I changed my mind, on the sections and all that below – I have a better (and easier!) idea, so I’m going to try that instead. Might as well take advantage of these categories and pages (now that I have pretty much figured them out.)

This way, there will still be plenty of posts on the front page, but there will also be access to posts in the individual sections. Sort of.

Anyway, off to think on this more (my house is still not clean, because I keep getting distracted) and then to make the categories.

Because the purpose is not fully defined yet, the site will be undergoing various changes, some of which will likely not be pretty. At first! They’ll come into line later on, though.

For instance, at the bottom of this page I have (sort of) put back in the various sections, because I have plans for those. Well, not for the sections themselves… I think I will just leave them archived, so people can access the old articles and such, but I don’t plan on filling them up again. No, I’m thinking more along the lines of um… maybe Arts and Letters Daily (only not so much). We’ll see how that turns out.

Meanwhile, over on Stalking Sunlight, Eurovision 2010 reigns! Melonhead has clips (and, of course, hilarious commentary) on the good, the bad and the really, really ugly. Unfortunately, some of the videos are not accessible to people outside the UK, but I think they can be seen at YouTube. Anyway, give it a look!

Me, though I am anxious to get started, today I am spending getting things together here, offline. My house needs cleaning, bills need paying and a bunch of other stuff I have been neglecting is suddenly demanding instant attention. Big surprise, that.

[graphic at top from Exploding Dog]

That, I think, is going to be the focus of the site. It’s a question that has been going through my mind for months, but which I’ve sort of ignored in favor of other things. It won’t go away, though, so I think I’ll go with it.

What does it mean?

Well, a number of things. First, it means that while there is much tragedy, injustice and horror going on in the world, this site – at least the main portion of it - will not be focusing on it. For one thing, I can’t anymore, and still move forward. Pathetic, I know, but that’s just how it is.

More than that, though, is that I just get so tired of only one story being told – and that is often the only story we (or, at least I, with my Western ears) hear. That is one reason that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie”s words had such an impact on me – they had, in some form, been echoing in my head for ages before I ever heard them. This need for more of the story, this need to place people in context, this need to know who people are when they are not dying, or involved in wars, or being raped, or being persecuted, or having their homes taken away. Who are they when they kiss their children and shoo them off to school? Who are they when they meet for lunch and laugh long and hard over a story someone tells? Who are they when the guns are quiet? Who are they when they sit in universities, soaking up knowledge? Who are they when they clasp hands across a great divide?

Who are they when they are living? That’s what I want to know. And that’s what this site is about.

i am (slowly, because I am basically on dial-up) building an offline library of TED Talks, a sort of buffet of thought, experience and inspiration. Just for my own pleasure and edification for right now, no specific purpose except that sometimes -  often, over the past year or so - I’ve felt emptied of something and in need of a fill-up. I have also been reading a lot - I have three or four ebook readers on my Blackberry and with hundreds of thousands of free ebooks out there, I am never without 50 or so stories to choose from at any point in time. Some of the plots, and thoughts, are outdated, old and offensive, but some of the writing is just beautiful and it’s that beauty that I have wanted to absorb.

I’ve even been listening to music, though mostly as a defense against the noise of the television and children and everything else. When I want to Escape From it All I stick my headphones in my ears and in flows Bach or Mozart, or whatever the classical music provider chooses for me, and it soothes and, again, supplies some needed something.

Anyway, as I’ve replenished and refreshed my thoughts have turned more and more to Human Beams, and what to do with it. I have had a few ideas, but no real desire to pursue them, no fire in the belly for them (beyond the planning, which I love) so they lie fallow. Still, the ideas keep coming and one of them will be The One, and then we’ll be going again. Until then I am not going to worry about where the site is going, if anywhere, and will just allow it to be and to become what it will. Some of the coding is still a bit off, by the way, particularly as I have been messing with it, so be warned.

This TED talk below is by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, on the danger of a single story.

Well, not me. I have a roof over my head and I suspect most of you do, too.

Some people in Haiti (among other places) are in a bad way though, and the people of Daily Kos are doing something about it.

   
Inside a Shelter Box

I know, I usually think of DK as being good at producing a groundswell of mass hysteria and little else, but I admit that when they do get their heads and their hearts together, they can produce really good things. Strength in numbers and all that, with people being able to give as little as $5.00 to as much as they want to and, so far, they have been able to purchase 118 Shelter Boxes for the people of Haiti.

   
Shelter Boxes in action

Here is the information for anyone wanting to add their bit to the effort:

 

SUPPORT SHELTER to 20222 and you will donate $5

Send the word SHELTERBOX to 56512 to send more money (you will get a

phone call back asking for amount and credit card info).

If you’d like to make a $10 donation to support our Haiti earthquake relief work via your mobile phone, text the message Support Shelter to the number 20222. Answer Yes when asked to confirm your donation. You will then receive a text message confirming your donation.

Here  is the  
Secure donation page  
https://app.etapestry.com/...

United States Shelterbox page

http://www.shelterboxusa.org/

Canada Shelterbox  
http://www.shelterbox.ca/   
Shelter Box home page  
http://shelterbox.org/

Or click over to the Daily Kos Shelter Box tag and see what they are up to.

… that are pictures?  - Toni Morrison (Beloved)

(photo from here )

There were maybe a hundred “illegal” people milling about, but it’s that little girl spinning in the Miami sunshine, her ribboned braids flying while her dress billowed, making those skinny legs look even skinnier that I remember. She was only about 6 or 7 and so beautiful and hopeful and expectant. And so loved. Her best foot – tiny and clad in brilliant white patent leather and ruffled, lacy socks – would be forward when she reached the shores of a land that didn’t want her. Her momma, her daddy, had made sure of that.

A blip in the crowd waiting to be arrested, processed and sent back, she filled my TV screen with her exuberance, her love of life, of the moment she was in. I smiled at her joy, marveled that she was so bright and fresh after getting off that rickety boat, wondered if she was doomed.

This is my day to write about Haiti.

I did have an article all planned. Been gathering material for it, blocking out the points I wanted to make and all that was left was the writing.

But the writing of that wouldn’t come. Only the echoes of a little girl dancing at the edges of my memory, flashing her huge smile and her shiny shoes and her fluffy white dress with the big, pink bow.

Care

[ETA, from this article, “The Dangerous Desire to Adopt Haitian Children”]

The answer is not to stop loving, or to stop trying to understand, but to realize that our love is always endangered by selfishness. If we ever think our love is pure, we need to stop thinking along that track, take a step back and think again. Don’t stop loving, just stop thinking that your love is infallible and all-knowing.

I’ll close with a few reality-based ways to help Haitian children in Haitian families in the short term:

- Donate to SOS Children’s Villages, Save the Children or UNICEF.  
- Sign this AIUSA petition to request an end to interdiction-at-sea policy  
- Contact your representative. Ask them to support an increase in refugee visas for Haitians and expedited family reunification visas for Haitian-Americans. Ask them to support the airlift of Haitian children unaccompanied by family ONLY for the purposes of temporary medical hosting and NOT for the purposes of adoption.  
- If you live close to a Haitian-American community, contact their organizations and ask if there is anything you can do to support community efforts.

(photo from here)

It doesn’t look like I’m giong to get my Haiti article done today - but not for lack of trying! There is, of course, still time - it’s not even 4pm on the west coast yet. But unless I can find a bit of quiet time somewhere, it’s just not on.

The thing is, I had it all planned out, what I was going to write, and the darn thing just kept moving in a different direction so, taking far to long to get it, I eventually decided to follow. It won’t be any great treatise or anything (I tend not to write any of those) but it’ll be whatever it is. Whenever it’s quiet enough again to hear what I am writing.

In other news, though, I got part of the site fixed that I messed up. I had things pointing to the wrong place, which is why the articles weren’t showing up when you clicked on the title or posted a comment. That’s fixed. Other little stuff is still wrong, but nothing as important as that.

i need to find out if we can revert back to a previous version or move forward, if there is a new one. I’m about to throw this one out the window.

Anyway, there are issues with the site (I messed up the coding, surprise, surprise) but I can’t fix them because EE won’t allow me to save anything – or will rarely allow me to, anyway. It just keeps looping around to the control panel whenever I try to save a template or edit a post or whatever. Extremely annoying.

Will have to find arin and tell her I messed up, the site’s messed up, EE’s messing up, we’re all just a mess - see what she can do, lol.

Over the past couple of weeks or so I’ve seen posts from this site at various community blogs, but have not, until now, clicked on any (the post titles are pretty boring sounding – for instance, the one I clicked on was titled “More of Your Responses Are In”). It turns out, though, to be pretty interesting.

Nourishing the Planet, one of a network of blogs from the Worldwatch Institute, appears to highlight various sustainable agriculture practices being put into place around the world – from small backyard plots to large farm collectives.

In one four-part series ( Malawi’s Real “Miracle”, Improving Livelihoods and Nutrition with Permaculture (video), Emphasizing Malawi’s Indigenous Vegetables as Crops (video), and Sweeping Change )  Danielle Nierenberg visits Kristof and Stacia Nordin in Lilongwe, Malawi.

Malawi is one of the many, many places and things I don’t know much about, and agriculture is another (I kill all plants) but I wanted to mention this particular series because of various thoughts brought to mind while reading it.

Here is the first paragraph:

 

Stacia and Kristof Nordin have an unusual backyard. Rather than the typical bare dirt patch of land that most Malawians sweep “clean” every day, the Nordins have over 200 varieties of mostly indigenous vegetables growing organically around their house. They came to Malawi in the 1990s as Peace Corps Volunteers, but now call Malawi home. Stacia works for the Malawi Health Ministry, educating both policy-makers and citizens about the importance of indigenous vegetables and permaculture for improving livelihoods and nutrition.

Okay, nothing new there. Western people going to Africa (or South America, or other places) and deciding to stay – at least for a while – and teach, help, so on. But then this caught my eye:

 

Malawi may be best known for the so-called “Malawi Miracle.” Five years ago the government decided to do something controversial—provide fertilizer subsidies to farmers to grow maize. Since then maize production has tripled and Malawi has been touted as an agricultural success story.

But the way they are refining that corn, says Kristof, makes it “kind of like Wonderbread,” leaving it with just two or three nutrients. Traditional varieties of corn, however, which aren’t usually so highly processed, are more nutritious and don’t require as much artificial fertilizer compared to hybrid varieties. According to Kristof, “48 percent of the country is still stunted with the miracle.”

Stacia and Kristof use their home as a way to educate their neighbors about both permaculture and indigenous vegetables. Most Malawians think of traditional foods, such as amaranth and African eggplant, as poor people foods grown by “bad” farmers. But these crops may hold the key for solving hunger, malnutrition and poverty in Malawi.[Ed. emphasis mine]

And I thought… well, I don’t know what I thought. How did that come about? or maybe, How familiar that seems? So often food indigenous to regions, and to cultures, is derided to the point where, if it’s not pre-packaged or doesn’t have a big name label on it, it’s no longer considered “good food”. I really have no idea of that is what happened in Malawi – I know even less about that country than I do about agriculture. But it wouldn’t surprise me.

Anyway, one for the blogroll that I will be putting together. The whole series is an informative read/watch. As are other people and places they have highlighted on the blog, some of which I’ll probably post about over the next few weeks.