So I had had a bit of wine

I was watching TiVo, waiting for Sam to come home (if I were a worthy soul I would hyperlink the TiVo and mention that it was the new Drew Carey improv show, with the dogs next to me and the pleasant surprise that it was not drek)

So I was watching TiVo, and I heard a sound that could have been the dishwasher having a problem, or the heating system having a problem, or the stove exhaust system with a hairball, or something much more interesting at the neighbors (such a thin partition away). I followed the sound waves, aware as always that I am getting older, that my ears never bring me to any concrete conclusions about the tree that houses the bird, the direction of the siren, the location of the recently shocking BANG!

I opened the back door, and the sound was the suddenly insistent rain, ringing on the cast iron spiral staircase and the braind new copper waterspout installed by the crazy neighbors who have a gift for the extraordinary and irrelevant. And you could stand there, in the rain that made it necessary to work the bees on Sunday, and hear the sound crescendo up and down, BRAVURA and piano, basso and soprano. AND be so glad.

I wish I could remember the train of thought that brought me to the wondering about choices,and about fixing the power over one's life to the most clearly promixate wonder, but I have had one glass of wine too many, and even as I had the jolt of illumination about what seems like the heater but is in fact the rhythim of the heavens having something to do with the specific gravity of iron versus copper -- I knew I would never be able to write it down, to tell myself or anyone else abotu how the wonders are wonders within gorgeous wonders that occur because of rain and late husbands and spiral staircases and the choices you make about whether to open the door and stand in the wet, or decide (only one tiny degree of personal experience away) that you already know what the weird noise was. And pour another glass.

Help for the MCBA newsletter

MaryEllen asked me if I could help write material for the Honeypot newsletter of the MCBA. This is good, but I am worried about putting a newbie byline on everything in this transitional year for the club. So I want to come up with material that seems "third party" or similar to reference material. This could include:

Interviews with bee people
A guide for the perplexed seeking bee resources online
Weird Gear
Debates of note in the bee world
Bee trivia
Other Pollinators to Know
Changes in beekeeping: who is a beekeeper these days?
The Weather This Year
Bees in the News
The dumbest thing I ever did
What is a master beekeeper?

Essay: Collaborative Structures and Future Generations of Political Action

This idea is based on two events: the publication of yet another"what
are we gonna do with these apathetic kids?" article in the Post, and
attending a BBC Proms concert which debuted a really good
collaboratively-developed performance piece by a youth orchestra, Invisible Lines.

What I propose is that the sources and methods for acquiring trusted
social, cultural, and political information have shifted for at least
some of the population, – generally youth who have had lifelong
or at least prolonged access to the WWW, email, and instant messaging
technology – to data and opinion that has been vetted through
the Coolness & Connectedness Protocol.

This protocol is based on the algorithmic behavior rather than the
exhaustive data access of the source: for example, an authoritative
source of cultural information is not someone who knows everything
there is to know about Franz Liszt or Franz Ferdinand, but is someone
who gets, digests, and distributes the latest, most insightful and/or
most useful development in that area.

It is also a means of feeling connected in a smart and nearly
subversive paradigm: the example of "All Your Base," Conor Camp, Sam
and I, and Darshan Thota. Other examples are the spontaneous
net-generated be-ins, protests, etc.

Back to algorithm: it is a means of problem solving that copes with
the onslaught of variety, choice, and information by connecting with
the persons or groups who seem to be good at processing the situation
at hand, rather than highlighting key data points about it. Getting
finding yourself in a deadly boring pub: "Kristin is good at finding
the party, I will text her..." is an example, "Patty knows all the
restaurants in this post code" is less useful. I need a better
example.

The next point I thought of is the relationship of this trusted,
dynamic source of information to traditional, authoritative, and
relatively static media and political systems. I believe they are
conceived of as finite, fact-of-life type objects rather than living
institutions with which one might affiliate. One copes with
government and politics because one sees it as belonging to someone
else, monolithic, and impossible to change. About as personally
change-able as the weather. One is almost making subversive, cynical
subgroups in opposition to institutions, whether political parties,
newspapers, charities, big corporations, or international
institutions. Note the similarities between subgroups who decide to
opt-in to western culture and those who opt-out into some form of
more active subversion.

Severe note for now: this is not necessarily an ideal or mature
system. The Coolness aspect of the protocol still underscores the
importance of the novel, clever, short term, and popular over the
orderly, humane, long term, and independent. In fact, these
subgroups may see themselves as independent and unique, even when
they travel in packs defined mostly as "being aware" of something the
main culture is not.

Finally, the truly hopeful thing about the "Invisible Lines" piece is
that it presents not a critical post-assessment of an accomplished
event or work, but an example of an effective and high-level
collaborative creation produced using fluidly dynamic, dispersed
group labor. The piece was lively, celebrating diversity without the
tiresome, pedantic "and now we have the digeridoo" programming that
comes from a checklist-based rather than group generated
representation of the world.

--

New Yorker Quilt

A quilt, at least queen sized, featuring elements from the New Yorker magazine. There will be well-known side bar ads down the sides (poke boat, mini cooper), a couple of famous covers (ex pashtuns, new yorker's view), maybe a famous avedon photo, or whoever took lyle lovett, somehow a snippet of a david sedaris piece, maybe the facial recognition illustration, a chast page, a thurber, a cather, an eb white, a new yorker dog cartoon, the banner from talk of the town, an annoying subscription card sticking out over one of the articles. On the back I would like to embroider the names of all the writers, cartoonists, and photographers who have given so much -- from Cather to Gopnik and beyond. I wonder if I can rent an embroidery machine.