Twittering or Frittering?

Here is what is great about Twitter:

With the help of Firefox's Friendbar, a dull browser frame becomes a personalized crawl, a la CNN, but without the MWG (Missing White Girl) and Crisis of the Week news.

Follow comedians for truth; news reporters for laughs (and sometimes information); philosophers for exercise; curmudgeons for introspection; pundits for head-shaking wonderment; screenwriters for commentary; epidemiologists for thrills; computer geeks for fun; media smartypants for prognostication; and chefs for ideas.

What is not so great about Twitter is its potential for epic time suck. When people link to interesting, funny, informative pages, the swirling vortex of the Interwebs can take over and cocktail hour can become 10:30 p.m. in what seems like seconds.

For instance, Twitter led me to the Gallup Poll people's page on marriage, where I learned that what was once derisively called miscegenation has gone from anathema to no-big-deal in my lifetime and that people get divorced at a much higher rate than they accept divorce as a moral choice.

Clicking a Twitter link sent me to a group of women in Canada who hold potlucks to raise money for the education of Afghani women and girls and makes me want to hold such a party.

During the recent Swine Flu drama, I felt up to date even when conflicting information was flying around the mainstream news stations. It gives me confidence that any future epidemiological excitement will come my way in the same quick and efficient manner.

So, even the downside is hardly a tragedy.

Try it, you might like it.

Swine Flu Confirmed Here

According to the Boston Globe, swine flu has been confirmed in both Kennebec and York Counties. Also, I have it on good authority that WHO will raise the pandemic threat level to 5 on a 6 level scale at 3 p.m. EST.

A New Old Star

No, this is not another Tom Petty post, though I am always up for that. It has nothing to do with Maine that I know of, and is only news to those who care about the big picture. The biggest picture.

This is about a real star, actually the death of a really old star, the oldest star ever seen. By seen, of course, I mean felt or sensed by a NASA satellite. This object, according to Harvard astrophysicist Edo Berger, is 13 billion light years away and was born moments, astronomically speaking, after the Big Bang. The Big Bang is estimated to have occurred 13.7 billion years ago, so this star's death throes, gamma waves--like the rings 'round a pebble thrown into a still pond--have traveled through the majority of the known universe until rolling over a Gemini observatory last week.

From the SpaceRef.com article, Berger said, "I have been chasing gamma-ray bursts for a decade, trying to find such a spectacular event. We now have the first direct proof that the young universe was teeming with exploding stars and newly-born black holes only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang."

Gamma-ray bursts are the universe's most luminous explosions. Most occur when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel. As their cores collapse into a black hole or neutron star, gas jets, driven by processes not fully understood, punch through the star and blast into space. There, they strike gas previously shed by the star and heat it, which generates short- lived afterglows in other wavelengths.

So last week we saw some ancient afterglow. That's getting to be all some of us can count on.

[H/T to Stan who clued me in to the obvious difference between light years and years. D'oh!]

Local Swine Flu Brief

About half an hour ago, 1300 Sunday, the Department of Health and Human Services declared a Public Health Emergency in the U.S. and the Centers for Disease Control have recommended that schools think about closures. (Don't have a link for that yet.)

Maine is uniquely situated in that most of our students have been out of school for the last 10 days and are set to reconvene tomorrow. Many of these kids and/or family members have been out of state some returning within hours of coming back to school.

If Mainers were prudent, we would declare an additional three or four days off to shake out the incubation period and reduce the potential disease vectors.

When I checked with Lincoln County Emergency Management Director Tim Pellerin, whose cell phone number is on his voice mail, he had not heard anything from DHS or other emergency organizations. Knox County Director Ray Sisk apparently takes weekends off. Emergencies never happen on the weekend you know.

Update: Ray Sisk returned my call this afternoon around 4 p.m. and sounded thorougly organized. He is staying in contact with the State Epidemiologist Dora Mills, describing her as "a practical person," and seemed to have all the latest information. He said he had just gotten off the phone with the Five Town (Camden-Rockport) Superintendent Pat Hopkins and that he was available for anyone needing information.

What Is and Isn't an Open Mind?

Via Andrew Sullivan and Twitter.

Blogs for Crabby English Teachers

Again, I have made no time for actual writing. Nevertheless, my now constant Twitter feed put me onto the "Blog" of "Unnecessary Quotation" Marks. Have a look while I go searching for blogs of inaccurate antecedents, illogical conclusions, sentence fragments and vague generalites.

Drive By Blogging--PR and Social Networking

Please accept my apologies, Dear Reader, for the quick hit. Teaching has sucked the extra time out of my day. In case there is any doubt, this is a good thing, though our little blog has suffered.

Writer Kay Liss and I did a presentation on PR for Maine Media Women last weekend. Kay gave the nuts and bolts and I provided some links and bytes, defending the proposition that virtually all PR is moving to the web. Low and behold, in case any of the MMW writers are lurking, here is an article supporting my notion.

As soon as it is up, I will link to the Lincoln County News article about the presentation.

Not Worried About Global Warming?

Talking with Terri Gross today, James Balog, a geologist and National Geographic photographer, said within 30 years the Indian subcontinent could be largely out of water, thanks to the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers. That's a couple billion really thirsty people.


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Here's how he knows:



Yikes!

A Writer I Like Adds Fuel to the Mommy Wars < Sigh >

Hanna Rosin's work measuring American political and religious winds has interested me for years. Now she has written an article for the Atlantic wherein she all but says breastfeeding makes women insane, twice.

Of course she is smart and a good researcher so she makes an excellent argument for giving in to the pressures against breastfeeding. Trouble is she calls women who nurse their children crazy--well actually one time it is the La Leche League lady who says her group is a little crazy. In any case it makes me a little angry.

What surprised me is Rosin seems disinterested in reducing crazy-making barriers to breastfeeding--labor policies that make staying at home or pumping so challenging, family law with no "tender years" provisions in contested divorces--or calling out the bitchy, superior uber-lacto mammas for their ridiculous judgments, as opposed to the nursing itself.

Could we please get to the point where a nursing mother attracts less consternation than the average midriff baring, tramp-stamped teen, before we call an end to the campaign to make breastfeeding acceptable across U.S. social classes and settings.

Funny thing is when you get to the end of her article, Rosin, a nursing mom, acknowledges that nursing contact with a baby is unique and she will "probably miss it" when her baby is weaned.

Why I Teach: Part I

If you ever wonder why high school teachers suffer gladly the indignities doled out too often by adolescents, it is partly because we love our subjects and are evangelizing for learning, and partly because we know the adolescents will eventually grow up.

Here, from a former Lincoln Academy student, Donielle Wilson, now serving her second tour in Iraq, is an example of the latter. She responded in a facebook message after I asked her for an example of her day. Donielle, who most recently made her home in Thomaston and worked as a guard at the prison in Warren, is scheduled to be back in Maine in April.

Hmm… I presume you mean something a bit more descriptive so that you might be able to close your own eyes and envision yourself where I am. I’ll do my best to provide you with a sort of play by play of what my day looks like.

It’s 4:00 a.m. My alarm is going off but I am already awake. I am awake because for the last several months I have found it everything but easy to sleep. You might call me an insomniac. It might be the explosions that sound throughout the night, the helicopters that fly so low they shake the very bed I sleep in, I’ll leave that to your speculation. I’m tired but I’ve grown accustomed to this.

I wipe the sleep from eyes and inhale deeply. I smell dust from the storm yesterday, and through its thickness I smell coffee and it lifts me from my under my blankets. I pour myself a cup and drink it in silence as my two roommates lie sleeping. Before long and I am staring at the bottom of my mug. I relate to its emptiness.

I grab my hygiene bag and walk wearily to the bathroom. While brushing my teeth I look at my own face in the mirror. I am is hard to recognize. I see a change and wonder when exactly it occurred. The eyes looking back at me are not the same.

I walk back to my room. I put on the same uniform that I have worn every day for the past year. It is faded now and dirty. Every stain tells a story of its own, some I’d like to forget. I pull on my vest and all its contraptions. I clear my weapon and place it in the holster. My mission bag is heavy as I place it on my back, it weighs nearly as much as I do. My back is screaming for relief but I ignore it, there’s nothing I can do about it today. I take one last look in the mirror, a stranger’s face looks back as I fix my patrol cap.

I pass other soldiers on the way to my truck. It’s far too earlier for conversation and so we just nod at one another. Silent words are often understood better than those spoken. I load up my truck and head to the DFAC for chow and to grab a few things to snack on throughout the day. I return and attend my mission brief. I find out exactly what my task and purpose is for this particular day.

Then it’s time for the S-2 brief, all the current significant acts that have take place in the last 12 hours. The IED’s, suicide bombers, snipers, EFP’s, the soldiers that are no longer with us. It’s time to go now. I close my eyes and bow my head. Silently I pray. I ask God and my father to look after myself and my fellow soldiers today. That we may all come back safely.

We spend the next eight, ten, sometimes 14 hours out in sector. Anything can happen at any given moment. Some days it’s quiet and other days it’s almost too much to take. We fight demons other than the insurgents and terrorists themselves. We fight fatigue, stress, homesickness, frustration, anger, sadness and despair. We fight because no matter what happens we are soldiers. We have come this far. We have refused to quit. We have pushed our bodies further than we ever imagined possible, tested the power of our minds to the limit. We have experienced loss. That loss made us weak, but we are stronger now because of it. We have become a family and shall forever remain as such.

Lee, it is difficult for me to put into words the atrocities of this place. The weather as well as the enemy are temperamental. Each day is different and yet they seem to coagulate into a never ending story. I try not to focus on the amount of days that remain as it only makes it harder. Days here are long and yet the nights seems even longer. Those moments of supposed relaxation are almost as difficult. The times when your mind slows down and becomes idle. That is when you begin to process little by little everything you have seen, everything you have experienced and the people you have lost.

If there is anything I have learned, anything positive that I can take from this.. My message is: Life has been given to us. And as quickly as we attain it, it can be taken away, snuffed out like a candle, and the only thing that remains is the smoke. That smoke is what we leave behind. Do not focus on what you do not have in life, cherish the things you do have. Cherish the people in your life as they will not always be there. When you have a bad day and you feel like the ground is crumbling beneath your feet, remember that someone, somewhere has it far worse.

If you want to do something and you are able, do it. If it doesn’t work out the way you envisioned, at least you know. Do not spend your life wondering. Set aside the what ifs. Live for today because it is the only day that you know you have for sure. Forgive the wrong doings of others. We all make mistakes, but if we learn from them nothing is lost. Life is what we make it. We have been given life, let us not waste it for there are people no longer with us today that would give anything for a second chance.

I look forward to talking to you more when I get home. Tonight, much like every night, I am tired. I did not check for grammatical errors but I’m sure you will note them J Please keep in touch. You are as much of an influence in my life now as you were in high school and I value our friendship. Love,

~D.
xo