Mr. Kabodian’s Blog

Well, I’ve been reading my Wired magazine. The February 2008 issue has a short, interesting article and visual called “The Secret Life of a Blog Post.” Frank Rose shares the various directions a blog post (maybe this blog post) goes when a blogger clicks the Publish button.

Between Ping Servers (I’ve only been pinged once; I guess someone was focusing on the word “Armenia” a couple weeks ago and now I’m not a virgin blogger…once pinged, you can’t go back, you know), Search Engines, Data Miners, Text Scrapers, and Ad Servers, I was introduced to a whole underground I never knew existed.

The little kid in me is itching to test the blogoshere-web-underground nation (yes, I made that up). I’m wondering if I start using more buzz words in my blog, I may be pinged more and aggregated up the wazoo. It’s just a theory, and I’m not usually one to look for attention, but here it goes…

I was thinking of bringing up our lovely President (Bush) at our Super Bowl party this weekend. Now I haven’t been particularly pleased with our instigation/involvement/prolonging of the war in Iraq, but I also haven’t been very vocal about it at family functions. If I was to push a few Republican buttons in a Colbert Nation manner, I wonder if that would be a fumble or a touchdown, so to speak. During a Bud commercial, I could set out some Bush Impeach-mints for the improved breath of my family and friends or wear my Dumb and Dumber button with the Bush duo on it…just to see where that goes. I could whip out my Hillary and Bill t-shirt from their old lawyer days or serve a little side dish of “wouldn’t a Black President be more representative of the American populace” before dessert. Then again, that may be more than needed on any given Sunday…like this one.

There. By my count, I splashed at least ten good buzz words in that completely made-up paragraph. It’s time to send my test-baby out into the wide, wide, wide world of blogging. I’ll let you know if I get any reaction (I’m sending it without tags to see what happens).

(I wrote this over a year ago, but it still seems true, so I’m sharing it. That’s my test.)

Right now…
Young children walk an ocean beach,
Generations fish together in a small boat,
A girl throws a penny in a fountain and wishes,
And
An old woman thirsts.

Right now…
A full cable car slowly scales a hill,
A family winds along Route 1 in a rented Grand Marquis on vacation,
Groups whale watch in small ships,
And
A boy is tired from walking five miles as he returns from school.

Right now…
The Continental Breakfast Buffet is opening,
A couple meets for lunch at a diner,
Family members decide between Mexican, Chinese, and Italian for dinner,
And
A beggar is turned down when asking for a tourist’s leftovers.

Right now…
A businessman checks into a Holiday Inn Express, again,
Women meet at a cottage in the woods for a retreat,
Kids come home from school to their comfortable homes in suburbia,
And
Members of a homeless family construct a shelter from cardboard scraps.

And right now…
An elementary school teacher chooses an outfit from her closet,
A ten year old and her mother pick out a new dress for the girl’s birthday,
A bus driver puts on his uniform,
And
A little boy finds some shoes to wear and smiles.

We were sort of herded into the Ark, many with their partners, from out of a cold, steady rain.

All Biblical allusions aside, my first Ark experience was fun and very satisfying. Four friends and I drove down to Ann Arbor yesterday to attend a benefit concert for Re-Member at this storied music venue. We were treated to The New Green, Mannafest, and Sari Brown — three of Ann Arbor’s musical jewels. Some surprises for me included: how well the mix of guitars, trumpet, and strings worked for The New Green; how much the one Motown song the Mannafest sang (“Heard It Through the Grapevine”) made me wish they sang more old time Rock and Folk; and how Sari Brown was a hoot — she made me shake my head, smile, and, at times, wonder how I was lucky enough to be at what seemed like a crowd made up of her family. Hearing a concert of new music is a risk, but this one panned out.

Part of my satisfaction came, however, from hearing the Reverend Keith Titus’ talk between the first two bands. Keith is the co-founder of Re-Member and its former Executive Director. I’ve known him for years, but I never tire of hearing his strong, mellow voice and his brutally honest, challenging words about Lakota history and our role in it. He says what needs to be said. He reminded us of our country’s slaughter of unarmed, innocent Lakotas at Wounded Knee in years past. He shared statistics and personal examples of the deep poverty on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. And he encouraged us to act. Whether we come to southern South Dakota — as I am blessed to be able to do this summer — or not, if we care about this world, we must find our niche and do what we can.

So, I was fed in Ann Arbor (of all places for a Spartan to be fed). My musical soul was treated. My spiritual soul was lifted. And all in the Ark, which seemed at times to floating…in entirely the right direction.

Experience

one of the best teachers —
not the best

how about
experi ments
moms and dads
books
tv?

how about
patience
siblings and spouses
music
websites?

how about
silence
grandparents and in-laws
journaling
movies?

lines are fuzzy
knowing is on vacation in Fiji

experience can be (fool’s) gold

A Kabodian 2008

On my tombstone, it may read “Save early, save often.” I constantly tell my students to do it and I make a habit of doing it also. I’m not talking about money (though my dad would have been). I’m talking about any document I am creating. It’s so simple to save the document right away and then save it regularly. It cuts down on those frustrating moments when the software freezes and the work I’ve done up to that point is lost.

So why do I still fail at this simple task?

I was just composing this wonderful blog entry about how I came in second place in the 4th Annual New Year’s Day Hockey Tournament at my niece’s house in Hudsonville. I was having fun getting down some thoughts about how I skate poorly, but when it comes to table top hockey, I can handle a puck. I thanked my cousin, Adam, for getting me into table top hockey as a teen…then I went to save.

White-screen-hell stared back at me for several minutes.

I refuse to rewrite the blog entry. It was just starting to take form. It was a new being. Moments like this are the only times I feel some inkling to why some people are against abortion. I feel like I was doing the right thing (“saving” the file), but that new creation is gone.

In my more cogent moments, I sometimes do a ‘right-click, copy’ before I save anything. You are reading this now only because I went back to Word and started over, saving like I had a Tourette’s tic. This is, unfortunately, a microcosm of the real issue; every step forward I take in the game of Mother May I Use Technology, I take two steps backward. I usually feel competent for a good 15 minutes before something goes wrong. Power Points, wikis, podcasts, blogs, rss, Flickr, Furl, Movie Maker, Google Docs — you name it, I’m trying to make sense of it (both within and between each of them). Frustration mounts, I keep at it, even end up teaching others, get more frustrated, learn more…

I’m re-learning, un-learning, re-re-learning, outside-the-box learning — anything but anti-learning. Feeling alone and knowing I’m not at the same time.

(time passed)

I went back to add to my blog and the entry from before had saved.
I apparently had not waited the 15 minutes I was supposed to wait.
I’m still not finishing the entry. I’m pasting it here with the following comment: I played really well, despite coming in 2nd, and I’m proud of every goal and stop I made.

…Hockey is not one of my favorite sports. Though it does remind me of soccer from time to time, hockey is not even one of the top 10 sports I enjoy playing in or watching. I’m sure it’s partly due to the fact that I am a sub-par skater; the idea of a speedy, hard plastic puck and those flailing sticks don’t make me want to jump onto the ice anytime soon either.

And yet, I came in 2nd place in our 4th annual New Year’s Day Hockey Tournament. The table top hockey we play at my niece’s house in Hudsonville has become one of the things I look forward to with every new year. You see, my cousin, Adam, was a hockey fanatic when we were growing up. I was brought up on table top hockey at family gatherings. Adam knew his way around hockey on the ice and on the table top. He was competitive and talented. Little did I know then that he was giving me the training I would need for family gatherings of today.