Today is the last day to register to vote in many different states, and I texted messaged her to ask if she had registered yet. So, on her way down to town hall, she called me, letting me know she was on her way down, and then she called me back after she was registered.
I had hoped she would be able to get some friends to go with her and they could all take pictures of each other as the registered to vote, but this didn’t happen. So, sorry, no pictures.
Please, if you haven’t registered to vote, do so today.
Also, today, I received an email from Jen Just, the CT Field Organizer for the Obama campaign. Tuesday evening, the Obama / DeLauro Headquarters will have their grand opening at 900 Chapel Street in New Haven from 5:00 to 6:30 PM. Congresswoman DeLauro will be the featured speaker and refreshments will be served. This will be followed by phone banking and then a Debate Watching Party starting at 8:45. If you are anywhere near New Haven, you should try to attend.
]]>Today is the last day to register to vote in many different states, and I texted messaged her to ask if she had registered yet. So, on her way down to town hall, she called me, letting me know she was on her way down, and then she called me back after she was registered.
I had hoped she would be able to get some friends to go with her and they could all take pictures of each other as the registered to vote, but this didn’t happen. So, sorry, no pictures.
Please, if you haven’t registered to vote, do so today.
Also, today, I received an email from Jen Just, the CT Field Organizer for the Obama campaign. Tuesday evening, the Obama / DeLauro Headquarters will have their grand opening at 900 Chapel Street in New Haven from 5:00 to 6:30 PM. Congresswoman DeLauro will be the featured speaker and refreshments will be served. This will be followed by phone banking and then a Debate Watching Party starting at 8:45. If you are anywhere near New Haven, you should try to attend.
]]>I've promoted a post I wrote when she was first born to the front page and she will read part of it at school today as part of the "MAG Birthday Tradition".
More stuff soon...
]]>I've promoted a post I wrote when she was first born to the front page and she will read part of it at school today as part of the "MAG Birthday Tradition".
More stuff soon...
]]>Meanwhile, down in Virginia, Miranda is performing the role of Sister Mary Robert Anne in Mary Baldwin College production of Nunsense. Last night I went to a gathering of Twitter users from Connecticut and Rhode Island over on Chester. Tonight, I’m going a fundraiser for the Woodbridge Democratic Town Committee. (Yeah, there website needs a little work.)
One thing that I did get done yesterday was a minor tweak to the website. It now shows the seven topics I’ve written most about over the past month up as a menu line. With that, I haven’t gotten much other writing done today. Tomorrow will probably be fairly busy as well.
]]>Meanwhile, down in Virginia, Miranda is performing the role of Sister Mary Robert Anne in Mary Baldwin College production of Nunsense. Last night I went to a gathering of Twitter users from Connecticut and Rhode Island over on Chester. Tonight, I’m going a fundraiser for the Woodbridge Democratic Town Committee. (Yeah, there website needs a little work.)
One thing that I did get done yesterday was a minor tweak to the website. It now shows the seven topics I’ve written most about over the past month up as a menu line. With that, I haven’t gotten much other writing done today. Tomorrow will probably be fairly busy as well.
]]>Both yesterday and today, I wrote some long detailed personal emails that I was fairly pleased with. They required some serious thought and good wordcrafting. It felt good to write that way, and I’ve been thinking about my posts on the blog recently. Some of them have caused me to think as I put my words together, but a lot of them have been pretty light.
To a certain extent, that is okay. If I was having serious, weighty discussions all the time, I’d probably be even more boring. Yet I like to engage in serious discourse when I can.
I’ve also been speaking with the folks at sezWho, trying to get their post and comment rating system working more reliably on Drupal. They seem to have fixed most of the problems, although there are a few outstanding minor problems.
With that, I’m starting to get people to rate my blog posts. My welcome blog post has received six ratings, for an overall rating of 4.0. There really isn’t much of anything in the blog post, and perhaps people are using it to rate the blog overall. My most recent Wordless Wednesday post also received six ratings with an overall rating of 3.8. It was a picture of a German Chocolate cake that Fiona and I made for Kim for her birthday. As is common with Wordless Wednesday posts it received a fair amount of comments as well.
Yet my more serious post, the day before about discussions of the nature of authority on a mailing list that I’m on, received three ratings, for an overall score of 2.3. It received one comment, which didn’t really address the main theme of the post. Yet this post stimulated great discussions on two different mailing lists. I wish people who disagreed with what I wrote would leave comments about what they disagreed with, instead of simply giving it a poor rating. I also wish that sezWho would make it easy to see who has given which ratings, and what other posts they’ve rated. Without this, the ratings seem arbitrary and don’t really help to build either community or help further the discourse. I’ve suggested this to the folks at sezWho and we’ll see if this comes in a future release.
So, I sat down, I didn’t have a clear direction of where I wanted to go with today’s blog post, but, in order to stay with at least a post a day, I managed to crank out something. I hope it was interesting and/or informative. For me, the discipline of forcing myself to post every day, has been beneficial, and I think I’m improving as a writer because of it.
What do you think? What should the balance of light and serious posts be? How do we build community and discourse around our blogs? Do you have goals or other things that help you write regularly, or improve your writing?
]]>Both yesterday and today, I wrote some long detailed personal emails that I was fairly pleased with. They required some serious thought and good wordcrafting. It felt good to write that way, and I’ve been thinking about my posts on the blog recently. Some of them have caused me to think as I put my words together, but a lot of them have been pretty light.
To a certain extent, that is okay. If I was having serious, weighty discussions all the time, I’d probably be even more boring. Yet I like to engage in serious discourse when I can.
I’ve also been speaking with the folks at sezWho, trying to get their post and comment rating system working more reliably on Drupal. They seem to have fixed most of the problems, although there are a few outstanding minor problems.
With that, I’m starting to get people to rate my blog posts. My welcome blog post has received six ratings, for an overall rating of 4.0. There really isn’t much of anything in the blog post, and perhaps people are using it to rate the blog overall. My most recent Wordless Wednesday post also received six ratings with an overall rating of 3.8. It was a picture of a German Chocolate cake that Fiona and I made for Kim for her birthday. As is common with Wordless Wednesday posts it received a fair amount of comments as well.
Yet my more serious post, the day before about discussions of the nature of authority on a mailing list that I’m on, received three ratings, for an overall score of 2.3. It received one comment, which didn’t really address the main theme of the post. Yet this post stimulated great discussions on two different mailing lists. I wish people who disagreed with what I wrote would leave comments about what they disagreed with, instead of simply giving it a poor rating. I also wish that sezWho would make it easy to see who has given which ratings, and what other posts they’ve rated. Without this, the ratings seem arbitrary and don’t really help to build either community or help further the discourse. I’ve suggested this to the folks at sezWho and we’ll see if this comes in a future release.
So, I sat down, I didn’t have a clear direction of where I wanted to go with today’s blog post, but, in order to stay with at least a post a day, I managed to crank out something. I hope it was interesting and/or informative. For me, the discipline of forcing myself to post every day, has been beneficial, and I think I’m improving as a writer because of it.
What do you think? What should the balance of light and serious posts be? How do we build community and discourse around our blogs? Do you have goals or other things that help you write regularly, or improve your writing?
]]>Kim called from the ob/gyn office. As she was setting up her next appointment, she glanced at the television in the waiting room, and saw that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Centers. She called me, and I turned on the TV and watched as a second place hit the towers, as I talked with Kim on the phone. What was going on? What did it mean?
I logged into a text based virtual world that I had been active with. I talked with friends there. Some were from Washington, DC and were talking about events there. We gathered, as family, my wife and I on the phone, my friends online, and all tried to make sense out of it.
Now, seven years later, many of us are telling our stories online. Cromely’s World has a blog post up, pointing to a post on Flyer Talk about one passenger’s experience. He also has a post about his experience flying a few years later as well as his mother’s experience in New York City on 9/11.
Yet the story that jumped out most at me to day was, Soap Sushi’s story. She was in the hospital after having a c-section a few days before when her first daughter was born. Her first daughter is about a month older than Fiona. She talked about seeing the images of the planes hitting the World Trade Centers being repeatedly shown on television. She talked about going into bankruptcy and the darkness that surrounded her.
It is a powerful blog post that I urge everyone to read.
]]>Kim called from the ob/gyn office. As she was setting up her next appointment, she glanced at the television in the waiting room, and saw that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Centers. She called me, and I turned on the TV and watched as a second place hit the towers, as I talked with Kim on the phone. What was going on? What did it mean?
I logged into a text based virtual world that I had been active with. I talked with friends there. Some were from Washington, DC and were talking about events there. We gathered, as family, my wife and I on the phone, my friends online, and all tried to make sense out of it.
Now, seven years later, many of us are telling our stories online. Cromely’s World has a blog post up, pointing to a post on Flyer Talk about one passenger’s experience. He also has a post about his experience flying a few years later as well as his mother’s experience in New York City on 9/11.
Yet the story that jumped out most at me to day was, Soap Sushi’s story. She was in the hospital after having a c-section a few days before when her first daughter was born. Her first daughter is about a month older than Fiona. She talked about seeing the images of the planes hitting the World Trade Centers being repeatedly shown on television. She talked about going into bankruptcy and the darkness that surrounded her.
It is a powerful blog post that I urge everyone to read.
]]>Mairead was always very bright, and always ready for an argument, and I seem to recall that she felt it was unfair that she didn’t get to vote. After all, she was probably brighter and more informed than many of the adults voting. We probably talked a little bit about how laws were made and how when she was old enough, she could work on lowering the voting age.
Attorney General Blumenthal touched on this at the Obama Rally in Hamden, Connecticut last Saturday when he particularly thanked people that brought their children to the rally. We need to encourage civic involvement starting at an early age.
Twelve long hard years have come and gone. Mairead is off in college and I wanted to make sure she was registered and was going to vote. In response to an email I sent, she wrote, “I want to actually go to a voting place... Remember when you took me to the fire station for the '96 election? I've been waiting ever since.”
I suspect neither of Mairead nor I imagined what those twelve years would be like, or how historic her first vote would be. Yet perhaps that is an important lesson to all of us. Things that we talk about can carry greater significance than we think at the time, even if it takes twelve years to come to fruition.
I suspect the same applies to the comments we leave on blogs. At one blog I visit, a person posted a comment bewailing about the polarization of politics. That same person then went on to compare Obama to Hitler. Excuse me? I don’t think people that compare a U.S. Presidential candidate to Hitler has much ground to complain about other people polarizing politics.
In another discussion, I heard people complaining about how biased the media is and how bad it was that there weren’t going to be more debates. I remember many of the debates during the primaries where the moderator, typically a noted pundit or anchor from one of the major networks spoke more than the candidates. It reminded me of the old joke about a resort up in the Catskills. One person complained, “The food here is horrible” and the other replied, “Yes, and the portions are so small.”
I would love to see good debates that focus on the issues, and don’t resort to candidates and pundits yelling at one another about trivialities. I would love to see people on the web talk about politics without resorting to polarizing rhetoric, and I sure hope that a friend of Mairead will send me a picture this November of her wearing an “I Voted Today” sticker.
So yes, the portions of political dialog are small, the politics are too polarized, but to throw in another great quote, “There is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that’s not being talked about.” So, let’s talk politics. If we can be grown up, the way my daughter was twelve years ago, we can do it without polarizing rhetoric, but even if the best you can do is be divisive, let’s have a discussion.
]]>Mairead was always very bright, and always ready for an argument, and I seem to recall that she felt it was unfair that she didn’t get to vote. After all, she was probably brighter and more informed than many of the adults voting. We probably talked a little bit about how laws were made and how when she was old enough, she could work on lowering the voting age.
Attorney General Blumenthal touched on this at the Obama Rally in Hamden, Connecticut last Saturday when he particularly thanked people that brought their children to the rally. We need to encourage civic involvement starting at an early age.
Twelve long hard years have come and gone. Mairead is off in college and I wanted to make sure she was registered and was going to vote. In response to an email I sent, she wrote, “I want to actually go to a voting place... Remember when you took me to the fire station for the '96 election? I've been waiting ever since.”
I suspect neither of Mairead nor I imagined what those twelve years would be like, or how historic her first vote would be. Yet perhaps that is an important lesson to all of us. Things that we talk about can carry greater significance than we think at the time, even if it takes twelve years to come to fruition.
I suspect the same applies to the comments we leave on blogs. At one blog I visit, a person posted a comment bewailing about the polarization of politics. That same person then went on to compare Obama to Hitler. Excuse me? I don’t think people that compare a U.S. Presidential candidate to Hitler has much ground to complain about other people polarizing politics.
In another discussion, I heard people complaining about how biased the media is and how bad it was that there weren’t going to be more debates. I remember many of the debates during the primaries where the moderator, typically a noted pundit or anchor from one of the major networks spoke more than the candidates. It reminded me of the old joke about a resort up in the Catskills. One person complained, “The food here is horrible” and the other replied, “Yes, and the portions are so small.”
I would love to see good debates that focus on the issues, and don’t resort to candidates and pundits yelling at one another about trivialities. I would love to see people on the web talk about politics without resorting to polarizing rhetoric, and I sure hope that a friend of Mairead will send me a picture this November of her wearing an “I Voted Today” sticker.
So yes, the portions of political dialog are small, the politics are too polarized, but to throw in another great quote, “There is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that’s not being talked about.” So, let’s talk politics. If we can be grown up, the way my daughter was twelve years ago, we can do it without polarizing rhetoric, but even if the best you can do is be divisive, let’s have a discussion.
]]>Kim’s mother had fought a long battle with cancer, and I started dating Kim during the final days of that battle. On Kim’s birthday, nine years ago, Kim and I went out to dinner with Kim’s father, her brother, and her sister-in-law. The family had gathered to move Kim’s mother from the hospital to hospice.
After the dinner was done and the gifts exchanged, including a gift that Kim’s mother somehow managed to order from her sick bed, Kim’s father received a message on his beeper. He called the doctor and found that his wife had died.
Within a year, Kim’s maternal grandmother died as well. She had been in great health, but she failed to recover from a minor heart attack. She died of a broken heart after her eldest daughter died of cancer.
Kim and I got married a year later, on her mother’s birthday, and our daughter Fiona was baptized the following year on our anniversary and her grandmother-in-heaven’s birthday.
Often, when Kim and I were out and about, we would see two morning doves beside the road, or crossing our paths. Morning doves frequently habituated Kim’s maternal grandmother’s house and Kim often commented about the doves being messengers from her mother and grandmother in heaven.
So, as I was greeted by the coyote yesterday morning, I thought about how their habitat has expanded greatly since Europeans first came to America, and about how they are becoming more common to Connecticut. I worried about the safety of our cat and our aging dog. Yet I also wondered about the coyote as totem.
The coyote is a great symbol in Native American lore. He is the trickster. Wolf’s Moon’s Spirit of Coyote writes,
The Trickster, always carries with him, lessons that are crucial to growth and change, yet the lesson he brings is usually one that is contained within a grand joke that Coyote plays upon the unwitting human. As such, though he is a Teacher Spirit, his lessons are taught via the vehicle of humor and wisdom found within folly.
Is The Trickster coming into our lives, to teach us some great lesson? The struggles of the past few years have been wearying and I hope that no new tricks our coming our way. Yet I do hope that the struggles of the past few years can be made sense of and integrated into some great story of growth and change.
Later, Wolf’s Moon writes,
Only through exploring many different avenues will the Coyote eventually find the Path that his/her heart resonates to, and along the way a variety of interests will capture their restless curiosity. Above all however, the Coyote individual needs to explore and investigate as theirs is an active and inquisitive mind. Hence, fields in which they are challenged intellectually or spiritually will resonate the strongest with them as well as a field in which they can share their insights and knowledge gained with Others.
Some professions which the combination of qualities mentioned above might be found are in the communications field such as writing or journalism, the educational field or any Role in which they are able to transmit their philosophy, ideas and ideals to their fellow Two-Leggeds.
So, is the coyote a totem? A messenger? Is there some sort of great lesson accompanied with humor and wisdom within folly? Is there a clue to help me find my path, a path that captures my restless curiosity? Does it have something to do with writing, journalism, education, or even blogging?
Or, was the coyote I saw yesterday morning a simple reminder of the wild animals that we share our world with, even in suburbia? Either way, it has caused me to reflect a little more on my life and the lives of those I touch. Hopefully, this post will cause others to reflect on their lives as well. What animal totems, messengers, or other things cause you to reflect on your life?
]]>Kim’s mother had fought a long battle with cancer, and I started dating Kim during the final days of that battle. On Kim’s birthday, nine years ago, Kim and I went out to dinner with Kim’s father, her brother, and her sister-in-law. The family had gathered to move Kim’s mother from the hospital to hospice.
After the dinner was done and the gifts exchanged, including a gift that Kim’s mother somehow managed to order from her sick bed, Kim’s father received a message on his beeper. He called the doctor and found that his wife had died.
Within a year, Kim’s maternal grandmother died as well. She had been in great health, but she failed to recover from a minor heart attack. She died of a broken heart after her eldest daughter died of cancer.
Kim and I got married a year later, on her mother’s birthday, and our daughter Fiona was baptized the following year on our anniversary and her grandmother-in-heaven’s birthday.
Often, when Kim and I were out and about, we would see two morning doves beside the road, or crossing our paths. Morning doves frequently habituated Kim’s maternal grandmother’s house and Kim often commented about the doves being messengers from her mother and grandmother in heaven.
So, as I was greeted by the coyote yesterday morning, I thought about how their habitat has expanded greatly since Europeans first came to America, and about how they are becoming more common to Connecticut. I worried about the safety of our cat and our aging dog. Yet I also wondered about the coyote as totem.
The coyote is a great symbol in Native American lore. He is the trickster. Wolf’s Moon’s Spirit of Coyote writes,
The Trickster, always carries with him, lessons that are crucial to growth and change, yet the lesson he brings is usually one that is contained within a grand joke that Coyote plays upon the unwitting human. As such, though he is a Teacher Spirit, his lessons are taught via the vehicle of humor and wisdom found within folly.
Is The Trickster coming into our lives, to teach us some great lesson? The struggles of the past few years have been wearying and I hope that no new tricks our coming our way. Yet I do hope that the struggles of the past few years can be made sense of and integrated into some great story of growth and change.
Later, Wolf’s Moon writes,
Only through exploring many different avenues will the Coyote eventually find the Path that his/her heart resonates to, and along the way a variety of interests will capture their restless curiosity. Above all however, the Coyote individual needs to explore and investigate as theirs is an active and inquisitive mind. Hence, fields in which they are challenged intellectually or spiritually will resonate the strongest with them as well as a field in which they can share their insights and knowledge gained with Others.
Some professions which the combination of qualities mentioned above might be found are in the communications field such as writing or journalism, the educational field or any Role in which they are able to transmit their philosophy, ideas and ideals to their fellow Two-Leggeds.
So, is the coyote a totem? A messenger? Is there some sort of great lesson accompanied with humor and wisdom within folly? Is there a clue to help me find my path, a path that captures my restless curiosity? Does it have something to do with writing, journalism, education, or even blogging?
Or, was the coyote I saw yesterday morning a simple reminder of the wild animals that we share our world with, even in suburbia? Either way, it has caused me to reflect a little more on my life and the lives of those I touch. Hopefully, this post will cause others to reflect on their lives as well. What animal totems, messengers, or other things cause you to reflect on your life?
]]>Now, it is the Tuesday after a long weekend. I rushed to take out the trash, a task I tend to forget on Tuesdays after a long weekend. I did some laundry; the piles always seem higher after a long weekend. I did some dishes, read some emails and blogs, and took my car to the shop, which of course ended up being more expensive than I had hoped.
I think back to my friends expressing hope last week, proclaiming, “Yes, we can!” Yet back at home, getting ahead seems beyond reach. The simple task is not to fall further behind.
Yet it is in these simple tasks, as I stand in the sunshine hanging out the clothes to dry, instead of simply throwing them in the electric drier, that we can find ways to get ahead when it might seem like we are simply marking time or trying not to fall behind.
So, I am sure that my friends that have recently gotten back from Denver have plenty of catching up to do, yet as they catch up, as the prepare for November, and more importantly for what each of us will do past November, I hope they manage to find moments to savor the simple victories.
]]>Now, it is the Tuesday after a long weekend. I rushed to take out the trash, a task I tend to forget on Tuesdays after a long weekend. I did some laundry; the piles always seem higher after a long weekend. I did some dishes, read some emails and blogs, and took my car to the shop, which of course ended up being more expensive than I had hoped.
I think back to my friends expressing hope last week, proclaiming, “Yes, we can!” Yet back at home, getting ahead seems beyond reach. The simple task is not to fall further behind.
Yet it is in these simple tasks, as I stand in the sunshine hanging out the clothes to dry, instead of simply throwing them in the electric drier, that we can find ways to get ahead when it might seem like we are simply marking time or trying not to fall behind.
So, I am sure that my friends that have recently gotten back from Denver have plenty of catching up to do, yet as they catch up, as the prepare for November, and more importantly for what each of us will do past November, I hope they manage to find moments to savor the simple victories.
]]>Another growing tradition amongst the EntreCard droppers is to list the top droppers on your site at the beginning of each month. Last month I did that, but used links going to EntreCard. One person noted that my blog has a page rank of five, which many EntreCard droppers would love a link from asked why I had linked to the EntreCard link, instead of directly to the blog. Well, I tend not to think a lot about page rank, and I wanted to just do a quick link to the top droppers.
However, keeping this in mind, this month, I’m doing things a little differently. I read through the list of top EntreCard droppers on my blog, and chose on that I really like.
Prodromus is a blog with the tag line, “A Forerunner to the Future… Why We Need to Become Energy Independent”. I’ve joined discussions about politics on that blog. I don’t see eye to eye with the writer on a lot of topics, but there is enough common ground, and I believe mutual respect, that we can have good discussions about the issues.
So, there is my link for a top dropper last month. Check it out. Meanwhile, I’m going to try and catch up on everything after my weekend away camping.
]]>Another growing tradition amongst the EntreCard droppers is to list the top droppers on your site at the beginning of each month. Last month I did that, but used links going to EntreCard. One person noted that my blog has a page rank of five, which many EntreCard droppers would love a link from asked why I had linked to the EntreCard link, instead of directly to the blog. Well, I tend not to think a lot about page rank, and I wanted to just do a quick link to the top droppers.
However, keeping this in mind, this month, I’m doing things a little differently. I read through the list of top EntreCard droppers on my blog, and chose on that I really like.
Prodromus is a blog with the tag line, “A Forerunner to the Future… Why We Need to Become Energy Independent”. I’ve joined discussions about politics on that blog. I don’t see eye to eye with the writer on a lot of topics, but there is enough common ground, and I believe mutual respect, that we can have good discussions about the issues.
So, there is my link for a top dropper last month. Check it out. Meanwhile, I’m going to try and catch up on everything after my weekend away camping.
]]>