Author: Shelley Powers

Categories
Weblogging

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

A few days ago I wrote in a posting that I was taking a short break from weblogging. This is not a big deal. I take breaks, you take breaks, we all take breaks.

Weblogging isn’t a job or a marriage or parenthood whereby we’re committed to supporting it 100% of the time. Weblogging is a hobby. Something we do because it gives us pleasure, allows us to be heard, enables communication with others, sell books, products, services, explore technology – pick one.

If you’ve checked out the comments for this posting, titled “Burnt to a Crisp”, then you’ll see that some folks think I was taking a break because I expressed the views about the SFSU demonstration and the Blog Burst and then didn’t want to stay around to take the heat. I’ve commented back – most of which was pulled because I spoke from anger. A great deal of anger. Time to stop speaking from anger.

I was taking the break because I’m in the process of closing down a corporation I’ve had for over six years, as well as preparing for a move 2000 miles away. These are time consuming events, as is the book writing. In addition, I wanted to spend some time playing around the neighborhood so to speak – play tourist.

However, my reasons for wanting to take the break are not why I’m writing now. I’m writing now because I shouldn’t have to provide a reason why I’m taking a break. I feel I have to now because I’m kind of a proud person, and I really don’t like people believing that I would run from a fight. This was something I just couldn’t blow off.

Respect. It all comes down to respect.

This weekend I’ve been thinking a lot about respect. I’ve thought about some of the things people have told me in the last few months – some based on anger, some based on kindness, but all intertwined with this concept of respect.

Recently someone who I consider a very close friend told me that I wear my heart on my sleeve – meaning that whatever I think and feel goes online for all to see. Well, this is true to some extent. However, there is more to this iceberg than what shows above the water line, so to speak.

Regardless, this statement gave me pause – there’s that respect thing again. Am I coming across as this whiney thing that starts a fight, and then tells those who show up to stop picking on me? I would be appalled if this is true, because that’s not how I am. That’s not how I want to portray myself.

I’m stronger than that. I’m better than that. If I am portraying myself as this emotional wimp, then I’ve screwed up royally in how I communicate. And if I’ve lost respect because of what I write, then I have to seriously take a long look at my writing, and the value of this weblog.

Categories
Connecting

Control

Leaving the parking garage for my lunch appointment on Tuesday, I found the exit blocked, yet again, by the construction crew of the new condo across the street. I tapped my horn and when a couple of members of the crew turned towards me, I pointed to the pallets blocking the way. One of the guys holds up his finger in a gesture of “one moment”, walks over and moves the pallets — but not the huge truck behind them, basically giving me just barely enough room to turn the corner and not scrape the sides of my car.

As I fought to move the car around the obstacles, other construction crew members stopped working to watch and laugh at my efforts.

Last week when I took my car into the Ford service center, I missed the regular entrance and ended up driving through the actual center itself. At the center exit, a car blocked the way out, with a mechanic standing beside the car talking to another mechanic driving the car. I waited, not saying anything, not sounding the horn — I was a stranger in a strange land in this place. Eventually, the two guys finished their conversation, the car started to move, and I started to go…

…when I was stopped because the mechanic who had been standing by the car walked directly in front of me, slowly, looking at me, making sure I realized that he “owned” this territory, and that I pass by at his sufferance.

These two acts go beyond issues of courtesy. They were about power. These two individuals were the gatekeepers and I had to pay toll.

With the construction crew, my toll was to be humiliated as I tried my best to drive around the obstacles. At the service center, my toll was being made aware of the fact that I didn’t belong in this place, and I had best remember it.

There are well established (though often ignored) laws about driving to ensure we don’t kill each other. There are roads to enable driving from any point A to any point B. There is also a mapping and addressing scheme that works remarkably well in regards to location of same.

All of which can be arbitrarily shut down by one person who, in a moment of ultimate power, controls my only access to the organized but open system of the road.

Categories
Critters

A story of lasts

Two tales of extinction from Tasmania.

Earlier in May, I read about the efforts to clone the Tasmanian Tiger (Thylacine) an animal whose last known representative died in captivity in 1936 (see video at BBC).

I studied about the Tasmanian Tiger when I wrote a four-part story about cryptozoology, extinct and legandary animals, and the giant squid in Tale of Two Monsters. According to an article in ENN:

It took humans only some 70 years to make the Tasmanian tiger extinct, as farmers in the 1800s began shooting, poisoning, gassing, and trapping the animal, blaming it for attacking sheep. The last known Tasmanian tiger died in 1936, and it was officially declared extinct in 1986.

Today, Allan pointed to this sad tale of the return of pieces of the body of Truganinni, the woman who is considered “the last Tasmanian Aborigine”.(Descendants of the early aborigines have survived, though none are full-blooded.)

The British Royal College of Surgeons pilfered the pieces long ago for study, and only just discovered them again in January. Since the Tasmanian aborigines believe their bodies should lie in rest near their home, the pieces of Truganinni are being returned for ceremonial burial.

Accounts about the deliberate extermination of the Tasmanian aborigine bear a remarkable resemblance to those taken to exterminate the Tasmanian Tigers. According to Jared Diamond:

Tactics for hunting down Tasmanians included riding out on horseback to shoot them, setting out steel traps to catch them, and putting out poison flour where they might find and eat it. Sheperds cut off the penis of aboriginal men, to watch the men run a few yards before dying.

The final efforts to eliminate the aborigines occurred through that most efficient of destructive agents – religion. When only about 300 aborigines still lived, George Augustus Robinson a self styled preacher convinced the remnants to join him in a sanctuary created for them on Flinders Island. There he would convert them over to Christianity and “modern ways” while he protected them from further destruction. Unfortunately, the Island became a prison rather than a refuge, and Robinson helped complete the work started so enthusiastically by the other settlers.

Note: In the interest of disclosing possible bias, I should point out that here in the United States, we share much of the same efficiency as our Australian brethren when it comes to killing or displacing natives – human and otherwise.

Categories
RDF Weblogging

Doing my part: RSS auto-discovery

Since weblogging is all about RSS and aggregation, I’ve added the Mark Pilgrim RSS auto-discovery code to my weblog’s template.

Note: In the interests of disclosing any bias, be aware that I am writing a book on RDF, and that I support RSS 1.0 based on the RDF specification.

Categories
Stuff

Belief-o-matic

I took that Belief-o-Matic test that’s supposed to tell you the religious system that best suits you.

After finishing the test I waited for the results. And waited. And waited. Finally a simple plain white web page opened, and in the middle of the page I read the following words:

 

I reached a place where every light is muted,
which bellows like the sea beneath a tempest,
when it is battered by opposing winds.

The hellish hurricane, which never rests,
drives on the spirits with its violence:
wheeling and pounding, it harasses them.

The soul falls headlong, down into this cistern;
and up above, perhaps, there still appears
the body of the shade that winters here.*

 

As I puzzled over the results, a beating sound started coming from my computer and my monitor started slowing spinning. I was amazed since I was using a laptop and the monitor doesn’t spin.

Faster went the monitor, louder was the beating, smoke poured from the machine until all of a sudden the monitor stopped spinning and displayed

The Blue Screen of Death

And then my machine died. A melted plastic blob, still faintly smoking. In the air, the subtle scent of burnt plastic mixed in with overripe ocean and rotten eggs.

Luckily I had this backup machine so I could post to my weblog. Unfortunately, I don’t have any results from the test to post.

Sorry.