BOUNDARY ISSUES

(Cover of the Portland Mercury the week Reagan died.)

During the early 1980s, as Reagan launched our current Hate Society, the back windshield of my Honda Civic was smashed one night and my car ransacked. But the only item taken was my address book in the glovebox -- not my tapedeck nor my case of tapes. not my tools or the stack of games visible in the back hatch, Just my address book.

I of course called the Lesbian Rights Project to report it because they were monitoring the reprisals against us, those of us in the group Lesbians Against Police Violence. I didn't call the cops because it was them, and/or their friends, who were doing this shit. One of my friends in the group had similarly had her house broken into and the only thing stolen was her dayrunner. Another friend had her truck towed despite it being legally parked, and when she got it back two days later, missing from it were her checkbook and journals.

Not long after my break-in, two group members lost their jobs after visits to their boss's office by men in suits, and a third friend, a mechanic in LAPV, had the old Volvo she had lovingly restored firebombed overnight. She quit the group amid tearful apologies, saying she was just too frightened.

It cost me $150 to replace my rear windshield at a time when I was living on $380 a month. After that, for several years I kept my address book in code, combining it with my datebook in a tiny leather clasp that never left my back pocket.

They still want that information about law-abiding citizens just as badly, only now they can buy it from Facebook. You can tell how eagerly FB wants this treasure trove of yours by how persistently they beseech those of us who have NOT given them access to our address files by trotting out the names of our friends who used the FB "Friend Finder" to locate that loser from 20 years ago you don't want to be in touch with anyhow.

Every time someone is gullible and lazy enough to allow FB to "access" your email list elsewhere, make no mistake about it, they are copying your data instantly and selling it. As a researcher, I know what kind of gold it contains, a veritable biography of your existence. My guess is that this revenue is FB's prmary moneymaker, given how assiduously they push it.

All to individually "save you the trouble" of typing in the names of the folks you actually do want to friend.

Do you REALLY believe the police state after eight years of Bush is less dangerous that that of the early 80s?

Pass . It . On .


(Cross-posted at Group News Blog.)

Read More...

Summary only...

THE QUALITY OF METER

(Splash photo by Paul Hoksenar)

One of my most prized possessions is a complete collection of Shakespeare that was given to my mother as her high school valedictorian present by her book-loving father, the year before he died. It was printed as World War II raged, and hence it demonstrates the paper and ink rationing of the times: The pages are tisue-thin, the print reduced, the margins scant. But it is still elegant and compleat, and Mama found room to underline or make comments in her copperplate handwriting, using peacock-blue fountain pen ink in delicate lines.

I began reading from it every night when I turned 12 and we moved to Brasil, with no TV and either the volumes on our shelves or a few English-language murder mysteries in the bibliotecas all we had as print material. Long after my parents were asleep, I'd lie in the tropical swelter of my room, watching the geckoes in each corner who kept mosquitoes at bay, flipping between lines of iambic pentameter to footnotes and glossary, trying to suck out all the meaning he packed into each phrase. A good way to cope with hormones hitting my bloodstream like galloping mares.

I once heard that the average English sentence produced in everyday conversation by a native speaker tends to run ten syllables in alternating beats. In other words, iambic pentameter sounds like "ordinary talk" to us -- overlay metaphor and epic ideas, and you've got poetry no one can forget because it settles into the grooves of our brains.

I wonder if that's still true any more.

The ratio of allowable Twitter characters to allowable Facebook characters is 1:3. There is no poetry in that decision. The only way around mathematically brutal elision is to cheat by adding a picture or link -- fodder for the ADD crowd who will actually go to prominent writers' blogs and complain about having to read "paragraphs."

So Mama's generation understood how to retain the entirety of a thing while avoiding waste. How would we now reduce the following to a FB friendly discrete chunk -- and what feverish possibilities would be thus lost for a future pubescent looking for doorways to the world?

The quality of mercy is not strained.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown.
His scepter shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.
But mercy is above this sceptered sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings.
It is an attribute of God himself;
And earthly power doth then show like God's
When mercy seasons justice.

[Cross-posted at Group News Blog]

Read More...

Summary only...