New URL - now with threaded comments!

Hey all, just a heads up that we have switched to the NEW DOMAIN tonight. The template is a work in progress, but it’s a bit mellower then this one. Let us know if you hate it! All the posts, and comments have been updated, but there is an additional step to get re-logged in (see below). Thanks for hanging in there with us!

Details…

Admin panel is pretty much the same, but now with cool new features! Do some digging and shoot over any questions via comments or email. I’ll try and put together another meta post about using the features next weekend.

There is a Forum - under “meta” in the sidebar… I have no idea how it works, we did some initial testing and it appears to function just like a message board where we could have running threads, but I’m super busy this coming week and won’t be able to fiddle around with it until next weekend. Go ahead and play around… it’s your site!!

The threaded comments are set to 10 right now, but we can tweak it based on how things play out. Feedback is always appreciated!

That’s it, that’s all folks… head on over to the new and improved Everybody Comes From Somewhere and update your blogrolls accordingly

The admin panel is here.

When you hit the site your password for WordPress will not work, SORRY!! We tried. But this is the last update unless we change formats completely.

So here’s how it works. We’ve set everyone’s passwords differently. I’m going to email each of the members with their new password NOW. When you hit the site or admin panel, login with the UID and password I’m sending, then go to the “users” screen, click edit on your name, and change your password and any of your profile information that you want.

The main difference you’ll see is there isn’t a “My Dashboard” at the top of your screen. BUT on the sidebar under “Mo Meta” towards the bottom of the page, you’ll see a link to “site admin”… that is your Dashboard to the same WordPress interface you’re used to.

There is a difference with the YouTube embedded settings, instead of all you have to enter is: [youtube: the last numbers/letters of the url - i.e. p9OYD5f5UpI]

NO MORE COMMENTS HERE…. head on over to the new place!!!

~spider

[update] Sorry for the form letter feel of my emails people, I didn’t have time to personalize

Shhh, down in front…

Hey all, we are moving to the new site NOW, so please, no comments until you hear from me again… I’ll be posting instructions here in about 30 mins and will be emailing everyone individually with your new passwords…. all posts and comments to this point will be moved over to the new site…

Starting… Now.

~ spider

An Ordinary Person’s Guide to the Human Development Index

(or why GDP per capita (PPP) is a poor measure of development)

Until recently (well over 20 years now, I think though I’d not want to be held to that since most of my sources for this continue to languish in a garage in the U.S.) Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita was widely used as the leading indicator for international development.

At least I understand it, the theory ran along the lines that GDP per capita is a measure of economic activity – and the more economic activity per capita the higher the standard of living in that nation. GDP per capita was used as a proxy measure for quality of life and standard of living – because the latter is harder to measure.

Saturday Open Thread

The state Democratic Party criticized McCain for his support for the war, calling him “worse than Bush” in a statement.

After the speech, McCain was asked by an audience member if he was “sucking up to the religious right.” He drew laughs by responding: “What’s wrong with sucking up to everybody?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ahhh…an breath of fresh air..a politician telling it as he “really” sees it!

Lately I’ve amused myself by turning off the sound on these airheads, and just watching thier lips flap. Somebody really ought to make a video of flapping political lips set to the right music. I can see it. It’d be hilarious, complete with inserted sound effects instead of words.

My day is for holing up, waiting for the storm, reading, writing, drawing, playing with cats, napping, and trying to locate my missing desktop, which I haven’t seen for over a week now.

How ’bout yours?

Poem of the Day - 02/24/07

Wisdom and War

A Little Music with that Rant???

The music for tonight was inspired by Shirlstar’s most excellent rant in the Friday Open Thread today. So if you haven’t seen it yet - go take a look then come back and listen.

I also thought it was time we invited Stevie Wonder for a little visit to the neighborhood. So for those of you on dial-up - tonight we’re listening to “Higher Ground.”

Sugar by Ferreira Gullar

Sugar

The white sugar
I’m about to use
to sweeten my coffee
this morning in Ipanema
wasn’t made by me
and no miracle made it show up in my sugar-bowl.

I look at it, so pure
and friendly to the palate,
like a kiss from a girl, water
on the skin, a flower
that melts in your mouth.
But this sugar wasn’t made by me.

This sugar came
from the corner market, and Oliveira,
the shopkeeper,
didn’t make it.
This sugar came
from a mill in Pernambuco
and the miller didn’t make it, either.

This sugar used to be cane, and cane
comes from huge canefields
that don’t sprout by chance
in some valley’s welcoming lap.

In places far from here,
where there are no hospitals,
where there are no schools,
men who don’t know how to read
and die of hunger
at 27
planted and cut the cane
that was made into this sugar.

In dark mills
men with hard
and sour lives
produced the pure white sugar
I’m about to use
to sweeten my coffee
this morning
in Ipanema

Ferreira Gullar, translated by Chris Daniels.Gullar is a Brazilian poet who “[a]fter almost a year living underground, . . . went into exile (Moscow, Lima, Santiago, Buenos Aires) from 1971-1977.”

Chris Daniels has  done a lot of translating from the Portugese. “Sugar” is but one of many that can be found at Notes From A Fellow Traveller

Friday Open Thread

G’morning, all.

Another week behind us, and for many, the weekend beckons. There’s supposed to be a king sized snow storm heading into Minnesota, and I can’t wait.

I miss the excitement of the  old Minnestoa winters:  the excitement and challenge of surviving waist high snowdrifts, 30 below temps, and the magnificent blizzards that would swoop , shutting down the world. It was a chance to prove how resiliant we were, and best of all, it brought us together. Neighbor helping neighbor dig cars out of drifts, those of us with snowmobiles transporting essential workers from home to work, delivering groceries to those closed in..rescuing those with medical emergencies. Authentic community in action.

(Enough reminiscing!)

Where are your heads on this Friday Morn?

One Ring

One ring to rule them all …and in the darkness bind them.

Today’s One Ring is the corporate controlled media. The ‘news’ produced by the corporate-military-industrial-media binds the American people in Darkness. Important stories are ignored and unimportant stories are covered obsessively. ‘News’ is used to distract the American public and to keep us from focusing on the real reasons that this country is going to hell in a supersonic handbasket. The ‘News’ is used to subtly and not-so-subtly mold the populace into compliance with the goals and purposes of the corporate plutocratic kakistocracy.

Thursday Open Thread

In the one short day, when I had no net access to you all, although I never left my house and sought no wars or battles, the wars found me. It was either defend myself and fight back , or let them win. I was preemptively invaded by two enemies in one day: Comcast and Red Lobster. (Details to come in a separate story. )

For now, I just wish to notify you that I did survive the shock and awe phase and to express my glee at being back among friendly faces. I am intact and safe here in my little bunker, planning a strategic counter attack on both fronts. I intend to win and I will not withdraw my forces until I do.

So! Whassup with you all?

A “lean, mean, killing machine” tells his tale

I don’t have much to add to this tale by Sgt. Martin Smith, USMC, ret. It’s difficult to read, but it is the modern fighting force and this force is being deployed to “defend your freedom”.

Marine Corps boot camp is a thirteen week training regimen unlike any other. According to the USMC’s recruiting website, “Marine Recruits learn to use their intelligence . . . and to live as upstanding moral beings with real purpose.” Yet if teaching intelligence and morals are the stated purpose of its training, the Corps has peculiar way of implementing its pedagogy. In reality, its educational method is based on a planned and structured form of cruelty. I remember my first visit to the “chow-hall” in which three Drill Instructors (DIs), wearing their signature “smoky bear” covers, pounced upon me for having looked at them, screaming that I was a “Nasty Piece of Civilian Shit.” From then on, I learned that you could only look at a DI when instructed to by the command of “Eyeballs!” In addition, recruits could only speak in the third person, thus ridding our vocabulary of the term “I” and divorcing ourselves from our previous civilian identities.

Our emerging group mentality was built upon and reinforced by tearing down and degrading us through a series of regimented and ritualistic exercises in the first phase of boot camp. Despite having an African American and a Latino DI, recruits in my platoon were ridiculed with derogatory language that included racial epithets. But recruits of color were not the only victims, we were all “fags,” “pussies,” and “shitbags.” We survived through a twisted sort of leveling based on what military historian Christian G. Appy calls a “solidarity of the despised.”

….

Poem of the Day - 02/22/07

When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

When I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

-Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

Wednesday Open Thread

Welcome to Wednesday everyone!!

Apparently the news today is that the British are pulling troops out of Iraq. Blair says that the first contingent of about 1,500 troops will leave in a matter of weeks, and a further 1,500 will follow by the end of the year. Britain will withdraw all of its troops from Iraq by the end of 2008.

I just watched a Democracy Now story about a new book “Silent Jesture:The Autobiography of Tommie Smith” by Tommie Smith and Delois Smith. In case you don’t remember who Tommie Smith is, he and team mate John Carlos staged one of the most effective silent protests in modern history at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico.

And finally, in deference to yesterday’s “Fat Tuesday” I thought I’d share a quote from a book I’m in the beginning stages of reading, “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert. She travels to Italy to study pleasure, India to study devotion and Bali to study balance. Last night I just finished the chapter on her experience in Italy. Here are some of her conclusions:

I came to Italy pinched and thin. I did not know yet what I deserved. I still maybe don’t fully know what I deserve. But I do know that I have collected myself of late - through the enjoyment of harmless pleasures - into somebody more intact…And I will leave with the hope that the expansion of one person - the magnification of one life - is indeed an act of worth in this world. Even if that life, just this one time, happens to be nobody’s but my own.

What’s on your mind today?

Poem of the Day - 2/21/07

Revelation

We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone really find us out.

’Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.

But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.

-Robert Frost (1874–1963)

“instinct for retribution”

I’ve lately been thinking about the idea of American exceptionalism and its ramifications. And I am beginning to see that the idea that a nation or state is so righteous that it has the the right to play God contaminates every aspect of our behavior as a society. When more people are murdered in the U.S. by “the state” with premeditation and full forethought than in any other nation on the planet except China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, what does that say about us as a people? This article from The National Post in Canada explores our American fascination with the death penalty.

Tuesday Open Thread

The Thread

Something is very gently,
invisibly, silently,
pulling at me-a thread
or net of threads
finer than cobweb and as
elastic. I haven’t tried
the strength of it. No barbed hook
pierced and tore me. Was it
not long ago this thread
began to draw me? Or
way back? Was I
born with its knot about my
neck, a bridle? Not fear
but a stirring
of wonder makes me
catch my breath when I feel
the tug of it when I thought
it had loosened itself and gone.

-Denise Levertov

Poem of the Day - 2/20/07

Friendship

Oh, the comfort—
the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person—
having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,
but pouring them all right out,
just as they are,
chaff and grain together;
certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them,
keep what is worth keeping,
and then with the breath of kindness blow the rest away.

-Dinah Maria Mulock Craik (1826-1887)

On Behalf of Human Dignity

I’ve never seen the TV show “The Wire” because I don’t have HBO. But I can tell you that later today I’m going to rent copies of the dvd and start watching it all the way through its 4 seasons. That’s because I just finished reading an article by William Hughes over at The Black Commentator (thanks for the link Blueneck) that describes a speech by its creator David Simon.

Simon predicts the end of the American Empire as the result of the triumph of capitalism over humanity.

Simon started: “I am wholly pessimistic about American society. I believe The Wire is a show about the end of the American Empire. We…are going to live that event. How we end up…and survive [and] on what terms, is going to be the open question… There will be cities. We are an urban people…What kind of places they will be are…dependent on how we behave toward each other and how our political infrastructure behave…

Monday Open Thread

I am abstaining from celebrating “Presidents Day” this year. I’m just not in the mood. Maybe I’m not fully recovered from the week long 24/7coverage of Fords funeral, but I am way fed up with being asked to honoring powerful old dead white guys, no matter who they are.

Instead, I declare today “Other’s Day”.

A day for honoring those who march to thier own drumbeats, not ones chosen for them. A day for all who dare to not conform to the cultural/politcal/social dictates of others. A day for boat rocking, free thinking, truth tellers who have said “No Thanks” to obediently swallowing whatever they are “fed” by those in charge of everthing.

A day to honor those of all colors, cultures and ethnic backgrounds, all genders, all generations, anyone who is “different” in any way at all, from Americas mainstream white culture.

Because being an “Other” in America takes a lifetime of courage and fortitude.

Good morning to all, and the thread is open!

Sunday PM Painting Palooza Vol.80

Welcome back.

This week we’ll be continuing with our project inspired by the Sedona, Arizona scene seen in the photo directly below. It is another small photo, this one depicting a group of condos with the red rock buttes behind.

Once again, this one is being done on a small 5×7 canvas.

When we were last together, the painting appeared as it does in the photo seen directly below.

SInce last time I’ve spent some time working on the condos. I’ve added the light yellow color the lit areas. In the scene the portions face toward the right. I’ve also added blue to the deeply shaded areas, the same color as the shaded window areas. Finally, I’ve gone over the moderately shaded ochre areas. I expect to have only limited revisions to these areas and consider them largely done at this point. The current state of the painting is seen directly below.

That’s all for now, see you next week.