Expect Yourself

That's where I'm writing these days, at least sort of. Trying to. The archive here contains the words (and some of the pictures) that I wrote at BlogCity from 2004-2012. You can find more current work here.

Good-bye, old blog

After 7.5 years, 467 entries and 2,822 comments the old blog is gone. I have all of it in soft copy, including the comments, thanks to my former host, and I have transferred all of the posts, minus comments, to be archived here, in all their glory. I even kept some cringe-worthy posts, written before I knew what I know now, that might have been better off gone (wondering right now: what was I thinking?) in the interest of honesty (see previous parenthetical statement).

For at least the time being, I will write here, and resolve to do so more often, now that that's decided, but for now, I just want to say Good-bye to My Rants a/k/a DotCalm at Blog-City. It was great while it lasted. If any of you happen by have links to my old site, please update them when you get a chance. I will add categories and links to this page soon.

For now, a moment of silence, at least here. If you want to talk, feel free to nudge. Twitter's best.

The Words Matter

Last week, I watched Ed Rendell cite on television New Orleans' 2005 flood as an infrastructure failure and couldn't help but smile at how far we've come. He made no mention of a "natural disaster" or Hurricane Katrina, and rightly, finally so.

I've been honored and blessed to be a part of a group of people who've worked passionately for the past six years to bring about just such a change in lexicon, bloggers who adamantly referred to the event as The Flood, or even the Federal Flood, insisting that what it's called accurately represents the actual truth of the event. It seems to be working. We can change the words if there are enough of us and we stick with it long enough.

This is the amazing gift that new, or social, media has brought to us: the opportunity to join voices and be heard as We, The People. The patriotic choice is to use it.

I should also like to stop calling them the Tea Party. It inaccurately infers patriotism when it's closer to insurrection, and it suggests, erroneously, that it's an independent party. I intend to always refer to them as Tea Party Republicans, since Secessionist Anti-Democracy Republicans doesn't roll off the tongue as well. I accept that, delusionally embracing ignorance and without regard for history or truth, they've fully appropriated "Tea Party" so that it no longer means honorable patriots but now describes people who wish to tear down our government and to transfer significant portions of our nation's wealth from the people to the very richest among us and the corporations that made them so.

The saddest aspect of this is that so many, falling victim to ignorance, have been persuaded to vote and march and passionately clamor for all these things that are not in their best interest. This movement preys upon some of the most vulnerable among us, the gullible, fear-motivated uneducated, who're unable to think for themselves, and have done so with the collaboration of what we used to call the Mainstream Media, but should, from now on, refer to as the Corporately Owned Media, because that's what they are. They, the Corporately Owned or Corporately Funded Media, have the power to affect public thinking, especially that of the most susceptible and those in the throes of latent or blatant racism, and mold it into a movement that will do the bidding of the most powerful against the people.

So, let's review:

• It was a Catastrophic Infrastructure Failure.
• They're the Tea Party Republicans.
• It's the Corporately Owned Media.

We, The People, if we choose to raise our voices together for long enough, can change it.

Interactive Circle

I watch a lot of television. I came to this highly unexpected place through my own choices, somehow, from the single young flight attendant who actively followed the arts and cultural scenes of San Francisco and New York and kept her parents' cast off television in her bedroom closet, pulling it out mostly for Big Games or election debates and returns. The transition was complicated but certainly complete. I went from philosophically opposed to fully engaged somewhere between 30 and 50. We've grown up together, television and I, from a few black and white choices back in test pattern days that I'm old enough to remember, to thousands of choices, DVR programming from my iPhone, picture in a picture if the need arises (usually for sports or politics), always tweeting while watching, an interactive television experience.
Our children, and presumably our grandchildren, help keep us young, and most of us will overcome any obstacles to remain in communication with them, so even the most hesitant, resistant and downright unwilling among us will adopt our children's media if that's what we have to do to stay connected. But that's not me. I was an early adopter. After living my life deeply immersed in one form of marketing or another (the daughter, step-daughter, neice, sister and wife of marketing executives on both the agency and client sides), I was blessed to be part of a team that pioneered using offline promotion to drive online interaction. In fact, we were the first people on the planet to do so, and helped the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office define how interactivity is novel and non-obvious, but I digress. I was regularly communicating with my kids via AIM in the late '90s, early '00s, and by '99 had been cyberquatted, in itself a new media lesson. Since then I've intentionally grabbed each new kind of interactivity as it came along, determined not to be left behind (again), equating it with professional vulnerability, viscerally excited about the new potential in each and every one.
So now, television is the old guy (we like to call ourselves middle aged, but is that really what it is?) and it's got this hot young sweetheart, the internet. Suddenly, I don't just watch television, but I watch it with a crowd of others assembled on one social media platform or another. Lets face it, we seniors don't get out like we used to. I work 45 hours a week in a complicated, hectic, adrenaline-drenched environment, and I have Crohn's, so watching television flat on my back with my laptop is about all I have energy for at the end of my work day. My kids are grown and have homes of their own. I'm tired, but also not as busy as I was used to being. I've always been very social, so I welcome the chance to talk about what I'm watching, even if it's just 140 characters at a time on Twitter or with folks I know on Facebook.
When I hear my contemporaries dismiss social media, primarily as a "time suck", I hear an old fogy shouting "Get off of my lawn!" Refusing to learn for no good reason smells of fear, smells of failure to grow, and rationalizing it as somehow right to think that way smells of self-deception. Twitter gets called "narcissistic" more than other platforms, and it's a common whine, "Why would anyone want to know what you're doing/eating/seeing/etc.?" Except that's the point when "etc." includes thinking and you use Twitter not just to follow people but to follow ideas, subjects of interest, current events, other media, even television. In most areas of our lives we are bound with others by the things we have in common: our geography, our social stations, our ages, our activities or those of our children; but in each of these there are clear signals that create preconception: how we look, where we live, what we wear, what we drive. It's different when we interact on social media because there we choose connections largely, if not entirely, because of shared ideas; and on Twitter, unlike some other fora, we can follow the ideas first as a path to find the people with whom we wish to connect.

This started as a post about the awkwardness of the interaction between television and social media, at least from television's perspective, but has veered into one about how television is enhanced, made fresh, by the internet. Maybe it won't be long before interactive television becomes routine, but, at least for now, it remains a one-way medium. We watch it, but it doesn't really know we were there. However, in tandem with social media it becomes a part of a greater interactive whole, and life becomes less lonely when we watch while "talking" by typing about what we're watching on Twitter and Facebook with others who are watching it too.
As I was editing this post, I watched Leslie Stahl's 60 Minutes interview with Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, while following all tweets that contained the word "facebook" on Twitter. I also DVRed it because the Falcons game ran late and I didn't want to miss it, so I have it stored in my TV's memory. The segment closed with the announcement of yet another Facebook redesign deployment tomorrow and invited viewers to visit the show's website for a tour of the new interface. Gotta run (in this beautiful interactive circle) y'all. It's a great time to be alive.

Catfish

Warning: This post may contain vague spoilers, but does not contain concrete ones. I don't come out and say it, but it's impossible to write about Catfish without at least alluding to the story's secret. Read at your risk. Even better, go see the movie, then come back and read.
I lucked into a special showing of Catfish, with co-director Henry Joost in attendance, making it two movies in a row I've seen that were followed by Q&A with the film's maker, since the last movie I went to was The Big Uneasy in New Orleans on 8/30 with Harry Shearer. I intentionally didn't read much about Catfish, because I didn't want to know the secret, and I went early in its release, the second day, because I knew I couldn't stop myself from finding out for long. I also wanted to see "Catfish" before seeing The Social Network, wanting to see the story built on Facebook before seeing the story of how Facebook was built. It was an afternoon showing on a sunny Saturday, so the crowd was small, and I sat down front and right, so it just happened that he was five or six feet from me when answering questions. Even better, he spent time in the lobby signing autographs and talking to folks after the show, and really seemed to be a great guy. Pictured with me at right, he looks remarkably like The Youngest (much less so IRL).
The film follows Nev (rhymes with Steve) Schulman, a photographer and the brother of Joost's business partner, Ariel, with whom he runs a film production company in New York City. The three shared an office space. In this highly recommended recent piece, Joost describes it simply:

Our threshold for considering something interesting enough to film is very, very low.... When Nev started to correspond with an 8-year-old kid who reached out to him on the internet, Ariel pulled out his camera instinctively.... We film ourselves all the time.

Their resulting work follows Nev's evolving relationship with that kid and her family, immediate and extended. The virally popular trailer calls what happens when they head out on a road trip to meet these people "shattering", but I don't agree and think that's even misleading. I found the surprise liberating and sweet, maybe even the opposite of the scary it's been depicted. It's more like discovering Picasso's "lie that tells the truth," defining art and the creative spirit, even if some of that spirit, that art, is accidental, even if someone could get hurt. I was wondering if it was true, and some in the media have suggested it's a faux documentary, a story built to look like the truth, a device. "Is it true?" was one of the first questions asked of Joost during the Q & A that followed the film, and Joost didn't just answer, "Yes." Much, if not most, of the discussion that followed was less about the movie and more about the experience that these young men shared, more importantly, the remarkable people they met. They saw something unfolding in front of them and documented it without knowing where it would go, almost stumbling into a deeply moving story and one that also speaks to a core value of social media: its ability to relieve the loneliness and isolation that so often burden ordinary people, perhaps especially those overwhelmed by loss, difficulty, routine, emptiness, pain, its ability to help us hold onto "fragments of things we used to be, wanted to be, never could be," as he put it. BTDT.
Ultimately, the film's creators find the eruptive, disruptive, irrepressible nature of the artistic soul, affirming the notion that the thing you can't not do, that thing that comes out anyway, even when you or the circumstances of your life try to keep it in, will find a way even if it's sideways, even when our burdens bend us, bend it. These young men, perhaps overly eager, some have suggested self-absorbed, turned out to be as gentle and generous souls as the ones they discovered. Instead of judging, they embraced. "Catfish" isn't scary or shattering; it's tender and enlightening. As Joost put it, "The biggest surprise in living the experience and making the film was that we didn't find a villain on the other side of that door." I'm so glad I saw "Catfish" and got the chance to talk with Henry Joost. It's one of those movies you keep thinking about long after it's over. If it's not playing where you are, click here and request the movie in your area.
The current crop of documentaries really is seriously enticing. I'd also like to see "Waiting for Superman" and "I'm Still Here". I loved "Catfish" but warn you not to expect some huge stunner of a reveal, because it's a more ordinary but elegant story they unfold. Next weekend I'm going to go for the big studio fiction based on real life, the movie about Facebook, "The Social Network". I'll try not to expect Aaron Sorkin to be there.

The Museum, The Message & The Movie

The Museum

My recent trip to New Orleans for Rising Tide 5 and observances of the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall and the flood that followed in New Orleans started with a an event at the Louisiana State Museum, Katrina 5.0: A Symposium on Technology and Blogging. I commend the museum for their choice of subject and hope they'll continue the discussion of Social Media in Disaster, because there isn't a community in this country for which this has been more important than SE Louisiana. In the wake of the hurricane in Mississippi, the flood in New Orleans and the diaspora that followed these events, for the first time in this country, citizen-generated online content distributed vital information, became emergency communication used to look for the lost, locate the safe and to broadcast, in the truest sense of the word, real-time vital information. Social Media, including Craig's List, blogs and online message boards became the means through which dispersed communities re-formed their existing connections and established new ones, based on their ongoing shared experience. This was the environment in which first the NOLA Bloggers and then Rising Tide organized.

Troy Gilbert, @gulfsails, was on the Symposium panel to discuss his live blogging of the immediate aftermath in River Ridge and the flood in Lakeview, which he did initially by texting to post on Blogger and later charging his laptop via a generator and finding a live hard phone line so he could access the internet with a laptop and a dial-up connection. This information led to a lively discussion on the particular value of text messaging (and dial-up) in an emergency, followed by a discussion of the remarkable way in which Twitter was used by New Orleanians in the Gustav evacuation. Because Twitter can be accessed for both sending and receiving tweets using text messages on the most ordinary cell phones, and because it's possible to follow tagged subjects (#gustav #nexthurricane) in addition to people (@bestfriend) on Twitter, a group of technologically inclined New Orleanians and their extended digital support system saw Twitter's potential as an emergency management tool and intentionally adopted the platform, set themselves up as a group, knowing that it would be useful in an evacuation, given what they'd learned in numerous evacuations, including recent memories of the extended one that followed Katrina.

Text messages are tiny packages of data, that, once sent, hang in the ether until they manage to get through, able to do so, eventually, even when cell towers are struggling with power problems and whole area codes appear to be down. By the time Gustav made his landfall, there was a very developed active network of NOLA tweeters. Evacuees were reporting traffic conditions as well as fuel, supplies and accommodations availability on the road. Their friends in other locales were tweeting to them updates on the storm and related news, while folks who chose to remain in New Orleans were tweeting conditions there, even up to, on days two and three and four, going house to house looking for porch lights intentionally left on for just this purpose and informing their friends, via Twitter, when their electricity came back on, all reporting from the evacuation or the storm, vital information, 140 characters at a time. Suddenly, Twitter wasn't just a game, or a fun thing to do, not just a clever marketing channel or a silly time suck, but an excellent emergency management tool, that if deployed by responders could function something like interoperability lite.

It's important that we talk about it, write about it and share ideas, because we're all just learning how to do this and there's value in shared knowledge. Kudos to the Louisiana State Museum for furthering the discussion, for spreading the word. I was very glad to get down there for it, and I look forward to the museum's upcoming exhibit: Living with Hurricanes, Katrina and Beyond opening 10/26/10.

The Message

So there they were in the summer of 2006, these newly-forming NOLA Bloggers, almost a year into the internet explosion that erupted from the diaspora, already instinctively trying to correct the erroneous terminology of Hurricane Katrina, the Natural Disaster that struck MS vs. The Flood, the Infrastructure (or Engineering) Failure that followed in New Orleans, erroneous terminology that was taking hold in the national narrative, when Scout Prime, then blogging at First Draft, suggested to Oyster of Your Right Hand Thief, that there could be a conference. Her suggestion resulted in this post, which resulted Rising Tide 1, which led to Rising Tide 5, this year, that Rising Tide webmaster, Lance Vargas, described in Fear and Loathing at Rising Tide 5, as "the largest concentration of myth dispellers in any one place that weekend." Myth dispellers, bloggers and their readers, tweeters or just supportive interested parties, gathering with experts brought in to help find the truth buried in all the noise, gathering to ask questions that help define the message that they would in turn broadcast, if not pioneering new media advocacy, certainly trying to perfect having fun trying.

It's a mission based on the notions that the words matter and that corporately funded media can't be trusted to get it right, that they're compromised by obligations to sponsors on one side and ratings on the other, thus inclined to deliver a pre-packaged PR story to suit their advertisers that also manages to pander to their audience's preferences, and that this infects all kinds of officials, public and private, so much so that a president who must know better still suggests that the flood in New Orleans was a natural disaster and limits declaration of the man-made failures to the response, or lack thereof, still making no mention of a catastrophic infrastructure failure. Maybe that's just too scary. Terrorists really are superfluous when we have all these hidden time bombs in our infrastructure.

So, it's been a desire shared by many to at least try to correct the message, to try to find and further the truth rather than the neatly packaged stories we're given by a for-profit media, that started Rising Tide and fuels its growth, a desire to gather and look for the truth that will help define the message, an evolving mission to change the words, and not just about the flood, because these same mistakes get made over and over again, most notably, recently, with the oil spill, and will be the same with the oil spill as long as we keep calling it the oil spill. Spill is something one does with their coffee. I'll even go so far as to accept that spill is something that happens when an oil-carrying tanker loses its load, but BP and Transocean and Halliburton and their sub-contractors and all the parts of the U.S. government that participated in their oversight, primarily the MMS and Congress, in the process of trying to take something that probably oughtn't belong to them in the first place out of the earth, broke the floor of the Gulf of Mexico, opened a gash through which the contents of the earth gushed out, and they were unable to stop it because they hadn't bothered, in their headlong rush to get the prize out of the earth, to prepare for the possibility that something could go wrong, hadn't bothered to have a real plan in place in case they, well, broke the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. Safety First, performance art used to cover up just another greed-corrupted, profit-driven culture. When they did break the earth, they lied about it, like a naughty child covering up the mess they'd made, hoping Mommy wouldn't see it. When that didn't work, they threw poison on it, a poison with only one purpose: to make the oil less visible. They didn't care that the poison, Corexit, was worse for all the things that live in (around?) the Gulf of Mexico than was the oil, that it would make it harder to find the oil, so it would make it harder to remove the oil, and also that it would infect the food chain from the bottom up, that there was no science to tell them exactly how this would manifest, whether it could go all the way from killing of species of marine life to creating dangerous seafood. No one knows, but BP didn't care. Hiding their mess was the only thing they cared about. But I digress, sort of.

Profit-driven cultures frequently evolve this way, with appearances trumping reality, and finding a way to tell your immediate superior what they want to hear rather than the truth becomes a necessary tactic for advancement, since how it looks is way more important than how it really is, and the words, the spin, and the shiny tale told seems more real than the ugly, broken, failing true story that lies beneath. Whether it's levees built on goo, or an overly gaseous well, or a crumbling system of pipes carrying explosive natural gas through residential neighborhoods, the current corporate/government/big media culture is that it's best not to talk about what's going wrong if you want to keep your job. Nobody cares about what they can't see.

So we all just do what we can, because we can, because the words matter and we can say that loudly, and it's pretty glorious that others before us fought all these years in this country to protect our rights to say what we're thinking publicly, the way that other Americans have, all the back to Thomas Paine, except now, our little homemade pamphlets are, if ephemeral, wildly distributable to a potentially huge audience, able sometimes to tap into a public energy that can sweep a topic up into the larger consciousness, making it possible, with a few bytes posted online and oft repeated, to influence what happens next, to change the words, which brings me to The Movie.

The Movie

On Monday, August 30th, still in New Orleans, I went to see Harry Shearer's documentary film about the true causes of the flood versus the myths built into the most widely accepted stories, The Big Uneasy, at the Prytania Theater with @VirgoTex and @RacyMind. We found the aforementioned Oyster there and attended one of the shows after which Shearer spoke briefly and took questions. I liked the movie, although I am not its intended audience but rather its echo chamber. There wasn't much I learned, as I've spent the last five years kind of studying this, but it was interestingly presented and it's a movie that needs to be seen and talked about and quoted, all as part of this same mission, this message, this perhaps stupidly old-fashioned idea that truth matters, that knowing what really happened matters, that making sure it or something like it doesn't happen again or somewhere else matters.

The movie was initially scheduled to play one night only on 8/30 in theaters across the nation, and the DVD can't be sold until ninety days after the theatrical release, but Shearer has promoted it fiercely and the film's gotten some legs, so there've been some additional screenings scheduled and extended clips posted online. He does a good job of explaining the science of what happened, including perhaps the best graphic of the time line of the levee failures that I've seen. If I can find that clip online, I'll post a link as an update. John Goodman's "Ask A New Orleanian" segments are nice comic relief that also yield valuable information, and the film's pace was comfortable even on a belly full of Franky & Johnny's fried catfish and a couple of beers.

During the Q & A that followed, when asked how he funded the production, Shearer said, "I like to think that this is Rupert Murdoch's money that paid for this; I just acted as a conduit." The audience laughed at his reference to his work on The Simpsons for Fox, later adding to point out that he made the movie because what we call the mainstream media failed to report truthfully, "Why else would a schmuck from Spinal Tap and The Simpsons have to do this if they'd done their jobs?"

Perhaps most interesting in all of the post-release stories is one Shearer told that night that's since taken on some life of its own via the internet, about his attempts to purchase underwriting on NPR, which he did when he realized that neither Morning Edition nor All Things Considered would be covering the release of his film. What followed is not something one would've expected from NPR. Here's how Shearer described it:

NPR's legal department ruled that these words were not acceptable in the announcement: "documentary about why New Orleans flooded", that the only words that would work for them were "documentary about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina" -- this despite the fact that the movie IS about why New Orleans flooded, and it most certainly is not about the hurricane (since the experts interviewed in the movie agree that the flooding was a "man-made engineering catastrophe").

It didn't surprise me later to learn that Shearer's inspiration to make the movie came at Rising Tide 4, for which he was the keynote speaker (that link is to @sophilab's video of his keynote address), because what struck me most, what I kept thinking about on the drive home to Atlanta, what led to this whole long-winded ramble of a post, was that his mission in making this movie was maybe identical or at least very close to identical to our mission with Rising Tide: to dispel myths, to help define the words that are used to describe these events to the rest of the world, to take the definition of those messages away from the entities and organizations with financial interest in the outcome or something similar and use whatever kind of platform we have to replace the spin that had been sold as truth with what really happened, and that this mission doesn't end with New Orleans' flood, but includes what we call what BP did to the Gulf of Mexico and whether we consider the mammoth commercial apparatus that reports news for us our mainstream media, or what it really is, owned and operated by sponsors, corporately-funded or for-profit.

I'm sorry to go so horribly long (although it's hard to believe anyone could possibly still be reading), and am almost ashamed at how much time it's taken to get this written, but it seems to me this is important because it looks like it's going to be a long, hard fight.

RTs

I had hoped to try and grab some lucidity as the last few days' adrenaline subsides and I drift into a short stupor before I have to drive back to Atlanta and return to my day job, so I could put down in words at least some of the things that have happened, that were created and shared by and with these NOLA Bloggers, this fifth anniversary of Katrina's landfall and of the infrastructure failure that occurred in her wake, but, nah. I'm afraid it might be too late for that. So, if you don't mind I'll ramble and link to some of the fine friends who are better bloggers than I am. It will be best for us all if y'all go and read what they wrote. If you're looking for well-written, cohesive narrative, I fear you're in the wrong place. Here's my report from Rising Tide & Rob Thomas with a few ReTweets thrown in, my RTs.
Loki, who once again did a great job as Master of Ceremonies, has posted a Cinchcast of Mother Jones' Mac McClelland's keynote speech, including the Q&A that followed. While she's been generally regarded as the hottest keynoter yet, I happen to think that depends on how you define hot, since she's up against last year's keynoter, Harry Shearer. (Stop it, I'm serious. He's certainly hotter from my POV, but I digress.) Aside from being brilliant and beautiful, she rocked for being the first keynoter to come to the Friday night party, and she signed NOLADishu's Halliburton Cementing Handbook. Shearer, however, gets his own special kudos for being the first keynoter to show up at the year after his keynote Rising Tide as an attendee, which also rocked, a lot. His documentary, The Big Uneasy, shows one night only nationwide on Monday, August 30th. If you miss it, look for it soon in DVD.
Veracity Stew has a good recap of Tim Ruppert's presentation on the differences between levees and dams, in fact and in how they are considered, regulated and maintained by governments, whether federal or local. It turns out those differences are big and important and affect millions of Americans who don't live anywhere near the Gulf of Mexico. The Big American Night has a long post that pays particular attention to the Public Safety and Environmental panel discussions. If you didn't follow Liprap's live blogging on the Rising Tide blog on Saturday, then scroll down to see her live posts. @Dakinikat did something cool, putting up a post early in the day and then letting the comments thread be the live-blogging. I don't agree with everything she says, but it's a nice record, and her comment after noting that our keynoter was dropping f-bombs and drinking a Bloody Mary, "She's gone native," was hilarious (h/t @skooks).  
We had a great crowd, with folks coming in all day and very few leaving, until the very last panel, or because of the very last panel, which was Maitri's Treme panel. Jeffrey gets the quote of the day as a questioner when he asked Eric Overmyer, Treme's co-creator and executive producer, whether there was a danger of "curating to death" the culture that the show is trying to capture. Overmyer recognized that danger. 
I'll toss up the links to pictures and interesting reports, hopefully including video, as updates to this post as I find them, and promise another post covering the Katrina 5.0 Symposium at the Louisiana State Museum as well as Shearer's movie, later. We had over 200 attendees at this year's conference, plus probably a dozen or so more press comps and unregistered panelists (it was my job to count them and I'll work on getting the final, final head count after I get this post up). The Howlin' Wolf turned out to be an almost perfect venue and h/t to Howie for getting it done on game day. The Marriott Springhill Suites was perfect as a conference hotel. With quite a few organizers encamped and many out of town guests, including our keynote speaker, I heard not one single complaint. Somehow, miraculously, our non-attendee hotel neighbors didn't even complain about us, or at least not that I know. Walking back and forth between the hotel and the Wolf it was impossible not to notice the front of the Convention Center less than two blocks away, and I couldn't help but wonder what passed in those spaces five years ago.
The organizers kicked ass, many shouldering multiple responsibilities. I did my best to manage the registration process from afar but would like to thank the real organizers for an amazing job done well: Peter Athas, Patrick Armstrong, Jeffrey Bostick, Leigh Checkman, Alli deJong, Mark Folse, Mark Moseley, Lisa Palumbo, Tim Ruppert, Rob Steinmetz, Lance Vargas, George Williams, and especially, our Chair, without whom it would have been something completely different, Kimberly Marshall. I kind of miss the days of live-blogging Rising Tide, because manning the check-in table means I don't get to pay full attention to the program, although this venue was better for doing both at the same time than any place we've previously held the conference. I end up doing more tweeting than blogging and trying my best to follow as we go along on Twitter by keeping one eye on the #rt5 tweet stream, of greatest value when used as a guide to longer content by clicking the links shared. There were lots of great tweets, but my favorite was from Lamar White of @CenLamar who tweeted to @RisingTide the day after the conference, "This year was a smash success. Rising Tide is quietly emerging as the State's most relevant and insightful annual conference." Also, check out his report of running into President Obama at Parkway Bakery on Sunday.
It was a hard decision for me to make, because debriefing with the organizers after the conference is one of my favorite parts of our traditions, but last April, when, on a whim, I tried to buy tickets for Rob Thomas' acoustic concert in Biloxi on 8/28 for his Sidewalk Angels Foundation, the last of the summer tour, I hit the jackpot and came away from Ticketmaster with front row seats. I was fortunate enough to enlist @brenyb as my enthusiastic partner in crime, and we high-tailed it out of Rising Tide and to Biloxi in the pouring rain, without eating dinner or so much as having a beer, landing in our seats barely in time to catch our breath before they started. Playing with Matt Beck and Frankie Romano, he performed a mix of his solo material, Matchbox Twenty favorites, some covers and two Tabitha's Secret songs, one of which I'd never heard, and really liked, Swing. Matt Beck did one excellent solo song that I have on video. My Flickr Pics are here, but I'm a little uncomfortable posting the videos I made. Unlike most artists, Rob doesn't take down concert vids folks post online, but these are such high quality that I'm not sure it's okay (or maybe I just want them all to myself?). It was a soft concert, relaxed, with everyone seated except at the very end, with the appreciative audience singing back to him all night. On our ride back to New Orleans (okay, after a stop for a late dinner at Waffle House), we talked about Rob's way with words, and maybe I'll come back and write a whole post on his remarkable ability to distill complex concepts into a very few cleverly turned words, and add a set list, but this line from MBT's Hand Me Down, which he did not sing on Saturday, seemed to us to perfectly fit the day's theme, nailing what passes for information right now in this country, what a corporate for-profit media teaches us: "gonna like the way they lie, better than the truth."
Jeffrey pointed out a few things in a blog post on the Friday before Rising Tide that I think bear repeating. First, he points out this paragraph from the RisingTideNOLA.com home page:

We come together to dispel myths, promote facts, highlight progress and regress, discuss recovery ideas, and promote sound policies at all levels. We aim to be a "real life" demonstration of internet activism as we continue to recover from a massive failure of government on all levels. 

Then he adds this:

I very much like that little block of text. It says an informed, engaged public can debunk and overcome damaging untruths which emerge either through general laziness or from powerful institutional malefactors. This is, in my opinion, the very best of what internet media offers us.

I hope people came away from this year's Rising Tide both more informed and engaged. I know I did.

*** We already have an update. Crystal Kile's video of Mac McClelland's keynote is here.
**** Watching Treme has a comprehensive post up here with detailed coverage of the Treme panel.
***** Mark LaFlaur's live blogging for Levees Not War. The conference is always better for having Mark around.  

Eat, Pray, Gag

I'm sure Elizabeth Gilbert is a lovely woman, and that her book, Eat, Pray, Love and the hit film made from it are both full of great spiritual guidance, universal truths and enlightened insights beyond my imagining. I just cannot muster the desire to explore the wisdom of a woman who sought to heal from her terrible, terrible divorce by taking a year to travel the world, poor dear. While I'm pleased for her that she was able to turn healing her broken heart into a really great career, I'm much more interested in the women left to raise children alone or those who're forced into the workplace for the first time in decades after being dumped for a younger model, or maybe the ones dealing with not ending a hopeless marriage because they can't possibly afford the divorce, or they're married to men who really can't take care of themselves. I'd even listen to the stories of the average wives just muddling through or brave women holding their heads high while stuck in dead-end jobs they hate because they, well, need to avoid homelessness and keep or provide health insurance.

Maybe I'm being unfair, and I know that these less fortunate women with fewer, um, travel options aren't nearly as, well, scenic. I also risk sounding bitter and cynical, although I really do feel happy and optimistic; I swear; pinky swear; double fuckin' pinky swear. Seriously, I don't mean to be mean. I might even really like her book or its movie. I just don't have the stomach to find out. Please, forgive me.

Rising Tide 5

Rising Tide NOLA, Inc. will present its 5th annual new media conference on the recovery and future of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast on Saturday, August 28, 2010 at The Howlin' Wolf, 907 South Peters St. in New Orleans. The one-day conference features speakers and panel discussion on the status and future of the culture, politics, criminal justice system, environment and flood protection of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

Rising Tide NOLA, Inc.is a non-profit organization formed by New Orleans bloggers in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the federally-built levees. After the disaster, the internet became a vital connection among dispersed New Orleanians, former New Orleanians, and friends of the city and of the Gulf Coast region. A surge of new blogs erupted and, combined with those that were already online, a community of bloggers with a shared interest in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast developed. In the summer of 2006, to mark the anniversary of the flood, the bloggers of New Orleans organized the first Rising Tide Conference, taking their shared interest in technology, the arts, the internet and social media and turning advocacy for the city into action. The idea for the conference originated with Scout Prime, then a blogger for First Draft and a tireless advocate for New Orleans. Her idea resonated with Mark Moseley, Oyster of Your Right Hand Thief, culminating in this post and the first Rising Tide Conference.

Conference registration is open and only $20 until July 31. Registration includes lunch, and there will be a pre-conference party hosted by the New Orleans bloggers on Friday evening August 27, also at the Howlin' Wolf. More information is available at the Rising Tide website and blog. You can also follow Rising Tide on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook for regular updates.

This is always a great event. I look forward to seeing y'all there.

Rob Thomas at The Fox

I love every chance to go to the Fabulous Fox Theater in Atlanta, from rainy Saturday afternoons of my childhood playing make believe with sisters and friends in its exotic spaces while we were supposed to be watching Doris Day and Rock Hudson elevate dysfunction, to stage plays and concerts and one silent film accompanied by orchestra. I've never had a bad time at The Fox.

The Youngest graciously accepted my invitation to come along, and we met up with some friends of his before the concert, first at their beautiful Ansley Park home and then at Livingston in the Georgian Terrace. It was great to see this iconic hotel's jawdroppingly beautiful transformation, even if I was sorry to miss Carolina Liar and the first part of One Republic. We don't get things just right every time, and the opportunity to get to know the friends I'd heard so much about was worth it.

Thomas opened with "Fire on the Mountain" and to a standing, singing audience's obvious adoration and quickly thanked everyone for choosing to be there, recognizing the value of time and resources spent, pledging to give everything he had to make the experience worth it. It sounded real and he lived up to it. Alternating between the keyboards and guitar reminds us he's the musician behind the sound, but we are there to hear him sing his words, words about beauty in our broken places, about our imperfect struggle to connect with others and ourselves, words about joy and pain.

There was a wonderful feature article by Erik Hedegaard in the August 6th issue of Rolling Stone, "Confessions of an Unapologetic Pop Star" subtitled, "How did Rob Thomas survive a violent redneck childhood to become one of the top songwriters of his generation?" It goes a long way towards explaining the angst and points out how unfairly he's been stereotyped. Unfortunately, they've removed the content from the online edition, so if you want to read it, I guess you'll have to go to the library. How weird is that?

He played a hearty seventeen song setlist of tunes from Something To Be and Cradlesong (plus Little Wonders), before his Matchbox Twenty bandmates, Paul Doucette, Kyle Cook and Brian Yale joined him on stage for two songs for the highly aroused crowd. Just as his words speak to the complexities and nuances of human being and interaction, his expansive relationships with his former bandmates teach by example. Rob Thomas and Matchbox Twenty are not mutually exclusive, and if one eclipses the other, neither is less for that. We should all embrace growth so magnanimously. It made me want to go listen to Paul Doucette's current work for The Break and Repair Method.

Thomas closed with a beautiful, haunting version of "Smooth", like I've never heard and that I couldn't find anywhere online, followed by "This is How a Heart Breaks", ending too abruptly. It felt like no encore, felt weird. I know now that the whole thing was an encore from the time MB20 came on stage, and that their arrival sort of interrupted what would have been the concert's end, so it just felt like no encore. Sometimes I'm easily confused. This did lead to an interesting conversation about encores in general, and what they mean, and whether or not this is something an audience earns or something to which an artist is obligated, but I digress (sort of).

Here's some homemade video from the Matchbox Twenty portion of the concert. The Youngest mentioned during the show that Thomas takes the red plaid shirt to a whole new level. I expect we'll see more vids of the show as time passes. From our seats towards the back there was a sea of cellphones held high all the way to the stage.

So, maybe Thomas isn't edgy or cool, but I don't really care. There are folks in this world for whom being cool is easy, who saunter through their days certain and secure, free of anxiety and self-doubt. Rob Thomas is for the rest of us.

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I thank @brenyb from Twitter for convincing me not to sell the tickets, for linking the above video, for pointing out the Rolling Stone piece and providing a copy of it, sending me the set list, and helping me embrace my inner groupie geek. Maybe I'll do it again. Maybe next time I'll have better seats, take pictures, take notes and write a proper review. Maybe next time will be December 5th in Biloxi. You just never know.

I bought tickets to see Rob Thomas at The Fox this Wednesday, September 30. It was an impulsive thing to do, on a Friday night in July, before what will hereinafter and forevermore be referred to as The Wedding (more on this, another time). I was hanging out on Twitter using TweetDeck, following folks who were tagging tweets with #Real Time or #Bill Maher, which I always look forward to watching, especially having just discovered that Rob Thomas was scheduled to do the show, except he was stuck, his flight delayed in New York, and he wasn't going to make the appearance he'd scheduled in a stop-over in Los Angeles as he headed off to tour, New Zealand, I think, or was it Australia?

Well, that was the small and embarrassingly late Ah Ha! moment: Rob Thomas is touring, with a new album out, so he could be coming to Atlanta. Blessed with the internet, which got me into this impulse buy opportunity in the first place, I discovered that was, in fact, the case, and that he was scheduled to play The Fabulous Fox, an extraordinary venue, so I did it.

Since then, I've wondered whether or not this whole thing is advisable. First of all, it's sold out so I can easily sell the tickets, which might even fund the replacement of the glass face of my beloved iPhone. It broke so surprisingly easily. The pain this shattered face brings me only serves to emphasize the inappropriate affection I've felt for this, well, device (it seems more like a person, really), from the moment I held it, also in July (big month for major purchases, it seems). Love in my pocket, a thing of beauty and function, enabling picture sharing on Facebook & Twitter with just a few touches and one click to take the picture, but I digress (remind me later, though, to tell you all about what my iPhone can do).

Now, I've seen some live music since the last time I saw Rob Thomas perform, on stage with Matchbox 20 at Chastain Amphitheater August 2, 1998 (Soul Asylum opened - I had to look it up), but, excluding small clubs and Jazzfest, that was the last real concert I attended, and it was fabulous, a legendary event (at least in our family), The Youngest & Middle Son's first concert. They were 10 & 13. I'm an old fan, from the beginning, and I love it all, but his first solo album, Something To Be is by far my favorite thing he's done, with or without Matchbox 20, one of those rare albums, a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts.

When I was tagged on Facebook for a meme called My Soundtrack, it directed, "Using song titles from only one artist, cleverly answer the following questions," I chose Rob/M20. Here's what I posted:

Are you male or female: "Problem Girl"

Describe yourself: "Unwell"

How do you feel about yourself: "Ever The Same "

Describe where you currently live: "Fallin' to Pieces "

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: "Back 2 Good"

Your best friend is: "All I Need "

Your favorite color is: "Black and White People"

You know that: "This is How a Heart Breaks"

What's the weather like: "Mad Season" (close 2nd: "Cold")

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called: "Bent "

What is life to you: "Something To Be"

What is the best advice you have to give:"How Far We've Come"

If you could change your name, what would it be: "My, My, My "

Your favorite food is: "Crutch"

In addition, a friend from New Orleans left the following comment on my post:

You know I saw a lot of bands when I worked at the House of Blues...and this guy Thomas was the biggest surprise I ever had. I really didn't like the music that much until I saw him perform. He blew me away.

So I guess I'm going to go. Despite the fact that I'm a total wuss & have to work on Thursday and don't normally do such things on work nights, at least not recently, not since I've been sick, and I'm exhausted just thinking of it, but you only live once, right?

I know. I'm pathetic, and I've been a very bad blogger (and not just because of my affection for stream of consciousness run on sentences). Sleep. Work. Eat. Okay, sometimes Twitter. Okay, sometimes go to New Orleans, and maybe the mountains, and, once recently, La Jolla, CA. More on that later. I promise.

Peace, y'all.

The Tide Rose

The Tide Rose in New Orleans last weekend, and I was still inspired by the NOLA Bloggers. The attendance was greater than previous years, the posters and t-shirts more beautiful, the keynote more riveting and the panels and parties, the participants and reparte, more wonderful than ever. Who thought that possible? The hard part about going to Rising Tide from out of town (and of insisting on driving) is that I don't get much chance to blog about it because I'm busy driving home in the immediate aftermath. That's also the worst thing about working the sign in table too. Live blogging is for those seated among the attendees (well, except perhaps for Liprap who maintained the RT Blog while also working the sign in and buy swag table with me *jealous raspberry at her mad skillz*), and Maitri killed it in this series of live posts. Killed it.

Harry Shearer's Keynote was excellent, and much of its content ended up published as a blog post at HuffPo. He came early and caught most of the Culture Panel (my fav) and stayed for a long time shaking hands, posing for pictures, signing books, talking, listening. The lunch by Cafe Reconcile was amazing (thanks, David). If you don't know what Cafe Reconcile's about, then this is the one link in this post to click. In addition to their noble purpose and good works, Reconcile produces fabulous food. White Beans and Shrimp, Crawfish Pasta, Greens, Cornbread... oh, my! The afternoon was the Politics Panel & we closed with the Sports Panel, playing to the worn out but die hard crowd.

Coming home late Sunday and straight to work Monday was rough, but there's no rest for these bloggers, and it's taken just about all the focus I can muster while also working full time (and work's been an intense dead run this week) to follow their creative bursts burning up the internet tubes with inspired and energetic plans for next year's event. It will be bigger and better than ever before and I'll be sharing specifics soon. We came away from Rising Tide pumped.

Harry Shearer: Comments at Rising Tide IV in New Orleans (22 Aug 2009) from Crystal Kile on Vimeo.

I came away from it all resolved to be a better blogger and with renewed devotion to New Orleans, more specifically, New Orleanians. I'm also increasingly convinced that self-censorship rooted in fear of what folks I know or work with or may one day know or work with will think if I speak my heart makes for bad blogging, the kind that's gone on here for too long. As we approach the coming 4th anniversary of New Orleans' flood that followed the landfall of Hurricane Katrina, the NOLA Blogosphere is full of eloquent posts about Rising Tide as well as the anniversary, but I'll direct you to Scout Prime's Farewell Post at First Draft:

I am just an American who felt strongly about the necessity of this country to right the wrong that had been done to the Gulf Coast and in particular New Orleans. I believed and still do believe that it is a moral imperative and that in not doing so we, as a country, as a community, risk losing our soul. I would submit that as a society we lost our moral compass when bodies were allowed to remain in the streets of N.O. for days and weeks, or in homes for months and even a year in some cases, as the powers that be argued over who would foot the bill to recover the remains of the victims of the flooding of New Orleans. There is something very wrong when such a thing can occur in a great nation.

Read her post. Watch her videos. Take a few moments to think, as this anniversary approaches, about how we can be a better country, how we can find our national soul. We've come a long way, but we still have far to go.

Peace, out, y'all.

Rising Tide IV

Rising Tide IV is coming Saturday, August 22, 2009. Harry Shearer is the Keynote Speaker and there are panels planned on New Orleans' Culture, Health Care & Sports. There will be a cocktail meet and greet on Friday (details later) as well as a catered lunch. This is always a great event, characterized by lively interaction with incredibly interesting folks (and great food and plenty drink).

Many thanks to Greg Peters for another amazing poster. This year's conference theme is "Sinking To Great Heights". Quoting Greg's poster description: "The figure represents Yemaja, a Yoruba Orisha and owner of all waters, patron of fishermen and wreck survivors, and manifestation of the feminine principle of creation."

Details will unfold on the Rising Tide Conference Blog.

Y'all come. Seriously. Registration is available here.

Note: Dambala has a great further explanation of the Orisha pictured here over at American Zombie. Of course he does.

True Love or not True Love

This started as a comment on World Class New Orleans, to Mr. Clio's excellent post A Toxic Culture for the Heart (what I had to go through to get Facebook out of those links is a'whole'nother post). Writing in reference to South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's infidelity scandal, one of his points is that we glorify "following our heart" and then punish those who do. I think often about the emotionally unhealthy nature of much of the music I listened to growing up, and its profound effects on me, especially in the context of the rest of popular and family cultures. Hours of "I'm Your Puppet" (just the best example, one of too many) over and over accompanied by melodramatic heart-bursting pining can't lead to anything good. It cost me a fortune, in more ways than one, to escape this way of being.

Perhaps I've over-corrected, driven by a love for my children that requires me to at least try to put them first as the best way of insuring my own happiness; and maybe I'm lying to myself by insisting that the notion of "true love" as a goal or priority is self-indulgent drivel, or more importantly, at least at my age, icky.

When I see someone like Sanford doing this kind of damage to those they claim to love and citing "falling in love" as an excuse, it's repulsive. They put their own grandiose gratification above the well-being of their families. Gross and immature, this seems worse to me than Bill Clinton or even Larry Craig just wanting to get a little on the side. I'm not advocating detached sexual dalliances, but somehow that seems more honest. There are lots of valid reasons to leave a marriage. Even the Catholic Church provides a way of escaping impossible union, and I think it's totally okay for someone who's fought the good fight, tried everything they could to make it work and come to the realization that it can't be done because no one can do it alone, to go and seek happiness with dignity; but, please, lose the drama.

Mr. Clio's description of cultural glorification of "searching for true love" as "bait-and-switch" is exactly right. What works in a novel or a movie becomes destructive in real life. We've been taught wrong. What we should be seeking is a quieter, more day to day, way of living love. It's just not as much fun to watch.

What I find most telling about the whole Sanford mess is that the people closest to him hung his ass out to dry. His family and staff just let him have it. His Lieutenant Governor called attention to his absence. His communications people had no safety net in place, no damage control deployed in his behalf. His wife, his former campaign manager, knew exactly what she was doing when she told the world she didn't have a clue where he'd gone. They must really hate this guy.

Welcome

If you've found your way to this page, it was probably by way of a link from the comment section of a blog that doesn't allow Name/URL comments. While I occasionally update the content on this blog, I have a primary, regularly maintained blog that can be found here. Thanks for clicking over. I look forward to your clicking through. Peace, y'all.

From the Zeitgeist Multi-Disciplinary ArtsCenter! John Barry is getting ready to speak as Oyster, our fearless bivalve leader, provides an introduction. I will continue to update this all day, so check back often. Barry tells us that he "was in this space a few weeks after the storm," so it holds extra meaning to him to be speaking to us here today.

"..the Gulf of Mexico at one time went all the way to Cape Girardeau, Missouri..." All the land south and west was "made by the deposit of sediment of the Mississippi River... Everyone in the conference knows that we have lost roughly 2000 square miles of land, over time. "He's talking about the breadth of the "Mississippi River" which he considers a "cone" that stretches from northern New York state all the way to the Continental Divide. He calls it an "enormous cone" citing the map in the book, that which is the River's drainage basin, and he explains the difficulties the deposits caused to shipping and the nation's economic development by creating sandbars at the mouth of the river, so in 1875 there were jetties built to stop the creation of these sandbars. This resulted in an explosion in commerce along the river, deeply into the heartland."The port of Tulsa can't use the port of Houston. The port of Pittsburgh can't use any other port but New Orleans.... It's not the port of New Orleans, it's all the cities that New Orleans makes into ports." This is the point I don't think most Americans understand.

Barry states that right now the state of Louisiana is only getting about 1/3 of the sediment that the river should be depositing in the wetlands south of NO, it's "being impounded" by cities (made ports) upriver. "One half of all the sediment that is lost is actually sitting behind dams in ND & SD, dams built to provide electricity. " This creates a major problem for LA & the city of NO, from which nothing is received. He also points out that the entire Gulf IntercoastalWaterway, constructed for purposes of national security, has also provided a hindrance to the deposit of sediment at the mouth of the Mississippi. Add to that the additional salt water intrusion that's further harmed the wetlands, much of which has been caused by the oil industry, especially by their construction of canals. He compares the wetlands to a block of ice, taken out of the freezer and placed into the sink. He also points out that the Gulf Intercoastal Waterway and the Industrial Canal were man-made, dug to enhance shipping for the oil industry. But for them, the water would have never reached the Lower 9. By now, many of us know this, but most of the country doesn't know this and he's committed to getting that word out. Every article he writes he titles "Things You Don't Know About Katrina", a title that has always been changed by his editors.

Answering a question, he points out that the port of New Orleans is 90 miles long, stretching functionally all the way to Baton Rouge, altogether making the largest, busiest port in the world. He suggests that some time in the future a "low water" event might allow an opportunity to repair some of the damage and get the river back on track. He speaks of "risk communication" as a "term of art" and says that what must be done is "you tell the truth". Of course, that's what did not happen here. The truth, known, was not told and New Orleanians did not know the state of their flood protection, or their lack thereof. He suggests that fixing this could become a growing industry, pointing out that we're in better shape, in terms of sea level rise, than in many other parts ofthe world because the marsh is still alive. He also says that every port in the world is below sea level, by definition: Singapore, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, all below sea level because they are ports. He adds, "Death Valley is below sea level but it's got a pretty little levee system." 60% of goods shipped out of America go down the Mississippi River. Without New Orleans Tulsa and Pittsburgh are no longer ports.

LeighCheckman is blogging beside me, watched over by our own Mominem. Updates soon and often. Thanks for watching. Peace.

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First update: Missed most of the Education panel (schedule here) fighting tech difficulties (thanks Alan & Mayoress for fixing). Wanted to add that Inspector Cerasoli came to the meet & greet last night and stayed to the last, talking, and listening, to the bloggers. He's a good thing for New Orleans.

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LisaPal's pics from last night coming soon. Don't miss them.

Journalism panel now. Jeffry Bostick moderates.

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Lee Zurik says his eyebrows are real!

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Loki asks that those of us live blogging let people know that Humid City is temporarily down migrating to a new server. It's been a glitchy couple of days. Oh, and there's a tropical storm coming. Not sure about getting back to Atlanta. :/ Mark LaFlaur of Levees Not War, in from New York, asks the great question, how do we, the grass roots of the blogosphere (us) connect with the top tier of the blogosphere (Kos, TPM, etc.). Eli answers that we should push, we can email Josh Marshall, Kos, etc. Zurik suggests that patience and relationship building is important too, citing that he and Karen emailed for over a year before they, together, broke the NOAH story. My attention span wanes. We just saw a sneak preview of the new Levees.org film, which I'll post when it becomes available. Now the local politics panel is seated, peppered with friends, Dangerblond, Suspect Device, Schroeder. Fellow blog citizen, Adrastos, is moderating.

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I'm officially the only person live-blogging the after party and it won't last long. We're at Rendevouz at the corner of Magazine & 8th, Uptown, New Orleans. This is the best part! Small contingent of bloggers, mostly drinking. That's all. If you're in the neighborhood (lucky you) stop by!

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Correction: In my last update I meant to say that the "live blogging" won't last long, not the afterparty, which continued well into the wee hours. I can't get enough time with these bright people. Finally, here in my golden years (heh), I've fallen in with the Best. Crowd. Ever. Rising Tide was such a stunning success. There wasn't one uninteresting moment. Somehow, the panels, which have been excellet at each event, manage to continue getting better. I'll be back with a more thorough round up a bit later, but would like to thank The Mayoress for all her help yesterday during B-C's downtime. It's easy to forget how fortunate we are to have a host with such fine citizen service.

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More Sunday morning. Until I get my wrap up post finished and us, RT iii blogging central can be found at Maitri's. She did a fabulous job covering yesterday, with pics (some of which I'll glom later - thanks in advance, M).

RISING TIDE!

Mark your calendars for the weekend of August 22-24 and start planning your trip to New Orleans for Rising Tide III, the NOLA Bloggers' annual conference.

More than just interesting speakers and topical panel discussions, the weekend includes a Friday night party and a Sunday public service component, great opportunities to break bread and share cheer with the NOLA Bloggers and those who come to learn about New Orleans, as well as to put hands on and do something.

Best. Time. Ever.

Blogerati! Lively Banter Guaranteed!

It depends on how you define safety

Gary Hart to Wolf Blitzer on CNN, after having been asked if it's expected that the Republicans will once again try to get away with characterizing the Democratic Party as being "weak" on defense (emphasis mine):

HART: A lot of us supporting Barack Obama have pretty long history of experience in national security matters. And I for one would yield to no one in this country in terms of my commitment to this country's national security, and new ways to achieve it. We're not living in the Cold War anymore. And to pretend that simply spending a lot more money on the Pentagon is going to make us safer was proved false by 9/11. This was an administration that was warned that terrorists were going to attack this country, and they did nothing. I am not going to listen to anybody in this administration talk about Democrats being weak on national security. They let this country down.

Finally. Shall we all say it again, and again and again? I've had quite enough of leaders who live by the old 1960s rule of let's not, and say we did, who live in a fantasy world in which what one says or calls something or someone is more important than how people and things really are, a world in which appearances trump actualities, in which spend-thrifts are called conservatives, a world in which the duped people of America buy this load of crap. It's over. It's time to call a reckless spendthrift a reckless spendthrift.

Our nation is dangerously in debt. Our defenses are worn thin and frayed from fighting a war for the benefit of Halliburton, KBR & Blackwater. It's time for the Corporate plunderers to leave our looted treasury alone, to take their newly-enhanced wealth and go home. It's time for some reality-based leadership to come in and clean up their mess.

Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films

Or, just go to your rooms. Now.

In Full Mom Mode:

Dear Senators Clinton and Obama,

Please promise me you know what you're doing, that both of you really are present enough to be a good president and neither one of you will do anything that might deliver this election to McCain. It's not so much that I hate John McCain, because I don't. He's a patriot who served his country nobly throughout his adult life. I don't even hold his widely acknowledged anger issues against him. Sometimes a little righteous indignation is highly motivating, as long as he demonstrates better impulse control than the inmate who's been running the asylum for the last almost eight years. We just really can't afford to stay on our current path. I mean, we literally can't afford it, can't pay for it, don't have the money to wage endless, expensive wars that, more than anything else, prove the points of those who hate us, fan the flames of anti-Americanism, make the world more dangerous for us and us lame broke. Haven't we had enough of leaders who say one thing and do the opposite?

Barack, Hillary, please just promise us you have a plan, that you'll drag this out only long enough to keep yourselves and your party atop the news cycle to fill this gap 'til the conventions, but that you'll do it without drawing too much blood. Then, find a way to make a true and lasting peace for the good, not just of your party, but of your country. Walk the damn walk. There sure has been enough talk. You can prove what great presidents y'all would be, prove it, by bringing peace and harmony to the Democratic Party. At this stage I don't care which one of you is atop the ticket, or if the other is on it, just that, whatever happens, it is genuinely without animosity (or you do a grand job of making it look that way - and that you make some important place for John Edwards). First, you must make peace. Kiss and make flipping up.

Demonstrate what a great president we're going to have, 'cause we're going to need one with the mess this disastrous administration has left for you to clean up. If y'all can come out of this forging party unity I'll believe you're more than just ordinary presidential candidates, you're patriots and diplomats, totally prepared to meet the challenges of the presidency.

I've been watching John Adams on HBO and I'm deeply touched by the enormous sacrifices our founding fathers and mothers (and their families) made when they gave birth to this country Their wisdom and commitment are now so clear in the difficult choices that yielded our republic, as well as in the well-chosen words that became their Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. We need the next president to respect the foundation on which this country is built and care about individual rights. Put the good of the nation ahead of your own goals and ambitions, and please start now.

So, stop pointing out each others' weak spots, or else the boys and girls on the other side of the aisle will be laughing all the way to the White House. Show us you're ready before day one. Really be living conduits for change. Take the high road. Both of you. Work it out. Senators, I believe that you each think you'd be a great president. I don't care which one of you it is. The good news is that you have before you a great chance to show us how it's done.

Either that, or both of you go to time out.

Yours, in Momness,

Sophmom