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

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.

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.

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. )

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.

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.
Isn’t that what we want in a leader? Someone who can shape the materials of economic reality, compromise, geopolitics and culture to make not just a functional system — like the ignoble Birkenstock — but something that makes being part of civic life a pleasure.
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!!

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.

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’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.