I'm trying out a new comment system. I wrote most of it yesterday for another project. I'm sure there are still bugs in the system, so if you run into any here let me know. (and thanks!) To comment on this post (or any post) just click the little "comment" link below. Pretty simple. Give it a try! :)
part of a conversation from last night:
skp: you should redesign your site.
pb: why? you don't like it?
skp: well, you could give it a new, sleek look.
pb: it isn't sleek now?
skp: isn't it more old school?
pb: what do you mean by old school?
skp: well, it's been like that for a long time.
pb: true.
I was in the middle of the East Ridge trail in Armstrong, when I found a bit of literate graffiti on a bench. It reminded me of the Tibor Kalman quote that Matt recently posted to his site.
"There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in." - Leonard Cohen
walking meditation
I've been walking a lot lately. On Friday I went to Armstrong Woods. I felt like I had the whole forest to myself. I didn't see another person on the trail all afternoon. Yesterday, skp and I walked from Shell beach near Jenner to Wright's beach (and back). We caught the sunset about halfway back to Shell beach, but we weren't quite expecting it so soon. We had to move quickly to make it back before the light completely vanished.
Hey cool, looks like I won an anti-bloggie for best FOJM photo. Out of all the categories, blurriest photo seems to fit me well since, well, all of the photos used in this design are blurry. I didn't expect this one at all because there are so many great photos at FOJM. Many thanks to the anti-bloggie folks for picking it! FOJM is a fantastic project. So this anti-bloggie should be shared with Heather for providing the space and inspiration. Where do I go from here? :)
ev, matt, jack, and meg have weighed in with their thoughts about the demise of Pyra as we have known it. I wanted to write about it too, so I can put a little piece of it behind me. It's hard to sum up two years of your life in an essay. And there's still a question I haven't been able to answer: What is a Pyra?
I just received my copy of Working for Yourself: Law & Taxes for Independent Contractors, Freelancers & Consultants. Can people still work for themselves in this economy? I hope so.
speaking of stress fractures, I heard an appropriate quote yesterday. Elie Wiesel was paraphrasing one of his elders when he said, "No heart is as whole as a broken heart."
loop dreams
Sometimes when I'm stressed out at work, I'll have a dream about a SQL statement that keeps returning data. It just endlessly loops through rows and rows of database records and there's no way to stop it. I had a similar dream last night; instead of a database, my mind was looping through various scenes. The most vivid scene involved a man setting up an old-fashioned silver film projector. He would then turn it on and project a 35mm film against a wall. The film was him setting up the projector a few minutes before. In another scene, I was in a brick warehouse that had been converted into a record store. I was looking at a huge advertisement hanging from the ceiling. The poster was showing a new comic book that pitted Superman against Dr. Doom. But as you may or may not know, Superman is a DC character while Dr. Doom is a Marvel character. So you can see the despair inherent in this image. There were a few other scenes that I don't quite remember now. Like a good techno song, my dreams kept oscillating between these events...forming a larger loop. Finally, I was able to break the loop by waking up. And I didn't get back to sleep for quite a while.
A Confederacy of Denial (washingtonpost.com): "Ashcroft, Norton and their supporters would do well to go back and look at the words of Confederate leaders before joining any chorus of Confederate nostalgia. In 1861 the vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, declared that his new government's 'cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.'" I can't believe that there are still people in this country (and people that hold the highest offices in the land) who are civil war deniers. I also can't believe how often issues that should have been decided during the civil war are still with us today. Between these cabinet nominees and the georgia flag debate, the civil war still seems to be a hot topic. Coincidentally, I just started reading Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz.