Blogs

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Read them all...they're beautiful. I've been reading flea for years now on the now-defunct Ms. boards, and this trilogy is like everything she writes: smart, heartfelt, and never without humor.

I'm reluctant to talk about Reagan's presidency and the response to his death because the issue is extremely polarized and emotionally charged right now. Now you may guffaw, that's okay; when have I ever shied away from a polarized issue, right? We have the encomia: Tom Brokaw's voiceovers from the funeral, anecdotes about Reagan's personal interactions with ordinary people, his relationship with his wife, etc. Then there are the critiques of what many have called revisionist history: the necessary reminders that Reagan's policies on, among other things, AIDS, Latin America, programs for poor and working-class families, and women hurt a lot of people, and that we should remember those hurt by such policies at the same time we remember Reagan himself. That's a good point, but I find myself compelled to treat Reagan's death with a soft touch, as Jeanne does. She says, "I watched for just a short time, and not even talk about Reagan's 'moral' foreign policy bothered me, because a brief period of dishonesty won't kill us, and brutal honesty at this point would not be good for the soul." She calls for a pause for mourning before going into the critique. The comments in the thread are definitely worth reading; Dustin says, "The Reagan that did so much bad for the world we've inherited has been gone a long, long time, and I couldn't really find it in myself to condemn the man who passed away this weekend." For me, that's a big part of why my opinions here are tempered. My grandfather died eight years ago of Alzheimer's, and I can corroborate that it is a horrible way to die. Dustin's right, that man has been gone a long time. My grandfather had Alzheimer's for eighteen years before he died, so I don't remember what he was like before he started deteriorating. In the years right before he died, he had no idea who we (his family) were. A former carpenter, he would get lost in the house he'd designed and built with his own hands. Sometimes he'd wail, usually incoherent, half-formed words, and hit himself on the head. The lives of the two men aren't comparable, I know, but their deaths are, and their families' experiences with Alzheimer's are. I can't condemn the man who passed away last weekend, either. He was only a palimpsest.

It's important to remember, too, that Reagan wasn't a despot. He could have been the cruelest, most misogynistic oppressor the world has ever known, but he couldn't have acted alone. He had a lot of advisors, Senators, and members of Congress behind him who supported the tax cuts for the wealthy, the Mexico City Policy, the Human Life Amendment. There were plenty of despicable people in that administration.

I've just accepted an invitation to write the entry for "performativity" for the forthcoming (from Greenwood Press, in case anyone was interested) Encyclopedia of Third Wave Feminism, edited by Leslie Heywood. While I'm grateful for and excited about the opportunity, this will prove to be one of the more difficult pieces I've been asked to write: It can only be 750 words, and the audience is high school/undergraduate/general public. I want to explain it clearly and get the theory right at the same time, if possible. Will I be able to do it?

As you know, I've been brooding recently. I still don't feel great, but your comments have gone a long way toward cheering me up. My good friend Andrea gave me some more advice that I'd like to pass on. She said it when we were at the Pilot House, my favorite restaurant in my hometown. They have delicious New Orleans-style food, and I was having blackened swordfish with Pontchartrain sauce. It was good enough to affect me on a deep emotional level, and--of course--I was waxing wistful. Back in December, I ate some of the gumbo at the Pilot House, and it hit me: I want to be closer to home. I was telling Andrea this, and she told me I was idealizing home. She then uttered the following, and wrote it down a couple of days later so I'd have it:




Thanks, Andrea. :) You always know what to say.

I had a strange dream the other night, which I describe at Jenny's since she posted about a dream too.

Started knitting a hat last night for a friend. It's dark blue merino chunky wool yarn, in seed stitch. I can't send it to him until September, but I think he'll like it when he gets it. I put a little piece of the yarn in my most recent letter to him.

I wonder how much money it's costing the University of Minnesota to run UThink on Movable Type. With UThink, every student at the university is able to have as many blogs as he or she likes--one for each class he or she is taking, and a few personal ones too. There are nearly 50,000 students on the Twin Cities campus, and I wasn't able to find an exact number for the faculty. That's a lot of blogs...

Update: I meant to say in this post that I can't wait for Ginmar to get back home. I want to have a big party for her. Well, at least a "let's see how big a party I can have in a 464-square-foot studio" party. :)

I've been home since late Friday night, and usually I have a wonderful time here. This time, though, I can't seem to enjoy myself, mostly because of all the work I have to do, but that's not the only dark cloud over my head. Lately I've been brooding about all kinds of personal matters. In early October, I'll be turning thirty, and I'm decidedly not the person I thought I'd be at almost-thirty. I thought I'd be much more together, confident, and mature, further along in my career, less lonely. I never imagined I'd still look at something like this and think it was cool. When I'm here, I see all my friends, some of whom married relatively young, had children, and settled down here, and I envy them. Sure, a lot of what goes into those decisions is social pressure to do those things, but most of the time, when I look at my friends in that situation, I think, wow, they're wise. And happy. They knew what they wanted eleven years before I did (well, I still don't know what I want; so much for that) and went after it. I was talking to one such friend the night before last who is married with three children, and she said I shouldn't envy her, because while she's happy, she has a lot of responsibility, and sometimes she envies me too. I think she was only trying to make me feel better, but I appreciate the gesture.

The other dark cloud is the possibility that, according to my doctor, I might have endometriosis. It's not that serious, but my grandmother had to have a hysterectomy because of it. In all likelihood, it wouldn't come to that in my case, but I have this nagging, paranoid scenario going through my mind: What if my doctor told me I'd have to have a hysterectomy sometime in the next, say, two years, and if I wanted to have a child, I'd better hurry up and do it? I don't have Lil's certainty that I want a child, but given a deadline, would I? If so, whom would I hit up for, uh, donation?

I have to dismiss this nonsense. :(

I'm in the public library (home visiting family and friends for a few days), and I'm quietly laughing so hard that people are craning their necks to see what's on my screen.

I'll admit, I was at first taken aback by Mike's implicit characterization of my opinions on open source and free culture as mere duckspeak, but then I saw Cindy's comment. The last thing I wanted to do was alienate anyone, to bifurcate the issue, or to attack anyone's credibility, but obviously I have contributed to doing all three, and for that I apologize. Mike is pointing out these rhetorical problems because he cares about open source, just as Charlie and I and many others do. So I'll try this again: my opinion, offered sincerely. I realize that I agree with a certain contingent of people, but these are my thoughts too.



Yes, I think that generally, people should use open source software and should allow derivative works of their content if possible, but not because someone's a poseur if he or she doesn't do those things, or that it's an all-or-nothing matter. Of course, there are circumstances under which other choices are more practical. I support open source software and open content because they help to free information--code and content, which I see as overlapping, as I've said elsewhere--and allow everyone (who has the hardware, that is) the opportunity to participate in building upon that information. It enables people who couldn't afford the software otherwise to use it. I know it sounds florid, but I support open content and open source because it's a beautiful, altruistic collaborative vision, a gift economy, people's helping each other by improving the software and content because they can, and want to. I genuinely believe that open content/open source can have a positive effect on knowledge-making on a global scale. [Update: Open source software and open content aren't the things that will be the undoing of global capitalism and make it so that we can live on love and tater pie in a glorious utopia; I don't mean to come across as that enthusiastic. Open source/open content can't, for example, solve the environmental and public health crisis in some developing countries that has been the result of discarded computer hardware.] I'd still argue that this goal is best attained by engaging all three layers of the internet:

The primary strategies for building the core common infrastructure are:

• An open physical layer should be built through the introduction of open wireless networks, or a spectrum commons.
• An open logical layer should be facilitated through a systematic policy preference for open over close protocols and standards, and support for free software platforms that no person or firm can unilaterally control. More important are the reversal or refusal to adopt coercive measures that prefer proprietary to open systems. These include patents on software platforms, and the emerging cluster of paracopyright mechanisms like the United States’ Digital Millennium Copyright Act2 , intended to preserve the industrial business models of Hollywood and the recording industries by closing the logical layer of the Internet.
• An open content layer. Not all content must be open, but intellectual property rights have gone wildly out of control in the past decade, expanding in scope and force like never before. There is a pressing need to roll back some of the rules that are intended to support the twentieth century business models. These laws were passed in response to heavy lobbying by incumbents, and ignored the enormous potential for non market production and decentralized individual production to become central, rather than peripheral, components of our information environment.

See also Frank Field's notes on the stakes in this debate.