Metacentricities

As you probably recall, I recently moved this blog from Typepad to Wordpress. It was an easy process, and one that was well worth it. But, of course, spammers of all stripes (email spammers, comment spammers, weblog spammers) are like mold growing on a piece of bread that’s been out for a few days. In order to avoid having to cough up $150 for another year, and to move to an entirely free and open source platform that I control, I cancelled my typepad account. And, I guess, people watch typepad, pay attention to page rank and google, because this is what showed up on the typepad url only days after I canceled my account:

What’s amazing to me, actually, is how dumb they are. Why they think readers of my blog would be interested in firearms, I’m not exactly sure. At first, I thought it might be Six Apart trying to goad me to re-sign up my account, but I decided that’s probably something they don’t have time for.

And the very very sad part is that if you google me, this is now the top link. I have NO idea how that would happen, since my name is nowhere in the page (or even in the cached version they have, which is also post-cancellation.

I’m imagining it will fall off at some point, but I think I’m going to have to start doing something about it. If you have a link on your blogroll to my blog, please check to make sure it is http://www.metacentricities.com!! Thanks!!

So, here’s the lesson. If you’re thinking about starting a blog, and you’re debating between self-hosting and a commercial service, self-host, because even if you do domain mapping with the commercial service (which I did for a year) it doesn’t matter, in the end, you don’t have control.

I just finished Harry Potter: The Deathly Hallows. I won’t post any spoilers here. It was a good book, a fun and engaging read, full of the standard JK Rowling mysteries and puzzles and twists and turns. But it was, in the end incredibly predictable. Which is OK, I guess. But I haven’t understood all of the hype around it, and the spoiler warnings, etc. The ending is rather predictable, as most fantasy stories are.

If you want to borrow my copy, it’s available.

I know, it seems like just a few weeks ago that we were unpacking the relocubes, dealing with snow, moving bookshelves and furniture, putting up pictures and all of that stuff. It was actually 5 months ago, but that time has flown.

We decided, for a variety of reasons, to move again. We’re moving to Shelburne Falls - a sweet little town on the other side of the river. It’s a very  nice place, and our house is going to be in short walking distance to town. It’s got a great studio/workshop space that we’ll be using (more on those upcoming plans soon.) It’s very different than this house, in layout, and in setting, but it feels very right, and what we’re really looking for.

Interestingly enough, it’s owned by our Chi-Gung teacher Zayne, and his wife Moriah, who have been running the School of the Golden Discs there. So the house has interesting history and energy. They’ve decided to move the school to Colrain. It also seems like the graces are in our favor - we found a probable buyer of our house before it was even listed! There may be a bit of rearranging things timewise - they want to move in before we are probably able to move into the new house, but we have faith that it will all work out.

It will be nice to live somewhere that isn’t a 20+ minute drive to everything - where most things we need (except the occasional major grocery shopping trip, etc.) is in walking distance. Oh, and did I mention, real broadband, instead of the sorry excuse for broadband that is satellite internet? And our cell phones will work, too.

This July 4th it seems that the way people are responding to the Bush presidency is to refer back to the Declaration of Independence. And, if you read it, thinking instead of our “king” George, instead of the old King George, it is actually rather striking. First Draft has done the work for us - by linking to news stories that connect to the things he’s done.

Keith Olbermann has a wonderful special commentary about the commutation of the sentence of Scooter Libby.

I hate to think about what’s next. Especially since it seems that the new Democratic congress doesn’t seem to really be flexing its muscle.

Being at the US Social Forum has been giving me lots of food for thought. It’s not as much because of the content of the workshops, but because of what identities I have brought with me to the different sessions. In the one I gave, my identity was as an free and open source software advocate. In the panel I was on, I was a progressive faith blogger (and secondarily, a techie with blogging technology expertise.) At another workshop I attended I was mostly just myself, with a little bit of the faith blogger. At yet another workshop, I was a member of a nonprofit organization that needed to think about fundraising.

All of which has made me think a lot about the journeys I’ve been taking over the last few months, and where those journeys might be leading. It also made me think more about what I wanted to write about here, and what I wanted this blog to be.

I was inspired by the workshop done by the Network of Spiritual Progressives. Their perspective - that the huge social change that is necessary to steer us as a species away from the course we are now on requires spiritual awakening - is one that I have basically agreed with for quite a while. And it’s made me think about what my perspectives on social change really are. That’s another journey - my activist journey, from anti-nuclear activist in the 80s through the different movements I was a part of (gay rights, AIDS, pro-choice, prison issues, anti-war, etc.)

One of the memes of the progressive Christian community is the notion of “living the questions” - that the most important questions of our lives don’t have easy answers, and the only way we actually can answer them is by living them. I think that’s part of what I want to think and talk more about - how do I live the question of what that spiritual awakening underneath social and political change would look like? How would I manifest that in my own life?