not yet ready for prime time

Project Runway and the Wheelchair

2006-12-20T16:57:00.000-05:00

I know that Project Runway, one of Bravo TV's reaility show takes on Survivor, doesn't want unsolicited program ideas, but I'd love it if they'd think about this one:

Although the segment wasn't without its problems, I loved last year's show in which the contestests designed an outfit for a fellow contestant's family member. I know the contestants weren't thrilled (ahem...) about designing for someone other than a fashion model, but I loved that the producers prodded both designers and audience members to consider exactly what fashion is and who it is for on a broader canvas than what is traditionally considered the fashion world.

Well, I've recently developed a mobility problem which I hope is temporary but which may not be. This morning, when I was looking online to familiarize myself with current available assistive living devices, I found ASSIST IRELAN D. As I was digging around on the site, I discovered their terrifically useful information pages. The one called "Clothing Ideas for Wheelchair Users" (here) set me thinking back to that model-in-the-family Fashion Runway episode last season.

If the folks who create the project ideas for Fashion Runway look at the web page cited and then take into account the following statistics, I think they would see the relavence/usefulness of a show in which the designers are asked to design for a disabled person:
*In 2005, the percentage of working age individuals reporting a disability was 12.6 percent in the US.
*In 2005, the median annual labor earnings of working age people with disabilities working full-time/full-year was $30,000 in the US.
*[I]n the US, among the six types of disabilities ... the highest prevalence rate was for people with ?Physical disabilities,? 7.8 percent.
*In 2005, 51.6 percent of working age people with disabilities were women in the US.
*In 2005, 10.9 percent of working age people with disabilities were ages 21-29 in the US.
[Source: "2005 Disability Status Reports
United States." StatsRRTC, Cornell University. Online.

Think what an emotional boost it could be for many disabled people to see at least a handful of talented designers consider not only their physical needs but their fashion sense needs as well.

Anybody out there listening????
©2006

a world of hope

2006-07-16T12:27:00.000-04:00

map courtesy of theordora maps

jace herring newsflash - and i was thinking bin laden was tough to find

2005-01-24T17:22:00.000-05:00

ahem. pardon me, but a rant follows...

i just read a report the us is doubling the reward for finding bin laden. i think it may not be too long before a lot of unhappy bloggers are mustering that kind of interest in jace herring who wants, it seems, no one to pay attention to that man behind the curtain at bloghosts.com.

godaddy.com just sent me a letter saying that the registrant information for my domain has to be initiated by the legal registrant. and guess who that would be? jace herring. jace herring. jace herring. SCREAM!

i had written godaddy a couple of letters, the last one quite lengthy. i explained that my domain - which i registered and owned - from 2001 until i hooked up with jace herring's bloghosts couldn't possibly be his legally . i never gave permission for herring to own my domain, only to host it. my new webhost, bless its heart, isn't having any more luck in effecting the transfer, it seems, than i have had. so i've registered for a new domain, but i want my old one back. it's mine, jace. mine. all mine.

this whole issue is heading way beyond principle for me. i'd be very interested in hearing if someone opens a class action suit against him, as has been suggested | here |. i am just heartsick. doesn't herring realize that some folks are losing not only sleep but revenue as he continues to play his mime game?

read more about it at blogrolled.

or just google " jace herring bloghosts" for an eyeful.

snow and magic

2005-01-24T02:11:00.000-05:00

snowing here. we love to fill all the bird feeders, draw away from the windows, and watch. magic can happen....

what kind of toes do YOU have?

2005-01-12T15:58:00.000-05:00

i don't have a clue how i wind up at pages like this toe-ring one. hey, i'm an old lady. i don't wear toe rings - though i do sometimes paint my toenails blue.

toe typing:

easy to fit toes: "defined/pronounced toe pad, with a slightly thinner toe."
hard to fit toes: "dramatic/chubby round toe pad with a much thinner toe." [this is the toe i would have guessed i have, but nooo. mine are evidently just those shapeless
straight fit toes: "no real defined toe pad. the toe is the same size and shape from toe tip to 2nd knuckle." for these toes," the toe-ring lady writes, "it's better to get a tighter ring and remove it before swimming."

to her i reply that my body is shaped like my toes, so who goes swimming?

font addict - thanks, manfred klein

2004-11-10T09:04:00.000-05:00

TbP Font talk - Manfred Klein:: page 4/4:::

Letters, numbers and symbols are atoms and molecules of our mental life, media to receive and to send messages. For some people who are interested in art they are more important or more interesting than the stuff considered as art by the wider society. Many free artists are aware of it. For the average person, type is a re-discovered cultural asset - nice. To spread reasonable, human thinking in the future not only language is required, but also type. That's pretty clear!

how i ever missed this interview with my favorite font creator, manfred klein, i'll never know. that he gives so many terrific fonts away astounds and thrills me.

a good night to close the language door

2004-10-27T17:16:00.000-04:00

courtesy nasa/jpl-caltech

i love that nasa colored this photo of saturn's moon, titan, so romantically and so glad i found it after feeling so weighed down all day with politics.

tonight, our own total lunar eclipse...
url: http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/LEmono/TLE2004Oct28/TLE2004Oct28.html

i will close the language-door.

When someone quotes the old poetic image
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,
slowly loosen knot by knot the strings
of your robe.

Like this.
(rumi)

The way the night knows itself with the moon,
be that with me.

(rumi)

[At] night, I open the window and ask
the moon to come and press its

face against mine. Breathe into
me. Close the language-door and

open the love window. The moon
won't use the door, only the window.
(rumi)

maybe peace only uses windows, too...

bush finally breaks silence on the missing weapons

2004-10-27T16:22:00.000-04:00

380 tons = 344 730.201 kilograms

380 tons - wow...that's more than even i weigh

380 Tons of Explosives Missing from Sensitive Former Iraqi Military Installation. The Iraqi interim government has warned the United States and international nuclear inspectors that nearly 380 tons of powerful conventional explosives - used to demolish buildings, make missile warheads and detonate nuclear weapons - are missing from one of Iraq's most sensitive former military installations. (source: new york times, 25 oct 2004)

Saddam Hussein's regime posed a threat to the security of the United States and the world. With the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime, a leader who pursued, used, and possessed weapons of mass destruction is no longer in power.(source: results in iraq: 10 ways the liberation of iraq supports the war on terrorism)

yet i read for myself the cia's summation of key findings on iraq's weapons of mass destruction at the time we shocked and awed in baghdad, and i think i've got it straight now:

not only did the us fail to find weapons of mass destruction in iraq since there were apparently none there to begin with it also seems to have lost a boatload of potent suckers that were.

yeah, these missing weapons are really bugging me, making my voting finger itch.

maybe me and others. i see that the president has finally broken his public silence on the weapons today in pennsylvania:

today - 27 oct 2004 - from the ap: [bush in pa]: Now the senator is making wild charges about missing explosives when his top foreign policy adviser admits, quote, we do not know the facts, Bush said. Think about that - the senator's denigrating the action of our troops and commanders in the field without knowing the facts. Unfortunately, that's part of a pattern of saying almost anything to get elected.

Bush was referring to remarks made by Kerry adviser Richard Holbrooke Tuesday in an interview with Fox News. Holbrooke said the U.N. inspectors had told the American military this was a major depot. He added: I don't know what happened. I do know one thing - in most administrations the buck stops in the Oval Office. (source: kerry hammers at bush on missing explosives in iraq, minneapolis star tribune)

buck stopping. yeah, that's the ticket...

as i wait for tuesday, i'm still mulling on this oldie but goodie the debates dredged up, too:

13 mar 2002 white house press conference excerpt:

Q Mr. President, in your speeches now you rarely talk or mention Osama bin Laden. Why is that? Also, can you tell the American people if you have any more information, if you know if he is dead or alive? Final part -- deep in your heart, don't you truly believe that until you find out if he is dead or alive, you won't really eliminate the threat of --

THE PRESIDENT: Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all. Who knows if he's hiding in some cave or not; we haven't heard from him in a long time. And the idea of focusing on one person is -- really indicates to me people don't understand the scope of the mission.

Terror is bigger than one person. And he's just -- he's a person who's now been marginalized. His network, his host government has been destroyed. He's the ultimate parasite who found weakness, exploited it, and met his match. He is -- as I mentioned in my speech, I do mention the fact that this is a fellow who is willing to commit youngsters to their death and he, himself, tries to hide -- if, in fact, he's hiding at all.

So I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him, Kelly, to be honest with you. I'm more worried about making sure that our soldiers are well-supplied; that the strategy is clear; that the coalition is strong; that when we find enemy bunched up like we did in Shahikot Mountains, that the military has all the support it needs to go in and do the job, which they did.

And there will be other battles in Afghanistan. There's going to be other struggles like Shahikot, and I'm just as confident about the outcome of those future battles as I was about Shahikot, where our soldiers are performing brilliantly. We're tough, we're strong, they're well-equipped. We have a good strategy. We are showing the world we know how to fight a guerrilla war with conventional means.

Q But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.

I call my philosophy and approach compassionate conservatism. It is compassionate to actively help our fellow citizens in need. It is conservative to insist on responsibility and results. And with this hopeful approach, we will make a real difference in people's lives.
source: president george w. bush, fact sheet on compassionate conservatism, april 30, 2002)
...

Despite the competing meanings of the term, liberalism remains, according to the oxford companion, a focal point of Americans' efforts to balance the benefits of capitalism with larger moral and ethical priorities. (source: now with bill moyer

Long distance supporters : Pakistani schoolchildren walk with a cut-out of US Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Kerry... as part of a rally organized by the World Minorities Alliance NGO to show support for Kerry. (AFP/Jewel Samad)

Yahoo! News - AFP Top Photos

zen, haiku, and the art of mr picassohead

2004-10-18T08:45:00.000-04:00

here's a link to a self-portrait (ahem) composed in mr. picassohead (the program i talked about in the last posting...

go there. make silly art for no reason, and breathe deeply.

more:

everypoet's haiku generator, too (just check expectations before you click - it is programming, after all).

& dailyzen - meditation 365:

daily zen inspirational quotes from zen, buddhism, and taoism - a meditation haven with a humorous and global touch. on-site, there's also original zen art to contemplate and share.

all three are totally free, no strings. little pools of quietitude to rest by on my daily trek across the big wide world-wide web.

i need that. thanks, you guys.

2004-10-15T18:36:00.000-04:00

ah, where there's mr picassohead, there's hope....

still just blogging around the campfire

2004-06-20T17:24:00.000-04:00

like i'm surprised:
Look who's blogging: Online journals take over the 'net

People have been telling each other stories for thousands of years. It started around campfires in caves. ... Now people in offices gather around water coolers and coffee pots and talk about the things that matter to them.

"All a weblog does is, it moves that conversation onto the Web.

from one of my early online journal entries, "Stories 'Round the Campfire":

Thursday, July 24, 1997

Along with all this need to put my version of the story out there, I think there is something for me as a journal reader in the way the computer attracts by its dynamism , yes, but how also at some point many of us look for a place to rest, to reflect--a place with stability--and those sites which update their journals fairly regularly provide that. Sometimes we want to grab hold of that flickering screen light, hold on tight, know that it will be there to go/come home to tomorrow. Online journals centered on home and family breathe life into all the metaphors we use about the web--Geocities.com with its homes and neighborhoods and Tripod.com with its pod metaphor, a somewhat more open, flexible architecture (even with overtones of something alien), but whose other metaphors aren't so radically different. To modify Robert Frost a little, on the Web, home is the place where, when you . . . go there, /They have to take you in.

and from Leslie Marmon Silko's Storyteller:

Communal storytelling was a self-correcting process in which listeners were encouraged to speak up if they noted an important fact or detail omitted. The people were happy to listen to two or three different versions of the same event or the same humma-hah story. Even conflicting versions of an incident were welcomed for the entertainment they provided. Defenders of each version might joke and tease one another, but seldom were there any direct confrontations.

this entry is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

the interval determining the coincidence gate is adjustable

2004-06-09T16:20:00.000-04:00

and in today's local news

in about half an hour, former president reagan's body will land at andrews air force base, and he will soon lie in state under the capitol dome. as a local, i'm listening for traffic updates.

who says i don't write about current events?

i keep an occasional thread going in my paper journals about why i don't note the (so-called) noteworthy events of the day as they break around me. mostly i conclude that i'm not a newspaper reporter and that if i don't think the big happening is effecting me personally in a way i really need to explore, i stick to jotting down the stuff of my personal life and mind. maybe it boils down to solipsism - my feeling that i'm ultimately unable to know much of anything except myself so in a way, my self is the only existent thing. or somesuch.

why, i didn't even write about the transit of venus or the brood x cicadas. and they overlapped. and i saw the transit and was deafened for over a week by the cicadas.

the washington post rooted out a scientist who suggests that the last time the cicada emergence was concurrent with a venus transit was 22 may 797. the time before had been 23 may 921 bc. talk about something once in a blue moon. why hasn't a rare thing like that found its way into our common tongue, i wonder. oh, yeah, well i guess that it is easier to toss off that blue moon thing in conversation than, "well, you know a president only lies in state every once in a venus transit - brood x cicada concurrence."

book your seat for venus transit (technews.com)

finding a body

2004-06-05T11:25:00.000-04:00

what if?

wonder what'd happen?

maybe...

these are major components of conversations i'm apt to have.

supposing - the stuff of stories.

finding a body.

[a timed free-write - 10 minutes:]

how do people lose bodies? what does it mean to find a body? a body can be lost if one neglects it- the notion of a mind/body split. one can lose a body by having someone disappear from their lives - by their running away or dying. one can find a body by becoming aware of it, claiming it. finding a body can also mean discovering someone - sexually or in other emotion-linked ways. children and grandchildren - how they feel when you hug them and hold them close. how you can see or find parts of your body in theirs: your eyes, your build or structure, your cheekbones. you can find the bodies of other loved ones,too, in the bodies of your children or cousins or sisters. your husband's smile, his gait, his spatulate fingers. you can also find a body literally. discover a dead body, for instance. or one that is sleeping. what would it feel like to discover a dead body? to come upon one in an ordinary place? where would it be? what would you notice first? how do you answer questions like these from imagination? so, what if i got up right now and walked over to that history book aisle and discovered a body there? propped up against the civil war section in a sitting position, maybe. maybe i'd think they were reading at first, but then right away i'd likely notice the slumping, the strange melting of posture. i'd look around for confirmation of what i was seeing. or i'd hear myself screaming before i had any thought at all. i'd scream as loud as i could. or i'd clamp my mouth closed around the scream and rush to the information desk. i'm worried that something is wrong in history, i'd tell them. come look. oh, couldn't they just come look for themselves. and finally someone would follow me, take over, clear out the store. even i'd be asked to leave since i didn't really know anything. the whole time i'd be looking for the security cameras, wondering what'd they'd seen. and i'd wonder why i was the first person to see the body. and if i was. and what had the others before me done or thought? who were they? where were they? what kind of person would see a dead person and not do anything? not even report them to the information desk. and hadn't there been anything to hear? why hadn't someone heard something? a thud, a moan? had the person been poisoned? maybe they were dead when they got to the store but didn't know it. what kills people but isn't immediately apparent? what would i do the day after i discovered a dead body here? would i come back to this store? or would i stay away forever? who would i tell about what happened? what would the story i tell look like? would i distance myself with humor? i'd obsess, of course. that's me. and in the next days i'd create a thousand versions of what had happened and what might have happened and what could have happened. even if there were a published account or explanation, i'd have to create my own exclusive version of events. and if foul play had been involved, i would find the story that, no matter what, would give the killing a plausible motive, would make it personal, would cozy it up. after all,a person might be able to forestall a murder with a motive. anticipate it. guard against it. but a random killing? no. if i had to believe it had been a random killing, i'd likely never leave my house again.

this phenomenon seems directly related to the fear of finding a body in the forest.

finding a body - more:

the why files and finding a body

finding a body (or not) - via technical remote viewing - something apparently akin to a psychic security camera

finding a body that bore rabbits - Mary Tofts, 1726

finding a body by googling it

finding a body by donating a body to tennessee:

If you donate your body, please send a photograph of yourself (via mail) to keep in our records. A frontal view of the face is preferred (similar to a passport or driver's license photo), but any photograph is acceptable. We request a photograph so research involving facial reconstruction and photographic superimposition as a means for identifying unknown individuals may be conducted on skeletal remains of known individuals. quoted from "Body Donation," Forensic Anthropology Center, University of Tennessee

baby jessica, the well, & the stories we tell

2004-06-01T09:17:00.000-04:00

I grew up in rural Kentucky where people paid attention to the seasons and their neighbors, and everybody had a story. My dad grew an organic vegetable garden when everybody else was still using DDT. He did that because he had read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, and that became his story. The neighbors talked about it. And I could see the power of what he had done, translating an idea into action. So I grew up with this dual passion: my imagination smitten with books, and my feet flat on the green, green ground.

one of my favorite themes comes straight out of one of my basic tenets: we are the stories we tell. the we being all of us. the stories we tell about ourselves and the stories others tell about us.

today, i heard on morning edition that baby jessica graduated from high school yesterday. do you remember baby jessica? the baby in the well? how we sat mesmerized for the 50+ hours it took for them to get her out? the flood lights pouring down in the black night on that hole where, if anything important was happening, it was happening out of sight? and how we all knew and understood that? how most of the nation sat there glued to the screen, especially those last hours? 1987. jessica mc clure. yes, that was her name, i was thinking as i listened.

how fickle history is. how easily we do forget so we have to have those mottoes like, lest we forget. how we can be in the grip of someone's story and fold it into our days, and then poof one day it's just no longer there. their story is no longer on our tongues. the short-term memory has closed over it and filed it deep away. the only we even have to know that it is gone is if it is somehow dredged up again.

and if we ponder even for a second how we could have forgotten, we have explanations. well, it was just pop culture, anyway, not real history. we'd remember the big things. the important ones.

we cling to the idea that history is somehow only about large, world-altering events because we need to believe that some things in and of this world are immutable.

that's especially true in these information-laden days. what is implicit but unsaid in warhol is that any of us may be historically fixed - pinned down like a papery moth in a specimen case - as the story told about us in those fifteen minutes of fame we all get.

i mean that jessica graduated from high school and there were few cameras to report is a different story. not really one about her at all. the cameras that may have been there - aside from those of her family and friends - remind us that despite that one extraordinary moment of holding a nation's interest, jessica is ordinary. she lives in texas, she goes to high school, she graduates. that is what survival is. ultimately that is all that it is. that is what being is about. what kind of story is that? who'd glue themselves to the set for that?

maybe that's why web diaries and web logs have become such a phenomenon. so many of us aching to get our stories out there. our songs of ourselves. pre-emptive strikes at history for the moment the flood lights turn on our dark well. or if the moment never comes.

i'd love to be a story by barbara kingsolver.

so you have to start somewhere

2004-05-31T12:59:00.000-04:00

one is never enough.

and another cliche: i fear i'm developing blog mania.

when i blithely punched the create new blog button, i had every intention of making a blog that would allow me to post drafts of my other blog.

sounds so silly when i see it written down. yes, i know you're supposed to be able to save drafts and polish them up before you hit the publish post button, but for someone with a little dyslexia, a lot of hangups, and a.d.d. to boot, it's not always that simple.

here's one scenario:
you've checked and double-checked, previewed 'til the cows come home, know you're positively ready, hit publish post and see that you've not only spelled your own name wrong but that it shows up that way twice because you didn't scroll down far enough to see that your last cut was actually a paste operation. and for some reason, you thought it would be cool to atom feed your site but you don't even really know what that means yet, and it seems that people are actually showing up at your page. maybe it's because of that atom thing or maybe - blush - it was because you just couldn't help but flaunt yourself a little on that mailing list, and here you are not ready for them because while you were learning to blog your brains out you were also cooking supper, and something started boiling over in the kitchen, and oh, okay, so you even forgot you were supposed to be fixing the blankety-blank blog in the first place.

yeah, that'd be me.

and then there are those permalinks that still have me confused. when i see the word, i think of the alaskan tundra. is it just me? permafrost: how i was told that just by walking on parts of it, you could be trampling hundred-year-old willows or birches underfoot and not even know it. who'd ever have thought you could stomp a tree on the tundra in the first place:

tundra 101: tunturia, from the Finnish: treeless plain

so these permalinks - what happens if you stomp on one by over-zealous editing? could we ever know?

anyway, as i was filling all the blanks for the new blog so i wouldn't have to worry about goofing up the other one, it occurred to me that there'll probably never be an interface made that could do that. so i had this blog half-created, and i'd picked the template with the sassy polka-dots for it, and what - i'm just going to toss it out? i think not.

here is a truly wonderful thing about first postings that i've learned in my short history as a blogger:

write a second, and this one falls to the bottom.

©2004