Shelley’s tracking and I’m trying to figure out if I figured out the magic of it all. Did you get pinged, Shelley?

I’ve discovered some bloggers whom I’ve added to my roll because they are just such damned interesting people: Lorraine O’Connor (one of the older/wiser ones), eclectic Aussie Allan Moult, Mike Zellers (spacemonk), and Tom Bolton. I was particular impressed by Tom’s piece that picked up the thread on gender started by Frank Paynter. So, check ’em all out.

I’ve been reading so much online about the current American travesties that I can’t remember where I saw a list of criteria that are indicators of the imminent fall of an empire. If I remember correctly, my country is exhibiting all of them.
On top of that we have ravaging fires in drought-ridden parts of this country, heavy rains and flooding in areas already known to be sodden, horrific tales of pedophiliac priests rising out of the religious dark, and an increasing number of news stories of parents breaking apart their kids’ bodies and spirits.
My son ruminates online about his painful alienation from his country of birth, and we all wait to see if something awful will happen on the day on which we celebrate the ideal that America was supposed to strive toward.
No wonder we’re all depressed. There is hardly anything that is in our control anymore. It makes me wonder about what exactly IS still in our control.
Maybe all we have is all we really can expect to have as humans on this planet: the challenges of daily survival; of creating ways to connect with and love each other; of working toward and celebrating small successes because the large ones will always be out of our control; of learning how to share our successes with each other so that we can all hope beyond the daily.
Perhaps we humans have gotten too arrogant. We assume that we can control — each other, the elements, the whims of the universe. The truth is, it seems to me, that the only thing that we each have control over is our own Self. And nowhere in our upbringings or educations are we taught to understand that and how to accomplish that with love, compassion, joy, and meaningful connection.
Maybe those of us who survive what comes next will be those of us who can hunker down, live small, stay connected with similar souls, wait for it all to blow over. If it doesn’t blow us all up before we make it through.

Since I post about b!X so often, some might think that I have only one offspring with a presence on the web. Not so. My daughter — aka ‘cwyln’ –(on the verge of popping out my grandson any day now) has a website here promoting her novel, which was supposed to be published by a small press that now claims to have been so badly affected by 9/11 that it has pretty much folded. So, does anyone know of an agent and/or publisher that might like to take on this one?
Not my actual offspring, but dearly loved and much appreciated, is my son-in-law — aka ‘schmev’ — who is an amazing illustrator with stuff on his website here. He has written and illustrated the most beautiful children’s book about Esmeralda the honey bee, and that’s looking for a publisher as well. Both sites are in my Familylinks.
I’ve posted about these two before, specifically about their wedding five years ago, which sported statues of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia on their wedding cake (instead of the traditional bride and groom) and featured a life-sized Yoda cardboard figure presiding over the whole event.
We are quite a family, doncha think?