Where Are We Now?

“Meaning” and “knowledge” seem to be an obvious pairing; far more so than the silly old “truth and beauty” schtick. In 1819 Keats was rocking the odes, laying down more quotable lines than Bob Dylan. The one about truth and beauty from Ode on a Grecian Urn sticks in the brain of everyone ever stuck in a sophomore English literature course. The context will be long forgotten but the poetic platitude will remain.

Keats had no knowledge of  iPads, orYouTube, or e-publishing. no Nooks, no Kindles.  Nor were there motion pictures. Electricity was high tech theoretical with no practical applications. Gas lamps and candles provided light after the sun had set. One might retreat to a cozy nook to read a book, a nook all the cozier for the fire recently laid with kindling. Keats’ conceit, the motion pictured on the vase, the images drawn forth and animated by the prosody within his ode, was remarkable and prescient.

Keats wrote five odes in the spring of 1819. One of his favorites was Ode on Indolence. I ran across a reference to the Ode on Indolence this morning in the key logger file I installed on young Mr. Vindaloo’s machine. Is it wrong, I wonder, for an employer secretly to track the work of his employee? I feel a little conflicted about this, but since the moment I returned to the office and found young Mr. V. all a-twitter, following an online conversation about scripting and application program interfaces and what-not, I’ve also felt vindicated. When it comes time for me to settle the bill with the middleman, the contract services company that sent me young Mr. V. in response to my request for someone who could refurbish my old blog and integrate it with social media, that key-log file will be quite useful, a real money saver.

…reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio –Howl

Looking for some online clues about Newt’s intention to announce for the Presidency in March–spurred on by secret knowledge of gubernatorial catalyzed strikes, work stoppage, labor betrayal–angry, yet bemused by Republican attitudes about the law and how it need not apply to them, I stumbled into wood s lot and looked no Further than this link which today tops the column of Mark’s ever changing content: The Allen Ginsberg Project.

The Ginsberg blog–its sidebar replete with streaming audio, streaming video, links to critical essays, interviews, articles, photographs, research, memorials, tributes and a robust collection of the poetic works of Ginsberg and his friends–featured this week a post about the Gibney film at Sundance…

Intention is the core of all conscious life. It is our intentions that create karma, our intentions that help others, our intentions that lead us away from the delusions of individuality toward the immutable verities of enlightened awareness. Conscious intention colors and moves everything.
– Hsing Yun

From 2024 until her death in the spring of 2024, Michelle Goodrich used her blog to teach some of us about design. Recently a visitor came here to Listics from the web archive, where Mandarin Meg’s blog lives on.

Michelle enjoyed serendipity. She was amused by coincidence. She liked it when we shared things we found bubbling up around the web, things that seemed somehow synchronous, or things that tickled our sense of deja vu. Here are a few of those things that happen to be stuck in my browser right now, today.

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Meg Pokrass, a new Facebook friend and a flash fiction writer made this…

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Elsewhere, Ashleigh Burrows, a Tucson “elder blogger,” was seriously wounded in the Arizona massacre this weekend. Here is her daughter’s update.
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I’ve been a fan of Paul Ford since the nineties. Paul’s a techie and a fine writer and editor. He’s metro-textual. His most recent piece, “Why Wasn’t I Consulted,” tickles me eight ways from Sunday. It’s worth reading just to get context for his neologism, “the Gutenbourgeois.” Read it here. Learn and laugh!

Somehow related to Paul Ford’s understanding of the web and the persistence of Mandarin Meg’s work, is this New York Times article about a so-called “digital library race.” Oddly, the information is presented in the Business section. Fortunately, not everyone subscribes to the bizarre American ritualistic competitive model. Though the Times laments a “digital library divide,” most of us can simply be grateful for the work that’s being done, take advantage of the collections at Google books or theeuropeanlibrary.org, browse the Library of Congress 16 million item “American Memory” collection, and bear in mind that while old business models for electronic publishing (see JSTOR) hold us back from full participation in this amazing global sharing of the fruits of our cultures, ever more work is available via open access.

Walt Whitman's Cardboard Butterfly from the Library of Congress

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Meanwhile, back in the kitchen… it remains my good intention to mix up my very first batch of English muffins or crumpets today. There’s a first time for everything, but sometimes inertia is hard to overcome and I find myself reading the cookbook instead of cooking. For example, here are some of interesting food bloggers that I’ve been following (instead of baking): Mango and Tomato, One Bite at a Time, Florida Girl in DC.
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And really, there is a lot of other cool stuff on the Interwebz… take for example:

• How Paul Krugman found Politics (The New Yorker)
• The quantified self (a narcissist’s dream come true!)
• ZOMG Science (I’ll never stop linking unless they stop thinking!)
• Quashie (The approachable negro is in!)
• Everything is falling apart (Confirming your worst nightmares)
• Documents that reference Blackwater from Wikileaks current release (no wonder everyone’s in a tizzie)
• …and more, oh so much more…

But for now, play her off keyboard cat!

Thanks to Sheila Lennon and her source, Dermot Casey, for the link. (Click here for a full screen version.)

It’s flamingly delicious.

Kulcha Round-up

Betsy Blair, comsymp

Federal government muffs another one

Whining Joe Klein

Invisible Inkling

Prison Health and Our Community: A Public Health Investigation

Pew, that decade STANK

Steve Outing, Welcome to Elba

Jim Long on the Verge of Something New

John Siracusa, the Ars in Arstechnica

Community Supported Journalism

Public Knowledge

Progressive Change Campaign

Can you believe those murderous swine were acquitted in federal court?

How dreary is local news then?

The young Pol Pot… such a nice looking boy…

Herrera

DOC BENWAY HERE ………. NURSE, SLIP ME ANOTHER AMPULE
OF LAUDANUM ………. RECOLLECT ONCE ME AND CLEM CLONE WAS CHEWIN
JOHIMBE BARK OUT BACK OF JODY’S ALL-NIGHT PET SHOP …….

NOT A FINER MAN IN THIS WHOLE ZONE
THAN OL’ CLEM ‘N JODY CLONE …..

****WHERE WAS WE, YEAH —- USE AUTHORIZED DATA BASE ACCESS
PROTOCOLS ONLY ….. SENSUOUS KEYSTROKES FORBIDDEN ….. DO NOT
STRUM THAT 33 LIKE A HAWAIIAN STEEL GUITAR ….. GRAND CONCLAVE
OF THE PARTIES OF INTERZONE: CHECK YOUR BOX FOR DETAILS…..
PERSONAL ATTENDANCE REQUIRED; SEND NO REPLICA. BENWAY OUT.
TLALCLATLAN ……

community memory

The flip of a tractor trailer
The writhe of a live power line
The closing of the main road
Has me on this sidestreet
Looking for a way home
A house, woods, trees
Just another cul-de-sac
With no way out
And there in the hollow
Of an oak I see a face
Mumbling the words
‘We must work, work, work’

Which could be my grandfather’s
Just before he fell off the wagon
And died alone on a long binge
Quickly I retreat
But soon I’m back
At another sleepy circle
In front of another house
Looking much like the other
Staring at another face
Whispering in the hollow:
‘I’m in mourning for my life’

Which could be yours from
25 years ago speaking the words
Of some playwright from 50 years before
On some stage I’d long forgotten
(Hope you’re doing fine)
(And whatever role you’ve found
is the one you want)
Or maybe it was the blank stare
Of my grandmother
Who would sit for hours
Watching wrestling on TV
‘Mammaw, you know it’s not real’
‘Oh but it is. I’ve seen the blood.’

And so I get out of there
Only to find another cul-de-sac
Much like the others
And this time it’s the stupor of my father
Stumbling through the front door
His white T drenched with blood
Glass in his hair, but now he looks
Like David Carradine, whispering:
‘Two things we know, Grasshopper.
All living things suffer. And yet
they are programmed to keep going.
Til they just can’t go no more.’

And then there ‘s this nirvanic grin
Followed by a gurgling sound
And then nothing
But a curdling darkness
Wrapping about me
Like an old cloak
from an old theater
expecting me to slip in
Or maybe it’s just an ordinary owl
Keeping me from sleep
With his ridiculous truths
From some other century
And all will be forgotten
On the way to work
In a certain slant of morning
Beyond the tinny grace of birds
Teasing in the distance.
— Ray Sweatman