between craft and art. But some times you find a shoe that is both beautiful and comfortable.

Are the Democrats out of step? They might take a lesson from Prince Charming; it is about the shoes. But keep in mind: You can't kick a cowboy very far if you're wearing sandals.

On Wild Card last night, insurance fraud investigator Zoe Busiek (Joely Fisher), after spiking an attacker with a strategically placed karate kick, smiles to her partner and says something like "Now you know why I wear high heels."

So, my fellow American females, let's get out our metaphorical spike heeled boots and start walkin' over that paradise-paving president of ours!!

October 18, 2003

I know that Mother Theresa is for sure a saint. But I think Michael Moore is too. My Man Moore continues to tirelessly seek out the diseases in our failing government and economic system. And they are legion. (This sick world needs a lot more like both of those two healers.)

At non-blogger myrln's suggestion, who was repeating Michael Moore's suggestion, I Googled "dead peasants insurance" and "senior death discount" --and discovered two more ways our existing power systems are demonstrating their disdain for us little guys (without whom they would have no base of power).

I just don't understand why all of us little guys are not out there adding to Howard Dean's growing and deserving power base. While Dean uses the internet in a blue collar way for his campaign, there are other politicos who do differently. Like Hillary Clinton who recently held a live online chat, but to participate, you had to donate a $1000. Smaller donors and reporters were not allowed in. I wish she weren't buying into the old ways of doing political business, but it looks as though she is.

Michael Moore and Howard Dean -- now there's a pair who, together, might be able to show up and clean up the mess in this country. Personally, I wish there were a female presence in that effort, but I don't see any out there with the metaphorical balls.

October 16, 2003

I'm a hands-on person. I like to cook, knit, make things, re-make things, hug, touch. Even though blogging requires my hands on the keyboard, it's not the same feeling for me as the other hands-on stuff that I do. There's too much physical distance between my reaching out and that sensory-deprived cybertouch.

But I find myself joining in Gary Turner's (who lives in the British Isles) campaign to help out Chris Locke (who lives in Colorado) and is a very very close virtual friend of my Blog Sister Jeneane Sessum (who lives in Georgia.)

So I bought the $20 Save RageBoy 2004 calendar, even though I already have a perfectly good calendar that I bought in the dollar store last month; even though I have gotten in Chris' virtual face more often than not lately; even though I could think of a dozen things that cost $20 that I'd like to buy for my grandson; even though…….

I am remembering at this moment my first communication with Chris Locke -- an email I sent to him several years ago (even before Cluetrain was on sale) after my son, b!X put me on a "Six Degrees of Separation" list/site on which Chris Locke put him. I had no idea who Chris Locke, was, so I sent him an email saying I was b!X’s mom and was wondering who Chris Locke was. Locke sent me back a one-sentence reply: "I didn’t know b!X had a mother."

Not only does b!X have a mother, but this mother constantly struggles with a tendency to want to mother the world, and that includes Chris Locke, whose ability to write like this -- I think -- should be nurtured and encouraged and supported.

I can't mother the world. I certainly can't mother Locke. But I can, and did, buy the calendar that I will always keep as a hands-on reminder of the virtual community that I’m a part of right now.

Namaste, bubala.

I've shifted a little on my position about the ability of weblogging to generate a meaningful community beyond moral support.

Just one example close to home (well, not so physically close to home because it's on the other side of the country from me): I noticed on my son b!X's site that he periodically gets both donations and other contributions from his readers (which is great because he's usually unemployed). Of course, his weblog is geared toward supporting citizen involvement in an actual, real-world community But the fact that his blog readers see his contribution to the real-world community worthy of reciprocation extends his personally supportive community.

And Elayne Riggs' comment on my post below reminds me of the value of the blogging community for networking purposes, especially employment. As a matter of fact, in the near future I'm going to see if any of my Boston-based blogger friends might be able to help a former student of ex-husband's find another job in the area.

We need lots of different kinds of communities in our lives. Blogging surely fills some of those needs.

October 15, 2003

Remember the music of theme song for the Beverly Hillbillies? Heh.

Come and listen to my story 'bout a boy named Bush.
His IQ was zero and his head was up his tush.
He drank like a fish while he drove all about.
But that didn't matter 'cuz his daddy bailed him out.
DUI, that is.
Criminal record.
Cover-up.

Y'all come vote now.
Ya hear?

In the email I in which I received the above from a friend, it looks as though it was written by
Roger Owen Green
Librarian, NYS Small Business Development Center
R.Green@nyssbdc.org

If I'm wrong, I apologize to the actual lyricist.

Nevertheless:
"Patriotism means being loyal to your country all the time and to its government when it deserves it." - Mark Twain

October 14, 2003

Watch out for Community! Marek J writes. Because Community Makes Ends Meet!

He's talking about the community enabled by technology -- the one that gives each person with a computer a voice that can be sent and heard and responded to 'round the world. But this is a community of literally untouchables. It is real but has no tangibility. And in this community, it's too often so hard to tell what's true and what's camouflage, what's real and what's illusion, what's factual and what's just wishful thinking or self-deception.

In this blog community some connect with honesty and some hide behind fantasy. We can use our voices to sound like a community, but we really don't have much of a chance to act like actual members of a real community.

When you live alone and you're vomiting and fainting and have to get to the emergency room (as happened to one of my local friends this weekend) the virtual community is not much help. She needed someone to get over to her house, help her call an amulance, clean up the messes she left on her bedding and floor. Someone in her real, actual community of physical friends went over and took care of it all. And then I went to the emergency room to pick her up, take her home, and make sure she had what she needed.

When widely loved blogger and "virtual" friend Burningbird went into the hospital for gall bladder surgery, none of us from the virtual community was there to hold her actual hand, drive her back and forth -- do all of those things that we might have wanted to do and what one usually looks to her community to help her with. But we weren't there; couldn't be there except in thought, in voice. When the currents of real life knock us off our feet, leave us in a tangible mess, "voice" can't do anything to help beyond giving moral support.

We need more than this community of voices in our lives. We need real, actual, people with bodies as well as hearts and voices to help us with the things that life is really, physically, actually about.

For those of us who live alone, this blogging community is an important connection to other voices, other minds. But the process of actual, physical, tangible living requires so much more than that kind of connection, that kind of friendship, that kind of community.

Watch out for (virtual) Community! Don't expect more from it than it can give.

October 12, 2003

I'm exhausted. But I'm pissed about being used. I'm really tired. Got back from working a big craft fair for two days and found out that one of my best friends was in the emergency room and needed to be picked up and brought home. So I did. And then set her up so that she could get through the night all right.

I'm really tired. And I'm sick and tired of RageBoy's inability to move on past his perennial arrested development stage. I'm a little late picking up on this, but, even though I ignored his effort to get lots of us to join his childish and hurtful prank against Dave Winer, he managed to post a comment on my weblog that, for all practical purposes, enlists me in his anti-Winer campaign. I resent that. And I'm tired. But not tired enough to edit the comment to negate his devious manipulation of Google on my unsupported behalf.

I'm really tired. My feet hurt, my back aches, and Locke's sneakiness a big pain in my neck, which a motrin and an edit will get rid of. Too bad he can't get rid of that nasty streak of his. And too bad his other blogger friends don't stand up to him as well.

I'm really tired.

October 11, 2003

I just got home from the first day of the two-day craft fair that I do once a year to sell my shawls. It's held at a huge apple farm/orchard run by a young woman who was an eighth grade student of mine back in the '70s. I'm tired. My back hurts. I'm asking myself why I do this, since I barely break even. I like making the stuff, so I have to do something with it all. Sell it at a craft fair once a year. Groan.

And while I've been finishing up, packing up, driving out, unpacking, standing, selling, sitting, selling, driving ....., all kinds of neat stuff has been going on in the lives of my blog neighbors.

Moj przyjaciel, Marek J. became a citizen of the U.S. Maybe there's hope for this country yet. You go, guy!

Frank Paynter launched a brilliantly visual interview with Burningbird/Shelley, who is probably still in the hospital after her surgery. Jeneane posts a poem to Shelley that echoes how so many of us feel about Bb. You go, Bb!

Jeneane and George took a tough stand on behalf of their daughter Jenna and her right to be educated as an individual. You go, guys.

And Thierry Robin, a free-lance reporter from France has gone to Iraq...

...in the company of three female members.... My favorite subject is the condition of women and girls in Iraq. I'm going to listen to their words, silences, claims and hopes. I will try to seize their glances, to catch a moment in the life of these women, of these girls in the turmoil of this war which does'nt finish. I'm going to meet them as if I were visiting the members of my own humane family. That's the main thing. It does not matter what these women will dare or be able to tell me, what they will reveal about their life or inner feelings. Try to decipher the language of the human heart in such a situation will give all the depth to this work, like a unique testimony of our time.

She's supposed to be reporting back in her weblog. You go, girl!

And now, back to my crafty life beyond the blog -- not anywhere near as relevant as the rest. But it's the only one I have right now. I'm going.

October 09, 2003

Traveling the super-connected Internet superhighway is a lot like driving our high-speed interstate road systems, so asserts Diane Cameron, a local newspaper columnist, in last Sunday's Times Union. (Warning: The TU only archives for seven days, so the link to her piece won't work after that.)

She writes:
If you really want to see changes in the geography, culture or climate that make up the United States, you have to take the pokey slow roads.

There's a parallel here for the Internet, our information superhighway. We've developed the habit of zipping around to search for info without ever leaving our desks. You can Google your way to facts and data and deals, and think you've learned something. But that's often as bland and indiscriminate as spending five days seeing five states distinguished only by their rest stops and speed limits.

So, in the context of that analogy, it seems to me that weblogs are the by-ways that we can meander to find out what it's really like out there in the global hinterlands. Unlike the fast food of IRC, weblogs give you a chance to savor the peculiar spices of the locale, take in the sights. Sometimes you have to kick your way through the garbage, but by the time you leave, you take with you a definite sense that you've been somewhere unique. If you leave a comment to show that you've been there, you've left your own footprint in the sands of that local history. Now that's connectivity.

Ken of ipadventures recently posted some good stuff about "connectivity." big picture and little picture, from global signal to personal access. Near the end of his post he says:

What we seek is a signal. A connection. The network isn't about technology. It isn't about business. It isn't about profit. It's about connections. End points are people and people connect, Sometimes we connect with machines to gather information. Often times we connect with other people because we share some link, or bond, or passing interest.

As I looked around the attendees at BloggerCon last Sunday, I couldn't help think that I was probably the oldest one there -- certainly the oldest female (who were definitely in the minority). As I experienced Joi Ito's session on "Community" (and it was an "experience," what with an IRC chat -- that included people in the room as well as others -- happening on the screen behind Joi as he RSSed and Wiki'd and Wifi'd and excitedly shared information that went completely over my aging head) I couldn't help feeling that I was creeping along in the right lane while the rest of the traffic sped by me on that superhighway. I'm never going to catch up.

After the blue-haired boy in the straightjacket and his handlers stumbled out of the "T" last Sunday, their seats were taken by a couple of older teenaged girls who were instant messaging on their digital cell phone. I can barely program my non-digital cell phone to do one-touch dialing, and I need my magnifying glasses to see the screen anyway. My engine is stalling. I'm pulling over to the shoulder.

Joi Ito talked about how people with instant messaging no longer have to make long range plans to get together. Now you can instant message all of your friends, see who's available to do something and meet-up spontaneously. Fast and faster and fastest. It seems to me that it's all about connecting without really CONNECTING.

This technology is for the young and fast. The ones who grew up with with eye-bytes of MTV, with the machine-gun conversations of IRC, the get-there-quick-and-don't-ask-questions information superhighway.

I've copied Diane Cameron's entire column into an extension to this entry because she brings up implications for education that I think are crictical.

Me, I'm staying on the slow roads. I'm enjoying the by-ways of blogs, where I can linger and converse and find out what it's like to really live somewhere else (big picture and little picture).

October 08, 2003

In his comment to my post below, RageBoy (with whom I briefly shook hands at BloggerCon) says I seemed to him like a "Nice Lady."

Now, those are two words I won't mind seeing coming out of the mouths of grandson's future friends. But, c'mon, is that what a 63-year-old former funky disco queen who purposely wears tight jeans wants to hear?

I used to be delighted when my own kids' friends called me a "cool mom." I've also been called "arrogant," "nasty," and "hot" by various friends at various times. But "nice?" And "lady?" (shudder) Is that how far I've fallen?

I often tell my friend P that she's too nice, and she knows that I don't mean that as a compliment.

Call me a "screaming-mimi careening-out-of-control psychotic wolverine," and, in a strange way, I feel validated. Call me a "nice lady" and I start wondering where I lost my edge and if I should put in my order for the rocking chair now.

October 06, 2003

I didn’t make the first day of BloggerCon 2003 for lots of reasons, including the cost for a day of sessions to which I felt no connection. And for me, that’s what blogging is about: connection. So, instead, I spent the first day strengthening two of the most important connections in my life…..

….who are conveniently located a half-hour "T" ride from the Harvard venue of BloggerCon.

And then I did get myself over to the second (free) day of BloggerCon, where, for me, people and thoughts connected in ways I never expected. Let me start at the end:

On my way back over the rails from Harvard Square, a trio of theatrically black-clad teenagers took the seats next to me. While the nightmare looks of those Matrix wannabes did not particularly disturb me, I was definitely unnerved by one item that the boy was wearing. His hair was blue. Well, we see a lot of that these days. His ultra-wide-leg pants were festooned with chains and zippers that had no other purpose but to festoon. That’s no biggee either. But his black straightjacket stopped me cold. It secured his arms across his chest and, by long sleeved ends and silver D-rings, to his shoulders. What was he thinking! What was his mother thinking! I was thinking that I am glad that my own kids are grown up and I’m not confronted with the challenge of parenting a boy who thinks it’s cool to walk around in bondage. Hell, he almost fell off his seat when the train stopped abruptly. Look ma! No hands!

My thoughts at that point necessarily connected to my perceptions of AKMA and his son, Si, who were still at BloggerCon even as I sped back to enjoy the company of my non-blogger offspring and her family. My path crossed AKMA’s and Si’s several times as we coincidentally attended the same conference sessions throughout the day. In most cases, I found watching the dynamics between them more fascinating than any presentation. Si, with his fingerless gloves, mischievous grin, and ever-present laptop; AKMA with his clerical collar, mischievous grin, and ever-present laptop. Father and son, pals, co-conspirators. It was so evident how much they truly liked each other, honestly appreciated each other’s abilities, humor, talents. I don't know what AKMA would do if Si showed up with blue hair and wearing a tightly fastened straightjacket. But it doesn't look as though he's ever going to have to figure that out anyway.

I first saw them both at Halley Suitt’s early presentation, to which – not being a morning person -- I arrived late. For my money (even though it didn't cost me any money), Halley's style and substance was the best of the bunch. She facilitated a session that explored what can happen – and what actually DID happen – when a blogger exposes (on her personal weblog) her employer's corporate misconduct . There are consequences to making public statements about others, even when they're true. And blogging is public. As far as I'm concerned, this is an issue that deserves its own conference, and Halley, a consummate and experienced teacher, orchestrated a discussion that began to tease out the complex strands that had tangled themselves into Glove Girls predicament.


This is Halley, really listening to what someone else is saying.

And here's where I just have to take more hats off to Halley (whom I met in person over a year ago and liked outright then). On top of her major smarts, she also Ms. Major Personality. Getting up and "stealth disco-ing" behind Joi Ito as he was presenting was something I wish I had had the guts to do -- that is, if I had been privy, in the first place, to the in-joking about the stealth disco stuff that apparently evolved the day before, when I was out buying my grandson his first pair of shoes. You go, girl.

btw, I took a photo of AKMA taking a photo of.....

Watching Halley perform and produce started me thinking about how – just like we are what we eat – we blog what we are. But even those who blog anonymously or pseudonymously (or whatever the word is) can't help but insinuate who they essentially are into their writing.

And that train of thought continued for me into AKMA's session. Just as Halley is a teacher, AKMA is a preacher. While most of what he had to say during his session was not very relevant to me (my being an irreverent non-believer and all), I wanted to contribute something to the conversation before it was over. But Dave Winer chimed in with something irrelevant to just about everyone there, and AKMA used the rest of the session to respond. So I never got a chance to. So I will here:

Spirituality, for me, is a very personal thing – has no connection to congregation or community or church of choice. I usually have very little tolerance for active believers. Yet, reading AKMA's weblog over the past year has made me more accepting and respectful of those who have much different cosmic understandings than mine. So, even though at BloggerCon he spoke to issues regarding blogging as a way of conversing among members of established congregations, I wanted to tell him that his kind of blogging is expanding the spiritual community beyond those establishments. And, while I'm pretty sure that I'd not be able to sit through one of his actual sermons (or anyone's, for that matter), I do read his blog posts, and often they reach me as no official sermon could.

Side note: As AKMA related how he constructs his sermons (he needs to know up front what conclusion he wants to come to and he needs to come up with a "hook"), it occurred to me that that’s exactly how I often construct the kind of personal essay that becomes a good blog post. So, in a real way, blog posts can be very much like the best kinds of sermons.

Final and most important note:
I went to BloggerCon with limited and specific intentions – to actually meet the Wizards, to see the guys behind the curtain who make the winds blow. And, for the most part I did. I shook hands with Dave Winer, David Weinberger, and AKMA. I never got to Doc Searls; I’m sure he didn’t notice. But I did walk over to Chris Locke and introduce myself. What I really wanted to do was sit down somewhere with Chris and see if I could meet the man behind the mask. But all we had a chance to do was shake hands and say polite “nice to meet yas.”

What I didn’t do and what I really wish I had done was give that cuddly Frank Paynter a big hug. Instead, we shook hands and chatted and went to lunch with Betsy Devine and Halley and some new bloggers. Meeting Frank in person was a delight. He’s even better than his weblog. And Betsy, as I expected, still leaves me breathless with her energy and curiosity and openness.

For me, blogging is about the bloggers. It’s a tool for communicating and conversing across geographies in a way that can affect more ordinary people than any other form of sharing ideas and opinions because it allows for thoughtfulness as well as timeliness. But it’s still new, and it’s still widely unknown, and it’s risky, and it has consequences that need to be taken seriously.

It’s also a way to find community, which is what Joi Ito’s session, as well as part of the previous day’s webcast, addressed. I still have much to think about before exploring it all here in public.

So, did I get anything out of BloggerCon? I got what I went for. Did I contribute anything? No. And that’s because, as an outsider, a non-techie, I had nothing to contribute to this pep rally for the Blog Team. Was it worth the trip? If I didn’t combine it with a visit with my grandson, I probably wouldn’t have done it. But I’m glad I did, if only to make real and tangible the faces behind the A-list names. And to give me something timely to think/blog about.

October 02, 2003

According to this:

On the alleged Iraqi program to develop nuclear weapons, at the most the evidence points "very tentatively" to a restart of a program "at the very most rudimentary level," [CIA advisor David] Kay said. "But it clearly does not look like a massive resurgent program, based on what we've discovered now," he said……..

…… Multiple sources have told the team that "Iraq did not have a large, ongoing, centrally controlled CW (chemical warfare) program after 1991," Kay said. And information found so far suggests that Iraq's large-scale capability to develop, produce and fill new chemical warfare weapons was "reduced -- if not entirely destroyed."

Earlier today I heard Rumsfeld on the news making some asinine statement to the effect that it will really be unfortunate if it turns out that there really are no WMDs. I wish I had written down exactly what he said and how he said it. I hope that some smart someone captures the video clip digitally and gets it online. It's the understatement of the century, uttered with utter callousness and stupidity.

I hear that some liberal bloggers are calling today "Liberal Validation Day." I hope that that this is only the beginning.

Liberte. Egalite. Fraternite.

Vive le revolution!

That's the wizards of the Kingdom of Blog, of course. Leaving tomorrow to spend time with my munchkin grandson and then head over to BloggerCon to pull aside the curtain and see who's working the controls.

Meanwhile, Dumbya's kingdom feels more and more like some bad movie script. As Maureen Dowd explains:

Now Washington is consumed with the saga of how the glamorous C.I.A. officer and the dashing California surfer-turned-ambassador went from wedding cake to yellowcake....

The group that fights so ferally to keep everything secret, from the cronies who met with Dick Cheney to the identities of the people it has tossed into the brig at Gitmo, had no problem spilling the beans on its own spy when self-preservation was at stake......

So, for the weekend, I'm heading down the yellow brick road away from Dumbya's disturbing Land of Oz and escaping to what I'm assuming is a kinder, gentler world.

I'm a good witch doncha know?

Stay tuned for my outsider's view of the gathering of the Wizards of Blog.