Correcting Shelley, who mentions “…the belief that all we need are mentors: examples of women who have ‘made it’. Given such is supposedly enough to somehow make women feel more comfortable, and thus encourage more to enter the profession.”

What Shelley describes as a “mentor” I am used to thinking of as a “role model.” In order to improve social conditions and economic opportunities, career opportunities, opportunities for self-fulfillment for all, both mentors and role models are needed. A person who has a mentor is fortunate indeed. I wonder how many people actually have someone who plays this role in their life? As a middle-class white male I could have used mentoring, but I never really had any. The counseling program at my high school was a bad joke. As a young person, from adolescence through maturity, I wore my attitude like a suit of armor, daring anyone to get within sword’s reach. If anybody did reach out, I was undoubtedly too obtuse to welcome or even recognize the opportunity.

On the other hand, as a white middle-class male, I couldn’t help but gain some empowerment from my milieu. All of the men with jobs, supporting families in homes they owned, with two cars in the garage, a boat and a trailer in the driveway, a pedigreed cocker spaniel shitting on the nicely mowed lawn… all of these and more opened mental pathways for me, outlined a set of expectations that I sensed were within reach. I knew that I had choices because I had role models that showed me the opportunities that existed for people like me. But I never had a mentor who would explore a wider range of opportunities, open doors, or simply coach me in ways that would help me make good choices, understand the challenges associated with the choices, and help me to address those challenges.

This has been a poor-me post, brought to you by the piece of shit the world revolves around.

“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.

… for himself? Don’t be afraid. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

We write. Most of us are long-tail writers web publishing for free. Few of us connect to the trad publishing world, fewer still have writing careers. I for one would take money. I would like a lot of people to read my work. Some of it is work. Writing at its best for me is not work, but editing… that’s work. I read Jeneane and I am awed by her presence, her clarity. I read Shelley and I respond to her acerbic yet insightful commentary. Madame Levy floors me with her art. Chris Locke amazes me with his relentless scholarship. Ray Sweatman, a superb web publishing poet, has a poem up… I’ll bet he’d like you to read it. I’ll bet he’d take money for the work. How do we pay our poets?

There’s a cultural barrier in the blogosphere that the great communicators, we bloggers, have a hard time talking about. We’re writing in public because we want to share our work. Some of us would be pleased to measure success in dollars and hit counts and cross links. How do we promote this?

My practice is to share my experience and to share my likes and dislikes. Through it all I would prefer to develop cordial, friendly relations with others. But what if I create some friction, heat up my interactions from time to time, start a fire with that heat? Is there anything wrong with that if the people find the fire illuminating? What if I don’t agree that Dave Winer is an unreconstructed sexist, but rather acknowledge that some of my friends find him challenging as can be? What if I LIKE Kathy Sierra, find her amusing, if occasionally a little brittle? What if I found Scoble just as warm and charming as everyone says he is when I finally met him face to face? If I link to these high traffic bloggers, am I guilty of “link baiting?”

Who the heck am I anyway? Should I jump in and defend Kathy and Dave when the criticism of them seems wrong-headed? Can I say often enough that Mike Arrington just rubs me the wrong way? How many “libertarians” out there need to hear the message that they are thoughtless, greedy people who are operating in a delusional context? How many other adjectives can I throw at them before I go over the top?

How can a guy make any money in this sphere by insulting the money people? How can a guy keep his self respect if he doesn’t insult most of them at one time or another?

How many of us are reading each other any more anyway?

China Cat Sunflower (1972)

I Know You Rider (1972)

There is so much high level bullshit to rail against one scarcely knows where to start. When was the last time a country made a commitment and kept it past the next general election? Screw Israel and screw the Hezbollah. Screw Lebanon, screw Iraq, screw Saudi Arabia, screw Iran, screw North Korea, screw the nasty Bush oligarchy and their entire criminal conspiracy. Screw the ridiculously deluded millions of people who allow their metaphysics to cloud their reason, their religion to subvert their humanity, their own best interests to be dominated by charismatic and sexual pitches from polished marketing propagandists of all persuasions.

Screw public relations. Screw marketing. Screw journalism and screw so called higher education, a window backwards into a medieval world so messed up that they still parade around in robes and issue credentials for thoughtfulness. Screw philosophy and philosophers of every type. Screw art and artists. Screw everyone whose pursuit makes them so special that the rest of us don’t get what they’re talking about. Screw everyone who doesn’t get what everyone else is talking about. Screw poets… strike that, the sick bastards will find some way to enjoy it and use it against you. Screw sexual politicians and screw nasty big-ass geeks who don’t know identity politics from authentication systems. Screw open source and all the open source-iacs. Screw the proprietary nonsense too. Screw everyone who doesn’t get that Sonny Bono gave us all a gift when he secured the mouse franchise for another hundred and fifty years. Screw Sonny Bono. Screw his widow too. Screw every rich and famous jerk who has a skiing accident. Screw anyone dumb enough to be both a Democrat and a flyer in light aircraft. Screw the assassins, the Mossad, the CIA, the RSVP and the rest of those degenerate assholes.

That’s not the point. Those are some of the easy targets. The hard stuff is out there in Murry Gunty land, where there are children who will Google their dad someday and be not proud of him. The hard stuff is looking at Halley Suitt and telling her to back up, turn around, get straight and get real… look at her peers and find a better role model than Jack Welch. Telling her to write well or give it up for a while. Telling her that the CEO schtick is not that cool, that Bud’s Filling Station and Body Shop has just as big a payroll as she does, a lot heavier capitalization, and Bud doesn’t mess with the CEO shit even though he does great fender work. Telling her for god’s sake just go to North Beach and eat Italian. Don’t tart it up with cutesy-wootsy little cable car Tony Bennett bullshit.

How many wikipedia links between Jack Welch and decimation as a practice of the ancient Roman Legions?

Bulldozed crops, destroyed homes, constant threat of violence
3 million people under the longest military occupation in modern history
35 years of Israeli oppression
IDF checkpoints
miserable curfew horrible way to live life
torture ill treatment detention without charge
human rights violations by israeli forces
war crimes

That’s Palestine… what do the Israelis have in mind for Lebanon? What’s different this week in Lebanon from what has happened there since 1968? Why are media memories so short that the US and Israeli thugs are permitted one atrocity after another, in Palestine, in Iraq, in Lebanon with each vicious act reported fresh as if it wasn’t part of a mosaic of squalid oppression?

Failed Israeli policy, impotent thrashing of a mindless brutish nation, global condemnation, their only friends Bolton and the Bush regime…

Ten years ago…

5. The law of state responsibility requires a state that has committed an internationally wrongful act to restore the status quo ante, if possible, or failing that, to make reparations. “The State responsible for an internationally wrongful act is under an obligation to compensate for the damage caused thereby, insofar as such damage is not made good by restitution.” Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts, art. 36, International Law Commission, Report of the International Law Commission on the Work of its Fifty-third Session , UN General Assembly, Official Records, 56th Session, Supplement No. 10, p. 43, UN Document A/56/10 (2001).

6 A state’s obligation to make compensation when an obligation breached is ” owed to the international community as a whole.”

7. Many official investigations of Israeli abuses found Israel guilty of extensive violations of international law, including the massacre of civilians, the illegal use of cluster bombs, and incendiary and fragmentation munitions, (phosphorous and flechette shells) as well as acts of violence directed against civilian objectives. Indeed, this very Commission made a finding in 1983 that Israel had committed genocide against hundreds of Palestinian Arabs in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatilla in Lebanon. United Nations Commission on Human Rights Resolution 1983/3, 15 February 1983. In April 1996, the United Nations Secretary General ordered an official investigation into an incident in which Israeli gunners fired 36 rounds of proximity fused artillery into the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon (UNIFIL) Headquarters and its immediate vicinity in Qana where over 800 civilians were taking refugee from massive and indiscriminate bombing of some 98 villages in southern Lebanon. 106 civilians were killed in the massacre, 52 of whom were children.

8. Immediately after the attack on the UNIFIL base at Qana, the Secretary-General ordered an investigation to be conducted on an urgent basis. That investigation, completed 1 May 1996 stated: “while the possibility cannot be ruled out completely, the pattern of impacts in the Qana area makes it unlikely that the shelling of the United Nations compound was the result of technical and/or procedural errors.” Report of the Secretary General of the United Nations Interim Forces in Lebanon , (UNIFIL Report) for the period 22 January 1996 to 22 July 1996 (UNIFIL 1996 Report

9. According to UNIFIL officials, the IDF was repeatedly informed by telephone that it was shelling civilians. UNIFIL officials told the press that only one or two minutes into the barrage, they contacted Israel and informed it that its forces were shelling their base. For at least 11 to 12 minutes after the initial UNIFIL contact was made, the Israeli forces continued to fire artillery at the base despite continued frantic requests by UNIFIL to cease fire.

10. The report by Major-General Franklin van Kappen confirms that the orders to fire came from Israeli officers of some level of seniority. Under intense political pressure, the United Nations dropped the investigation and never revealed to the public the underlying evidence and findings upon which the Van Kappen report was based. No final report on the Qana Massacre was ever published.

11. The Qana Massacre is only one of a multitude of incidents constituting persistent and gross violations of the human rights of Lebanese civilians perpetrated by Israel. Between 1968 and 1997 the United Nations Security Council issued 25 resolutions (UNSC resolutions 262, 270, 279, 280, 285, 313, 316, 317, 332, 337, 347, 425, 427, 444, 450, 467, 498, 501, 509, 515, 517, 518, 520, 587, 1052) condemning Israeli military action and attacks on civilians in Lebanon, notwithstanding the many resolutions vetoed in the Council by the United States (e.g., 30 UNSC resolutions vetoed by the United States between September 1972 and May 1990). However, the Qana incident was one instance in which the UN possesses the evidence necessary to establish Israel’s clear legal, if not criminal, responsibility for these violations because they occurred while in the custody and under the protection of UNIFIL soldiers, on territory clearly demarcated as a United Nations base

How do we deal with matters of personal privacy when as public bloggers we are commited to honesty and transparency? Sometimes it works simply to step away from the keyboard for a while. Tom Shugart is back with further thoughts. It’s good to see you Tom!

Many, many people have emailed and posted regarding their regrets at not having been able to memorialize MEG on Friday. It was a small gathering, five people, two of whom didn’t really know her but who were paying their respects none-the-less. Here’s what I think… Michelle believed in love and so many of us loved, respected and admired her. When you lose someone you love, you accept it and move on. Time heals.

We’re moving on through our sadness, but I wanted to simply steal this post from Mike Golby as a last tribute to my departed friend. Golby always finds the core of the matter:

:: Saturday, July 29, 2024 ::

Seasons in the Sun…

Adieu l’Émile je t’aimais bien | Adieu l’Émile je t’aimais bien tu sais | On a chanté les mêmes vins | On a chanté les mêmes filles | On a chanté les mêmes chagrins | Adieu l’Émile je vais mourir | C’est dur de mourir au printemps tu sais | Mais je pars aux fleurs la paix dans l’âme | Car vu que tu es bon comme du pain blanc | Je sais que tu prendras soin de ma femme | Je veux qu’on rie | Je veux qu’on danse | Je veux qu’on s’amuse comme des fous | Je veux qu’on rie | Je veux qu’on danse | Quand c’est qu’on me mettra dans le trou

Lately, Meg’s been on my mind; more especially, yesterday and today. Unable to attend a memorial gathering for her at BlogHer, I carried my thoughts of her through the day.

Wendy and I found ourselves scrambling up rocky paths, into forgotten caves, and along narrow ledges under soaring slabs of prehistoric stone. We were geocaching; hunting — I guess, much like John Laroche in The Orchid Thief — an elusive treasure. Laroche sought the Ghost Orchid, and his story — enjoyed by Meg, was elevated to art by Marion Orlean, Charlie Kauffman, Chris Cooper, and Meryl Streep.

I was also seeking solace. Unable to attend the memorial — time zones and my having screwed my chances of ever finding my MSN Passport address or password precluded me joining the online link up early this morning — I spent the day reflecting on the life of a friend now gone. I’m not good at endings, so even Frank’s posts on the memorial cut me up a bit, despite his being a saint for doing so much to realize the event.

I’ve nothing but good memories of meg. Her courage, love, and loyalty transcended in-the-world mundanities and, although she did not blog per se, she was unable to restrain herself in mails and, occasionally, her comments feature, where she’d let rip with a love of the great wide open. So I’ve been missing her.

I’m no great believer in synchronicity (or anything for that matter), but finding my first halfway decent calla lily of winter outside a virtually inaccessible cave on the side of the mountain set it all to rest for me. If I needed a signal, a ghost orchid, an answer to any prayer, that lily you see above is it. (Originally a South African flower, the calla or arum lily does well in California and — to me — became virtually synonymous with meg’s graphic coding exercises.)

Our walk, enhanced by my finding my lily at the mouth of the cave (the unknown, it seemed to lead into the heart of the mountain), enabled me to come to terms with a pretty hard and blunt truth; i.e. for better or worse (and I’m thinking of her here), meg is gone.

And although she found it so difficult to accept or call on, meg left behind an abundance of love, perhaps the greatest gift any of us can give to other people. Claude’s farewell mail reminded me of Brel. Translated by Rod Mckuen to Seasons in the Sun and made a hit by Terry Jacks, the English version — while acknowledging it — did not carry Jacques Brel’s depth and down-home earthiness.

So it’s Brel I hear when I say “Goodbye Michelle, it’s hard…”

Adieu ma femme je t’aimais bien | Adieu ma femme je t’aimais bien tu sais | Mais je prends le train pour le Bon Dieu | Je prends le train qui est avant le tien | Mais on prend tous le train qu’on peut | Adieu ma femme je vais mourir | C’est dur de mourir au printemps tu sais | Mais je pars aux fleurs les yeux fermés ma femme | Car vu que je les ai fermés souvent | Je sais que tu prendras soin de mon âme | Je veux qu’on rie | Je veux qu’on danse | Je veux qu’on s’amuse comme des fous | Je veux qu’on rie | Je veux qu’on danse | Quand c’est qu’on me mettra dans le trou

Jacques Brel | Le Moribond

:: Mike Golby 11:56 PM [+]

Michelle’s memorial - just Beth, Lisa, Melinda, and me locally with Jeneane online. But I read from the outpouring of posts and thoughts that surrounded Meg’s passing last month and I think it was good to carry this forward, to carry the grief so many of us felt through a closure that bespeaks acceptance of her choices and allowed many of us to share again the sadness of that moment of learning of our common loss.

Thanks to everyone who sent notes, words to share, kind thoughts and shared sorrow. Michelle Goodrich is gone and we remember her with love.

Mandarin Meg memorial gathering — non-denominational, non-sectarian, simply human gathering of people who wish to acknowledge and remember the passing of Michelle Goodrich at 3:45 today, Pacific time in Suite 8111 Hyatt San Jose at 1740 North First Street, San Jose California.

People with thoughts and memories to share are welcome to speak them, to read them, to type them in real-time via IRC chat client to a chat room named #MandarinMeg on Freenode which will be available starting about ten minutes before the memorial begins.

This gathering will be loosely modeled on Quaker practice: coming together in silence, followed by some brief comments by me regarding our purpose there, then continuing quiet while people speak when they feel moved to share. We will ask that each person speak only once until all present have had a chance to share. After an hour of silence broken by our thoughts and memories, I will break the silence by standing and thanking those in attendance.

If you can not be there but have something you would like read aloud for those who are there, simply email me at fpaynter@gmail.com

From 3:45 to 4:45 Pacific Time (GMT -8 hours), people will gather at BlogHer to honor the life of Michelle Goodrich, our friend Mandarin Meg. The memorial will be in room 8111 at the San Jose Hyatt Hotel.

Hyatt San Jose
1740 North First Street,
San Jose, California, USA 95112

An IRC chat room named #mandarinmeg will be open on Freenode and friends around the world are invited to join us as they can and share their memories online. We’re sorry that the timing can’t be convenient for everyone everywhere. Late afternoon at BlogHer seemed like a good time for North America, and not impossible for Europe (11:45 pm London, 12:45am Berlin, and morning in much of east Asia and Australia).

If you are not all that famuiliar with Internet Relay Chat, here is an easy way to join up. Download the Mozilla 1.7.13 browser for your operating system from http://www.mozilla.org/download.html.

Install the browser, but don’t select it to be your default.

Open the browser after it has been installed and click on the Window button in the menu bar at the top. The pull down menu that opens has an item near the bottom called IRCChat. Click that and in the text are on the bottom of the page enter:
/attach freenode

after you are attached to freenode you will be asked to idfentify yourself with a nickname. Just pick a one word name you want to be known by and hit enter.

type /join #mandarinmeg

you will be connected to the mandarinmeg room

if you want to give it a try this week and you have problems, just email me and I’ll try to walk you through it.

I’ll look forward to sitting with you next Friday and remembering meg.