Pseudo Biker Poetry

The hot spell that held Colorado in its grasp seems to have broken and quite a bit of rain has fallen in the past few days. In looking at my old stack of poetry I found a poem from 1991 that seemed a good fit:

The first rain has fallen
Bringing in the moist cool fall.
The oils wick up
And the plastic paints take on a new demeanor.

My tires make their way across the tarmac
That grips half heartedly
And I remember,
Shift smoothly.

The crisp air brings many memories
And the chimneys begin their scents.
The autom rides have beauty
And new challenges to bear.

Ride swift and wll
Before the frosts come.
But remember wet leaves
Grip not as well as warm asphalt.

09/26/91

Memories of the Fourth

So it is the Fourth of July, and a Friday. I'm pondering if I am up to a 2.5 mile walk to go see fireworks or if I will just watch the ones that go high enough to see them from my house. The Fourth of July has always been a special holiday in my family. My grandparents lived in Massachusetts, and so more than one Fourth was celebrated watching the fireworks over the Boston Harbor listening to the Boston Pops.

But even a stronger memory, perhaps because I was a older, is my memory of the Fourth of July in Nevada City. I can't place what year it was, or even how old I was because my summers in Nevada City, from when I was about 11 until I was somewhere in my 20s have sort of a timeless quality about them. It is one place that truly feels home to me, even though I have never lived there. Anyways, one particular Fourth, as usual with my mother's whole family together it was decided that we would be in the Fourth of July parade in Nevada City.

Wait, you might, say, you mean several weeks/months before it was decided and your uncles put an entry in to be in the parade. No, that isn't what I meant. It was the fourth and it was decided there. We all dressed in red white and blue, my Uncle Saul and I had our fifes (my uncle gave me one) and we headed to somewhere close to the start. I recall Uncle David talking with someone but I am dubious that it was anything official, but shortly after the starting point of the parade my family entered the parade; my Grandma, my Grandpa, my mom, my uncles and me all started marching. We waved at the crowd and played Yankee Doodle Dandy on the Fife and Uncle David proudly announced us as the "Levi Clan" and we marched along the parade as the crowd applauded.

So when I think of the Fourth of July I remember sparklers, my dad setting off fireworks, going to the beach north of Santa Cruz that was like a war zone on the fourth (yes, my friends had mortars, yes the sand was sometimes made glass), good food and friends, but most of all I remember marching in the parade in Nevada City because we decided to.

Surreptitious Posting

It's not a Fishbowl, It's a Habitrail

In a lot of places I hear people talking about how we are in our little echo chamber, or fishbowl. I get that concept. I have talked with people who have written (and had published) books on film who when I talked to them about video on the net said "Oh yeah, my husband sometimes sends me funny videos from YouTube." Yes, there is a huge digital divide, no question about it.

Lately though I've been thinking it is less of a fishbowl and more of a habitrail. I have been working on building connections in Colorado and trying to create a network where those of us creating and involved in this new media/social media/web2.0 stuff in Colorado can start to meet each other and know about each other here in Colorado rather than finding our neighbors at some conference in Las Vegas.

What this means is that I am meeting a lot of people who are in the "fishbowl" who only know about some small segment of the fishbowl. Some of these people are well connected individuals yet when I mention people who I think are incredibly visible, like Loic Lemeur, Chris Brogan, Cali Lewis, or Gary Vaynerchuk they respond with a blank look. They have no idea who these people are.

After curbing my initial self righteous response I realize that chances are some of their big name people are unknowns to me. Yes I blog, but I'm not "a big blogger" my focus is video, so yes I know people who are visible in video. For those into audio there may be a whole other group of "must knows" that I may be ignorant of, and then music - who are the connectors there?

I may know a few people in each of these groups through twitter but really I swim in the social media tools, video and virtual worlds areas. Furthermore, even though I treat these areas as contiguous really each is its own area. Rather than being a big fishbowl it is more like we are in a habitrail. These worlds all connect through those tunnels but each section is mostly aware of the room they are in.

So I would say, yes we should ask, "How do we get out of the fishbowl or echo chamber?" But perhaps a first question is "How do we communicate across the habitrail?"

On the Other Hand

Transcription can be found in the comments. You can click on the image below to make it bigger (and slightly more readable).


(Why in the comments? Are you reflexively reading my typed text first? For many they do.)
(Normal typewritten posts will be returning shortly.)

Post Mortem on a Handwritten Post

Follow up on my previous handwritten post.

Also, I can add, after transcribing the first post, editing is much easier in the digital form, and length seems more apparent when measured in pages.

Untitled Handwritten Post

Ok, Eric started this meme, and PurpleCar got me thinking, so it is time for me to join in.

What is this meme? Well since I can't just link it here I'll tell you. Write a blog post. No, not type, write. And now you can see my fine hand :)

So a few thoughts popped up when I read PurpleCar's post.
1) All fo my fountain pens were dry. Shows how much I write.

2) If google can't scan and index this is this a way to have a private chat?
(and can google really not scan this - I am reminded of evernote.)

3) The difficult in providing links in a graphical post, andhow on my old websites I used image maps.

Of course if you are reading this (unspellchecked) post in its original you both can see and are good at deciphering handwriting. The text to speech converters won't work on this, and it pr is a slower read, just as it is a slower write.

Goldie



Of course I can link in the transcript, so I will.