Orient Lodge

In a few moments, I will hit the road on my way to Staunton, VA to pick up my middle daughter from college. It is about an eight hour drive.

On the way, I'll pass through Martinsburg, WV where I plan on stopping and doing a little get out the vote in today's West Virginia Primary.

So, I'll mostly be offline, although I hope to put up a few posts on Twitter, BrightKite, Utterz and/or Flickr and I hope to get at least limited access this evening.

But I'm near the end and I just ain't got the time
And I'm wasted and I can't find my way home.

I’ve always loved those lyrics, but I must admit that I don’t remember ever being so wasted that I couldn’t find my way home. Yet that image of not finding ones way home remains with me. It sometimes shows up in my dreams.

The setting was some sort of mashup of Brooklyn, where I lived when I first got out of college and some aspects of a science fictional Japan. I wander past shops, try to find a subway line that goes the right way, follow avenues and look up streets, but everything seems to take me east instead of north.

This dream recurred the other night in a sleep made light by a crick in the neck. I woke up grumpy from lack of sleep and pondering what this means.

I’ve been receiving more emails about the old house. It sounds like the foreclosure is pretty much complete. We’ve moved to a nice small house that we are renting, and the kids have been spared most of the trauma of the move and foreclosure, yet I suspect that this may have fed into my dream. The house that had been my home for fifteen years is now no longer mine.

Yet it is also Mother’s Day, which is another aspect of what makes a house a home. Memory laden objects have been brought from the old house to the new house and Kim has done a great job in turning this house into a home.

So, perhaps there is something more to this effort to find my way home. Does it have to do with my work? My career? My writing?

Yesterday morning, a wood thrush hopped around on the old mountain laurel bush outside my office. On a branch above the wind chimes, he sang his song for me. I thought of Willie in Willie was Different, a children’s book by Norman Rockwell. I grew up not far from where Rockwell painted and his paintings always evoke some sense of home for me. My mother got us a copy of the book Willie was Different which I’ve read to my children.

Is this wood thrush pointing me the way home? Is the way home paved with blog posts, chapters for books and other writings? I don’t know.

But I do know that the heart and hearth of a home is kindled by a mother. So, to Kim, to my mother, to Kim’s mother in heaven, to all the work at home, stay at home, crazy moms, Happy Mother’s Day. May you, and your loved ones find your way home.

Baby alpacas are expected at Alpaca Hill Farm in Seymour, CT in a couple of weeks.

Alpaca Hill Farm has a small shop on their farm which we stopped at just before Christmas last year. We had a great discussion with the owners and they mentioned that they had some alpacas that were do sometime in the spring and we might want to stop by in May to see some baby alpacas.

Well, as Fiona and I were out doing errands today, we drove past the farm, and I thought, let’s stop by, see if anyone is there, and if so, if there are any new alpacas. It was a beautiful spring day, and Eileen Warner was sitting on the deck. She told us that the alpacas are due in about two weeks, so they are planning on having an open house, hopefully sometime around mid June.

As we were chatting, Tom Warner showed up with three recently shorn male alpacas in his trailer. It is striking how small a newly shorn alpaca looks. Tom and Eileen led them into the field as Fiona and I watched and patted the herd dog. The new alpacas got to know their new surroundings as they glanced warily at the dog, curiously at the ducks, and even more curiously at the alpacas they will be living with.

We look forward to a chance to see some baby alpacas in the next month or two.

So, Fiona and I did our first BlogTalkRadio podcast last Sunday. Fiona's Nanna called in, and we all had a great chat. We haven't nailed down what our format is going to be. How much will I talk about the eclectic set of topics I like to discuss on Orient Lodge? How much will it be Fiona's show? What role will the extended family play in the show?

Yesterday, I got a nudge in the extended family direction. Call Your Nana added me as a friend on BlogTalkRadio. This is a weekly show where Nana, aka Miriam, talks with her granddaughter, aka Hilary. So, I listened in to their last broadcast, Relax More!. It was a great show. Full of family stories and discussions about how people relax. Today, at 4PM PT, 7PM for those of us on the east coast, they will have their one year anniversery show.

Well, we did it. After an unsuccessful attempt a week ago to produce our first episode on BlogTalkRadio, Fiona and I this evening recorded Episode One, Take Two. Mostly, it was Fiona and I talking. Nanna did call in and join the discussion and I tested playing a pre-recorded piece, in this case "Daffodils" by William Wordsworth Longfellow, which I had recorded a year and a half earlier for Librivox.

All in all, it was a very successful first session, and a great opportunity for both Fiona and I to hone our online talk show radio skills. As we continue this, I expect themes and clearer voices will emerge out of the experiment.

So, please, listen to the recording and let us know your thoughts about where we should be going.

Connecticut State Senate Candidate, Mike Renzullo will be walking in the Multiple Sclerosis walk at 9 AM starting in Litchfield. He is encouraging people to join him for the walk. If you can’t make it to Litchfield, there are several other walks going on through out Connecticut today. Mike is running a great campaign, including service politics into his activities and sending out a great newsletter.

In his latest newsletter, he has a great section about picking up trash on Earth Day.

Last Saturday was Earth Day, and folks gathered at Coe Park in Torrington for a city-wide clean up. I was assigned to pick up trash at a park on Oak Street. This is where older kids hold Little League games and play basketball, and there is a playground for the younger kids. My cousin Kevin used to live in that neighborhood, and we used to go to this park as kids. This is a perfect example of how we can all have a direct effect in making our communities a little nicer. In about an hour and a half, I picked up an entire trash bag full of cigarette butts, broken glass, cans, bottles, food wrappers, and other various types of refuse. While I was working, a couple of the parents who were there watching their kids joined in, and started collecting trash, too!

For a more traditional campaign event, please consider stopping by at the fundraiser for Martin Goldberg who is also running for State Senate in Connecticut. The event starts at 2 PM at the home of Geena Clonan and Peter Schrobenhauser, 1119 Sasco Hill Road, Fairfield, CT 06824. Details can be found on MyLeftNutmeg.

In the evening, Fiona and I will make a second attempt at a show on BlogTalkRadio. I was fairly disappointed that there were technical problems last week. Support from BlogTalkRadio seemed fairly responsive during the attempt, but the problem was not resolved during the show slot, and the folks at BlogTalkRadio failed to follow up on what happened or how it has been addressed, so I am a little bit dubious about whether the show will end up happening this week, or the quality of BlogTalkRadio’s service.

Anything else exciting going on?

Saturday morning. These allergies or virus, or whatever it is that has had me wheezing and coughing and not sleeping for a week has waned slightly and I slept well last night. I’m still at a very low energy level, so I thought I would do a little low impact surfing.

By low impact surfing, I mean visiting blogs by following links from sites like EntreCard or MyBlogLog. What I like about these sites is that you can let people know that you were there without having to actually think up some sort of comment to leave. With Entrecard, you can drop a card which the site own sees, and hopefully decides to come and visit your site. You can also buy advertisements, and I’ve been running Entrecard advertisement right below my list of MyBlogLog readers.

MyBlogLog shows a list of recent readers on your site, and I like to check out the blogs of people who have visited via MyBlogLog, as well as people who have been reading their sites.

Typically, these sort of visits bring me to sites very different than I would stop at as a progressive political blogger. Most of the time, I like that. However, sometimes it can be a bit tedious. EntreCard listed a whole bunch of people that had dropped cards on me, but said I hadn’t dropped cards on them. I went to visit a few and found that we’re all ones that EntreCard said I had visited, so I couldn’t drop a card on them. More annoying, as I tried following some of the ads most of them were for opportunities to make money fast on the Internet.

So, I switched over to checking my visitors via MyBlogLog. First on the list was Jill Miller Zimon. Jill is a great writer. We’ve crossed paths talking about different issues and conferences, but I don’t believe we’ve ever met face to face, even though I now live in the town where her parents live. One of these days we will meet.

Unfortunately, her blog doesn’t fit nicely into my idea of Saturday Morning Surfing. While the make money fast blogs were too mindless, Jill’s writing is always thoughtful and requires more time than I wanted to commit to any blog entry. I read her post about Bush, Marc Dann, and Women’s Voices Women’s Votes. Go check it out.

Jill’s list of recent readers included Susan Mernit. Susan is another great writer that I typically wouldn’t visit for some light Saturday morning reading. In her recent blog posts she talks about why she is reading more Twitter and Friend Feed. They act as effective filters for those of us already on information overload. I have problems keeping up with the flood of emails and haven’t gotten through all of the blogs in my feed reader in ages, but Twitter provides a good quick glimpse into what is going on.

She also talks about Digerati as media brand. Well worth the read. It seems like digital natives get both of these ideas. Teenagers spend much of their online communication in short blasts, and do a good job of defining their personal brands online, although some adults might question the markers used to denote a teenagers brand online.

With all this in mind, I went over to Twitter. It struck me, that here I was seeing a much better snapshot of our twenty first century world. whatsnext just finished reading Empress Orchard. chrisbrogan is saying hello to PodCamp in San Antonio. He, along with jerikpotter are twittering about SOBCon. ZoeConnolly is checking the air field in Caledon Penzance in Second Life. Earlier, several friends from Second Life were complaining about difficulties logging in. Others had been twittering about problems with YouTube earlier.

nprpolitics is talking about polls, Rev. Wright, and John McCain. JasonBarnett is reporting live from the Minnesota DFL Second CD convention and MikePanetta is at the DC Democratic State Committee Convention. kentbye saw a bunch of old friends at the Maryland Film Festival. Many friends are talking about Maker Faire.

acarvin is just 49 people away from having 2000 followers. PurpleCar and jeffpulver are talking about Iron Man. Apparently, it is getting great reviews on Twitter and they are both looking forward to seeing it. http://twitter.com/jcnork>jcnork is preparing for his son’s first communion.

As I scan through all of this, my mind goes to Mrs. Dalloway as she reflects on London on the fine day of her party. Pink Floyd’s lyrics come to mind, “Snapshot in the Family Album”. rickmahn twitters from SOBCon08, that Brian Clark says “It is marketing suicide to be too general in blogging today”. I don’t know. Maybe for the make money fast blogs, that I decided to skip over earlier today, it is marketing suicide to be too general. Yet as Susan Mernit points out, people like Scoble, Calcanis, Arrington and Winer have done a good job of creating compelling brands. I’d much rather read PurpleCar and jeffpulver talk about what movie they want to see today, and jcnork talking about his son’s first communion than I would listen to people who have lost authenticity in their business blogging as they try to focus on a narrow niche.

So, I’ll return to my random surfing, until Kim and Fiona get home from riding, and then maybe we’ll find something fun to do on this overcast weekend as well.

Go read Rafael Noboa's The Twenty Percent. Right now. I mean it.

(Hat tip: David Isen)

Allergies? Some sort of bug? I’m not sure, but I’m dragging today. There has been little email, and little on Twitter, so I’m staying abreast of most of that. Fiona is playing Club Penguin, and I’m helping her a little with that. I scan a few other blogs, social networks, and so on, but mostly, I’m too tired to think.

My traffic has been quite high over the past few days as people did searches on Victoria Lindsey. I hit 500 uniques in a single day and my monthly uniques has broken 4,300, but that traffic is dropping off, and traffic is returning to normal.

So, not a lot of content today. If it wasn’t for NaBloPoMo, the effort to post every day out of a month, I’d probably let this day pass. But, I haven’t missed a day yet this year, so I figure I should at least try to make it through April.

For a brief moment, earlier today, it felt like I was catching up. Sure there were over 1,000 unread emails in my inbox, but I had gotten done the tasks that needed to get done and I could sit down and start looking through the pile of emails that have piled up and select the next tasks to tackle.

One of those emails, however, was from the lawyer for the foreclosure, so I felt I needed to write a little bit about that. Then, I got an IM in Second Life about the film shoot folks from TechSoup were doing in response to the Daily Show episode, Avatar Heroes. I’ve already written up my article about Avatar Heroes for SLNN.COM. I figured I should go and join the TechSoup folks. I participated in a dolphin avatar shape, and it strikes me that I need to form an organization, Dolphin Shaped Reporters of Second Life. Right now, I think it is just me and Rob Riggle. If there are any other Dolphin Shaped Reporters in Second Life, please let me know.

(You can see a few pictures I took at Avatar Heroes on Flickr.)

In other things, I’ve spent a bit of time working on a Drupal 6 installation. It has been fun mixing together pieces of the VotingAPI and Fivestar module, with the profile module and attempting to add Views into the mix. Unfortunately, Views doesn’t work well with VotingAPI in Drupal 6, so I had to roll a couple blocks of my own.

Soon, I will ran off to pick up our Community Supported Agriculture box and then take Fiona to her swimming lesson. When I get back, I need to do an interview or two in Second Life, so I guess the queue of unread emails will just have to grow a little more before I can dig into it.