Personal
Personal reflections, comments about things I've been doing, etc.
RIP: Alex
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 08/03/2006 - 12:41Kim forwarded the following message to me a few minutes ago:
"Alex passed away early today peacefully at home."
Alex was Kim's riding instructor for many years. When I get a chance, I will provide more details.
Desperately seeking Nikki
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 06/01/2006 - 13:10The other day, I got an email with this as a tag line:
"I get up every morning determined to both change the world and to have one hell of a good time. Sometimes, this makes planning the day difficult." – E.B. White
I can understand the feeling. However, another quote I’ve been coming across a lot recently helps put it into a slightly better perspective.
“It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.” Robert F. Kennedy
So, yesterday, I set out on determined to change the world and to have a good time by sending forth a tiny ripple of hope. The setting was Gina Coggio’s literature classes. Gina and I have been corresponding for some time, for example when I went to see her classes production of a play about The Hot Zone by Richard Preston.
When I wrote about that, I commented about the belief that good writing can change people’s lives, and that is what I talked with the students about. I pointed them to Candy Girl’s post, In Loving Memory: 27 Marines, 1 Sailor of 1st Battalion 3rd Marines. I explained that her husband was serving in Fallujah and that she had written some of the best stuff I’ve seen about what the war means to a person perhaps not all that different from some of the students.
I pointed them to Fran’s post about starting Chemo. Fran is a 31 year old woman who had commented on a friends blog and has written some good stuff about dealing with cancer.
I pointed them to Joe’s blog entry about his experiences when hospital administrators came to speak with him about his blog about his open heart surgery.
I pointed them to the blog about a woman from the Hartford area who went to Ethiopia to adopt a child.
Friday Five
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 05/05/2006 - 11:54Cinco de Mayo brings a special meaning to Friday Five. I’m not sure if this will really end up being five unrelated topics or not, but it will have a bunch of different tidbits, much of it follow up to various things I’ve written about recently.
I just got an email from the Media Bloggers Association giving me an update on the Maine Web Report case. It is great to see bloggers across the politics spectrum work together to defend free speech.
Peter Turner, whom I met at the New Organizing Institute training in DC back in February sent me an email about The Katrina Project. They are trying to keep the Gulf Coast tragedy fully in the public eye and promote a serious national conversation about poverty and inequality through helping rebuild the New Orleans Public Library. A very cool project. Please, check out their site and contribute a book or two.
The schedule for Personal Democracy Forum 2006 is up. I will be on a panel, The Rising Power of Local Political Blogs. Two of the other people on the panel are Liza Sabater, whom I’ve met at various events around CivicSpace, last year’s Personal Democracy Forum, and probably other events, and Juan Melli, whom I’ve met online several places. It should be a good conference.
I’m also gearing up for the Media Giraffe conference. With that, I’m spending a bit of time looking at various video sharing sites. A few quick comments on this: Apparently blip.tv has cleaned up its interface and is easier to use now. For example, you no longer need to create a separate thumbnail. DailyMotion and ClipShack allow loading videos from cellphones. Kim’s cellphone records videos, so I’ll give that a try. Unfortunately, neither of them have a nice feed into other blogs, although DailyMotion does include RSS feeds and group abilities. Grouper has moved out of the ‘Coming Soon’ category, and I should probably explore that a little.
Also, Kim uploaded this picture of Reilly resting in the sun yesterday. It fits nicely for cat blogging on Friday.
So, that’s a little bit of what’s going on with me.
On the road with Ned Lamont
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 04/29/2006 - 20:36“I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills.
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;”
Today, Kim, Fiona and I went to the 28th Annual Daffodil Festival in Meriden. For Ned, it was an opportunity to meet with people from Meriden and surrounding towns and talk about the issues that mattered to them. For us, it was an opportunity to enjoy some of the simple pleasures of our home state that too often gets overlooked.
Fiona was particularly interested in the swimming pool filled with trout where youngsters could try their hands at fishing. She also enjoyed a pony ride.
Last week, Kim and I joined Ned as he worshiped at Faith Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in Stamford. It isn’t our regular church and we enjoyed a different style of worship than we are used to.
As I’ve traveled the State with different campaigns, I’ve found myself looking for these special times, chances to savor what Connecticut has to offer, from daffodil festivals, county fairs and oyster festivals, to a rich tradition of spirituality and innovation.
It struck me that this is perhaps what I like best, being on the road with a candidate I believe in.
