got a new mac, and that's what makes me want to do graphics (like below) a lot and even fix up and begin to manage the weblogs better; it would be about time i'd get to some farflung places but here's one for example that my students use, and it's interesting, but i have to keep up on its template and keep everything current, etc.; it's an ongoing job but more pleasant on a mac. in fact everything is more pleasant on a mac, especially listening to music as i sit, or playing with photos, in general; i even dream better at night; i wake up, and if i have an image i don't like, i just mentally drag it over into the trash where it will go out of my consciousness. if your mac is your conscious mind and everything is visible, clear resolution and pretty, and manageable, then that's much better than having this PC-like vagueness where everything is possible but you have to be in the know to really get to it. it may all be a matter of feeling, but feeling is what counts sometimes.

so a soccer season started, and the kids all got out there, and it was a little too intense for me to report on, so i'll save it for later, and some family members are in the hospital, and i'll keep that to myself also out of respect, but plenty of other things are happening in this world including riots down in the student district and my neighbor being caught up in a scandal which i'd also better keep to myself for the moment at least. in high stress times maybe the best thing is to stick to i-tunes and picnik (that being the picture-distorter, see below). an important person in our lives, my son's roommate, also disappeared from the face of the earth; i didn't know you could do that these days, maybe they'll find him, but this of course will wreak havoc on the world as we know it, as this guy paid the bills and organized everything.

so the question of why everything would happen at once definitely comes up, along with the question of whether the sharp turn toward fall weather marks a distinct turning of the earth and leaning toward change that is of course not always good. and you see gathering clouds of trouble around the world; i watch the news, of course, as part of my job, and so one question might concern whether the world is ending, or whether it's just a period of rising instability and horrible job market. and in any case it doesn't seem like it's going to be an easy world for the young folks, might not even be so great for me, and i still have lots of options. i spill them out here, because this is a personal place and one where i like to talk about this stuff.

so i had three scams a while back, and now i can only remember one of them, but i might look back and see what the heck the other two were. at that point i'd never even mentioned my main one, africahub, a good idea which i'd never given up, but which i'd shelved for a while while i tried to figure out some other options for how to proceed. the idea behind africahub is that the world needs an online resource for news and information about africa, which could start with news but move into music, languages, environmental information, etc. and could be developed almost infinitely out in many directions. and a person would learn a lot of programming skills this way; in its appearance it would start out like google news, but in its development it would end up being more like wikipedia....in the sense that each page, say a page about mali, would have links to places like malian musicians, malian languages, history of mali, etc. and each one of these would be in an area that would be connected to other similar topics. so it could be developed onward and outward but would primarily be a link resource where you could find all kinds of things african.

and yes, i've always loved africa. always wanted to go there. always wanted to see that african sun and grasslands, the infinite continent. one can do that, these days, without necessarily leaving this chair. one can, and one should, since avoiding the new colonialism will be the primary political impetus of the new world. by that i mean, african countries will want genuine allies rather than resource-exploiters, and they will begin to be more shrewd about who these people are, once they lift the yoke of oppressive dictatorship (a difficult process only now beginning in some places)...the future will really be about alliance of people who are careful with the world, versus those who would simply exploit it, and this kind of alliance must be nurtured and promoted. ah, but a person also needs a vision, and a future, and in some cases, must cast eyes abroad to find it. and travel forward, with no fear.

speaking of which, the tale of harding county south dakota moves forward, as i tell my friends more about it, and these are friends who have at least been there, and know a little what i speak of. we can only speculate about what exactly lies on the eighty acres of harding county that i could reasonably extract and call mine, but ironically the same friend who has actually been there, has also at one point in his life been a surveyor. so it might technically be possible to find out what this land is really like. i'm excited; it gives me hope. meanwhile the boundary waters, that other place that filled my heart, that spoke to me, the far north, land of frigid dark & long winters beyond imagination, clear cool and blue waters of the largest of the lakes, that place is on fire, burning beyond control, who could imagine. a land of ten thousand lakes, at least half of them are in that northern zone, they go on forever, so maybe these fires won't dip down and take the whole continent. but it makes you wonder. my heart starts to longing for the open spaces, the summer outdoors, and i'm beginning to realize: it's a crowded world, not much space left untrampled. and what there is, might soon get more crowded.

more later...chou