A New Day

I have no idea how to approach an Inauguration Day blog post. This is such a huge day. I'm killing time this morning at home before a visit to Dr. Amy to hear her words of caution about weight and blood pressure and things like that. And waiting for the inauguration of Barack Obama

My state already has its new leader. Jack Markell was sworn-in as Delaware's Governor at 12:01 a.m. today. Jack was joined by Matt Denn, his Lt. Governor, who is already being noted as a man of humor (which appeals strongly to me).

Mr. Markell has a huge challenge ahead of him. We have a large deficit and need a strong and wise leader. I think he is up to it and I, frankly, really like the guy.

Meanwhile, there are reports that hundreds of thousands are already on the Mall in Washington. I hope to find a spot near a television at mid-day. I expect I'll have tears in my eyes.

We are about to change, I think. The cynic in me cautions that politicians are politicians and the world will be as it has always been. But I still am touched. An hope-filled. And ready for a new start for our community, our state, our nation, and the world.

Echoes of a Scream

I just finished The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine, a Lebanese American writer, painter and one-time engineer. This is a fabulous book, exploring modern and ancient Arab, Muslim, and Lebanese life and culture. It is filled with wonderful stories -- myths, fables, lessons -- woven into each other like the many peoples who made Beirut such an interesting melting pot in the years before its civil war.

Much of the mythological portion of the book is the long tale of the great Sultan Baybars, who rose from slavery to dominion over all of the Islamic world. He is opposed by Arbusto, who tries, and fails, many times to prompt the overthrow of the ruler he feels has unjustly taken the throne.

At one point, in trying to inspire an army to victory, he offers a familiar-sounding speech:

"This is the city of Aleppo," Arbusto said. "Not only are we going to thrash them here, we are going to Damascus and Homs and Hamah, and we going to Baghdad and Mosul and Jerusalem, then we are going to Cairo to take back the sultanate. Yeeeeaaaah."

In fact, this speech, or one very like it, appears twice in the book.

Interestingly, towards the end of the book it becomes clear that Baybars is, in fact, an unjust king and the many stories of his glory are ancient public-relations efforts.

Echoes within echoes.

Want to Flow Your Own Data?

For the last month I have been beta-testing a site called "your.flowingdata.com" which uses the twitter API to create a simple data-tracker for personal information such as your weight and eating habits, your sleeping patterns, your feelings, and even your bowel movements. The site appears to now be out of beta-testing and open to all users.

I tried both "feelings" and "eating & weight." I didn't find much use for the "feelings" application, but I find it interesting to track what I eat and what I weigh as I try, again, to gain control of my personal mass. This is a simple application, but helpful as a regular reminder that what I put into my body has a connection to what I weigh and how I feel.

If you are interested in this sort of thing, and you are a twitterer, have a look and see what you think.

Really. Very. Cold.

The temperature was in the single digits when we woke up this morning. It was, I think, the coldest point of a strong cold snap that should linger for a few days. For my friend Will in Minnesota, or Jim, in Wisconsin, that's probably not that cold. But here in Delaware, single digits are rare.

I added a visit to the point at Cape Henlopen to my morning round of errands, to see if it had been cold enough, long enough, for the Delaware Bay to develop any ice. I'd found mini-floes on the beach at the Cape in February of 2007 after a similar cold snap.

The ice was not quite as extensive today. It looked more like a giant Slushie (the crushed-ice drink they used to sell at 7-11 when I was a kid).

It has warmed up a bit, but remains colder than is comfortable. We ate dinner tonight in a restaurant with large, plate-glass windows. They were not designed for this sort of weather and radiated cold into the restaurant. We kept our coats on; some folks only removed their gloves when the food came to the table.

This weather is better suited to curled up in front of a roaring fire, with a cat on your lap or perhaps a dog at your feet. A warm drink, and a good book. If only we had snow...

The Perfect Toy for the Moment

I give you obamicon.me, an on-line imagery toy that creates an iconic (Obamiconic?) version of any image you care to upload. It mimics that icon-like (Obamicon-like?) image by Shepard Fairey of the President-Elect seen recently on the cover of Time magazine.

I expect there to be a flurry of activity on this site. It perfectly captures both the mood of anticipation that marks this last week before the inauguration, and our national love of looking at ourselves. I know I found it charming.

And, we're just waiting. Sure, there are news stories to follow (if you are a political junkie), and football playoffs (at least in our region), but aren't we all just waiting for January 20?

So when an on-line toy that is appropriate to the time, we jump right in.

I tried a few different nihilistic inspirational posters, including the celebration of silly at right. I also tried for outdoorsy and for thoughtful. But I liked the goofy one the best.

Twitter and the Daily Devotionals

A comment from ShoreThings on my Buddha Machine post has led me into yet another twitter-related post. ShoreThings came to the post based on the title, which popped up in twitter, thinking it would be about the tinybuddha twitter account. Tinybuddha offers regular nuggets of Buddhist wisdom and related quotes. Here's the latest:

"Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others. He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind." ~Buddha

That led me to wonder what twitter devotionals might exist. So I have done some poking around and found, in no particular order:

• Bible In a Year
  Screw the rules & traditions, just get on with sharing the love, healing and power of Jesus Christ with those around you http://ow.ly/1JI
• The Daily Tao
  A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants.
• ESV Daily Verse
  In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so
  
• Daily Zen
  "It is better to practice a little than talk a lot."
• Daily Buddhism
  “Neither from itself nor from another, Nor from both, Nor without a cause, Does anything whatever, anywhere arise.”
• Daily Bible Promises
  Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven ... where thieves do not break in and steal. Matt 6:20 http://is.gd/eZoS
  

I didn't find any daily Koran verses, but twitter limits searches per day and I ran out before completing my poking around.

I know there must be others. Anyone have any recommendations?

There's a Tiny Little Buddha in There?

On the windowsill in my office, up there with a small chunk of New Hampshire granite, a logo Slinky, and a tiny ceramic turtle-shaped planter (why do I have that?), I have a small red plastic box. It looks like a 1960s-era transistor radio, with a single speaker, a switch and a volume wheel.

It is a Buddha Machine, from FM3; "a little plastic box that plays music." In fact it contains two short loops of music that repeat in a drone that can be conducive to meditation, or intense work, or just weirding-out your co-workers.

I bought mine on-line a few years back after reading about it in The New Yorker. They are made by a couple of musicians in China -- one Chinese, the other a Westerner -- who also perform with groups of the machines as FM3.

Sasha Frere-Jones has written about the Buddha Machine again, both in the magazine and on his blog. I think it was his tip before that led me to the original. The news this time is that there is an updated version of the Buddha Machine, with more loops and options. There is also, apparently, an iPhone application.

Frere-Jones also points to a page with samples of some of the loops and to a cool site that offers a virtual wall of loop-playing machines that can be mixed and matched and played in dizzying combinations.

Think how much fun I can have with my office-mates now!

Meta-Meta-Meta-Web

A tweet this evening from Daily Show producer Miles Kahn (meta #1) pointed me to an article on the New York Observer web site, All That Twitters, (meta #2) which looks at the growth of twitter through the recent twitter-recruitment of Mr. Kahn by Daily Show performer John Hodgman:

“Producer miles Kahn thinks twitter is a waste of human time and resources,” Mr. Hodgman “tweeted” on his account, titled @hodgman, from his iPhone. “Obviously I agree with him, but I still like him,” he added.

A few minutes later, Mr. Kahn gave in and started his own account: @mileskahn. Mr. Hodgman linked to Mr. Kahn’s page and, almost instantly, hundreds of the more than 25,000 of Mr. Hodgman’s fans who subscribe to his Twitter updates started following @mileskahn.

I have to admit. I am one of the Hodgman fans who started following Miles Kahn that day (meta #3). I followed that exchange, and the good natured banter it engendered, and I continue to enjoy their twittering. (Mr. Kahn had a story idea shot down today).

This does all seem very circular. And I fully recognize that I'm over-twittered. But I'm enjoying twitter and I follow many people in my profession whose tweets add to my regular environmental scanning.

It's all about communication.

It's All In the Choices We Make

Sometimes the smallest details stand as editorial comments. Looking through Tuesday's front pages on the Newseum web site, I found several different photographs of a cute moment Monday in the Capitol Rotunda.

Mr. Obama was walking through the Rotunda with Nancy Pelosi and her crew. He stopped to talk to 5-year old Carter Metz, of Tennessee.

I was interested to see how that was played in different papers.

I was struck by the caption the editors of the Kansas City Star chose to put just above one version of the picture: "Obama meets with Capitol Hill leaders." Placed above this particular photo, this suggests that maybe the 5-year old is the leader.

By contrast, The Washington Times chose what I think is a cuter photo of Mr. Obama bending down to talk to young Carter and includes just a descriptive caption below. This highlights the fatherly Obama and the charm of the moment.

I may, of course, be reading way too much into these design choices. But that "meets with leaders" looks like the sort of thing I would have wanted to try to get away with.

I should also note that I Find the Times' version, with Pelosi and Rahm Emmanuel and the rest of the suits relegated to the background while the President-Elect speaks to a child, really cute.

What Music Do I Like?

I have eclectic taste in music. When I try to explain or demonstrate my taste, folks often simplify the discussion to one word "weird." I guess that's fair, my taste buds are spread all over the musical tongue.

I heard a piece on NPR this evening, however, that might help to illustrate what I love about the many different musics I like: an openness.

The story is about a group of Nashville session players who set aside their formulaic day-job playing once each week to play as The Time Jumpers in a regular Monday evening gig at a place called The Station Inn. They play standards from across the American music spectrum; generally as western swing. They play for love, fun, and friendship. They are not trying to be "successful." And they sound great.

The part of the NPR story that caught my ear was toward the end, when guitarist Andy Reiss explained what he likes about playing this way:

The beauty of music is [that] when your ears are wide open, your heart is wide open. You're not even thinking. You're listening and you're part of something, and everybody is doing that. When that happens, it's pure magic. And as a musician, you know how rare that is.

What struck me is how similar this is to the way that the members of the Grateful Dead, who play what would seem an entirely different sort of music, describe what they seek on stage. They talk in very similar terms in their 2009 tour announcement (which I linked to over the week-end).

Mickey Hart calls it the "mind meld." The group describes the process in a video posted on their site as "all about listening. You listen more than you play..." Phil Lesh says that that sense of surprise is why he keeps playing:

For me, it’s the question mark that’s really pulling me in...what’s gonna happen? When you walk out on the stage the possibilities are infinite every time. The musical possibilities are infinite: there is no end to it, there’s no back wall and there’s no ceiling, there’s no floor. It’s infinite and therefore you can still explore it till the day that you die.

So here we have two different sorts of music that bear striking similarities. They both draw from the deep well of American songs, they both exist somewhat outside the main stream, and they both are played by musicians who understand that the beauty of the music is found in the other players.

This is what I like. The genre doesn't really matter; I'm interested in the process and the surprise.