New Year Dispatches 2009

It’s been a wonderful time in New Orleans. Last New Year here was rushed, a raucous celebration bookmarked by frantic driving, home to back home again in less than three days. This year has been more sanely paced and, therefore, relaxing.

I love how things get stuck in our personal vernacular. I can’t link you to her post because her blog is no longer published, but I will forever think of the Psycho Therapist when I think of New Year because I read it when she wrote this:

The Bulgarian Master Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov said the first twelve days of January represent the whole year. January 1st stands for January. January 2nd stands for February. January 3rd stands for March and so on. By practicing loving kindness, openness and generosity while giving thoughtful attention to the significance of each day, you will thereby be consecrating the New Year.

This notion has gotten stuck in my personal vernacular, the complex connections between language, thoughts and feelings that can’t be stopped from coming into my head when I hear certain words in combination. Of course, it’s not meant to be taken literally, and might be easily carried too far by the obsessive among us, leading to unnecessary and uncomfortable foreboding in the event that something really rotten happens in the first twelve days of the new year. That’s not the point though. An exercise that makes us stop to practice loving kindness, openness and generosity can’t possibly be a bad thing, under any circumstances; and giving thoughtful attention to the significance of each day is perhaps life’s single most important practice; because without thoughtful (and I would add, honest) attention to the significance of each day, we, well, miss our lives in our rush to the next thing, in our struggle to let go of the in-built need to be the one who gets to decide what that next thing is going to be.

I’m glad I could come here, to New Orleans, where celebrating life in the moment has been raised to high art. I rang in 2009 in the company of bloggers Dangerblond and Cousin Pat within a throng of New Orleanians surrounding a bonfire of Christmas trees on the neutral ground in the neighborhood they call Mid-City. On New Year’s Day night, we added Alli to our little cadre and went to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button at the Prytania, the first single-screen theater I’ve been to in years. I’m glad I saw it because it was wonderful. I’m especially glad I saw it here, in New Orleans, to which it is a visual love letter. It also makes the same point that is made by the notion of consecrating each new year: life is fleeting, loss random and pervasive, and connection with each other, love, amidst a journey that is by definition solitary, is what lasts.

Sometime soon, this blog’s Hit Counter will pass 1,000,000 (the first 100,000 were the hardest). My geekiness stops short of understanding the criteria through which Blog-City’s fine management reaches that number, but I’ll take it. Some things it’s better not to know. My point is that I wouldn’t trade it for the world, what I’ve gained in human relationship, that which lasts, from blogging. Without taking away from my beloved friends and family who’ve escorted and supported me to here, those still with us and those who have passed on or wandered away, this new dimension this late in life has been the most wonderful sort of surprise, as they would call it here, lagniappe. My only resolution for 2009 is to savor it all.

Happy New Year, y’all. Thank you so much for being here. To borrow a phrase that’s also been forever changed in my previously mentioned personal vernacular by the previously mentioned movie, it was nice to have met

Live from Rising Tide III

From the Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary Arts Center! John Barry is getting ready to speak as Oyster, our fearless bivalve leader, provides an introduction. I will continue to update this all day, so check back often. 

Barry tells us that he “was in this space a few weeks after the storm,” so it holds extra meaning to him to be speaking to us here today. “..the Gulf of Mexico at one time went all the way to Cape Gerado Missouri…” All the land south and west was “made by the deposit of sediment of the Mississippi River… Everyone in this conference knows that we have lost roughly 2000 square miles of land, over time.” He’s talking about the breadth of the “Mississippi River” which he considers a “cone” that stretches from northern New York state all the way to the Continental Divide. He calls it an “enormous cone” citing the map in the book, that which is the River’s drainage basin, and he explains the difficulties the deposits caused to shipping and the nation’s economic development by creating sandbars at the mouth of the river, so in 1875 there were jetties built to stop the creation of these sandbars. This resulted in an explosion in commerce along the river, deeply into the heartland. “The port of Tulsa can’t use the port of Houston. The port of Pittsburgh can’t use any other port but New Orleans…. It’s not the port of New Orleans, it’s all the cities that New Orleans makes into ports.” This is the point I don’t think most Americans understand. 

Barry states that right now the state of Louisiana is only getting about 1/3 of the sediment that the river should be depositing in the wetlands south of NO, it’s “being impounded” by cities (made ports) upriver. ” One half of all the sediment that is lost is actually sitting behind dams in ND & SD, dams built to provide electricity.” This creates a major problem for LA & the city of NO, from which nothing is received. He also points out that the entire Gulf Intercoastal Waterway, constructed for purposes of national security, has also provided a hindrance to the deposit of sediment at the mouth of the Mississippi. Add to that the additional salt water intrusion that’s further harmed the wetlands, much of which has been caused by the oil industry, especially by their construction of canals. He compares the wetlands to a block of ice, taken out of the freezer and placed into the sink. He also points out that the Gulf Intercoastal Waterway and the Industrial Canal were man-made, dug to enhance shipping for the oil industry. But for them, the water would have never reached the Lower 9. By now, many of us know this, but most of the country doesn’t know this and he’s committed to getting that word out. Every article he writes he titles “Things You Don’t Know About Katrina”, a title that has always been changed by his editors.

Answering a question he points out that the port of New Orleans is 90 miles long, stretching functionally all the way to Baton Rouge, altogether making the largest, busiest port in the world. He suggests that sometime in the future a “low water” event might allow an opportunity to repair some of the damage and get the river back on track. He speaks of “risk communication” as a “term of art” and says that what must be done is “you tell the truth”. Of course, that’s what did not happen here. The truth, known, was not told and New Orleanians did not know the state of their flood protection, or their lack thereof. He suggests that fixing this could become a growing industry, pointing out that we’re in better shape, in terms of sea level rise, than in many other parts of the world because the marsh is still alive. He also says that every port in the world is below sea level, by definition: Singapore, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, all below sea level because they are ports. He adds, “Death Valley is below sea level but it’s got a pretty little levee system.” 60% of goods shipped out of America go down the Mississippi River. Without New Orleans Tulsa and Pittsburgh are no longer ports.

DotCalm at Blog-City is down (boss Alan’s blog is down too so I”m guessing they’re working on it). DotCalm at Blogger won’t let me paste in. For the time being I’m here. Lots of folks live-blogging. Pics to come (I think – need to resize). Updates soon and often. Thanks for watching. Peace.

It depends on how you define “safety”

Gary Hart to Wolf Blitzer on CNN, after having been asked if it’s expected that the Republicans will once again try to get away with characterizing the Democratic Party as being “weak” on defense (emphasis mine):

HART: A lot of us supporting Barack Obama have pretty long history of experience in national security matters. And I for one would yield to no one in this country in terms of my commitment to this country’s national security, and new ways to achieve it. We’re not living in the Cold War anymore. And to pretend that simply spending a lot more money on the Pentagon is going to make us safer was proved false by 9/11. Talk about Democrats being weak on national security. They let this country down.his was an administration that was warned that terrorists were going to attack this country, and they did nothing. I am not going to listen to anybody in this administration talk about Democrats being weak on national security. They let this country down.

Finally. Shall we all say it again, and again and again? I’ve had quite enough of leaders who live by the old 1960s rule of let’s not, and say we did, who live in a fantasy world in which what one says or calls something or someone is more important than how people and things really are, a world in which appearances trump actualities, in which spend-thrifts are called conservatives, a world in which the duped people of America buy this load of crap. It’s over. It’s time to call a reckless spendthrift a reckless spendthrift.

Our nation is dangerously in debt. Our defenses are worn thin and frayed from fighting a war for the benefit of Halliburton, KBR & Blackwater. It’s time for the Corporate plunderers to leave our looted treasury alone, to take their newly-enhanced wealth and go home. It’s time for some reality-based leadership to come in and clean up their mess.

Or, just go to your rooms. Now.

In Full Mom Mode:

Dear Senators Clinton and Obama,

Please promise me you know what you’re doing, that both of you really are present enough to be a good president and neither one of you will do anything that might deliver this election to McCain. It’s not so much that I hate John McCain, because I don’t. He’s a patriot who served his country nobly throughout his adult life. I don’t even hold his widely acknowledged anger issues against him. Sometimes a little righteous indignation is highly motivating, as long as he demonstrates better impulse control than the inmate who’s been running the asylum for the last almost eight years. We just really can’t afford to stay on our current path. I mean, we literally can’t afford it, can’t pay for it, don’t have the money to wage endless, expensive wars that, more than anything else, prove the points of those who hate us, fan the flames of anti-Americanism, make the world more dangerous for us and us lame broke. Haven’t we had enough of leaders who say one thing and do the opposite?

Barack, Hillary, please just promise us you have a plan, that you’ll drag this out only long enough to keep yourselves and your party atop the news cycle to fill this gap ’til the conventions, but that you’ll do it without drawing too much blood. Then, find a way to make a true and lasting peace for the good, not just of your party, but of your country. Walk the damn walk. There sure has been enough talk. You can prove what great presidents y’all would be, prove it, by bringing peace and harmony to the Democratic Party. At this stage I don’t care which one of you is atop the ticket, or if the other is on it, just that, whatever happens, it is genuinely without animosity (or you do a grand job of making it look that way – and that you make some important place for John Edwards). First, you must make peace. Kiss and make flipping up.

Demonstrate what a great president we’re going to have, ’cause we’re going to need one with the mess this disastrous administration has left for you to clean up. If y’all can come out of this forging party unity I’ll believe you’re more than just ordinary presidential candidates, you’re patriots and diplomats, totally prepared to meet the challenges of the presidency.

I’ve been watching John Adams on HBO and I’m deeply touched by the enormous sacrifices our founding fathers and mothers (and their families) made when they gave birth to this country Their wisdom and commitment are now so clear in the difficult choices that yielded our republic, as well as in the well-chosen words that became their Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. We need the next president to respect the foundation on which this country is built and care about individual rights. Put the good of the nation ahead of your own goals and ambitions, and please start now. 

So, stop pointing out each others’ weak spots, or else the boys and girls on the other side of the aisle will be laughing all the way to the White House. Show us you’re ready before day one.  Really be living conduits for change. Take the high road. Both of you. Work it out. Senators, I believe that you each think you’d be a great president. I don’t care which one of you it is. The good news is that you have before you a great chance to show us how it’s done.

Either that, or both of you go to time out.

Yours, in Momness,

Sophmom

So much for “Don’t be evil”

So much for “Don’t be evil”, supposedly Google’s “motto”. As described in Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

“Don’t be evil” is the informal corporate motto (or slogan) for Google,[1] established by Gmail inventor Paul Buchheit[2]. Paul, who suggested the slogan in a meeting, said he “wanted something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out,” adding that the slogan was “also a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent.”

“Don’t be evil” is said to recognize that large corporations can often maximize short-term profits with actions that destroy long-term brand image and competitive position. By instilling a Don’t Be Evil culture, the corporation establishes a baseline for decision making that can enhance the trust and image of the corporation that outweighs short-term gains from violating the Don’t Be Evil principles.

I was cruising along happily in the blogosphere as Sophmom, with all my Sophmom activities tied to my soph underscore mom at yahoo dot com email account. This included my primary blog that I’d very happily maintained at Blog-City since June 2004. Initially chosen for its ease of interface, I’m happiest there because of the wonderful (and personal) customer service (blessed Mayoress) and what can only be described as excellent search results (Google Gods please don’t get too mad at me for this post). It was only logical to have a Sophmom’s Dotcalm at WordPress just to prevent anyone else from confusing the matter, which I did at Blogger as well. Now, WordPress lets anyone comment and leave links, but some blogger blogs only allowed comments by those with blogger “accounts” so it made sense to have one. Since I was leaving links to this blog from time to time, I figured I should post something here, so I do (not particularly often – but I do); although usually (or at least once upon a time) when posting anywhere, I post as Blog-City Sophmom.

It started for me when I decided that I needed a Gmail account in my real name. Now, there was an element of not wanting anyone else to have it, but I also thought that I might migrate some of my Yahoo activity to Gmail, having heard good things about it. Then the oddest thing started happening: no matter how many times I signed in to my Google toolbar or blogger using the Yahoo email account, once signed in, I was automatically reverted to being signed in to my Gmail account. I don’t like the notion of mixing Sophmom and my real name online, even if I’m the only one who sees it because I’ve spent three years working hard to keep them apart. I have my reasons and they’re important. Lots of people who read my blog know me in “real” life and I’ve actually broken bread and lifted a glass with plenty of folks I’ve met online. But there are one or two (okay, exactly two) people in this world who, if they realized *I* am Sophmom, would just take all the fun out of it. But that’s beside the point. I should be the one who gets to decide which of my email accounts is tied to which of my blog accounts and Google has taken that out of my hands and forces me to default into their product(s).

Then the commenting format changed, this weekend, without so much as a “Yoo hoo, y’all, we’re gonna change it up a little,” from the “Don’t be evil” folks in Mountain View. Suddenly, when commenting on any blogger blog, I can’t comment as Blog-City Sophmom, but must post as either a linkless guest (”nickname” – how lame is that?), anonymous (on blogs that allow it) or as blogger Sophmom. Now, I’m smart enough to figure out how to put an html link to my real blog in the body of the comment, but, still, it’s just so, well, evil. It’s short-sighted and violates the spirit of the internet that Google, from the beginning, has claimed to embrace.

I’m sorry, y’all, but when Google gets to decide which email I use to sign in and which blog link I leave when I comment, they’ve taken a choice away from me, stepped over their own line, violated their own standard.

Sophmom.

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Suburban Oblivion has also posted about this.

Incredible Katrina Home Video

See God, HBO – Save John From Cincinnati

Remember

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Welcome to DotCalm. Please visit my everyday blog at Blog-City: Sophmom’s DotCalm.

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