The children, the babies, are not yet buried and the “Mommy Wars” have started over blog post responses to viral posts. I have many other pressing tasks to do, including traffic court today for forgetting to register my car, and I don’t want to spend the day researching. I probably should because I am a damn good researcher, actually trained in both library and social science methodologies and could probably expound with amazing clarity about the main players in the drama over “I am Adam Lanza’s Mother,” a post that went viral (just Google the phrase and you will see what I mean) from a mother with a very troubled child. Now bloggers are saying that the writer of this piece is the one with mental illness, not her son. I didn’t help. I forwarded the link and the original blog address after I read a republication of the post. I should have done research before forwarding, but really now, does anyone really do research on the info every single time before re-tweeting something? I don’t know what the truth is. And neither do any of us outside of the situation, and from what I can tell there are several truths (perspectives) inside the situation.
And you know what? I don’t care what the truth is. Truth is a personally constructed value. There are facts. There are data. I cannot be the judge of others. I wrote another piece last year, A Cautionary Tale :: Blogs, Lies, and Screen Captures, on a different blog that discusses a different tragedy and the intense emotions that come into play when mothers attack via social media. (Wasn’t When Mothers Attack a B-grade Fifties Monster Movie? Sorry, but I need some levity in these sad, sad days in which the whole country is regrouping.) Everyone who can text is a writer these days. Folks skilled at the art of deception tweet, post and blog. Mothers who are at their wit’s end tweet, post and blog. People who hurt and want to find the reason for their pain also tweet, post and blog.
There are sessions at blogging conferences on the experience of having your posts go viral. Sometimes it is because you did your research, sometimes it is because you let your son and his best friend dress alike for Halloween just like they wanted to do, sometimes it is because you were “shot in the ass.” Memes happen. You cannot know your post, or blog, will go viral. You cannot know when you will become a celebrity.
Geesh girl friend(s), just lighten up. I know, I know, we can’t lighten up about the situation that broke the heart of a nation. But there is civility. Remember civility? Remember Tucson and our call for civility after January 8th, 2011? There is a fund for civility that grew out of that. The desire for a civil society, for people acting civilly, for build a true civilization is real.
I can be snarky, too quick to offer up my sharp tongue, but please, please know that I try to never be intentionally critical of an individual. I haven’t always been successful. My political posts can get very heated at times, less so than they used to be, but let’s just say I learned my lesson. After having lobbied and protested in my congresswoman’s office, met and talked to her at fund-raisers, written scathingly about her being propped up by big money and political machines and specific influence groups, and after seeing her chief of staff’s jaw drop when she saw and recognized me from DC at a local Tucson even, to have her, my Congresswoman fall victim to an attempted assassination that injured and took the lives of many others — well — let’s just say that I can now vehemently disagree with someone while still loving them for being who they are. I learned that even politicos with whom I disagree can be inspirational and have good motives.
I hope the Mommy Wars component of this hoopla fades away quickly. Nothing is more fierce than a woman protecting children. Yes, there are terribly disturbed children in our society. Yes, there are mothers who are mentally ill in our society. Yes, we have too long allowed politics fueled by profit to compromise the well-being of our citizenry. The lives of our children depend on actions, not our words. So let’s work to protect our children and not attack each other.
What All This Means, Provisionally, In Arizona
Did my early ballot get counted? I have no way of knowing!
I watched the last days before the U.S. election via CNN International from outside the country. I then anxiously monitored election returns via Twitter feeds in airport boarding areas. The mere opportunity to have these vantage points for this process signals that I am a fortunate person in this life and the world.
Hubby and I spent more money than we have to send my hubby to a conference and for me to get to visit one of the places in the world that inspired the educational and career paths of my life. I, however, know this experience is not one that bestows or signifies the quality or value of my life. I am no better or worse a person than a woman who may never get to travel beyond her community or outside the borders of her state. Status, opportunity, achievement, and the “worth” of individuals are either distinct attributes or non-existent constructs.
The status quo in the U.S.A. is eroding. The ideas and ideals behind our constitution are growing. The American status quo does not embody our constitutional values. The change we are seeing does embody the essence of what has always made America great: an expansively democratic governance. This is not the same as expansive government. Yes, we are a representative democracy guided by an inclusive constitution at the highest levels. But there are eddies of absurdity that are pulling elements of our society into total dysfunction.
So what have we learned thus far and what do we do with it?
The simplistic assessment that “Pot, Gay Marriage,and Science are the Winners in this Election” has some truth in it. Liberty requires the pursuit of happiness. If individuals are not free to control their bodies, their most personal behaviors, and trust the science that guides collective policy, if something stops them from having time to dream, create, and problem solve, then our great nation will die an inelegant death through ignorant actions.
As an Arizona resident who is quite disappointed, but not surprised by, the reporting of Republican wins in the political races in my state with over a half a million uncounted early and provisional ballots, I expect my state to get what it deserves from allowing the essential democratic process to be violated consistently over the last many elections. If all this stands, there will be infrastructural spending in the next four years, but Jeff “no earmarks” Flake will see that Arizona does not get our fair share of public works money, just like Kyl did, and McCain will be right there with him. “Earmarks” that benefit constituents will be lost, but corporate kickbacks will be alive and well. The small government wackos will funnel questionably allocated funds into private prison systems, the contemporary tool of enslavement, rather than education. Propaganda works best with an uneducated populace. When they are imprisoned it works even better.
Allowing idiots to manipulate democracy in a state to the point where Neo-Nazis have been allowed to patrol the border, religious minorities have gerrymandered our political districts, state governance districts do not reflect the population of the state, has handicapped the ability of our institutions of higher education to attract the best students. What brilliant minority or foreign student would want to attend university in a state with AZ SB 1070. This in turn handicaps commerce when it attempts to draw upon a skilled, innovative, and renewable population of scientists, business innovators, and elastic well-educated labor networks that can respond to change.
I am not a conspiracy theorist, nor a leftist malcontent. I am an anthropologist who understands cultural systems, population trends, and trajectories. What has been going on in Arizona for a while now is dangerous and impacts democracy in all of America.
The Arizona example, along with Ohio and Florida, shows what assaults on democracy look like in the contemporary United States elections. Links to some of the Arizona Problems follow:
- Could voting irregularities sway the election? This mentions Flake’s robo-calls to Democrats telling them the wrong polling place.
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Arizona: More Than 600,000 Ballots Remain Uncounted Over half a million uncounted votes show a significant problem beyond individual irregularities.
- Count Every Vote in Arizona Petition. We have to petition to have our votes count? Apparently so.
More than anger, I am feeling nauseous, disheartened and a profound need to do something. I think this is how revolutions start. Anger is a short term irrational act. I am tired of giving up my time, energy and income to fight the right wing attempts, thus far rather successful ones, to violate the the will of the people as shown by the manipulation of elections by all levels and branches of government. I have already spent the better portion of five years of my life acting for change against wars waged due to the lies of selected rather than elected administrations, if I have to go out in the streets again, I am stepping it up this time. I am a matriot and the U.S. ideal of democracy and representative governance means the world to me.
Gerritsen Beach Children Freezing in the Dark
My daughter in Brooklyn writes:
“I keep buying socks and dropping them at shelters, I keep texting donations to NYCares, I keep buying things off the Amazon Sandy Registry. Everyone I know has done something to help with Hurricane Relief Efforts but it is still not enough. How do we fix this? After watching twelve hours of snowfall today, this email that I got from my twins list serve is especially terrifying.”
Is there anyone who reads this that can help these families in Gerritsen Beach?
Kathy Ene writes, (on my daughters twin list) “As the temperature plunges and the snow falls the residents of Gerritsen Beach live in darkness and cold. Classified zone B this small community across the bay from Breezy Point was flooded out by the Hurricane. We have no power, heat, food or help. We need help to get our power restored. The 400 homes must have the electrical boxes removed and replaced by new boxes before power can be turned back on. There is a shortage of electrical boxes. A local electrician explained each job takes about 4 hours to complete. The city must approve the job when completed before the house can qualify to be turned on. We need 100 electricians. We need boxes. We need money. This is a working class neighborhood. Too many people have no money to pay for the work. I fear for the children most. Many are still in their homes in darkness with no heat. I am afraid something terrible will happen needlessly. There is no one down here coordinating a recovery effort. Can anyone put me in conact with concrete help – a politician that will deliver, a benefactor that will take charge? Thanks, Kathy Ene”
Surely there is a person in a network of someone who reads this blog who has a connection that can help this community. They need help now!
8:59 a.m. update – some things are happening, but if you know someone who can expedite anything, please get them in touch with Gerritsen Beach elected leaders, city leaders, state leaders, national leaders. As always, the poor suffer the most. This situation is continuing be dire even after days of coverage.
The Veil Between The Worlds Lifts
A Personal Reflection on All Souls Day
Momma would have been 98 today. My best friend as a teenager / high school, Kim Marie, would have been 56 tomorrow had she not died at age 21. A once good friend who no longer speaks to me because I’m a progressive was 56 yesterday. These personal stories lead me into the darker celebrations of Samhein and Dia de los Muertos which arose out of celebrations of the end of harvest and recognition of the beginning of winter.
All Souls Day, November 1st, is celebrated in the Southwestern U.S. as it is in Mexico, as Dia de los Muertos. Many peoples with a European heritage carry on part of a cultural tradition in which the veil between the worlds was thinnest, the most permeable it is all year. Here in the part of the U.S. that was once Mexico, in La Primeria Alta or the Northern portion of the Sonoran Desert, the day is one where the graves of loved ones are decorated with intricately cut paper (papel picado), depictions of skulls and skeletons, marigolds, sugar skulls, candles, and pictures.
In Tucson, Dia de los Muertos, and the our unique observation of it on the weekend nearest to that day, has come to be a very special celebration for and by our community to mourn, to heal, and to celebrate lives and memories where they mix. A few years ago, in 1990, a personal remembrance performance began what has now become an All Souls Procession with over 30,000 participants. “Parade” is a term sometimes used to describe the event, but which is far too superficial a description of the procession. It touched the hearts and filled some of the emptiness of souls who are learning how to carry on in this world without the physical presence of loved ones.
Each year the procession grew. And this seems fitting. Tucson, the Old Pueblo, is a special place. People have lived here for thousands of years. In recent history thousand have died in the surrounding deserts as they attempted to migrate to find work. We are a fairly large city, but we were a town and still feel like one. We are a community that has always attracted artists and writers. Tucson is unique. Any person who is sensitive to such things can feel a sense of history and special energy in this beautiful town between several ranges of mountains. It is a place that honors life, history, and cultures.
I wish I could participate in the procession this year, but I cannot. I have several folks I would much like to acknowledge who left the earthly realm this past year. I will have to do something privately.
Follow Friday: Networked, Tweeted & Pinned
WHAT IS #FF
Two weeks ago, I mentioned the need to use the #ff hashtag on Twitter more effectively. My experimental change to this end has begun.
#ff is a Friday meme on Twitter that is connoted by the #ff hashtag and is used as a way to promote Tweeters you follow and find interesting.
It might look like this this, that just happens to be the people I #ff-ed today, individually:
#ff @mimiavocado @amnichols @Cecilyk @ABattheBurrow
A tweeted list of names, @ signs with a person’s twitter handle after it, without context, does little to inspire other than the most devoted of Twitter followers to check out the list of your followers that you recommend. I have seen the hashtag #ff used as a reward given for new followers, as a shout out to buds met in the physical world may not have a large footprint in the social media world. So, I’m approaching this hash tag a bit differently from now on through the end of the year, at least, to see if it makes a difference for the people I recommend, to my interaction with them, to my overall stats, or if it just gives me a platform from which to examine Twitter activity, and Pinterest activity, from a more informed vantage.
It will take me a while to play catch up with all the folks I should have already #ff-ed. Within a couple of weeks I will be caught up, though. Well, on second thought, give me through the end of the year on that too. It all starts with Pinterest, but I will get to that in a minute.
TWITTER, PINTEREST & INFO THEORY
I’ve been thinking about this whole “social media thing” for years now. I decided long, long ago that I wasn’t as into quantity as quality. That’s the whole “It ain’t the meat, it’s the motion,” thing.
Figuring out what constitutes quality in the new world of Twitter and Pinterest is an anything but a concrete or well bounded endeavor. Life has never been simple, and that is infinitely more true now that we are but data bits churning within the swelling mass of everything that resides just before the event horizon of the Technological or Informational Singularity, put forward by Kurzweil. I’ve wanted to reference this fantastically titled article, The Information Singularity Arrives Next Tuesday, Around Lunchtime, for years. I’m sure it at first glance my mixing of the physics of the Cosmos with an explanation of why I think the link-up of Pinterest and Twitter is a good idea will baffle most of my college friends from Purdue who went off to work in Washington, Oregon, and what came to be known as Silicon Valley, in the late 1970s.
An informational change in kind is, and in fact probably already has, transmogrified all we know, and how we know it, and will continue doing so. My friends, “Welcome to the future fair.” As a comedy troop once said, “We’re all Bozos on this bus.”
This following You Tube video clip has nothing to do with Twitter or Pinterest. I recommend just listening to it sometime because… just because.
There is no way you can catch up. Just keep swimming, walking, writing, or thinking. Keep doing what you do. But knowledge, and the data connections that drive it, are so vast, and interacting and changing and creating new relationships at a such a near instantaneous pace (because that is what information does) that the very nature of information has
All of this is what has been bothering me about Twitter’s #ff. The information system has a life of its own. It may not be sentient yet, but it exists and is changing and adapting to what users think it is before anyone can figure out what it is. As amazing cultural and social media influencers, bloggy divas, and women of a certain age, my women friends and I drive the engines of the information economy who are incorporating women’s culture and knowledge into this new cosmic intellectual stew. My compadres and I are significant use innovators and the information we incorporate about women’s culture is essential to driving this new system to an equilibrium level that is more egalitarian, and more equitable, than anything that has previously existed.
PINNING MY #FFs
So, figuring out ways to efficiently maximize social media information and connections is something that we may or may not do “naturally” but it is something that we and new social media seem to be doing well. I love the linkages that develop between new systems. Tweeting my pins is something that seems like a no-brainer now that I am looking at both platforms. What I have decided to do is:
- Figure out which social media dudes and divas I want to feature on any given Friday
- Get the links to the most complete listing of those folks social presence – probably a blog
- Pin those links to my #ff board on Pinterest and choose the image you want associated with the blog among the options presented to you
- In the pinning process SKIP OVER adding the checkmark to the box that says, Twitter
- You will add the #ff before the text of your tweet on the next screen – and though I didn’t do it this week (duh! I forgot the at sign with twitterhandle) the text of the tweet should probably read something like “#ff, @twitterhandle, brief intriguing comment about the person, pinterest-generated url to the pin
Doing it this way, I think, has these advantages:
- highlights the individual
- links blogs with twitter handles
- crosses platforms and thus kills two birds with one stone… Hehehe twitter and birds, get it?
- is more permanent than a simple tweet that gets lost in the Dickensian world of the Tweets of Twitter Past
- allows the visual to accentuate text without detracting from either
So, what do you think? Is this a great idea or what?
Apps, Apps, Apps…
It is Wednesday, so it is my day to announce my App of the Week, but you will have to read on to find out what it is. Why. Because I am still debating what to feature even as I write this. So you will get a mini-tour of some of the stuff I’m using and downloading, and why, as I work my way toward the proposal.
GAMES
Stupid. I know. Waste of time. I know. But as a person who is living a pretty good life with serious depression, I want to encourage people to play and have fun. Play is fun. Games can give you positive reinforcement, presuming you find ones that you like and from which you can get what you want or need. I love Words with Friends, Spider solitaire, and Hidden Chronicles on Facebook. If it feels good, do it.
Today, Greedy Bankers vs. the World, for iPad is FREE, Greedy Bankers Bailout is also free today. Same link. I love beating the Greedy Bankers. This isn’t App of the Week, but it is fun, and reminds you who the bad guys are while you are goofing off!
SOCIAL BOOKMARKING
I just started using the Stumble Upon app for Social Bookmarking. I like the iPad version. I never got into delicious, digg was/is so decidedly anti-woman in its burying of topics submitted by women that I will not even provide a link to it, though it stopped the bury function. Once misogynist, always misogynist. No reprieve.
Don’t know what social bookmarking is? Well, if you discover something you may want to find again, using a social bookmarking tool will allow you to add it to your “stumbles,” in the case of Stumble Upon, And you can discover things that others have added to their collections. You can also find your likes for things you didn’t personally add but like, and presumably if you like it you may want to find it again.
Still don’t get it? Try it out. It is free.
I know several bloggers swear that most of their traffic comes from being stumbled.
AGGREGATION IS US
For your news reading pleasure… aggregation “can’t be beat.” You do use an aggregator don’t you? I use several because they each have different strengths and weaknesses. I’m using direct RSS feeds into my reader less than I once did. They still work well for keeping up with my bloggedista friends, but for news feeds I think of them as semi-smart (as in learn what you like) services rather than pages, or newspapers. I used to use Feedly for my RSS reader, but I now find myself using Zite, Trapit, and Feedly… but I have just heard about UnDrip and want to try it out and if it really is social bookmarking and aggregation all rolled into one, well, I will be in heaven, but I’m not there yet and it seems like a “newspaper” app.
Writing Offline
Nothing new here, but if you write offline, you will need something to replace your old standby, MS Word, cause it still “ain’t there” if you know what I mean. So I have downloaded and am testing out EverNote and Google Docs/Drive… because both are free and say I can work offline. We’ll see. I am going to be offline for few days next month and will test both out thoroughly. Gasp… I know. I can’t believe it either! But in the meanwhile I am using Pages.
PAGES
Yes, my App of the Week is Pages. With the iCloud it updates to all other devices too. But I have found that I am able to really write serious stuff, make it pretty, but not as pretty as I can on my desktop. This post’s featured mage is part of a proposal I did on my iPad. It is only $10 and for a major brand’s product, that isn’t too bad. I haven’t had the need for the other components of iWork, so I can’t speak to those, but Evernote and/or Google Docs will have to be pretty good to tear me away from familiarity. Moving to using the using the iPad like a laptop over the last year plus has been both traumatic and wonderful. My logitech keyboard paired with my iPad makes writing possible, and using basically all new software has been the biggest learning curve. So why is Pages my App of the Week? It is a comfortable old friend on my iPad. I like that. It works too.