i heartily accept time magazine's person of the year award, which i learned about through jeff jarvis, who quoted this among other things:

And for seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME’s Person of the Year for 2006 is you. . . .

that certainly referred to me, though i noticed that they put some other bloke on the cover. i also noticed that, when trying to access the story itself, i got stuck in some chrysler ad and couldn't get through it, impatient as i am. so i decided to back off, accept the award, and let it go at that.

my friend peg won a golden spork award for her weblog, and this is probably more significant, since there are far fewer winners, and each one probably had some merit; peg's certainly does. unlike me & mine, which sputter along, skipping entire weeks in favor of finals, christmas running-around & whatever...

time probably hopes that, by having six billion or so winners, they'll at least get a few readers out of that. but, young folks are all doing facebook, or myface, or whatever, and even old geezers like me aren't going to stop and look at a chrysler ad. i remember ancient times, when chrysler made dodge darts (60's) that even tom & ray liked, my favorite in high school, and old valiants with push-button transmissions, and they made the best old vans too, but that was nigh-on fi'ty years ago, and since then they haven't made much a-tall except air-bag commercials. they were so big on those air bags, i thought they ought to go into politics, but maybe they did that & i didn't even know it, and that's why they're still around. anyway if they're teaming up with time, i'm going in the other direction, at least for the moment, though i do accept this award gratefully, and i thank my mother, and my high school english teacher, and you my dear audience, who come from everywhere from soldotna, alaska, to paris and izmir, turkey, last i knew, but who mostly consist of my family and friends- to you, who made this moment possible, these outfits get wilder every year...thank you, and god bless you.

sun., dec. 3, 2006, young friends of the southern illinois friends' meeting performed the monsters of kanifloria, a play based on a fable by aaron piper. at first i did not want to put this play on the web because much of it is directly lifted from the fable. but, i've put aaron piper's name all over it, and now feel that the web needs a record of what happened, of our take on it. it gives him credit- in fact it's notable that in a book full of tales and fables, these children chose this one repeatedly, so perhaps the best part of it, for them, was being able to perform a story that was so familiar. i would also like to put the poster up, which was wild too, and which was entirely a product of their imaginations. these would probably go on the quakersrock site which i've been using in general for the plays and for notice about them.

the unitarians rejected the play good tidings of yule, perhaps because they do these things by committees who worry quite a bit, and i wasn't there to address their worries. that's the best explanation i can offer, not knowing the details, and not willing to admit to any of the play's blatant imperfections.

the 20six site itself is not a great place fot these things, since it doesn't handle the natural returns of play-typing, and, as you can see, does not allow you to pull yourself out of the archive without hacking. the story you see on top, extended family, is also woefully incomplete: poorly developed characters. so, i have refrained from advertising it. have also refrained from fixing it though. it remains, suspended, somewhere over uk cyberspace.

and, below, if you can still scroll down, notice nitroade, our latest project- ours is made of cardboard, with moving, though imperfect wheels, a spoiler, etc. as we troll the web (the 5-yr-old is pretty adept at using google images) i'm aware of the commercial explosion around these things- i will get dozens of search engine hits from just mentioning nitroade, not to mention dinoco helicopter- and, i promise, we will get pictures of our creations up, sooner or later- flo's v8 cafe is suspended up above the piano as i type (and nearby is we've-got-ourselves-a-nodder-d.j.)- but if i were to figure out how to make money off of these cardboard creations, i could quit my day job. i do believe that the young lad is headed for a profession in which his perfectionism and artistic talent will no doubt be better appreciated. in the meantime, if you see some other images- closeups of these "anthromorphs" (?), don't be surprised. we make 'em, even before the metal ones hit the shelves. this nitroade has halloween colors, and the numbers have special significance to eli, who is just mastering both the left-to-right thing and the tens-column nature of the left ones. i must say that elmer's glue is made for corrugated cardboard, which in turn is made for durable-strength architecture, and, is blessedly plentiful in our world. with his perfectionism, we have a lot to work out, not the least of which is the issue of scale and smoothness of driving on hastily cut, not-so-circular wheels. maybe nitroade is from carbondale. ours is definitely an ornament valley native...and, round wheels or not, i've been going with the flo...

i like to think of myself as walking lightly on the earth, but lately it's been raining, and very cold, and lots of stuff to do, so i've been taking the big lug of a truck down to work, through the west side of carbondale. people sometimes ridicule this neighborhood as being 'suburbia' (though carbondale in truth cannot be big enough to have one) or you sometimes hear 'faculty ghetto', but i prefer 'ornament valley', being totally into a cars-the-movie phase with my five-year-old. thought of the name earlier in the fall, looking down from my living room window at ornamental maples and other ornament-type trees changing color slowly and beautifully.

but now, rain and cold and december descending on the area, and a major corner, about halfway, is the site of houses competing to do the best lawn ornaments. dazzling light shows pointed at each other- it's been getting bigger every year, and this year huge balloonish frosties are all the rage, i guess. this is all pretty garish. of course, if it's morning, and i'm on my bicycle, i hardly see it. but these days i don't get out of work until dark and it's right there in my face.

a few houses down the bike-route back-street, though, i found an actual totem pole, up against the side of a house, not garishly put there either, just standing there. a person could go by many times without seeing it, but, on a bicycle, you're more likely to catch these things.

welcome to the ornament valley!