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

Calm or Control

It's easy to be serene amidst calm, at least easier than finding calm amidst chaos. I'm usually pretty good at both but seem to be losing my touch amidst the shit really hitting the fan. Not that I'm not well practiced, but it seems worse than even my usual. Additionally, I've come to believe that, sometimes, excellent stress management techniques do nothing so much as enable us to sustain, well, more and more stress. Sometimes I think it would just be better in the long run to become hysterical, declare the vapors, fall apart, give up, lean into nothing there. I just don't know how, and can't quite forgive those who do, being also slightly outnumbered by them.

I saw Michael Clayton recently On Demand and had opportunity to discuss it in comments to Dangerblond's insightful post about the film. Carefully woven into Tony Gilroy's tense story are themes of mental health and mental illness as they relate to moral ambiguity or clarity. Tilda Swinton and George Clooney both played characters locked in morally challenging careers. Tilda Swinton's Karen Crowder drowns in evil amidst a severely misplaced Herculean effort to maintain the appearance of professionalism, of control, of normalcy; while George Clooney's title character trudges forward, losing himself completely in trying to do what's right by his ex, his child, his brother and his job. Between them is Tom Wilkenson's brilliant Arthur Eden, obviously slipping into madness and the absolute certainty it sometimes brings. Clayton, desperately trying to bring in and control his AWOL colleague, confronts him in an alley, concluding, "I'm not the enemy," to which his old friend responded, "What are you then?" Arthur understood, even in his illness, perhaps because of it, what was right and what was wrong. Michael, so caught up in fulfilling the roles into which he had become entrenched, couldn't see. I empathize with that.

Ultimately, we get up every day and try to put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes mental illness comes with great clarity, other times it's more like just plain evil. There's a fundamental difference between maintaining control (or appearances) and answering chaos with calm, it's just not always so easy to know which is which.

Best. New Year. Ever.

It was magic. It was way too fast and way too short. The drive down was way too rainy, but we got there, Middle Son delivered in time for work Sunday and Friend delivered to her fiance (hereinafter "Romeo"). New Orleans was crawling with the Hawaiians, unanimously judged to be among the nicest, most generous and most welcome tourists the city has ever seen. The Georgians arrived with us, a series of SUVs bearing "G" magnets and antenna flags (driving way too fast for conditions). There was a fight in a very neighborhoody bar called Lotsa-Luck and a gathering around the end of the bar for dinner and drinks with a bunch of Romeo's high school buddies (these folks are in their 50s now) at Lakeview Harbor. It ended with a tired hustle home New Year's Day night, exhausted with a cold, but very, very happy.

I remember last year posting about the Psycho Therapist's notion of consecrating the New Year and I can't help but think of it as 2008 begins. While I missed visiting with my dear blogger friends (I got a short visit with Adrastos and talked to Dangerblond twice), I had the time of my life, spending New Year's Eve as a guest, member of a party of six, in the center of the upstairs window overlooking the courtyard at Commander's Palace. Oh. My. God. All dressed up in thrown together evening wear (thanks, Kim, for pointing me in the right direction for the perfect black lace top that made it all work) with a most exceptionally gracious host, I couldn't believe it was really happening. He was greeted by name when we walked in the door, and again all along the way as we passed through the kitchen and up the stairs to our table. I felt like a believing child on Christmas morning. In the middle of the Turtle Soup the trio of musicians visited our table. With the bass within reach on my left and the clarinet (also within reach) just beside the banjo-playing singer, they struck up "Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?" and I couldn't help myself. I cried. It was a perfect evening. After twenty some-odd years of staying in on New Year's Eve, considering it "amateur night", I did something really different (really, really different, for me). Maybe it's a sign of change.

The last three months of 2007 were hard. The KnockingShitDownCo lost a founding partner after a long and courageous battle with cancer. Sister Bel, with whom I live, was diagnosed with the same disease. Money's tight and a lot of people are depending on me. I am heading into 2008, for lack of a better word, tired. But, filled with gratitude to Friend for encouraging me to go, to Romeo for introducing me to his wonderful friends and most especially to the one of them who was our host, I did something different this New Year's Eve and it was magic.

May 2008 be the Best Year Ever. Happy New Year, y'all. Peace. Out.

Google Redeemed

The Google/Blogger comment interface fiasco seems to have been resolved. Even non-Blogger bloggers can now leave comments that include links back to their blogs/sites on Blogger blogs. Still, their lack of corporate understanding about what blogging is and means was revealed. I hope they work on it. And that's all I have to say about that.

There's a lively discussion going on at Suburban Oblivion about the difficult changes that Google has made to their Blogger comment interface. I want to repeat here what I said there in comments because it gets to the heart of the matter:

Speener said: “What galls me about this is the total ignorance of what blogging is about. Sometimes I comment, and then go back to blog about what I just read. The idea is to encourage community, to share with your peers, to circumvent the structure that we’re so often asked to adhere to for no good reason.”

Exactly! I’ve had my blog since June of 2004. I have 112 blogs in my blogroll. I have found myself starting to click on a blog from my blogroll to pay them a visit and stopping upon realizing that the one I was considering is a blogger blog, knowing the difficulty I’ll encounter when attempting to comment. These are the steps as I experience them:

1. Click the link;

2. Read the post (which may or may not include clicking links and reading other things);

3. Click on comments;

4. Click on the “This page displays both secure and nonsecure items…” warning (BTW, “nonsecure” is not a word);

5. Begin writing my comment;

6. Realizing it’s blogger, I open another tab to sign into blogger, something I have to do over and over regardless of the fact that I’m signed into my google toolbar;

7. Go to my blog to pull out the code for the link (I realize I could eliminate this step by learning the code for the link - working on that one);

8. Copy and paste the code into the comment field at the end of my comment;

9. Enter my blogger username and password into the username and password field (this, despite the fact that I’m signed into both my google toolbar and blogger);

10. Sometimes I have to do #9 twice;

11. Post my comment.

Now, I’m thinking that I should put an asterisk by all the blogger blogs in my blogroll just so I can know if I’m going to head over there, what kind of time and effort commitment I’m making. Like Speener said, it shows their “total ignorance of what blogging is about.” *sigh*

So much for "Don't be evil"

So much for "Don't be evil", supposedly Google's "motto". As described in Wikipedia (emphasis mine):

"Don't be evil" is the informal corporate motto (or slogan) for Google,[1] established by Gmail inventor Paul Buchheit[2]. Paul, who suggested the slogan in a meeting, said he "wanted something that, once you put it in there, would be hard to take out," adding that the slogan was "also a bit of a jab at a lot of the other companies, especially our competitors, who at the time, in our opinion, were kind of exploiting the users to some extent."

"Don't be evil" is said to recognize that large corporations can often maximize short-term profits with actions that destroy long-term brand image and competitive position. By instilling a Don't Be Evil culture, the corporation establishes a baseline for decision making that can enhance the trust and image of the corporation that outweighs short-term gains from violating the Don't Be Evil principles.

I was cruising along happily in the blogosphere as Sophmom, with all my Sophmom activities tied to my soph underscore mom at yahoo dot com email account. This included my primary blog that I'd very happily maintained at Blog-City since June 2004. Initially chosen for its ease of interface, I'm happiest there because of the wonderful (and personal) customer service (blessed Mayoress) and what can only be described as excellent search results (Google Gods please don't get too mad at me for this post). It was only logical to have a Sophmom's Dotcalm at Wordpress just to prevent anyone else from confusing the matter, which I did at Blogger as well (obviously). Now, Wordpress lets anyone comment and leave links, but some blogger blogs only allowed comments by those with blogger "accounts" so it made sense to have one. Since I was leaving links to this blog from time to time, I figured I should post something here, so I do (not particularly often - but I do); although usually (or at least once upon a time) when posting anywhere, I post as Blog-City Sophmom.

It started for me when I decided that I needed a Gmail account in my real name. Now, there was an element of not wanting anyone else to have it, but I also thought that I might migrate some of my Yahoo activity to Gmail, having heard good things about it. Then the oddest thing started happening: no matter how many times I signed in to my Google toolbar or blogger using the Yahoo email account, once signed in, I was automatically reverted to being signed in to my Gmail account. I don't like the notion of mixing Sophmom and my real name online, even if I'm the only one who sees it because I've spent three years working hard to keep them apart. I have my reasons and they're important. Lots of people who read my blog know me in "real" life and I've actually broken bread and lifted a glass with plenty of folks I've met online. But there are one or two (okay, exactly two) people in this world who, if they realized *I* am Sophmom, would just take all the fun out of it. But that's beside the point. I should be the one who gets to decide which of my email accounts is tied to which of my blog accounts and Google has taken that out of my hands and forces me to default into their product(s).

Then the commenting format changed, this weekend, without so much as a "Yoo hoo, y'all, we're gonna change it up a little," from the "Don't be evil" folks in Mountain View. Suddenly, when commenting on any blogger blog, I can't comment as Blog-City Sophmom, but must post as either a linkless guest ("nickname" - how lame is that?), anonymous (on blogs that allow it) or as blogger Sophmom. Now, I'm smart enough to figure out how to put an html link to my real blog in the body of the comment, but, still, it's just so, well, evil. It’s short-sighted and violates the spirit of the internet that Google, from the beginning, has claimed to embrace.

I'm sorry, y'all, but when Google gets to decide which email I use to sign in and which blog link I leave when I comment, they've taken a choice away from me, stepped over their own line, violated their own standard.

Sophmom.

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Suburban Oblivion has also posted about this.

H/T Clay at NOLA-Dishu.