A welcome message indeed!
At any rate, this good Mister Cone was talking to a good mister David Hoggard, and it occurred in their joint mind, that Buberian I-thouness that transcends time and space, to, maybe, create a happening, yes, and one centered around blogging, and bloggers, as they had suddenly become the stewards into whose hands the fate of the world had been entrusted...strange though it may seem at first.
And sure as eggs is eggs, their vision became reality, and their reality drew crafty and deipnosophical blogsmiths from throughout the land...which of course ends at Virginia, South Carolina and Tennessee. Some carpooled from our beloved capital, Raleigh, wherefrom my own grandparents hailed. Others came from that great center of culture, and home to America's first public university, Chapel Hill. And yet others came from lowly Charlotte, home of NASCAR and ketchup consumption*.
Most, however, came from their beloved Greensboro...named for collard greens, since everyone there ate them with great relish and sound. Well, let me amend that to read, "pretty good relish". I never really understood why it should be cooked with pork parts. Probly goes back to Isaac or sump'm. Hell, ask them! I'm from Charlotte! We got Wendy's!
And speaking of "got Wendy's", I got wind the other day that the mighty Piedmont Bloggers were taking their show on tour, and that they were, in essence, a new model for society, partly based on the knowledge gained at Black Mountain College, but coupled with all that the Internet can bring to bear upon the issues confronting bipeds in Bushworld.
There is even talk of a radio and television network, along with movies, broadway shows, the Beijing Opera, Dai Rakuda Kan, Live from the Roof of the White House, and other marvelous venues, but need we have anything to do with them? No. So why do I bring them up?
Now, you know that if I tell you, I will also have to sell you an automobile. Oh you do! Good!
Well, I will tell you why I bring it up, but not until the fifthteenth chapter, by which time you will have completely lost interest, and the fact that I write it in Hittite makes it all the less likely that you'll find out that, indeed, I have forgotten why I brought this up. Product-placement, maybe. Or maybe the Armagnac. These things are yet to be discovered.
So yes, Piedmont Bloggers. Who were they again, Margie? Oh yeah. Archons of the Blogosphere. Big phucking deal. Bet ya caint say that on ABCNNBCBS!
No, Jethro. I cannot. And I'd rather YOU didn't either. Besides, I haven't told the good folks who have had the karma (I shant make value judgements!) to be reading these words of wisdom, that Collardboro, rather greensboro, (oops! should I capitalize upon the moment?) is the erstwhither home of one William Sydney Porter, if my memory joins me, or better known as the candybar, Oh Henry! ... and where a lot of people spilt blood during the Revolutionary War.
Now some time in between the two, this Porter feller goes and changes his name to "O. Henry" of all thangs, and proceeds to write some of the most clever and beloved stories in America's history. And he was from this great city where the initial meeting of the great Piedmont Bloggers held their meeting of the minds. And just look around at the results!
Heaven on Earth. And you thought it couldn't be done. Not in your lifetime. Not in your lazy, couch-potato, good-for-nothing lifetime. But there it is! And you cannot doubt your eyes. Or your president. Not since the Ashcroft Dictates were handed down.
"Ah! 'The New Dictation!'. Haven't had time to absorb that one, yet, Sahib."
So why bring it up? Again. Chapter 15.
CHAPTER 2
And then it happened...
It was a warm Saturday August morning in Greensboro, North Carolina, and the sun was shining. Shiny, happy people gathered in an art museum and began sharing ideas, bagels and coffee.
Greeting each Piedmont Blogger as they entered the Sanctum Sanctorum, was Mister Cone, himself, looking much more awake than I felt, and a good deal younger and more sprightly than in his online portrait. David Duchovny with a beard, maybe. At any rate, he made everyone feel welcome, thus facilitating further introductions and conversations that seemed to not want to end...so it was eventually carried down the street and into a Thai restaurant on the groovy Tate Street...on which the author once lived lo those many years ago, and also where the blog conference was held. Do I hear the Twilight Zone theme?
No. It was actually Pictures of Matchstick Men. Very similar though!
And so it was that the brave Piedmond Bloggers forced their way into the mind of Anonymoses.
Chapter 3
So who were these other characters? You've only mentioned a few names. What are you, stupid?
To answer that question, I have devised a series of self-guided self-observational meditations, based on the poetry of Rumi and Spacius, only translated into Cobol, then back into Tocharian B, then transliterated into math symbols read by Steven Hawking. Well, not really, but I could! Instead, I turned to resident blogger-poet, Billy Jones, who was the master of virtual ceremonies. His skill set includes the ability to expand the size of a blog ten thousand fold. And he does it with his hands. Quite remarkable really, when you consider that in just one day, his productivity was 600,000%. And this is why he is not a lackbeard.
Chapter 4
Legend has it that Matt Gross had come down from blogger heaven to add gravitas, wit and guidance to the celebration, and I, for one, want to corroborate that would-be urban legend. And he was not only there, he was trustworthy, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, cheerful, brave, and clean.
Matt was the man who is largely responsible for Howard Dean's meteoric rise early on, when no one thought he had a chance in Hell. And now he is helping to shape Erskine Bowles' campaign into a winning campaign. Matt has had a bright past, and is sure to have an even brighter future. I guarantee it.
Also adding gravitas to what was quickformed in weeks, and not in exotic Palo Alto, where BloggerCon III was to transpire at the lovely Stanford campus, or in the ancient halls of Harvard, two places known for attracting blognoscenti and the bloggerati, but rather in a mid-sized city in North Carolina which, although relatively unknown, promises to not always be so --and I smell victory -- was the great legend, Jerry Whatsisname? Just kidding! The one and only Jerry Bledsoe, author of many a 5-star book, and delighter and instructor of Carolinians far and wide, with his journalistic contributions.
And adding not gravitas, but a sort of levitogravitas, or gravitolevity, although properly called jocoseriosity, was the inevitable AND inimitable Bradford von Krantzenstein, or Brad Krantz for Bermuda short. And Mister Krantz was not long before he dropped the proverbial stinkbomb by insinuating that writing is not of worth if it not sold. But Mister Krantz perhaps deliberately left out the fact that a gift when converted into a commodity renders the bearer of the gift susceptible to losing that gift. Or as Schopenhouer warned, "writing for money has spelled the death of literature." But of course, the risible Mister Krantz was being his rascal self, and, his nudging was fuel for the group to rachet it up a notch. So we thank him for doing what he does best...get people to thinking. This is why he is one of the Legends of which I report.
Chapter 5
Two legends that didn't make it, and may not have even known about the Conference, since they didn't get my email in time, are Charlotte talk show host, Mike Collins, and the lovely producer of the show, Wendy Braatz...both of whom I only just met today, the day after the Convention, because they had an Open House at the WFAE studios, which bring such great things to Charlotte as "Charlotte Talks" and NPR. I had the added pleasure of hearing Michael Reno Harrell, who was entertaining the guests, and who graced me with the great ballad, "The Nickle", about a girl from Syracuse who comes South.
Mister Edward Cone might like to know that Mister Collins is not unlike Mister Christopher Lydon, whose respectable work he is already familiar, since he was once a guest on his A-list rolodex watch. No wait. Something like that, or suckmycat, if you are from the deep south.
Anyway, I told Mike and Wendy that I was going to convince them to interview Mister Cone, if he would be so kind, and maybe Misters Gross or Hoggard, should their hands not already be full -- not assuming, mind, that Mister Cone's hands are idle. Of course they are not, so lay off! It's just that he was the host of the most recent conference (unconference), and has the added advantage of having been interviewed before. Not that the others haven't mind. Oh, never mind!
Chapter 6
Among the blognoscenti was the good and young man, Jay Ovittore, who had to bear my calling him Joe, but whose forebearance was a deep well indeed. One of the younger Legends, Joe said to Anonymoses during post-prandial chit-chit that he had no interest in selling his ideas, but rather wanted to give them freely. Will this limit his abilities? I don't think so. And neither did (referring back to a previous conversation) Mister Cone or Ms Sinreich, both of whom actual do sell some of their work, but, because of their magnanimity, are not in fear of losing it.
Such magnanimity should be the coin of the realm, especially in the world of politics...which too often corrupts into just another way for someone to boost their wealth or power. But, as Lin Yu Tang, from his perch created by having been the only Chinese Nobel Prize winner, tells us: People are largely motivated by fear. The desire for wealth is but a fear of poverty. The desire for power is but a fear of impotence. The desire for Fame is but a fear of obscurity. And the desire for "Success" is but a combination of the three other fears...and a fear of failure therewith.
But Piedmont Blogger-politicians are not like this. They are fearless bodhisattvas guided by love and caring. Among the fearless bodhisattvas were Sally Greene, Jeff Thigpen, Mike Barber, Kirk Perkins, and Don Vaughan. But, as Gerry Goulder of Guilford GOP News, who is also a mighty Piedmont Blogger, points out:
Republicans are losing on the Internet. I attended the Piedmont Bloggers Conference this weekend. I may have been the only Republican political blogger present. Many local Democrat politicians were present, and they introduced me to a plethora of Democrat blogger web sites...Blogs increase participation, build a community, extend beyond campaign season, and build a strong bond between office holders/candidates and the voting public.
To fix the problem, all that need be done is to shut down blogs and the internet. Either that, or open it up to all people, and encourage and facilitate its use. At least that's what my plumber tells me. And he has a master's degree. In Science.
Responding to Billy and others in Greensboro is PressThink reader Jude Nagurney Camwell, who also does a political blog for the Syracuse newspaper, where she's The Rational Liberal, and the nervy intelligence flows from her posts. This is from her personal blog, equally fine. Her observation tells us a lot about blogging and its strange sense of place. Remember, she's getting this from reading the blogs...
The people in Greensboro have such talent - and such heart! I wonder - is it something in the drinking water? Whatever it is, it makes you wish you were there.It makes you wish you were there. Which suggets a connection between blogging and longing. If you were "there" in August you might have been invited to their local blogging conference.
While perusing the forums at Sojourner, I was pleasantly surprised to see my old professor, Peter Gomes, who had written a post about the Iraq War...
'Patriotism is Not Enough' by Peter J. Gomes
[EXCERPTS]
POLLS SHOW that most Americans, frustrated, alas, by the ephemeral character of the "war on terrorism" and still angry and confused about Sept. 11, 2001, want to do something. As we know, however, in angry, vengeful moments, the desire to do "something" is easily translated into the will to do "anything," and that "anything" may very well be the wrong thing. Bombing Iraq into oblivion as payback to those who have done us injury at this moment seems to me to be the wrong thing to do. Polls do not get at the truth. Thirty-five years ago, most polls showed significant majorities in favor of whatever it was we were doing in Vietnam, and eventually the majority in favor concluded that the minority opposed were, in fact, right. Polls simply tell us where we are, not where we ought to be.
The gospel, however, does tell us where we ought to be, tough, untenable, and difficult as that place may be. Love, justice, and righteousness are superior to wisdom, might, and riches. How often do we have to be told that? "And these are God's words," says Paul at the end of Romans 12: "If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head." Don't allow yourself to be overpowered with evil: Take the offensive and overpower evil with good. That is what Paul is saying: Take the offensive: Overpower evil with good! Now that is a radical foreign policy. That would scare the bejesus out of a lot of people, to know that with all of our power we decided that we were going to overpower evil with good—and what a topsy-turvy world this would be! That should give all the hawks in Washington something to think about, that if they want us to be noticed, the world would notice us if we took seriously the idea of overpowering evil with good.
On December 8, 1980 John Lennon died, killed by the bullet of a madman. It was the year Ronald Reagan became President of the United States. Hard to say which event brought more grief...
With the election of Reagan, suddenly there was a whole new breed of hominid strutting about, cocks-of-the-walk, in alligator shirts, lime slacks, hingeheads. The square was back, the 50s were once again upon us. And the hip world went back underground.
I was living in a house on Friendly Avenue right next to the greenway with David Grogan and Chuck Newman, and dating Lucy of Charlotte. She was talking classes at the university, whereas I was only auditing classes. Buddhism, Ballet and the Electronics Music lab. I was also helping Bil (sic) Poole entertain dance classes by playing piano, and occasionally other instruments. I can think of worse jobs.
Greensboro was a hub of creative and intellectual activity, just as it is now, only now it is centered around the illustrious embarrassment of riches, in the form of bloggers. And a good number of the remarkables were students and teachers at UNC-Greensboro, formerly a women's college. The predominance of women in the University area provided the proverbial seedbed for creative activity, and, as in all times when the world turns upside-down and mediocrity is given its turn, the creatives and progressives find one another and pour their suffering into more creative outlets.
John Jones was arguably the best host for serious gatherings. There, he and his friend, Maria Robbins, would host parties for Grogan, Newman, Lucy, Dayna, Chance, Eric, Jonathan Franzel, Fred and Stan, John Pope, and a few other worthies. John would cook up a mahvelous meal in his wok, and allow us to dig through his wondrous library of books and music. John got me up to speed on Brian Eno's "Oblique Strategies cards" in a van trip to Atlanta to see Genesis at the Fox Theatre, and his music was along that line of European avant-garde eclecticism, although he did have Americans Steve Reich and Phillip Glass among his collection. Everyone had the great Nonesuch offerings. Bil Poole was also an audiophile, and yet his collection was more heavily leaning toward the jazz side of the ECM label, where one could find folks like Jan Garbarek, Eberhard Weber , Egberto Gismonti, and even George I. Gurdjieff, who really wasn't all that jazzy. Speaking of Gurdjieff, Eric (I forget his last name) was reading Gurdjieff's "Beelzebub" at my prodding, and even read it the requisite 3 times. We were all probably a little to young and inexperienced to get much out of it, but it was a moment. What can I say?
I sat in on Paul Courtwright's Buddhism class, who, one day, packed into cars and drove to Duke University where Edward Said was speaking on Orientalism, after which Paul treated us to dinner at an Indian restaurant, where he taught us the proper form. It was my chance to see the beautiful Duke University, or Mister Said, who sadly died last year. And sadly, some in our circle have since died, namely John Pope and Fred. May their memories live on...
At night, we could often be found on Tate Street, at Rosewaters, New York Pizza, or Aycock...where such great performances as the Beijing Opera would play. Tashi, a wondrous ensemble with Ida Kafavian, Peter Serkin, Fred Sherry and Richard Stoltzman, came that year, and I can still hear the final strains of Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" playing in my head. Local favorites were F-Art Ensemble and Glenn Phillips.
One of the fellers, and Lord help me with his name, started up a film class, which showed, among other things Bergman's "Persona", Renoir's "The Grand Illusion" and the avant-garde works of Stan VanDerBeek...who came and gave a talk.
While all this creative activity was going on, there were also seminars and discussions on the KKK-Communist "Greensboro Massacre", which has happened in Greensboro the previous year...strangely. Around the University one could hadly image even a fistfight. Rocky Horror, RocknRoll High School and the Life of Brian were more on the minds than violence.
It was a heady time. It was also the year that I found a big colorful oak tree on the campus, plopped down one fall day and read the whole of the Bhagavad-Gita. A day my life changed. Just like when Lennon died.
The morning John Lennon died, I was awakened to a decidedly 9/8 rhythm pattern, with which I immediately fell in love. Chuck was playing Dave Brubeck's "Blue Rondo a la Turk", and it was my first taste of 9/8. So my day started off with a musical theme. By nightfall music would have a very different role. It will die.
And so, as I painted the bare walls of my little room on Friendly Avenue, lost in reverie, smelling the curry onion eggs Grogan was cooking up, I heard the words come out over the radio..."John Lennon has been shot". And with news of his death, spontaneously, people gathered for a candlelight vigil at the University.
The Reagan era had begun. The Peacenik-in-chief had been silenced. No more giving peace a chance, it was a time for greed and mediocrity and John Wayne.
Within months I would pack my backs and move up to Cambridge, where a lot of other folks also found refuge from the brutal Godzilla.
Greensboro Today
Those days in Greensboro are still among my favorite, and I am so happy to once again connect to the city, through such creative souls as Ed Cone, David ("Get outta here!) Hoggard, Matt Gross and Billy the Blogging Poet, as well as the other great bloggers working there, including Ruby Sinreich, Dan Romuald, Jay Ovittore, Ross Myers, Tara Sue, and many other great folks.
I often wonder if any of the old gang of '80 and the bloggers of '04 know one another, as I know they would find kindred spirits. Or if any of the bloggers remember any of the events I have described. If so...please comment profusely!
Lastly, in today's Charlotte Observer, I wrote a graf on Greensboro and the blogosphere, which went like this:
View from blogosphere: Charlotte behind curve
Blogs are the cutting edge of democracy, giving everyone with access to a computer the ability to publish, free of charge and without space restrictions. "Blog" was also the most popular new word this year and is now to be found in major dictionaries.Greensboro and the Triangle seem to have a better grasp of blogging's importance than we do in Charlotte -- hosting conferences and tying in with newspapers and universities.
The Observer might do well to team up with local bloggers in order to help empower the community with this important new skill. North Carolina has a strong presence in the blogosphere, but it can be made stronger still. The best way to predict the future is to create it.
-Dave Beckwith
Can You Taste The Tears?
This is not the heartbeat of the Earth.
This is not a pope.
THE STARK FIST OF REMOVAL
"It's even more relative than Einstein realized."
"Don't just eat a hamburger -- eat the HELL out of it."
I have simply got to meet Robert Anton Wilson. So Bob, if you're out there, pop on over!
Last night found me poring over one of the several books I have of his, namely "Coincidance", and flipped it open randomly, as his books are so pregnant with synchonicity triggers. I must have wakened the neighbors with my outbursts of laughter.
Well, thank God for the Internet! I have found the section from which I read, and I will excerpt a few passages...
The American Coffee Ceremony
The Javacrucians, a group which looks suspiciously like a parody of the Rosicrucians, has selected the less-controversial caffeine as its sacrament. It also has the simplest theology in history, teaching that one thing only is necessary for salvation, the American Coffee Ceremony -- a variation on the Japanese Tea Ceremony. This is performed at dawn, and you must face east, toward the rising sun, as you raise the cup to your lips. When you take the first sip, you must cry out with intense fervor, "GOD, I needed that!" If this is performed religiously every morning, Javacrucians say, you will face all life's challenges with a clear mind and a tranquil spirit.
SFMB -- the Society of Fred Mertz, Boddhisattva -- was founded by the Finnish-American poet, Antero Alli, and holds that all wisdom is contained in the seemingly inane remarks of Fred Mertz, a minor character of the "I Love Lucy" TV show. By watching "Lucy" reruns continually and meditating on the apparently banal things Fred says -- e.g., "I don't know what's going on around here" or "I don't understand women at all" -- this sect claims you will find the same Enlightenment as in contemplating Zen Buddhist koans such as "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" And just as in Zen, where students are often required to meditate on monosyllables such as "Mu" (no), the SFMB sect would have you meditate on such Mertziana as "Huh?" or "Awww!" until you sense what Joyce would call the epiphany in even the most trivial.
You Too Can Be A Pope
More serious, or at least more desperate, is the Discordian Society and/or Paratheo-Anametamystikhood of Eris Esoteric (POEE), an anarchistic sect divided deliberately into two opposed groups, each claiming to be (I quote) "the first True Religion." Like the witches, the Discordians worship a female divinity, but say She is crazy. Her name, in fact, is Eris, and the ancient Greeks knew her as the Goddess of Chaos; Discordians claim she is also the Goddess of Confusion, Discord, and Bureaucracy. The Discordian orthodoxy, headed by "Ho Chih Zen" (real name, Kerry Thornly), claims this was revealed by a miraculous talking chimpanzee, who appeared in a bowling alley in Yorba Linda, California, in 1957. The POEE sect flatly rejects this, says it is superstitious nonsense intended to attract the gullible, and proves the existence of Eris by Five Proofs, which are logical monstrosities and reduce actually to One Proof -- namely, "If Eris doesn't exist, who put all the Chaos in this universe, you damned atheist?"
Discordians have set out to out-Hensley Hensley by making every man, woman and child on the planet a Pope. They are doing this by mass-distribution of Pope cards and have not, of course, neglected to send one of these to the Anti-Pope in France and to the chap in the Vatican who still thinks he's the only Pope. All employees of the Pentagon are, willy-nilly, Discordian saints whether they want to be or not, since Malaclypse has canonized them and incorporated them into a holy order called "Knights Of The Five-Sided Castle," under the patronage of St. Quixote. The Pentagon itself is a religious shrine, said to embody the perfect balance of Chaos and Bureaucracy. Everybody who opposes Discordianism as blasphemous or absurd is an honorary saint too, of the House of the Rising Hodge, while Discordians are saints of the House of the Rising Podge.
Discordianism shuns dogma but has one catma, the Syadastan Affirmation, which reads, "All affirmations are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense." Discordians call this the Free Mantra -- unlike the Transcendental movement, they charge no fees -- and insist that if you repeat it 666 times you will achieve Spiritual Enlightenment, in some sense.
The Order of the Golden Calf had a brief career but now seems defunct. The members, who all lived in Berkeley, California, had a magnificent gold (or imitation gold) statue of a calf and carried it around to places where other sects were proselytizing on the streets. There they would do an Adoration of the Calf, distribute leaflets describing their idol as "the first victim of monotheistic bigotry," and urge everybody else to "lighten up your act a little."
The John Dillinger Died For You Society, run by a pseudonymous "Dr. Horace Naismith" (allegedly a Playboy editor by day and a maniac only by night), accepts as its savior John Dillinger, the gunman who robbed 23 banks and three police stations before he was shot dead by FBI agents in 1934. JDDFYS members place memorial wreaths and floral bouquets at the Biograph Theater, where Dillinger was gunned down, every year on the anniversary of his death, June 22. Their major spiritual teaching comes from Mr. Dillinger, whom they call St. John the Martyr, and consists of the words, "Lie down on the floor and keep calm."
Power! Sex! Success! Money!
I have saved the best -- or worst -- for last. The Church of the Sub-Genius in Dallas has borrowed a bit from all of the above, and from every other religion on the planet, uses high-powered advertising techniques in the style of the most aggressive Christian Evangelists, and promises in capitals to teach you the secret of POWER! and SEX! and SUCCESS! and MONEY! It will also put you in touch with SUPERHUMAN FORCES, save you from THE CONSPIRACY, and even show you how to achieve SLACK and literally get something for nothing. That is admittedly a tall order, but the founder, J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, is no ordinary mortal. In fact, it is far from clear whether anybody has actually ever seen "Bob" at all, at all, and Sub-Genius advertising darkly hints that before an ordinary human can survive a meeting with "Bob" it is necessary to go to Dobbstown, located somewhere in South America, and have special surgery to "open the third nostril." Even then, it is warned, you might come back from such a Close Encounter with inflamed eyes, headache, total or partial amnesia, and other stigmata of UFO contactees, and you will probably be harassed by agents of THE CONSPIRACY who will appear at your door pretending to be Jehovah's Witnesses and try to get inside to brainwash you.
...
I think I have found the Secret of Power. It is in one of the cheaper Sub-Genius publications More Quotes and Gloats from "Bob" and it reads, "You know how dumb the average guy is? Well, by definition, half of them are even dumber than that." Then again, it might be in other gems of Dobbsiana such as "Don't just eat a hamburger -- eat the HELL out of it," or "Fuck them if they can't take a joke," or maybe even the Dark Saying, "GOD spelled backwards is DOG, but BOB spelled backwards is still BOB."
...as "Bob" sums it up elsewhere, "Hell, it's even more relative than Einstein realized."
