Friday, July 30, 2004

Morning after

Kerry’s speech was better than I’d feared, and I pretty much agreed with Brother-in-Law David Weinberger (blogging for the Boston Globe) about the quality, the friendliness, the limited but crucial amount of detail.

Kerry is old school ruling class, lots of noblesse oblige and probably pretty damn honest considering– he can afford honesty, especially with Ms. Teresa’s deep pockets.

Anyhow, I'm feeling hopeful about the election, unless Bush and his boys do a big surprise– an Osama surprise would be most likely, a coup d’état less likely but not impossible.


Thursday, July 29, 2004

July 29

They're noodling around building up to a speech by John Kerry at the Democratic Convention. I wouldn't mind hearing him speak, but I sure don't want to watch any more of Blitzer and mini interviews with delegates and such. Maybe I'll wait for the sound bites.

Sunday, July 25, 2004

Democratic Convention Blogs

Just for fun: Photos from a convention blogger of the Democratic convention before it starts at
http://www.bopnews.com/archives/001081.html. And my brother-in-law is blogging the convention for the Boston Globe!

Saturday, July 24, 2004

July 24

Just back from a lovely Texas smoked ribs dinner that a friend bought at a skills auction-- ten grown ups, quesadilla hors d'oeuvres, wine, ribs with and without sauce, baked beans, potato salad, a knockout pecan pie. Lots of talk about: organizations, nonprofits, foundations, the elections, Reverend Al, W., and lots more. I had a great time, and I think I got the brandy out of my clothes that I spilled with a big gesture.

More July 23

I'm continuing to fool around with this, wondering if it's worth doing or not.  I'm figuring out some technical things, like how to put in a picture, like this one of Virginia Woof:  .

Friday, July 23, 2004

I Have Two Blogs. Or Maybe Three

I've been trying to figure out what a blog is. I know what my journal is: I put in notes for projects, I take my emotional temperature, I copy e-mail notes and letters to people. I keep a blog on my website where I put some pictures and generally write upbeat things about events in my life, honors, burgeoning tomatoes in the garden, etc. I know that when I read the blogs of Internet people like my brother-in-law David Weinberger or my old friend Susan Mernit that I am usually more interested in what's happening in their lives than in their comments on the medium itself. I've never cared for novels about novelists writing novels about novel writing, either....

Thursday, July 22, 2004

I almost know a vice presidential candidate!

I know someone who knows a vice presidential candidate! Teresa Gutierrez is running for vice president (with John Parker for prez) on the Workers World Party ticket! See information about them at http://www.workersworld.net/vote4workers/wwelect0603.html!

Saturday, July 17, 2004

July 17

A lot of people are blogging the conventions and blogging the media response to the convention.  I intend to read Victorian novels and modern created Victorian novels.

Thursday, July 15, 2004

July 15, 2004

We live in history and in our social settings, but are conscious
of it only rarely. That is to say, we follow the news more
or less, and when some great event happens to our nation
or our race, we are moved, or we are manipulated to be moved,
and we feel some hint of our relationship to the rest. We
are more aware of ourselves as part of something larger
when we are, say, members of a PTA or Board of a nonprofit.
In these things we have some satisfaction, some sense of
empowerment. But the things on television, the great public
events and disasters (disputed elections, the collapse of
the world trade center, a bombing, an earthquake), we feel
overcome with our smallness in the face of that thing. Spiritual
people take comfort by plugging themselves into the greatness,
and political activists take action that they see as confronting
evil. For each of us personally, though, history is a mystery--
how a particular tree did not fall on a particular farmer
clearing the land, and how a particular woman in childbirth
had enough antibodies to bacteria to fight off the infection
from the hands of the country doctor or midwife trying to
help her. These survivors whose genetic packets came to
be me were buffeted by chance, by the big events, the wars:
my father's eyes too weak when he tried to volunteer for
the second world war, even though they would have been allowed
under the draft: thus my father working in a warplane factory
in Akron Ohio instead of dying on the beach at Normandy.

Sunday, July 11, 2004

July 11, 2004

This is a test again. Let me try inserting my blog with photos on my website: testing with images: .

test

Testing testing one twothree