Track down your senators!

This I extracted From a NARAL Email. You Could Use I t to express your Opinions of the Nuclear option...or any other issue.

• Let your senators know you're keeping an eye on them next
  week - and that you want them to talk with voters about the
  nuclear option. Click here to send
  your message today.
  
• Visit your senators during the recess next
  week. Check your local newspaper or visit your senators'
  websites for dates and times of town hall meetings. Or
  call your senators' offices at 202.224.3121 to schedule a
  personal appointment with your senators for you and your
  pro-choice friends.
  
• If you can't catch up with your senators, get
  creative and have fun! Get your friends to write
  a brief, personal note opposing the nuclear option, then deliver
  your notes to the senators' office nearest you with a bag of
  atomic fire ball candy.
  
• Let us know if you are able to track down your senators and
  what happened. Click
  here.

'Extinct' woodpecker found alive

The spectacular ivory-billed woodpecker, which was declared extinct in 1920, has been found alive in North America, Science magazine reports.

"For those of us who tenaciously cling to the idea that man can live alongside fellow species, this is the most incredible ray of hope."

My Parents had a copy of the beautiful two volumes of Audobon's prints. For some reason. I attached to that bird. I have always believed that they still existed.

999 today
Birdlife
Sci-Tech
Sun Times

After the Flood

Judy: "You left the bath water running again!"
Punch: "So I did, and now we don't have to go to Florida for the beaches!"

US 'conceals high terror figures'

• " The large increases in terrorist attacks reported in 2004 may undermine administration claims of success in the war on terror"

There were about 650 such attacks last year," Henry Waxman said, citing official briefings given to congressional aides, "- up from 175 in 2003, a record number at the time.
Iraqi insurgency 'undiminished'

• "Between 50 and 60 attacks are carried out each day, the same number as in 2004, according to Gen Richard Myers, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff."

Personal Letter

Alice,
It was kind of you to send that one update. About the deaths of GWW and JBW. Dad told me that the had renewed contact with his brother in the mid eighties. I often wondered how that went.
Sorry that the post on that website was so garbled. I copied it from another site and expected it to retain formatting.
The information, Mail address and contact, all suggest GWW as the author of that particular contribution.
I should provide you with the reference So that you can compare Dad's information with that on the website and see if that was an e-mail address that he maintained.
I'd like to thank you for your Generosity in sharing your Telephone number.

But I have to ask you, please write to me before you make a call to my number. You have surprised me in the past and I don’t need surprises.
If there is an emergency certainly call, but if you want to remember dad or discuss things we shared growing up together, I would appreciate it if you wrote about is and if you gave me some warning before you do call. As the woman in the John Prine song says, "just give me one thing that I can hold on to." I have maybe five things that come from my life before 1984; a wedding photo a few shots from 'the honeymoon,' when Dee told me she did not love me; a tie died shirt you made; a couple of letters from you describing miscarriage, money lost in drug deals; some letters from Dad, calling me a lazy criminal, a child killer, and warning me that I no longer welcome to visit their house.(actually those letters are later, after I moved here.) Oh i do have a guitar that I bought from Ceci's brother Miguel, and a Motor scooter that i bought from John Cleany, now rusting, though I was still riding it in 1999. There's a really dilapidated deck of tarot cards, the Ravenswood deck and i have one or two battered notebooks mostly filled with highly abstract ramblings about kabala and tarot. (tended to tell about things through the symbols and connect events to the images.) I think i brought a copy of a Gregory Bateson book and Shades of Gray. All of those things are worn around the edges and merely shadows of life before 1984. Twenty years of silence and regret have made a grey veil over all my memories of home. Stir things up to fast and o choke on the dust. all I know is that you kept in tough with Mom and Dad and went home for Thanksgiving talked about times past and present and kept the memories alive.
What i am asking is that you take the time to write things down so that i have time to think and respond. If you want to remember Dad, take a mental journey through the past, but bring a golden thread like Theseus as you walk past the yellow phone on the wall and open the door to the basement, descend the wooden steps and smell the sawdust and iron and the stale drain-water. He's just around the corner sitting in that old grey-cushioned bentwood chair, probably smoking a pipe, (the disreputable black hickory,) wearing an old flannel shirt a pair of paint-stained Khaki work pants and Clark's desert boots. He wont have finished his Courvoisier, He will look up from his ruminations and be glad to see you. and if he has that old boxer Mini with him give her a pat for me, will you?

• I know you can write. Make the time. Ten minutes a day? It's time you take for your self. try Goldberg's rules of writing

.

1. keep your hand moving ( you might want to use a pen if you've been keyboarding all day)


2. Be specific. (love is vague, a poached egg, three slices of bacon and a bowl of apple cinnamon flavored instant oatmeal for breakfast before you went to school every morning, that's love.)


3. Lose control. (Wander around your memories as if you were six. you are alone in the house, it is OK to look at the rose canton china tea set in the back of the cupboard in the dining room.)


4. Don't think. (If you think you will think if you write you will have something to think about, [and share])

You don't have to send everything you write. just type up the good parts that you want to share.
I realize that you know all this and read good writers and went to college and everything. But if you want to Talk about Dad it is really important that you put stuff in writing. you had my address but you never told me that he died. And who left my name out of all those obituaries. You want to 'Talk' but on paper I'm as dead as uncle John. It's not that I don't want to hear the sound of your voice.
I just need some warning before you call.
bill

No end in site

The problems I encountered redesigning my weblog lead me to the conclusion that it still needs work. the site is ‘quirky,’ problems are encountered in IE and FireFox. My dilemna is that I wanted a simple set of CSS rules and not a set of work arounds and other clutter. so i have two basic choices, simplify the template so that it works consitently, or keep the three column format and learn how to work around the IE bug.

See more progress on: Redo My Blog

A terrible beauty is born

Easter Rising in April 1916.

Tips To Turning Your Life Into Literature

• Write about what you know. Dig up all that old dirt, then dish it.


• Write about what you love. Would Patrick O’Brian’s seafaring Aubrey/Maturin novels have been any fun if he was hydrophobic?


• Join a writers’ group. Monthly meetings with like-minded friends are a great source of feedback.


• Go back to class and learn from a pro: Meet your future competition in an adult-school course.


• Write to your favorite writer. Greg Kihn did.


• Best-selling authors Natalie Goldberg and Julia Cameron know how to coax fledgling writers into full flight; check out their how-to workbooks.


• The more you read, the better you write."

from Boomer 2.0

Other Blogs

Clearly I lack focus.
I should just pick a topic and stick with it.
I should write more and not fiddle with the parameters.
but i don't give a should.
same with the otters.
heres a list of blogs I "otter" work on.
Sunlight
Postcard
House Call

Poetry Blogs

I found a few good Poetry Blogs recently and looked up some old ones.
Weblogs Are a great tool for workshopping (that awful word,) poems and other short writings. But blogs can also showcase good work. If you publish or know of some good poetry blogs, post the adress in a comment below. and I'll take a look.

• As/Is many poets; one blog.
• Poetic Inhalation
• Sidereality
• Blue Tattoo Very interesting
  

Goal Oriented

I've had this privelege at 43 things, where i can post my goals and update on my progress and also recieve feed back from others. Blogger and Ryze are the other two social networks i've tried. I'd compare them but they all complement each other. Flickr is another. Blogger an Flickr are best by far, but i can't rank blogger against other blogging networks. (they might be listening.)

Margaret (McCann) Ward

Margaret Ward (McCann) as a Baby.

Margret Ward, my maternal Grandmother. today was her birthday.

A Parting Glance.

I've Been looking back in the archives and rereading old farm stories.
I should try to compile them and maybe redraft the whole thing as a single story..

New Template

I finnished working on the New Template. hows it look in your browser? I'm thinking of maring the "a" links a darker green and assigning a smaller type style to the Blogroll and archives list. Perhaps it should be for both sidebars. also a color change for "a:hover, and "a:visited."
Tell me how it looks in your browser.
IE probably sucks.

Day to Day...

For some reason I never get my blog right. Sometimes I read poetry and I want to wright poemz, or quote them. Other times Political Rants get my goetz an i find myself Trolling Adverserial Blogs.
I still want to fix things.
Renewed obsesion.

These days: I work on silver, on wax for silver casting, on music (mostly guitar,) and on Html for Blogs like this.

Tuesday, I cast two rings, a pendant and hammered out a one, ounce synclastic bracelet.

Kuan Yin

om tare tuttare ture soha om tare tuttare ture soha om tare tuttare ture soha om tare tuttare ture soha om tare tuttare ture soha om tare tuttare ture soha om tare tuttare ture soha

Praises and Requests to the Twenty-One Taras

Tara

jewelry courses at the arts center

The Casting workshop is usually open tuesdays from 3-9 but you should call to make sure. later in the summer it will move to another date if it is allowed to continue at all.

Button Tag for GMail

A Gmail Button. This might be useful. Although I may have doctored it a bit much.

Mail Yourself A Letter

A letter from an Old Friend Can sometimes help You realize where you are headed and where youve been. a letter from your old self can be an even more profound revelation. Dont wait till December to make your new years resolutions. Make them Now!...
F u t u r e M e . o r g

Allen Denny and Bill

Allen Denny and Bill
Originally uploaded by _william.

I think that's shortbread.

Love Puppies?

Masha with her Former biology Teacher Marie Weir. That's Judy Masa on the Right, a former Classmate of Masha's and Fellow Zonian.

Shakuhachi in Gulfport.

Good Morning

Still Tweaking the layout
Need to separate the date from the previous post and make the center column wrap instead of intruding into the right when the browser is half sized.
?

Whew!

Now Finished (almost) Remaking the Template for this Blog. I used A nice German Three column Model From Princess Monorom. Most of the work was done in Notepad. There is only one Table in the whole thing, (the footer.) The trouble is that things didnt quite line up until i added the Javascript for the little True Fresco referer list Which Hangs outside the column just a bit for some reason that brought the image bar into perspective and aligned the colums.Best not to mess with it now just see if it performs consistently. Oh and FTP the Graphics for the Header.

---

7/20/2005
I ditched the footer table long ago.
I like the way it looks but not the way it loads.

The Bipolar Net

Tom Matrullo, (mentioned by allied,) points out divergent characteristics of self publishing formats on the web.
The Tagging format of flickr allows a person the opportunity "see a place through the eyes of a native, or a tourist, and feel a kinship with that person." One can review the photos from someone's vacation or browse all the tags from a particular location and see several peoples views. Matrullo enjoys the generosity of the 'photo sharing medium,' and he shares his enjoyment by generously hyperlinking the words of his essay to photos on flickr, giving the reader a glimpse of the kinship and community which he find there. By contrast he sites an anti-Islam blog from Norway. Of course he Also provides links through several of what he calls "satanic blogmills," as bloggers read and pass the "Muslim Rape Epidemic" story. His mention even attracts it's own trolls who decry the "Demonic Alliance of Islam and the Left."
Well good. I assume that while they are busy typing their rants, they are not lynching Muslims. besides the object of Hate blogging and comment trolling is to bait and engage "liberals."
There is a real difference in the way that people use the media. One type is fueled by interest and curiosity and the other by indignation and stale adrenalin (and poor typography.)
The questions left in my mind are about Memes and the ways that ideas mimic viruses. When I was young I was taught that exposure to other ideas was a cure for the ignorance which has held back civilization in so many centuries. Now I wonder if ideas can have a corrupting influence. After all some viruses have no cure, although we try, could it be that some destructive ideas are ineradicable? If we teach the child tolerance will she be more likely to get in the car with the crazed pedophile?