Category Archives: Technology

International Blog Day

In an effort to expand my playground and encounter the joy of discovery, I’m participating in International Blog Day. Writer Nir Ofir noticed that the date looked an awful lot like the word blog, at least the way he and millions of other non-Americans write it: 3108 —> Blog. Okay, maybe a bit of a stretch, but an original idea. So today, 8/31, is a day to share new blog gems.

  • One Word: a Perioperative nurse in Boston, MA, “wanted to write 52 essays, one a week for a year.” The essays reminisce about her childhood and contemplate topics such as chaos, suffering, words, joy, color, her search for meaning, and her experience of her body. She also includes photos. I sense we are similar in age, and I enjoy her voice.
  • Dakota: this blog has one aim — to present photos, links, and poetry. It does not distract itself with links to other blogs. It simply is. What I find most fascinating are the poems in which some words are links. It provides another dimension to the poem.
  • Book of Kells: Kelli Russell Agodon is a Washington state poet. Her blog features snippets about her life as a poet, links to poetry-related and literary news, and an extensive list of poetry bloggers. She also practices gratitude and occasionally posts a “gratitude list,” something I do in my private journal.
  • Surrender, Dorothy: the only description in her “About Me” section is a quote: “A poet should be as sensitive as an aching tooth.” –Anna Swir She posts her poems and writes about the writing life, as well as the human life as experienced by a writer. She also once feared spiders and now takes extra care to be kind to them, a transformation I understand.
  • Land Mammal: The subtitle is “Feeding the Beast.” Written by Anne Haines, I was drawn to the blog because she describes herself in a way I connect with: “Mid-forties… poet-librarygirl-nerd.” And she has two cats! The blog features her poetry.

My interests lean toward a certain writing genre these days. Even if you don’t read poetry, take a peek at these blogs. Not all the posts are poems or about poetry. These are women with strong voices and rich inner lives.

Tag:
Website: Blogday.org

The Aftermath

It goes without saying, but I’ll say it. What has happened in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama is heartbreaking. All of it. The fate New Orleans dreaded has become reality.

As I walk around in sunny, dry California, I’m a bit dazed when I think that massive destruction has torn lives apart a few states away. Life requires I go about my business, but part of my mind meditates on what has happened, and my heart is extended toward everyone in that stricken region.

In an effort to understand more about why New Orleans is so vulnerable, and to learn what its long-term fate may be, I found an article in the New York Times.

The Gulf Coast has always been vulnerable to coastal storms, but over the years people have made things worse, particularly in Louisiana, where Hurricane Katrina struck yesterday. Since the 18th century, when French colonial administrators required land claimants to establish ownership by building levees along bayous, streams and rivers, people have been trying to dominate the region’s landscape and the forces of its nature.

As long as people could control floods, they could do business. But, as people learned too late, the landscape of South Louisiana depends on floods: it is made of loose Mississippi River silt, and the ground subsides as this silt consolidates. Only regular floods of muddy water can replenish the sediment and keep the landscape above water. But flood control projects channel the river’s nourishing sediment to the end of the birdfoot delta and out into the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico.

Although early travelers realized the irrationality of building a port on shifting mud in an area regularly ravaged by storms and disease, the opportunities to make money overrode all objections.

When most transport was by water, people would of course settle along the Mississippi River, and of course they would build a port city near its mouth. In the 20th century, when oil and gas fields were developed in the gulf, of course people added petrochemical refineries and factories to the river mix, convenient to both drillers and shippers. To protect it all, they built an elaborate system of levees, dams, spillways and other installations.

—After Centuries of ‘Controlling’ Land, Gulf Learns Who’s the Boss

The article continues by mentioning that the islands and marshes are the defensive barrier against hurricanes. Without regularly deposited sediment, they’ve shrunk. This causes the entire delta region to sink; one expert said it sinks as much as a third of an inch each year, which is ten times the global average rate. Yet allowing nature to run its course would mean losing the economic and cultural civilization that’s populated the region for centuries. So much money has been invested there, and so much future income is at stake, that people will likely rebuild and continue to engineer systems to keep the ocean at bay. I just wonder, though, how far New Orleans will have to sink before people will admit the insanity of it. Or perhaps it will become our Venice.

Thoughts About the New Autobiography

This is a form of note-taking to bookmark tidbits that particularly spoke to me from the book, Your Life as Story, by Tristine Rainer.

We are no longer a tribal people, but we are entering the age of the global village. We now have a technological campfire, the Internet, that allows us to find other members of our tribe — people who share our general mythology about life. We could use our technology to enrich our collecctive wisdom through autobiographic storytelling — but we have lost the skill.

The lie is not in the new popular forms: factions, docudramas, nonfiction novels, personal journalism, dramatic nonfiction, the literature of fact, creative nonfiction, autobiographical novels, nonfiction narrative, and literary memoir. Mixing of fiction and nonfiction has been enjoyed by other cultures for centuries. The art of the earliest Japanese diaries lay in blending the author’s experience with imagination so the reader could not tell where fact ended and fiction began. The lie in our culture is in not recognizing that we are now sophisticated enough to enjoy this kind of writing and entertainment, and that this is what we are doing.

For the curious who might want to see how I’ve created my mini-course — or who just want to see how obsessive and compulsive I can be — you can peruse it at your leisure. Incidentally, I wrote this post as a means of postponing the first exercise in her book; I’m wrung out from last night. Tomorrow!

All At Once By Remote Control

Roads aren’t real anymore. All roads are now metaphors about the road. Most people would rather stay home. In their homes they feed on lots of clichés about the road so that they won’t feel as if they’ve stopped moving. Only the dead stop moving and most people don’t want to be dead. Every couch potato dreams himself or herself on the road, and they are, thanks to TV, which gives them the illusion that they are somewhere else. Everyone lives on TV now, which is everywhere and nowhere. People are in the Amazon, in the Arctic, on the streets of Detroit, in the Southwest, in San Francisco all at once, by remote control. When TV travelers do travel they go to places they’ve seen on TV, straight into the tourist postcards and never see what they haven’t already seen at home. If they stumble on something that’s never been on TV they shoot it with the video camera and then it’s on TV. They go from postcard to postcard by plane so they never touch the road.

–Andrei Codrescu, Road Scholar: Coast to Coast Late in the Century

Blog Discoveries & Trivia

I found out about Blogpulse from Euan’s blog. I’ve been trying to wean my ego from paying attention to the number of visitors here or finding who links to me. This program, of course, taps into that vein, but it promises to be an interesting way to track topical trends in blogs. I found myself listed and looked at the blogs considered to be my “neighbors.” A few were appealing, and I shall make a point of visiting more:

  • Pages Turned. A reading journal and commonplace book–a book in which ‘commonplacesÂ’ or passages important for reference are collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement. Offers an impressive booklist and other snippets.
  • Coffee and Varnish: With Enough Coffee I Could Rule the World. DEFINITION – “Jane Smith”, circa 1969: coffee whore, internet junkie, canine lover, devourer of books, movie fiend, creative, flirt, lazy-ass, smart-mouthed, potato-chip-eater. An interesting collection of reflections.
  • Nothing To Do With Arbroath: No real issues. Just stuff and nonsense. Fun links to interesting tidbits. I especially enjoyed the European Geography quiz, although I admit with chagrin I scored only 56%.

I also, lately, have hopped on the silly quiz bandwagon. This blog has not featured many, but every now and then I give in and take some. Results are below:
Continue reading →

Bad Cat

I rounded the corner from the hallway and found Sophie lounging on my laptop. Very bad idea. The fan was whirring madly. However, both cats adore sunspots and will sprawl wherever they find one.

can't resist a sun spot

My laptop has the ability to take a screenshot — a picture of the computer screen. She managed to take two as she lay there. Below is the better shot. Is she a genius, or what? A bad, smart cat.
Continue reading →

Too Much Text

When I consolidated myself from two blogs to one, I attempted to structure this site so that the left side revealed more personal information and the right side focused more on broader resources. Increasingly, though, the page feels very text-heavy to me. I’m sure that a few might like the links, but I’ll bet the majority rarely get looked at. This was brought into sharper focus when I went to a few other blogs and saw the authors had redesigned them to provide greater simplicity to the eye.

So I’m curious… what parts of this main page do you like? What could you do without? What would you keep? I’m interested in readers’ suggestions, since the majority of the design is for you, after all.

Taking a Break From My Break

We interrupt this blog vacation to pass along the following information. I received it in an email.

Cameron Marlow, the creator of Blogdex, is collecting data for his dissertation at M.I.T. He has a short survey online about bloggers and blogging, and you should help him do his research and take the survey. The survey is geared for people who blog and only takes about five minutes.

Blog Survey at MIT

I just took it; it was quick, and interesting. And I feel I might have done something socially useful.

Kindness Shared

This is an inspired idea:

The Complimenting Commenter:

I am going around the blogosphere leaving Complimentary Comments. For Kindness sake. Join me.

It’s time to share the love, people. Make an effort to visit a blog — new or familiar — and leave a word of kindness there. I myself have been become lax about leaving any type of comment (or reading blogs for that matter). Yet leaving comments — especially friendly ones — is how I met some truly good friends through blogging.

[via Hoarded Ordinaries]

Creativity

I haven’t been writing much lately. Haven’t spent much time reading blogs or online news, either.

Rather, I’ve been cooking more, reading books, and getting crafty. Last weekend I made this:

pansy

It’s small, only 5″x5″, and it came as a kit with the mat, glass, and stand. I enjoyed it and have another slightly more complex one to start next.

While I stitched this, I watched three Nova episodes that explained string theory. Now that requires some creative thinking! It’s complex, even mind-boggling, yet incredibly fascinating.

On a lighter note, I re-read The Phantom Tollbooth, a children’s classic. I’d given each of my students a copy as a reward for good performance. Juster’s play with words throughout the allegory tickles me.

Happy Monday, all.

Guidelines For Simplifying

I found this list at the house where I was recently a guest. It was from the Unitarian Universalist church (my host is a minister). It’s so good that I’m putting a copy on my refrigerator to help me to be a mindful consumer.

Strive for Simplicity – Think Before You Buy

  1. Do I really need it?
  2. How much will I use it?
  3. Can I borrow it from a friend?
  4. How many do I already own?
  5. Was it made by a child?
  6. Did it harm the environment?
  7. How long will it last?
  8. How will I dispose of it when I am finished?
  9. Can I relax and wait until tomorrow?
  10. Can I picture a happy life without this?

Integration

From January 2002 to August 2003, I kept a personal weblog that consisted of an amalgam of topics: notations about my mundane daily life, deep explorations of existential questions, self-revelation (journal therapy), and links to items of interest to me that I wanted to share.

I learned with some difficulty the danger of a) writing about people with whom I have relationship and my thoughts and feelings about them, and b) inviting those people to read the blog. They don’t mix. So I worked on shaping my public “voice” in blogging and took pains to use pseudonyms when speaking of people.

When I opened my private therapy practice, I acted on the advice of a friend, a successful businessman, who suggested that potential clients finding my personal blog before my business page might become confused. Thus A Mindful Life was born: a weblog that provided resources and ideas for living and kept personal writing to a minimum.

Simultaneously, I created an alter-ego blog under a pseudonym, in which I wrote about my crappy day, or how I accidentally laundered my cell phone, or my excitement about getting a new job. It is an informal place — a family den, whereas A Mindful Life is a parlor.

I took pains to share the url only with people in my real life whom I wanted to have access. However, web-savvy relatives with whom I did not share the url found me anyway, and read the blog without my knowledge or permission for almost a year before I found out. I found out in a distressing, backhanded way. Immediately my voice was muffled. That blog is no longer a place to pour it all out; perhaps a blog is not the best venue for deeply personal writing. (Though gods know thousands of people do it.)

For awhile I lived with this divide, but after the blog was rediscovered, I have felt the strain of compartmentalizing. The boundary served a purpose, but does it serve me best at this point? I’m no longer a practicing therapist, though I can’t rule out that I might be in the profession again someday. And yet, a sense of unity appeals, and perhaps this is because my life has enough chaos of late that the fragmentation does more harm than good. I also am weary of having two separate places to show artwork and photography, to keep a list of reading, etc.

I’ve not totally abandoned the other blog nor taken it down. I am going to live over here more for awhile, however, and see how it works. So you might find, interspersed with the poetry and quotes and snippets of articles about spirituality and life, passages about me and my daily life that weren’t here before.

Or you might not. It depends. This is the seduction of blogging: it is so very easy to sit down and write whatever comes to mind. Once a day, or several times a day. It is a medium perfect for brain-dumping and informal flights of thought. However. The drawback is that such writing siphons off material that might be put to better use in other pieces, or if left unwritten might gestate into something else creative. The other drawback is that blogging sometimes replaces communication among individuals, as people in a blogger’s life check the blog to see what’s up, rather than directly correspond or speak.

The immediacy of blogging has proven therapeutic for me. It’s also been a creative outlet, not just with writing, but with coding and formatting the site. However, the questions remain: What is my public voice? What is my intention with this blog, with blogging in general? Can one blog serve multiple needs in me? Is this venue the best use of my gifts?

I don’t know the answer. I love the theme and design of my other blog, just as I love this one. They are my creations. Yet sometimes I wish I had not made this split. Can I consolidate? Should I? I don’t know. We’ll see.

Perhaps You’ve Noticed

I have been playing with the format on this blog! You see, currently I maintain two blogs, and I’ve been desiring more unity in my writing. I spent this evening changing the layout to allow the left column to contain more information of a personal nature, and the right column to highlight my interests of a more professional or philanthropic vein. The center column, of course, is for the daily posting.

I realize the format makes this a visually dense experience, which is why I changed the column link style from bold to normal. I need to check it with other browsers to see how it looks, and somehow I need to get my hands on a PC to cross-check that. Please bear with me while I continue to tweak!