On Remembering

I found it! I found the poem I was looking for!
It's unedited, exactly as it was when I wrote it.
I just absolutely love love love this poem. It's so apathetic. It's everything that seventeen-year old me was. The ending gets me every time. Pause as you read it. Pause and really let the end sink into your soul. (Maybe it won't work for you; I don't know. But just try it.)

I need to remind readers that this poem has absolutely nothing to do with my current romantic partner situation.

Oh man, now I want to find the "Still Life" poem. I just spent like ten minutes digging through my old journal. It's funny how much I've grown, and funnier still how much remains the same. I became friends with a girl who'd gone to Mullen, although she was much older than me, and she became my biggest supporter during those awkward teenage years. She believed in my writing and I'm so grateful for that, because without her positive input, I may not have had the courage to keep doing it. We keep in touch on facebook now, and I don't know that I've ever been able to really tell her how much it meant to me that she read everything I wrote. She's off getting her doctorate and living a wild and beautiful life in Australia, but it's funny how much we are still able to share even if it's just through "likes" and comments.


"Remember"
originally posted January 11, 2006


I remember you.
I remember the first time
you said "I love you." 
I had forgotten
until today.
Sitting in the park last night, 
on a shadowed log
amidst the winter grass
while she remembered 
memories she should’ve never had
I flashed back. 
I took a picture of the spot
where I was standing
when it hit me
late that summer night
and I first felt the sensations 
roll over me.
but enough
I'd like to leave it there.
Later, not long forgotten
we were side by side
tangled in a sweet release
and you kissed my forehead
in that way 
that you knew drove me crazy 
and you whispered it.
I tensed
as silence filled the room
what was I to say
to someone I didn't love?
I sighed 
and kissed your hand
and rolled over
and let you hold me
until it was over
and I didn't have to say 
anything anymore.

On Blogging as Not-Journalism

Judge Hits Blogger With $2.5 Million Fine for Not Being a Journalist

3 minutes ago by Peter Pachal

In a case that’s sending a frightening message to the blogger community, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that a blogger must pay $2.5 million to an investment firm she wrote about — because she isn’t a real journalist.

As reported by Seattle Weekly, Judge Marco A. Hernandez said Crystal Cox, who runs several blogs, wasn’t entitled to the protections afforded to journalists — specifically, Oregon’s media shield law for sources — because she wasn’t “affiliated with any newspaper, magazine, periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system.”

The Obsidian Finance Group sued Cox in January for $10 million for writing several blog posts critical of the company and its co-founder, Kevin Padrick. Obsidian argued that the writing was defamatory. Cox represented herself in court.

The judge threw out all but one of the blog posts cited, focusing on just one (this one), which was more factual in tone than the rest of her writing. Cox said that was because she was being fed information from an inside source, whom she refused to name.

Without the source, she couldn’t prove the information in the post was true — and thus, according to the judge, she didn’t qualify for Oregon’s media shield law since she wasn’t employed by a media establishment. In the court’s eyes, she was a blogger, not a journalist. The penalty: $2.5 million.

The debate over whether bloggers are journalists has been going on for years, but the consensus has been largely settled — on the opposite side of what Judge Hernandez has ruled. Attorney Bruce E. H. Johnson, who wrote the media shield laws in next-door Washington State, told Seattle Weekly that those laws would have protected Cox had her case been tried in Washington.

In a more high-profile case, an editor from Gizmodo escaped criminal charges after revealing to the world an iPhone prototype lost in a bar. Although police raided the California home of editor Jason Chen in 2010, the case was cited as a test for that state’s media shield law, and the district attorney said publicly this year that no charges would be filed to anyone from the site.

When discussing the case, Steve Jobs told The Wall Street Journal‘s Walt Mossberg that he believed Chen was “a guy,” not a journalist. Mossberg countered that he himself was a blogger, and that he thought bloggers were journalists. (You can see the exchange in this video, at about the 17:00 mark.)

Are bloggers the same as journalists? And if not, what is the dividing line? Share your thoughts in the comments.

source: Mashable 

American Exceptionalism

Still not about teen pregnancy, my apologies. I've managed to convince myself that talking about it will lead me to write about eventually.

However, this article caught my eye this morning. It's from Feministe, and I thought you might enjoy it. It makes me think of those damn chain emails that always irk me so much and then spark posts where I try to say something like what is written below but fail miserably in my attempt.

And thus, written by guest blogger S.E. Smith, is "American Exceptionalism and You."

Enjoy:

Talking with a lovely Canadian the other day, we were discussing a really common problem we encounter on the Internet: The assumption that all readers are from the United States, and thus have a detailed understanding of issues that pertain to the United States and are deeply interested in these issues.

There’s a term, ‘American exceptionalism,’ that is used to describe some of the interesting social and political attitudes that surround the United States. Officially, it has to do with the idea that the United States is somehow exceptional or special, occupies a special position on the global stage by virtue of its accomplishments, deserves a special place in history because it’s just so darn unique. None of these things are true, but they directly contribute to the way the United States engages in foreign policy and interacts with other nations, behaving as the self appointed playground monitor that can do no wrong.

And this plays out in the way that people in the United States interact with the rest of the world as well. There’s a dominance that happens; US English is assumed to be the primary mode of communication, for example. Sites assume that readers can access Hulu videos (only available in the United States, but you already knew that, right?). Or that all readers are up on current political events in the United States. There’s also an implication that everyone from the United States has shared values and life experiences that acts to erase many people.

This very term, ‘American exceptionalism,’ speaks to the special place that the US thinks it occupies. Did you know that there are 36 countries in the Americas? That the Americas span two whole continents and the Caribbean? That US English is not the only language spoken in the Americas? Yet, the United States has coopted this term, ‘American,’ all for itself. Some people have even taken special care to weaponise this term in the immigration debate, demanding that the United States should be closed to people who aren’t ‘American.’

Assuming that everyone is from the United States doesn’t just erase the identities, interests, and concerns of people who are not from the United States. It also makes it fundamentally challenging for people to engage with content on US-centric sites. The assumptions that they will know about things slung about quite casually with no context or background get really frustrating; who wants to Wikipedia their way through a blog post to understand what in the hell is going on? Not I, that is for sure.

And I note that when people who are not from the United States write, they often do so with a global audience in mind. They explain things as they go along. They provide context and information so that people can understand what they are reading. They add insight and commentary. They do not assume that readers will understand the ins and outs of their political systems or will know the titles of laws by heart or will understand coded references to historical events. As a reader in the United States, I still sometimes feel a little bit lost, in part because of the ignorance cultivated by the way I engage with media, but at least I am not completely at sea.

When I go to the front page of overseas newspapers, often it’s US news that dominates the headlines. The 2008 election was covered in exhaustive detail in publications all over the world. Yet, Britain recently had an election, and it received barely any coverage here in the United States. Many US readers couldn’t tell you what a ‘coalition government’ is, let alone why it matters. Australia has an election coming up this year, but you probably wouldn’t know that if you read the news in the US exclusively.

US newspapers report news in the context of ‘how this pertains to the interests of people in the United States.’ Foreign newspapers don’t do this. They assume that readers might actually want to know about things that are going on in the world, even if they do not directly related to events going on at home.

There’s an othering that happens here too. When I read news stories about things that happen in other countries, it’s all about the Other. Over There. Those People. And The Horrible Things They Do. No matter that the same horrible things happen here in the United States, no matter that the United States might actually have some culpability in those horrible things, some involvement in a history of colonialism and exploitation.

That othering crosses over to interactions online as well, with people regarding nations outside the United States as abstract, exotic places. A certain amount of patronising seems to develop. Even on sites that supposedly have an international bent, the assumption is that everyone is from the United States, as though people from other regions of the world can’t access the site, or are perfectly happy to remain on the margins, to allow other people to write about their nations and their experiences. Sometimes it seems like everything must be filtered through the US lens.

Considering what happened the last time someone at Feministe tried to point out that the United States is not the centre of the world, I’m sure this will be tragic to hear, but, folks? The United States is not the centre of the world. And the widespread insistence on centreing experiences and concerns that are primarily relevant to people in the United States, and to referring to these things as ‘American,’ effectively ignoring the existence of the 35 other countries in the Americas, is really a significant barrier to conversation, not just here, but on many sites across the Internet.

Censorhsip

I am careful of what I write, hesitant fingers hanging over plastic keys, begging to be stamped down and repeated, again and again, forming words with their movements, the sounds making steady music from it. Each letter comforts the next, the up and down and up and down becomes a constant rhythm. Yet, I hesitate. Stopping, dangling a word over the keys, their begging is silent, though, and I resist.
The readers checks them, stopping daily, weekly, as it pops us in their favorites. The words mean nothing to them. They stop and read, as though it's the daily newspaper. They do not realize they've been fooled. There is nothing here but empty words, spun out of boredom or the chance that maybe once I'll say what I'm thinking, what's poised on the edge of my brain.
I never stop wondering, thinking, realizing, dreaming, assuming, whatever. But when I sit down to play the symphony of these keys, my words float away from me in some angry tide of feeling and I am left with nothing.
I stare. White screen. Blank. The keys sit. Untouched. I think. No, that won't work. She won't like it. or. No, that won't work. They don't know what it is. I realize that for life to be a story, one must have an eager audience. No novel is woven out of words for the sake of hearing the symphony. It is only written because the conductor begs someone to listen or to understand. It is the hope, I think, the hope that someone will appreciate the keeps them typing aimlessly or purposely however they set about it. There has to be a goal, always is, even if it's self-awareness.
Only in the bound book, hidden in the secret places, stashed in a backpack, clasped between pale hands or tucked into a drawer are the secrets spilled out with ink.
Sirens squeal other stories outside this building in the heart of the city.
I sit, saying nothing, wasting energy for the reader to comprehend.
But all is not lost.