CNN.com posed a question to readers yesterday: "As gas prices soar higher and higher, Washington has rolled out a number of proposals to ease the pain at the pump: a $100 rebate check, delaying deposits to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, increased fuel efficiency, alternative fuel research and more. What do you think the U.S. should do to address the problem, both immediately and down the road?" This morning, while reading yesterday's responses, I observed that however well meaning and intentioned the comments were, not one person was suggesting that our voracious appetites might need to be curbed. That perhaps it's a drastic change in lifestyle that is merited.
So I fired off a response. But as soon as I pushed the send button, CNN changed their daily focus and I've yet to see where today's responses ended up. So I'm posting my response here.
What should the U.S. do to address the problem? We should be strongly encouraged to change the way we live. To make a lighter footprint on the planet. But hey, that would hurt the economy. Better to go shopping or fly to Disney World and keep believing that there will always be enough resources, crude or otherwise, to satiate our increasing appetites.
For instance, many well meaning people believe that ethanol is the answer.
But according to Wikipedia:
"Today the US Gas usage is approximately 360,000,000 U.S. gallons per day. 28.8% of the US surface area (~ 685,000,000 acres) would be required to grow the biomass required to produce enough ethanol to cover current domestic US gas demand. The US currently has 455,000,000 acres of arable land. There are currently about 80 million acres of corn planted in the US (~40% of the world's supply)."
(So...to support our 360 million gallons a day habit with ethanol, it'd take 685 million acres--almost 30% of total US surface area--of our arable land. And we only have 455 million.)
A $100 rebate check (attached to a bill that would open up drilling in ANWR) is asinine. Yes, increased fuel efficiency (technology that already exists and is in wide use in Europe but is discouraged here) and research into alternatives is important and necessary. But more importantly, we need to change the way we live.
Friday, April 28, 2006
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Regime change, yes. But which one?
Let's use a few nuclear weapons to smash yet another country and her people, ostensibly to keep them from being able to use nuclear weapons, ostensibly to keep the world safe from nuclear threats and a potential new "Hitler"...
When are we, in this country, going to acknowledge the absurdity and threat to the world--and ourselves-- that our government has become... and rise up and overthrow it?
The Iran Plans
Seymour M. Hersh--The New Yorker
One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”
When are we, in this country, going to acknowledge the absurdity and threat to the world--and ourselves-- that our government has become... and rise up and overthrow it?
The Iran Plans
Seymour M. Hersh--The New Yorker
One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
No Offense Mr. President, But...
No offense meant Mr. President, but what exactly do you mean when you say that "terrorists like to kill?"
"Terrorists haven't given up; they're tough-minded, they like to kill "
I'm just wondering which kind of killing is okay and which kind is bad. What separates terrorists from the "good people" if you know what I mean? Because maybe I should be arming myself and all. Vigilant for terrorists in my own neighborhood. Do you have a manual that you recommend I peruse? "Terrorists and Not Terrorists, How To Tell the Difference" perhaps?
I'm just sort of confused because it seems our country is doing an awful lot of killing, by your count perhaps 30,000 and by other accounts upwards of 100,000 (possibly 298,000 when Fallujah is factored in, according to the 2004 Lancet study) and I'm trying to understand which kind of killing is okay. (Not to mention all the "coalition" lives that have been sacrificed in the process.)
I have a couple of kids I'm trying to raise and want to do right by them. It seems, by my accounting and yours, that we've killed a whole bunch, thousands at least, of Iraqis because you thought (or were told), erroneously it seems, they had weapons of mass destruction that could harm us.
Since you're the Commander in Chief (is that the proper way to address you?) I just figure you're the guy I should be asking these questions.
Respectfully awaiting your reply,
Debi Smith
Ashland, Oregon
"Terrorists haven't given up; they're tough-minded, they like to kill "
I'm just wondering which kind of killing is okay and which kind is bad. What separates terrorists from the "good people" if you know what I mean? Because maybe I should be arming myself and all. Vigilant for terrorists in my own neighborhood. Do you have a manual that you recommend I peruse? "Terrorists and Not Terrorists, How To Tell the Difference" perhaps?
I'm just sort of confused because it seems our country is doing an awful lot of killing, by your count perhaps 30,000 and by other accounts upwards of 100,000 (possibly 298,000 when Fallujah is factored in, according to the 2004 Lancet study) and I'm trying to understand which kind of killing is okay. (Not to mention all the "coalition" lives that have been sacrificed in the process.)
I have a couple of kids I'm trying to raise and want to do right by them. It seems, by my accounting and yours, that we've killed a whole bunch, thousands at least, of Iraqis because you thought (or were told), erroneously it seems, they had weapons of mass destruction that could harm us.
Since you're the Commander in Chief (is that the proper way to address you?) I just figure you're the guy I should be asking these questions.
Respectfully awaiting your reply,
Debi Smith
Ashland, Oregon
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Fat Tuesday---Today and After
Who would have thought, a year ago, that the next Mardi Gras would mean so much to so many?
To people living in all parts of the world who now have more awareness of all things New Orleans and who, in their desire to express their solidarity, might for the first time be celebrating Mardi Gras.
Or to business owners in downtown New Orleans and in the French Quarter desperate for tourists to return and help create some semblance of recovery/normalcy.
Or to the victims and survivors most devastated–at least in the New Orleans area–who live just 3 miles away from the French Quarter and who are deeply conflicted and worried, or outright angry, that Mardi Gras celebrations send the wrong message to the country and the world.
Or to the media crawling all over the place like vultures on a piece of road kill. (Media attention in the region is necessary of course, and some are doing a balanced job of reporting. But those that are focusing solely on Mardi Gras, and will pack up and leave tomorrow, aren't helping the situation.)
Mardi Gras is on the brain. But for how long? How long will our attention remain after the last dirty beads and plastic beer cups are swept from the streets (for they will be swept from the commercial areas even while the rotting innards of homes–what once constituted the belongings, memories, and lives of thousands– still awaits cleanup even now, six months after the storm)?
A year ago I barely knew what Mardi Gras meant. Other than it was masses of people partying wildly in the streets. Throngs of inebriated women–and men– gleefully responding to the bawdy calls of, “show us your tits.” The goal? Strings of brightly colored glittering beads shipped in on containers from China. And somehow this all also had something to do with the Christian celebration of Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Jesus. At least that was my meager and possibly somewhat inaccurate impression.
My only other association with Fat Tuesday , the climax of Mardi Gras, was that a church in the small town I once lived held a yearly Shrove Tuesday pancake feed. All day long volunteers sifted, stirred, poured, and flipped giant fluffy pancakes made from some jealously guarded secret recipe that had been handed down through the years. Church ladies--donned in white lace or 70's flowered aprons--served up these confections, which we dusted with powdered sugar, drizzled with lemon juice, and covered with cheap maple syrup all day long.
My kids and I looked forward to this tradition every year. Then four years ago we moved to a new community and have missed that simple little pancake feed ever since. Especially this year. Today I wish we had some place locally to go and be with others to celebrate tradition, and mourn and grieve together that which has been lost by so many, not just in New Orleans, but in numbers hard to comprehend all along the Gulf Coast. A pancake feed would be nice.
Perhaps this would be a good time to take a moment to pause and remember all the other many families and businesses and neighborhoods and communities and towns and cities so greatly affected, devastated, displaced, disintegrated, or physically disappeared by the sister storms Katrina and Rita and their cousins Neglect and Inadequate Response. These people need to be held in our collective consciousness as well. Say a prayer for them, or whatever it is your belief system prompts your heart to do. But let's not forget them.
In January my kids and I--along with a friend and her two children--traveled to the Gulf Coast to participate in a couple of relief projects. Because of the need to find volunteer opportunities that would be a good fit for our kids, we decided to focus our efforts in the New Orleans area. And New Orleans, instead of some other equally devastated area, became the focus of my thoughts.
I had never been to the south, much less the deep south. While following the media coverage of the catastrophe I found myself questioning the subsequent calls to rebuild New Orleans. "Why don't these people retreat? Just throw a white flag up to Mama Nature and say, 'I give. I retreat to higher ground.'" And, "How much money should we be throwing at this astronomical problem presented by geography and poor planning anyway?" I was pretty clear, because of these questions and assumptions, that I wasn't going to the region to help the people rebuild per say, but to be a support for them while they try to determine the course of their futures.
Boy was I in for a shock. First of all, no amount of online research, talk with friends and groups who'd been to the decimated region, or viewing of video and photos could prepare me for the amount, quality, and wide swath of the devastation that we viewed upon arriving on the Gulf Coast. Secondly, and more importantly, I was naively ill-prepared for the deep dark haunting beautiful painful meaningful incredible history of "these people" that I would encounter and be engulfed by while there and have been forever and profoundly affected by.
It was not about "these people." And it became quickly and painfully apparent, on a personal level I'd not anticipated, that something very valuable to our nation, and our humanity, was wasting, molding, rotting, fading away in the wake of the hurricanes and failed levees and inadequate (to be polite) response.
"These people" have a history in the region I couldn't begin to presume to fathom even if I devoted myself to it for the rest of my life. But, after having traveled there, I can pose the following, to myself and anyone else who cares to listen: Imagine living in the same place your whole entire life. As did your family before you. And theirs. Imagine the histories and stories and traditions and neighborly and community connections. The beautiful, even through difficulties that may present themselves, tapestry that is woven by this kind of beingness in place and time. Imagine that it's all you've ever really known. And then imagine it being pulled out, suddenly and completely, from underneath you.
And just to dispel any persistent or lingering myths, this not so imaginary scenario didn't just happen to a bunch of poor black people. Yes, one of the hardest hit areas in the New Orleans area was the Lower 9th Ward. But to the east of the Lower 9th, separated only by a street, is St. Bernard's Parish, predominantly white.
And regarding the Lower 9th, to dispel another myth, while perhaps monetarily poor, according to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center and the 2000 Census, they had a 59% home ownership rate (compared to 46.5% in Orleans Parish overall) . When one 75 year old Lower 9th resident was asked in 2003 about this high rate of ownership, she replied: "This was one of the first subdivisions that was designated for African Americans. The idea was just so wonderful to be able to buy a lot for $250, to build a house and be a homeowner. When my family first came here, we cut a street, a path really, to get back to this lot. In the Ninth Ward, you've got a group of people who have stayed because we wanted to - because we've got an investment in this community.” Imagine that, investment in their community.
As of the 2000 Census, St. Bernard's Parish was home to 67,229 people. Following the storm and flooding due to the failed levees, Parish president, Henry "Junior" Rodriquez, declared all of the parish's homes unliveable. And according to Wikipedia, "It should be noted that this is the first time in FEMA history that an entire parish/county had the severity of damage as St. Bernard received from Katrina."
It's easy for some of us to consider relocating. It is for me. I've done it. Several times. And driving through the unbelievably decimated neighborhoods of both locations left me in wonder at what great pool of tenacity and fortitude and desire these people draw from that enables them to even consider beginning the incredibly daunting tasks before them. I'm not sure I could do it. And, admittedly some aren't. But for most, it's not like that. These are a people of strength and character and history like I've never met before. And I was incredibly mistaken to have previously thought it was a no brainer, that they should just move on.
These people want to rebuild their shattered lives. In the place they've always lived. And being with them for just a short time, I began to understand why. And the value of their desire. And the importance of it-- to them, and to the rest of us.
They can't do it alone. And by no means does one celebratory Mardi Gras six months after the storm mean they are back on their feet. I now realize that their celebration is much more than glittering beads and drunken bawdy behavior. Their celebrations are of their incredible spirit. And today, what they want the world to see is not that their lives have been salvaged...but what needs to be, and is worth, saving.
We, in this country, pat ourselves on the back often for being can do, resourceful people. And we do have a history, although somewhat spotted, of helping others in their greatest hours of need. We would be gravely mistaken, following the greatest natural disaster to ever befall our nation, to turn our backs on our own. Or to just send $20 to a charity and feel we've done our share (though all those $20 donations do help). We need to hold our government, which was to be by, for, and of the people, to their bound duty. We need to ask why more and more money, $244,045,540,000 (as of 2:10 am PST 2/28/06) is asked and granted for a war in a foreign land, and more and more lives are needlessly lost to it, (I'll refrain here from further debating this mis-begotten war), and neglecting in the process, the very torn fabric of our own nation.
It's about money and priorities. Whose? is the question.
While volunteering with Emergency Communities in Chalmette one afternoon (which I highly recommend), there were a couple local street musicians entertaining the returning residents who were gathered for lunch. In between a beautiful set of songs, Rosaline stopped and said, "Not to be political, but it's been projected that to rebuild and shore up the levees it will cost 16.9 billion dollars. That's approximately what George W. Bush spends in Iraq every 90 days. Enough said." And then she smilingly and peacefully resumed her serenade.
Yes, Enough Said.
But yet, it isn't really enough. There is so much more to be said, to be done, so many people hurting and waiting...and so many stories. It hurts that words to actually convey the breadth of this thing are so inadequate. I could keep trying for hours and would probably not ever come close.
It's 2:40 AM here on the West Coast. Fat Tuesday. And I have a pile of pancakes to make for my family in a few short hours. Maybe I'll invite some neighbors over. New traditions to create and old ones to honor. And many people for us to hold in our hearts and not forget today...or after today.
To people living in all parts of the world who now have more awareness of all things New Orleans and who, in their desire to express their solidarity, might for the first time be celebrating Mardi Gras.
Or to business owners in downtown New Orleans and in the French Quarter desperate for tourists to return and help create some semblance of recovery/normalcy.
Or to the victims and survivors most devastated–at least in the New Orleans area–who live just 3 miles away from the French Quarter and who are deeply conflicted and worried, or outright angry, that Mardi Gras celebrations send the wrong message to the country and the world.
Or to the media crawling all over the place like vultures on a piece of road kill. (Media attention in the region is necessary of course, and some are doing a balanced job of reporting. But those that are focusing solely on Mardi Gras, and will pack up and leave tomorrow, aren't helping the situation.)
Mardi Gras is on the brain. But for how long? How long will our attention remain after the last dirty beads and plastic beer cups are swept from the streets (for they will be swept from the commercial areas even while the rotting innards of homes–what once constituted the belongings, memories, and lives of thousands– still awaits cleanup even now, six months after the storm)?
A year ago I barely knew what Mardi Gras meant. Other than it was masses of people partying wildly in the streets. Throngs of inebriated women–and men– gleefully responding to the bawdy calls of, “show us your tits.” The goal? Strings of brightly colored glittering beads shipped in on containers from China. And somehow this all also had something to do with the Christian celebration of Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Jesus. At least that was my meager and possibly somewhat inaccurate impression.
My only other association with Fat Tuesday , the climax of Mardi Gras, was that a church in the small town I once lived held a yearly Shrove Tuesday pancake feed. All day long volunteers sifted, stirred, poured, and flipped giant fluffy pancakes made from some jealously guarded secret recipe that had been handed down through the years. Church ladies--donned in white lace or 70's flowered aprons--served up these confections, which we dusted with powdered sugar, drizzled with lemon juice, and covered with cheap maple syrup all day long.
My kids and I looked forward to this tradition every year. Then four years ago we moved to a new community and have missed that simple little pancake feed ever since. Especially this year. Today I wish we had some place locally to go and be with others to celebrate tradition, and mourn and grieve together that which has been lost by so many, not just in New Orleans, but in numbers hard to comprehend all along the Gulf Coast. A pancake feed would be nice.
Perhaps this would be a good time to take a moment to pause and remember all the other many families and businesses and neighborhoods and communities and towns and cities so greatly affected, devastated, displaced, disintegrated, or physically disappeared by the sister storms Katrina and Rita and their cousins Neglect and Inadequate Response. These people need to be held in our collective consciousness as well. Say a prayer for them, or whatever it is your belief system prompts your heart to do. But let's not forget them.
In January my kids and I--along with a friend and her two children--traveled to the Gulf Coast to participate in a couple of relief projects. Because of the need to find volunteer opportunities that would be a good fit for our kids, we decided to focus our efforts in the New Orleans area. And New Orleans, instead of some other equally devastated area, became the focus of my thoughts.
I had never been to the south, much less the deep south. While following the media coverage of the catastrophe I found myself questioning the subsequent calls to rebuild New Orleans. "Why don't these people retreat? Just throw a white flag up to Mama Nature and say, 'I give. I retreat to higher ground.'" And, "How much money should we be throwing at this astronomical problem presented by geography and poor planning anyway?" I was pretty clear, because of these questions and assumptions, that I wasn't going to the region to help the people rebuild per say, but to be a support for them while they try to determine the course of their futures.
Boy was I in for a shock. First of all, no amount of online research, talk with friends and groups who'd been to the decimated region, or viewing of video and photos could prepare me for the amount, quality, and wide swath of the devastation that we viewed upon arriving on the Gulf Coast. Secondly, and more importantly, I was naively ill-prepared for the deep dark haunting beautiful painful meaningful incredible history of "these people" that I would encounter and be engulfed by while there and have been forever and profoundly affected by.
It was not about "these people." And it became quickly and painfully apparent, on a personal level I'd not anticipated, that something very valuable to our nation, and our humanity, was wasting, molding, rotting, fading away in the wake of the hurricanes and failed levees and inadequate (to be polite) response.
"These people" have a history in the region I couldn't begin to presume to fathom even if I devoted myself to it for the rest of my life. But, after having traveled there, I can pose the following, to myself and anyone else who cares to listen: Imagine living in the same place your whole entire life. As did your family before you. And theirs. Imagine the histories and stories and traditions and neighborly and community connections. The beautiful, even through difficulties that may present themselves, tapestry that is woven by this kind of beingness in place and time. Imagine that it's all you've ever really known. And then imagine it being pulled out, suddenly and completely, from underneath you.
And just to dispel any persistent or lingering myths, this not so imaginary scenario didn't just happen to a bunch of poor black people. Yes, one of the hardest hit areas in the New Orleans area was the Lower 9th Ward. But to the east of the Lower 9th, separated only by a street, is St. Bernard's Parish, predominantly white.
And regarding the Lower 9th, to dispel another myth, while perhaps monetarily poor, according to the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center and the 2000 Census, they had a 59% home ownership rate (compared to 46.5% in Orleans Parish overall) . When one 75 year old Lower 9th resident was asked in 2003 about this high rate of ownership, she replied: "This was one of the first subdivisions that was designated for African Americans. The idea was just so wonderful to be able to buy a lot for $250, to build a house and be a homeowner. When my family first came here, we cut a street, a path really, to get back to this lot. In the Ninth Ward, you've got a group of people who have stayed because we wanted to - because we've got an investment in this community.” Imagine that, investment in their community.
As of the 2000 Census, St. Bernard's Parish was home to 67,229 people. Following the storm and flooding due to the failed levees, Parish president, Henry "Junior" Rodriquez, declared all of the parish's homes unliveable. And according to Wikipedia, "It should be noted that this is the first time in FEMA history that an entire parish/county had the severity of damage as St. Bernard received from Katrina."
It's easy for some of us to consider relocating. It is for me. I've done it. Several times. And driving through the unbelievably decimated neighborhoods of both locations left me in wonder at what great pool of tenacity and fortitude and desire these people draw from that enables them to even consider beginning the incredibly daunting tasks before them. I'm not sure I could do it. And, admittedly some aren't. But for most, it's not like that. These are a people of strength and character and history like I've never met before. And I was incredibly mistaken to have previously thought it was a no brainer, that they should just move on.
These people want to rebuild their shattered lives. In the place they've always lived. And being with them for just a short time, I began to understand why. And the value of their desire. And the importance of it-- to them, and to the rest of us.
They can't do it alone. And by no means does one celebratory Mardi Gras six months after the storm mean they are back on their feet. I now realize that their celebration is much more than glittering beads and drunken bawdy behavior. Their celebrations are of their incredible spirit. And today, what they want the world to see is not that their lives have been salvaged...but what needs to be, and is worth, saving.
We, in this country, pat ourselves on the back often for being can do, resourceful people. And we do have a history, although somewhat spotted, of helping others in their greatest hours of need. We would be gravely mistaken, following the greatest natural disaster to ever befall our nation, to turn our backs on our own. Or to just send $20 to a charity and feel we've done our share (though all those $20 donations do help). We need to hold our government, which was to be by, for, and of the people, to their bound duty. We need to ask why more and more money, $244,045,540,000 (as of 2:10 am PST 2/28/06) is asked and granted for a war in a foreign land, and more and more lives are needlessly lost to it, (I'll refrain here from further debating this mis-begotten war), and neglecting in the process, the very torn fabric of our own nation.
It's about money and priorities. Whose? is the question.
While volunteering with Emergency Communities in Chalmette one afternoon (which I highly recommend), there were a couple local street musicians entertaining the returning residents who were gathered for lunch. In between a beautiful set of songs, Rosaline stopped and said, "Not to be political, but it's been projected that to rebuild and shore up the levees it will cost 16.9 billion dollars. That's approximately what George W. Bush spends in Iraq every 90 days. Enough said." And then she smilingly and peacefully resumed her serenade.
Yes, Enough Said.
But yet, it isn't really enough. There is so much more to be said, to be done, so many people hurting and waiting...and so many stories. It hurts that words to actually convey the breadth of this thing are so inadequate. I could keep trying for hours and would probably not ever come close.
It's 2:40 AM here on the West Coast. Fat Tuesday. And I have a pile of pancakes to make for my family in a few short hours. Maybe I'll invite some neighbors over. New traditions to create and old ones to honor. And many people for us to hold in our hearts and not forget today...or after today.
Monday, August 01, 2005
What kind of effect does one want to have?
I'm beginning to believe that by spending so much time focusing on the negative things happening in the world, I'm actually giving the negativity more power. My conundrum has long been: how to be aware of what's going on but not get pulled into its negative grasp. It's not that we should bury our heads in the sand, ignoring what's happening, going about our lives oblivious and ignorant. But is focusing on the negativity the best way to help? That's the conventional wisdom of course. But what if there's a different way?
My bent, for a long while, has been on trying to get everyone to realize the problems. Hmm. Realize the problems. Couldn’t that also be inferred to mean: make the problems realized/happen? Or as my Webster's dictionary defines it: to bring into concrete existence.
For too long now, I’ve spent time paying attention to a negative reality. Feeding off of it really. And you are what you eat after all. It seemed to start in earnest with the whole 9/11 thing. The conspiracy behind it. Then one thing led to another. I’ve spent untold hours online perusing every sort of information portal. To be honest, feeding mostly off of doom and gloom. 9/11 was an in-house operation, let me count the ways. The Iraq war, a dishonest abomination, let me count the dead and dismembered bodies. The environment is falling apart, don’t breathe the air, can't drink the water. Milk will kill you, let me dump all the cheese and milk and puss (only to buy more next week). Chemtrails, rfids, depleted uranium, big brother, mad cow disease, electromagnetic radiation, mainstream media, vote fraud, peak oil, earthquakes, the draft, you name it. Doom, doom, doom. My nickname around the house is “Debi Downer". "But", I protest, "I'm just trying to be informed."
For too long now, I’ve spent time paying attention to a negative reality. Feeding off of it really. And you are what you eat after all. It seemed to start in earnest with the whole 9/11 thing. The conspiracy behind it. Then one thing led to another. I’ve spent untold hours online perusing every sort of information portal. To be honest, feeding mostly off of doom and gloom. 9/11 was an in-house operation, let me count the ways. The Iraq war, a dishonest abomination, let me count the dead and dismembered bodies. The environment is falling apart, don’t breathe the air, can't drink the water. Milk will kill you, let me dump all the cheese and milk and puss (only to buy more next week). Chemtrails, rfids, depleted uranium, big brother, mad cow disease, electromagnetic radiation, mainstream media, vote fraud, peak oil, earthquakes, the draft, you name it. Doom, doom, doom. My nickname around the house is “Debi Downer". "But", I protest, "I'm just trying to be informed."
My 12 year old daughter hasn't wanted to hear any of it. Saying it depresses and worries her. No wonder. However, when she saw me reading the other day--something about “The Guns of August” and Cheney’s supposed goal of invading Iran right after Congress goes on its summer break--she wanted to know what the bad news was. Insidious, the effect one person can have. But there’s the point. One person can have an incredible effect on those around him/her, and beyond. The question is: What kind of an effect does one want to have?
I think I would like my life to be an example of what I believe to be possible. That we can achieve anything. Anything we set our minds to. While I may note that there are terrible things happening, I can choose to re-frame them in my mind's eye and envision a positive outcome. I can visualize whirled peas. I can foster a more positive outlook and share that with my family and those around me, always being mindful of my thoughts and guarding against their current proclivity to turn towards the dark side.
What do I think we can create by focusing our intentions in a positive way? I think if enough of us desire and envision it, we will see war end.
I think I would like my life to be an example of what I believe to be possible. That we can achieve anything. Anything we set our minds to. While I may note that there are terrible things happening, I can choose to re-frame them in my mind's eye and envision a positive outcome. I can visualize whirled peas. I can foster a more positive outlook and share that with my family and those around me, always being mindful of my thoughts and guarding against their current proclivity to turn towards the dark side.
What do I think we can create by focusing our intentions in a positive way? I think if enough of us desire and envision it, we will see war end.
But wait, I’m reminded of something my 15 year old son was quick to point out a couple of weeks ago during an incredible discussion regarding the principles of the book, Ask and It Is Given, “If half the United States envisioned a pull out from Iraq, there would still be another half, potentially, that thinks/believes it’s the right thing. Can your will, (should your will), overpower theirs?”
So, let me rephrase. I think we can create the experience of peace for ourselves and any who desire it. I think we can heal ourselves and those who wish to be healed. I think we can create the experience of a healthy and nurturing environment. I think we can create abundance. I think we can create anything we can imagine. We do already. We create exactly that which our thoughts are focused on--be it positive or negative. Look at your own reality and see if you can't see this to be true. Pay attention to your thoughts throughout the day. Compare them to what you are experiencing.
To create and experience the reality we desire, we need to do more than just say we desire it. We have to make sure our thoughts are in agreement with what we say we want. Science is beginning to prove that thought affects matter. That all is vibration. And not that thought affects matter in a fixed way. Science is able to demonstrate that a quantum particle's response varies, depending on the thought directed at it.
So, let me rephrase. I think we can create the experience of peace for ourselves and any who desire it. I think we can heal ourselves and those who wish to be healed. I think we can create the experience of a healthy and nurturing environment. I think we can create abundance. I think we can create anything we can imagine. We do already. We create exactly that which our thoughts are focused on--be it positive or negative. Look at your own reality and see if you can't see this to be true. Pay attention to your thoughts throughout the day. Compare them to what you are experiencing.
To create and experience the reality we desire, we need to do more than just say we desire it. We have to make sure our thoughts are in agreement with what we say we want. Science is beginning to prove that thought affects matter. That all is vibration. And not that thought affects matter in a fixed way. Science is able to demonstrate that a quantum particle's response varies, depending on the thought directed at it.
If you say you desire something, but are constantly focusing on the opposite of that something, that’s what you’ll experience.
One of the ideas that I struggle with but am really intrigued by is the idea that there is enough. For everyone. And that there is room for all variety of thought and choice and belief. It's so expansive feeling, and yet runs so contrary to our usual way of thinking. Our modern day society is almost completely based on the idea of having to fight for what we need or believe. That we have to get what we need before someone else does. Or prove our way is the right way. Or protect what we need and want before someone else steals, or takes, or uses it up. The war in Iraq is just such an example. And in the environment. In education. The boardroom. Religion. The buffet line. But what would happen if people started imagining, focusing on, and seeing themselves get what they need? Trusting it to be there? For everyone? Be it water, food, electricity, medicine, whatever? And beyond needs even? Do you feel the shift inside when you consider the idea that there might be enough for everyone? That there might be no need to fight for what we need and believe? Do you notice the sense of relief, of an inner relaxing? Even if just very momentary?
One of the ideas that I struggle with but am really intrigued by is the idea that there is enough. For everyone. And that there is room for all variety of thought and choice and belief. It's so expansive feeling, and yet runs so contrary to our usual way of thinking. Our modern day society is almost completely based on the idea of having to fight for what we need or believe. That we have to get what we need before someone else does. Or prove our way is the right way. Or protect what we need and want before someone else steals, or takes, or uses it up. The war in Iraq is just such an example. And in the environment. In education. The boardroom. Religion. The buffet line. But what would happen if people started imagining, focusing on, and seeing themselves get what they need? Trusting it to be there? For everyone? Be it water, food, electricity, medicine, whatever? And beyond needs even? Do you feel the shift inside when you consider the idea that there might be enough for everyone? That there might be no need to fight for what we need and believe? Do you notice the sense of relief, of an inner relaxing? Even if just very momentary?
These ideas do, however, also raise the question in many minds, including my own, of the necessity for restraint and conservatism, environmental stewardship and social justice. If everyone suddenly believed they could have anything they desired, what would happen then? Can the earth really support such a concept? Can humanity?
But what if it's not the earth's ability to provide that causes problems, but our own minds? Our own fears? Our own belief in a limited universe? What if, when we change our minds, the reality we experience collectively changes? Perhaps whatever we imagine can be. Maybe once we recognize how potent and creative we are, and how connected to the all, we cease behaviors and having desires that are a detriment to it.
And perhaps some of this smells like a bunch of bullcrap. “If an Iraqi desires peace, all he has to do is focus his thoughts on it and it’ll happen?? If a hungry person in Niger desires food, all she has to do is imagine it? Yeah right!! And what about global warming and genocide and desertification and...”
I can certainly hear the roar of protest. But, what if, what if it does matter what we focus our thoughts on? What if, by focusing on positive outcomes, we could change the world?
Monday, May 16, 2005
Errant Planes
Last week a small plane flies into the restricted airspace of the Nation's Capitol. By all accounts it was just a mistake, as possibly evidenced by the freezing of the 69 year old pilot when approached by the Black Hawk helicopter. And if that didn't paralyze him enough, two F-16 fighter jets rushed to the scene, dipping their wings and dropping flares. Thank goodness the 36 year old student pilot had his wits about him or there might really have been a national emergency at the White House.
But this isn't about the errant, and possibly clueless, meanderings of a pilot and his plane. This is about how the government, NORAD, and the FAA handles air security. I've been expecting someone to draw a corollary on this one, and excuse me if I haven't seen it, but what about 9/11? I'm not a historian of FAA protocol, and perhaps I'm talking out my arse, but I do believe that FAA and NORAD regulations regarding restricted air space on the morning of 9/11 were fairly similar to what they are now--the fugly war on terrorism at home and abroad, all the personal sacrifices to civil liberty, gargantuan debt, etc., we've had forced on us aside.
Two things. Questions.
Thing one: Why the huge, and costly, evacuation of the White House and nearby government offices last week, but no evacuation of the second tower or the Pentagon on 9/11...when NORAD, FAA, and the air traffic controllers all KNEW there were big errant planes flying around, ostensibly bent on becoming missles of death? (Oh that's right, there was a full scale war game going on that morning and everyone "in charge" believed that the planes they were seeing on their screens weren't actually real? Nevermind the actual television footage of actual carnage?)
Thing two: Why does our "commander in chief" continue to not be kept abreast of critical emergencies? The White House security level is raised to its highest, Red. But the president is kept blissfully unaware as he continues frolicking on his bike, probably dreaming about his pet goat.
For more information on air security protocols, war games, and evidence regarding government complicity on 9/11, see:
1
2
3
4 I declare a bad war.
But this isn't about the errant, and possibly clueless, meanderings of a pilot and his plane. This is about how the government, NORAD, and the FAA handles air security. I've been expecting someone to draw a corollary on this one, and excuse me if I haven't seen it, but what about 9/11? I'm not a historian of FAA protocol, and perhaps I'm talking out my arse, but I do believe that FAA and NORAD regulations regarding restricted air space on the morning of 9/11 were fairly similar to what they are now--the fugly war on terrorism at home and abroad, all the personal sacrifices to civil liberty, gargantuan debt, etc., we've had forced on us aside.
Two things. Questions.
Thing one: Why the huge, and costly, evacuation of the White House and nearby government offices last week, but no evacuation of the second tower or the Pentagon on 9/11...when NORAD, FAA, and the air traffic controllers all KNEW there were big errant planes flying around, ostensibly bent on becoming missles of death? (Oh that's right, there was a full scale war game going on that morning and everyone "in charge" believed that the planes they were seeing on their screens weren't actually real? Nevermind the actual television footage of actual carnage?)
Thing two: Why does our "commander in chief" continue to not be kept abreast of critical emergencies? The White House security level is raised to its highest, Red. But the president is kept blissfully unaware as he continues frolicking on his bike, probably dreaming about his pet goat.
For more information on air security protocols, war games, and evidence regarding government complicity on 9/11, see:
1
2
3
4 I declare a bad war.
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Crimes of the Century
I actually believe this very important article by David Michael Green, a professor of political science, titled Stop the Crime of the Century is misnamed. I'd title it The Second Crime of the Century.
What was the first you ask?
9/11.
And not because I believe 19 hijackers, acting in accord with a former CIA guy named Usama, or Osama, were the sole, if at all, perpetrators of 9/11.
Why would I say that?
(Please give my answer a chance before you call me a traitor, tell me to go to France, or call Homeland Security.)
An easy place to begin would be checking out a transcript of David Ray Griffin's talk regarding government complicity in 9/11. If you're only familiar with the "official" version of 9/11 you might be in for a surprise. If so, please suspend your disbelief, read (or listen via many different internet links) to the talk Mr. Griffin, theologian and author, gave to University of Wisconsin students on the 18th of April and which was telecast via CSPAN2 on April 30th and May 7th (way to go CSPAN!). If, after reading the transcript, your interest is sufficiently piqued--and it should be--this will only be the beginning of your trip down a very interesting, and disturbing, rabbit hole.
Let me know if you need any directions for the journey. I'd be happy to supply you with a variety of credible links.
Ditto what Mr. Green suggests, except let's add an s to the end of crime so that we can really get the job done right.
...........................................................................................
Decided to look up the lyrics to Supertramp's Crime of The Century. Seem especially appropriate to include here. I love Supertramp by the way. And I think my all time favorite song might be School.
Crime of the Century, by Supertramp
Now they're planning the crime of the century
Well what will it be?
Read all about their schemes and adventuring
It's well worth a fee
So roll up and see
And they rape the universe
How they've gone from bad to worse
Who are these men of lust, greed, and glory?
Rip off the masks and let's see.
But that's no right - oh no, what's the story?
There's you and there's me
That can't be right
What was the first you ask?
9/11.
And not because I believe 19 hijackers, acting in accord with a former CIA guy named Usama, or Osama, were the sole, if at all, perpetrators of 9/11.
Why would I say that?
(Please give my answer a chance before you call me a traitor, tell me to go to France, or call Homeland Security.)
An easy place to begin would be checking out a transcript of David Ray Griffin's talk regarding government complicity in 9/11. If you're only familiar with the "official" version of 9/11 you might be in for a surprise. If so, please suspend your disbelief, read (or listen via many different internet links) to the talk Mr. Griffin, theologian and author, gave to University of Wisconsin students on the 18th of April and which was telecast via CSPAN2 on April 30th and May 7th (way to go CSPAN!). If, after reading the transcript, your interest is sufficiently piqued--and it should be--this will only be the beginning of your trip down a very interesting, and disturbing, rabbit hole.
Let me know if you need any directions for the journey. I'd be happy to supply you with a variety of credible links.
Ditto what Mr. Green suggests, except let's add an s to the end of crime so that we can really get the job done right.
...........................................................................................
Decided to look up the lyrics to Supertramp's Crime of The Century. Seem especially appropriate to include here. I love Supertramp by the way. And I think my all time favorite song might be School.
Crime of the Century, by Supertramp
Now they're planning the crime of the century
Well what will it be?
Read all about their schemes and adventuring
It's well worth a fee
So roll up and see
And they rape the universe
How they've gone from bad to worse
Who are these men of lust, greed, and glory?
Rip off the masks and let's see.
But that's no right - oh no, what's the story?
There's you and there's me
That can't be right
Friday, May 13, 2005
The "Ultimate Educational Experience"
A substitute biology teacher in Gunnison, Utah facilitates a class in the dissecting of a live dog. The dog was sedated. And the dog was scheduled to be euthanized.
Questions anyone?
"The teacher is standing by his decision and calls it the ultimate educational experience. Principal Anderson said he supports the lesson and it will be allowed to continue because the students are learning."
What's next, live dissection of sedated death row inmates? Gitmo prisoners? The terminally ill? I could go on, and it'd probably include something sarcastic about "ultimate educational experiences" regarding the substitute teacher and his principal, but I'll refrain.
I can, unfortunately perhaps, imagine what was going through this teacher's mind. And he's probably going to take a public flogging, however justified or not, regarding it. What's most distressing is that this kind of "educational experience" has much more to do with desensitizing impressionable students than teaching them anything about the digestive tract of the unwanted dog or how to be a compassionate human being.
When I was in high school, I wrote a paper regarding my distaste for dissecting anything. I didn't mind the biology class so much. The teacher I rather liked, although he always smelled a little too much like booze. Though the booze probably contributed to his fairly lax teaching style and somewhat humorous and sarcastic nature which most of us--except those who most wanted to learn biology--enjoyed. But when it came to being told I had to dissect frogs whether I liked it or not, I tried to stage a mini revolt. It wasn't that the teacher made me feel violated. More like the system was making me feel violated.
I wrote an article intended for the school newspaper merely suggesting that if one didn't feel destined for a field in biology or medicine, why should they be forced to dissect frogs? For one, I liked frogs. And, just a few years earlier, they had been the subject of many of my favorite childhood stories and personal imaginings. And now I'm being coerced into dissecting them?
I worked for the school paper and submitted the article for final approval. Soon thereafter, along comes the well meaning head of the newspaper department and, taking me by the arm, tells me that it's an inappropriate piece. Incredibly, as I consider it now, I was even directed to speak to the principal about it, who chastised me about my subversive attitude, and told me firmly, "you mustn't question."
Well...this is why our family homeschools. For one, to create our own ultimate educational experiences. Like focusing on community service, sustainable living, human and animal rights, global politics, clean water and air,...the list of potential ultimate educational experiences is endless. But, to be honest, we homeschool mainly to preserve the natural, and necessary, questioning ability of young people. We aren't perfect at it. There are plenty of times we don't do the best job of encouraging or answering the questions. But question we must. All of us. Everything. And I sure question the thinking that says it's okay to dissect live, however sedated, dogs.
"The teacher is standing by his decision and calls it the ultimate educational experience. Principal Anderson said he supports the lesson and it will be allowed to continue because the students are learning."
What's next, live dissection of sedated death row inmates? Gitmo prisoners? The terminally ill? I could go on, and it'd probably include something sarcastic about "ultimate educational experiences" regarding the substitute teacher and his principal, but I'll refrain.
I can, unfortunately perhaps, imagine what was going through this teacher's mind. And he's probably going to take a public flogging, however justified or not, regarding it. What's most distressing is that this kind of "educational experience" has much more to do with desensitizing impressionable students than teaching them anything about the digestive tract of the unwanted dog or how to be a compassionate human being.
When I was in high school, I wrote a paper regarding my distaste for dissecting anything. I didn't mind the biology class so much. The teacher I rather liked, although he always smelled a little too much like booze. Though the booze probably contributed to his fairly lax teaching style and somewhat humorous and sarcastic nature which most of us--except those who most wanted to learn biology--enjoyed. But when it came to being told I had to dissect frogs whether I liked it or not, I tried to stage a mini revolt. It wasn't that the teacher made me feel violated. More like the system was making me feel violated.
I wrote an article intended for the school newspaper merely suggesting that if one didn't feel destined for a field in biology or medicine, why should they be forced to dissect frogs? For one, I liked frogs. And, just a few years earlier, they had been the subject of many of my favorite childhood stories and personal imaginings. And now I'm being coerced into dissecting them?
I worked for the school paper and submitted the article for final approval. Soon thereafter, along comes the well meaning head of the newspaper department and, taking me by the arm, tells me that it's an inappropriate piece. Incredibly, as I consider it now, I was even directed to speak to the principal about it, who chastised me about my subversive attitude, and told me firmly, "you mustn't question."
Well...this is why our family homeschools. For one, to create our own ultimate educational experiences. Like focusing on community service, sustainable living, human and animal rights, global politics, clean water and air,...the list of potential ultimate educational experiences is endless. But, to be honest, we homeschool mainly to preserve the natural, and necessary, questioning ability of young people. We aren't perfect at it. There are plenty of times we don't do the best job of encouraging or answering the questions. But question we must. All of us. Everything. And I sure question the thinking that says it's okay to dissect live, however sedated, dogs.
Saturday, April 02, 2005
the space between
hah. i keep thinking i can do this. unedit myself. but i can't. i keep backspacing, erasing, rewriting. can i really get to the real me? e.e.cummings comes to mind. he didn't even capitalize (then again, maybe he did). proper spacing. am i doing even him right? it's the ongoing conundrum. i like that word. conundrum. how to be real? without being so worried people won't get it? but is that a problem? thinking people should "get it?"
what i'd really like to do is find the unedited version of myself. of everyone. the real in me, the real in you, the real in everyone. it fucking pisses me off that i can't access that more freely. that i can't find that part of myself more easily. that that (that that??) real person inside. is she even there? hello??
just came from an amazing party. a party of friends. a place where i feel welcome and free to be real. this is a big thing. a thing so rarely understood and realized. yet...i'm still not sure where i fit within. the space between. "the space between." isn't that a david matthews lyric? maybe not. i suck at knowing who sang what. but it's a verse that comes to me. maybe i should google that. "the space between."
okay, that took me forever. to add a link to dave matthews "the space between" lyrics. not even sure it worked.
so what did i really hope to impart with this writing? this is the thing... everything we each say in each moment has more of an impact than any of us realize. i was at this party tonite and more than once (another song comes to mind "more than once") someone told me that what i'd said some other time, a few months ago or several years ago, made an impact on them. now i'm not suggesting that what i might say is so important, it's a suggestion that what each and any of us says in any moment might make a difference.
the space between offers so much. it's an infinite place whereby we can learn and be and know more than we ever knew was possible.
how can we judge what another does? how can we know and ascertain what another might have been here to do?
i had an interesting, and long, conversation with a man who was very close to a person who recently chose to leave this plane via suicide. was that a necessary choice? we can't decide. can't judge. but we can agree that what we need to do is pay attention to each present moment. and, i suspect, the people who choose to leave here would suggest we do pay attention, be present, be now.
how to be now? what a question. how to be now? how to be present in a world that suggests an ignorance to things difficult? how to be present with a world that doesn't make any sense? how to be present in a world that seems to be against life and joy?
how to live in this moment?
back to the unedited part. who am i? who are you? who are we? who are we all together? (another bunch of lyrics?) all interesting questions. and where is the unedited part? the part that really speaks? the part that really matters?
damn. it's a whole other bunch of questions i have to add to my to do list.
to be continued again...
what i'd really like to do is find the unedited version of myself. of everyone. the real in me, the real in you, the real in everyone. it fucking pisses me off that i can't access that more freely. that i can't find that part of myself more easily. that that (that that??) real person inside. is she even there? hello??
just came from an amazing party. a party of friends. a place where i feel welcome and free to be real. this is a big thing. a thing so rarely understood and realized. yet...i'm still not sure where i fit within. the space between. "the space between." isn't that a david matthews lyric? maybe not. i suck at knowing who sang what. but it's a verse that comes to me. maybe i should google that. "the space between."
okay, that took me forever. to add a link to dave matthews "the space between" lyrics. not even sure it worked.
so what did i really hope to impart with this writing? this is the thing... everything we each say in each moment has more of an impact than any of us realize. i was at this party tonite and more than once (another song comes to mind "more than once") someone told me that what i'd said some other time, a few months ago or several years ago, made an impact on them. now i'm not suggesting that what i might say is so important, it's a suggestion that what each and any of us says in any moment might make a difference.
the space between offers so much. it's an infinite place whereby we can learn and be and know more than we ever knew was possible.
how can we judge what another does? how can we know and ascertain what another might have been here to do?
i had an interesting, and long, conversation with a man who was very close to a person who recently chose to leave this plane via suicide. was that a necessary choice? we can't decide. can't judge. but we can agree that what we need to do is pay attention to each present moment. and, i suspect, the people who choose to leave here would suggest we do pay attention, be present, be now.
how to be now? what a question. how to be now? how to be present in a world that suggests an ignorance to things difficult? how to be present with a world that doesn't make any sense? how to be present in a world that seems to be against life and joy?
how to live in this moment?
back to the unedited part. who am i? who are you? who are we? who are we all together? (another bunch of lyrics?) all interesting questions. and where is the unedited part? the part that really speaks? the part that really matters?
damn. it's a whole other bunch of questions i have to add to my to do list.
to be continued again...
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Filling Station
It's a beautiful sunny day here in Southern Oregon. Just returned from refueling the car and dropping my daughter off at a class. Was listening to Kila while the tank was filling. Watching the pansies blowing in the breeze, marveling at how nature always seems to dance rhythmically to whatever music I might be listening to. Watching all the traffic blow by. Trying to juxtapose all my observations with my ongoing frustration with the state of things on this blue marble of a planet and my own inertia regarding necessary change.
I asked the station manager, after I'd paid my bill, what he thought was going to happen with gas prices. He replied, "Three dollars by summer." I mentioned I'd recently overheard someone say, "Four dollars in one month." He said he didn't see it going much over $3.50, but added that he is pretty certain we'll never, ever, see it go below the two dollar mark again. He told me how he hears people talk about a big government conspiracy regarding gas prices. "It's not that," he said, "it's China. Their increasing consumption is driving up the prices of everything. Gas, steel, etc." I know that he's correct, and I'm surprised by his awareness of the issue. He surprises me even further when I ask him if he's familiar with the idea of peak oil. I suggest that it isn't just China's increasing appetite that's fueling the problem (pun intended), it might also have something to do with the oil supplies themselves. After the peak, the oil becomes more and more expensive to extract. By some accounts, we are at the peak. Others have us past it. Regardless of where the peak is, most agree there is one and that if we haven't already passed it--barring any new big finds--it's nevertheless approaching fast and bringing with it a big change in the way we live.
He says he's familiar with the idea, and says he's been thinking about these issues for several years. He doesn't want to see the price go up, "I pay just like anyone else does," he says. But he also says he thinks if gas took a major leap in price, it'd be the thing we all need to get us off our butts, "but no, they bring it on so incrementally that we don't pay much attention. Get frustrated, yes, but not enough to do anything about it." He then shares an idea he's pondered the past couple of years, one which I say surprises me being that it's coming from a man managing a gas station. He tells me he thinks people should boycott a gas company. "Take Chevron, for example," he says, "get everyone, I mean everyone, to boycott Chevron for a month. It'd kill them. And then the next month, boycott another company. Then we'd get some changes." Then he goes on to tell me that his station doesn't have any room for price gauging. In fact, he shares, they'd go broke if they didn't offer their other services, like the car wash. There's a big difference between a service station and a gas company of course, but I wonder if we'd be barking up the wrong tree to boycott gas companies. Perhaps we need to boycott automobile manufacturers.
According to the Jan/Feb 05 issue of Adbusters: "The EPA repeatedly bows to industry pressure. It has allowed corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) to stagnate for a decade; worse, it is only starting to amend loopholes that allow 'light trucks'- read: SUVs, now 50 percent of cars sold in the US-to avoid tighter fuel economy standards--If standards for light trucks were identical to cars, US oil consumption would drop by one million barrels a day. And worse yet, automakers routinely sidestep laws by altering cars to qualify as light trucks. Or they swallow the fines: BMW recently paid a paltry $28 million fine for not meeting CAFE standards, calling it a price of doing business."
Come to think of it, maybe we should boycott the government...
The station manager and I start talking fuel efficiency, alternative fuels, existing technologies. He points to his brand new sports car (with a 'support the troops' ribbon on the back). He was told it would get 18mpg/city. Instead it gets 9mpg. He's considering getting a different car. I mention that our family has been considering biodiesel. We both agree though, that the best thing we could do is drive less. My driving is something I consider daily. I've made some changes here and there. But rearranging one's life to NOT revolve around the ease of transportation the automobile provides isn't always the easiest task. It should be. But our lives have become so complex and complicated--interesting since all the technology surrounding and consuming us was supposed to make things so much easier--that it's hard, for me anyway, to stop long enough to make the necessary changes.
This morning's conversation comes on the heals of my reading the above mentioned Adbusters magazine the past few mornings (when I could have been using the time to wake my daughter earlier and walk to class with her). It's full of correlations to this conversation. One article talks about the issue of China's adoption of western consumer values and its increasing love affair with the automobile. Setting up a nightmare scenario whereby it's predicted the now 12 million cars on the roads of China will turn into 160 million by the year 2020. In another article I read the following:
One of the most common 'When I was a kid' stories goes something like this: "I had to walk two miles to school. Even in the depths of winter. And it was uphill both ways." Embellishment aside, walking to school is a basic rite of passage for countless children around the world. But these days, horror stories of child abductions have many urban and suburban parents in such a state of anxiety that they insist on driving their children everywhere. So, even if the school is just down the block, everyone hops in the minivan for the five-minute drive. Five times a week, twice a day, vehicles queue and idle in front of schools throughout North America and beyond."
This is absurd. We're slowly poisoning our children with all this idling-literally and figuratively-while we mindlessly guzzle up the last of a precious resource that if conserved might just be responsible for saving our child or grandchildren or grandchildren's children down the road. And this is just the beginning of what we're doing and not doing when we allow our lives to be controlled by fear and "convenience."
I laugh at the gas station attendant for driving a 9 mpg sports car. I laugh, nervously, at myself for not readjusting my life to be in fuller accordance with my beliefs, for I am one who drives her daughter one mile to go to school. Short term "protection", long term death sentence. Absurdities.
To be continued.
I asked the station manager, after I'd paid my bill, what he thought was going to happen with gas prices. He replied, "Three dollars by summer." I mentioned I'd recently overheard someone say, "Four dollars in one month." He said he didn't see it going much over $3.50, but added that he is pretty certain we'll never, ever, see it go below the two dollar mark again. He told me how he hears people talk about a big government conspiracy regarding gas prices. "It's not that," he said, "it's China. Their increasing consumption is driving up the prices of everything. Gas, steel, etc." I know that he's correct, and I'm surprised by his awareness of the issue. He surprises me even further when I ask him if he's familiar with the idea of peak oil. I suggest that it isn't just China's increasing appetite that's fueling the problem (pun intended), it might also have something to do with the oil supplies themselves. After the peak, the oil becomes more and more expensive to extract. By some accounts, we are at the peak. Others have us past it. Regardless of where the peak is, most agree there is one and that if we haven't already passed it--barring any new big finds--it's nevertheless approaching fast and bringing with it a big change in the way we live.
He says he's familiar with the idea, and says he's been thinking about these issues for several years. He doesn't want to see the price go up, "I pay just like anyone else does," he says. But he also says he thinks if gas took a major leap in price, it'd be the thing we all need to get us off our butts, "but no, they bring it on so incrementally that we don't pay much attention. Get frustrated, yes, but not enough to do anything about it." He then shares an idea he's pondered the past couple of years, one which I say surprises me being that it's coming from a man managing a gas station. He tells me he thinks people should boycott a gas company. "Take Chevron, for example," he says, "get everyone, I mean everyone, to boycott Chevron for a month. It'd kill them. And then the next month, boycott another company. Then we'd get some changes." Then he goes on to tell me that his station doesn't have any room for price gauging. In fact, he shares, they'd go broke if they didn't offer their other services, like the car wash. There's a big difference between a service station and a gas company of course, but I wonder if we'd be barking up the wrong tree to boycott gas companies. Perhaps we need to boycott automobile manufacturers.
According to the Jan/Feb 05 issue of Adbusters: "The EPA repeatedly bows to industry pressure. It has allowed corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) to stagnate for a decade; worse, it is only starting to amend loopholes that allow 'light trucks'- read: SUVs, now 50 percent of cars sold in the US-to avoid tighter fuel economy standards--If standards for light trucks were identical to cars, US oil consumption would drop by one million barrels a day. And worse yet, automakers routinely sidestep laws by altering cars to qualify as light trucks. Or they swallow the fines: BMW recently paid a paltry $28 million fine for not meeting CAFE standards, calling it a price of doing business."
Come to think of it, maybe we should boycott the government...
The station manager and I start talking fuel efficiency, alternative fuels, existing technologies. He points to his brand new sports car (with a 'support the troops' ribbon on the back). He was told it would get 18mpg/city. Instead it gets 9mpg. He's considering getting a different car. I mention that our family has been considering biodiesel. We both agree though, that the best thing we could do is drive less. My driving is something I consider daily. I've made some changes here and there. But rearranging one's life to NOT revolve around the ease of transportation the automobile provides isn't always the easiest task. It should be. But our lives have become so complex and complicated--interesting since all the technology surrounding and consuming us was supposed to make things so much easier--that it's hard, for me anyway, to stop long enough to make the necessary changes.
This morning's conversation comes on the heals of my reading the above mentioned Adbusters magazine the past few mornings (when I could have been using the time to wake my daughter earlier and walk to class with her). It's full of correlations to this conversation. One article talks about the issue of China's adoption of western consumer values and its increasing love affair with the automobile. Setting up a nightmare scenario whereby it's predicted the now 12 million cars on the roads of China will turn into 160 million by the year 2020. In another article I read the following:
One of the most common 'When I was a kid' stories goes something like this: "I had to walk two miles to school. Even in the depths of winter. And it was uphill both ways." Embellishment aside, walking to school is a basic rite of passage for countless children around the world. But these days, horror stories of child abductions have many urban and suburban parents in such a state of anxiety that they insist on driving their children everywhere. So, even if the school is just down the block, everyone hops in the minivan for the five-minute drive. Five times a week, twice a day, vehicles queue and idle in front of schools throughout North America and beyond."
This is absurd. We're slowly poisoning our children with all this idling-literally and figuratively-while we mindlessly guzzle up the last of a precious resource that if conserved might just be responsible for saving our child or grandchildren or grandchildren's children down the road. And this is just the beginning of what we're doing and not doing when we allow our lives to be controlled by fear and "convenience."
I laugh at the gas station attendant for driving a 9 mpg sports car. I laugh, nervously, at myself for not readjusting my life to be in fuller accordance with my beliefs, for I am one who drives her daughter one mile to go to school. Short term "protection", long term death sentence. Absurdities.
To be continued.
Sunday, February 06, 2005
Night Pages
Writing guru Julia Cameron suggests morning pages. I prefer night pages. Sometimes.
Listening to Natalie Merchant's "Ophelia" in my headphones. Husband just went to bed. "It's 12:45, maybe you should go to bed", he says on his way up. Just makes me want to stay up longer.
Sitting here trying to process life.
Had a great evening. Great day actually. Not the one I'd originally planned. Plans are funny that way.
Kids were both away (overnights on Friday) and I ended up having the whole day to myself. Funny how that happens more and more the older they get. Funny how hard I miss them, and how much I enjoy my alone time all at once. Is this what happens? The tearing apart of the mothering self?
I'd imagined doing a little housework and then walking downtown to get a coffee and write. When the coffee hour had long passed, I thought I might go to my favorite local pub, get a beer, and write. But instead, I just kept cleaning, organizing, and puttering around the house. One project lead to another. Washing an old (10 years?) Playmobile container and the slimy dinosaurs it had housed for the past several years (trying to remember the times my kids had played with them, so innocently in the mud), trying to find matching socks in the "misc" sock basket (where does the sock fairy take all those socks?), sifting through a pile of old "favorite" books, cleaning out and organizing the game cupboard (including the Disney memory game my daughter used to love playing, and finding myself wondering about the fact that we'd ever supported anything "Disney.")
It was, I suppose, a day spent sifting memories. A day spent contemplating how things are one moment deemed important--like so many old toy dinosaurs-- only to be quickly discarded. There's a big lesson in there.
My daughter (now 12) came home, and seeing my pile of things to get rid of says, quite emphatically, "you're not getting rid of those games." She has a difficult time letting go of the things she's outgrown. So do I. But the housing of these things takes time. The housing and organizing and storing of memories takes up a lot of space. Mental and physical. Why is it so hard to let go of them? Are we afraid the memories will disappear if we discard the items that represent a certain time in our life?
I had an interesting conversation with a friend last week. I've known him for a couple of years, and was surprised to suddenly learn that his family had experienced a house fire a number of years ago. I asked him what that was like. He said that it was actually a very good experience in some ways. Before, he'd felt it was important to keep physical belongings/items intact in order to preserve memories. After losing so many things however, he realized that the memories remained irregardless of the presence (or not) of the item. He said it was an incredibly freeing experience.
I wonder how many people pay for storage units, pay monthly mortgages or rent, just to house memories they're afraid of losing. I wonder how many of us spend our Saturdays organizing, cataloguing, sifting, pondering over, finding storage for, or tending garage sales of, the amazing amount of stuff that enters our lives. And often, we're talking about unwanted, unsolicited-- though often generously offered--gifts that we'd never have purchased ourselves. You know what I mean. All those gifts that come from grandparents, aunts and uncles, friends, schoolmates. We're an incredibly generous lot. Aren't we? And so much of it is more burden than gift.
Probably the best gift anyone can give another is nothing. "What I choose to give you today is nothing. Happy Birthday. Happy Kwanza. Merry Christmas. Happy Father's/Mother's/Valentine's Day, etc." Nothing. Nothing.
The gift of nothing. What a concept.
But it's not just the gifts from others that cause such painful consternation. We buy a good deal of it ourselves. "If I just get that one item, I'll be happy." "I'll finally be fulfilled." "My life will finally be organized."
I recently bought a new bath mat. I'd been looking for a new bath mat for several years. Up till the time I bought one, we'd used old towels. You know, gotta have something to sop up the overflow of water. Something to absorb the moisture as one steps out of the shower. For some reason, I convinced myself that a bath mat would make things easier in this department and that it would be a wise purchase. Funny thing about bath mats, they are so thick they hold water too long. Never dry out. And bath mats aren't an easy thing to run through an apartment sized washing machine. But an old towel is. Now I have a sopping wet, mildewy bath mat sitting in a bag on my front porch (where it's been for two weeks getting more mildewy) that needs to be taken to the laundromat. So much for making my life easier.
The older I get, the more I realize, the less I need. Should I rephrase that? Is it proper grammar? How can I be simpler?
I keep watching the birds outside my kitchen window. There's a tree out there and even though it's mid-winter, it's full of rotting (but obviously still edible) apples. Birds of every stripe and color swing back and forth on the fruit, pecking to their heart's content. I watch. And as I watch I'm reminded of a biblical verse I recall from my fundamentalist upbringing. Something about how the creator provides for even the birds of the field.
Why is it that we humans worry so? Why are we so afraid about being provided for? Why don't we trust that our needs will be met? Why do we continue to argue, fight, and conduct wars over resources that we think are necessary to our livelihood? Why is this fight fought primarily by people that espouse a belief in God? You know...the god who says he will provide for all necessities? Brings to mind other biblical events, the ones where the Israelites didn't trust. Where they thought they had to take matters into their own hands.
Didn't this leave them wandering?
And so I guess we go around and around and around. Always circling.
And while I could go round and round and round about my own organizing, sifting, worrying about what to keep, what to honor, what I need, what to worship, what to discard, how best to make a difference in the world, etc., perhaps the lesson is the same. A question. Several questions. What do we give our attention? What do we give our time? And why?
Are we trying to store up gifts? Are we trying to create a legacy? Are we trying to get rich? Are we trying to prove we led valuable lives? Are we trying to prove we were somebody? Are we, out of fear, trying to prove that we existed? If so, I suspect, it's because we don't know and trust who we really are.
And that's why, every once in a while, I find myself wondering what it would be like (god forbid) to lose everything (materially) in a house fire. Why I wonder what it would be like to have nothing but the clothes on my back and my family (clothed and fed) at my side. To be here without all the detritus that we accumulate as time goes on, Disney Memory Games, dinosaur toys given as a promotion 10 years ago by the local bank, or that ugly sweater Grandma sent on my child's 8th birthday.
It's not the stuff. It really is not the stuff. It's the moments. And one day, I'll get it. One day, we'll all get it. Hopefully it's sooner rather than later. For I fear our getting it means much more than any of us realize. Yet I also tend to believe that there is no time limit. That there is enough time in the whole wide universe for each of us to get it in our own due time. Therein lies the beauty of the whole thing. The beauty of life. Of reality. Or our co-existence.
Hmm. I never did get to the thing I'd intended to write about here. Maybe next time. Whatever that means. For while this moment deems itself important to me, and maybe (or not) to you, in the end, it's all we're really guaranteed. What shall we make of it? Nothing that you have to organize, shift around to different piles, take back to the department store with the "gift receipt", haul off to Goodwill, the dump, or the local "free box" (an innovative concept in my own community that at least makes you feel like you're donating to a good cause...until you see a friend pilfering through it happy to find a free Gap sweatshirt). (Not that I don't look through the free box pile myself.)
Listening to Natalie Merchant's "Ophelia" in my headphones. Husband just went to bed. "It's 12:45, maybe you should go to bed", he says on his way up. Just makes me want to stay up longer.
Sitting here trying to process life.
Had a great evening. Great day actually. Not the one I'd originally planned. Plans are funny that way.
Kids were both away (overnights on Friday) and I ended up having the whole day to myself. Funny how that happens more and more the older they get. Funny how hard I miss them, and how much I enjoy my alone time all at once. Is this what happens? The tearing apart of the mothering self?
I'd imagined doing a little housework and then walking downtown to get a coffee and write. When the coffee hour had long passed, I thought I might go to my favorite local pub, get a beer, and write. But instead, I just kept cleaning, organizing, and puttering around the house. One project lead to another. Washing an old (10 years?) Playmobile container and the slimy dinosaurs it had housed for the past several years (trying to remember the times my kids had played with them, so innocently in the mud), trying to find matching socks in the "misc" sock basket (where does the sock fairy take all those socks?), sifting through a pile of old "favorite" books, cleaning out and organizing the game cupboard (including the Disney memory game my daughter used to love playing, and finding myself wondering about the fact that we'd ever supported anything "Disney.")
It was, I suppose, a day spent sifting memories. A day spent contemplating how things are one moment deemed important--like so many old toy dinosaurs-- only to be quickly discarded. There's a big lesson in there.
My daughter (now 12) came home, and seeing my pile of things to get rid of says, quite emphatically, "you're not getting rid of those games." She has a difficult time letting go of the things she's outgrown. So do I. But the housing of these things takes time. The housing and organizing and storing of memories takes up a lot of space. Mental and physical. Why is it so hard to let go of them? Are we afraid the memories will disappear if we discard the items that represent a certain time in our life?
I had an interesting conversation with a friend last week. I've known him for a couple of years, and was surprised to suddenly learn that his family had experienced a house fire a number of years ago. I asked him what that was like. He said that it was actually a very good experience in some ways. Before, he'd felt it was important to keep physical belongings/items intact in order to preserve memories. After losing so many things however, he realized that the memories remained irregardless of the presence (or not) of the item. He said it was an incredibly freeing experience.
I wonder how many people pay for storage units, pay monthly mortgages or rent, just to house memories they're afraid of losing. I wonder how many of us spend our Saturdays organizing, cataloguing, sifting, pondering over, finding storage for, or tending garage sales of, the amazing amount of stuff that enters our lives. And often, we're talking about unwanted, unsolicited-- though often generously offered--gifts that we'd never have purchased ourselves. You know what I mean. All those gifts that come from grandparents, aunts and uncles, friends, schoolmates. We're an incredibly generous lot. Aren't we? And so much of it is more burden than gift.
Probably the best gift anyone can give another is nothing. "What I choose to give you today is nothing. Happy Birthday. Happy Kwanza. Merry Christmas. Happy Father's/Mother's/Valentine's Day, etc." Nothing. Nothing.
The gift of nothing. What a concept.
But it's not just the gifts from others that cause such painful consternation. We buy a good deal of it ourselves. "If I just get that one item, I'll be happy." "I'll finally be fulfilled." "My life will finally be organized."
I recently bought a new bath mat. I'd been looking for a new bath mat for several years. Up till the time I bought one, we'd used old towels. You know, gotta have something to sop up the overflow of water. Something to absorb the moisture as one steps out of the shower. For some reason, I convinced myself that a bath mat would make things easier in this department and that it would be a wise purchase. Funny thing about bath mats, they are so thick they hold water too long. Never dry out. And bath mats aren't an easy thing to run through an apartment sized washing machine. But an old towel is. Now I have a sopping wet, mildewy bath mat sitting in a bag on my front porch (where it's been for two weeks getting more mildewy) that needs to be taken to the laundromat. So much for making my life easier.
The older I get, the more I realize, the less I need. Should I rephrase that? Is it proper grammar? How can I be simpler?
I keep watching the birds outside my kitchen window. There's a tree out there and even though it's mid-winter, it's full of rotting (but obviously still edible) apples. Birds of every stripe and color swing back and forth on the fruit, pecking to their heart's content. I watch. And as I watch I'm reminded of a biblical verse I recall from my fundamentalist upbringing. Something about how the creator provides for even the birds of the field.
Why is it that we humans worry so? Why are we so afraid about being provided for? Why don't we trust that our needs will be met? Why do we continue to argue, fight, and conduct wars over resources that we think are necessary to our livelihood? Why is this fight fought primarily by people that espouse a belief in God? You know...the god who says he will provide for all necessities? Brings to mind other biblical events, the ones where the Israelites didn't trust. Where they thought they had to take matters into their own hands.
Didn't this leave them wandering?
And so I guess we go around and around and around. Always circling.
And while I could go round and round and round about my own organizing, sifting, worrying about what to keep, what to honor, what I need, what to worship, what to discard, how best to make a difference in the world, etc., perhaps the lesson is the same. A question. Several questions. What do we give our attention? What do we give our time? And why?
Are we trying to store up gifts? Are we trying to create a legacy? Are we trying to get rich? Are we trying to prove we led valuable lives? Are we trying to prove we were somebody? Are we, out of fear, trying to prove that we existed? If so, I suspect, it's because we don't know and trust who we really are.
And that's why, every once in a while, I find myself wondering what it would be like (god forbid) to lose everything (materially) in a house fire. Why I wonder what it would be like to have nothing but the clothes on my back and my family (clothed and fed) at my side. To be here without all the detritus that we accumulate as time goes on, Disney Memory Games, dinosaur toys given as a promotion 10 years ago by the local bank, or that ugly sweater Grandma sent on my child's 8th birthday.
It's not the stuff. It really is not the stuff. It's the moments. And one day, I'll get it. One day, we'll all get it. Hopefully it's sooner rather than later. For I fear our getting it means much more than any of us realize. Yet I also tend to believe that there is no time limit. That there is enough time in the whole wide universe for each of us to get it in our own due time. Therein lies the beauty of the whole thing. The beauty of life. Of reality. Or our co-existence.
Hmm. I never did get to the thing I'd intended to write about here. Maybe next time. Whatever that means. For while this moment deems itself important to me, and maybe (or not) to you, in the end, it's all we're really guaranteed. What shall we make of it? Nothing that you have to organize, shift around to different piles, take back to the department store with the "gift receipt", haul off to Goodwill, the dump, or the local "free box" (an innovative concept in my own community that at least makes you feel like you're donating to a good cause...until you see a friend pilfering through it happy to find a free Gap sweatshirt). (Not that I don't look through the free box pile myself.)
Saturday, January 29, 2005
On Blogging
So...here goes. My first foray into the blogging world. What number am I? How many bloggers exist? Let me go google that...
A blogger at blogit.com has the same question:
How many bloggers ARE there?
Does anyone really know?
Blogit's answer: We have thousands of members; we do not provide exact numbers for competitive reasons. Posted by BlogitStaff-Becky on December 5, 2004 at 6:17 AM
Now what competitive reason could Blogit have for not sharing how many bloggers they have?
Is it little fish syndrome? They want to appear big, so they can't admit they're actually pretty small? I have no clue about blogit. Haven't done a websearch of them (and probably won't). But in my own new blogging opinion, they're not doing themselves any pr favors by avoiding the question this way. No offense Becky.
I read more search results:
Technorati tracks over 3.5 million blogs worldwide, up from about 100,000 two years ago. The Pew Internet study estimates that 11% of adult U.S. Internet users regularly read blogs. A new weblog is created every 5.8 seconds, resulting in about 15,000 new blogs a day. Most bloggers update their weblogs regularly: there are about 275,000 posts daily, or about 10,800 blog updates an hour.
These statistics appear to be, while no publish date is available, fairly recent. So, it looks like my little blog is one of some 15,000 that were created just today. A very small fish in a very big ocean here.
Here are some interesting thoughts and blog stats from a blogger in Australia:
from:
Have you ever wondered how far this blogging thing has extended? How many bloggers are there? Where are they from?
Blogcount attempts to answer some of these questions and more. The results are staggering....here's a taste.
Blogger alone has 1.5million registered users. Their number of users grew 14% in the 60 days after 11 March!
Blogstreet's list of blogs grew 27% in a similar period and Technorati tripled the number of blogs it watched in a recent two month period.
Live Journal has 1,090,084 total accounts, with over half of them presently active. Of these 62.2% are Female users and 37.4% are male! (which is pretty different to the God Blog Gender Survey that I did where I found that at least 54% of Christian bloggers were Male!)
18 year olds are the biggest users at Live Journal, most seem to fall between the age of 15 and 25 years old.
The median update rate of weblogs.com pingers is every three days.
Poland now has 100,000 blogs, again 62% are written by women, 75% are under 20 years old.
Iran has 12,000 blogs, but here 76% are male.
During the recent War, 4% of Americans got their war coverage from Weblogs.
This Site has crawled 437,986 blogs. In that list 205,898 are written in English. After that the most popular languages were Portuguese, Polish, Farsi, Spanish, German, Italian, French and Icelandic(in that order). 101,831 are hosted with Blogspot, 14,841 are with MT, 14,172 are with Pitas and 13,106 are with Blogger.
Wow - those are some amazing statistics....the amount of data that is flying around the net purely from blogs is massive. You've got to wonder how useful a lot of the data is, and what impact so many people putting their ideas, dreams, feelings etc out into the datasphere is having on our crazy little world!?
I didn't intend to center my first blog on blogging. But it's interesting stuff. Technorati shares its opinion on the amount of data-blogging flying around the net:
The power of weblogs is that they allow millions of people to easily publish their ideas, and millions more to comment on them. Blogs are a fluid, dynamic medium, more akin to a “conversation” than to a library (which is how the Web has often been described in the past). With an increasing number of people reading, writing, and commenting on blogs, the way we use the Web is shifting in a fundamental way. Instead of primarily being passive consumers of information, more and more Internet users are becoming active participants and creators of content. Weblogs allow everyone to have a voice.
And it's high time everyone recognized the power of their voice, no matter how small it may seem in the larger sea of things. We just never know when that one small thing we say, or do, or write, or share, might be the thing that makes a difference somewhere.
In the web article Digital Media and the Internet: The Question of Utopia Amanda Griscom writes:
...today's digital utopia has been given a space to grow that's far bigger than a painter's canvas and more substantive than the imagination. As of now --- and only the cornerstones have been lain --- it's a horizontally distributed (anti-hierarchical) network of computers within which millions of people can actually communicate and travel and make money and meet friends and buy products and argue and pray and develop communities. The utopia that we are (perhaps inadvertently) attempting to construct in cyberspace seems to satisfy the utopian ideals that have been hovering above Western civilization since ancient Greece.
Gotta love the "anti-hierarchical" part.
We're talking here about the power we as individuals have to shape the world together.
We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.--Marian Wright Edelman
I like to believe in the hundredth monkey principle. Or in this case, the millionth blogger principle.
We all have a voice. Thank you blogspot, blogit, blogstreet, and a multitude of other websites that host the many independent, thoughtful, maddening, enlightening, and thought provoking words of we the people. It's a difference we make, that we may not yet foresee, and which is changing the world--one word at a time. I feel privileged to be a part of it (no matter how small, and seemingly irrelevant that part may appear to be).
So, this ends my first blog. Not sure if I've done it "right." Been struggling with pasting links and quotes, moving back and forth, saving drafts, coping with a mini crash, using the spellchecker, etc. But, it's a start. Looking forward to more time spent here.
A blogger at blogit.com has the same question:
How many bloggers ARE there?
Does anyone really know?
Blogit's answer: We have thousands of members; we do not provide exact numbers for competitive reasons. Posted by BlogitStaff-Becky on December 5, 2004 at 6:17 AM
Now what competitive reason could Blogit have for not sharing how many bloggers they have?
Is it little fish syndrome? They want to appear big, so they can't admit they're actually pretty small? I have no clue about blogit. Haven't done a websearch of them (and probably won't). But in my own new blogging opinion, they're not doing themselves any pr favors by avoiding the question this way. No offense Becky.
I read more search results:
Technorati tracks over 3.5 million blogs worldwide, up from about 100,000 two years ago. The Pew Internet study estimates that 11% of adult U.S. Internet users regularly read blogs. A new weblog is created every 5.8 seconds, resulting in about 15,000 new blogs a day. Most bloggers update their weblogs regularly: there are about 275,000 posts daily, or about 10,800 blog updates an hour.
These statistics appear to be, while no publish date is available, fairly recent. So, it looks like my little blog is one of some 15,000 that were created just today. A very small fish in a very big ocean here.
Here are some interesting thoughts and blog stats from a blogger in Australia:
from:
Have you ever wondered how far this blogging thing has extended? How many bloggers are there? Where are they from?
Blogcount attempts to answer some of these questions and more. The results are staggering....here's a taste.
Blogger alone has 1.5million registered users. Their number of users grew 14% in the 60 days after 11 March!
Blogstreet's list of blogs grew 27% in a similar period and Technorati tripled the number of blogs it watched in a recent two month period.
Live Journal has 1,090,084 total accounts, with over half of them presently active. Of these 62.2% are Female users and 37.4% are male! (which is pretty different to the God Blog Gender Survey that I did where I found that at least 54% of Christian bloggers were Male!)
18 year olds are the biggest users at Live Journal, most seem to fall between the age of 15 and 25 years old.
The median update rate of weblogs.com pingers is every three days.
Poland now has 100,000 blogs, again 62% are written by women, 75% are under 20 years old.
Iran has 12,000 blogs, but here 76% are male.
During the recent War, 4% of Americans got their war coverage from Weblogs.
This Site has crawled 437,986 blogs. In that list 205,898 are written in English. After that the most popular languages were Portuguese, Polish, Farsi, Spanish, German, Italian, French and Icelandic(in that order). 101,831 are hosted with Blogspot, 14,841 are with MT, 14,172 are with Pitas and 13,106 are with Blogger.
Wow - those are some amazing statistics....the amount of data that is flying around the net purely from blogs is massive. You've got to wonder how useful a lot of the data is, and what impact so many people putting their ideas, dreams, feelings etc out into the datasphere is having on our crazy little world!?
I didn't intend to center my first blog on blogging. But it's interesting stuff. Technorati shares its opinion on the amount of data-blogging flying around the net:
The power of weblogs is that they allow millions of people to easily publish their ideas, and millions more to comment on them. Blogs are a fluid, dynamic medium, more akin to a “conversation” than to a library (which is how the Web has often been described in the past). With an increasing number of people reading, writing, and commenting on blogs, the way we use the Web is shifting in a fundamental way. Instead of primarily being passive consumers of information, more and more Internet users are becoming active participants and creators of content. Weblogs allow everyone to have a voice.
And it's high time everyone recognized the power of their voice, no matter how small it may seem in the larger sea of things. We just never know when that one small thing we say, or do, or write, or share, might be the thing that makes a difference somewhere.
In the web article Digital Media and the Internet: The Question of Utopia Amanda Griscom writes:
...today's digital utopia has been given a space to grow that's far bigger than a painter's canvas and more substantive than the imagination. As of now --- and only the cornerstones have been lain --- it's a horizontally distributed (anti-hierarchical) network of computers within which millions of people can actually communicate and travel and make money and meet friends and buy products and argue and pray and develop communities. The utopia that we are (perhaps inadvertently) attempting to construct in cyberspace seems to satisfy the utopian ideals that have been hovering above Western civilization since ancient Greece.
Gotta love the "anti-hierarchical" part.
We're talking here about the power we as individuals have to shape the world together.
We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.--Marian Wright Edelman
I like to believe in the hundredth monkey principle. Or in this case, the millionth blogger principle.
We all have a voice. Thank you blogspot, blogit, blogstreet, and a multitude of other websites that host the many independent, thoughtful, maddening, enlightening, and thought provoking words of we the people. It's a difference we make, that we may not yet foresee, and which is changing the world--one word at a time. I feel privileged to be a part of it (no matter how small, and seemingly irrelevant that part may appear to be).
So, this ends my first blog. Not sure if I've done it "right." Been struggling with pasting links and quotes, moving back and forth, saving drafts, coping with a mini crash, using the spellchecker, etc. But, it's a start. Looking forward to more time spent here.
A Pre-Blog Archive
Published on Friday, December 24, 2004 by CommonDreams.org | |||||
| A Christmas Story | |||||
| by Debi Smith | |||||
|
| |||||
| On the longest night of the year, I was at my computer struggling to compose a holiday greeting. It was about two in the morning and I decided to take a break and search online for an interesting Christmas story. Our family had been invited to come to a friend’s house the following evening to share in an old fashioned poetry and story reading,"something Christmas related," my friend had said. Our families met a couple of years ago when their nine year old daughter joined the soccer team I was coaching and which my own daughter was on. They pulled up to the first practice in an old Toyota which sported Montana license plates and a "Free Tibet" sticker. They had just moved to town. The mother soon proved herself to be one of the most thoughtful, compassionate, and generous people I’ve ever known; surreptitiously leaving me baked goods in my car from the bakery she and her husband were operating, offering to help out whenever and wherever needed, and always positive and enthusiastic. In our chats after practice, we soon learned that we had many things in common: similar parenting styles, similar eclectic and somewhat radical ideas about education, similar values and approaches to living... Our daughters, and our families, were soon hitting it off and it wasn’t long before we got together and shared a meal. It’s funny how laying food out on a table tends to encourage the laying out of our most deeply held beliefs as well. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the ancient and almost sacred act of breaking bread makes us feel safe, nourished, and trusting enough to be ourselves. The topic soon turned to politics. Somehow, politics had never been a direction our afternoon chats had wandered, surprisingly, considering how much time I was then spending researching the events of September 11th and the disturbing conclusions I was coming to and so vocal about with everyone else. But here we were breaking bread together and talking politics for the first time. I quickly realized I’d made an incorrect assumption. Never assume that just because someone drives a car with a "Free Tibet" sticker on the back it automatically means the passengers are politically liberal. Thus began an interesting and somewhat tentative friendship with Libertarian leaning Bush supporters. My new friend and I continued to have wonderful dialogues about mothering, schooling, etc. Our families still shared meals, though with a tacit agreement to avoid discussing politics. Over time however, concurrent with the Bush administration’s rush to war in Iraq, the dinner dates and get togethers began happening less and less frequently. This didn’t stop the kids however, who still continued to have their play-dates and sleep-overs. Kids don’t care what someone’s politics are. It’s not that they don’t care in the sense of being un- interested. In fact in the past few months I’ve been surprised at how many times I overheard kids asking their friends--whose parents represented the entire political spectrum--who they were "voting" for, and regardless of the answer, would continue on happily with whatever they were mutually engaged in. Shortly before November’s election, my friend’s daughter showed up for her classes at the local homeschooling center our family also attends–a place widely regarded as being fairly liberal (though political labels are such an ineffective way of defining anyone). She’d just been to a Bush rally the previous day and was covered from head to toe in Bush placards and buttons. My first feeling upon seeing her was one of frustration and dismay. I’d had my own Bush experience the previous day in which I witnessed first hand a very disturbing assault upon civil liberties and was feeling especially concerned about the direction our country was headed. Seeing this young girl so gleefully supporting Bush almost sent me over the edge. Almost immediately however, I caught myself in another faux pas. This one perhaps more major than the last. How could I worry about the demise of civil liberties on one hand and be upset with an eleven year old for exercising hers on the other? Two days later I observed this same 11 year old girl, still sporting her Bush buttons, giggling and eating lunch with a friend. Her friend wore a hand painted "Kids for Kerry" t-shirt festooned with Kerry buttons. They certainly didn’t seem to be having any problems with each other. These events and observations brought about a needed shift in my perceptions. Which in turn also seemed to precipitate a positive shift, despite political differences, in the friendship our families shared. Even so, however, there’s been one nagging question I’ve been unable to ignore. How could they be supportive of Bush? It’s a question I’ve regularly, and timidly, pondered asking them. When my friend called this week inviting our family over for a holiday gathering, asking us to bring along a reading, I told her that we’d love to attend and that I’d be sure to bring along something "anti-christmas or political" to read. It’s the most "political" thing I’ve said to her in months. It was met with silence. I laughed. For a moment she’d thought I was serious. Trying to find an interesting Christmas story or poem to share, I googled "a Christmas story." The search returned 605,000 results, the first of many being for the 1983 children’s movie of the same name. Obviously I needed to narrow my defining operators so I added the word peace to my search. I knew this would turn up a plethora of results as well, but was especially interested in finding a story I could share that talked about peace. Jesus was the prince of it after all. My search returned 48,900 results. I haven’t a clue what 48, 899 of them were however, because the very first one was all I needed. It was THE story I knew I was looking for. The story, published on December 9, 2004 by the well regarded University of Wisconsin-Madison student newspaper, and written by Nick Barbash– a sophomore majoring in political science and international studies–is titled "A Christmas story of peace and love." Here was the retelling of a story–a true story–that happened 90 years ago this Christmas Eve, about soldiers in a time of war laying down their weapons for a brief moment in time, and coming together to celebrate their humanity.
As I read, a dim recognition of the story came from some remote corner of my memory. Maybe I’d read a version of it somewhere, or perhaps I’d heard about it on TV, or maybe a history class mentioned it, or maybe it’s just some primal knowing that humankind has the potential for such things. Nevertheless, I was stunned. I immediately began searching the internet for more details. I wanted to verify the story, but was also incredibly intrigued and wanted to learn more. Apparently, many people through the years have tried to chalk the story up to being mostly legend. But in a 2001 interview in the National Review, Stanley Weintraub, author of Silent Night: The Story of the World War I Christmas Truce, tells how he became convinced it was more than myth.
In 1985 I published a book about the five days leading up to the Armistice in November 1918, A Stillness Heard Round the World: The End of the Great War. While researching it I discovered the abortive informal armistice in 1914 that had bubbled up from the ranks on Christmas Eve. Although it clearly happened, and survivors had been on a BBC television documentary in 1982, the event had taken on the quality of myth. I determined to find out more, particularly to grasp the mythic power that the truce seemed to possess, and to examine it from both sides. I had begun my earlier book with the line, "Peace is harder to make than war," and as I worked on Silent Night that line became even more meaningful. Although I was working on other books at the time, including two on World War II and several biographies, every time I went to England or Germany on other research, I dipped into files of newspapers for January 1915, as troops mesmerized by the miraculous Christmas peace, a sort of waking dream they could hardly believe, wrote home about it. In those pre-censorship days, the letters were often sent on to local newspapers, which printed them. Then I went to the military archives. It was all real — even the football games (our soccer) in No Man's Land. I even found some of the scores. In 1998, BBC News ran a story based on the book Christmas Truce which was written by Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton.
I can’t help but wonder. How many of today’s servicemen and women deployed in Iraq, or how many of the so called "insurgents" who are really mostly just regular people resisting an illegal occupation, or how many of the innocent bystanders and victims of war would really just prefer a nice meal together, an exchange of simple gifts, and perhaps a nice game of soccer rather than all the senseless killing and dying currently taking place? Weintraub doubts that the kind of truce that took place in No Man’s Land 90 years ago could ever happen again, saying at the end of his interview, "To see a common humanity in likely future opponents seems unlikely. A Christmas truce could not happen again without a mutual respect for the values of Christmas." I see his point, but I’d like to respectfully disagree. I have much more in common with my Bush supporting friend than a shared holiday. Our humanity is not bound by our religious beliefs, by what we do for a living or live to do, by what color our skin is, by how much money we have or don’t have, nor even, as I now realize, is it bound by what our politics might be. Our humanity is much bigger and deeper than that. I shared Nick’s story at the reading last night. I also shared the poem, Christmas in the Trenches, written twenty years ago by John McCutcheon. It was met, despite all the mixed political viewpoints in the room, with resounding applause. We ourselves were meeting in our own No Man’s Land after all, rising above our petty differences and recognizing something more deeply shared. Another Christmas truce like the one that took place all along the Western Front in the winter of 1914 may be unlikely. And sending cards proclaiming "Peace on Earth and Goodwill to All" are but meaningless and futile exercises if we can’t find that space between the trenches–that no man’s land that is really everyman’s– where we, if even for only but a moment, see ourselves and our humanity reflected in another’s eyes. Deep down we know we share something greater than the values of the few but powerful people asking us to kill each other. Deep down we know we share something far greater than the values proclaimed by any one religious, political, or cultural belief. It is my wish for humanity that we start living more fully that which we deeply know. For when we do, No Man’s Land will cease being littered with the awful detritus of our fear and in its place will bloom the hope, life, and dreams we all commonly share. And then we shall finally know the true meaning of Christmas and Peace on Earth.
(The following piece was published in Truthout's election blog immediately following the November 2 election. Unfortunately, they disabled all the hyperlinks which supported each of the questions.)
An Invitation to the Conservative Right from a Liberal Lefty
Contrary to the catchy heading of this letter, I actually rather disparage labels. For one, they really don’t paint an accurate and complete picture of who an individual is. We’re far more nuanced than that. Right? I could be wrong but I’d bet there’s at least one area in your life where you might tend to be at least a little more liberal than conservative. I know I can admit the reverse. In fact I’ve been accused before of being a closet conservative. But labels shmables. They’re like suffocating little boxes. They trap us and our thinking capabilities inside, and perhaps even worse, they create division. Division which is now being reflected in our families, friendships, communities, churches, places of work, and has become a widening chasm threatening to engulf our entire country...no matter what our labels read. Perhaps the only way we can avoid disappearing into this chasm is to come together and begin dialoguing and listening to each other - compassionately. Not hysterically or with crazed, shrill, frantic voices. Let’s leave that to the far left and right talking heads that get paid mass sums to rile us up. This is an invitation to the real people that make up this country. Not the pundits, pollsters, media, politicians, or the corporations that have bought and paid for all of them. No, this is an invitation to regular folk. To the moms, dads, grandparents, sons and daughters - of every color, social status, educational background, and belief system - who, in one unbelievably diverse and amazing tapestry, form the fabric of this great country. I’m almost certain that if we sat down in a room together and each made a list of the things most important to us, we’d find ourselves agreeing on many of them. But how often do we consider that? Perhaps this would be a good place to begin. Discovering what we agree on. What we tend to disagree on is how to go about achieving the things we believe in, a much bigger and inherently more difficult task yes, but one that’s made easier by gaining a modicum of understanding into why we each believe the way we do. A task made easier by first recognizing our shared and incontrovertible beliefs, hopes, dreams, and desires. For example, I assume we would agree that we both want access to clean water? How about healthy air? Can you see where I’m headed? But...before we discover what we agree on, a pressing question looms above all others and begs answering. There are close to 56 million people in this country (or more, if you take into account all the voting irregularities in Ohio alone), along with a large portion of the world citizenry, who are very confused and completely flabbergasted as to why you’ve just re-elected George W. Bush. If for no other reason than the fact he lied to you regarding Iraq. Not just one lie, but many. Saddam was not involved in 9/11. Iraq was not an imminent threat to the United States. There were no weapons of mass destruction. And to date, 1145 American Troops and 145 Coalition Troops have lost their lives fighting in this unjustifiable war. I know you don’t want to hear it, but many of us are also wondering about a seeming contradiction of yours. Why do you go around wringing your hands about the sanctity of all life but ignore the murder of thousands and thousands of innocent people in Iraq? Approximately 100,000 Iraqi civilians - men, women, children, grandparents - have been blown to bits by our precision smart bombs and administration lies. And why do you then, to top off this absurd contradiction, re-elect the very person responsible for the murder? If Jesus is someone you admire and look up to, can you imagine him supporting all the lies and bombing of thousands and thousands of innocent people whose only mistake was being born in the middle of the richest triangle of oil on the planet? And if you can’t, could you please explain this contradiction? I hope you don’t think this is just an angry diatribe. It’s just that I can’t wrap my head around it and maybe you can help me understand your reasoning. (And in case you think I’m 100% pro abortion, you’d be wrong. One of those nuances I mentioned.) Okay, so there’s one big question off my chest. But before I sign off, I’d like to ask just a few more questions...if you don’t mind. Why did you vote for a man who has the worst job creation/loss record since Herbert Hoover?
Again, I must ask, why did you vote for a man who took this country to war on lies? Why did you vote for a man who sends your children, ill-prepared, to that war and then cuts their benefits?
This is by no means a complete list of my questions, but it’s a good start. Perhaps we can meet for coffee sometime, your place or mine, and you can help me understand why you’ve just re-elected George W. Bush. Then maybe over a second cup of coffee we can begin that list I mentioned. The one where we talk about our hopes and dreams for our children, and their children. About what sort of legacy and world we’d really like to leave them. Maybe from that place where we agree, we can gently move into the less agreeable areas with more respect for each other. We need to define our vision for America. You and I, the regular folks. If we don’t, I fear the creaking jaws of the growing divide will one day open big enough to swallow us all. We owe ourselves, and all future generations, here and around the world, better than that. Looking forward to the pleasure of your reply and hoping you’ll take me up on that coffee. Sincerely,
|
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)