tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-152700082024-03-06T20:45:33.774-08:00Composite: thoughts on poetics & techInternet -- information -- criticism -- poetry -- connection -- feminism -- open source -- translation -- digression -- recursion --- ranting -- the future -- by <a href="mailto:lizhenry@gmail.com">Liz Henry</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger325125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15270008.post-8845305458161299072010-09-01T11:54:00.001-07:002010-09-01T11:54:52.519-07:00Moving Composite to bookmaniac.orgHello there! I'm moving this blog over to <a href="http://bookmaniac.org">bookmaniac.org</a>. See you there!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><!-- Begin supplemental 728 ad -->
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4896579068/" title="drifter boat by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4094/4896579068_cc95b83c0d.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="drifter boat" /></a><br />
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India Basin itself is in Bayview, between Islais Creek and <a href="https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hunters_Point,_San_Francisco,_California">Hunters Point</a>. <br />
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4896573968/" title="India Basin by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4093/4896573968_acf47609e3.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="India Basin" /></a><br />
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Here's a detail from a great map on a postcard from the India Basin Neighborhood Association - more about them later!<br />
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<img src="http://view.pics-or-gtfo.com/20100815-84951f6f7af83c90dab420cdda3ccac3.jpg" border="0"/> <br />
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So, we started out in the Open Space III part of the park, down Aurelius Walker and looking south towards Open Space II and the power plant. The shipyard and docks between were very intriguing! I wish we could help fix those up. There are a few boats moored there and one hauled out on land. I wish there were still a ton of boats there.<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4896575168/" title="India Basin Open Space by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4142/4896575168_3720afd93e.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="India Basin Open Space" /></a><br />
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Check out <a href="http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=India_Basin_and_the_Southeast_Bayshore">what it used to look like in 1969</a>! A lot more lively and alive. I wonder what changed between then and now? Awareness of the pollution issues? Some other "development" effort that came to naught but ruined what already existed?<br />
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<img src="http://foundsf.org/images/6/6c/Bayvwhp%24india-basin-1969.jpg"><br />
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We met Chris B., kick ass urban kayaker. Happy birthday Chris!<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4896583626/" title="making drifters by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4119/4896583626_39e2fe7469.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="making drifters" /></a><br />
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It was cold and drizzly but we had fun. I was dying to get in one of the kayaks. INstead we took off, went to a school BBQ, and came back when it was sunnier a few hours later, to the northern bit of the park. In between were a 24-hour ghost restaurant, the Surfside Liquor store, some housing, and <a href="http://www.teamkiss.com/lotusgirls/boxshop.html">The Box Shop</a> which looks like a great artists' studio built from shipping containers. A couple of groups were in the park all day - America True, which runs boating events for kids, and the India Basin Neighborhood Association. They fed us, talked with us, gave us kayak and motorboat rides, and were great hosts.<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4896063699/" title="America True kayak event by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4076/4896063699_194dbf3349.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="America True kayak event" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4896656670/" title="America True kayak event by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4138/4896656670_8e9706f1ae.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="America True kayak event" /></a><br />
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I met a very smiley person in a life jacket:<br />
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4896052299/" title="Kayaker at India Basin by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4100/4896052299_b9e03f16b4.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="kayaker at India Basin" /></a><br />
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Melita told me some of the history of the struggle over the area's development. I always end up listening to long confusing meetings of the Hunters Point Redevelopment council on the radio and am a huge fan of Harrison Chastang's commentary on city and other news. Later I googled around and read up on the very interesting battle over whether Shipwright's Cottage was historical enough to be a landmark that would block some condo developer from building giant-ass condos on this bit of privately owned land on the San Francisco shoreline. Clearly the history of that is more complicated that I could absorb in an evening of reading. But I did find wads of city documents, meeting notes, <a href="http://www.sfredevelopment.org/index.aspx?page=68">EIR</a>s, the fervid rantings of Francisco da Costa about White Lesbians (capital letters!) <a href="http://www.franciscodacosta.com/articles/bayview105.html">butting in to screw up India Basin</a>, and this <a href="http://www.investorinspector.com/answers/213/Joint-Venture-Investors-needed.html">pathetic and hilarious plea</a> from one of the land owners in question:<br />
<img src="http://view.pics-or-gtfo.com/20100815-e00a09313898879df5e2f635f8f087e4.jpg" alt="Hosted @ http://pics-or-gtfo.com" border="0"/> <br />
oKAY then... Anyway, as I looked at the shore and the docks, I imagined them all fixed up, not destroying what's there but with some more boardwalks and cafes and neighborhood businesses and a working shipyard and marina. Okay, it's polluted. Probably where I live is too. As long as I'm not smack on top of the radium dial disposal pit. (Or the bit that caught on fire underground in 2000, and they just dumped some more dirt on top of it and crossed their fingers.) I would totally live aboard there and run Community Kayaks. Get some historic ships in there but make it all integral to the community. Get a laundromat and a grocery store and fix up that amazingly cool <a href="http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Soul_Food_Ghost">24 hour restaurant</a>, not like some kind of attempt at a Fisherman's Wharf of the Southeast. And ... not some kind of nightmarish gentrification which everyone (except real estate developers) wants to avoid.<br />
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So about the real estate. How about <a href="http://albioncastle.us/">Albion Castle</a>... a stone castle right on India Basin with its own *caverns* and 10,000 gallons of water per day from the aquifer plus the rights to the brewery name. <a href="http://www.zephyrsf.com/bayview/881-innes-ave">On sale now</a> for only 1.8 million dollars... <br />
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This site, <a href="http://www.communitywindowontheshipyard.org/cleanupguide/map_parcels.htm">Community Window on the Shipyard</a> has a focus on the Hunters Point Shipyard not India Basin, but it's a really good site that makes the official "INFORMATION" about the <a href="http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-07-01/news/the-man-who-cried-dust/">environmental mess</a> and cleanup plans and progress easier to understand. <br />
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Also, here's a link to the <a href="http://www.indiabasin.org/">India Bay Neighborhood Association</a>...<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4896084615/" title="India Basin Neighborhood Association by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4118/4896084615_b6416979ec.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="India Basin Neighborhood Association" /></a><br />
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And back to our beautiful day in the Basin! <br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4896672370/" title="India Basin Open Space by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4116/4896672370_0ae0fa76a2.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="India Basin Open Space" /></a><br />
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My son made a little boat, a two-master, that stayed afloat for an hour until the motorboat ran it over:<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4896068001/" title="drifter afloat by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4123/4896068001_d35b3d7d54.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="drifter afloat" /></a><br />
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In the riprap along the water by the parking lot there's a gravelly slope that works well to put in kayaks. We met Dawn and Dan who were helping out and getting people into lifejackets. Dawn turns out to be Dawn Riley of America's Cup fame. Dan is involved with BAADS, which I just recently joined. Cool! <br />
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I got into a 2 seater Old Town "Loon" kayak and tore up the Bay! Me and Milo went as fast as we could. He counted so that our strokes would stay coordinated. We checked out the docks at the old shipyards and went around a buoy. After crutching around the rocks kind of awkwardly, it was great to speed through the spray and I didn't mind getting wet. Everything was sparkling in the sunlight. I like things like ruined docks and horrible old power plants and grungy marshlands and will definitely be back to kayak around this area. Then the kids had a ride in the motorboat, and I took another kid out in the kayak - he too was into going as fast as possible. We had fun and clearly he could have stayed out there a lot longer.<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4896668342/" title="Motorboat by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4098/4896668342_2ecb3baf56.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Motorboat" /></a><br />
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Afterwards we went to the EcoCenter in Heron's Head Park, just north of India Basin. It was gorgeous, but closed and looks like it's been closed since mid-July. I didn't realize this from <a href="http://ecocenterheronshead.blogspot.com/">the EcoCenter Blog</a>! We enjoyed walking around it anyway. I like the way the tanks look, and the wooden walls.<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4896697410/" title="EcoCenter by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4073/4896697410_868bcff246.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="EcoCenter" /></a><br />
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However, I find that Da Costa the environmental activist and slightly off base and racist ranter <a href="http://www.franciscodacosta.com/articles/heron2.html">really, really does not like the EcoCenter or the Heron's Head park</a> (or, really anything but the mythical golden past) because putting a park and a children's education center in the middle of a toxic waste dump is horrible. He kind of has a point there -- and yet visiting a park is a lot less horrible than building giant non-earthquake-safe condos in the middle of it all and seems like a good use of land that has been messed up. It means that someone goes there and has a reason to go there and a reason to keep cleaning it up. Here's some alternate reports and data on Heron's Head Park aka Pier 98 from <a href="http://www.ci.sf.ca.us/site/port_page.asp?id=102470">Literacy for Environmental Justice</a>, which you know is good and friendly because it's all in Comic Sans.<br />
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My thoughts on the shoreline: we could probably figure out how to test the toxicity of things in the area ourselves. Not like I know how, but it should be possible. Do some soil and water tests now and keep doing them! My other somewhat flippant solution is to put free (and compulsory) housing for the main City government people right in the worst spots. Make their kids go to school there too. Then they will have to haul ass to improve the situation. As a side effect, cowardly do-nothings won't dare run for office. <br />
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Since that won't happen anytime soon, I wish the neighborhood association luck in their plans to keep the shoreline for public use, for a maximum number of people to enjoy rather than for some gated condo community that a few developers make an obscene profit on out of exploiting the housing market. The shoreline is held in public trust and I like the idea of recreational use combined with historical preservation. To do any of that I think people need an awareness of the neighborhood's past and present and how <a href="http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Bayview/Hunter%27s_Point_Toxic_Tour">environmental racism</a> affects the community and the entire city.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><!-- Begin supplemental 728 ad -->
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<b>What Is Geek?</b><br />
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Today I was washing the flowered handkerchiefs my sister made me . When the hankies got wet in the sink I could feel all kinds of slimy mucus on there. I thought, what makes mucus do that? What's going on, chemically? Is there a scale of measurement to describe snot's ability to dry up and re-slime? Must look up viscosity! <br />
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Later that day I spent hours reading about soil science. That led me to giant government web sites, maps, explanations of whether the soil in my area was firm enough for tanks to cross, or soft enough for mass burials in pits. I absorbed the beautiful jargon of the taxonomy of soil. <br />
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Then I had this weird flash, like time travel, where I was mentally telling all this to this girl Susan I knew in middle school. I could see her very kind but skeptical smile. This imaginary Middle School Susan sighed and said I was SUCH a geek. She said I was "like a boy".<br />
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Another moment popped into my head. At BlogHer 05, when Mena Trott from SixApart stood up and started babbling about knitting blogs. I kind of freaked out. <br />
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I was like, OMG, CNN is here! I thought you were going to represent, and be my computer programming coder rock star and instead....you're talking about knitting! How embarrassing! We were finally getting noticed as women doing stuff on the web not just as blog writers but as deeply technical women and now... knitting?!!! <br />
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I tried to suspend my judgement, persuading myself, "Well, women DO knitting and, women talking to each other on the Internet is inherently good, so, I guess it's good they find each other there and talk about what they like, which is this trivial, stereotypical, embarrassing, girly thing, it might as well be talking about Barbies and painting our nails." <br />
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I could see Mena knew she was being misunderstood and that the media was going to mangle her message. As I thought about this over the years, I understood the dynamic of what was happening. I'm so sorry for my ignorance and my misogyny. I was SO WRONG.<br />
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Now I know that knitting a sock is this AMAZING thing -- like building a suspension bridge, a feat of engineering, and is like code in that it is ... code.... but made out of physical stuff.... Textile geeks have patterns that are code that convey technical information. They reverse engineer and re-invent marvellous things, knitting coral reefs and digestive systems and enormous protein molecules along with socks and sweaters. Now I'm a knitting groupie. I signed up on Ravelry just to swoon over the textile rock stars. <br />
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As I washed my snotty handkerchiefs I thought about boys in middle school. While my being a geek made me "like a boy", being a geek, for boys, meant they were called girly or gay. Being weird meant that gender norms could be used against us. For geeks who were boys and then men, I think this influenced and still influences a defiant need to define geek as male. Geek macho insists on hetronormativity, defines girls as a thing apart, claiming geekiness for manhood. <br />
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I'm not a knitter. But I do have SOME skill with string. I can play cat's cradle and make string figures. Like hand-clapping games and jumprope rhymes, string figures are passed from girl to girl over the years. <br />
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It strikes me we could learn something crucial, as geeky feminists, from the pattern of how young girls pass on this knowledge, and how that is presented as gendered knowledge – as something “girls know how to do”.<br />
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Single crochet is just making a loop with your fingers and thumb, tying the same sliding knot over and over. It teaches the skill of maintaining tension on a strand. It's a useful skill to make a weak cord into a stronger, thicker one.<br />
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It's what you pay attention to.<br />
It's a stance towards knowledge and doing.<br />
It's about communicating knowledge and process.<br />
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I learned everything I knew about string from other little girls. Though I didn't realize it, that was my introduction into geek sisterhood. Teach your geekiness, and pass it on. It's what girls know how to do.<br />
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<img src="http://web14.twitpic.com/img/141449550-e56abfc8f74889a73a0c6e63e9271d6d.4c5c7ed8-scaled.jpg"><br />
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<i>(posted originally on Dreamwidth - this is the edited version to fit it in under 4 minutes)</i><div class="blogger-post-footer"><!-- Begin supplemental 728 ad -->
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<img src="http://www.regathon.com/alviso/graphics/z-ribbon-cutting-1.jpg"><br />
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Go, <a href="http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/08.20.98/cover/alviso-9833.html">Alviso</a>! Very cool!!! A long fight that led to free public access to this place that might actually see some use. It could lead to other nice, small scale development that gives people access to the water and shoreline. <br />
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The <a href="http://www.inflatablekayakreport.com/2010/05/kayaking-alviso-slough.html">Inflatable Kayak blogger wrote up the launch</a>, with photos. The slough is peaceful, calm, and full of birds, and looks like a great place to kayak. <br />
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I found a government record of the project: <a href="http://www.dbw.ca.gov/ProjectBlog/blogs.aspx?ID=103">Alviso Marina County Park Boat Launching Facility Project Blog</a>. There was a meeting in 2005 talking about potential Requests for Proposals. They thought the ramp would be finished by 2006. Ha! After 2 years of entries that read "Status remains unchanged", here's how far along things had progressed:<br />
<blockquote>Wednesday, October 10, 2007<br />
Per Santa Clara County: due to construction calendar constraints as dictated by permits, and the award of the needed grant funding for the project in September 2008, the first foreseeable construction window is considered to be starting June 2009.<br />
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Updated: Friday, January 18, 2008<br />
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Permit issues, funding issues, land control issues, and environmental concerns have led to unforeseeable delays to this project.</blockquote><br />
I'd love to know the story behind that, and what the permits, land control, environmental concerns, etc. really were! Yikes!<br />
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This summer the ramp opened. It cost 2 million dollars to build. It goes into a narrow slough that's about the same depth as Redwood Creek in the area where I live -- with a low tide channel depth of 4 feet. <br />
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There's a <a href="http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_15562342?nclick_check=1">local politician proposing a port</a>, with restaurants, an IMAX theater, and a tiny ferry. That scale of port seems quite unlikely! Get real! How about some decent public bathrooms, boat rental, and an ice cream shop?<br />
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I wonder why my town doesn't do more with the waterfront it has. Here we have a great creek, we already dredge the channel every few years, there's at least two officially public boat launch ramps into the creek, and yet our waterfront is barely used. Not that I want an IMAX next door. It does seem like there could be more small businesses and it could be much more of a nice destination for local people.<br />
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Anyway, I'd like to take my kayaks to Alviso Slough to take a look at what's there!<br />
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<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4845325950/" title="alviso-slough-map by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4083/4845325950_ccdd0887a6.jpg" width="500" height="443" alt="alviso-slough-map" /></a><br />
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<a href="http://osm.org/go/TZMlTWJG">You can see from the map</a> that the area of the boat ramp is marked "South Bay Asbestos Area". Mmmm! Asbestos! I think also a lot of mercury comes down the Guadalupe River from the hills. But seriously, that doesn't bother me. IMHO if it's polluted, stick a park on it, put up some warning signs, and start to work on reclamation. I'm going to kayak through the marsh, not roll around it or lick it, and if I fall in I'll take a shower afterwards. I'm sure whatever pollution there is about a million times less horrible than one afternoon working in a dry cleaners. Anyway, people live there, on that worthless neglected marsh that then gets sold off in chunks to Cisco for umpty-gazillion dollars so they can build some giant parking lots on it.<br />
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So, 2 million dollars! Could you build a decent boat ramp meant for kayaks for less than 2 million dollars? I could.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><!-- Begin supplemental 728 ad -->
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Distances open up hugely and pinch themselves up into almost nothing depending on the wind and current and tide. The parking lot of an office, a boring place, turns out to be the best fishing spot on the creek, full of families hanging off their truck tailgates.<br /><br />Many of my names for the creek are jokes but they reflect the way we are using the creek as kayakers and what we think is important. The places where trash collects, the strength of the current, the mudflats, the sticks and pilings and pylons that are landmarks, the place where the grebes hang out, the wind shadow of Middle Bair Island.<br /><br />We remap our minds by traversing the edge of the known map. I was thinking about frontiers, wastelands, and edges. At Open Source Bridge I said some stuff about wastelands. When you hear a place described as empty, reach for your gun. Just kidding. No, when you hear a place described as empty, you can be sure someone is exploiting it. The desert, the wasteland, and the frontier, are obfuscations. <br /><br />So in my naming of these places I open up different possibilities of exploitation, but since no space is unnamed and unobserved -- they are named and observed and mapped by governments and corporations -- I would prefer that they be named and observed in a decentralized way by anyone at all. (Which is one reason I adore <a href="http://www.openstreetmap.org">Open Street Map</a> and Open Sea Map.)<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4692161538/" title="Voyages by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4021/4692161538_0ae8b352b1_o.jpg" width="360" height="390" alt="Voyages" /></a><br /><br />As I look back on the history of Bair Island and Redwood Creek I keep finding ghost places - like "South Shores" which was an attempt by a developer to rename the slough as a suburban extension of "Redwood Shores". Or like Deepwater Slough, which still has a faint track on the satellite photo - the C shaped trace that loops across Middle Bair, across from the Port - the dredged mud and pickleweed it encloses still privately owned and still named "Pacific Shores" probably for some totally screwed up future condo development scheme.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4692206214/" title="Bair Island EIR map by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4058/4692206214_d0e1bc7d95_b.jpg" width="552" height="502" alt="Bair Island EIR map" /></a><br /><br />The Bair Island history, its battles, and its <a href="http://www.southbayrestoration.org/Bair-EIR-EIS-Final.html">2006 EIR</a> are all deep background good for anyone interested in the proposed 12,000 household development of the wetlands-turned-salt-ponds owned by Cargill. On the maps they're the pink rectangular areas that barely even look like bay anymore. <br /><br />A neighbor of mine across the harbor is gearing up for that battle on another blog, <a href="http://virtualsaltworks.blogspot.com/2010/05/saltworks-is-in-bay.html">Virtual Saltworks</a>. The ponds are still part of the bay and still supposed to be open space and wetlands. We could use a little bit of digging into maps and history - what was First Slough like before it was diked? What would it take to restore it at least to the state that Bair Island and Corkscrew Slough are in now?<br /><br /><object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pzRnmw_u-kA&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/pzRnmw_u-kA&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object><br /><br /><br />Soon the abandoned docks and the piers for electric company access to overhead cables will be decorated underneath by pirate mailboxes where Milo and I will leave secret messages for the world. <br /><br />I have some great ideas for Community Kayaks. They'd be like the civic projects for free bicycles anyone can use without fuss. It would be very easy and cheap to start and maintain a simple flotilla of boats free for anyone to use. More local people would use Redwood Creek, would see the edge of our town, the cultivated-wild places that exist right next to the industrial port where oceangoing cargo vessels offload their gypsum, sand, and gravel and load up clanking waterfalls of scrap metal. People barely care about the Creek because they don't know it's there. If they paddled around on it they might get fond of it.<br /><br />I got a little obsessed with the Alviso boat ramp opening. If you live in Redwood City - do you know where the public boat launch ramps are? There are two that I know of!<br /><br />What is the Bay for? Who gets to go on it? You shouldn't have to be rich - or go on a giant ferryboat - or treat it like a sort of horrible wet golf course - <br /><br />Where are my beautiful floating islands made of trash and full of ecological minded Burning Man hippies cultivating flats of pickleweed and nesting habitats for Caspian Terns? I also imagine a beautiful anarchosocialist cooperative marina with art projects and rogue marine science. It would be easy for us here in the harbor to be monitoring water quality, observing the plants and birds and fish, and so on. Decentralized maps and some kind of visionary open data project could make for some great open source science - I'm sure someone's doing this already.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><!-- Begin supplemental 728 ad -->
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There were many living in the harbor itself over the winter, but they began to migrate elsewhere in the spring months. There's always one or two out over Redwood Creek next to Bair Island, gliding and diving. They perch on pilings and sit on the floating docks near my boat, wary but tolerant of human approach. You've probably seen the heartbreaking photos of <a href="http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/06/caught_in_the_oil.html">pelicans covered in oil</a> from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Here's some happy pelicans who live in Redwood City to cheer you up!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4630071842/" title="voyage to buoy 20 by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4024/4630071842_b9eaabef29.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="voyage to buoy 20" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4311222286/" title="pelican by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2703/4311222286_3d3650a358.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="pelican" /></a><br /><br />Terns, possibly more than one species of tern, showed up in mid-spring and are swooping over the harbor and river, catching tiny fish. They make a funny clicking noise almost like blue jays scolding. While I'm kayaking, terns fly right overhead and plunge into the water a foot or two from my boat. They're incredibly graceful and a bit saucy. You can tell them from gulls a long way off from their swooping flight, black head, long beak, and curvy wings.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4629474523/" title="voyage to buoy 20 by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4027/4629474523_1ec0b26f0d.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="voyage to buoy 20" /></a><br /><br />Great Blue Herons are a bit more rare. I see them most commonly in the early morning, evening, or far into Smith Slough away from the harbor itself. But they come into the harbor and hang out, even perching on dinghys and boat rails. When we see one, we stop paddling and glide as slowly as possible so as not to disturb it. They're very shy. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4590940646/" title="great blue heron by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4047/4590940646_e7b6a72b4c.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="great blue heron" /></a><br /><br />Egrets are easy to spot all over the Bair islands, often visible from the Pete's Harbor parking lots on Inner or Middle Bair or from the viewing trail. From the kayak, I most often see them in the tiny inlet we call "Pylon Bay".<br /><br />Western Grebes come right into the harbor, but they can almost always be found in a little flock next to Middle Bair Island right where the slough meets the creek, between Pete's Harbor and the Marine Science Institute. They scatter when the crew boats row by in the early morning and evening. I've seen these grebes do the preliminary steps to their mating flights -- pairing up and head pumping, copying each other, but not the full "walking on water" part. The grebes are everywhere in Redwood Creek and seem to be very successful in their fishing.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4629477293/" title="Grebe by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4052/4629477293_e6c3f311f3.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Grebe" /></a><br /><br />Coots are around, but less common in the creek. We have one resident coot who hangs around C and G Docks in the harbor, named Wacko by my neighbors. It hovers around the little flocks of ducks and sticks close to the shadows of the boats and docks during the day.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4649837333/" title="Wacko the coot by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3399/4649837333_576a31d8d0.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Wacko the coot" /></a><br /><br />Ducks, seagulls, and small Canada Geese are extremely common around the harbor and Bair Island. I feed them (and Wacko the Coot) handfuls of duck chow in the evening from the back of my boat. A couple of weeks ago, I saw three pairs of Canada geese with 7 chicks, between the Bair view trail and Inner Bair Island, but the goose families with goslings haven't come into the harbor. My neighbors have said that every year the ducks have lots of ducklings, most of which don't make it to adulthood as they get eaten by herons and seagulls.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4649799907/" title="Ducks and geese by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4055/4649799907_1e9c3d438e.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Ducks and geese" /></a><br /><br />During a low tide, especially a minus tide, we see a lot of night herons. They're very shy and wary, but they still perch on the docks to fish. It's nice to see them out on the mudflats in a minus tide, along with phalaropes, plovers, peeps, black necked stilts, avocets, and what I think might be whimbrels. I love night herons because they look so fierce and grumpy.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4650444184/" title="night heron by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4035/4650444184_49eac18667.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="night heron" /></a><br /><br />I don't have many photos of the avocets and stilts. I see them most often at the minus tides or way out in the slough. The closest point I expect to find stilts is in the slough in between Inner Bair and Middle Bair Island. Here's a stilt right by Pete's Harbor at a minus tide in the early morning, near the place we call Castle Point.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4566538203/" title="cormorant and black necked stilt by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4009/4566538203_d01c5ecd79.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="cormorant and black necked stilt" /></a><br /><br />Cormorants are common and quite beautiful! They and the pelicans remind me of little dinosaurs. We recognize them a long way away from their low sleek profile sitting on the water, very different from the shape of a grebe, or from their characteristic posture perched on pilings, docks, or pylons, with wings outspread. The dock near the pylon across from the Pete's Harbor laundry room, and the pylon itself by the Bair Island viewing trail, are pretty much guaranteed to be festooned with cormorants any time you look. I conclude that they must make a successful living from the creek and the area immediately around the harbor. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4498842355/" title="Spring Break by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4013/4498842355_2f1130bb32.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Spring Break" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4649821455/" title="Cormorant by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3399/4649821455_73470a9d32.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="Cormorant" /></a><br /><br />Red tailed hawks glide over Middle and Inner Bair Islands, hunting. Some small mammals must live there. A few years ago I saw rabbits boxing each other on Inner Bair, while it was still home to a hiking trail.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4649822097/" title="Red tailed hawk on a pylon by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4030/4649822097_9f558a35ee.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Red tailed hawk on a pylon" /></a><br /><br />Though I haven't seen a Clapper Rail, I'm pretty sure I've heard one over by Inner Bair Island: <a href="http://identify.whatbird.com/obj/463/overview/Clapper_Rail.aspx">they sound like creaky machinery</a>. <br /><br />On Bair Island itself, there are swallows, red-winged blackbirds, finches, and other small songbirds I haven't identified. <br /><br />You can see quite a lot of these birds from the Bair Island viewing trail or from the Pete's Harbor parking lot near the Waterfront Restaurant. To get to the viewing trail, get off Highway 101 at Whipple and go on Whipple towards the Bay, away from the city. You will pass some car dealerships and the old movie theater. The road curves around to the left, past the foot and bike bridge that goes across the creek to Main Street. Keep going past the Diving Pelican Cafe. Across from the Bair Island condos and a big empty field, just before the railing, road, and walkway that leads to the Pete's Harbor ship on land that's painted like the Italian flag, there is a tiny trail and a "Shore Access" sign. Park in the lot across the street from the trail. <br /><br />Along the gravelled trail, there are two natural history signs that have information about the marsh. There are benches where you can sit to look out over the slough. If you walk about halfway down the trail towards Whipple, there is a tiny sand pit and playground good for toddlers to play in. Bikes can make it up this trail all the way to Whipple. Strollers are okay up until the halfway mark at the sand pit. It's not very accessible for wheelchairs but not impossible if you can make it up the steep gravelled slope that starts the trail -- I can make it only with a push from behind, but can do the trail after that despite the shallow gravel up until the sand pit. Past the sand pit, the trail is narrow and rough.<br /><br />Leave a comment if you birdwatch around this area and let me know what you see!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><!-- Begin supplemental 728 ad -->
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"Love the wild hair, I have to show that to my son - his favorite color is purple." <br /><br />Further along, in Corning, after about 1 million billboards for a place called the Olive Pit, I got off the highway and had a similar experience in the Travel America truck stop. A woman in a TA vest liked my purple hair and yelled "Hey Mom! Come on over here!" They liked my hair and then I went to the bathroom passing a big sign for Trucker services in the Trucker Chapel. Wow, a truck stop with a *chapel*. I had this picture suddenly come into my mind of the Holy Grail appearing and disappearing at a truck stop feast table near the <a href="http://tweetmeme.com/story/221341357/youtube-das-racist-combination-pizza-hut-and-taco-bell">combination pizza hut and taco bell</a>. There were two other obvious OLIVE *** places so I went down the road to the Olive Hut, a big round topped metal building with plastic barrels outside. Not sure what I was hoping for; I love olives, olives with weird things in them, and felt there might be a warehouse full of kitsch, and if I could get an Olive Capital of the World magnet or tea towel something in my soul would be road-trippishly satisfied. Alas, no trinkets but a mostly empty echoing warehouse with some very nice and cheap olives. I tasted and bought chipotle and garlic-jalapeño stuffed olives plus some slightly out of place salt water taffy. The kitsch was probably all at the place with the billboards. I pictured big fiberglass olive shaped structures making up a playground and photo opportunity, where you could get into the fake olive with your head sticking out and take a stupid picture. If that doesn't exist, it should...<br /><br />There was an interesting sign somewhere along the way, "<a href="http://www.project2105.org/subweb1/temperature/jan29-05_is_thermal_curtain_dead.htm">Stop the Thermal Curtain! Save Lake Almanor!</a>". A thermal curtain (said my driving companion Oblomovka from browsing on his phone) is a thing they install at the bottom of deep lakes to stir up the cold water that sinks to the bottom and sent it out and down stream to benefit the fish, or fishermen, or both. "Waiit a minute is this something that the power companies say is for the environment but is really to offset their own thermal pollution..." Not sure and I need to look it up. The "save the lake" guy sounds slightly batty on his web page. I want to believe!<br /><br />Must go to Lake Shasta Caverns on the way back, OMFGBBQ! A boat ride, bus ride up the hill, and then CAVES. I love a cave, wet or dry. Show me the flowstone, baby!<br /><br />We got off the highway again at Weed to go to the Silva BBQ, which was very good but very, very salty! It's worth a stop for the amazing view from their deck of Mt Shasta and the Black Butte volcanic plug. Thank you, Roadside Geology of Northern California, for all the great explanations of geologic features. I failed to buy some funny postcards that said "WEED" on them.<br /><br />A brief stop to lie in the grass under the trees at the Rogue River state park ... I get very stiff while driving and have to pee like once an hour and am very curious about the things nearby the highway, in case you're wondering why I stopped like 6 times on what should be a 4 hour drive... I thought of how if I were younger I'd be climbing all the trees in this rest stop and running down to the riverside but it was the end of the day and nothing other than lying on a picnic blanket was going to happen. The wind picked up as we lay there and made the tops of the tallest pine trees sway beautifully like little anenome-like tentacles of branches of coral. <br /><br />In Grants' Pass we stayed at the Sweet Breezes motel, very nice, with a funny pink painted sink, funny green splotches decorating the bathtub wall -- someone learned to paint porcelain. A bookshelf with readers digest condensed books. A slight carpet cleaner smell but it aired out and was tolerable. A fridge and microwave (no coffee in room - only in the lobby) and nice bath stuff. Pink and green towels and bedspread, rather sweetly matching the painted sink... someone made an effort.<br /><br />Dutch Brothers coffee kiosk. More chit chat which I got to overhear. Two guys in the kiosk argue about breakfast place advice. Ray's Supermarket breakfast burritos (tempting!) Della's for a step up from Denny's and some people say it is the best breakfast in town. I drove around with my coffee seeing the preparations for Boatnik. <br /><br />Ended up at the Powder Horn Cafe which was a classic and gorgeous little diner with longhorn horns over the menu on the back wall, a case of homemade pies (flavors chalked up on a board nearby) and a waitress with a lot of eye makeup and one of those sarah palin hair thingies calling me honey. I adored all the waitresses. A lot of people in here look like regulars and all chat about their weekends to each other and the staff. The rye toast was not the gross kind that has been in the freezer for years but was fresh, thick, and soft, eggs nice, homemade hash browns (a LOT of them) and coffee at my elbow topped up every 5 minutes. They had a charming thing called Table Talk with knock knock jokes, funny headlines, local history and so on. I'd go there again, especially for rhubarb pie. They were really nice even though I was an out of towner and taking up a whole table with my newspaper and notebook and giant plate of cheap poached eggs. (Breakfast was... 6 dollars total with tax. !!)<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4656845242/" title="Powder Horn Cafe, Grants Pass by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4069/4656845242_bef2369f75.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Powder Horn Cafe, Grants Pass" /></a><br /><br />Other bits of Grants Pass that I noticed while driving around: the caveman statue, cute downtown with ads painted on sides of old buildings, a piercing shop, something with a betty boop sign that could be a sort of homegrown hot topic for the alty teenagers, a theater where Henry Rollins is coming tomorrow to do spoken word (!!!!!) Cute well maintained small businesses everywhere so a) it must be cheap to live here b) the city must encourage and foster them very well. I thought the downtown was missing a hotel or two or fancy bed and breakfast - instead the motels are all near the highway, understandable, but as a tourist I prefer to be right in the cute downtown where I can walk (or wheel) to everything without getting in my car. <br /><br />In my little fantasy world (where there are also giant olive sculptures and Olive Capital tea towels) I putter around the tiny shops, cafes, small town history museum, and riverside park without having to drive and park and drive and park. The local paper described Boatnik, a 50 year old boat parade and picnic, sounds like fun, beer drinking by the river and so on, lots of small town competition of who can build the coolest float and I'm always a fan of that, eat your heart out pretentious Burning Man artists. I would SO go to Boatnik! As long as no one beats me up or anything - I find small towns fascinating but a bit scary, to be honest! Clearly Grants' Pass is trying to transition from being a logging town to being a tourist town and they're doing a good job of it.<br /><br />Onward to Portland! My goal today is to pick up some rocks from a stream bed! It would be nice to see something that isn't serpentinite ... how sick I am of the Franciscan Melange. Some granite maybe - is that too much to ask? The problem here is that I can't walk all that far, so it has to be a riverbed right next to a parking lot.<br /><br />I forgot my camera so the photos of this trip will all be cameraphone. Everything is so lush and green and rainy here!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><!-- Begin supplemental 728 ad -->
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While I was there today a woman and a dog in a very DIY camper van were doing some housekeeping and enjoying the late afternoon sun, so the camping, or homeless-person-occupancy, probably continues despite the <a href="http://www.sfnpc.org/warmwatercovehistory">recent community makeover</a>, graffiti cleanup and daily policing. A few years ago people were still <a href="http://www.gofishn.com/content/warm-water-cove-pier-san-francisco-county-california">fishing from a pier</a> to take advantage of the warm water coming from the power plant outfall (which attracts fish.) The pier's gone now. <br /><br />Sounds like a lot of piers have been closed over the last few years, including <a href="http://www.pierfishing.com/pier_of_the_month/9910.html">San Mateo Pier</a>, the longest fishing pier in California.<br /><br />From there I could see a very interesting building that looked like <a href="http://www.explorethebay.net/BASE/2009/12/the-sun-sets-on-boxland/">a lot of cubes piled up on top of each other</a>. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/cobrasick/4155424808/"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2767/4155424808_8bf7aab58b.jpg"></a><br /><br /><br />It's behind the Pacific Gas & Electric Station A, a huge and beautiful red brick building. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4511247575/" title="Pier 70 by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2770/4511247575_1262550fef.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="Pier 70" /></a><br /><br />Here's some links to the history of Potrero Point:<br /><br />* <a href="http://www.explorethebay.net/BASE/2010/02/station-a-another-penetration-into-the-potrero-point-industrial-district/">Station A</a> <br /><br />A block or two north, little alleys wind around the decaying buildings of Pier 70. <br /><br />* <a href="http://wikimapia.org/5112378/Building-11-The-Noonan-Building">The Noonan Building</a><br />* <a href="http://pier70sf.org/mappage/mappage.htm">Map of Pier 70 structures</a> - a great map with notes for each building.<br />* <a href="http://pier70sf.org/history/irish_hill/irishHill.html">Irish Hill</a> This hill full of houses and apartments for the iron and steel mill workers and their families was leveled and the rubble used to fill in the Bay. I saw a tiny bit of the hill left - you can tell it's not just a pile of dirt because it looks like a roadcut through serpentinite.<br /><br />Underneath these industrial buildings is a tide-washed labyrinth of slag pits, cisterns, waste dumps, and wooden pilings. I can't even imagine the giant amounts of toxic junk still leaching into the Bay. <br /><br />Building 104, an office building from 1896:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4511892636/" title="Pier 70 by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2360/4511892636_6ea1599769_m.jpg" width="180" height="240" alt="Pier 70" /></a><br /><br />Building 21, from 1900.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4511250275/" title="Pier 70 by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2797/4511250275_e64a271221.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Pier 70" /></a><br /><br />Building 11, The Noonan Building, 1941. People obviously live there.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4511889376/" title="Pier 70 by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2693/4511889376_491ba08636.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Pier 70" /></a><br /><br />During wartime this shipyard churned out countless ships. Thousands of people worked there in round-the-clock shifts. As the shipyards closed the area became neglected and used for storage for old cars, MUNI trains and buses. It sounds like then there were decades of concern from people in the Dogpatch, Potrero, and Hunters Point communities, plans for redevelopment, toxic cleanup, reclamation, preservation of the historic buildings, and industrial customers who still might use the land for power plants, and ship building or repair. The largest floating dry dock facility in the world was sold to the City in the 1980s for one dollar -- probably because the massively polluted land (and ongoing pollution of the Bay) was clearly a liability and someone was going to have to *clean it up* before it got seriously used again. <br /><br />As I mulled over What Is To Be Done here's what I thought up. While it's not being used for much else and it's polluting and dangerous, full of crumbling buildings and broken glass and probably more asbestos than anyone can imagine, make it a public Dangerous Park. Just let anyone do whatever the hell they want in there and graffiti it up and have punk rock shows and photograph the roofs of falling-down warehouses. But let them know the dangers to their health and safety -- just as you'd put up signs to say that a seaside cliff is dangerous because of erosion and high waves. The conditions of entering the Dangerous Park should be agreement that you're not going to sue the city for whatever injuries result. <br /><br />Some of the Historic Buildings would be graffitied and fucked up, but maybe some would be improved, cleaned up, cared for by artists and colonized in interesting ways.<br /><br />I realize this isn't going to happen and instead it will end up being a squalid industrial center for a while longer until some asshole buys it and Develops it, because the only way that people are "allowed" to be in or live on a toxic waste dump is if some bunch of developers makes an obscene profit off it. But people using crappy in land in some less centralized and profitable way is, weirdly, never okay.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><!-- Begin supplemental 728 ad -->
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<!-- End supplemental 728 ad --></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15270008.post-23630530956820431702010-01-20T01:29:00.000-08:002010-01-20T13:00:18.060-08:00Connecting to a PebbleI came into this room with a jillion people soldering and just finishing their Arduino pebble thingies and some madman crouched by my wheelchair to explain how to mindmeld with it. After a bunch of fiddling and more kibbitzing by a guy named Garth we got this other one working. I am incoherent! Because jetlag, and I'm in New Zealand at day something of linux.conf.au.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4290343590/" title="Pebble! by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2800/4290343590_655d9434b4.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Pebble!" /></a><br /><br />Here's how to do it! On a mac! Incoherently! And not quite like <a href="http://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/MacOSX">this, which is full of lies</a>.<br /><br /><a href=http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software>download arduino software</a><br /><a href=http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm>download drivers</a><br /><br />You will have to restart your Mac. <br /><br /><a href=http://github.com/geekscape/Aiko>download source of Aiko</a> from github. (You do not need to go figure out github right now, just click on "download source")<br /><br />move that into ~/Documents/Arduino and unzip it.<br /><br />It needs to be like this:<br /><br /> docs/ nursery/<br />aiko_gateway/ examples/ pebble/<br />aiko_node/ libraries/ tests/<br /><br />And in:<br /><br />~/Documents/Arduino/libraries: <br /><br />Aiko/ PString/ pebble_relays/<br />NewSoftSerial/ PString2.zip pebble_relays_aiko/<br />NewSoftSerial10c.zip pebble/ pebble_temperature/<br />OneWire/ pebble_display/<br />OneWire.zip pebble_ldr/<br /><br /><br /><br />And thusly:<br /><br />~/Documents/Arduino/libraries/Aiko: <br /><br /><br />AikoCallback.h* AikoDeviceSPIBus.h* AikoSExpression.h*<br />AikoDeviceMCP320x.cpp* AikoEvents.cpp* AikoTiming.cpp*<br />AikoDeviceMCP320x.h* AikoEvents.h* AikoTiming.h*<br />AikoDeviceSPIBus.cpp* AikoSExpression.cpp* Makefile*<br /><br />You will be missing a bunch those files and the might not be in the right place. So move them around!<br /><br /><br />Download and unzip into ~Documents/Arduino/libraries: <br /><br />http://www.pjrc.com/teensy/arduino_libraries/OneWire.zip<br /><br />http://arduiniana.org/NewSoftSerial/NewSoftSerial10c.zip<br /><br />http://arduiniana.org/PString/PString2.zip<br /><br /><br />Then plug in your Pebble! Yay!<br /><br />Open Arduino application which you downloaaded earlier. <br /><br />Select the Serial Port from the Tools menu.<br /><br />Go to File--- Sketchbook -- aiko_node<br /><br />Click Verify in the button toolbar<br /><br />It should compile <br /><br />Click the upload button in the toolbar<br /><br />It turns on! yay!<br /><br />Make sure to select the serial port in "Tools".<br />Click the Serial monitor button in the toolbar. It pops up another window.<br /><br />select 38400 baud in the dropdown menu<br /><br />Your Pebble should talk to you now!<br /><br />thusly:<br /><br />(node pebble_1 ? (temperature 27.87 C))<br />(node pebble_1 ? )<br />(node pebble_1 ? (light_lux 854 lux))<br />(node pebble_1 ? )<br />(node pebble_1 ? (light_lux 854 lux))<br />(node pebble_1 ? (temperature 27.87 C))<br />(node pebble_1 ? )<br />(node pebble_1 ? (light_lux 855 lux))<br />(node pebble_1 ? )<br /><br />Tell it this:<br /><br />(relay on);<br />(relay off);<br />(relay2 on);<br />(reset_clock);<br /><br />You have now Impressed the Pebble. Name it something like R'duinoth. Huzzah!<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4290500152/" title="aiko says hi! by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4069/4290500152_89bb4fc6db.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="aiko says hi!" /></a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><!-- Begin supplemental 728 ad -->
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<!-- End supplemental 728 ad --></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15270008.post-56520427772129560692010-01-15T12:04:00.000-08:002010-01-15T12:24:52.941-08:00Beyond underwear: Useful things for crisis situationsA friend just asked me what would be useful to send to Haiti or to any evacuee camp, refugee camp, or disaster situation besides food, water, and medical supplies. She had the opportunity to send a box immediately by small aircraft and had to send things that were in her house already. So, here's my question for you. Other than food, water, and medical supplies, what would you list as non-obvious and useful in a disaster?<br /><br />Here is my list.<br /><br />Backpacks - things to hold other things<br />Tape - all kinds but mainly duct tape, electrical tape, and masking tape<br />Scissors<br />Pocketknife<br />Notebook<br />Sharpie markers<br />String or strong cord<br />Safety pins, binder clips, rubber bands<br />Ziplock and other plastic bags, all sizes<br />Handkerchiefs or bandanas<br /><br />What would you add to that list?<br /><br /><br />My list is heavy on the office supplies but that's because I believe that information is power. With paper, a Sharpie, and some good tape, you become an instantly powerful distributor of information, because you can create useful signs that spread information efficiently. The list is strangely similar to what I'd recommend you need to organize an impromptu conference. <br /><br />I still believe that along with food, water, shelter, and medical care, information is a primary need. <br /><br />Given a point of internet access, priority should be on peoplefinding and information booth services. For peoplefinding, register people for email if they don't have it - Gmail is excellent- and on some existing popular social software. I think Facebook is ideal as they have okay privacy controls, useful for limiting volatile family details. Their neighborhood and group features are useful for finding, say, everyone you can think of who you work with or who lives on your block. Full names (which is what official databases go by) aren't useful when you're trying to make sure that lady who works on your shift or your neighbor "Bud" are okay because you heard that their sister's looking for them. Sign people up for email and make sure they understand how to get back into it. Sign them up on some social software, and friend them and get them to friend you back. You are now a point of contact for anyone who knows them. Do this with everyone you speak with, and you'll be doing something very useful!<br /><br />In Katrina relief efforts I found that evacuees needed backpacks and tools to carry information -- notebook and pen, or a small folder or even a manila envelope, were crucial as they started to get paperwork, ID, and have to take notes on where to go for what resources, who they've seen, talked to, lists of people they're trying to find, and so on. Since officials, army and police would often just move cots and trash bags full of people's rescued (or newly received) belongings, a backpack is much better so people can carry essentials around.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><!-- Begin supplemental 728 ad -->
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<!-- End supplemental 728 ad --></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15270008.post-65023447526253595042010-01-02T08:19:00.000-08:002010-01-02T09:57:14.591-08:00Living in a boatA month ago <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7yfISlGLNU">I moved onto a boat</a>, a 37 foot Chris Craft Catalina built in 1987. The engine is in scattered rusted pieces. There's a faint bilgey, seaweedy smell and a gentle rocking motion. Pelicans, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GOWRK5ic7E">grebes</a>, coots, ducks, geese, scaups, cormorants, and night herons hang around the harbor outside my window.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4180087206/" title="harbor by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2672/4180087206_c8ee6d2db9.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="harbor" /></a><br /><br />Last night for the first time, during a minus tide (a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perigean_spring_tide">perigean spring tide</a>) the boat grounded on the muddy bottom. Then there was a moment where the boat began to sway again - it had lifted off and we were floating. I looked out at the christmas lights in the rigging next door and realized we were at our usual height relationship again, with a view of the canvas roof over their cockpit. While we were both grounded, their deeper keel hit bottom first, and their boat towered over us so that I was looking into their lower portholes from my cabin window.<br /><br />It's all a bit like a trailer park in a very wet parking lot. <a href="http://www.petesharbor.com/our_boats.html">Some people's boats sail out into the bay or to far destinations</a>. Others, like mine, stay put except for the promise and motion of the tide. People who have boats, and who live aboard their boats, seem to share a particular romanticism, dreaminess and the attachment of meaning to possibilities of a nomadic life, or a sense of needed refuge, shown in lists of the <a href="http://www.burgees.com/BoatNames.htm">most popular boat names</a> over the years. <br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tide">Tides are complicated</a>. On this part of the coast we get mixed tides -- with high water and low water twice a day, and one set of high and low points higher than the other. The tide moves north along the U.S. west coast because of the Coriolis effect. Here in the bay, down a marshy creek channel and in the middle of a slough, the tidal range is still over 8 feet. Floating docks and finger docks are loosely connected to piers by huge metal rings. Sometimes we on the boats, and the docks that bridge the water, are up at the level of the parking lot. At low tide, the ramp from the parking lot to the docks is quite steep.<br /><br />Dock steps with a handrail lead up to my boat. Between the main cabin and the other rooms, there are a few more steps. These are still hard for me to negotiate, especially stepping down. But through the stress of moving I've held up very well. Now that I'm settled in, the constant small variations of the steps between rooms, with resting possible in bed or in the living room and kitchen, are making my knees stronger. <br /><br />The head in the aft (captain's) cabin works well. The forward head has been in pieces for over a week, waiting for an out of stock valve to be shipped to one of a small group of my neighbors who have been in and out of the boat to study the valves and hoses below deck and the disassembled hoses attached to the toilet itself. I've learned a little bit about <a href="http://www.boatus.com/boattech/casey/04.htm">marine heads</a> in the meantime. Everyone here gets to know the marine shop and the RV supply places, and, I think, the workings of each other's boats.<br /><br />The boat had two circuits of 30 amps each. Space heaters, the microwave, and the toaster oven use the most amps and can potentially flip some circuit breakers. There's a 12 volt circuit too for the boat's batteries, and the bilge pump runs on that. Though the water and electricity are hooked up to the city services, I'm suddenly more aware of them as finite resources, and am now much more moderate in my use of both. My neighbors can see the water I use to wash dishes, as it's pumped out over the side. The toilets' holding tank is pumped out twice a month into a boat with a giant holding tank, with all our sewage sloshing around visibly inside. <br /><br />A small subset of my books fills three half-size bookshelves. I brought a lot of books about exploration and the sea, fiction and non-fiction. So far the best one has been <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Loss-Essex-Whale-Penguin-Classics/dp/0140437967">The Loss of the Ship Essex, Sunk By a Whale</a>. Three survivors from the 1820 wreck of a whaling ship tell the story of the whale's attack, a long journey in three open boats, starvation, thirst, fear, and cannibalism. My other favorite book just now, a present from <a href="http://www.oblomovka.com/">Oblomovka</a>, is The Queen of Whale Cay, about a woman named Joe Carstairs who drove ambulances in WWI, raced motorboats, had about a zillion lovers including Marlene Dietrich, and bought her own island in the Bahamas which she ruled feudal or colonial style until the 1960s. Every paragraph of the book was full of new outrageousness. I also brought some books of poems to translate, and some of my favorite poets like Ginsberg and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alta_%28poet%29">Alta</a>. <br /><br />By comparison to many other towns on the Peninsula, Redwood City has kept a little bit of its working class industry and feel, in part because it's a working deep water port. Ships from China and South Korea bring construction materials, like gypsum and rock for cement. They leave filled with scrap metal. On one side, a complex of tall buildings is built around a rocky artificial stream, then some salt ponds shade towards more slough and a landfill to the south. On the north side of the port, there's a yacht harbor surrounded by tech and genetics companies in a chain of long low buildings and their oceanic parking lots. Then, bits of slough and winding creek channels. At the point where Redwood Creek crosses 101, there's a marina called Docktown, with some enormous "floating homes" built on pontoons, and boats ranging down to the "barely floating" category. There are lots of flowerpots and dogs and amazing, attractive clutter, and a completely non-snooty yacht club. I like it there. My boat is in Pete's Harbor, a quiet marina just across the creek and around a point, facing Bair Island and Smith Slough. The liveaboards here all seem to know each other and it's a good community. Two newer marinas in town, West Point and Bair Island, are stricter in their rules and are out to attract a richer set of residents. But my impression of Docktown and Pete's Harbor is that people here are just regular -- not wealthy yacht owners -- and in fact it's very affordable to live on the water here once you have the boat and a slip to rent. The politics of the existence of marinas seems as complicated as tides and less predictable. Here is an area in flux, whose ownership is a bit unclear or is municipally owned. Would it even be possible to own a tiny bit of the coastline in the bay, here? Could it be possible for a consortium or co-operative to buy up some land and own their own personal boat slips, rather than renting the slips? I wonder, too, if that would inevitably lead to people filling in the spaces between docks and new land pushing outward into the Bay, as much of San Francisco was built on docks and filled in to become land, owned and controlled rather than the liminal space that coastlines seem to be. <br /><br />As I read about the complexities of tides I learned about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphidromic_point">amphidromic points</a>, places in the ocean where because of the Coriolis effect, the topography of the sea floor or the nearby landmasses, the tidal range is zero. The tides here keep me noticing things and alert to this small bit of the world. I'm paying attention to weather and watching the marine buoys nearest to the harbor. <br /><br />Anyway, the changes in my life have been overwhelming and absorbing, so much that I haven't been blogging much or spending time online, other than for work. I need to jump back in, though, and in a couple of weeks am leaving for New Zealand for <a href="http://www.lca2010.org.nz/">linux.conf.au</a> and <a href="http://wellington2010.drupalsouth.net.nz/">DrupalSouth</a>. Wellington is on Cook Strait, between the North and South Islands of New Zealand. On the east coast, high tide comes at the same time as low tide on the west coast. So the current through the channel is fierce and for various reasons, nearly unpredictable. A bit like my interest in geology and gardening and compost made me notice dirt and rocks and want to learn about the geological history of every place I go --- seeing a landscape as a potential narrative over the scale of geologic time and simultaneously from the point of view of a gardener --- living aboard a boat (which happened somewhat by chance as I looked for a cheap place to live in my town on Craigslist) has given me a new overlay or template or lens to view the rest of the world. So there's a new set of things to learn and notice, everywhere I go, which makes me feel incredibly lucky and happy. The rock and soil based lens of my view is about deep history and rootedness, and how to settle and blend into that landscape, making a sort of habitat or ecosystem where I make a home for birds and bugs, getting back some tomatoes and oregano and flowers. Here on the water in my glorified floating trailer, I find I've made the same sort of cozy domesticity inside the house, but outside, there's no feeling of rootedness or connection. I'm detatched, ephemeral, temporarily in residence, trying not to make an impact with my biodegradable soap, an observer and traveller. What would it be like, living in a spaceship? It's like what that anthropologist whose name I can't recall wrote about the attractions of waiting rooms and hotel lobbies. But rather than waiting in an impersonal static lobby for a particular event, I'm a temporary resident along with the ducks and herons as enormous forces keep our world in flux.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><!-- Begin supplemental 728 ad -->
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<!-- End supplemental 728 ad --></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15270008.post-44979708925732865512009-10-25T21:59:00.000-07:002009-10-28T16:37:47.986-07:00Disability Blog Carnival #59: Disability and WorkThe theme for the Disability Blog Carnival #59 is Work and Disability. It's <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Presidential-Proclamation-National-Disability-Employment-Awareness-Month/">National Disability Employment Awareness Month</a>. Thank you to Penny from the <a href=http://disstud.blogspot.com/>Disability Studies Blog</a> for co-ordinating the Disability Blog Carnival through 60 issues!<br /><br />Thank you all for your contributions! All through October, they buoyed me up and gave me food for thought. I felt intense pride to be part of this very loosely knit online community of thinkers and writers.<br /><br />The next Disability Blog Carnival will be hosted by the <em>fantastic</em> group blog <a href="http://disabledfeminists.com/">FWD/Forward: Feminists With Disabilities</a>. <br /><br /><ul><br /><li> Wheelchair Dancer contributed two posts. In <a href="http://cripwheels.blogspot.com/2009/10/becoming-disabled-on-job.html">Becoming Disabled On the Job</a> she writes about how even in a supportive workplace there were many obstacles to overcome as her physical capabilities changed over several years. <br /><br /><blockquote>Ultimately, I was successful at my job; I wrote my heart out, presented, won awards, grants, and funding; I got myself published. Technically, however, I didn't get my work done on schedule; in fact, it took me approximately two extra years to approximate a body of work like the ones that my peers had on their resumes. I felt like that broken and imposter racehorse, uselessly gimping around behind its pure blood, beautiful, swift sisters.</blockquote><br /><br />Her other post, <a href="http://cripwheels.blogspot.com/2009/10/disability-at-work.html">Disability at Work</a>, focuses on her current job as a dancer, where she is not the only person with a disability! "You know that disability is an important factor in your work environment when . . . " Ha! I love it! I'm printing out her 10 reasons why list and putting it up at my office!<br /><br /><li> Sophia from 'sprokenword has an otherwise excellent post which does contain some hatred expressed towards people riding airport motor transport carts who are fat. If you can read around that or bracket it, read on because the post explores some other important issues. In <a href="http://sprokenword.blogspot.com/2009/10/this-inaugural-post-was-prompted-by.html">Disability Employment Awareness Month</a>, Sophia describes her job working for a non-profit open source software company while dealing with gait problems, chronic pain, trouble standing, and difficulty walking. Her situation requires quite a lot of travel. I enjoyed this post and have a lot of respect for the difficulties of travel and Sophia's determination to do it. Sophia's post and Wheelchair Dancer's first post spoke to many of the issues that people with disabilities and chronic pain face in professional careers.<br /><br /><li> <a href="http://alisonbergblomjohnson.com/">Alison Bergblom Johnson</a>, from the blog Writing Mental Illness, posted about poetry as work. <a href="http://alisonbergblomjohnson.blogspot.com/2009/10/anne-sexton-patient-or-poet.html">Anne Sexton: Patient or Poet</a>. Anne Sexton was a brilliant and hard working poet. She won many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize. But in the psychiatric professions she is a patient and her work is considered as pathology - as evidence of her illness.<br /><br /><li> Deborah Kaplan wants to recognize the ways that her job is awesome in <a href="http://gnomicutterance.livejournal.com/39306.html#cutid1">working while disabled: it's really just fine</a>. "I could do most of those infamous "activities of daily living" without help if I had too (since I don't think that Congress defines "open-source coding and checking my feeds" as an activity of daily living). But without adaptive technology, I would not have been able to hold a job for the last 10 years, full stop." Her co-workers and employers are supportive. She has some complicated stuff to say about the tradeoff between working through pain and difficulty vs. taking time off and trying to heal and avoid stress. In all that complexity, though, her day to day experience of work is "pretty damn good".<br /><br /><li> Tlönista's post <a href="http://tlonista.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/workability/">Work/Ability</a> writees about some of the negative aspects of her experiences working and being a mentally ill person. She wonders how much longer she can go on. "Don’t think about the long term, don’t think about the future, treat your life like a sub-prime loan. For now I am a “good” mentally ill person. Not a menace, not a burden. I am functional. I’m so tired."<br /><br /><li> Sashafeather's post, "<a href="http://sasha-feather.dreamwidth.org/372260.html">Disability and Work: What I do</a>" centers on Ursula K. Le Guin's science fiction book about an anarchist planet, <em>The Dispossessed</em>, where the word for work is the same as the word for play. Sashafeather describes work/play as "what occupies a person's time, and what one does with the people in one's community". She does emotional work, self care and pain management, volunteer work for the WisCon feminist science fiction convention, and disability/anti-oppression activism. She moderates several online communities and does creative work in media fandom. <br /><br />Her post made me think about self-care and pain management as an important part of community work. It's something I have to remind myself of: If I don't deal with my physical pain levels, I will be less useful to the people around me and my community. You might think the motivation of "not being in so much pain" would be enough. Often it's not. <br /><br />And she moves into very interesting territory in writing about work, disability, and feminism:<br /><blockquote>I have personally benefitted from the feminist idea of work being a socially constructed idea, and "women's work" such as housework, childcare, and care of the elderly and ill being often unpaid or underpaid and devalued by society. The reason women are paid less than men is because women's work is undervalued. Women often provide emotional support for others, they build friendships, they build communities, they build homes. All of this takes time and effort.<br /><br />The categories of women and disabled people intersect hugely. The work of disabled people is also devalued, and disabled people face huge barriers such as pain, exhaustion, mobility and cognitive impairments, communication differences, discrimination in the work place and the wider world, and a lack of basic access to buildings, services, and transportation.</blockquote><br /><br /><li> Eva from The Deal with Disability wrote and posted a video of herself at her dogwalking job. <a href="http://thedealwithdisability.blogspot.com/2009/10/hey-everyone-i-have-video-for-you.html">Sometimes accessibility is more than meets the eye</a>. She posts flyers for her business at veterinarians' offices and was showing how though she found out she couldn't get into the office there, the staff's attitude was polite and helpful. Eva goes on to point out factors other than steps or ramps that affect accessibility.<br /><br /><li> <a href="http://aut.zone38.net/2009/10/25/the-spaces-in-my-resume/">The spaces in my résumé</a> by codeman38 talks about some of the practical difficulties in getting a job by traditional means. Interviews, transport, and phone calls are not completely impossible for him as an autistic person but they are definitely obstacles. He finds jobs through friends and family. <br /><br /><li> Tera from Sweet Perdition writes about her job at a local game store: <a href="http://sweetperdition.wordpress.com/2009/07/15/voldemort/">I am Lord Voldemort</a>. She works for store credit at a job that her college professors would consider below her capacity - but she loves her work and their appreciation of her.<br /><blockquote>Sometimes you think about getting a proper job, one that pays you money or, at the very least, requires you to leave the house, but you don’t want one. You realize that you don’t really want a lot of things that you’ve grown up hearing independent adults must have . . . But all this guilt is just society’s poison coursing through your brain; it isn’t you. The things you want–really want, not just think you should want in order to be a real person–are not the things your culture wants for you. Popular culture doesn’t have many models for the kind of person you are.</blockquote><br /><br /><li> Cheryl from Uppity Crip has two posts to contribute. Heads up that her blog has music on auto-play. <a href="http://uppity-crip.blogspot.com/2009/01/51-of-workplace-accomodations-cost.html">51% of Workplace Accomodations Cost Nothing</a> and <a href="http://uppity-crip.blogspot.com/2009/04/mental-illness-is-still-big-stigma.html">Mental Illness is Still a Big Stigma</a>. <br /><br /><li> I posted on BlogHer.com on <a href="http://www.blogher.com/working-women-disabilities">Working Women With Disabilities</a>. I was feeling exhausted and disheartened, and wanted to see other people's thoughts on working and being disabled. My own thoughts on the subject are going to take me a while to put together. When I post about my personal experiences with losing jobs, struggling to get SSI, working part time, passing as able, going back to school, and access issues on the job now that I'm working again. I'll link to it from the comments on this post. <br /><br /><li> <a href=http://wheeliecatholic.blogspot.com/>Wheelie Catholic</a> posted many times in October with Disability Awareness Month in mind. Her posts are great!<br /><br />* <a href=http://wheeliecatholic.blogspot.com/2009/10/top-ten-ways-for-managers-to-screw-up.html>The Top Ten Ways For Managers to Screw Up under the ADA</a><br />* <a href="http://wheeliecatholic.blogspot.com/2009/10/sears-case-is-largest-employment.html">Sears case largest disability related employment discrimination settlement</a><br />* <a href="http://wheeliecatholic.blogspot.com/2009/10/national-disability-employment.html">National Disability Employment Awareness Month: What Can We Do?</a><br />* <a href="http://wheeliecatholic.blogspot.com/2009/10/pbs-to-air-film-on-disability-advocates.html">PBS to Air Film on Disability Advocates</a><br />* <a href="http://wheeliecatholic.blogspot.com/2009/10/campaign-for-disability-employment.html">The Campaign for Disability Employment: whatcanyoudocampaign.org</a><br />* <a href=http://failblog.org/2009/10/22/sensitivity-fail-2/>Disability Awareness FAIL</a> - this one is hilarious and awful!<br /><br />Late additions:<br /><br />* <a href="http://aspergersquare8.blogspot.com/2009/10/job-interview.html">Video Post from Bev</a> from Asperger Square 8.<br /><br /></ul><br /><br />[ETA: warning on fat hatred on a link.]<br />[ETA again: I phrased that badly and i think misinterpreted sophia's words to be about scooter users. By carts she meant people who are riding the electric carts that airport employees drive around to pick people up. See comments on this post for my thoughts. - Liz 10/28/09]<br /><br />Thank you all again for clueing me in to your amazing writing. And thanks for reading! <br /><br />Please stay tuned to <a href="http://disabledfeminists.com/">FWD/Forward</a> for the next Disability Blog Carnival call for contributions for Carnival #60!<div class="blogger-post-footer"><!-- Begin supplemental 728 ad -->
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<!-- End supplemental 728 ad --></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15270008.post-91182026126146923492009-10-14T10:09:00.001-07:002009-10-14T10:37:00.191-07:00ADAPT in Atlanta kicking ass, taking namesThis weekend I went right from the Blogalicious conference in Atlanta to the end of a march and start of a rally that kicked off a week of activism by ADAPT. <br /><br />Their goals are, free people from being incarcerated in nursing homes, and kept in there against their will. They back the <a href=http://www.adapt.org/mfp1.php>Money Follows the Person</a> program, which means a person's benefits are under their control rather than under the control of doctors, social workers, and assisted living facilities (who are a powerful medical-industrial complex much like the prison-industrial complex: powerful lobbyists with a lot of money at stake.) Right now ADAPT also <a href=http://www.adapt.org/cca.php>supports the Community Choice Act</a>, a bill which you can see and follow directly with <a href=http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h1670/show>OpenCongress.org</a>. <br /><br /><img src="http://nickscrusade.org/img/CCA%20Randy.jpg"><br /><br />I hopped out of a taxi with two backpacks hanging off the back of my wheelchair, tired enough to cry but feeling jet setty, determined and super excited, as if going to the crip activist prom. As I rolled up an exhausting hill to the Martin Luther King historic site and rose garden. Hundreds and hundreds of disabled people and others were there. There were some songs and short speeches. There seemed to be three or four main organizer dudes, 70s looking older white guys. I gradually realized everyone was in groups based on the color of their tshirts. <br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/d1BImednUe0&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/d1BImednUe0&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />I have not been involved on any level other than donating money to ADAPT and though I write about disability online a lot I don't get to hang out with anyone really and I miss that enormously and need some solidarity. So I was so grateful just to be there for a while with everyone. I wanted to stay and support the goals of the organization to get government officials to change policies, get people out of forced institutional living, and embody our political power with direct action. <br /><br />But I'm also going to frankly tell the story of my afternoon and my thoughts.<br /><br />First, here is an ADAPT logo and a link to their donation page.<br /><br /><a href=http://www.adapt.org/donate.php><img src="http://www.adapt.org/images/adapt-fop-avatar-150px.png"></a> DONATE!!!<br /><p><br /><br /><a href=http://twitter.com/NationalADAPT>Follow NationalADAPT on Twitter</a><br /><a href=http://twitter.com/MIADAPT>Follow Michigan ADAPT</a> on Twitter<br /><p><br /><br />Here's a short speech by Lois who says "Free our brothers and sisters, free our people."<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fKS3n8V0_4M&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/fKS3n8V0_4M&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />I enjoyed the small bits of chanting we did. How do you spell power? A-D-A-P-T! However I have been in enough rallies in life that I never want to yell "The People united will never be defeated" again. Did it anyway in the heat of the moment. But I draw the line at "Hey Hey Ho Ho." A person has to have some boundaries. Hah!<br /><br />Andrew Jones speaks about getting out of an institution with the MFP program which has now been denied funding. I missed videoing the second bit of his talk, which was fantastic (my camera ran out of batteries just then.)<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/N-w2duxnSnI&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/N-w2duxnSnI&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Later that afternoon I went to shake Andrew's hand and tell him I'd upload the video of part of his speech, and he raffishly explained to me that I was a rather attractive and curvaceous young lady. Thanks, Andrew, but LOL that was some quick work, how about making friends first, also, actually I am 40 and prideful of my mature charms and middle aged wisdom. You are certainly silver tongued though and should get on email. It would work for you.<br /><br />Thank you ASL interpreters. Y'all worked so hard. And thanks ADAPT for structuring that constant side by side translation.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4004519915/" title="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2539/4004519915_271425da28_m.jpg" width="180" height="240" alt="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday" /></a><br /><br />So then, there was a sort of extra staged bit which I had mixed feelings about, keep in mind I am a total outsider to ADAPT so take it all with a grain of salt. Delores Bates and Kathy and Bodie came up to the front of the rally and did not speak but the main organizer guy told Delores' story of being in an institution for "seizures" for the last 43 years. She just got out, I guess with ADAPT's help, this September, to live in her own place. IT was her 57th birthday on the day of the rally and they presented her with a birthday cake and a giant card with lots of signatures. We all sang her Happy Birthday. It was her first birthday on the outside in 43 years. <br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Wpgp30XSxXk&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Wpgp30XSxXk&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br /><br />So, okay, I cried like a baby, but I also was like "So, fucking give her a piece of her own cake then? Also, what she have to say about it if anything?" And felt it was a bit stagey and poster-childy. I talked with Delores a bit afterwards and asked her if I could take a picture, she smiled and nodded and I showed her the photos in my camera for a bit. I wished she could talk with me. Thank you Delores for contributing your story and your birthday moment to ADAPT and all of us in the crowd. Congratulations on getting out.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4005294932/" title="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2582/4005294932_132fcefce8_m.jpg" width="180" height="240" alt="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday" /></a><br /><br /> I wondered what happened next and I imagined again her having email and showing her Eva's <a href="http://thedealwithdisability.blogspot.com/">The Deal with Disability</a> blog entries so she could totally crack up laughing. And that she could have a Facebook page and people could donate directly to her if they wanted and if they cried while singing her Happy Birthday rather than it being sort of showcase for ADAPT, though I also felt like ADAPT probably does right by her and she might be happy to donate that publicity about her life for the good of others. Basically I had my little social media empowerment fantasies and started making real life plots to go to nursing homes in my area and implement my idea to get them online with wireless and take it from there. More about this later on <a href="http://hackabilityblog.com">Hack Ability</a>.<br /><br />Here are some scenes of the people and the crowd.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4004509737/" title="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2492/4004509737_423cbf1acd.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4005276704/" title="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2430/4005276704_4e499e8474.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4004506529/" title="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3209/4004506529_7b537e6c70.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4004502409/" title="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2456/4004502409_53517442d3_m.jpg" width="180" height="240" alt="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4004498881/" title="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2557/4004498881_ca944d09de_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4005292760/" title="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2582/4005292760_a7c299794d_m.jpg" width="180" height="240" alt="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday" /></a><br /><br />I saw my friend Bethany and was very excited! We were on a panel together at the Sex:Tech conference. Then wandering around for a while I introduced myself to some women named Naomi and Joanne. They were very persuasive trying to get me to stay. I thought about calling work and begging for time off without pay, and trying to find child care, and seeing if I could change my plane ticket instead of leaving that night. Would it be possible? I considered just "accidentally" missing my plane and finding a place to stay overnight. But I'd have to accomplish all that in something like 2 hours and I didn't want to let my employers down or my family. If only I had planned to stay.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4005288232/" title="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2606/4005288232_807e7d6473.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday" /></a><br /><br />Then people took off up the big ramp out of the park and up another hill to Park Manor nursing home, right next to the Rose Garden. I asked a guy to hold my hand and pull me up the hill. (Thanks!) We all marched and rolled past and waved. The Older People for Community Choice stayed outside the windows with a big banner, waving, till the end of the parade. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4004531779/" title="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2471/4004531779_42b60dd879.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday" /></a> <br /><br />Now here is the "Stay on the Sidewalk" bit, where I rant at length!<br /><br />As I rolled down hill at the tail end of the march I made friends with a guy named Tali and soon we were deep in discussion about disability rights politics. Over the next few blocks we kept getting yelled at to get into single file. The march went on and on and Tali started to give me a lift - I hung onto the side of his power chair so he could pull me (and my giant backpack) up the hills (which no one who isn't in a manual chair would even think of as "hills"). We were all in the middle of the right lane of the road. Basically I don't react well to senseless orders and I'm proud of my capability to land in a strange city and get around. Also, i know how to cross the street but at every intersection another person usually one on 2 legs was screaming at me through a megaphone to keep up. This one older lady behind us in a power chair was very, very upset that Tali and I were not following the rules. I was half a lane away from the part of the street that was open to traffic and at no time was in any danger. What I think happened was a vicious cycle of this lady's instant judgement of me as a spoiled bratty child of privilege who needed to be controlled. And this kicked in all her officiousness, which in turn pushed my buttons big time so I refused to do what she said. As disabled people (or people in general) we are not served well by doing what we're told without using our own judgement. By the end of the march I was not only so mad I could spit, I was ready to go get hit by a car just out of spite. If not rolling up huge, horrible hills, being yelled at every inch while I was deep in talk with Tali, I would have liked to have a good heart to heart talk with that lady about authority, privilege, hierarchies, rules, race, disability, internalized oppression, and so on, and I mean that sincerely. Instead I lost my temper and just kept yelling No, leave me alone. The worst moment was when she decided I was too far back at the end of the line of the parade and she started yelling for someone to come and push me. "We've got a manual wheelchair here who needs a pusher" And that sent me over the edge of rage to be referred to like that. I also fight very hard to be independent in big and small ways. So it pisses me off that someone else thinks they get to decide when I need "help" which in this case would not have been help. Tali and I were cussing everyone out loudly and yelling No sorry don't need help we're anarchists. I also had some commentary from walking organizers in orange shirts about "how well I was doing"... thanks but shut up, that was a patronizing and unnecessary thing to say.<br /> <br />The thing is, i've been an activist and organizer for years and I know how to organize a march or parade, I know you have to get permits for it and work with the city and the police, I know how to block traffic as safely as possible, and I've been to many rallies where there are guys barking orders through megaphones at people who don't need to be ordered around at that moment, because they panic a little at being responsible and in a position of authority, and so they have to go around displaying it, because they're worried and need the feedback and reassurance that their authority is *working*. I would like to tell those guys to take a chill pill. Unless it is an actual crisis situation, you are not helping, you are just training people not to think for themselves, and causing a reaction of confusion and resentment. And in an actual crisis situation, it may very well NOT BE YOU with the megaphone and orange vest who keeps a cool head and exhibits leadership. To be overly generous, there is the opposite kind of asshole in rallies with a black bandana who is just there to fuck shit up and set a newspaper vending machine on fire and they can also kiss my ass. And I'm not that kind of asshole, i'm the *journalist kind of asshole* and also one of those rogue computer people. In any situation I look to whoever is sane and making sense and being effective. If the most sensible person there is me, then I lead. In a situation where I have information that shows that it is best for another person to lead and coordinate and there are rules that make sense, then it is best for me to go with that. That, for people fighting for "empowerment" should not be hard to understand.<br /><br />Here's how I felt about it at the time and Tali too....<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4005303534/" title="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3558/4005303534_8403425ca4.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday" /></a><br /><br />LOL!!!<br /><br />Tali especially since he was put into a different "color group" as Bethany who he had specifically come there to meet as his one friend at the march and then a bunch of organizers wouldn't "let" him sit with her since he had the wrong color tshirt on or something. Um. !!?? What possible purpose could this serve. We were told over and over again that people were trying to PROTECT US. What's wrong with that statement should be a bit obvious.<br /><br />Now if it is directly going to contribute to saving someone's live or helping us not be harmed in some way I can shut up about my personal dislike of orders and my special snowflake self and rights, and be dutiful for common good, but this was NOT THAT MOMENT.<br /><br />Near the end of the march back I ran into my blog friend PhilosopherCrip,<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4004534317/" title="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2441/4004534317_8b18bf52a8.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday" /></a><br /><br />I adore him!<br /><br />We spoke super briefly and he sized up my state of mind and I think, in a post later, actually partly answered it by <a href=http://www.philosophercrip.com/2009/10/11/atalanta-action-days-1-2/>explaining ADAPT's organizational philosophy</a> and how it goes into military organization mode during Actions.<br /><br /><blockquote>Now, when folks refer to ADAPT as the “militant” wing of the disability rights movement, they are more accurate than they may realize. To some degree, ADAPT’s organizational structure is a representative democracy as actions are being deliberated and planned. However, when the wheelchair tire rubber meets the road, we turn into a highly authoritarian, quasi-militaristic structure, complete with chain of command and an expectation to follow orders exactly. This has all been a matter of reflection for me (particularly how trust relationships operate within a direct action activism structure), some of which will hopefully find its way into a future blog entry. </blockquote><br />I appreciate that explanation very much and it goes a fairly long way to quench my irritation. However I have a meta irritation which is that a lot of the people at the rally might not have the luxury of being irritated or going off like I could to do their own thing. There was not good information passed out to people. A lot of people don't have independent means as far as money. The pace of activities was brutally fast. I was increaasingly conscious of my own extreme privilege relative to others there. I could at any point just call a taxi and go wherever I damn pleased. So I could criticize the leadership all I wanted. That is not a good feeling, it's not right or fair, and to me is a sign something is not right in a power structure. I was like, damn, I'm even more happy for my job because it means i'm not subject to being grateful to these officious do gooders to boss me around while they're "helping me" "for my own protection".<br /><br />When I'm getting arrested or facing some pepper spray then I appreciate organization but being "protected" from the simple act of wheeling down the street next to my friend ... no thanks.<br /><br />As an amateur leader myself in some situations I would advise other "organizers" to cope with loose cannons like me by valuing their capabilities and not trying too hard to rule over them in the small stuff. It backfires. Just let them do their thing and then when the time is ripe, co-opt them. (LOL AGAIN) (I say this mostly to make Joe/PhilosopherCrip crack up laughing)<br /><br />And as I bitched about this to my friends a lot of them said "Yeah, that's why I don't really hang with ADAPT, that stuff turns me off." <br /><br />That is too bad and it's feedback that should not be dismissed. <br /><br />On another level of meta I would question whether the organization has a fair amount of military veterans in it who perpetuate their drill sergeant style and somewhat out of date organizational tactics. We should be empowering each other with information and two way access to public discourse in ALL WAYS so that we can act collectively in a swarm-like fashion. What y'all need is flash mobs, not paramilitary squads and cells. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4005281406/" title="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3477/4005281406_3f31b4d363_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday" /></a> <br /><br />I really do respect all that ADAPT has achieved and does!!!! <br /><br />But check what you're doing and listen up. Many aspects of the rally and march reminded me of my dealings in the Houston Astrodome during Katrina with the Red Cross officials vs. the rogue anarchist computer people. And I want to tell you that what on some level what got people the hell out of that refugee camp was information and connectivity: phones and email, myspace and facebook and search engines and the web. Not Professional Organizers and charity and hierarchical leadership that hugs information and power tight to its chest. A flow of information means that people can make decisions and act together. You all need some wing of your organization that works to those ends too.<br /><br />Anyway, at the hotel, I actually used my privilege to take our asses to the hotel bar and have a much needed beer and sandwich in the 20 minutes before I had to catch a taxi and plane out of town. The bar waitress was SO nice and saw I was looking for a power outlet to plug in my laptop, and she brought me my sandwich to go so I could eat some of it and take the rest. She was completely unfazed by our wheelchairs. Omni Hotel, you rock. Bethany and Sara and Tali it was the highlight of my trip to get to hang out with you.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/4005306466/" title="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2481/4005306466_e6e3d06b0e_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="ADAPT rally and march in Atlanta, Sunday" /></a><br /><br />So I flew off literally sobbing with my desire to stay there and be in the week's actions despite my rant about power structures and being yelled at, so ready to go for it. <br /><br />I resolved to donate my week's salary and to exhort other people all week to donate to the cause either by directly helping someone out or <a href=http://www.adapt.org/donate.php>donating to ADAPT to support their actions and organization</a>. <br /><br /><b>Would anyone out there like to <a href=http://www.adapt.org/donate.php>match my donation</a>? Email me, lizhenry@gmail.com, or comment here. </b><br /><br />The next day I woke up at 5am and began following what was happening in Atlanta. All day throughout work I could not stop thinking of all of y'all in Atlanta, cheering you on over Twitter, I worked to post and tag all my photos and videos as fast as possible as the only contribution I could make remotely.<br /><br />What you all achieved and are doing today is so beautiful. Congratulations on getting into the Governor's office, HUD and HHS and making top officials agree to meet right then and there and begin negotiations. So smart and so effective. You got a response and got the politicians to listen and take our power seriously. YEAH. (And direct action and the threat of an endless sit in or hundreds of us dragged out in handcuffs, ie, PR disaster, IS WHAT IT TAKES. RIGHT ON.) Good job with the talk of timelines and scheduling a series of committee meetings. Please, report on this in as much detail as you can on the net. And to report on it ASAP so we know what's going down. A lot of us are watching and putting our trust in you right now to represent our interests. <br /><br />Thanks for listening. Also, thanks to Nick Dupree for letting me know about the rally and actions in the first place (last week on his blog). Now, anyone who read this who can afford it go and donate. Consider trying to get your employers or family or friends to donate as well. And, go read up on the other posts in <a href=http://www.nickscrusade.org/adapt-blogswarm-fall-action-2009/>Nick Dupree's ADAPT Blogswarm</a> !<div class="blogger-post-footer"><!-- Begin supplemental 728 ad -->
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It's divine madness hanging out with the muses.<br /><br />Have some poems with my translations! <br /><br />From Cortejo y Epinicio<br />David Rosenmann-Taub (b. 1927)<br />1949<br /><blockquote><br />XXXVII<br />El Combate<br /><pre><br />"¿Hacer?", me retorcía el Poderosos:<br />"autodefé de trámites lacayos,<br /> amolando cilicios,<br /> acuso la nostalgia del bozal."<br /> <br /> "¡Hacer!", blandí, de pie. Larvas... Rivales<br /> nieblas — andamios — en los yermos: una<br /> luz rededora decisivamente<br /> nutría y desmigaba.<br /></pre><br /></blockquote><br />Rosenman-Taub compacts these poems with precision - but with precise attention to ambiguities and broad meanings. I interpret this poem as an internal and external battle, a response to power, a battle about action. To make, to act, to do. Action? or Action! All came to mind to translate "Hacer!" In one mood, the poem comes out like this:<br /><blockquote><br />Duel<br /><br />"To do?" Power wrung from me:<br />"Auto de fé of bootlicking bureacracy,<br />itching prickle of hair shirts;<br />I blame nostalgia for the leash."<br /><br />"To do!" I blare, standing tall.<br />Mists - scaffoldings - in the wastelands, one<br />encompassing light critically<br />nurtured and eroded.<br /></blockquote><br />If you grant that is a possible interpretation of the poem, what would you say it means? What is its feeling? What is opposed to what? What relationship do those two verses, those two stances, have to each other? Are they either/or? Are they one in response to another? <br /><br />Rosenman-Taub's poems are puzzles, cryptograms, circular ruins. They itch at me. The language sticks into itself, words interfacing uncomfortably with each other, like burrs. The language of a mad philosopher-poet. It's a How to Think manual, but not for Dummies. As some difficult novels function to teach the reader how to read (suspiciously, and circularly) these difficult short poems teach the poet all that difficulty in an alchemical crucible. Playfully - but dead serious.<br /><br />Here are <a href=http://liz-henry.blogspot.com/2008/04/poetry-month-little-playful-translation.html>two more translations of a single poem by him, "Jerarquía"</a>. They're fun!<br /><br />It is a mistake when translators translate an obscure word in one language to make it easier to understand in a new. I try to go with my judgement of how awkward, hard, stuck up, dusty, a word is. <a href=http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/caliginous>caliginous</a> for example. I let it stand in this bullfight poem.<br /><br /><blockquote>VIII<br /><br />En el poniente de pardos vallados,<br />de sobaquillo y verónica de oro,<br />juegan el hombre y la parca: embrocados,<br />derivan: cuadran faena. El tesoro,<br /><br />caliginoso cabestre, se oculta<br />de la destreza de tules solares:<br />risco de fauces de jade: sepulta<br />los quioscos gilvos. La parca ¡No pares!<br /><br />hace ondular sobre los inmolados<br />novillos. Cómplice de acantilados<br />cuernos, ¡No pares! se trasvina, sigue<br /><br />y sigue... El hombre a las landas del cielo<br />ha escudriñado con garfio gemelo.<br />Ya no se sabe quién es quien persigue.</blockquote><br /><br />Like I said, a metaphysical bullfight. What a poem, interrupting itself!<br /><br /><blockquote>VIII<br /><br />In the west wind of corralled dun bulls,<br />of cape-sweep and stylish lance-stab, golden,<br />man and fate are playing: horn-tangled,<br />they shift meaning: dance formal faena. The best,<br /><br />caliginous maverick, half-hidden<br />from the dexterity of sunlight lace:<br />rock-crag jade jaws: he entombs<br />the gilted grandstands. Fate - Don't stop! -<br /><br />ripples waving over the sacrificial<br />yearling bulls. Conspirator of cliff-edge<br />horns - Don't stop! - transcending, on <br /><br />and on... The man come to heaven's prairies<br />has skewered all with twinned horn;<br />Now who knows who's chasing who?<br /></blockquote><br /><br />It's impossible to translate a poem like this literally and not screw it up. You have to know that it means something, settle on a meaning, on meanings battling, and hover over those meanings. "Don't stop!" set off from the action and repeated I think here is perfectly timed, an abruption of what the poem means and who is speaking or thinking. Who is saying don't stop? to who? We feel the audience - we are the audience of the bullfight and the dance, the fight is between the poet and the text, or the poet and the poem. Or the author exhorts us, familiarly - go on! Don't stop! Or any number of any other beautiful air-castles of meaning. The poem turns midway through from a poem about a bullfight to a poem about ways of thinking and reasoning.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><!-- Begin supplemental 728 ad -->
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You could try turning Javascript off in your browser to see those hidden users.<br /><br />Then, delete them (if you can) from the panel. I didn't try this myself, but I think it will work. <br /><br />Or, you can use mysql or phpmyadmin to delete those users from your database. If you don't remember how to connect to your database, look at the files in your wordpress folder and read the contents of wp-config.php. That will have the username and password and database host name. You might also need to look at the help or FAQ files for your web host. <br /><br />In phpMyAdmin, you can find and delete the hidden users by connecting to your database, then browsing the users table. Check the boxes by the wp_users and the email fields (or just check all of them) and then click Browse again. This should show you a list of all the users on your blog.<br /><br />This is what a row of user data should look like in phpMyAdmin:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/3899623096/" title="wp_users-sql-good by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2645/3899623096_f93a63a1bd.jpg" width="500" height="14" alt="wp_users-sql-good" /></a><br /><br />This is what a "hidden user" account will look like. It'll be a name that doesn't show up in your WordPress Dashboard, and it won't have an email address in that 5th field. Might be a good idea to delete these users right away.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/3899623216/" title="wp_users-sql-bad by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2515/3899623216_d2a1cebf6b.jpg" width="500" height="14" alt="wp_users-sql-bad" /></a> <br /><br />I followed <a href=http://lorelle.wordpress.com/2009/09/04/old-wordpress-versions-under-attack/>Lorelle's instructions for how to recover from my WordPress blog being hacked</a>. That worked fine:<br /><br />* I did an xml export from the Dashboard and made sure I knew what that file was named and where I saved it.<br />* I did an sql dump of the whole blog (from the mysql command line, but you could do one from phpMyAdmin too) Just to make sure I would have everything, and so that I could do some forensics later on the contaminated db.<br />* Then I deleted that db, made a new db, and saved the information on how to log into it. You could also drop all the tables in the old one, I guess, and keep using it. While you could leave the old db there, it seems unwise.<br />* I deleted all the stuff in my wordpress folder on my server. If I'd thought, I would have saved a few custom banners and images first. <br />* I downloaded WordPress latest version, 2.8.4 and unzipped it, along with some themes and plugins.<br />* I then went to the url for my blog and told the install screen a blog name and my email address, and got a new admin password. Voila, new empty blog.<br />* Then, from the WordPress Dashboard, went to Manage and then Import. I imported the xml file as a WordPress import, with its attachments. This brought me all my pages, posts, comments, and so on.<br /><br />A little tweaking and my blog was as good as new.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/36/86761499_45cb0705b6_m.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 154px; height: 240px;" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/36/86761499_45cb0705b6_m.jpg" border="0" alt="Total Crisis Panic Street Sign" /></a> (While Danger is Eminent sometimes, I don't think that's what the signmaker meant!)<br /><br /><br />I think for your average user, who finds upgrading and installing a bit scary, this will seem even more scary. But it's not bad at all. It just requires you to follow the steps, write down or cut and paste all the information you will need to keep track of:<br /><br />- one set of info for your web host account<br />- one set for your sql database account and phpmyadmin<br />- the information for your blog itself, for the WordPress install <br />- where you're saving the export file with your blog posts and comments!<br /><br />In a pinch, if you really mess up in this process, you can get a backup and restore from your web host. <br /><br />Now, even though I went through this process, I think that someone might potentially write a plugin or script to reveal and delete those hidden users. It might not catch all the modified data touched by those users, though. Spam may already have been inserted into your old posts, or some other havoc wreaked, which you could catch with <a href=http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/exploit-scanner/>Exploit Scanner</a> or some other useful tool. The problem with this approach might be that there are multiple versions or exploits based on this security flaw and no one is sure yet if it's modified core WordPress code or created some other exploitable security hole. So at this point, I think it's best to do a clean install if you think you can manage it.<br /><br />If you're not sure, turn off Javascript in the browser, go to the Users panel, and delete the people who shouldn't be admins -- at least. And maybe there will be an easier fix in a few days -- keep checking the <a href=http://wordpress.org/development/>WordPress development blog</a> to see if it says something more useful than "<a href=http://wordpress.org/development/2009/09/keep-wordpress-secure/>OMG, you dumbass, why didn't you upgrade right away, never, never, never do that again!</a>" (Thanks... I know... thanks for the lecture, grumpy sysadmin...)<br /><br />When I did this -- and I had to, because "upgrade WordPress to latest version" was not #1 on my to do list, and a blog of mine got messed with -- I had to re-install my plugins and go through the steps to re-create my blog. This goes to show that it's a good idea to keep a worklog of all the things you've done to a blog, or a wiki or any sort of installation, so that you can recreate it from scratch! You can do this on your blog itself, by creating a section in your About page or somewhere else, listing the plugins you use, and when you've upgraded, and so on. It is especially useful to share this information a group blog where you might have more than one administrator. If you haven't done this you could just be sure to do it next time and then write a really cranky blog post about how you don't understand how anyone in the world could be so clueless. HA.<br /><br />Good luck and here's some more links on the subject!<br /><br /><a href=http://codex.wordpress.org/FAQ_My_site_was_hacked>WordPress Codex FAQ: My site was hacked</a><br /><a href=http://weblogtoolscollection.com/archives/2009/09/04/old-wordpress-version-attack-warning-please-upgrade/>Old WordPress Version attack warning: please upgrade</a><br /><a href=http://dougal.gunters.org/blog/2009/09/05/checking-your-wordpress-security>Checking your WordPress security</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><!-- Begin supplemental 728 ad -->
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<br />Glasses were definitely IN. Me and Mario G. spaced out for a long time wearing these <a href=http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/06/in_the_maker_shed_trip_glasses.html>Trip Glasses</a>! Maybe that's why we got into such deep conversation later in the corner of the Open Source Politics session.
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<br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/3747215487/" title="OSCON by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2660/3747215487_c7ddc04692_m.jpg" width="180" height="240" alt="OSCON" /></a>
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<br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/3748004528/" title="OSCON by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2630/3748004528_6f539d5565_m.jpg" width="180" height="240" alt="OSCON" /></a>
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<br /><a href=http://ingy.net/>Ingy döt Net</a> models his 5 pairs of sunglasses. I'm not sure if this was a particular message about redundancy in code or if it was just one of those Ingy things.
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<br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/3750925251/" title="OSCON by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2605/3750925251_849ab735fd_m.jpg" width="180" height="240" alt="OSCON" /></a>
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<br /><a href=http://librarianavengers.org/2009/07/me-bouncing-around-onstage-at-an-oreilly-conference/>Librarian Avenger</a> Erica had the best shoes:
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<br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/3745708842/" title="OSCON by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2579/3745708842_b10eea0448_m.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="OSCON" /></a>
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<br />But seriously, OSCON. I had a good time and talked to a lot of smart interesting people. I hung out with Denise and Mark from <http://dreamwidth.net>Dreamwidth</a>, with <a href=http://infotrope.net>Skud</a>, with my former co-workers from Socialtext - Casey, Ingy, and Lyssa - and with Oblomovka, Yoz, Greg Elin, and a super old school Perl monger named Dave, Emma Jane, Val. I appreciated everyone's advice on consulting and on situations where one is expected to sort of provide the diversity. (Argh.) I went to all the expo hall booths talking with people and gathering up stickers to pass out at BlogHer's Geek Lab later in the week. The only full sessions I went to were Akkana Peck's Bug Fixing talk, which was really clear and good, and the open source politics panel.
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<br />Skud's keynote <a href=http://infotrope.net/blog/2009/07/25/standing-out-in-the-crowd-my-oscon-keynote/>Standing Out in the Crowd</a> was great. I'm still kind of absorbing some of the reactions to it from <a href=http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/07/oscon-standing-out-in-the-crow.html>O'Reilly Radar</a> and from <a href=http://lwn.net/Articles/343615/>Linux World News</a>. Women in any tech field, don your best armor before wading into those threads. My feeling is that it could have been a lot worse though and maybe we've reached a tipping point where enough people understand there's some problems and have a clue what might be helpful. For me, one of the more depressing things that happens in this field is when women with about 100 times the status and skill level I have end up giving the (private) advice that while they agree with all this and still feel it, they think it is bad for one's career to mention sexism or feminism ever. In this case, hurrah, that just didn't happen (at least that I'm aware of.) However, I think it's still the case that the vast majority of women I know in my field do feel the effects of misogyny and sexism and are often enraged by it in ways difficult to express. I would like to go further out on a limb here and say that the intersections of geek fandom culture and open source/tech people combined with the ongoing discussions of race, class, gender etc, like Racefail '09 for example, have upped the level of awareness and of discourse and have really changed some people's perspectives. Not that that translated into anyone in this discussion going "Hey, how about the rather low number of African American and Latino/a folks represented in open source at this conference and others in the U.S.?"
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<br />Anyway!
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<br />I enjoyed speaking at <a href=http://oscon.blip.tv/file/2391051/>Ignite OSCON</a> and hearing the amazing lightning talks.
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<br /><embed src="http://blip.tv/play/AYGTlTsC" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="480" height="300" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed>
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<br /><a href=http://www.chesnok.com/daily/>Selena Deckelmann</a>'s talk on the election in Nigeria was pretty great. As a Postgres expert she went to connect with a few IT guys in Nigeria who were scanning and <a href=http://www.africanloft.com/can-fingerprint-identification-strengthen-democracy-in-nigeria/>analyzing the fingerprints</a> on a large sample of ballots. Some huge percentage of them were duplicate fingerprints. After a long legal battle, <a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olusegun_Mimiko>Olusegun Mimiko</a> was declared the legal winner of the election and the governor of Ondo state.
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<br />My own talk was a short version of the DIY for PWD talk I gave at ETech.
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<br /><div style="width:425px;text-align:left" id="__ss_1802527"><a style="font:14px Helvetica,Arial,Sans-serif;display:block;margin:12px 0 3px 0;text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/lizhenry/ignite-oscon-your-flying-jetpack-1802527" title="Ignite OSCON: Your Flying Jetpack">Ignite OSCON: Your Flying Jetpack</a><object style="margin:0px" width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=jetpack-ignite-oscon-090803003424-phpapp01&stripped_title=ignite-oscon-your-flying-jetpack-1802527" /><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><embed src="http://static.slidesharecdn.com/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=jetpack-ignite-oscon-090803003424-phpapp01&stripped_title=ignite-oscon-your-flying-jetpack-1802527" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="355"></embed></object><div style="font-size:11px;font-family:tahoma,arial;height:26px;padding-top:2px;">View more <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/">documents</a> from <a style="text-decoration:underline;" href="http://www.slideshare.net/lizhenry">Liz Henry</a>.</div></div>
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<br />Here's what I said, more or less:<blockquote>
<br />Hi, I'm Liz Henry. Would you like a flying jetpack? I really, really would! To get them, we're going to need to apply DIY and open source ideas & organization to hack accessibility - and the idea of disability.
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<br />My wheelchair is a machine, a tool to get my body from one place to another. I'd like for it to be easy -- and possible -- for me to fix and hack. Like a bike, or a car. It's no more complex. I want root on my own mobility.
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<br />You can easily find information on how to fix a car. even though a car is like a giant polluting killing machine. There are books, tools, manuals available. The barriers to entry are low, so lots of people start car-fixing businesses.
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<br />You can find out how to fix a bike. There's tons of information freely circulated to the public. There are 20 million bike riders in the US. There's little independent bike shops everywhere. It's an industry.
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<br />But how to fix a wheelchair. 55 million disabled people are NOT feeling lucky. It's very hard to find information on how to fix a wheelchair. Or build one. How to sew your own seat back, build lightweight interchangeable parts. Nope!
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<br />Oddly, rather than being just a tool like a bike or a car, a wheelchair, walker, even a cane, is considered a MEDICAL DEVICE. Its invention, distribution, maintenance are under the control of powerful elites.
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<br />Why should you care? Well, because YOU will likely be disabled or have significant physical impairment for around 8 years of your life. That's the average in industrialized countries. No amount of individual power changes the systemic problems disabled people face.
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<br />How can you avoid this fate? Dick Cheney, one of the most powerful people on the planet, threw out his back and ended up in the worst vehicle ever. 50 pounds of cold steel, it might as well be a wheelbarrow. You can't get around in that. Bang, he's lost his independent agency.
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<br />It's not all about wheelchairs. As coders you might think about hand functionality, dexterity. People invent stuff to help with that. Most of that info's in out of print books, and on a couple of personal blogs. Can vanish into the mist ... like a geocities page...
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<br />Why should you care now? Until you need it, you don't care. When you do need it, you're busy. you're poor. and you're in pain. No telomere-fixing nanobot is going to save you from age and impairment. Impossible utopian nanobots are why we don't HAVE jetpacks.
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<br />Why isn't disability hacking more popular? Two big reasons. Attitude, and socio-economic factors. Bad attitudes are: Fear of mortality. Medical experts. Expectation of charity. Isolation. Lack of information sharing.
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<br />The second factor is systemic and socioeconomic. Your impaired body makes you disabled, so you fall under the control of the medical industrial complex. Your wheelchair repair manual or voice control hack might get you sued. Might violate copyright or a patent, might ruin someone's profit.
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<br />At some point YOU will need assistive technology. And you will want to hack it. You'll need a DIY attitude about access. You'll really need open source information structures and communities. Big projects, and the ability to customize things.
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<br />Here's some cool DIY hacks. Bicycle crutch holders made from PVC pipe. I can ride a bike, I just can't walk too well. Soda bottle prosthetic arm: a bottle, a plaster cast, and a blowdryer: cheap but it works. Crutch pockets to help carry things when your hands are full.
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<br />Here's a great project you could join. Tactile maps, a brilliant mashup for people with visual impairments. Email them an address, they print and snail mail you a raised print map. Software and hardware people are collaborating on this.
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<br />And another, oneswitch.org, a brilliant collection of hacks with step by step instructions on building one-switch interfaces to electronic devices. Control with a finger or by puffs of air. Others: Whirlwind Wheelchair international, open prosthetics project.
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<br />People with disabilities need open source culture. But existing open source culture needs the physical inventiveness and software adaptations driven by necessity, made by people with disabilities. Everyone disabled has a cool hack or two. They *have* to. Pay attention to them.
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<br />In the future... Will you be a sad lonely person fumbling to epoxy tennis balls onto the feet of your totally World War II looking hospital walker ? The recipient of charity, pity, mass produced help, at the mercy of what elite "experts" think is good for you?
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<br />Or will you be hacking your burning man jetpack as part of a vibrant community that supports serendipity, free access to information, non hierarchical peer relationships, and a culture of invention?
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<br />What will our future be? A DIY approach to hacking ABILITY... will help everyone. We'll invent cool shit! We'll open sourceily collaborate our way out of nursing home prisons run by the evil medical industrial complex AND... the future will be awesome!
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<br />Thanks.</blockquote>
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<br />For a bit more burbling about OSCON and BlogHer '09, see my post on blogher.com: <a href=http://www.blogher.com/oscon-blogher>From OSCON to BlogHer</a>.
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<!-- End supplemental 728 ad --></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15270008.post-14974519040991202912009-06-28T22:05:00.000-07:002009-06-29T10:49:21.031-07:00Dawn I heard a rag ripGreg Hall died. He was a good friend and a great poet. It drove me crazy to see him just throw away garbage bags full of his own fantastic poetry. He could shed it as easy as he could shed another "residential hotel" style apartment or an old self. Greg understood ephemera. We're always losing things. leaving the world behind with everything we do. I keep crying to think he's not still seeing and writing and losing - losing so intensely - and leaving things behind. Now he's left for good. <br /><br />Sometimes he'd send me a pile of poems instead of throwing them away. I know Robert Pesich must have some, and Walter Martin, and <a href=http://fanettelbeck.blogspot.com/2009/06/poet-greg-hall-dies-greg-hall-author-of.html>F.A. Nettelbeck</a> and certainly Bea Garth has got to have a ton.<br /><br />Bitter, funny, sweet, profound, never boring or pretentious, slouching around chain smoking in his cowboy boots. He could swoop into cliche or pop culture or insanity and come out of that nosedive firing anti-bullshit bullets to blow your head off. Weird staccato heartfelt delivery full of line "breaks and "quote" "marks". I will miss his strange late night drunken phone calls. The man could drunk dial you a poem or just ramble endlessly about Genet or Merle Haggard. Whatever it was would make me feel like I was flying, and could say anything, as a poet and madwoman, and it would be heard & understood. You know that feeling sometimes, with a person, when the things you might write in your most private soul broken-languagely, becoming text, just connected right in; talking to him opened that up direct to conversation. There wasn't even any leaping to it, Greg was on that rocketship to fucking mars.<br /><br />Greg reading <a href=http://bookmaniac.org/stuff/music/poetry/greg-hall-van-gogh-ambulance.mp3>Van Gogh Ambulance</a> at a Barbershop late night living room Non-Salon, 2004.<br /><br />Greg reading <a href=http://bookmaniac.org/stuff/music/poetry/greg-hall-chicken-little-shark-sky.mp3>Chicken Little Shark Sky</a> maybe around 2005?<br /><br />Greg reading <a href=http://bookmaniac.org/stuff/music/poetry/greg-pirateship-amp.mp3>Pirate Ship</a> 2005<br /><br /><br /><a href=http://eosthecreativecontext.wordpress.com/poetry/greg-hall/>some poems from Eos</a><br /><br /><br /><blockquote>CHICKEN LITTLE SHARK SKY <br />One by one <br />the parts of a body <br />arrive & attach <br />themselves <br />& flight <br />becomes more difficult <br />barely escaping <br />collision with chimneys <br />I sweep <br />through the air <br />with great effort <br />they are sharks <br />the left leg <br />the left foot <br />the wrists the hands <br />the neck the head <br />"I felt a great heaviness <br />in the water & everything <br />became silent" <br />then I was lifted <br />only to be <br />swept down <br />all the while <br />caught in a vise <br />"I felt no pain" <br />all I saw <br />was the eye <br />it seemed flat <br />& dead <br />& then the <br />water <br />turned <br />red <br />this is <br />getting <br />old <br />now the doctors <br />with aspirins like frisbees <br />& tubes & wires <br />& admonishments <br />every time <br />I light a smoke <br />I felt better <br />when I had <br />no body <br />& all I did <br />was fly <br />blind <br />& ecstatic <br />into <br />the <br />present <br />without <br />regret <br />or remorse <br />I recommend <br />to the young <br />not to age <br />& to fly fast <br />because <br />the sky <br />is <br />falling <br /></blockquote><br /><br /><br />Greg's "Explanatory Notes to Poems" doodle of his attitude towards literary criticism. Funny!!!<br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/3671798093/" title="Explanatory Notes to Poems by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3416/3671798093_a6f7a05929_m.jpg" width="240" height="187" alt="Explanatory Notes to Poems" /></a><br /><br /><blockquote><br />Just about 2 poems a year...<br /> <br />So here, by the grace of Liz Henry, arrives an <br />unobtrusive collection of 23 poems by the <br />troublesome trouble man, that restless and sleepy <br />man, the elusive Greg Hall. <br /><br />These poems, spanning 12 years, intruded <br />themselves as others faded, the stack was about a <br />foot high and these fugitives from the <br />crumpling fist somehow charmed, each in their <br />own way, the madman, who, although having <br />written them, longed to find no value in them, <br />or to find them fatally marred – Anything to <br />allow an exit “towards oblivion”, as Genet once told <br />an interviewer, when asked, “Where do you think <br />you’re headed?” <br /><br />Oblivion will take care of everyone – Though <br />perhaps that is better left unsaid. I’m only here <br />because this place, this planet, this hour, is <br />beautiful. <br /><br />“Only in it for the poetry.” <br /><br />I sincerely hope you find something to like in <br />these pages. <br /><br />and if you don’t, or can’t, or won’t, <br />at least I died <br />with a sword in my hand. <br /><br />Greg Hall <br />March 20, 2002 <br /></blockquote><br /><br /><br />Self portrait doodle by Greg. You can see the shark from Chicken Little Shark sky (and other poems) and "The Man With the Hoe" (from the poem by Markham) in the background.<br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/3671797767/" title="Greg's self portrait with shark and hoe by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2563/3671797767_76a02bdd69.jpg" width="487" height="500" alt="Greg's self portrait with shark and hoe" /></a><br /><br /><blockquote>NO CHARGE <br /><br /><br />In my chubby <br />checker <br />existence <br />I go around <br />with pliers <br />in one hand <br />and a hammer <br />in the other <br />looking <br />for yr mother <br />so I can help <br />you out <br />I will twist <br />her thoughts so <br />you can find <br />a woman <br />who is not <br />crazy <br />with no screws <br />loose <br />then you <br />can <br />celebrate <br />the <br />birthday <br />of <br />yr <br />balls <br /></blockquote> <br />(This poem especially hilarious out loud. It was in <i>Cuts from the Barbershop</i>)<br /><br /><br />I have Flame People as many people do & treasure; the poems from Inamorata, which I printed up into a sea-like little book with foam colored inside leaves; the manuscript of Whoregasm which I was going to publish with yellow legal pad paper marked up by cigarette burns and coffee mug rings and poem scribblings; Diary of a Desert Fox, and some other packets around here somewhere. Plus some recordings some of poems and some of Robert and me and Janel and mostly Greg, just rambling. But how much is out there? I wish I could read it. But more than that I'll miss his out loud readings and his beautiful conversation and his bad ass, innocent, bad attitude.<br /><br /><blockquote><br /><br />THE MAGIC OF FOREVER <br /><br />In the white morning light <br /><br />everything was waiting. <br /><br />Even the trees <br /><br />in vibrant state of tension <br /><br />seemed to be holding <br /><br />a breath inside. <br /><br />An implied cry <br /><br />such as a crow’s <br /><br />concealed itself <br /><br />among the green leaves. <br /><br />And though it is <br /><br />late in the year <br /><br />later in the year <br /><br />than I have ever been <br /><br />I too was waiting.<br /> <br />And now the Moon <br /><br />faded in the sky <br /><br />appearing as a Goddess. <br /><br />And now the wind <br /><br />orchestrating the trees. <br /><br />And now the cries<br /> <br />the crows in the leaves. <br /><br />And now the flood <br /><br />the remembrances of you. <br /><br />And now everything is moving <br /><br />and now nothing is waiting. <br /><br />And because I myself am lost <br /><br />nothing can be lost <br /><br />because everything <br /><br />is lost. <br /><br /><br><br><br /><i>(from Inamorata, dedicated to Abby Niebaur)</i><br /></blockquote><br /><br />That little book, so amazing, what other great books of his, one-offs, or the product of the culling out process of several years, are out there? <br /><br />I'd send him poems and he'd be all like WHERE DID THAT COME FROM and I'd be like WTF MAN, out of my BRAIN what do you think? and he'd be like WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO THAT and I'd be like well what about you man, what are you doing, can you just like, send that shit to people to keep for you instead of throwing it away?! <br /><br />We lost touch the last few years. I've missed him. Now I really miss him. He meant so much to me. It's fucking unfair. I know how he'd be about it but it's not fucking fair.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/lizhenry/3671084588/" title="Greg Hall by Liz Henry, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3559/3671084588_4bf14110bd.jpg" width="500" height="375" alt="Greg Hall" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />A player piano<br />on slack key strings<br />called to tell me<br /><br />"I can't rest or sleep<br />until I know<br />you've found your place."<br /><br />Toothache - telephone -<br /><br />"I used to have <br />this pain. My tongue<br />feels for it in the empty space."<br /> <br />Oldwood sounding box <br />sweet<br />on the hollowphone<br /><br />"Even as we speak<br />people we could have loved<br />die in their beds."<br /><br />Halt sway & slur worn-down cylinders<br />the turned up shirtsleeves of the player-mad ghost,<br />his lost gloves & blind fingers<br />lost generation<br /><br /><br /><br />and<br /><br /><br /><br />Rocinante<br /><br /><br />disconnected<br /><br />like him <br />you clutched your wrecked folder of printouts<br />like a derelict with a bottle of fire in brown paper<br />lurched about the room shy and a bit vacant,<br />your lifeline -<br /><br /><br />I can follow you a little ways now into the dark.<br /><br />Rambling to the bus station with my bag of books.<br />Goodbye arthritic knees, goodbye neurotic carousel,<br /><br />my mind freed to lightspeed floating in your words<br />your halting voice<br />I hear another voice<br /><br />Struck, stunned, to follow your lightning words up into the dark<br />your soul in the stars<br />flying<br />lost the sense<br />the stammering gaps,<br />the truth in the joke, <br />the little squares below waiting for my patient hand – <br /><br />An artist<br /><br />in <br /><br />the family – <br /><br />like<br /><br /><br />like<br /><br />immortality.<br /><br />Did you stop there underwater, waiting for a tug on the line?<br />The slow bubbles in the blood, clots in the brain, shocks near to death.<br />The anguished rope of vision<br />the damage done to us<br /><br />Faithless Rocinante how could you leave your master here like this?<br /><br />like<br /><br />my father, my father's father,<br />I fall from you like a plane in a tailspin, forgive me – <br />driving too fast down the highway with poetry in my lap<br />damaged<br />elementary particle I have seen photos of your tracks in cloud chambers<br /><br />like<br /><br />a crazy prince,<br />how cruel the world is!<br />How cruel the world’s beauty.<br />Old loon, <br />crying, haunted cracked vessel,<br /><br />I follow your lightning words up into the dark beyond the thunderclouds<br />that cotton wool, that thick white, up to the clear night sky and the electric stars<div class="blogger-post-footer"><!-- Begin supplemental 728 ad -->
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<!-- End supplemental 728 ad --></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15270008.post-55402646479860342542009-06-17T14:47:00.001-07:002009-06-17T15:01:14.236-07:00The Planet of SwearsI'm writing some RSS feed scraper programs and while playing around with that, set up an install of <a href=http://www.planetplanet.org/>Planet</a> feed reader. It was very funny to see on the one hand, lots of people blogging or writing things like "Oh, this doesn't even need setup, just unzip it and you're basically done" -- and the Planet documentation itself saying that the config file's comments explained everything -- vs. actual step by step instructions of what to do, like <a href=http://burningbird.net/technology/installing-and-customizing-planet/>burningbird</a>'s post, which I found very helpful. That's a lot of "nothing to do" to explain and it still didn't get far enough for what I'd like to figure out: how to set up one installation of Planet but also set up multiple feeds in different directories, each with their own template. <br /><br />Meanwhile I'm very amused that for another project I get to write a spider with a curse word filter. I haven't had that hilarious of results since writing porn filters for Excite's web spider. My output files and screen output when swear-spider.py runs are very funny. "Asshole Detected!" <br /><br />A quick search on lists of dirty words gets some very amusing Supreme Court hearing transcripts. Like so!<br /><br /><a href=http://www.mit.edu/activities/safe/indecency/fcc-2a.html>FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726 (1978), Decided July 3, 1978</a>. The dissenting opinions are especially great!<br /><blockquote>"A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged, it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in color and content according to the circumstances and the time in which it is used."</blockquote> I'll try quoting that to my kid next time he frown at my liberal use of what he carefully calls "the f word".<div class="blogger-post-footer"><!-- Begin supplemental 728 ad -->
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<!-- End supplemental 728 ad --></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15270008.post-74995304970404837812009-06-10T09:38:00.000-07:002009-06-10T09:53:56.209-07:00Kiva lending and people with disabilities<a href=http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/10/kiva-brings-microlending-home-to-us-ent%0Arepreneurs-in-need/>Kiva has opened up to lending to entrepeneurs within the U.S.</a> and I think this is something disability activists and independent living centers need to jump on immediately. This won't help everyone, but it could help quite a few people with disabilities to start their own businesses. <br /><br />For example, look at these <a href=http://www.passplan.org/PASSdb/Listall.asp>Pass Plan</a> examples. <br /><blockquote># PASS Plan Abstract: Joseph's goal is to become a full-time office clerk for the state. He has the disability label of Muscular Distrophy, Cognitive, and Vision Impairments, and uses a wheel chair. Joseph's PASS will pay for OJT training experiences, a van, insurance, registration, gas maintenance, and a driver. This PASS will be used to purchase of a van, install lift modifications, and hire a personal attendant. The yearly cost is $1884.00. This PASS is for six years and a total amount of $11,304. This PASS comes from the Chicago Regional SSA Office. </blockquote><br />How different would that proposal look if it were a request for capital and a Kiva-style loan (OR... a donation.) I've been saying for a while that what is insurmountable to a PWD, like simply needing a ramp built and a decent wheelchair, say a $5000 cost, would be easily obtainable through profiles and requests for donations or loans. Make the problem and the solution visible, and people will help, because to someone that $5000 is like pocket change and to a much greater pool of people on the Internet, a lot of small donations could make it up in no time. This would eliminate some of the structure of "professionals" who, frankly, siphon off 2/3 of the resources allocated to empower people with disabilities. Think of the people who have comfortable lives as professional experts who administer charity but who keep the objects of their charity in crazy poverty. It's not their fault, it's a systemic fault, but there's something deeply wrong there.<br /> <br />How might a Kiva-like structure combine with <a href=http://ssa.gov/work/>Ticket to Work</a> to make it easier for people with disabilities not just to find jobs but to go into business for themselves. Look at the collectives and cooperatives on Kiva and how a group of women will band together. That's the kind of organization we might need to develop. If you get benefits and depend on them for, say, your health care, your personal care attendent, your ventilator; then you can't have any resources and are trapped in an endless poverty, you can't accumulate resources, you are kept in dependency. I have some problems with "being middle class" as a goal and yet faced with things like institutional living and the loss of control of our lives I think it's not a bad goal to work towards.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><!-- Begin supplemental 728 ad -->
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