Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Pencils, white text and the revelations as history

As I begin to tap at the keyboard -- I sense that I am facing challenges yet to be overcome. Contributors to this sensation include that I do not type, trifocals challenge accuracy in seeing, and what it feels like to write with a pencil is a very distant memory. I face the New Year with fatigue, lack of momentum and an intention to commit to basics. I am half-heartedly assessing the public medium for which I find that ideas must be coaxed, shuffled, strained and simplified to have value. This requires resources that have been depleted.

Therefore I must challenge the purpose of glimpses through stained glass as a blog. Is this just a public scribble? Does it qualify as a journey journal? Can it be more than an expose in my inconsistency and ease of distraction?


Random memory: a peer who communicated with another peer at the day job playfully included personal hidden messages in his emails. His messages were hidden by changing the text from black to white. This sharing was discovered unexpectedly because the email was sent to print and all printed text is in black. What does this story memory invoke? Other memories like the lemon juice experiments of my youth (play, discovery) and thoughts about understanding cloaking,exposure, innovation and all of there potential impact on privacy.


So no deep dives here - just nagging thoughts in response to popular media. Our former VP speaks and I quiver. He infers that terrorists did not succeed in attacking on American soil after 911 - and the true level of threat must remain cloaked. So if Truth is cloaked in fear and hyperbole --- will history reveal if we were protected or scammed by these fear mongers. In the 80's I took a course on International Law. Terrorism was a key subject matter. I believe a Lesson Learned from that course was that terrorists are empowerd by breeding fear. It seems that this is now a living history.

5 comments:

Chris Gray said...

That last paragraph still resonates with me on a morning where Karl Rove is reported to have called our current VP a lair (pot=kettle?).

Speaking of VPs and Ps, did I ever tell you how, indirectly, the computer you donated to The Elder lead to my getting big smiles out of Michelle and Barak as I sat on and in the middle of a DC corporate board room in the early '90s.

Since the deal was, the computer should go to another non-profit if and when The Elder closed, the November that it did, I took it to the Coalition for People and started computerizing their operation until it was stolen over Christmas holiday. After canassing around, an umbrella organization for community organizations had gotten Apple to donate Macs as long as the project was willing to set up a dedicated phone line for use of UseNet or some such precursor to the Web.

I'm betting it was Michelle and Barak's idea and was utilized to organize a three day conference and fourth day of action a the corporate office (a bank, I think) the offices of the Fed (where we encircled it with a red ribbon, and at HHS, where we were repelled from pulling the kind of stunt we pulled at the bank.

I think that event is what put them on DC's political map. All I knew was that they were the people from Chicago.

Chris Gray said...

Have to start previewing before posting. Lair? Liar, liar, kettles on fire!

AdeleHouston said...

so strange --- this pic is of a captive primate mother that I had the odd fortune to photograph with mixed feelings including respect, awe, compassion and helplessness.

Anonymous - may your vile find its mirror.

Chris Gray said...

Readily admit to being a wanker, it is a survival tool I was enjoying only moments ago. As to posing, I don't know what as. You?

Now, I know that anonymous is credited with much scurilous writing, but I don't know what else is accomplished. Much of Adele's resume I can attest to.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Chris Gray said...

Or, to put it another way, by 19, I was putting down a punk like you, anonymous, who would have raped my friend’s character as surely as he already had her body, after he had put down he boyfriend, if not for me. The boyfriend had returned from two tours in ‘Nam, the sole survivor of two platoons, but was felled while removing his jacket. My friend had to depend on her friend. As far as I know, I left the guy dead. He was never seen or heard of again by us, shoveled off the street anonymously.

Now, who are you to be calling anyone a liar, mon guerilla? Who is the poseur?

I do not call someone scurrilous lightly. Judge Bassett tried to single out my testimony in the Wall Street Four Trial (4 because 120 paid their fines and walked away) as “scurrilous” but didn’t have the nerve since it was clear that, while he presided over C. Leader Gray’s court room right then, the expertise on the traffic patterns on Wall St. that day lay in my head and in no else’s in that courtroom.