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.

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.
Well, the first thing you know little Georgie goes to Yale.
He can’t spell his name but they never let him fail.
He spends all his time hangin’ out with student folk.
And that’s when he learns how to snort a line of coke.
Blow, that is.
White gold.
Nose candy.
The next thing you know there’s a war in Vietnam.
Kin folks say, “George, stay at home with Mom.”
Let the common people get maimed and scarred.
We’ll buy you a spot in the Texas Air Guard.
Cushy, that is.
Country clubs.
Nose candy.
Twenty years later George gets a little bored.
He trades in the booze, says that Jesus is his Lord.
He said, “Now the White House is the place I wanna be.”
So he called his daddy’s friends and they called the GOP.
Gun owners, that is.
Falwell.
Jesse Helms.
Come November 7, the election ran late.
Kin folks said “Jeb, give the boy your state!”
“Don’t let those colored folks get into the polls.”
So they put up barricades so they couldn’t punch their holes.
Chads, that is.
Duval County.
Miami-Dade.
Before the votes were counted five Supremes stepped in.
Told all the voters “Hey, we want George to win.”
“Stop counting votes!” was their solemn invocation.
And that’s how George finally got his coronation.
Rigged, that is.
Illegitimate.
No moral authority.
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

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.

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.

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.