Do you speak bloggeese

The staggering arsenal of jargon generated by computer geeks and geekettes boggles or globlogs my mind. Even as I begin to navigate the waters, I find myself stuck in limbo, between a typing/posting initial episode and a preview/compose/edit final product. This is ridiculous stuff, I say to myself. The whole experience should be logical and instinctive, the fingers should know where to go next. Then, a second later I notice the shortcut prompts: "press Ctrl with:Bold.." Someone is really, really working at his job, somewhere in Google-land.

Before I posted this musing I was distracted by all the new features on the "dashboard"-a word borrowed from another setting to make me feel in charge of what I'm doing, I am guessing, reassuring myself. Now, you think I am protesting, right? Wrong. I'm just commenting that just as I learn to do a new task, someone is busy, again in Google-land, making life easy for me, again. Wrong, again. All this is, in my world, is overload. I am ready to shut down, stop playing with all the children whose idea of fun is to give you a toy, show you how to use it and then rearrange its parts so only the initiated continue to play and have fun.

This is testing my patience.

Voting in Oregon

Even as late as yesterday afternoon Obama supporters were going door to door leaving brochures, reminding neighbors to vote. I know of two people in town who registered and voted for the first time in their lives. So, we are creating history right here in our corner of the world, selecting people to lead us into the next phase of our democratic future.

I heard once that we get the leaders we deserve, meaning those that we encouraged and supported all along. Anytime we choose to let others do the thinking for us, we abdicate our rights and responsibilities. How wonderful, in a democracy, we get a chance to rethink our positions every four years or so. We have power only if we exercise it. There are plenty of excuses. But there is only one reason: we vote to maintain a system of government that listens to everyone of us, rich or poor, young or old.

Let's all exercise our rights.

Tropical days in Oregon

The unusually warm days we have been having are good for tomatoes but are a nuisance to everything else.

We heard sighs all over town; people came out in shorts exposing scary white legs and arms. Ouch! We are outdoor people, usually with many layers of clothing hiding layers of unexposed skin. How can we survive this heat wave?

We moved sprinklers around to help the newly planted lettuces, onions, cosmos and stocks. The trees will do fine, going deeper to get their water; and the birds will look for lakes and ponds.

Hubby prepared Margheritas and chips, and fired up the outdoor grill. We were back in California, only with a better view and fewer people. The ocean roared and spewed, promising cooler breezes coming. We are counting on those promises. We didn't move to Oregon for the heat.

As we vote this week, we will seriously consider the candidates who are serious about keeping our planet safe, green and no warmer than it has already become. Global warming can seriously destroy a lot of life.

Snippets of truth

I'm watching movies and television for hours these days. With decades of television deprivation-I was too tired to watch television for my entire working life-now I can indulge and catch up.

What I see in front of me is nothing like the life I lived or the life I could imagine. Movies and television are feeding us life rhythms that do not match our actual lives.

Maybe it is the nature of the medium. Whenever we are retelling a story we act like a camera lens, focusing on this or that,to embellish, to capture an essence, to reconstruct a feeling.

How ironic for our civilization that our "fiction" will remain to document our real lives.

Conversion

Since my declaration for Hillary a few months ago, I've had a change of heart. Listening to both candidates and watching the mood of the land, my concerns are about changing Washington, getting more voters to take an active role in the running of country, and sending a clear message in the national election.

The message is simple. We need leadership that will move our country beyond partisan bickering and posturing. We don't need to win anything; we need to find the best solutions to our present problems and future needs. We need people in Washington and in Salem who can listen to their constituents and who can talk to each other. We are all in this together.

To solve our energy problems or any other problem we need enlightned people who do not threaten to veto, filibuster or strike if they do not get their way. We need people who roll up their sleeves, use uniting language and continue to live up to their principles.

Democracy does not work if the nation fights like the McCoys and the Hatfields. Democracy works when not even one person's interests are left out of the discussion; when rich and poor, rural and urban, natives and immigrants all work in good faith to solve problems; when our Constitution is supported by all three branches of government; when an elected official acts for the entire nation's welfare rather than for the people that paid for his election.

Obama has the right tone and the right perspective to lead us into a new dialogue. I will vote for him.