Saturday, April 28, 2007

Kinetic Conveyances

Mark and I walked down to Pearl Street on this pure blue-sky Colorado day, and then over to 29th Street where the Kinetics Conveyance Parade was assembling. In this yearly May event, kinetically designed conveyances are displayed for all to see, prior to a race the following Saturday which starts on ground but includes a tricky run across Boulder Reservoir and its mud flats as well. Designing a vehicle that works well both on land and water, and is a sculpture, and is creative and interesting, is not easy.

There are many, many prizes, not just for winning the race but for all manner of distinctions, including awards for Sculpture, Engineering, Costumes, Team Style, and others with such names as “Don’t Quit Your Day Job,” “Murphy’s Law” and “Best Bribe” (to be blatant). Most participants dress up for the event, and thus we observed black and white Jersey cows with black sparking top hats doing the can-can next to a vehicle with a matching black and white tail, pirates in a vehicle shaped like a shark and sporting an eyepatch, glittery silver dragons with red spikes down their tales in a vehicle with a matching dragon tail, Irish green outfits with red wigs, and much more. The parade includes one pass by the grandstand for official judging, but then another pass by the stand again where bribes for the judges are expected: food, shooters, or whatever else comes to mind. To understand this and other Boulder events, it is helpful to have a reference, thus this pointer to the “Keep Boulder Weird” site for those who need or want to know more.

We spent a little quality time on the upper deck at 29th Street Mall on the veranda of the Purple Martini, sipping our drinks and observing the scene, with a truly extraordinary view of the Flatirons and the more distant snow-covered Continental Divide as a backdrop.

Friday, April 13, 2007

Must Blogs be “Civil”, and What is Civil?

Death threats on her "Creating Passionate Users" blog caused Kathy Sierra, a well-known local Boulderite who writes about computer user interfaces, to cancel her appearance at conference recently. I went and took a look – and what I found was indeed offensive, pointless, and scary. I can see why she was upset. (She has since moved the original post to a separate website but has a link to it for those who are still interested.)

A Computerworld article this week explored the question of whether blogs can be regulated for civility, or whether that would be considered censorship. Now Tim O’Reilly has proposed a draft blog code of conduct with the hope of somehow enforcing civility in the wild, wild Internet, complete with a badge you can affix to your blog indicating that you follow the code. There is another badge depicting a stick of dynamite if your blog is the kind where "anything goes."

One of the dissenting comments was “We don’t need no stinkin’ badges,” and another argued that there is no way to enforce civility.

Of course there is much debate on the proposed code. Some bloggers hate the idea of private conversations between bloggers to settle issues regarding offensive comments, for example, because it strikes at the heart and soul of blogging, an inherently public activity. Others argue that not allowing anonymity will eliminate many valuable comments. Many bloggers find the idea of a code of conduct offensive and believe that the spirit of the Internet and free speech are at stake.

Up until now I have moderated this blog (which so far has received a miniscule number of comments anyway), which means that no comment is posted until I’ve reviewed it. I don’t think I would delete a posting unless it could truly be considered malicious abuse or libel, though. For some bloggers, even that much censorship is unacceptable. One blogger, commenting on the code of conduct says, “I know offensive when I see it, and I’ll delete it.”

What do you think?

Sunday, April 8, 2007

Judy

I used to sing a lot. Folk songs. I would sit on the grass at Indiana University’s Dunn Meadow in Bloomington, Indiana and sing song after song with my guitar, usually with a pretty good audience.

I still sing, but mostly in my head. I still know most of the words to many, many songs, and they arise in my consciousness as a kind of running commentary on my life. Thus, as I walk up to the side door to enter my place of work on a Monday morning, I might have Janis Joplin’s tune going in my head:


Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?
My friends all have Porsches,
I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends.
Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?


Why that one? Who knows, it just seems right.

Two Sundays ago, at the suggestion of my daughter Cait, I got to see the incomparable Judy Collins in concert at the Paramount Theater in Denver.

I loved it. She had a piano player as backup but did several songs by herself, either with the guitar or playing the piano. Her voice is still clear, strong and beautiful.

She sang a few old-timey folk songs including “John Riley” – the one where the young woman has patiently waited seven years for her true love to come home, explaining to the stranger in the garden that she remains faithful, and he reveals that he is himself her long lost John Riley (happy ending, although the woman is far more patient than I think I would be in similar circumstances).

She sang several others that I love, including “Amazing Grace,” her bittersweet rendition of “Send in the Clowns,” and songs about Colorado including “Someday Soon.” She won applause by mentioning that her 91-year-old mother was in the audience, and told stories about her father Jack and growing up in Denver surrounded by musicians.

She sang Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” and told the story of how she had first heard the song--a friend (Graham Nash?) had called her at 3 a.m. from New York City insisting she listen to a singer he had discovered.

She spoke with great affection of the first time she met Leonard Cohen, how attractive he was, how grateful she was that she never fell in love with him as friends had. She told him he could not sing, but that she would be recording his songs the next morning. She stepped over to a special smaller sparking keyboard, and I thought for a minute she was going to sing “Famous Blue Raincoat,” but instead she sang one I of Leonard’s haven’t heard much but would like to learn: “A Thousand Kisses Deep”:

And sometimes when the night is slow,
The wretched and the meek,
We gather up our hearts and go
A thousand kisses deep.

She also sang an absolutely heart-breaking version of a song dedicated to her song Clark, who committed suicide in 1992 at age 33, called “Wings of Angels.” She has written a book about this called “Sanity and Grace: A Journal of Suicide, Survival and Strength.”

Wings of angels tears of saints
Prayers and promises won't bring you back
Come to me in dreams again
Wings of angels tears of saints
We also heard “City of New Orleans,” “Open The Door,” “Since You’ve Asked,” and many more. It was a great evening and I was glad Cait shared it with me.

Inspired, I played my guitar with Mark the other night and sang again for several hours, one of my trustiest songbooks (“Rise Up Singing”) open before me. It felt really good but my fingers are sore. They’ll toughen up if I keep it up.