On the occasion of the publication of photos from BlogHer France I am feeling all literate and shit. The images of these young bloggy-bloggers blogging has inspired me to poetry. Lacking the verbal facility to whip up a good poem for you today… it’s one of those days when I can’t remember people’s names… have you experienced that? I got up this morning and thought to call a colleague and let her know I was running a little late. You know. The one I meet with on Wednesday mornings. What’s her name. Just look her up in the directory and give her a ring. What’s her name… can’t call, don’t remember her name. Really. There’s an entire gingko tree just outside the bedroom window and I can’t remember this woman’s name. I wonder if after dark, while we’re sleeping, the gingko insinuates tiny tendrils through the window screen, across the floor, beneath the pillow and into my ears, then draws out the naturally occurring flavone glycosides from my gray matter leaving me in some kind of Chekhovian syntactic and phonological knowledge bind… unable to remember the name of the horse much less the name of the woman of which the name of the horse might remind me… a classic anterior cingulate-prefrontal cortical bind as it were.

Diane, her name is Diane…

I read about gingkos in Hiroshima that survived the blast when all around them was blackened wreckage.

But really, if I can’t remember people’s names, how can I write a poyme? I’ll have to pull one from the cellars, a modest vintage from the wet sunny slopes, the crider soil formations of Kentucky, formed in a mantle of loess with an underlying limestone residuum — a screw-top bottling, modestly priced, suitable as accompaniment to the best that vegan cuisine can offer…

Presented then, in honor of all who attended BlogHer France, women who don’t need the advice but may be expected to understand and appreciate the sentiment:

The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

When I saw the headline, “Ernesto Pelts Cuba,” what was I to think? And then when I learned the storm was slowing for a while in the Sierra Maestra before roaring down and heading across the straits directly at the USA, well…

“There’ll be no peace without a planet…” Ruah Swennerfelt quotes Mary Ann Percy, a Quaker from La Jolla, by way of providing background on her shift fifteen years or so ago from working on peace and social justice issues to ecological awareness and active concern. Ruah and Louis Cox, two people who do their best to support their local economy and to live lightly on the land, are interviewed by Mark Helpsmeet on his weekly Northern Spirit Radio show which originates from WHYS radio in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Mark has recorded dozens of broadcasts and they’re available as streaming media or for download here.

Another show I heard tonight was an interview with Ina May Gaskin. Ms. Gaskin is a midwife and a prime mover in the home birth movement. She and Steve Gaskin provided a model for living from 1966 forward to today, starting with Steven’s Monday Night Class in San Francisco and continuing through all of her good work with home birthing in her community as well as the lights she lit across the world with her book on the subject. Mark’s interview was wonderful in drawing that out.

Mark has chosen the good people among us for his interview subjects. I’ve met some of these people and their commitment to doing right stuff is totally impressive… George Watson, a world war 2 conscientious objector… Mike Boehm, a Vietnam war veteran who’s been instrumental in establishing peace parks in Vietnam and starting micro-credit loan funds, helping to heal those wounds… Chuck Fager, who runs Quaker House in North Carolina, a place where soldiers with second thoughts about war and peace can find support… J.E. McNeil, a woman who wrote the book on draft counseling.

There’s a lot of food for thought in these podcasts, a lot of wisdom about community, peace, and living rightly on the earth.

Check out Chris Locke’s amazing MySpace herpetarium construction.

…and here is the promised Snake Preview of Samuel Jackson as the Voice of God in the recent audio remix of the Holy Bible.

For a while, a year and more ago I thought I’d make my fortune with the Blog World Expo (yes, there’s a wiki somewhere too). The moment passed, but I still feel the need for a blogging confab — a web communications summit — that combines the best of everything. I caught glimpses of what I’m after at BlogHer: a gathering of the tribes, a marketplace, an academy, a rich community of spirit.

I had lunch with Nicole Simon. We spoke of many things, but not about blogging… we talked politics, culture, global conditions and the pathos of the decline of the American empire… heck, we weren’t even drinking. I met Maria Benet in person, and while I wondered silently how Tom Shugart is doing these days and I thought she might know, Maria and I were just connecting face-to-face for the first time and not diving too deep into that rich history we’ve begun to develop auf blog. Rather I was fascinated by her tale of a family blog and the bear stories she used as a touchstone for her son his first year away at school.

(I’ve just popped a note off to Tom… sort of a six month check-in).

Grace Davis… holy smokes. I love her. Of course I also love Jory. And I love Mary Hodder. And Danah Boyd. And Melanie Swan. And Liz Ditz. I’m ashamed to say it but I think I might be a little easy. Melinda Casino, Aesa, Candace Gardener… no doubt in my mind, I’m a slut of Jimmy Carter dimensions. Liza (overheard muttering “I’ll never fly Northwest again”), Elisa, Silona, Adina, Glennia, Aura, Nina, Rebecca… all among the people I remember fondly. And of course there’s the Boston Babes: Betsy and Lisa and Halley. I said hello to Ponzi and asked her to remember me to Chris… she’s so good, she never batted an eye, just said certainly she would, and while I knew she was a public person with a zillion Gnomies cavorting around her public life and she didn’t really know me from Adam, well… I had to respect how she didn’t betray that. And at the same table at the same moment, I was able to stumble over my tongue and confuse Choconancy (Nancy White, who was sitting there) with HorsePigCow (Tara Hunt, who wasn’t)… all these famous writers and their famous blogs, even Homer nods.

Thinking about Grace I’m reminded of nakedjen… I met Jen at the first BloggerCon, but she had her clothes on. Jen’s a Santa Cruz bloggeuse too, but she couldn’t make it to BlogHer due to prior naked commitments. But let’s back away from the body-conscious purity of a Badger or a Nakedjen taking her clothes off because we should, and get back to the slut-motif…

Thin ice here, Buddy. Watch your step. Building a business is a lot like peddling your ass. But it doesn’t have to be, and the graceful way Mary Hodder makes her way through the minefield of obnoxious self promotion to emerge unscathed and still on message is something we can emulate. Her younger colleague, Mena Trott, hasn’t yet developed that gracefulness. Arianna of course has nothing to be graceful about. How many of us can say we stiffed Nancy Getty on the cost of our wedding? And Halley, my god… Halley… well, there was more flogging going on at this gathering than you’d expect at Miss Behavior’s B&D Salon. Some of it was graceful. Some of it was not graceful. The least graceful is the personal sell, the one that sells the CEO and leaves the product behind on the t-shirt table and the logo saturated lanyards. All of it of course flies in the face of the behavioral norms of the Winer style unconference, and to his credit I haven’t heard Dave ragging on about it much (although he does seem to agree with me that there was confusion about when and how to make a pitch). I think the first rule of the unconference was pretty well modeled… don’t be boring. Allow participation from everyone. The second rule, NO PITCHES, wasn’t acknowledged.

There has to be a middle ground, a place where the Noogles, and Ploogles, and Fuggles, and Muggles, can share information about their products’ capabilities in a technical context without pimping them. That was one of the thoughts behind Blog World Expo. There’s nothing wrong with putting the Microsoft Fembots in front of a blue screen and letting them perform, but consider the three ring circus. There your attention can drift to something more edifying like the elephant act.

[p.s. this just slammed me like the heel of my hand right in the forehead… not the “I coulda had a V8″ thing, but rather just as Rome took longer than a day or two to construct, so also does a world class event. Two days isn’t enough to do it justice, to do it right.]

Excellent memories of Mount Shasta and the Reading Creek Ranch will soon find their way to my Flickr account. Meanwhile here I sit in Larkspur Landing, checking email, getting ready for a dash across the bridge to PJ’s Oyster Bed and then from there down 280 to San Jose where some rest and relaxation will ensue.

Last night’s meal was a quirky surf and turf with some fresh salmon that Sherwood had just hauled out of the Trinity River, and a London Broil fresh from a Scottish highland longhair steer whose name I forget, but whom we remembered gratefully before digging in.

Some people think the gospel is best told by one’s life, others - the evangelicals - suggest it’s best told by the lips. Philip Gulley calls this the “life versus lips controversy.” I’m a life man myself. But the lips thing is carrying the day as re the soap on a rope thing…

When it comes to word of mouth marketing the evangelicals hold sway. Apple might think that a line-up of logos on laptops at a conference has some deeper semiotic impact, but face it, those Macs are like cocaine… they’re god’s way of telling you that you have too much money. No - in marketing you want to skip the demos and go straight to the snake oil pitch. For a quick dose of same, Chris Locke has prepared this Amazon guide.

The word on the street today is Ophidophobia. I hope TSA and Northwest Airlines have herpetological screening in place and that no pythons or adders or craits find their way into my carry-on!

Did you ever kiss snake lips?

On July 20, 1969 Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong stumbled a little on his lines, but he made history with his feet. Today was the anniversary of that achievement, a project that only succeeded because of our unity of purpose, an achievement beyond the reach of the impoverished imaginations of the neocons and their ilk.