Mike Stark is my kind of Marine: a guy who understands the freedoms he fought to protect and won't back away from using and defending them as a citizen. By the video and accounts in Truthout or at Taling Point Memo, Stark did nothing different than he's been doing: puting sharp questions to Senate candidate Allen. The video was shown on my local, Tribune-owned, station's ten oclock news. This tv coverage was not a Fox hatchet job, but just the usual MSM slop. According to them, a nameless "heckler caused a scare for the Allen campaign and had to be wrestled to the ground. They said this over the same video we all have seen...Stark was not the instigator and did not put up much of a fight either. He is the one who has a better case if it comes to charges but my TV station ended the piece with "charges have not yet been filed against the heckler".
The truth? You want the truth? Your TV network news can't handle the truth!
--
Posted by GreenSmile to A Bomb a nation at 10/31/2006 10:09:00 PM
A rambling monologue of one man's views on society, politics, business, environment, consumerism etc. If you want to know which trash can to put this in, "dissident American independent with liberal and tree hugger tendencies" will do.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
[A Bomb a nation] November 7th Surprise
Maybe this is what has Rove so cocky.
--
Posted by GreenSmile to A Bomb a nation at 10/31/2006 12:39:00 PM
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Posted by GreenSmile to A Bomb a nation at 10/31/2006 12:39:00 PM
A different kind of laziness
There are people who do not shrink from hard work who none the less would rather bail out a cesspool with a teaspoon than question their own attitudes or examine how limited their influences and information are.
That sort of person is the easiest to lead, but only in the sorry direction he is already headed.
The hope I cling to is that any kind of laziness is less the inertia against difficult or unpleasant effort and more an acculturation to expect little of oneself.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Please don't make up stories about me when I am gone.
I have made up more than enough of them to go around.
I was at another memorial service this past Saturday. It was lovely. It was for a man I barely knew, the patriarch of a wonderful family in our town. That family has, among other things, provided musical instruction and opportunities to perform to nearly two generations of kids, mine included. It was moving for me because I could take the Reverend's remarks about death being more of an horizon than an end or limit to life as something with more substance than mere comforting metaphor. The deceased, whom I was only getting to know from the eulogies, clearly imparted his character, particularly the vital collaboration of enthusiasm and loving discipline, to his son who in turn was a both amusing and inspiring as the conductor for the orchestra through which all of my children grew and learned both the art and the poise of playing their instruments before a crowd. It is in perfectly real although not exactly concrete ways that we each have the threads of our life bound into the fabric of our family and community well beyond our own span of days. We are hoped for by our parents and grandparents, we teach, exemplify and are remembered by our heirs and friends. This is not literal immortality. Transported somewhat in the grip and spirit of such occasions, it is easy for us, unavoidable for some of us, to go from thinking "(s)he would have wanted it this way" to feeling that the departed person is vaguely present in making their wants felt. The tug is there like weak gravity, inviting belief but without providing any specific clue that could not have come up from the unconscious. I have felt it.
Another interesting thing was the venue and what I will refer to as the culture of the service. It was held in a church. The title of the cleric presiding was "Reverend" and I don't know what denomination. The remarks he made, as noted, were touching and appropriate. The service began and concluded with hymns from hmynals found on the backs of the pews. But the only other mention of deity, and I consider it one of the greatest, was a recitation of the Kaddish, the one prayer Jews must say for their dead yet a prayer with no word about the departed and only exaltation and blessing for the holy one. I have attended other memorials in this church that were not so diverse of creed. I knew a few of the people in attendance, mostly via musical connections but the rest were an older generation of townsfolk whom I know of rather than know. What I know about most of them was echoed in the remembrances of the deceased: they give themselves to the good causes of education and conservation that had made our town a particularly rural and restful place to live. Some of them went to fight in Europe or Asia in WWII. Some of them were responsible for the little "peace park" in the center of our town where vigils against war are held once in a great while. We do not have conspicuous memorials to the fallen of 20th century wars and you will look hard to find commemoration of civil war dead. There is a stone commemorating the hardy few farmers, squires and shopkeepers who mustered and fought on April 19 1775. We still send sons off to war but it is nothing we celebrate here.
Those people in that church, like the people in my synagogue, are people of whom I know only good things and people who I will stand with at town meetings, at anti-torture vigils and, come election day [and judging from the prevalence of "vote for Daval Patrick" signs], at the polling booth too.
The great question that troubles me after these observations is the discord of influences in my own life that such events bring to the surface:
On the one hand, I see wonderful an constructive citizens facing their mortality within a religious setting. I see them using criteria from their creeds as grounds for acting for social justice. They can't all be atheists who just go through the motions of convention at these junctures where the life just ended must bring to each a very sharp focus on the purpose of their own lives. Though I do not get to hear their doubts or other inner thoughts, I see their works and there find encouragement about my species.
On the other hand, nothing whatsoever in my own experience persuades me that there is any supernatural consciousness, either embodied or somehow diffused in the universe. It all seems so much more likely to me that we project when we think we are having religious experiences. It would be a simple enough explanation for both the diversity of so-called beliefs and for the animal ferocity that overtakes many in defense of these imaginings. The outer certainties that some religion's profess and make into political agenda's for rather narrow benefits to imaginary beneficiaries have to be set beside the kind thoughts and good works.
That drives me nuts. I suspect that if I will see any resolution of this good-religion/bad-religion dilemma, it will be personal and come from some special vantage point or accommodation that could be difficult to find or sustain in anyone else's reality. I would like to find accommodation. I would like to start with the logic that many atheists accept: "The hope in an afterlife and the imagining of spirits and powers unseen which control those aspects of this world that we cannot control is ubiquitous and yet in its particulars it is full of disagreeing beliefs, usually breaking along tribal and cultural boundaries therefore these hopes and imaginings have no source but human nature, For if there were a god, we'd all know the same things about god". But I would like to pare it back to the mere observation: "hope in an afterlife and the imagining of spirits and powers unseen which control those aspects of this world that we cannot is ubiquitous" and add to it the simple observation that there are also atheists: "hope in an afterlife and the imaging of spirits and powers unseen which control those aspects of this world that we cannot is ubiquitous but not universal". Those are observations. That is a statement of what is. I will try not to descend into the codas each camp adds to the observation: The atheists may point out the self serving and identity enforcing nature of the beliefs and the believers may point out the blindness or claim the egotism of the non-believers in attacking or repudiating a great source of comfort to mortals. Do I need to go there? We do not disagree that we are in this physical world, all of us together. We do agree on at least some common notions of good such as freedom to think and speak, safety from war, subjugation and persecution and a life providing the animal basics of food, health, protection from the elements and perhaps good company of family and friends. Then if we only agree to have a neutral means to negotiate our differences when our particular definitions of the common good do not agree in details that affect how our common wealth and resources will be disposed, call this neutral means government, why would we not live well enough? I hear everywhere in the news only discord and mounting strife of factions that cannot share the commons of this planet and that strife is both between beliefs and between belief an non-belief. I saw in the rows of pews a quite diverse group of people who have, in their own town, done a very effective job of both sharing the commons and otherwise staying out of each other's affairs.
I have said "you can't ignore religion if it won't ignore you" which I admit, is a defensive posture and implies the believers won't leave the non-believers alone to act according to their own consciences. I won't take it back. As a decent human being, it is simply not an option to preemptorily say one party has a conscience that can dictate to others in matters that are strictly personal. And yet I am uneasy with the broad language, the unqualified term "religion".
I am aware of outreach and ecumenical efforts among faith groups who do not stand for the repressive and ugly narrowness presented as "faith" by the righteous-wing allies of the Bush administration. I invite them to reach out a little farther to the faithless like myself. I go on record here as regretting some of the rocks I have thrown at religion's way of interfacing one's mind to the world. Where it begets helpful attitudes and positive results, who am I to criticize?
The political climate brought me to blogging as a activity and an outlet. The sick use of religion on the part of Republicans that has given national emphasis to the least healthy and least helpful forms of religion in this country has brought religious criticism into my blogging. The blurry connection between terms like "family values" and the ideals of Christian values have come about because the habit of the fundamentalists is to code the less salable "Christian" with the more marketable "family" in their well oiled hunt for influence. Personally, I find the Dodsons and Fallwells have traded in their love-the-good-in-each-person in for a fear-the-evil-in-everyone, a superficial and weak but more easily carried faith. These are NOT the Christians I would care to make peace with but they bear the label "Christian" as fairly as Jude or Rev. Timothy Simpson. I want better categories so at least I can toss my rocks through the right windows.
There are of course many sects of Christianity. And for that matter Judaism too has flavors that I might not like. How are Jack Abramoff's prayer's received on high? How would I daven next to such a person? The distinction I am hoping to enable is between helpful religious observance and faith and selfish and uncivil religious observance and faith. Won't be easy, of course. But there certainly are strings that tie together a collection of religious groups that I would put in the uncivil category. The most amazing collection of little known connections about "conservative" Christian politics can be found in the biographies of the "council for national Policy"...a huge number of embarrassing connections such as having Tom DeLay and all his relationships to various churches spelled out and how rich [DuPont] their supporters are... These are too many connections for people of positive and humane faith to have to explicitly repudiate. The progressive religious person shouldn't need to distance themselves from that kind of "Christianity" . The voice and the conscience of the civil and constructive Christians are plainly heard if one is listening. But..I'd like a tag that lets me speak of such folks without readers thinking I also meant the leadership of the Southern Baptists. I'd like a tag that would let me speak of Jerry Fallwell that would not let my readers assume I also meant progressives in faith.
To this HuffPo post about the betrayal of a zealous believer at the hands of the Whitehouse, I commented with a similar question:
Whew!
The hardest part of this essay has not been written yet. The most important part has though, so there it is. I will return to this topic when better words come to me.
I open the floor to any suggestions about good tags for the two faces of religion.
I was at another memorial service this past Saturday. It was lovely. It was for a man I barely knew, the patriarch of a wonderful family in our town. That family has, among other things, provided musical instruction and opportunities to perform to nearly two generations of kids, mine included. It was moving for me because I could take the Reverend's remarks about death being more of an horizon than an end or limit to life as something with more substance than mere comforting metaphor. The deceased, whom I was only getting to know from the eulogies, clearly imparted his character, particularly the vital collaboration of enthusiasm and loving discipline, to his son who in turn was a both amusing and inspiring as the conductor for the orchestra through which all of my children grew and learned both the art and the poise of playing their instruments before a crowd. It is in perfectly real although not exactly concrete ways that we each have the threads of our life bound into the fabric of our family and community well beyond our own span of days. We are hoped for by our parents and grandparents, we teach, exemplify and are remembered by our heirs and friends. This is not literal immortality. Transported somewhat in the grip and spirit of such occasions, it is easy for us, unavoidable for some of us, to go from thinking "(s)he would have wanted it this way" to feeling that the departed person is vaguely present in making their wants felt. The tug is there like weak gravity, inviting belief but without providing any specific clue that could not have come up from the unconscious. I have felt it.
Another interesting thing was the venue and what I will refer to as the culture of the service. It was held in a church. The title of the cleric presiding was "Reverend" and I don't know what denomination. The remarks he made, as noted, were touching and appropriate. The service began and concluded with hymns from hmynals found on the backs of the pews. But the only other mention of deity, and I consider it one of the greatest, was a recitation of the Kaddish, the one prayer Jews must say for their dead yet a prayer with no word about the departed and only exaltation and blessing for the holy one. I have attended other memorials in this church that were not so diverse of creed. I knew a few of the people in attendance, mostly via musical connections but the rest were an older generation of townsfolk whom I know of rather than know. What I know about most of them was echoed in the remembrances of the deceased: they give themselves to the good causes of education and conservation that had made our town a particularly rural and restful place to live. Some of them went to fight in Europe or Asia in WWII. Some of them were responsible for the little "peace park" in the center of our town where vigils against war are held once in a great while. We do not have conspicuous memorials to the fallen of 20th century wars and you will look hard to find commemoration of civil war dead. There is a stone commemorating the hardy few farmers, squires and shopkeepers who mustered and fought on April 19 1775. We still send sons off to war but it is nothing we celebrate here.
Those people in that church, like the people in my synagogue, are people of whom I know only good things and people who I will stand with at town meetings, at anti-torture vigils and, come election day [and judging from the prevalence of "vote for Daval Patrick" signs], at the polling booth too.
The great question that troubles me after these observations is the discord of influences in my own life that such events bring to the surface:
On the one hand, I see wonderful an constructive citizens facing their mortality within a religious setting. I see them using criteria from their creeds as grounds for acting for social justice. They can't all be atheists who just go through the motions of convention at these junctures where the life just ended must bring to each a very sharp focus on the purpose of their own lives. Though I do not get to hear their doubts or other inner thoughts, I see their works and there find encouragement about my species.
On the other hand, nothing whatsoever in my own experience persuades me that there is any supernatural consciousness, either embodied or somehow diffused in the universe. It all seems so much more likely to me that we project when we think we are having religious experiences. It would be a simple enough explanation for both the diversity of so-called beliefs and for the animal ferocity that overtakes many in defense of these imaginings. The outer certainties that some religion's profess and make into political agenda's for rather narrow benefits to imaginary beneficiaries have to be set beside the kind thoughts and good works.
That drives me nuts. I suspect that if I will see any resolution of this good-religion/bad-religion dilemma, it will be personal and come from some special vantage point or accommodation that could be difficult to find or sustain in anyone else's reality. I would like to find accommodation. I would like to start with the logic that many atheists accept: "The hope in an afterlife and the imagining of spirits and powers unseen which control those aspects of this world that we cannot control is ubiquitous and yet in its particulars it is full of disagreeing beliefs, usually breaking along tribal and cultural boundaries therefore these hopes and imaginings have no source but human nature, For if there were a god, we'd all know the same things about god". But I would like to pare it back to the mere observation: "hope in an afterlife and the imagining of spirits and powers unseen which control those aspects of this world that we cannot is ubiquitous" and add to it the simple observation that there are also atheists: "hope in an afterlife and the imaging of spirits and powers unseen which control those aspects of this world that we cannot is ubiquitous but not universal". Those are observations. That is a statement of what is. I will try not to descend into the codas each camp adds to the observation: The atheists may point out the self serving and identity enforcing nature of the beliefs and the believers may point out the blindness or claim the egotism of the non-believers in attacking or repudiating a great source of comfort to mortals. Do I need to go there? We do not disagree that we are in this physical world, all of us together. We do agree on at least some common notions of good such as freedom to think and speak, safety from war, subjugation and persecution and a life providing the animal basics of food, health, protection from the elements and perhaps good company of family and friends. Then if we only agree to have a neutral means to negotiate our differences when our particular definitions of the common good do not agree in details that affect how our common wealth and resources will be disposed, call this neutral means government, why would we not live well enough? I hear everywhere in the news only discord and mounting strife of factions that cannot share the commons of this planet and that strife is both between beliefs and between belief an non-belief. I saw in the rows of pews a quite diverse group of people who have, in their own town, done a very effective job of both sharing the commons and otherwise staying out of each other's affairs.
I have said "you can't ignore religion if it won't ignore you" which I admit, is a defensive posture and implies the believers won't leave the non-believers alone to act according to their own consciences. I won't take it back. As a decent human being, it is simply not an option to preemptorily say one party has a conscience that can dictate to others in matters that are strictly personal. And yet I am uneasy with the broad language, the unqualified term "religion".
I am aware of outreach and ecumenical efforts among faith groups who do not stand for the repressive and ugly narrowness presented as "faith" by the righteous-wing allies of the Bush administration. I invite them to reach out a little farther to the faithless like myself. I go on record here as regretting some of the rocks I have thrown at religion's way of interfacing one's mind to the world. Where it begets helpful attitudes and positive results, who am I to criticize?
The political climate brought me to blogging as a activity and an outlet. The sick use of religion on the part of Republicans that has given national emphasis to the least healthy and least helpful forms of religion in this country has brought religious criticism into my blogging. The blurry connection between terms like "family values" and the ideals of Christian values have come about because the habit of the fundamentalists is to code the less salable "Christian" with the more marketable "family" in their well oiled hunt for influence. Personally, I find the Dodsons and Fallwells have traded in their love-the-good-in-each-person in for a fear-the-evil-in-everyone, a superficial and weak but more easily carried faith. These are NOT the Christians I would care to make peace with but they bear the label "Christian" as fairly as Jude or Rev. Timothy Simpson. I want better categories so at least I can toss my rocks through the right windows.
There are of course many sects of Christianity. And for that matter Judaism too has flavors that I might not like. How are Jack Abramoff's prayer's received on high? How would I daven next to such a person? The distinction I am hoping to enable is between helpful religious observance and faith and selfish and uncivil religious observance and faith. Won't be easy, of course. But there certainly are strings that tie together a collection of religious groups that I would put in the uncivil category. The most amazing collection of little known connections about "conservative" Christian politics can be found in the biographies of the "council for national Policy"...a huge number of embarrassing connections such as having Tom DeLay and all his relationships to various churches spelled out and how rich [DuPont] their supporters are... These are too many connections for people of positive and humane faith to have to explicitly repudiate. The progressive religious person shouldn't need to distance themselves from that kind of "Christianity" . The voice and the conscience of the civil and constructive Christians are plainly heard if one is listening. But..I'd like a tag that lets me speak of such folks without readers thinking I also meant the leadership of the Southern Baptists. I'd like a tag that would let me speak of Jerry Fallwell that would not let my readers assume I also meant progressives in faith.
To this HuffPo post about the betrayal of a zealous believer at the hands of the Whitehouse, I commented with a similar question:
It is a shame we can't reframe this religion+republicanism topic a little. What might do it is to get two or three words recognized as distinct connotations of the sloppily used label "Christian". Iddybud is a Christian too. Why hurt friends or shame innocent bystanders? The "Christians" being seduced are certain fundies, brains fueled by unadmittable fears and shallow understanding, who, for all their proclamations of the ultimate power of the kingdom of heaven, are desperate to wield some of the power of our new king George. The lusting of evangelicals after political power should be seen as an admission that they don't expect god to act for them, not physically nor in the hearts of men, and that they must have laws to say what their reading of the bible has not made audible to the wider world. What can I call that lusting?I admit to having tossed a few rocks myself so I am a fine one to be asking. But we progressives all need each other just as much as the neocons needed the fundamentalists and I think we, if anyone, should be able to talk with each other in more harmonious ways that will outlast the expediencies of getting Bush and buddies out of office. A lot of us with common political goals might not have the same spiritual goals but we can still do better than to bruise one another over those differences.
Whew!
The hardest part of this essay has not been written yet. The most important part has though, so there it is. I will return to this topic when better words come to me.
I open the floor to any suggestions about good tags for the two faces of religion.
Friday, October 27, 2006
[A Bomb a nation] The dirt.
Heeeeeerz Republicans!
Through the diligence of Chris Bowers at myDD, a list of moderately to thoroughly damaging coverage of the sleazy club that call themselves Republican congress persons. These are links to stories published in mainstream news papers and written by MSM journalists, not KOSsacks. This is their dirt and no body made it up. They own the stink in this sore nation.
--AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl
--AZ-01: Rick Renzi
--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth
--CA-04: John Doolittle
--CA-11: Richard Pombo
--CA-50: Brian Bilbray
--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave
--CO-05: Doug Lamborn
--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell
--CT-04: Christopher Shays
--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan
--FL-16: Joe Negron
--FL-22: Clay Shaw
--ID-01: Bill Sali
--IL-06: Peter Roskam
--IL-10: Mark Kirk
--IL-14: Dennis Hastert
--IN-02: Chris Chocola
--IN-08: John Hostettler
--IA-01: Mike Whalen
--KS-02: Jim Ryun
--KY-03: Anne Northup
--KY-04: Geoff Davis
--MD-Sen: Michael Steele
--MN-01: Gil Gutknecht
--MN-06: Michele Bachmann
--MO-Sen: Jim Talent
--MT-Sen: Conrad Burns
--NV-03: Jon Porter
--NH-02: Charlie Bass
--NJ-07: Mike Ferguson
--NM-01: Heather Wilson
--NY-03: Peter King
--NY-20: John Sweeney
--NY-26: Tom Reynolds
--NY-29: Randy Kuhl
--NC-08: Robin Hayes
--NC-11: Charles Taylor
--OH-01: Steve Chabot
--OH-02: Jean Schmidt
--OH-15: Deborah Pryce
--OH-18: Joy Padgett
--PA-04: Melissa Hart
--PA-07: Curt Weldon
--PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick
--PA-10: Don Sherwood
--RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee
--TN-Sen: Bob Corker
--VA-Sen: George Allen
--VA-10: Frank Wolf
--WA-Sen: Mike McGavick
--WA-08: Dave Reichert
have fun reading!
--
Posted by GreenSmile to A Bomb a nation at 10/27/2006 06:55:00 PM
Through the diligence of Chris Bowers at myDD, a list of moderately to thoroughly damaging coverage of the sleazy club that call themselves Republican congress persons. These are links to stories published in mainstream news papers and written by MSM journalists, not KOSsacks. This is their dirt and no body made it up. They own the stink in this sore nation.
--AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl
--AZ-01: Rick Renzi
--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth
--CA-04: John Doolittle
--CA-11: Richard Pombo
--CA-50: Brian Bilbray
--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave
--CO-05: Doug Lamborn
--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell
--CT-04: Christopher Shays
--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan
--FL-16: Joe Negron
--FL-22: Clay Shaw
--ID-01: Bill Sali
--IL-06: Peter Roskam
--IL-10: Mark Kirk
--IL-14: Dennis Hastert
--IN-02: Chris Chocola
--IN-08: John Hostettler
--IA-01: Mike Whalen
--KS-02: Jim Ryun
--KY-03: Anne Northup
--KY-04: Geoff Davis
--MD-Sen: Michael Steele
--MN-01: Gil Gutknecht
--MN-06: Michele Bachmann
--MO-Sen: Jim Talent
--MT-Sen: Conrad Burns
--NV-03: Jon Porter
--NH-02: Charlie Bass
--NJ-07: Mike Ferguson
--NM-01: Heather Wilson
--NY-03: Peter King
--NY-20: John Sweeney
--NY-26: Tom Reynolds
--NY-29: Randy Kuhl
--NC-08: Robin Hayes
--NC-11: Charles Taylor
--OH-01: Steve Chabot
--OH-02: Jean Schmidt
--OH-15: Deborah Pryce
--OH-18: Joy Padgett
--PA-04: Melissa Hart
--PA-07: Curt Weldon
--PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick
--PA-10: Don Sherwood
--RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee
--TN-Sen: Bob Corker
--VA-Sen: George Allen
--VA-10: Frank Wolf
--WA-Sen: Mike McGavick
--WA-08: Dave Reichert
have fun reading!
--
Posted by GreenSmile to A Bomb a nation at 10/27/2006 06:55:00 PM
Tool use in the 21st century
We are, in ways vastly richer and more lasting than our closest competitor, a communicating species. Our communicated facts, feelings and wisdom, frozen into words on a page, now become a greater vehicle [or, for some, a tombstone] of our culture than oral tradition. And we are a tool making and tool using species. Thus, every new tool that lowers the inhibitions to communicating is taken up by all the young humans as soon as they can afford it.
Reaching for generalizations more specific to blogging than "its a new way to communicate" is hazardous. The varieties and exceptions are myriad since the content has only a few constraints imposed by the web page as media. McLuhan would be much vindicated by the characteristics which the technology impose: the short shelf life, a mere moment of relevance of each blogged page so at odds with the longer stories we might want to tell. And the short attention span of the audience voracious yet impatient for not just news but stimulation. Having been there and done that, newspaper tradition lends its "below the fold" concept to bloggers. There is no standard dose of blogging though the most heavily trafficked sites such as Daily Kos or Atrios suggest a dose that has market appeal.
In the winter edition of reconstruction, I expect to read a few good essays on whether bloggers are journalists, a football much scuffed by comment and a few judicial rulings but not yet put through any goal posts. For economic reasons, journalists by trade have an interest in the question that bloggers, most of whom are bloggers by avocation, do not. I find it convenient to categorize my sources as "for-profit media" and "for-cause media"...and so I don't particularly trust or take unfiltered anything I read. That is my categorizing for blogs centered on news and comment. There are many other categories of blog but as I said, generalization breaks down. It is, even now in its early years, a media so customizable and with such low barriers to publication that personal creativity and idiosyncrasies will give you a thousand niches. I am sure this amorphous riot of style and subject are in fact the problem that makes a decent business for Technorati and other enterprises who make findable, under some taxonomy or other, whatever you want to find in blogs.
Ah but that is the great empty promise of blogging: You can say anything you want and imagine it is visible to the 100 million connected browsers the minute you hit "Publish Post". You lay out your cool idea, your expose' of local corruption or your insightful essay but nobody comes round to read it. It is up to you to do some of the work for the present crop of blog search facilities: you have to decide a category and audience that best fit your writing. You have to find the blogroll, the blog alliance or the blog carnival where the traffic is more likely to come looking for your particular color and flavor of blogging. In short, if you want readers, you have to be of some recognized kind and bear the tags of that kind or plug your blog into an appropriate syndicate. To be sui generis, no matter how compelling, amusing and excellent your work, is to court obscurity. After that, there are many short lists of tricks and habits of blogging-as-craft which help you hold an audience. If you want to review these basics I would recommend Coturnix because his blogging sucess is the proof of his suggestions, even for laying a blog to rest. Of all the tips you will find on many lists, putting out at least a post a day is perhaps the most important. If you are just looking for hits, write up the hot news or commerce topics of the day with frequent repetitions of the key words. Say anything. The search engine will touch your hit counter, but your prose will touch no one from the back of a list of 100000 page matches.
Why one starts a blog is not necessarily why one continues it. Long running blogs are part of your identity, even when you blog under a pseudonym. It is of course a projection of some aspect of yourself to take on some voice and, in that voice, reflect on the world or report something in your life. This seems to be the dubious bedrock on which much non-professional blogging rests: "hey! Look at me". It is a need to be or at least imagine that you have been seen/heard/known/understood. As motive, that can always be put down but never put away. It abides. I took an enforced rest in August and September and found that I felt diminished both in confidence, capacity to write and sense of connection to the small audience I imagine I have. If one is not paid to blog and one is not seduced by and addicted to the hit counter, motive is not so clear. I have never personally met and mostly don't even know the real names of people I have gotten to know via my commenting on their blog or their commenting. All the other substance of conversation among friends is there except that obligations are minimal. That is a kind of community. A community of a few dozen odd souls scattered all over the planet that virtually convenes when the RSS feed coughs up a new post. Often it seems like a kind of party to judge by the spirit and the wit of the commenting. That is not what I imagined when I started blogging. It is better than what I had in mind originally and not nearly so stale and sterile. When I began, I had a list of things I wanted to say and no imagined or real persons to whom I would say them. Still, I remind myself once in a while that even serial killers have had blogs or web sites. Asking yourself who is talking and who is listening is a good exercise.
Eventually, at times, the blank text entry box becomes a hungry child or a haunting mistress to which you can give nothing that satisfies. Its emptiness scares or mocks you. If you only write newsy things, only write when there is news worth reading : nobody reads filler on a blog. Its a terribly impatient media. But if you write because thinking is fun, do not underestimate the reading of blogs as a promoter and motivator for the writing of blogs. Its not just cut/paste/link either because we react to other peoples thoughts with thoughts that are often our very own. The business feeds on itself in this way.
I claim little or no objectivity in my observations of how blogging has changed me, turned me toward a new face of society. We are electronic nomads who can redefine our boundaries and groups at will. Boredom and fashion tug at us making our clicks ebb and flow. Certainly, my memory is weaker, in my late 50's than it used to be. Yet my reading, though in ever smaller snatches, has become incessant and wide ranging. I fear not to read from a dozen different MSM news websites and twice that many blogs every day, buttressing and overlaying multiple impressions and selections of the days news until I feel like I have a grasp of the whole world on this day, or as much of it as interests me. And if I cannot recall the fact or the name or the date, I have bookmarks and always keep up a copy of Notepad to paste in URLs and paragraphs. And I mail this digest of the digest to my infinite google mailbox at the end of the day. Fearless of ever forgetting or missing either the news or its meaning, how shall I age? Living and being in this world is not an exact science yet it is an experimental one. Each of us has a unique voice but many of us have not yet spoken. I'd invite you to start a blog because it is easy and because it subjects you to the self discipline of an imagined audience [which could materialize, who knows?]. Under those experimental conditions, write. Forget what you think will happen and just see what changes you undergo.
Like eyeglasses and phones, the computer, serving up the world configured as I wish to know it, must become ever more integral to my life. The glasses became contacts and then Lasik. The phone became a cell phone and then a Bluetooth ear piece worn almost constantly. Our new eyes, our new ears ... and now, our new voices.
Reaching for generalizations more specific to blogging than "its a new way to communicate" is hazardous. The varieties and exceptions are myriad since the content has only a few constraints imposed by the web page as media. McLuhan would be much vindicated by the characteristics which the technology impose: the short shelf life, a mere moment of relevance of each blogged page so at odds with the longer stories we might want to tell. And the short attention span of the audience voracious yet impatient for not just news but stimulation. Having been there and done that, newspaper tradition lends its "below the fold" concept to bloggers. There is no standard dose of blogging though the most heavily trafficked sites such as Daily Kos or Atrios suggest a dose that has market appeal.
In the winter edition of reconstruction, I expect to read a few good essays on whether bloggers are journalists, a football much scuffed by comment and a few judicial rulings but not yet put through any goal posts. For economic reasons, journalists by trade have an interest in the question that bloggers, most of whom are bloggers by avocation, do not. I find it convenient to categorize my sources as "for-profit media" and "for-cause media"...and so I don't particularly trust or take unfiltered anything I read. That is my categorizing for blogs centered on news and comment. There are many other categories of blog but as I said, generalization breaks down. It is, even now in its early years, a media so customizable and with such low barriers to publication that personal creativity and idiosyncrasies will give you a thousand niches. I am sure this amorphous riot of style and subject are in fact the problem that makes a decent business for Technorati and other enterprises who make findable, under some taxonomy or other, whatever you want to find in blogs.
Ah but that is the great empty promise of blogging: You can say anything you want and imagine it is visible to the 100 million connected browsers the minute you hit "Publish Post". You lay out your cool idea, your expose' of local corruption or your insightful essay but nobody comes round to read it. It is up to you to do some of the work for the present crop of blog search facilities: you have to decide a category and audience that best fit your writing. You have to find the blogroll, the blog alliance or the blog carnival where the traffic is more likely to come looking for your particular color and flavor of blogging. In short, if you want readers, you have to be of some recognized kind and bear the tags of that kind or plug your blog into an appropriate syndicate. To be sui generis, no matter how compelling, amusing and excellent your work, is to court obscurity. After that, there are many short lists of tricks and habits of blogging-as-craft which help you hold an audience. If you want to review these basics I would recommend Coturnix because his blogging sucess is the proof of his suggestions, even for laying a blog to rest. Of all the tips you will find on many lists, putting out at least a post a day is perhaps the most important. If you are just looking for hits, write up the hot news or commerce topics of the day with frequent repetitions of the key words. Say anything. The search engine will touch your hit counter, but your prose will touch no one from the back of a list of 100000 page matches.
Why one starts a blog is not necessarily why one continues it. Long running blogs are part of your identity, even when you blog under a pseudonym. It is of course a projection of some aspect of yourself to take on some voice and, in that voice, reflect on the world or report something in your life. This seems to be the dubious bedrock on which much non-professional blogging rests: "hey! Look at me". It is a need to be or at least imagine that you have been seen/heard/known/understood. As motive, that can always be put down but never put away. It abides. I took an enforced rest in August and September and found that I felt diminished both in confidence, capacity to write and sense of connection to the small audience I imagine I have. If one is not paid to blog and one is not seduced by and addicted to the hit counter, motive is not so clear. I have never personally met and mostly don't even know the real names of people I have gotten to know via my commenting on their blog or their commenting. All the other substance of conversation among friends is there except that obligations are minimal. That is a kind of community. A community of a few dozen odd souls scattered all over the planet that virtually convenes when the RSS feed coughs up a new post. Often it seems like a kind of party to judge by the spirit and the wit of the commenting. That is not what I imagined when I started blogging. It is better than what I had in mind originally and not nearly so stale and sterile. When I began, I had a list of things I wanted to say and no imagined or real persons to whom I would say them. Still, I remind myself once in a while that even serial killers have had blogs or web sites. Asking yourself who is talking and who is listening is a good exercise.
Eventually, at times, the blank text entry box becomes a hungry child or a haunting mistress to which you can give nothing that satisfies. Its emptiness scares or mocks you. If you only write newsy things, only write when there is news worth reading : nobody reads filler on a blog. Its a terribly impatient media. But if you write because thinking is fun, do not underestimate the reading of blogs as a promoter and motivator for the writing of blogs. Its not just cut/paste/link either because we react to other peoples thoughts with thoughts that are often our very own. The business feeds on itself in this way.
I claim little or no objectivity in my observations of how blogging has changed me, turned me toward a new face of society. We are electronic nomads who can redefine our boundaries and groups at will. Boredom and fashion tug at us making our clicks ebb and flow. Certainly, my memory is weaker, in my late 50's than it used to be. Yet my reading, though in ever smaller snatches, has become incessant and wide ranging. I fear not to read from a dozen different MSM news websites and twice that many blogs every day, buttressing and overlaying multiple impressions and selections of the days news until I feel like I have a grasp of the whole world on this day, or as much of it as interests me. And if I cannot recall the fact or the name or the date, I have bookmarks and always keep up a copy of Notepad to paste in URLs and paragraphs. And I mail this digest of the digest to my infinite google mailbox at the end of the day. Fearless of ever forgetting or missing either the news or its meaning, how shall I age? Living and being in this world is not an exact science yet it is an experimental one. Each of us has a unique voice but many of us have not yet spoken. I'd invite you to start a blog because it is easy and because it subjects you to the self discipline of an imagined audience [which could materialize, who knows?]. Under those experimental conditions, write. Forget what you think will happen and just see what changes you undergo.
Like eyeglasses and phones, the computer, serving up the world configured as I wish to know it, must become ever more integral to my life. The glasses became contacts and then Lasik. The phone became a cell phone and then a Bluetooth ear piece worn almost constantly. Our new eyes, our new ears ... and now, our new voices.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Yo, Pigeon! Whole skies are yours if you think outside the box.
Long after they ceased to be kept for communication purposes and in places where no one has ever seen pigeons, we still use the term pigeon hole. Used accurately enough by most to mean "an oversimplifying or limiting category" it is a good lesson in how, when a label loses it original meaning, we like to recycle it and hang on to its familiarity in some new, perhaps more expressively useful or emphatic role. Webster gets it right with "a neat category which usually fails to reflect actual complexities" . This season, when the world waits anxiously to see if the US stumbles farther to the right of reason and democracy, we have the two-pigeon-holes dilemma, so inadequate for discussion or understanding of who is making this momentous decision or how they are making it:
Liberal and conservative: pigeon holes that speed up conversation and slow down thinking.
Would you give a wheel chair to great wide receiver or crutches to a great sprinter? Not every listener needs the aid of simple categories. We get simple categories because of the needs of the speaker to control our thought.
Would you give a wheel chair to great wide receiver or crutches to a great sprinter? Not every listener needs the aid of simple categories. We get simple categories because of the needs of the speaker to control our thought.
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