According to the “Huffington Post,” WordPress has sustained a “massive hack attack” or as my friend Jane over at PlaneJaner’s Journey reminded me–
“Ghost in the machine!”
This is an article you need to read!
Tag Archives: WordPress
Text, Texture, and the Nature of Memory
I’ve been thinking a lot about memory this week. How we remember. What we remember. Why we remember some things but not others.
And in process, I remembered a poem I wrote some time back about my own expereince of memory, especially my experiencing the past as text.
In it, I allude to Anna Ahkmatova, the celebrated Russian poet who was so highly censored under Stalin , she resorted to writing her poems on cigarette paper, memorizing them with a friend (friend’s memory as carbon copy), and smoking the evidence of her crime against the Soviet State.
Here, I also allude to the texture of memory and the texture of texts themselves. It’s interesting to me that in English the word “text” is inherent in our word for “texture”–a sematic given.
Censorship
The past comes
back in bits
colorless as glass
ground almost to dust
so that any sense of shape
seems irretrievable
The taste of it lingers
in my mouth like
something burnt
marshmallow
toast
skin
Dream of Ahkmatova
stanzas scratched out
on cigarette paper
during Leningrad winters
memorized by a friend
burnt in ashtrays
saying what we don’t
(hear)
only know
like skin
(Something to be touched)
Text (ure)
is everything
(The formatting of the poem is not correct, but I could not get WordPress to recreate my Word document without changes in spacing. I finally decided to pass the poem along regardlesss, hoping its message would speak to you despite the irregularities.)
Verizon Wireless is the Devil
(And I’m not even exaggerating.)
This story is about the heartless and dishonest action taken by a company that claims to not only be “America’s largest and most reliable wireless network,” but also the one “more people trust.”
Clearly, America’s trust is ill-founded. And I am about to show you why.
My partner Sara and I live in Haiti, where Sara directs the recovery operation for one of the world’s largest and most well-known international aid organizations. I live in Port-au-Prince with her and blog about Haiti’s need for more relief, more aid, more care, more prayer. Sara does the work. I spread the word.
On the weekend of February 4th, Sara and I were in Miami for a long weekend away from the stress and strife, the grit and grime that is Port-au-Prince. But before hitting the beach and soaking up the sun, we wanted to upgrade our phones and renew our Verizon Wireless contract.
Up until that Friday I had an unlimited international data plan for my mobile phone—something that was essential to my functioning in Haiti, where access to both electricity and wireless is limited. I needed to upgrade my phone because I blog and the WordPress software I need was not available on the model of Blackberry I owned. Sara also needed an equipment upgrade, since her BlackBerry had stopped working several months before.
Frustrated that our access to electricity in Haiti had not improved even a year after the earthquake, we stopped at a North Miami Verizon Wireless store on our way in from the airport. We were eager; we were enthusiastic as we burst through the door and were greeted by a Verizon employee with, “Would you like to buy a Droid today?”
“No,” I sighed. “Really, I’d prefer another Blackberry, perhaps the Storm.”
The Verizon representative was willing to show me the Blackberry but eager to point out how difficult it was to type from the touch screen. He suggested I try. I did. Indeed, it was difficult.
“Really,” he offered. “The Droid 2 keyboard is more user-friendly and easier to operate.”
To make a long story short—
I tried the Droid. I love the Droid. Sara tried it. She loved it. We were sold.
We were in the store for close to two hours. We explained our circumstances to our now friend from Jamaica, who understood our frustration, as he too had grown up on a Caribbean island. We discussed my need to blog from my phone. He even loaded the WordPress software for me and moved the icon to my home page for easy access.
He empathized. He insisted the Droid was truly the answer to our data needs in Haiti. He referred to the unlimited access to email and internet we would enjoy. Things would be better.
Two hours later we left the North Miami Verizon Wireless store 2 Droids richer and $600 poorer—
Since, when we got back to Haiti the following Monday evening, we discovered we had no unlimited international data package. The phones were useless to us. We spent $600 and, in doing so, lost the very feature that made the phones useful to us, in fact, essential to us.
We had been duped.
So the first thing Tuesday morning, I called Verizon to have the problem resolved. I spoke with a “customer service” representative. I spoke with 2 managers.
Finally, manager Lenora empathized with our situation and agreed to submit a claim to the “Inactive Pricing Committee. “
Now, 7 expensive phone calls to US “Customer Service” later (Verizon refuses to remove the roaming charges associated with those calls), I learned this morning that Verizon has denied our claim, because we bought Droids and the unlimited data package had only been available on Blackberries.
If only we would return our phones to the nearest Verizon store and trade them for Blackberries then the committee MIGHT be able to reconsider our claim.
Maybe the “customer service” representative offered we could mail our phones back to the US.
Yeah, right—mail 2 VERY expensive phones from a country that doesn’t have a national mail service.
Yeah, right—mail them safely from a country where we can’t even trust our own gardener not to steal our tools—not because he’s a dishonest thief, but because he is that desperate to feed his family and might be able to trade the hammer on the street for a handful of rice, a cup of beans.
We won’t be using these phones for economic gain. Really, I‘d be a lot more comfortable blogging from the US, and Sara would be more relaxed if she weren’t trying to house the 1.3 million homeless Haitians living in Port-au-Prince.
We don’t make nearly enough money to pay the $70 per month for the 7 GB of data per phone that won’t come close to meeting our needs.
International aid work doesn’t pay well. Blogging about Haiti pays nothing.
Bottom line—
Verizon refuses to restore the unlimited international data plan we had until February 4th, when a Verizon representative dishonestly persuaded us to buy Droids rather than the Blackberries our unlimited access to data depended on.
Verizon has essentially crippled us in our ability to function in Haiti.
Verizon may be the wireless company most Americans trust, but God forbid, the Haitian people place a similar trust in corporate America’s willingness to meet their needs.
Verizon insists there’s really nothing more they can do.
Verizon Wireless is the devil!
(If you are willing, please pass along this story of corporate greed at the expense of the planet’s poor. Please help me hold Verizon accountable.)
Confessions of a Desperate, Writing Neurotic
Sara (my partner) has been saying for weeks that I should blog about this—this being what I wrote last summer about my struggle to write.
“I swear, it’s funny as hell,” she says.
Repeatedly—
So I gave in this morning, agreeing, maybe it is funny—
Or pathetic—
You decide.
But first a bit a background— how it all got started.
Just after the Christmas holiday, Sara returned to Haiti ahead of me. And because of this, over the New Year’s weekend, she was doing what Sara does to relax. What she calls “piddling,” what I would more accurately describe as “recreational organizing.” This can come in many forms: straightening closets—obsessively earnestly rearranging items according to color, all clothes on wooden hangers only—ordering and reordering items in the refrigerator—neurotically enthusiastically arranging jars and bottles in tidy rows, like-items soldiered together according to kind rather than rank.
(a subject for another post, perhaps?)
At any rate, you get the picture—
Over this particular weekend, however, Sara extended her reign of organizing terror to the contents of my drawers, my closets, cabinets, shelves.
Now I have mixed feelings about this.
Sometimes I don’t want my stuff touched—because in her cleaning frenzy, Sara is inclined, at times, to throw things away, pieces of paper she thinks useless but which are, in fact, important to me. On the other hand, Sara is extremely good at organizing, really good, as you might expect from someone who behaves this way for sport. So sometimes I agree to let her “piddle” with my precious possessions, but only if I can extract from her, my “everything-is garbage-gal,” the promise that nothing, absolutely nothing—not even the most seemingly senseless scrap or decades old sales receipt— will be discarded.
On this weekend in question, I extracted such a promise, and Sara came upon such a scrap—something I had scribbled on index cards—the contents of which she says I should blog about here.
But—before I lay my naked and neurotic writerly self out to me mocked and laughed at—I offer a disclaimer, of sorts—
Namely—that real writers, good writers, famous writers do indeed write about the kind of stuff I describe below. I’m thinking specifically about Natalie Goldberg, who in her book Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, outlines the basics of writing as spiritual practice and in Chapter 1, “Beginner’s Mind, Pen and Paper,” addresses the writers struggle to find the perfect pen, the even more perfect paper.
(And remember, as well, that this was NEVER meant to be read by anyone but me—so it’s bad, it’s raw, it’s, well, neurotic.)
So, without further adieu here’s what I wrote on 13 June 2010, what I scribbled in pink ink on unlined index cards:
When I have tried to journal recently I’m always bothered by the notebook I’m writing in—I know that sounds crazy—and surely it’s a mere excuse—but I truly believe I should be keeping my entries in another format—
Perhaps, typing them on my computer—if the paper is lined, perhaps, it should be unlined—if it’s plain—perhaps, it should be graph paper. If I write in blue ink, probably, it should have been black or green or gray—any other color than the one I’m using.
So here I’m writing on an index card—knowing that it too will feel wrong—and using pink ink—equally incorrect, I’m sure.
Most everything about writing feels wrong—doing it—not doing it—doing it in the morning, in the evening, in the afternoon—equally problematic.
Now, these index cards feel too small—not enough space—I feel confined—God knows I’ve got it wrong again!
But I try to tell myself it doesn’t matter. It’s better to get it wrong than not to have gotten it at all.
There you’ve GOT her folks—Kathy, the “Writing Neurotic,” evidence that she does indeed exist.
So laugh if you will. Mock if you must.
But, where in the name of God’s good implements of ink, does Writing Neurotic come from? Does she live in other writers? Does she roam from writer’s body to writer’s body, circling the globe, imparting authorial insecurities across the entire planet? Or does she only live in little old me?
Tell me—
Have you ever been possessed by Writing Neurotic? Has she come to your country, your city, house and street, forced herself uninvited into your office, taken over your desk, borrowed into to the deepest and most secret corners of your scribbling-obsessed self?
If she has, I want to know. I want to join forces with others who’ve been haunted—track her down—bury her once and for all, far from WordPress and Freshly Pressed—ban her forever from the Blogosphere!
Please note: I scheduled this piece to post yesterday before news broke that former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier had returned unexpectedly to Port-au-Prince.
To see an article from Yahoo News about this potentially ominous development, click here. To see the piece I posted as soon as we got the call that Duvalier was at the airport, click here. To read an article from CNN click here. ( Thanks to Mrs. H. over at “A. Hab.’s View of the World” for the CNN link.) And finally, to see a helpful piece from MSNBC.com, click here.
I will try to keep you updated as the story develops.
Blogging Buddies mean Blogging Bliss
Surprise!
Surprise!
Surprise!
Sorry to sound like a bad echo of Gomer Pyle, but gosh, darn—comments to yesterday’s post, a news update about Haiti, did indeed surprise me.
So today’s post poses some questions I’d most like my readers to answer—please—I’m down on blogging hands and knees begging for feedback!
First a bit of background—some random notes on how my thinking about blogs is evolving, thoughts that I think will put my questions in context.
(Please know I’m new at this whole blogging thing—so if you’ve been around the blogosphere for ages and all of this to you is old hat—then this post probably isn’t for you. But, I’m a relative newbie, so bear with me.)
Yes, in 2009 I started a blog meant to follow the adventure we began when Sara returned to international disaster response work and I stopped teaching, followed her into the field, attempting to tell our story. However, that material (archived on this site) was only read by friends and family. I did nothing to attract outside readers—rarely more than 10 people read each post. If we don’t count that—I’ve been doing this for a mere 2 months, so please forgive my naïve enthusiasm, my gawking and gaping—a country girl on her first trip to the big city of blogging.
But truly, what amazes me most about blogging is the sense of community I feel. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but surely not all bloggers experience the kind of connectedness I feel with those who read my blog and with those whose blogs I read. If so, WordPress wouldn’t be setting up a blogging buddy-system of sorts—because no one would need it—everyone would already be connected and buddied and belonging.
(I sometimes wonder if I was just lucky enough to stumble into the right group. Cause I’m new and I feel fully embraced. Several bloggers have emailed me over the last month or so—offering unsolicited words of caring, kindness, and down-home neighborliness. I’ve been welcome-wagoned into blogging bliss.)
However, the following questions have come out of this evolving awareness of community and reader involvement in the blogging process. I pose them to you whether you’re a regular reader here or just stopping by for the first time:
First, I wonder what among the issues I’ve raised, the many topics I’ve explored (a truly eclectic range) would you like to know more about?
I’ve shared some of my art, some of my poetry, some of my personal history, some about the evolution of my relationship with Sara, some about Sara’s work, a bit about my work in India, some thoughts about writing. But what interests you the most? And do you have any specific questions I might be able to answer in a post or a series of posts?
I realized for the first time from some of your comments yesterday, that the media in the US and other countries is likely not covering Haiti adequately, that you are not getting the news that you need, the news you deserve, the news Haiti needs you to hear.
What else do you need to know, or what else would you simply like to know? What kinds of posts would like to see more frequently?
Please know how much I appreciate your taking the time to read my blog. I’d just like to know how I can even better serve your reading needs.
In the meantime, I hope you’ll continue to surprise me with your comments, your questions, your care and concern for a country in crisis.
Please Post for Haiti: Pressing Port-au-Prince
As many of you know, tomorrow is the one year anniversary of the Haiti earthquake and accordingly huge numbers of media and NGO big wigs are here in Port-au-Prince to commemorate the event. The streets, still strewn with 95% of the original earthquake rubble, are more crowded and crazy than ever, which is saying a lot for a city whose roads boast potholes the size of swimming pools and mounds of debris that dwarf the SUVs that try to travel them.
So, I’m back in this city I love, hoping to participate in some small way—hoping to commemorate along with many others, both here and around the world, a catastrophe that shook this nation to its historic core, killing nearly a quarter million and leaving, still today, more than a million homeless in Port-au-Prince, entire families living in tents and under tarps that remap the landscape, blanketing the city in a patchwork of sadness and resignation–the hillsides and former parks of Port-au-Prince quilted in the aftermath of tragedy.
Tomorrow the American Refugee Committee is organizing an event called “Bells for Haiti”—asking churches, schools, and city halls across America to ring their bells for 35 seconds, beginning at 4:53 pm EST—the time it took the earthquake to topple Port-au-Prince one year ago.
Likewise, I’m asking those of us at WordPress to somehow remember the Haitian people in our blogs tomorrow.
Please post for Haiti on January 12th.
I don’t know how. I can’t tell you what to say, since I myself fell muted by the enormity of what we face here. I’ll post my part, but it won’t be enough. My voice isn’t loud enough.
But I know the blogosphere can raise a collect cry against the pain and suffering that still cripples Port-au-Prince, still haunts all of Haiti.
So, please press your words for Haiti tomorrow.
Post! Pray! Remember!
(And if you’re willing, please re-post this request to your own blog to help spread the word.)
A Frenzy of Freshly Pressed
I had a less-than-cool response to being Freshly Pressed.
I may have over-reacted. I may have caused a scene.
For those of you who don’t know, for those of you who are just now tuning in, I blog from Haiti, where not a lot of positive things have been happening lately, what with the January 12th earthquake, Hurricane Tomas, cholera, and now the close-to-coup political uncertainty.
To distract myself from this atmosphere of never knowing what’s next, I began blogging again after a year away from posts and comments—from Search Engine Optimization and RSS feeds.
I poured indecent amounts of energy into my renewed foray into the blogosphere. I was a down-right bloggerly drudge when it came to reading and commenting on the blogs of others.
I wrote and posted—
Wrote and posted—
Commenting maniacally in between.
For three whole weeks—
Until Tuesday—
When I did my daily duty of checking Freshly Pressed, posted most mornings by 11 Eastern Standard Time.
I had developed a near religious devotion to this posting of posts, ten blogs featured each weekday on WordPress.com. I knew my duties as a devotee, arriving with the requisite ritual beverages (coffee and Coke Zero, of course). I knelt at the altar of blogging greatness— and clicked.
Strangely—the list of featured posts included one that had not only stolen the name of my blog, but the name of my post, as well.
This was a desecration.
A cardinal sin against the goodness that is Freshly Pressed!
Until it hit me.
Oh, may the gods of blogging forever bless the shrine of Freshly Pressed—for, in the name of blog, indeed,
Heavenly choirs were singing as I twirled my Port-au-Prince kitchen dizzy—
Shrieking—
OMG—OMG
Twirling and shrieking—
Shrieking and twirling—a dervish of posting devotion.
And in this blogging frenzy, I did what any blogging diva worth her salt would do in such a moment.
I called my mother—
(Called my mother with the zeal of a six-year-old, just home from kindergarten, ready to show off her printing practice sheet, S’s marching capital and lower case across the page.)
“Mom, this is costing gobs of money, so I can only talk a minute, but I’ve been Freshly Pressed.”
“You’ve been what, Dear?”
“My blog. My blog has . . . “
(How should I explain it?)
“My blog has won a prize.”
“Well, that’s lovely, Dear.”
“What kind of prize?”
(I dare not mention “Freshly Pressed.” She’ll confuse that with French press or launch into a discussion of ironing!)
“It doesn’t matter, Mom, just a really cool prize. You should hurry and check your email. I sent you the link.”
“You sent me what, Dear?”
“The link. The blue LINK!”
“Oh, the BLUE ink, yes, I know, Dear.”
“But wait, let me write that down. I don’t want to forget—BLUE ink?”
(To better appreciate my mother’s memory issues see a post called “Airing Family Secrets via Haute Couture.”)
“Just go check your email, Mom.”
You know how the story ends—
Not with my mother delightfully 72, trying to figure out this world that was once Smith Corona and is now Google, Facebook, Twitter.
Rather with me—dizzy in my kitchen—reeling with the down-right, unabashed, writing-posting-commenting joy of it all—
The joy of FRESHLY PRESSED!
Yippee!
Kathryn M. McCullough 