Categories
Weblogging

Tip of the iceberg

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I like to write on many things, including weblogging; but too much time spent on weblogging leaves me feeling as if I could have communicated better with my silence than my words. It’s like eating celery – you use more calories to eat the celery than you get from the plant, which is nothing more than fibrous flavored water.

Last night, I, and I’m sure many others, received an email from Mena Trott with an announcement that the new Movable Type pricing plan was to be put into place during the night. And so it was. My first reaction was, well that will take some of the heat off of Dave Winer. And that led me to realize that it was Blogger’s last unexpected release that took some of the heat off of Six Apart’s newly released pricing plan that caused so much agitation, and I wonder if all these meta-people plan this out accordingly.

“Ok, Ev, it’s your turn to muck with their heads tonight.”

“Righto! I was wondering when I get to play!”

However, I don’t think the Six Apart people will get flack this time because the pricing seems to be reasonable. Instead of paying $500.00 if I had continued with my previous installation, I’d only be paying $70.00 for unlimited weblogs, and that’s fair enough. I’m happy, though, with where I am–me with my fingers deep into the code creating a new database driven error log system, and wondering what I can break next.

What I’m using fits me now, and my quiet interest in tweaking. Movable Type just isn’t my tool anymore. But I wish Six Apart well with their newest price list, and I do hope they’ve dropped the Typekey requirement for downloading or buying the software.

Speaking of Typekey, I’ve noticed few sites have required it, even if they are running MT 3.x. I really don’t think most people want to require registration. I like how my comments are set up, with moderation on older posts, and on-demand moderation for posts that have degenerated into a slugfest. Though there is risk with anonmous posting, I still get too many thoughful posts from people who prefer not to identify themselves to think about requiring registration.

Yesterday, amidst the comments left from people I’ve come to know and appreciate, and even a couple of nice comments from old friends from the now gone co-op, I had a semi-anonymous writer drop a very compelling note into The Value of Free. This person, who goes by ‘J’ wrote:

Has anybody noticed the kind of “wait and see what I say next week” attitude Dave has? It’s almost as if he’s daring people to flame him so he can make them look like arseholes when he announces whatever it is.

J raises a good point, especially on days like yesterday when the natives are restless and the smell of blood is in the air. Will we or won’t we look like ‘arseholes’ if Dave Winer comes out with either a lovely humanitarian gesture next week, or a terrible illness.

I won’t feel any such regrets, or guilt about what I’ve written. I write from what I can see and what I know and, most importantly, what I honestly believe. I don’t write to be mean, though I may come across as mean. I don’t write to kick a person while they’re down, but they may be down and I don’t know it. If I’m critical, I hope it’s of actions or technology, not people. And I can only write on what I see at the time, not what lies hidden from view.

When we reference each other, we’re responding to what people want to put online about themselves, and it is only the tip of the iceberg.

Dave Rogers writes about the bashing of Dave Winer and compares it to a previous incident when he saw ‘mob mentality’:

The public bashing Dave Winer is taking for his handling of the weblogs.com hosting issue is vastly, yes, vastly, out of proportion to the surprise and inconvenience his action has imposed on others.

This is one of the worst features of weblogs, especially the comment facilities – a kind of emergent, “smart” mob mentality that enables people, even people who were in no way affected or inconvenienced by the move, to publicly dump on someone. It echoes of “the shaming of Marc Canter.”

He was under no real obligation to offer even as much as he did. There are a lot of people who are asserting all sorts of obligations, but again, what is their authority? Could he have handled things differently, perhaps better? Maybe so, but I think there’s more than a grain of truth to the idea that whatever he did would meet with criticism. Expressing disappointment or some form of unhappiness is appropriate. Making assertions regarding Mr. Winer’s health, his technical abilities, or his character is not.

Of course, we could say that Dave Rogers is holding all of us accountable, and what gives him the right? But this game can become a spiral with no end, and too much time has been spent on this incident as is.

Perhaps we have no rights to hold Dave Winer accountable for his actions, other than to express criticism that he’d yanked the weblogs for 3000who-the-hell-knows-how-many people with no prior warning and then put up a rather indifferent, some could say a callous note. (This was before some of us wrote about the incident and he then posted much more information in a ‘personal audioblog’– including a reference to his health, and the reasons for his actions.)

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been influenced by the fact that Dave Winer has spent the weekend trying to discredit Ben Hammersley or get him fired because Ben wrote an extremely mild essay about the Atom/RSS discussions for the Guardian and it didn’t meet Winer’s approval.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have let Mr. Winer’s comments about freeloaders in the past make a difference to me; nor his many attacks on Google or Six Apart for their support of Atom. And I would have to completely disregard the times when he’s called me sick and pathetic in my own comments, and in his weblog (always pulled), time and again, because I don’t agree with him.

I would even have to disregard my belief that those who hold themselves up as one of the leaders in the community in order to use their influence to take potshots at others, can’t bitch when they’re the recipients of shots themselves.

Past history and experience, in addition to what is not written, can also make up the body of the iceberg that lies beneath the waters. All of these events just given are separate from the event in question, and though they may influence response, should they be allowed to drive it?

Dave Rogers is responding to the tip of the iceberg when he writes about our reaction to Dave Winer’s actions. Which he then continues with a second essay, writing:

Some of us have, in our minds, a set of expectations regarding what a “better” choice would be. Implicit in those expectations, is the expectation that Dave Winer has that same knowledge. Does he? If he doesn’t, would he be required to agree? If so, why? When you receive a free service from someone, are you therefore entitled to burden that individual with your expectations? Did you afford that person prior notice that you were choosing to burden them with your expectations, and that furthermore, you would hold them “accountable” to your expectations? Could you have made a better choice? Who should hold you accountable for making a better choice? Me? Do you know how your mind works? Really? Why not?

Rogers could be right, and who are we to hold Winer accountable; to attack his character in addition to his action? But then again, maybe he’s wrong and all we’re doing is following a path laid out, stone by bloody damn stone, by Dave Winer himself. This may make us fools, for being pulled into the BS–again–but I don’t know if it makes us a ‘mob’.

Frankly, I don’t think Winer has been much harmed by the writings of the last few days; I don’t think he’s unhappy about how all of this has turned out. Not unhappy at all, but that’s me talking with the view of the entire iceberg in front of me, not just the tip.

Dave Winer writes today about why he didn’t give any kind of notice or won’t respond to people offering help if they don’t do Manila, exhorting Rogers Cadenhead to hurry up and deliver a transition server, when Rogers volunteered to help. He talks about other things on his mind:

All the time I spend addressing the needs of random people outside the community, is time I’m not spending helping people in the community. So I’m choosing not to spend time on these offers, when I get offers from people who understand what a Manila site is, I’ll pursue that. I’m still waiting for Rogers to get a very simple transition server up and running. Hurry up guys.

I remind people I’m just a person, and I have a complicated life already. Regardless what the press says, it’s still true. I had two doctor’s appts yesterday and one today. I may need surgery. This isn’t a life-threatening illness, but it’s not a fun thing either. Moving on June 30. So there are other things on my mind, believe it or not.

He also writes in response to our criticism, Shame on you, I say. Well, so does Dave Rogers.

Shame on us…but not for the reasons either Rogers or Winer give. Or should I say, shame on me.

If Dave is seriously ill, he’ll have my best wishes for a speedy recovery. If he’s broke, he’ll have my empathy…and a recommendation not to stay in 150.00 a night hotel rooms. If he dies I’ll regret the loss of a unique individual and the sadness others will experience–but I won’t regret what I write about his actions. Ever.

Unless the writing just feeds the beast.

This story is so one minute ago and I’ve spent enough time on it, to no great benefit of anyone, least of all myself. It really is time for me to move on. To something else. Anything else.

Categories
RDF Semantics Weblogging

Common interchange format

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

After sleeping too late this morning and then waking with a headache–a response to long hours this weekend, culminating with finding out late yesterday the work was for naught and has to be re-done–I didn’t have enough time or energy to go for a hike somewhere, so I started playing around with technology.

I know this doesn’t make sense: why would a person spend all weekend with code and then spend time coding during off-hours? It’s really a variation of setting your alarm for Saturday morning just so you can turn it off when you don’t have to get up on your day off.

What? You don’t do this?

Anyway, I’ve been playing around in the WordPress code because my outgoing trackbacks and pingbacks have stopped working. I’ve also been playing around with some new PHP toys that I’ll cover in an upcoming new LAMP essay. However, most of the day has been spent thinking about interoperability.

The biggest challenge to industries in the past has been to establish a data model for the industry that all the participants could agree on. Once agreed on, then the groups could generate a data format that allows companies to electronically transmit data back and forth without having to go through a lot of transforms.

Some people think XML has eliminated the data transform problem, but XML is nothing more than a structured syntax – there is no ‘data’ within the XML model. It’s the same as having an alphabet, but no common agreed on language. I can scribble letters and you can scribble letters but if we don’t agree on what those letters mean, all we’re doing is creating pretty pictures.

Even RDF isn’t data. It’s a step up from XML in that it provides a structure for how objects relate to each other, but you still have to define the ‘objects’.

Anyway, I was thinking of data interoperability today because of the recent closing of weblogs.com, not to mention other recent movements between Movable Type and WordPress, Movable Type and Textpattern, and so on. I was reminded that one of the original purposes behind the Atom project was to define a common interchange format between tools, so that people could easily move from one to another. With this, people wouldn’t be facing some of the difficulties the weblogs.com folks are now facing, trying to get their Manila based exports into a format usable by other weblogging tools – something I’ve heard is not trivial.

However, the Atom folks went the syndication and API route and put an interchange format on the back burner. Too bad, really, because something like that would be rather handy now.

As coincidence would have it, one of the architects of Atom, Sam Ruby, volunteered to help write a data transform for those who are currently impacted by the weblogs.com shut-down. He wrote:

However, this is not a time for religious debate or partisanship. It is a time for compassion and an opportunity to learn and improve. Enough so that I am willing to step forward and offer to help with writing of conversion and migration tools. Assuming that the input looks anything like this format, I am willing to write conversion tools to either a comparable format or to a blosxom’s directory layout.

As Sam mentions, escape sequences and odd characters will now take on special interest, because these usually cause problems when either exporting or importing data. As he also mentions, getting one’s own domain is also a good think to think about now, too.

It’s great that individuals are stepping up to help out during this ‘crises’, but the better environment in the long run is to agree to a common interchange format and have all tools support it. Then people could export their weblogs weekly, or even daily if they’re paranoid enough (and no one could blame people for being paranoid now); if something like this were to happen again, the impact would be minor at best.

We have to stop putting those who aren’t technical into the position of being dependent on the technically proficient to come riding in to save the day every time a new ‘business decision’ is made. I like riding white horses as much as the next person, but it’s hard to walk about when people are kissing the tops of your boots.

However, technology is easy, business agreements are hard–in this environment, business agreements are damn near impossible. So until utopia hits, I also volunteer my help for those displaced from weblogs.com who want to move to WordPress or Textpattern. You’ll have to find your own server space, but I can help you get the tool installed and get your data ported to this environment.

Categories
Weblogging

The value of free

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

There is much to be learned about the incident of Dave Winer shutting down the free weblogs on weblogs.com this weekend; much beyond the obvious of always having a backdoor for your weblog. The real heart of the matter has to do with free, and the value we place on things that are ‘free’.

It wasn’t long before folks started rolling out the fact that people were hosted for free, and therefore haven’t a right to complain once the ‘free’ ride was over.

Doc Searls writes:

Thousands of us got a free ride from Dave, and Userland, over the past five years. What we got was far more than we didn’t pay for. For many of us (certainly for me), the benefits have been incalculable.

Let’s keep that in mind as those of us involved try to make this transition over the next few weeks

Archipelago responds with:

How about the folks bellyachin’ that Docs’ site is still running. Sheesh. I understand how annoyed folks are locked away from their writing and cats… but I also know that a lot of folks were happy to not pay, and not worry, and feel free to complain now that gravy train is over. If you’ve ever hosted sites and had folks who are getting free service call to yell at you at some ungodly hour on weekend that the site is down (regardless of the actual condition of the site) then you can feel some of the pain on the other side. And if you never have, and just annoyed that you can’t get to your stuff, where was you’re backup? Where’s your responsibility?

Om Malik writes about the ease in which to export from Movable Type or Blogger compared to other tools, and problems he had this weekend:

In comparison, switching from Manilla, or Word Press is painful and hard for those who are not blogsavants. (You can export the database or import using a RSS feed, but that is tough for people who just want to write.) I tried to move hosts this weekend and man it was a problem. Had Matt not helped me out, I would have never been able to do it. I guess, that is the penalty of free.

Anyway, this rant has become too long – I am going to say this, sometimes free is not good, and can be a bit of a pain. Weblogs.com users are finding out.

The same Matt offered to help with redirection , which is generous, and ‘free’. But as I wrote in David Weinberger’s comments, if the resources to run redirection in Matt’s space are trivial, wouldn’t they also be trivial in weblogs.com?

Frank Paynter has been collecting links and had an interesting take on the sudden revelation that this was all about Dave’s health:

The part about “Dave can’t program because it’s a health risk” troubles me… does this mean Dave can’t think because it’s a health risk? Or Dave can’t use the keyboard because his fingers might fall off? What is it about Dave’s style of coding that’s unhealthy I wonder?

Nothing to do with ‘free’, but I was curious about this myself. Personally I find coding to be unhealthy for me because I can’t hike and code at the same time, and therefore gain weight because I’m sitting on my butt and someday I’m going to fall over dead because I provide helpful, and free, tips for all of you…and it will be all your fault. You free weblogging scum, you.

Now, where was I?

Jeneane, well, now that lady is on a mission, providing good commentary, pointers to new weblogs.com webloggers homes, and demonstrating that she’s the fastest damn typist by immediately transcribing Winer’s audioblog to text.

(I’ve been chatting with Jeneane in emails about the demographics of those rallying around in support of Dave Winer, and those criticizing him. Interesting patterns developing – where’s the social software folks?)

Ralph has my favorite quote from this whole mess:

So now 3000+ webloggers have been summarily evicted with no notice. Dave has perfectly reasonable excuses for his actions. But he has no excuse for the lack of action that led to this. And UserLand really screwed up as a company by surreptitiously abandoning a huge user base to the fortunes of one person with a bum ticker. I guess when you play with a cactus, you’re bound to get pricked.

I guess when you play with a cactus, you’re bound to get pricked.

Most of these discussions are strongly reminiscent of the same discussions when Movable Type went from free software to having a fairly hefty licensing fee – and without warning. There were those who were unhappy, and were vocal about it. And then there were those pointing fingers at the rest of us and calling us cheap bastards.

What we’re finding in weblogging is there is no such thing as free forever. The medium has grown up; it no longer has the feeling of being something self-contained and measured and people who were doing ‘free’ earlier are bailing from doing ‘free’ forever.

There’s nothing wrong with not doing the free thing. However, there’s also nothing wrong with the people who accepted the free thing, freely given. No one begged to be allowed to use Movable Type, it was provided for download; no one whined to be allowed to weblog on weblogs.com–they were invited to participate. Each person who accepted these free things also gave something back in return: whether it was bodies when webloggers were few, or grateful acknowledgement when webloggers were many. Though those who have benefited from these free services in the past should be grateful, they don’t deserve to be called ‘cheap’ or cut loose without warning. Free does not equate to no value.

I wonder how far this loss of weblogging ‘free’ will go? To weblog reading? We don’t charge people to read our weblogs, but does that make our readers cheap, and valueless? I don’t believe so, though I haven’t always acted so.

I believe we should value those who have so many weblogs to choose from now, but still take the time to read what we write. It’s true that we should write for ourselves, but that doesn’t make the value of what our readers contribute to this whole experience any less. I hope that none of us–no matter how erudite or eloquent, no matter how popular or successful–forget the value of our readers, as this medium continues to grow in respectability if not size.

All the more so because being able to read weblogs seems to be the last ‘free’ in weblogging.

Categories
Technology Weblogging

WordPress and bug databases and communication

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

The folks behind WordPress have made a step in the right direction by first of all, not deprecating old functions without going through a formal deprecation process. This is to ensure that people have time for a release or two to modify a now deprecated function or global variable before it is pulled from the application.

They’ve also just started a bug database, and this could be good – if they understand that a bug system is a two-way communication process. It’s not always about code.

entered a bug in the database yesterday about the fact that if you turn off magic quotes in your .htaccess file, but you try and edit a comment and save it, it causes the SQL to crash. The reason for this is that the text of the comment isn’t ‘escaped’ – slashes put in front of quotes contained in the text to tell the database to treat these are characters, not the end of the database string.

Well, the response was to point to a change record in CVS in the newest releases of the code an d say, ‘Does this fix it?’

Well, how the hell do I know? I’m using 1.2. What if I can’t read code? Wouldn’t an English description acknowledging my problem and the solution have been better? With a little note about when it will be released? Such as, “This fix will be released in the 1.2.1 bug fix release”.

Bluntly, the WordPress development crew is not happy with me because I’ve been pushing them pretty hard for the last month. What I’ve been saying is that software is only 50% code – the rest is documentation and infrastructure, quality testing, and communication. Particularly communication.

Oh, you don’t need these things if your code is used by hackers or a small group of friends. But if you want your application to be used by strangers who don’t code – you can’t force them into learning code to communicate, or having to beg pretty please in order not to piss off the development people.

I’ve gotten a lot of flack for my criticisms of past weblogging tools. I stand by these criticisms, every single one of them. I’m not, now, going to play ‘touch not the programmer’ just because the source code I’m now using is open source. If anything, I want the open source solution to work, so will be harder, not easier, on the team behind the product. Is this unfair? What’s fair? Not being critical because this just isn’t done in weblogging?

Unfortunately, the team doesn’t see that I’m attempting to help them succeed over time–by realizing that an application is more than just code. My own frustrations aren’t helping, and have led me to become increasingly confrontational. My bad.

What I’ve been trying to say is that a successful application is demonstrated by the trust of those who use your product, and based on understanding what the users are saying and making an attempt to communicate in their language. It’s slowing down development if it means that the end product is more stable or secure. It’s releasing bug fixes, and developing a plan for future development and communicating it. Most of all, it’s realizing that people can’t be grateful forever. Eventually, the product will have to stand on its own, not on gratitude.

(Six Apart is learning that one rather painfully now.)

In short: a successful application is only 50% code.

But I’m also not going to trade my ‘kicking the baby squirrels’ tag for one of ‘kicking the open source baby bunnies’, either. If I’m not helping and all I’m doing is making people pissed, then time to stop what I’m doing.

Disappointing, though.

update

I’m glad I posted this and had conversations offline and on. It helped me refine, at least for myself, why I’m pushing at the WordPress group so much.

Much of it goes back to the concept of the Coders Only Club, and having to put code down at the door in order to ‘purchase’ the right to be heard. I want this open source application to belong , as much or more, to the non-geeks as it does to the geeks. I think we could have a lot of fun together.

However, the project is young, the developers are trying, and they are most likely getting tired of ducking from me, and my beating about their heads with my ‘help’.

update
General agreement is that I was too harsh on the WordPress developers. Guilty as charged. It’s their project – up to them how they manage it.

As for myself, I’m just going to maintain my own code at this point, and doing my own enhancements.

Sigh of relief for the WordPress team and their so-loyal fans. One less pain in the butt to worry about.

Categories
Places Weather Weblogging

Fried catfish sandwich

The weather report last Friday said that the Mississippi River was above the high-water mark and would most likely reach flood stage by Sunday or Monday. Since I was taking a long drive on Saturday anyway, I thought I would head north to check out the Sip in a state park close to the state border.

I stopped at a Visitor Center outside Hannibal, Missouri on the way to use its restroom and also pick up state and local maps. The nice older lady providing help for visitors mentioned that Hannibal was having a street fair this weekend; if I went, make sure to pick up a fried catfish sandwich.

Well, I’d not had a fried catfish sandwich before, and the thought of being among happy fair goers had more appeal to me then walking yet another isolated trail. Besides, can’t get much closer to the Mississippi than Hannibal.

The weather was perfect for the fair Saturday: warm and humid, but with clouds and a cool breeze. The fair covered three blocks along main street, and was just busy enough to be interesting, but not so busy to be irritating. Parking wasn’t a problem, and I parked close to the riverfront, where I picked up the photo of the Martin birdhouse I showed in an earlier post.

Of course, if you’re into American literature, you probably recognize Hannibal, Missouri as the birth place for Mark Twain. The town is proud of its most famous native son, and you can’t swing a dead catfish without hitting something related to Twain or his books. One of the more popular attractions is an hour long steamboat ride along Big Muddy, and since I had not had a chance to go out on any of the Missouri rivers, I decided to take the 4:00 ride.

The boat ride wasn’t for a few hours–just long enough away for me to visit the fair, and maybe the Twain Lighthouse. I enjoyed the various crafts, particularly hangings made of out recycled silver-plated dining utensils. However, I spent most of my time in front of the music store, listening to a jazz pianist who was playing modern ragtime. The player was a man wearing a green t-shirt and black jeans, sitting at an old upright piano, and his music was amplified by a mike used for singers in the group following, but the music was as pure and as sweet as the syrup used to make the sugared popcorn being sold by one of the many church groups that had stands.

The player’s songs were note perfect except for the last one he played. Halfway through, he hit wrongs notes and you could hear a faint ’shit’ come over the mike. He started again, and hit the same wrong notes, fingers tripping over each other until he came to a confused halt. Turning to the audience, he said he’d only learned the music for the piece he was playing in the last week. As he turned back to the piano for another go, some people left, made uncomfortable by his mistakes, probably wondering why he didn’t play something he knew flawlessly, rather than a piece that left him so vulnerable.

I had no intentions of leaving now, not after all his effort, and putting himself on the line as he did; but I have to admit I was anxious as he approached the problem notes. There was a hesitation, and a little faltering, but then I knew he’d found his groove, and the mistarts were worth the effort. No wonder that piece was so tough to play–it was some of the most intricate and hauntingly beautiful modern rag I’d heard.

Afterwards, we applauded like mad, happy that he decided to include a song that he hadn’t polished and practiced for months on end; I don’t think the music he played will ever be as fresh, and special, as it was during Saturday’s playing. And I imagine no other applause will sound as good to the pianist.

After that emotionally stressful, but rewarding, moment, I felt the need for sustenance and made my way to the food court: a couple of stalls set up in a side street, far enough away to keep the smoke of the grills from blowing into the rest of the fair. I was given a choice between pork steak sandwich, sausage and hotdogs on rolls, chicken kabobs, of all things, and the fried catfish sandwich.

I circled a couple of times, just to make sure I wasn’t missing anything, and when I ordered the guy joked that wouldn’t it be nice to stand at the front and ask for a sample platter with a bit of everything? When he returned with the sandwich, I replied that I had to choose the catfish, the lady at the visitor center personally recommended them.

“Short lady? Older? Yeah, that’d be Susan. She’s about as friendly as they come”

I agreed and then went around to the side to get the sauce for the sandwhich. As I was putting it on, a lady from the sausage place asked the guys with the catfish if they wanted to trade sandwiches. Sure they called out. I imagine one gets tired of only fish, or only sausage. Me I bit into that sandwich and it was about the best thing I had ever had in my life. Fine, crunchy cornmeal crust with a hint of pepper and salt surrounded delicate, moist white fish, all set off by a tangy sauce.

I continued to walk to the hill containing the Twain Lighthouse, looking at the stalls and listening to a barrage of music including native American and Andean pipes, both of which sat a little odd among the blue jean overall clad farmers and towns people. But hey, whatever rings your chimes.

I don’t know what the Hill is called that holds Twain’s Lighthouse, but the damn thing is steep. Halfway up I was gulping for air, and standing next to the hillside to catch breezes off the River. Helpful people on the way down warned me I was only half way, probably thinking the lady with the red face is going to expire right then and there.

The Lighthouse isn’t really a lighthouse. It’s just a little structure created to honor Mark Twain. When I got to the top, and saw that it wasn’t really a lighthouse–feeling a bit like the kid attending a carnival side circus and finding out at the mermaid is just a half naked lady in a swim suit–I thought about just quitting then and there instead of taking the last flight of very steep steps. Then I thought about writing about this experience, and how folks reading would want to hear about how I made it all the way to the top, so I continued. All the while, though, I was muttering about this ‘damn monkey on my back’ that wouldn’t let me quit when I was tired and didn’t want to continue.

Finally I made it to the top and hastened over to the sidewall, grasping it to keep on my wobbly legs, pretending to look at the River, but really trying to catch my breath and cool my face. A family was there, with an older man chatting with them. I thought they were together but when the family used the occasion of my appearance to flee, the man came over to me and started talking to me. Since I didn’t catch his name for the sake of this tale, I’ll call him the Guide for the rest of this writing.

The Guide told me he’d been retired since the age of 49, and spends his days now checking the weather and climbing the hill and talking to people. He talked about the buildings around town, and the flood of ‘93, and how Hannibal got its floodwall just in time. He pointed out the Wabash Bridge, the oldest structure spanning the River, and the spot where the bridge that used to connect Illinois and Missouri was before they had to tear it down because it was getting old.

He was born in 1939, and wore a faded red and gray hardware store cap, thin, worn white t-shirt, and baggy blue jeans – the kind farmers wear, not kids in LA neighborhoods. His eyes were a watery blue, and his teeth were yellowed and the gums red, which most likely meant he smoked or chewed tobacco or both. He had a gut and a look about his face, which seemed to say he wouldn’t be amiss to a beer or two. I realized he was probably about 69 and he didn’t look bad for his age. He didn’t look good, but he didn’t look bad.

He told a great story, mixing historical facts with what he’d said at the time, or what his brother said, like the time there was an accident on that old bridge and the traffic crawled along for two hours. We don’t really know what traffic congestion is, he said, until we get stuck on a two lane road crossing a bridge over a big river and there weren’t no other ways to get across. But did they cover this on the news? Warn people not to take the road? No siree, all the news would cover is St. Louis. Journalists, he said with affectionate disgust – don’t have a bit of common sense among them.

The Guide reminded me what Dave Rogers’ said about story-telling, in that it …imposes a structure on a narrative, given that stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The Guide said he knew the flood of ‘93 was going to happen, even if the weather people predicted a drought, because he watched what the animals did and you could see what would happen to weather more from them than any instrument. He was there when the levy broke, and he watched, from his hill, the waters flow and stretch until they filled the valley to the distant mountain ranges. He talked about journalists coming from all over in the weeks following, but seemed especially intrigued about meeting the journalists from Germany and Japan–as if there being here represented a crossing bigger than just an ocean and a bit of land. However, over time, the flood waters receded and this was the end to both the flood and the story. I think the Guide was secretly a little disappointed, because the only people left to tell his story to at this point were townspeople who had lived it, or heard it, too many times in the past.

And people like me, of course, who made it to the top of the hill, and who didn’t mind sitting for a time and hearing stories.

I stayed chatting until thinking that it might be close to the time for the boat to leave–I wasn’t wearing a watch–and then headed back down the hill and through town. I checked with someone along the way, and found that I had a few minutes to spare, and stopped to listen to the group of people who had replaced the piano player. They were the most motley assortment of musicians, but the music they played was good, and it seemed like they were having a fine time. The crowd liked it.

Every body was in a real good mood.

At the boat, when I boarded I found an area with five seats and sat way in the front of the pilot’s cabin. A family of three, Mom, Dad, and grown daughter, were looking for seats and I pointed out those around me were free. They sat there for a time, speaking Russian, until they spotted some people on the main deck. They trooped down with exclamations of delight at meeting up with this other family, with mutual hugging all around. I could hear the daughter saying something about how they thought they might run into each other in town, but not on the same boat taking the same tour. More back clapping and shouts of amazement, leaving all those around wondering at the circumstances of this chance meeting. Reminds me of picking up a book in an airport book store, reading enough to get intrigued, and then having to put it down because they call your plane out. By the time you get home, you can’t remember the name of the book, so you never know what the beginning and end are to the story.

Anyway, back to the boat. When it was about five minutes after the time to leave, the pilot came on to the loud speaker and said they were leaving directly, but also warning those of us sitting in the front to be prepared to cover our ears when the horns blew. I was glad for the warning, because those horns were loud enough to wake the dead.

The trip wasn’t from anywhere, to anywhere. It was a jaunt on the Mississippi, with the pilot telling stories most of them punnish, and therefore bad and appropriate. I finally had a chance to go out on the river and I was content, and even a bit surprised because there was distinctive ocean smell to the water. As I was watching the waters go past, listening to the drone of the captain tell some story about a young indian woman jumping from the local lover’s leap, I felt a bit guilty for my earlier grumpy thoughts about readers being a monkey on a writer’s back; after all, if I hadn’t pushed myself to go the last few steps to the lighthouse, I wouldn’t have met my own tour guide, and he was worth the trip himself, because you don’t get a better view of life on the Mississippi except for people who have lived there, year in and out.

Besides: readers don’t ask to be readers, anymore than those folks listening to that pianist play ask to be an audience.

We could see that the waters were very high, almost over the railway tracks in places. All the floodgates had been shut at the Hannibal floodwall except for the one leading to the boat. I wondered if the people in the area didn’t get tired of the potential risk of flood, but these people have learned to live with the River, even when the water was in a surly mood. Those who couldn’t handle it, left. Those who remained demonstrated a graceful acceptance of events outside their control, with a philosophical humor that would shame the most sophisticated New Yorker.

When the boat docked, it was late and I headed home. The road was relatively clear of traffic and though storm clouds threatened, I didn’t get any rain.

On the way back I thought that the Guide’s sureness about the coming flood in ‘93, and was, again, reminded of Dave Rogers’ narrative writings, which have been on my mind of late. I used to think that ‘writing our own narrative’ had to do with self-deception, and I wondered if the Guide’s sureness about the coming flood was at least due as much to hindsight, as it was keen weather acumen, and animal observation.

But it was something new that Dave wrote that gave me a better understanding of what I think he means by creating a narrative:

What I’m trying to do is to discern how much of what we do (narrative) is thoughtless “behavior” that addresses immediate issues of “feeling” and which is often counter-productive (i.e. leads only to more bad feelings which require more narrative to assuage, and thus repeating the cycle).

I think the only power we have is the power to choose. I think when we focus on the difference between the way things are, and the way we’d like them to be (our narratives) – in essence, when we focus on our suffering – in making our choices, we make the kinds of choices that will only lead to further suffering. In effect, we are steering by the wake. All narrative constructions are products of our past, even though they purport to be visions of our future. Adhering to narrative becomes a focus on the past at the expense of a present which simply is the way it is, and of a future which will be what it will be and almost certainly will not be what we wish it to be in our narratives.

I found the following sentence from the quote to be especially compelling: I think when we focus on the difference between the way things are, and the way we’d like them to be (our narratives) – in essence, when we focus on our suffering – in making our choices, we make the kinds of choices that will only lead to further suffering I have been tired of late, and it shows both in writing and photography. Neither seems to give me as much joy as they once did, and I’m not sure why. Perhaps I am burned by the constant need to produce compelling material; that ‘monkey on my back’ feeling I discussed earlier.

By compelling material, I’m not talking about my writing about bookbinding, or Emily Dickinson. I’m talking about when I write critically about MT or WordPress or Atom (or RSS) efforts, or politics, or even weblogging and therefore draw the acrimony of those who might previously have welcomed me as one of their own. The more I write, the more isolated I feel. Am I then reacting to these feelings of isolation, creating a new role for myself as Defender of Truth, and Protector of Users?

Yes I admit my own faults, but I don’t stop with self-flagellation–I also insist others also practice this same level of self-honesty, and if they don’t, I will drag them, kicking and screaming into the light and point a trembling finger of rightousness at them.

Maybe that’s why I’m so tired lately; so frustrated, and yes, even disappointed: I’m trying to create a world that can’t possibly happen–because only we can judge our own honesty– rather than just accept what is. Or as Dave wrote in another of his narrative posts, questioning David Weinberger’s phrase, writing ourselves into existence:

I think all the attention we pay to revising and editing, and paying attention to the past and trying to navigate to a “happy ending” is what separates us from our existence. The happy ending is now. It just never ends. Well, maybe it will end tomorrow. But tomorrow takes care of itself, if you let it. If you don’t try to make tomorrow conform to whatever your conception is of what tomorrow should be. I think.

Anyway. That’s probably enough about that. People can do whatever they damn well please, and if they want to spend their lives “writing themselves into existence,” well, who the hell am I to tell them they shouldn’t? Nobody at all.

Yeah. Who the hell am I to tell people what they should or shouldn’t do?

I thought all this while driving back, after a lovely day, filled with a delightful fried catfish sandwich and a fruit slushy on the boat, ragtime tunes dancing through my head. The next day when I wrote a critical weblog essay about WordPress, I ended up pulling it, and not just because of interactions via email or support forum but because I found myself in that same position of being dissatisfied in my writing, and this time I was determined not to continue falling into that same old routine.

When I read Sam Ruby’s plea for detente (sorry about improper character usage – It doesn’t publish cleanly), my first reaction was to write, Well, I’ll believe that when I see…, urp, there I go again. Or something along the lines of, Oh no! Here we go with another round of boys playing well, before boys play badly–but I didn’t. I stopped myself, and posted best wishes for the effort and a nice photo for Sam.

But then, as I was writing and pulling and writing some more, a new storm approached from the West and seeing it, I grabbed my camera to go down stairs and get more cloud pictures. Pretty, neat looking cloud pictures. As expected, the tornado alarm rang out, but what wasn’t expected was the wind that hit, and how fast it hit: from a gentle breeze to winds the force of a wall, knocking me back into the house, tearing the chimes off their hook and throwing them around in addition to the branches from the trees.

For some reason I can’t fathom, I stayed on the deck trying to grab photos of the debris flying through the air, but couldn’t because the wind was so strong, and it was so hard to control the camera. But I could hear the transformers blowing, and saw the smoke of the one nearest, and heard what sounded like roofs lifting, and then the power went off and my roommate came out on to the porch to suggest we shut the door.

Ten minutes later, it was all over, except for the fire and police sirens.

We walked about later that day and looked at the damage. We met a lot of our neighbors (one young lady going, “It’s amazing how a downed tree and no power brings a neighborhood together”), stopping along the way to watch the smoking, sparking transformer. One of the baby bunnies was out, looking as cute as can be and I wished I still had battery life to take a photo of it. I knew I wouldn’t be able to find it later, and thought it would be a nice addition to the photos of impressive looking clouds.

But as we walked back home, under the tree by our townhome, we found a branch with a nest attached to it on the ground. Scattered throughout the grass were three baby birds that had been killed when the wind destroyed their home.

Yesterday morning I went out to take a photo of them, but a odd thought came into my head when I took it: Nobody posts pictures of dead baby birds. Dead people, yes; but not dead baby birds.

Today I read a post that Seb Paquet wrote about Invisible Adjunct and the fact that she’s taking down her web pages. I wrote before about how much I admire the grace with which she handled her disappointment, and the elegance with which she managed her leave taking.

Unfortunately, the community seems to feel they own a piece of Invisible Adjunct because not long after she shut down her weblog, an Invisible Adjunct Topic Exchange was created. Now, Invisible Adjunct is taking down her pages and the community is debating on who exactly “owns” her weblog, because of the comments in the pages.

People have grabbed copies of her pages and put them into other locations; others have suggested she sell them on CD; and still others suggested she could turn her IA success into job opportunities. One person wrote:

This issue really bothers me. From a legal point of view IA is entitled to do whatever she wants with the site, but I think the right thing to do is to leave a copy online. I believe the comments form the bulk of the site overall (correct me if I’m wrong), and that much of the value comes from the conversations that took place under IA’s supervision. In some sense she’s not the “author” of the site, but rather the caretaker of an online community. She played the fundamental role of organizing the site and leading the discussion, and is clearly in charge of the web site. However, it would be terrible to see all these conversations and discussions erased forever, without even any explanation of why.

This issue really bothers me: that some of IA’s readers feel that she has a moral, possibly even legal obligation to maintain her pages because she really wasn’t the author–she was only the caretaker, and most of the real writing happened in the comments.

People discount IA’s participation too quickly, and too easily. Now, whether she leaves the pages or takes them down, what her readers have basically told her is that her contribution is not as important as their own. I wrote in comments at many-to-many:

One of the most graceful acts I’ve seen in weblogging is when IA quit. I loved the fact that she just left, she didn’t try to profit from her popularity online, and she left with such elegance and style. I didn’t care for the fact that a separate discussion forum was set up in her name, to carry on the same conversation. A better approach would have been to set it up under the topics involved, which seems to be graduate school, horrors or whatever.

Now, I see this clamor for keeping the pages up regardless of her option and her choice, because people think they’ve written such beauty in her comments that it must be preserved.

The beauty of IA’s act was as much in the ephemeral nature of the existence of her pages as anything else. People mirroring the pages, downloading the archives, setting up forums — not letting her go! Those crying for their lost comments have taken a graceful act and made it into a circus.

I thought it was the critical nature of my writing that formed my unhappy narrative, but I can see now I was wrong; I see the roots of my own discontent whirling about in the storm currently raging about Invisible Adjunct.