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Connected
2008-05-03 20:57:00
I looked at Twitter today which I had only vaguely heard of. It is a way of staying connected to your friends, family or co-workers by sending with your cell phone or computer short couple line micro-posts answering the question ?What are you doing?? I want to be connected this way. It is almost physical this yearning for connectedness. It is also mystifying. When cell phones first came out my reaction was, ?What on Earth are they talking about all the time?? But here I am years later wanting just such a connectedness. What happened to me?Twenty years ago I worked from our apartment writing a piece of software. I was alone. No, I mean really alone. There was no world wide web. None. It wasn?t there. I spent hours on the computer writing software and it was fun and interesting. But there were no distractions or diversions, no checking the latest news feed, looking at funny videos or exchanging emails and instant messages. When I needed a break from the software, I would...
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I Walk
2008-03-25 19:34:00
I walk to work again now that spring is finally here and winter is receding. I put away my boots and don my tennis shoes. I leave my winter hat at home. I haven?t walked all winter because of ice and cold. But now I am walking. My usual walk through the parks is too long for me now, I?ll need to work up to that. I walk along the bus route so I can stop when I am tired and take the bus the rest of the way. I have never walked this way and I am surprised at how nice the sidewalks are. But there is a lot of traffic so I will be happy to reroute to the parks in a few weeks. I walk. I pass an apartment building where a ground crew is doing spring cleaning on the flower beds. They use a leaf blower to clear the maple leaves and stop the blower as I pass. Across the street a beautiful yellow house is being refurbished into luxury condominiums. It is the color of daffodils. I walk. My tennis shoes feel different than my boots, lighter and quicker. I feel the air in my hair. ...
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Cuban Colors
2008-03-07 14:31:00
We go to the cafe for lunch and in the middle of an intense discussion about who knows what I look up at the walls and see this art. My husband notices that I have simply left the conversation mid sentence and looks around. ?This is wonderful,? I explain. He looks at the art and looks back at me. I see the intense colors and simple designs and declare, ?I bet it is Cuban .? I am thinking of a mystery I read years ago: Adios Muchachos by Daniel Chaverria set in Cuba and written by a Uraguayan. I can?t really say why this art and that book are related somehow in my mind but there it is. Maybe these paintings have the same flirtatious humor that I remember from the mystery. I look behind me and there are more. I love the colors also. I have decorated my living room with Carribean artists who declare simple designs with intense colors. Yesterday I was in the Carribean and today here I am missing the colors already. But here they are in this cafe. These wonderful colors hangi...
More About: Colors

Spring Break Reading
2008-03-05 04:56:00
My husband told me about a book that he had read that he thought I would like. Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means written by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi and he piqued my interest by citing it every time I mentioned my website. So I brought it with me on my vacation. From the first page I was hooked. It describes networks historically and mathematically using two networks I understand intuitively as primary examples: the world wide web and the internet. It reads to me like a mystery story with each theoretical breakthrough emerging from the previous. Amazingly most of these breakthroughs have happened in the last decade. Using the web and the internet as a starting point he argues that this theoretical foundation extends to many other very interesting networks including social networks, the economy, the brain, cell reactions, infectious diseases and inter-species ecosystems. This is a general audience book exploring the implications of recent ...
More About: Reading , Break , Spring , Spring break

A New Land
2008-02-24 04:41:00
St. Kitts - Nevis IT Job VacancyBasseterre, St. Kitts - Nevis?February 01, 2008The Department of Information and Technology is inviting applications from suitably qualified persons to fill the position of :Director of Information & TechnologyApplicants must have 5 years of professional experience in ICT and/or ManagementAt least a Bachelor?s degree or higher in information systems, or other areas relevant to supporting the planning of ICT programmes and a second degree or advanced Diploma in Public Administration or ManagementStrong verbal, written and communication skillsMust possess sound leadership, teamwork and reporting skillsApplications are to be submitted to the attention of: Department of Information & Technology, P.O. Box 186, Church Street Basseterre on or before the February 27th 2008.Applications should include Curriculum Vitae (Resume), two references and certified copies of relevant certificates.I read this advertisement in astonishment. A job? A job I am qu...
More About: Land

Capt. John Gifford
2008-02-17 16:23:00
I research Capt. John Gifford who according to the Westport Historical Commission, built our house in 1775. I find three John Giffords in Westport at that time and can distinguish them only by their spouses: Isabel Milk, Ruth Luther, and Rhoda Sanford. Last year I bought a pamphlet on the Head of the Westport written in 1908 at the general store in Russell?s Mills section of Westport. I read there a description of the public landing here at the Head of the Westport and descriptions of the houses here and their past and current, 1908, residents. I go outside with the book and look for a house with a long north roof and a house with a gambrel roof. I see nothing that I can fix on. I come back in and pull out a map of the Head of the Westport from 1795 and reread. I don?t think our house is mentioned. It does mention that William Gifford and Lemuel Milk purchased the site now, in 1908, occupied by the Westport Mill with the intention to put up a forge. And also that Lemuel M...

Distasteful Powers
2008-02-09 20:14:00
We sit down and watch a rental movie: The Lives Of Others. Set in East Germany just before and just after the fall of the Berlin wall it details the lives of a writer, his actress girlfriend, and the Stasi who have them under surveillance. I am on the edge of my seat throughout this two hour movie. I find this to be a study of the effects of totalitarianism on individual people. My previous exposure to totalitarianism was reading The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956 by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. I think about recent developments here to combat terrorism: the Patriot Act, massive surveillance by wiretapping, seizure of email and bank records, the No-Fly lists, indefinite detention at Quantanimo Bay, kidnapping and torture in CIA secret prisons. Now we are certainly not a totalitarian or even an authoritarian regime but I am nonetheless wary of our giving up civil liberties. Behind all of these programs are individual people who can gain quite a lot personally through misuse of th...
More About: Powers

Super Tuesday
2008-02-06 00:37:00
It is morning. It is raining. I head down the street to the school building with my voter registration confirmation in my bag, just in case. This is the first time we have voted since we moved to JP so I am taking no chances. A woman in a red jacket carrying a black umbrella crosses the street in front of me heading in the same direction. At the school there are signs held by various campaigners. The woman in the red jacket goes inside a side door. I follow her. She goes inside but I must stand in the doorway as the line, about eight people including the two of us, stretches to the door. Someone arrives behind me and asks the others to please move up and they do. Now we are all inside. There are two tables, one marked entrance and one marked exit with two people each, large lists of registered voters in front of them. When it is my turn I approach the elderly lady on the left. She finds my name and checks it off. ?Democrat,? she says. The man on the right hands me a D...
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Winter Walk
2008-02-01 00:36:00
I walk to work this morning for the first time this winter. Between snow and ice I have been reluctant to venture out until now. But the sidewalks are clear and the sun is shining, so I go. There are a few icy patches along the way, but nothing to give me pause. The pond is beautiful. The blue water ripples in the wind. There are a group of small water birds that I cannot identify surrounding a lone goose who must congregate with these birds in lieu of his flock which is nowhere to be seen. The water?s edge has become an ice flow melting, cracking and singing. I pass few people along the way in contrast to summer where there are many. A few walking their dogs. A few jogging. My face burns with the wind but I don?t mind. At the stoplight the light is flashing so I must take care as I cross into traffic. But there are not many cars. People are away on vacation, I think, and I begin to daydream of Nevis. There will be color and warmth. Sounds of frogs and monkeys and ...
More About: Winter , Walk

Playing With The Boys
2008-01-29 00:33:00
We go to Eileen?s reception celebrating Eileen?s newly published book Playing With The Boys : Why Separate Is Not Equal in Sports. The reception is held in her new house in Lincoln, a town outside of Boston. Eileen?s book makes the intriguing argument that sports should not be separated by gender, because competing with men in sports leads to experiences and networks that are invaluable in our modern competitive society with its emphasis on sports as a metaphor for success. I must admit that when I first heard this I thought it sounded crazy. It is obvious that men have a distinct advantage physically in most if not all sports. But we are not at those elite levels.When I was a girl, I loved to play sports. I played baseball and football and tennis. Baseball was first. I would go down to the baseball field and hang around waiting for a chance to join the game. I had to wait for someone to quit and then beg to take their place. The boys on the teams at first said no, because ...
More About: The Boys