How do you blog, asks Frank Paynter, a huggy bear of a blogger I met at Harvard’s first BloggerCon.
Late at night, usually after midnight, when my almost ninety-year old mother is asleep and I’ve unwound by watching some mindless tv program I’ve taped, then I read my email, trash my spam, check out my son’s new blog. And the NY Times, The Progressive Review, Truthout. And then, maybe, I blog.
But first I turn on the full-spectrum light on the wall near my computer. It’s a blank wall that I face, a white wall with no windows. My big, flat-screened monitor is my window, and the light feeds my illusion of an open space. I sit in my chair, wheel back and forth to loosen my thoughts. It doesn’t always work; I seldom have much energy left for thinking. I wheel back and forth, get up to feed the cat, get a drink of water.
I sit and wheel and watch the screen without the full coffee cup that sustains most bloggers. I don’t drink coffee. I drink tea. But not when I’m blogging
I used to read other weblogs before I posted on my own so that I could join “conversations.” I don’t do that much any more because I don’t have the time and energy to fully participate. I used to leave lots of comments on others’ blogs. I don’t do that very often now either. I liked it when my blogging universe was small and manageable. There’s just so many bloggers out there now, so much, so many. It all overwhelms me.
So, instead, I just sit and blog what I think, what I think about. I blog for me on my own weblog.. I blog to continue putting out connections to family and friends I no longer see much of. I blog for whoever finds me for whatever reason.
I post right into the Moveable Type template that my son set up for me. If it were any more complicated, I wouldn’t bother; but MT and b!X makes it a cinch. I type while I think, without first doing a draft. I try to proofread, but at 1 a.m. or such, I usually miss all kinds of typos. So the next morning, before my mother gets up and needs to be fed, reassured, reminded, recreated, I go in and find and fix them.
And then I go in and trash my comment spam, of which there is a constant flow. Just one more way the blogging universe has become so overwhelming.
How do I blog, Frank Paynter asks. I blog wearily and wishfully. I blog isolated and interested and intentioned.
I blog the way I live.
He blogs about an essay in the December issue of Harpers on the Intelligent Design issue. You can’t read the essay online; you have to buy the magazine.
I subscribe to the TV Guide so that I can plan which favorite programs to tape while I watch the others that are on at the same time. How lame is that.
There wasn’t much on television tonight (my chore each evening is to sit with my mother and watch television) so we watched Glamour Magazine Women of the Year 2005 awards. Missing from the list on this link — as I can remember from the program — are two women who deserve mention: the director of the Studio Museum of Harlem and Mary McAleese, President of Ireland.
While Goldie Hawn smiled a lot, “sharing her joy, ” President McAleese put out a call for women to step up, step out, and take over and fix the global messes that have been made by so many of the men currently in charge of policies and politics. Somehow I doubt that she has a subscription to the TV Guide.
I used to treat myself, once every year, to a year’s subscription to some intelligent magazine — Utne Reader one year; Mother Jones, another…. It’s been a while since I’ve done that.
I have just ordered a subscription for Harpers. I might not be able to save even a piece of the world, but at least I can try to save my brain.
Having been a sci fi fan for the past sixty years (since I began to read), I can’t always remember where I read or saw various speculations. But this one comes to mind today — I’m not sure why except maybe it has something to do with going around in circles.
I remember reading a story — or maybe it was an old Twilight Zone episode — wherein a scientist used a very powerful microscope to keep looking deeper and deeper into the smallest pariticles of matter. What he ultimately saw is his own eye looking back.
There’s also the idea that this planet is some sort of simulation game for some other much more powerful and intelligent species. “Let’s see what they’ll do when we……make a devastating rash of earthquakes and hurricanes….put the greatest country on the planet into the clutches of idiots…… ” etc. etc.
The latter is what came to mind when I heard a news report on television that described this scenario:
The auto industry, to save on fuel consumption, devises hybrid vehicles which consume much less gasoline. The gasoline tax goes to fix roads. So, the goverment is proposing a tax on hybrid vehicles because their owners won’t be paying their fair share to fix the roads. Read about it all here.
I feel like we’re in a Peter Sellers movie. Dr. Strangelove rides again.
I keep getting comments on a post I a couple of years ago about seeing the number 11 in various ways, most 11:11.
Last night, this comment was left on that post:
I am going to tell to all of you you something that I think no one has discovered ,because I never heard about that…..
In the alphabet with the numbers is like that A=1 B=2 and so on.
N = 14…….Y = 25
E = 5 ……..O = 15
W = 23……R = 18
………… ….K = 11
Total 42 + 69 = 111
New York =111 !!!
There are now 123 comments that were left on that post. I don’t know what that means except that numbers are significant.
Packed up the Thanksgiving leftovers, packed up my mom and a Power Team Fire Fighter (equipped with oxygen tank and mask, fire plug and hose, hat with goggles, and other assorted accoutrements) and drove out to visit my grandson — and his mom and dad, of course.
Firefighter Dave (as the action figure was named after the main character my grandson’s currently favorite video) was a big hit. As was the megaphone-style voice changer. Well, that was a big hit with my grandson. I’m not so sure about his parents, who are left to listen to his growing repetoire of loud noises.
My mom was a big hit too. I’m always amazed at how my grandson takes to her. Although I shouldn’t be. They are both at about the 3 1/2 year level. Traveling with my mom is very much like traveling with a toddler. I have to do the packing, make sure I take food in the car and make potty stops, help her in and out of the car, and listen to idle chatter for the whole trip.
But it was all worth it just to have a chance to play with my grandson and hug my daughter. My mom and I even stayed overnight in a little motel, and that all worked out better than I thought it would.
And what’s Thanksgiving without also sharing leftovers, right?
And speaking of leftovers, the accumulated stuff on this site is all being redesigned at this very moment so that my more elderly readers (and there are more and more of them) will find it easier on the eyes.
This current design is a Moveable Type stylesheet, which looks great in theory but is not that easy for everyone to read — not just because of the small typeface, but also the colors.
By the way, for those of you who have trouble reading weblogs and websites. If you have a mouse with a wheel, when you go to some sites, like Google, if you hold down the Control key and turn the wheel, you can change the size of the type on the page. That also works on some weblogs, like Time Goes By, and you will be able to do that with my new design as well. It doesn’t work on blogs like Stu Savory’s, and maybe he should figure out how to include that capacity.
The Internet is still the land of the young bright and clear-eyed. But there are more and more of us older folks who are finding our own places on it. Weblog and website designers would do well to keep that in mind.
After all, we ARE so much more than leftovers, whether they’ve realized it yet or not.
So b!X is working with me to figure out how to make reading this blog a pleasure — at least visually if not re content.
rent a movie and eat in front of the television.
works for me.
There will only be the three at the table today. But I’m cooking that big meal anyway. And I’m thinking of this story — which might or might not be true. It doesn’t matter. I thank my ol’ college chum Jim for sending it my way.
Twenty years ago, he drove a cab for a living.
When he arrived at 2:30 a.m., the building was dark except for a single light in a ground floor window. Under these circumstances, many drivers would just honk once or twice, wait a minute, then drive away.
But, he had seen too many impoverished people who depended on taxis as their only means of transportation. Unless a situation smelled of danger, he always went to the door. This passenger might be someone who needs my assistance, he reasoned to himself.
So he walked to the door and knocked. “Just a minute”, answered a frail, elderly voice. He could hear something being dragged across the floor.
After a long pause, the door opened. A small woman in her 80s stood before him. She was wearing a print dress and a pillbox hat with a veil pinned on it, like somebody out of a 1940s movie.
By her side was a small nylon suitcase. The apartment looked as if no one had lived in it for years. All the furniture was covered with sheets.
There were no clocks on the walls, no knicknacks or utensils on the counters.
In the corner was a cardboard box filled with photos and glassware.
“Would you carry my bag out to the car?” she asked. He took the suitcase to the cab, then returned to assist the woman.
She took his arm and they walked slowly toward the curb.
She kept thanking him for his kindness.
“It’s nothing”, he told her. “I just try to treat my passengers the way I would want my mother treated”.
“Oh, you’re such a good boy,” she said.
When they got in the cab, she gave him an address, then asked, “Could you drive through downtown?”
“It’s not the shortest way,” he answered quickly.
“Oh, I don’t mind,” she said. “I’m in no hurry. I’m on my way to a hospice”.
He looked in the rear-view mirror. Her eyes were glistening. “I don’t have any family left,” she continued. “The doctor says I don’t have very long.”
He quietly reached over and shut off the meter. “What route would you like me to take?” he asked.
For the next two hours, they drove through the city. She showed him the building where she had once worked as an elevator operator.
They drove through the neighborhood where she and her husband had lived when they were newlyweds. She had him pull up in front of a furniture warehouse that had once been a ballroom where she had gone dancing as a
girl.
Sometimes she’d ask him to slow in front of a particular building or corner and would sit staring into the darkness, saying nothing.
As the first hint of sun was creasing the horizon, she suddenly said, “I’m tired. Let’s go now.”
They drove in silence to the address she had given him. It was a low building, like a small convalescent home,with a driveway that passed under a portico.
The two orderlies who immediately came out to the cab were solicitous and intent, watching her every move. They must have been expecting her.
He opened the trunk and took the small suitcase to the door. The woman was already seated in a wheelchair.
“How much do I owe you?” she asked, reaching into her purse.
“Nothing,” he said.
“You have to make a living,” she answered.
“There are other passengers,” he responded.
Almost without thinking, he bent and gave her a hug. She held onto him tightly.
“You gave an old woman a little moment of joy,” she said. “Thank you.”
He squeezed her hand, then walked into the dim morning light.
Behind him, a door shut. It was the sound of the closing of a life.
He didn’t pick up any more passengers that shift. He drove aimlessly lost in thought. For the rest of that day.
What if that woman had gotten an angry driver, or one who was impatient to end his shift?
What if he had refused to take the run, or had honked once, then driven away?
On a quick review, he didn’t think that he had done anything more important in his life.
We’re conditioned to think that our lives revolve around great moments.
But great moments often catch us unaware-beautifully wrapped in what others may consider a small one.
PEOPLE MAY NOT REMEMBER EXACTLY WHAT YOU DID, OR WHAT YOU SAID, ~BUT ~ THEY WILL ALWAYS REMEMBER HOW YOU MADE THEM FEEL! .
Happy Thanksgiving.
Hey, why not
Let us remember that there are multiple theories of Intelligent Design. I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence, put in place by Him.
[snip]
We will of course be able to train the teachers in this alternate theory. I am eagerly awaiting your response, and hope dearly that no legal action will need to be taken. I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; One third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence.
Read the whole hilariously pointed explanation (including graph of how global warming is related to the decrease in pirates) at http://venganza.org/
(Thanks to non-blogger myrln for the link.)
all things flow toward water
wood grows upward
The above quotes are from reflections on I Ching hexagrams that were posted alongside photographs in a museum exhibition I went over to see on it’s last day.
Originating in New Mexico,
The idea for this project came from the text of the I Ching, where each hexagram and individual lines making
There’s one other quote that I remember, and it just seems such an appropriate reminder for me.
upward movement is not accomplished through agitation but with humility, flexibility, and grace.
Onward and upward.
