Author: Shelley Powers

Categories
Critters

Walking among the dog people part 1

First published in summer, 2002 and moved to the now defunct Dynamic Earth

I walk, almost daily, along the beach next to the Golden Gate Bridge. This beach also happens to be one of the few areas in San Francisco where dogs are allowed off their leashes, to run along the sand and play among the waves.

There’s a particular black lab I know that comes up to you and drops her ball just out of your reach. When you reach for it to throw it for her, she lunges in and grabs it out of your grasp and then dances around in delight at her own cleaverness. Then back again with the ball, dropping it down, expecting me to make another attempt.

One of the Jack Russell tries to keep up with the bigger dogs, running as hard as it can on its short stubby legs among the labs and the dobermans and the shepherds…until the other dogs run into the water.

The waves along the beach aren’t that small or that gentle and a small dog is not going to be able to swim in these waters. All that poor little Jack Russell can do when his larger friends jump into the water is to stand at the edge and bark for all its might. Wave rolls out, he runs forward; wave rolls in, he runs back. That cute little bugger barking at the ocean, in his mind having brief moments of triumph when the waves recede, setbacks when the waves return. He only stops when his friends exit the water, at this point having achieved a state of truce with the water.

One of my favorite dogs is a beautiful Boxer who loves to play in the water so much that his owner has to restrict him because the dog would exhaust himself and drown – the play means that much to him.

Once, a large red doberman came out of no where, walked right up to me, circled behind me, and then sat down beside me as if we were in a dog show demonstrating obedience. She then leaned for all she was worth against my leg, and just stayed there, looking out a the water. I was astonished at first, and then just started laughing. It was a moment of crystalline pure delight; the kind of moment you can’t buy, build, borrow, or create.

Absolute joy at simple gifts. I define this as fun, and it is my greatest meaning in life. And creating a little of that joy in others is my greatest purpose.

Categories
Stuff

End goal

I have some things I want to publish by the end of the month – long delayed LAMP essays, not to mention some older material on domains I’ve let lapse that I want to duplicate here so the work is not lost.

I am surrounded by half-started projects and half written essays and good intentions and now I’m choking on them. Now is the time to finish, and be done.

I want to end this month on a good note. If there are any comments to these new posts, they’ll be related to what I write, or they’ll be gone. And under no circumstances can my space be used by people wanting to get a message to someone else, or to fight battles that originated elsewhere–abusing the privilege I accord my readers, not to mention the hospitality of my home.

I would rather have comment spam then webloggers who use my space to hit and run. At least there is a form of honesty associated with the spam.

Additionally, I am taking great care in my writing to make sure there is no flint to spark against, no flames to fan–unless the flint is of imagination, and the resulting fire is the same flame I hoped to spark when I created my first weblog page, back in 1995. No battles will be fought, no dragons to be slain–all I see now are windmills.

Which means that my space will probably become very quiet.

Categories
Photography

Good stuff

Ahem. Announcement.

The August Edition of Missouri Life will feature a photo essay of Missouri rivers, lakes, and ponds by writer/photographer Shelley Powers.

Subdued dancing and prancing about occurs, punctuated with an occasional raw, primal scream of delight. Cat hides, rabbits run, small children begin to cry.

Categories
Weblogging

Black and white

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Another site design I’m working on is called Black & White, and I’d like to be able to hard-code this one for use when reading anything to do with either politics, or discussions of RSS and other weblogging hoorah that seems to have such ‘cut at the dotted line’ mentality.

However, I’ve only had 3 hours of sleep in the last 48, and I’m too tired to muck up what is now a lovely system of interchangeable stylesheets, so I’ll get a good night’s sleep before returning to the designs. And Black & White is becoming too fun to reserve it just for hoorah writing.

Speaking of hoorah and becoming mental,Dave Winer seems to have dipped his oar into too deep a waters too many times because he’s recently initiated actions that seem about guaranteed to lose him friends and, well, lose him friends.

He just pulled weblogs that were hosted at weblogs.com, without any warning I gather. I wondered what was going on when I visited a couple of weblogs.com sites and then saw this note at Halley’s. In addition, if you access one of the old sites, you get the following:

This site is for people with sites that used to be hosted at weblogs.com.

1. I can’t afford to host these sites. I don’t want to start a site hosting business. These are firm, non-negotiable statements.

2. There are several commercial Manila hosting companies, including weblogger.com. Thomas Creedon maintains a list of commercial and free hosting services. If you want to have your site hosted more cheaply, consider the possibility of forming a co-op of some kind.

3. If you want a copy of your weblogs.com-hosted website, post a comment here, include the URL of the site. Sometime after July 1, 2004, I will export all the requested sites, without their membership groups. You can then download them and do with them as you wish. I won’t export them before July 1, and this is a one-time offer.

Does anyone have a copy of the original weblogs.com statement? It would seem that the weblogs.com hosted folks weren’t aware that this was going to happen, and to have these weblogs pulled without some warning, and then this abrasive note placed in its place – that’s about the most graceless thing I have seen since I’ve dipped toes into these waters. And I’ve been out to some pretty nasty political weblogs.

If the folks at weblogs.com did have notice this was happening, and there has been clearly defined time limits to the hosting, no harm for Winer deciding to longer host. I recently disbanded the co-op I’d started because I also wasn’t sure of my future directions and didn’t want to leave people hanging if I had to make sudden changes. However, if you may have noticed, none of the co-op members have vanished without a trace-t-hey’ve been taken over by their cats, but haven’t vanished.

From what I’m reading in the comments associated with the weblogs.com sites, though people are appreciative of the free hosting (and this was a generous act, and they should be appreciative of past kindness), abruptly kicking everyone off without a word, and holding access to the sites until after July 1, well, it sucks.

And to salt them paper thin cuts to the skin, the first comment in the weblogs.com post is from Winer and reads:

Groundrules: Personal comments, ad hominems, will be deleted. And no negotiating or whining. Just post the url of your site.

Hmm.

There you go boys and girls: the number one reason why you don’t want to go with a hosted solution, and if you do, backup. Frequently. No matter how nice or cuddly or professional the host – back your material up at least weekly. Never give anyone control over what happens to your writing. Never.

(In fact, if I remember correctly, I once mentioned the evils of centralization, and actually used weblogs.com as an example of ‘what if…’ something like this were to happen. Maybe I need a Psychic Bird stylesheet, too.)

In the meantime, if you have a weblogs.com weblog and have a new location, if you send me an email or drop a comment with your new location, we’ll see if we can’t start circulating the changes– to get folks up and running more quickly. But this time, may I recommend hosting your weblog in your own space?

If you have questions about how to port from your Manila site to other weblogging tools, holler.

Dave Winer came out with an audio blog on this move, and evidentally, there was no warning to the people who have weblogs on weblogs.com that this was going to happen. I don’t think anyone begrudges Winer’s not wanting to host the sites for free, but pulling the plug without warning? Na ah.

Jeneane’s take. Curious, though – Robert Scoble and Doc are still on weblogs.com.

David Weinberger goes what a shock, but at least Dave explained it all, so it’s all understandable, and poor Dave. At least the people were appreciative of the service they had in the past.

I don’t get this place, sometimes. I really don’t.

Last update of this post, but this Time article on weblogging came out yesterday, too. This might explain the magazine reference Dave Winer made in his audioblog, transcript of which Jeneane posted.

Now, moving on…

Categories
Places

Where I would rather be

Today was another beautiful St. Louis day and after cleaning house and doing the weekly shopping, I stopped by Powder Valley for an early evening walk.

There are three trails at Powder, but I always take the shortest and easiest. Though the others give more of a workout, the Tanglewood Trail is less stressful of my ankle. Besides there’s always something interesting happening at Tanglewood compared to the other trails because there’s more to eat, and hence more critters eating.

Tonight, the birds were especially frisky because of an earlier rain and then the late afternoon sunshine. This week’s weather has been so welcome after all the oppressive heat and storms this Spring has given us.

The surprise tonight happened at the corner to turn back to the beginning. Through the trees I saw one of the bucks, a handsome devil with a nice set of antlers. The bucks are notoriously shy and to see one is a very rare and lucky event. I ducked quickly behind a tree, but when I looked cautiously around, I could see the buck twisting his head around the branches in front of him to get a closer look at me. We stood there, both of us peeking around at each other until I decided to move on because he wouldn’t be able to eat or move away until I was gone.

Tanglewood is only 1/3 mile around, and I circle it however many times I want. I try to circle it at least three times, to make a mile, but it really depends on the weather and how achy I am And how many people are out. Another reason I like Tanglewood is it doesn’t have the same numbers of people the other trails do. When I walk, I usually prefer solitude.

The second time around, as I headed toward a glen-like area of the forest, I spotted a doe and her tiny, twin babies, barely up on their feet and moving around. I stopped dead to enjoy them and while I was standing there, a man walked quickly past, head down in contemplation of his work out. However, as he drew near the babies he spotted them and stopped dead in his tracks, and turned to me with a huge grin on his face. He then whipped out his phone and held it out to the deer. I came this close to calling out, “Are you a weblogger?”

After he left, I slowly made my way closer to the glen, to get a better look at the mother and babies. By this time, the fireflies were out, and all the bushes surrounding the deer were alight with their sparkle; the late afternoon sun touched on the canopy of leaves and vines overhead, creating an unearthly glow on the surroundings.

It was astonishing. There was no other word to call it, but astonishing. I stood, barely daring to breath until the deer started slowly walking away, and the fireflies dispersed.

After I left I headed to the library, driving through the residential areas I prefer rather than taking the main road. One house had a mother and her young daughter out on the porch, sitting and enjoying the cool temperatures. Another house had an old car parked in front and several young men with their heads under the hood, and further down an older woman was mowing her lawn. It’s my favorite neighborhood in all of St. Louis, though other places have finer homes.

At the library, I stopped at the tables in the front that have books for sale, fifty cents for a hard cover, a quarter for a paperback, and a dime for magazines. I’ve been slowly but surely picking up a book now and again, trying to rebuild my long lost collection. I figure if I like the book I pick up, I’ll keep it. Otherwise, I’ll donate it back to the library, and they can sell it again.

The two tonight seemed like rare catches. One is titled, “Slow Dancing on Dinosaur Bones” by Lana Witt. The flyleaf described the book as a Southern comic gothic – how could I resist a book that calls itself a Southern comic gothic?

The second was “The Loves of Ivy” by a local teacher name of Carl Williams. He had signed this copy of the book, writing:

St. Library

Good to see you have my book. Ivy is still roaming Spring Creek.

Best wishes,

Carl R Williams.

We’ll see how they do.

I have to agree with Scott when he said in comments in my last post he’d rather visit Australia than the Moon–I think I would rather travel this world then leave it. I’m not sure when it changed for me, wanting to stay on this earth rather than roam the stars. When I was younger all I wanted was to go into space. Now, all I want is to go to London again, see the rest of Europe, or perhaps make that visit to New Zealand or Australia.

I think it comes with getting older. The closer you get to that day when you leave Earth for good, the better the old girl looks.