Two poems

She rises there
dark cold slow
from barren snow
yet like you
her time passes eternally
through moon and light
to this so bright

---

What season begins here
as night ends
for I am love
after all

A video summary of Web 2.0

An excellent Web 2.0 video from Digital Ethnography workgroup at the Kansas State University, Department of Cultural Anthropology. Visit their page here. The best line is the one about every connection we make via a weblink is teaching the machine.

From Feb 2007.

Water the Driveway

Suburbia… land of waste and want. Barren, soulless and lifeless, except for lawns which are high on Tru-Green. What better thing to do on a hot afternoon than water the driveway? And maybe, just maybe, get some on the drug-crazed lawn.

That’s what you’ll see walking around a suburban neighborhood. That’s what you’ll wonder about when you see the water running down the drains, hour after hour, house after house.

That’s what you’ll see when it’s raining out, and the sprinklers are on. You’ve got to see it to appreciate it.

Actually there are two different types of lawn watering. The one that you hook up to a hose and move to the spot that you want to water seem to waste the most. Especially when trying to water an irregularly shaped area. The other one is built into the lawn and go on rain or shine at a set time of day. When did those things become so popular? When I was growing up, you’d never see them. But then again, you wouldn’t see 6000 sq ft houses either. Now, they are everywhere.

You know, all a weed is, is a plant growing somewhere where you don’t want it to grow. So these mono-culture lawns that we see all around us (which are really weeds if they are growing in your garden), are a blight to that natural world. The amount of time, chemicals, fossil fuels, water and space they waste are laughable.

Annual rite of spring

It happens every year. The annual burn out or burn off or ultimate stupidity. Whatever you call it, the practice is mind boggling. It is the annual rite of, you guessed it, running your snow blower until all the leftover gas is used up.

What a truly bizarre site it is to see all those snow blowers just sitting there in people’s driveways, engines running, just sitting there. It seems some run for an hour or more.

As I went for a walk on beautiful April Earth Day, I saw at least a half dozen of these “occurrences” around our neighborhood. I don’t even have to mention the irony of it.

What do people think? I mean, gasoline isn’t exactly cheap, and global warming isn’t actually a well kept secret. Why not siphon? Or use a large suction turkey baster type thing. Or just let it stay there, maybe put in some dry-gas. I’ve never had a problem with our lawn mower sitting over the winter with gasoline from the previous summer in it. It always starts after a few pulls of the cord.

BTW, I’m considering getting a reel mower. My old lawnmower, that I bought used for $40 about 8 years ago, is on its way out. My lawn is not so big that a good reel mower couldn’t handle it.

In DC – update

All flights cancelled due to blizzard in northeast. So I’m here in DC for an extra day. Oh well,

In DC

So I walked around before dark fell and saw the Washington Monument (actually went to the top… it’s free!), the Lincoln Memorial (it’s in Linkin Park), the Vietnam Memorial (won’t we ever learn?), the Korean Memorial, and a bunch of other things. I swear there was a police motorcade every 10 minutes. When I first saw one, I thought it was the president, but then the kept happening, and I know Bush doesn’t get out that much.
Everyone here is more important than everyone else. You can just smell the beauracracy!
There are more homeless people, beggars and old handicapped people here than anywhere I’ve been to. So many people asking for money. I wonder if they give receipts?
Anyway, the restaurant that I went to had a fight right outside its doors. People were yelling and screaming, then the police came, then the paramedics. Meanwhile, I’m inside thinking “should I get the crab cakes or the salmon.” Apparently Washington is known for it’s less than stellar crime record. They cleaned up the blood while I finished off my salmon.
I flew in the BWI because it was cheaper, then took a 35 minute shuttle ride with a crazed Jamaican driver through thick traffic. I couldn’t look.
My hotel room has a view of a roof, a large metal thing and a wall. And there’s some garbage on the roof to help it look the part. Who said I was here to look out my window? Not me!
So that’s my report for now. I can’t wait for all the sleet and ice to start so I can fly in a plane with 3 inches of ice on the wings! What a blast! Then, when I get to home in the midst of the blizzard, I can slide right down the runway into a house or something.
Oh the joy of it all.

The first 100 hours

So the Democrats stuck to their “First 100 hours” pledge.

According to the AP, they “passed their six-bill, 100-hour agenda with 13 hours to spare.”

So what was in this 100 hour flurry of bills and votes? Well one of the things was an amendment to the “energy bill, which would reimpose $15 billion in fees, royalties and taxes on the oil industry.” Come on, would the republicanshave even let an idea like that be spoken? No.

But those silly Republicans. You’ve gotta love ‘em. (Or not). They “complained the bills were hammered through after Democrats reneged on a campaign promise to let the opposition offer amendments and help shape legislation.” Funny, sounds familiar, but in revers. Twelve years we dealt with their tactics and bad judgement. Too bad for them.Unfortunately, the bills they passed face an uncertain future in the Senate (with it’s very narrow Democratice majority) and worst, b the President’s veto. He’s truly the worst thing that’s ever happened to this country.

Here are the bills passed by the House as part of the 100-hour agenda (from AP):

A “conservation fee” on oil and gas taken from deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico; scrap nearly $6 billion worth of oil industry tax breaks enacted by Congress in recent years; and seek to recoup royalties lost to the government because of an Interior Department error in leases issued in the late 1990s. Passed Thursday.

Lower interest rates on federally subsidized student loans from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent in stages over five years at a cost to taxpayers of $6 billion. About 5.5 million students get the loans each year. Passed Wednesday.

Make the government bargain directly with drug companies with the aim of reducing prices of prescriptions for Medicare beneficiaries. Passed Jan. 12.

Expand government-financed embryonic stem cell research. Passed Jan. 11.

Raise the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour over 26 months. Passed Jan. 10.

Bolster terrorism-fighting efforts with more cargo inspections. Passed Jan. 9.

Democrats also won approval of internal House rule changes dealing with ethics, lobbying and budgeting. They were passed on Jan. 4-5, the first two days of the new Congress.

It’s all good people. Maybe we can start to breathe again. I actually didn’t think it would be this good so soon. There is Higher Being.

Oh what a day!

Two great things…

First, the election is over. No more attack ads and signs everywhere for another 2 whole years!

Second, the dems are clearing the stale, smoggy, sickening air of the right wing monopoly on power. Already good things are happening. Rumsfeld is out, Bush is on the run. Oh joy. Here is what MSNBC said:

A pledge from Pelosi
Setting a standard her party will be judged on in elections two years from now, speaker-in-waiting Nancy Pelosi promised: “Democrats intend to lead the most honest, the most open and the most ethical Congress in history.”

The California Democrat was on the cusp of making history herself, as the first woman speaker. President Bush called her Wednesday morning to congratulate her.

Pelosi pledged bipartisanship in a midday news conference.

“It’s not about the Democrats in Congress forcing the president’s hand,” she said. “The American people have spoken.”

Pelosi has already outlined a “First Hundred Hours” agenda.

The plan includes promises to reform lobbying, enact the recommendations of the bipartisan 9/11 commission, raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, cut the interest rate on student loans in half, streamline Medicare’s prescription drug program and expand federal funding for stem cell research.

She said she wants to work with Bush on a “new direction” on Iraq.

Yahoo should buy Zoho

Why not? What’s the wait? This would give Yahoo! a huge and successful entrance into online office suites. Zoho is very cool, and probably the best Web2.0 office suite out there, far surpassing Google’s offering, and much better done than ThinkFree (which needs some Java applet that never runson my PC).

But of course, there is the small matter of Zoho being owned by AdventNet, so Yahoo! would have to buy it out from them, which isn’t as easy as buying a whole company outright. Or maybe they could buy AdventNet. Not sure how much all that costs, or how much money Yahoo! has. And I don’t know if Yahoo! knows which way they are going anyway.
And then there is the issue of Yahoo! buying Zoho, then puting ads everywhere on the page like they did with Oddpost email. That, I can do without. But the promise of integrating my Yahoo! mail and calendar into an entire online office suite is still too nice to ignore.

So go ahead Yahoo!. Open the wallet and buy yourself some Zoho. It’s worth it.

I’m sick of the election.

Enough.

The lies flow like Niagara Falls from both sides, but mostly the GOP. Our democracy is (now) built upon choosing people with the most convincing lies. It will all be over (the 2006 election, not the lies) next week. Thank Goddess.

Speaking of lies, or liars, it’s always interesting to see people fall from their self declared heights. Mark Foley, Tom Delay, Jack Abramoff, the fun group of guys at Enron. But it’s always a good thing when people’s realities catch up with them. It’s like they can maybe face their own truth, their essence, instead of living in a rigid container filled by their fears. The latest to fall is Ted Haggard the uber-evangelical preacherman from Colorado. He leads one of the largest of the large megaindustrial churches, the 14,000-member New Life Church, and is the head of the National Association of Evangelicals. He’s an outspoken critic of homosexuality, same-sex marriage and closely alied with the ultra-conservative Focus on the Family. It turns out he’s gay, or at least experimenting (for just having sex with a male prostitute doesn’t actually mean one is gay). He’s also a drug addict gettin’ it on with crystal-meth, and he’s been messin’ around on his wife and of course, he’s a liar. And a hypocrite.

But you know, this is a chance for him. This could be the chance for him to come out of his fear driven faith, his lofty pseudo-christian fundamentalism and figure out who he his. Because in my book, it is wrong for him to be messing around on his wife, and it’s wrong for him to lie, and it’s wrong for him to be a hypocrite, but it’s not wrong for him to be gay, if that is what he is . Yet to some of these people, it’s just the opposite: wrong to be gay, but just fine to lie, cheat and steal in the name of their god. Just the opposite of what I would find acceptable, or “moral”, if you will.

Maybe he’ll go to a sex addict meeting and meet real people trying to come to grips with their compulsions. Maybe he’ll go to NA and see how other addicts struggle through a day without drugs and admit his powerlessness. Maybe he’ll find himself alone in a forest where he actually feels the comfort of the Wise Ancient One’s. Maybe he’ll cry tears from deep within his being, the same being that makes the beggar cry, the mother of children killed in a US bombing raid in Iraq cry, the EarthFirst!er cry when the forests are wiped out around her. Maybe he’ll be able to meditate on the interconnectedness of all life, maybe he’ll chant songs of healing for mother earth. I go too far, but all is possible now.

Maybe he’ll find the peace he seeks.