Reading the Captain's Logs has inspired me to update my Sea Chantey pages. I've finally posted Zeke Hoskins' hilarious Bound for Valparaiso, two years after Zeke told me I could do it!

My first attempt at email logging.

Labor Day weekend, Friday August 31 through Monday September 3rd, a big
Arts and Literature Festival is held in the Seattle Center:
Bumbershoot. WHEEL has a table in the Book Fair, Snoqualmie Room (we
have six anthology chapbooks, one for each year that we've held the
Homeless Women's Forum) so if you are in the vicinity come say Hi!

Bumbershoot is EXPENSIVE, but if you have a disabled bus pass you get in
free, and this year I have one.

The name of the festival is reported to be a the British word for
"umbrella" -- a self-mocking joke about Seattle weather. But I'm going
to tell you the real story.

The Bumber is the immature form of the Busker. Buskers are street
performers: musicians and jugglers and mimes and so forth.

We love our street musicians in Seattle, although there is less
consensus about the mimes. But in our cultural climate, they grow so
numerous we are always in danger of being overrun. So to maintain some
control over the population, every year we have a Shoot. To be
truthful, however, more Bumbers are trampled under the feet of the
crowds than are actually Shot.

Write On! / Anitra L. Freeman / http://www.speakeasy.org/~anitra/
"We can't help everyone. We can't fix everything. It hurts.
But it is better to live with pain than to live without caring."

Light and Dark in Seattle

Wednesday, August 29: A day of promise and a day of shame. Twenty women joined in a vigil for Lukas Stidd today; ten homeless and formerly homeless women, and ten women not homeless. One woman simply passing by joined us after reading our flyer.

This death had a deep emotional effect on a wide circle. The image of Lukas being dead for several hours before anyone noticed has disturbed many people. They want to show that they would not walk by, complacent.

Yet this morning's paper carried another horrifying story. A suicidal woman clung to the railing of the I-5 bridge for 3 1/2 hours, while drivers taunted her and yelled at her to "Just (expletive) jump ... and get it over with!"

My friend Michele went around all morning saying, "The soul of the city is officially dead. I'm moving to Tacoma." "Michele Give 'em Hell with One L Marchand" is habitually dramatic, but I had the thought myself, "Seattle has gone right past L.A. and turned into New York."

My mother used to say that the most powerful words in any human language were "I see you." We all have a deep hunger to be seen. It is the secrets we keep hidden that make us ill. It is the anonymity of a crowd that allows us to be monsters. It is the denial of our own humanity that makes us deny the humanity of others.

Alone
despairing
she clung to the edge

Invisible
isolated
they called from their cars

I can't see you
I won't see you
go away
die

Nobody ever sees me

Please do me a favor today. Say "Hello" to someone you haven't seen before.

Well, that's the first time that's happened to me -- I wrote a nice long log about the play I went to last night, submitted it, and it never appeared on my page! Disappeared into electron Limbo. Dropped into the bit bucket. Gone.

This is such a good play, I'm going to write my entry again! Once more into the logs, dear friends...

Last night I went ACT, A Contemporary Theater, to see "Waiting to be Invited", a civil rights drama about four black women going to a sit-in at a "whites-only" lunch counter in 1961 Atlanta. Sherry M. Shephard-Massat based the play on stories her own grandmother told her. Unlike many other movies, plays and books about the Civil Rights movement, "Waiting to be Invited" doesn't focus on the headline figures and dramatic confrontations, but shows only the four women preparing for the event, their personal lives and fears. It draws attention to the millions of people behind the scenes who make a movement, and to the place of true battleground, inside us.

In the program, Shephard-Massat commented on something said by a high-school girl at one of the first performances: "I don't know who this writer is and I don't know who she is writing for, but people my age won't know what is going on. The play was on a whole long time before I understood what was happening." As the author said, "It really surprised me that this generation does not know about what happened to give them their freedom." I went to the play with a young black woman from my writing workshop, and we both agreed that it is important to remember too. In our experience, racism still lives, and we deal with it every day; though in different ways. I won't pretend my struggle is as hard as hers. But in some ways, all -isms are the same, racism and sexism and the classism that says if you haven't got money to spend, don't come into our neighborhood.

ACT Theater has an excellent study guide for the play. I recommend it.

In other notes: I consider all my entries worth reading -- so I've made it easier to find back-entries by adding a Log Index to your left.

The "Custom Module" option seems to be the most valuable part of Xanga Premium. The Spell Checker takes approximately forever to load; I wouldn't know for sure because I always give up after a minute or so and cancel it. I'm not sure how to use the option to store extra pictures, and I'm a bit leary of it anyway. You can probably tell that I'm a text-oriented person and I like a simple page design that loads quickly.

Before my trial time runs out, though, I'll test "email posting." If I have something in email form, I don't have to cut-and-paste to post it on Xanga; I can send a Xanga weblog post through email. That might be convenient.

I still have twelve days to decide if the advantages of Xanga Premium are worth paying for. To help me decide, let me know if you use the Log Index and Link List (What I Do While I'm Not Weblogging), okay?

Write On!

The Seattle Times: Death gets too close to notice

I had planned to write about happier subjects today.

My personal day was good, in fact. But at 4pm I got the news that we were doing another Women in Black vigil next Wednesday, August 29.

Tuesday morning Lukas David Stidd was sitting at a picnic table in a park across from the Seattle Times office building. Staff and reporters passed him all morning, noting that his long hair was tied neatly back, that he was wearing a wristwatch and tan suede Converse shoes, that he had his head down on the table.

What nobody noticed was that he was dead.

Eventually the landscapers called security, security called the paramedics, and the paramedics announced that Lukas was dead. Then everyone was shocked awake, For the next day, Times columnist Nicole Brodeur said, "cynics went soft, and minds surged with memories of other we have lost and found." "What's the lesson?" she asks, and decides, "Maybe it is to pay better attention."

When I showed the story to Wes he said, "Maybe the lesson is to bring everybody in off the street, duh!"

He used a harsher word that "duh" but I never know who's reading these logs, so I try not to cuss.

No decision is in about what Lukas died of; there was no trauma to the body, no obvious signs of a reason. One of the women in our building who also lived on the streets said, when I told her about it, "Well, he probably died of natural causes; just slipped off in his sleep gently."

I don't want to die that gently.

My plans to attend the Slams tonight (Wednesday) have once more been postponed.

Have you ever stayed up all night to complete a project, only to spend 9/10ths of the time on the kind of distractions that delayed you completing the project until the last minute in the first place? I was up til 5am working on a WHEEL brochure due Friday, got up at 9:30am to work on it some more so I could take it to a review meeting at noon -- so, I drag around all day tired and achy and a lot less productive than if I'd just slept.

Have you ever run around in your shirt-sleeves because there's just a little drizzle outside but the air's warm and you grew up in the Northwest and you like the rain and you don't want to bother carrying a coat? And have you been caught when the rain-pipes came unclogged and the drizzle turned into a downpour, and you walked into your 4pm meeting with your hair in your eyes and dripping all over the floor? So then I was wet and cold and tired and stiff and aching.

I came home, took a nap, got on the computer to just check a few things before I finish the WHEEL brochure, and it's 1:30am already.

I am not totally irresponsible, folks. I'll have that brochure turned in tomorrow afternoon, and it'll look great. But I'll probably be exhausted afterward. Not from the work, but from the distractions!

This is how ADD works with me: I am either eminently distractable, chasing off after anything interesting -- and it is easy to interest me! -- or I hyper-focus, locking into one thing for eight, ten, or up to 36-hours-in-one-chair straight.

One of the things I got distracted with was the whole subject of evaluating information on the Internet. Someone on another forum made the statement that I was just as anonymous as someone that I was criticizing for using anonymity to hide behind while indulging in spite.

Well God Bless Us Everyone, but what do I have to do to break anonymity?!! I use my christened name on the Internet, I post my picure, I post a link to my website that has my whole biography and accounts of being homeless and bipolar and links to news stories about projects I'm involved in and friends who've met me and other websites that refer to me...

I don't expect anybody to read all that. But I check out the home websites of anyone I'm interested in, and I certainly check the credentials of anyone who tries to tell me something. And I am always trying to tell people something. Doesn't anybody check my credentials?

Maybe you don't believe anything you read on the Web. But in my opinion, to say "I don't believe anything" is the same as saying "I'll believe anything" -- because it means you have no standards that you use to measure what to believe.

This is a compilation of what I've posted over the years about evaluating information (and information sources) on the Web:

If you are looking for information about cloning, how do you distinguish between scientific reports, debates on ethics, and the news that little furry meatballs from Mars have assassinated George W. Bush and replaced him with a genetically engineered meatball clone?

Being able to evaluate the information you read on the Web for credibility and usefulness not only serves you when you are looking for information. It helps when you are offering information to know how others are going to evaluate your credibility.

One source for probably more discussion than you can ever use on this is
http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~agsmith/evaln/evaln.htm - "Evaluation of Information Sources" - a link list compiled for librarians. It's part of the Information Quality WWW Virtual Library at
http://www.ciolek.com/WWWVL-InfoQuality.html

A simple and accessible guide is the book Web Wisdom: How to Evaluate and Create Information Quality on the Web by Jan Alexander and Marsha Ann Tate. The authors also have the entire contents of the book available on the Web at
http://www2.widener.edu/Wolfgram-Memorial-Library/webevaluation/webeval.htm

Points that the author's stress for all web pages are:

• Who wrote this and what are their credentials?
  When you are putting up your own website, remember to have an "About Me" page. You may not feel comfortable giving your real name and address to strangers, but you should give enough background to back up any claims to expertise that you make on your pages.
• What is the author's bias?
  No human being can be completely unbiased. But if an author is up front about what their affiliations are and what their mission is, you can adjust for bias in evaluating their arguments. On your own website, do you have a list of affiliations? Do you have a personal mission statement?
• Who is the sponsor of this site?
  If you are selling anything -- even as an Amazon associate or other affiliate program -- remember that your readers will take this into account in evaluating your credibility. One more reason for being cautious about affiliate programs!

My own favorite guidelines for evaluating information:

1. Look for the traditional reporter's "who, what, when, where." Real news will have verifiable details.
2. Track back to original sources. If someone tells you, "Almost all convicts are left handed" without listing the study this statistic came from, be suspicious.
3. Simple scientific method:
   • Does the idea offered explain the facts?
   • Is this idea necessary to explain the facts, or does an existing, simpler idea explain them just as well?
   • Is this idea contradicted by any known facts?
   • Is this idea useful in predicting future events, or the results of a particular action?
   • Test it yourself.
4. Cross-check. If someone comes into the Real Change reporting two dead bodies in Seward Park, we get on the phone to the police, the Fire Department, and the Medical Examiner's office. If I read in one popular-science book that Thomas Edison knowledgeably discussed nuclear physics and rocket engines with his cronies, I'm going to look it up in several other science histories. If it's true, it's been referred to more than once.
5. A source that has proved credible a number of times in the past will be easier to believe in the future. If a source proves false several times in a row I may start ignoring anything they say. BTW: I tend to credit more the people who use phrases like "In my observation" and "I believe" and "According to my experience" -- instead of "As all intelligent people know" and "The Truth Is" and "Dr. Laura said it; I believe it; that settles it."

You have to balance all these tests against each other. It is possible for one person to be right and all others be wrong. If you hear from three different sources that a shark jumped out of Elliott Bay and dragged a tourist off Pier 48, that doesn't constitute proof. It is possible, even likely, for someone to be right on many things and wrong on one, or wrong on many things and right on one. It is possible for a new discovery to overturn a great deal previously "known" to be scientifically tue. But playing these several tests against each other has stood me in good stead so far.

There is one final thing to watch out for, though. We're all most likely to believe what fits our current beliefs, and most likely to perceive evidence that supports it. I try to play Devil's Advocate in my head. While reading somethiong I agree with, I ask "What if this weren't so? What would prove that this isn't so?" and when reading something I disagree with, ask "What if this were so? How would I prove that it was true?"

Now, was that the most boring Xanga log you ever read?

Bullying Online, a resource website from Great Britain. I learned of this website from an article at WrittenByMe, I Am The Person You Bullied At School. The title is taken from a poem on the site.

Even after Columbine, after news specials on the high rates of teen suicides, although we have some official programs focusing on prevention of bullying most people don't seem to take it as a serious problem. When children and young people turn violent, most talk is about the influences of TV and video games. In the meantime, small children are learning that it's okay to beat each other up, no adult will stop them. If you deplore violence in the headlines, then take responsibility for stepping up and intervening when it's happening in your neighborhood.

I hope this website helps.

A couple of lesson reminders in my email today. (Sunday)

On one list, discussion New Social Movements, a member mused, "Maybe we put too much emphasis on accomplishing big things, big changes. Maybe we could get more people involved if we emphasized the importance of small actions."

Many aspects to that. As I mused in my recent poem, "Thoughts on My Mortality," we're remembered more fondly for little human things than for big earth-shaking ones. Plus, a small deed done outshines a great deed undone. And, never pass up a chance to do something just because you can't do it perfectly.

The point the email poster was focusing on was, few of us jumped from couch-potato to full-time social activist in one swell foop. My own journey was in real tiny steps. It began when I was deep in depression, staying in a homeless shelter. The third night I stayed there I began showing the first-timers where the blankets and mats were and how things worked. A week later I had come out of depression far enough that I couldn't stand being in a staffed shelter any more. Here in Seattle we have a network of self-managed shelters organized by a group of homeless and formerly homeless people helping each other, and I moved to one of those. I took on volunteer chores, and after a few weeks helped as Coordinator of the shelter. Then I began going to the all-shelter meetings, and doing volunteer efforts on a wider scope including going to speak at City Council meetings, or at neighborhood hearings on opening new shelters. Now I teach classes and manage websites and go to conferences and all sorts of stuff. (Oh, and I have housing and an income and all that self-care stuff too.) It just grew on me. The main effort was in not panicking when something new came up.

Another email had a different slant on "Greater love hath no man but that he lay down his life for another." The poster said that he didn't consider it all that big a deal to die for someone else; but to be willing to put aside what you are doing and give your attention fully to another, that is both difficult, and valuable.

And so now I say good night, to cuddle with my Sweetie and help him come up with an idea for his next column.

Anonymity on the Internet

Many people keep their identity masked on the Internet, and they are wise. In my case, many of the reasons I am out here on the Net -- to spread information and break down stereotypes about bipolar disorder and homelessness, to promote the creativity of my friends and encourage creativity in others, to network with people who are working on similar causes -- are better facilitated by my having a face and a name and a way to contact me, and by my being open about my current life and my history. I neither expect nor demand that of others. In most cases, having a thicker screen between you and the rest of the wildlife in the Net makes sense. This very very big Net catches some poisonous snakes and spiders and other creepy things.

I have seen some good results of anonymity on the Net. Here you have the opportunity to open up and talk about things you'd be embarrassed to discuss among people who see you every day, to explore new aspects of yourself among people who don't have you typecast already and who can't stereotype you by how you look because they can't see you, to stumble through trying to put something into words for the first time... has everyone had that moment when you were trying to put a thought or feeling into words, saw all the blank faces of your friends around you, and stuffed it? Did you just shrug it off, or did you feel sick, or did you turn red and want to curl into a ball and roll behind the couch?

There are lots of forums on the Net where you can keep talking until you get it out, and if you embarass yourself too much you can just move on to another forum.

But I've seen some negative consequences of anonymity too.

One of them is the Babble Reflex. If you come into the house, call out, and don't get an answer, what is your first reaction? Call out again, louder, right? If you are trying to explain something and your listener doesn't signal that he understands, don't you usually go on talking at more length? Now, why do you think so many people on the net, on Xanga logs for instance, go on and on and on... I think it's because they never get a signal that they've been heard. In Virtual, no one can see their reader's face.

Another negative consequence of anonymity is the Donner Party Syndrome. You get out in a wilderness with a bunch of strangers and no witnesses, and some people give into temptations that are kept in check by social pressure back in the City.

In the physical world, being spiteful and cruel usually has consequences. Depending on your social group, the consequences vary from being shot in the gut or having your head stove in, to not getting a promotion or being socially shunned.

In Virtual, nobody can come down the electron tunnels with an aluminum baseball bat no matter what you say. Some people use this to be more open about views on religion, politics and other controversial subjects than they would dare to be at the bridge club. Some use it to vent rage, despair, lust or other emotions in safe ways that don't harm their daily lives and relations. Some others use it to indulge rage, spite, envy, lust, cruelty etc. in harmful ways, damaging others, because they can without serious consequences to themselves.

There isn't much you can do about the people in the last category. In email lists and some discussion forums you can filter out their messages. They do the most damage on read-and-rate forums. I've seen it happen to others, and to myself.

Understanding what is happening takes the sting out of it for me, usually. I've also tried to get as much fun out of such occurrences as I can by doing something I call "playing with the amoeba." I probably shoudn't do it -- I get the term from a comment one list-admin made to my sweetheart when he was persistently poking fun at a Troll, "Please, Wes, don't play with the amoeba!" But if I have to put up with something, I want to get some use out of it.

I manage several lists myself, and I unashamedly censor such behavior. An honest exchange of differing opinions, even when it gets heated, is one thing. Sniping from the cover of Virtual is another.

I don't know how to wrap this up. I wrote it to get my thoughts out, because I'm being pestered on one of those read-and-rate forums (fragx.com) by one such person. I'm not the only one pestered, either. I want to boil down what I just wrote out into a 200-word entry for fragx.

Now, on a more positive front, I have to go get the StreetWrites troop ready for a performance at StreetLife gallery!

In spite of the date logged, it's still Thursday in Seattle. I didn't post an entry Wednesday; it was a full day, and I was tired when I got home.

WHEEL, a Seattle organization of homeless and formerly homeless women, holds a Women in Black vigil whenever a homeless person in Seattle dies alone outside. We've held eight vigils since January 2000, for a total of 11 people. Six of those have been homicides, none yet solved, and two suspected homicides, not yet determined, or solved.

Wednesday we held vigil for Kathleen Bowman, age 35, found dead on Friday August 10 under the bridge near 1st Avenue & South Michigan Street; a suspected homicide.

I'm glad we do this. I wish like hell we didn't have to.

I've written poems after our vigils before. This time I wrote about my own mortality.

I will not ask you not to cry
though most of you will know that I
have gone to Glory leaped into the light been embraced by Gaia
moved on to my next body next level next planet next lesson
or become a small red puppy.

Even when spirit still sings to spirit
when skin is parted from skin bodies must cry.

I will hope that my writing friends survive me
and strangers, reading their fine elegies
will think, "I wish I'd known her"
and feel a moment of regret.

It would be nice
if all my books went into reprint
the media published retrospectives of my life
and somebody famous wrote an unauthorized biography.

I would like to imagine my friends
marching on City Hall
shouting, "Her spirit is with us!"

I would like
my name on some small thing
a shelter perhaps
a scholarship
or an all-night coffeehouse with a library
where anyone can stay up all night and write.

That someone might say, "She made a difference."

But most of all
I hope someone remembers putting up tents in the rain
making snow-angels on Mount Rainier in July
watching all-night Dr. Who marathons and eating brownies
my holding your hand all night when you almost died
you sitting by my hospital bed when I didn't know you were there
speak fondly of how crotchety I got
or try to share jokes that only we two understood.

The only thing that kept me here so long
was the bond woven of moments and touches
over and over again
from one single heart to another.

Please God I be remembered
for many small things.

We fight revolutions so that one child can laugh
while blowing dandelions.