Tonia stumbled upon a really great blog post over the weekend. So good that she wanted to rush upstairs and point and gush and say, “Look look this is so good you have to read this!” She didn’t, because I was in Podcast Mode for all of Sunday and when I’m in Podcast Mode I tend to hold my hand up in the air like a traffic cop, and stop people dead in their tracks when they want to talk to me. Single minded podcaster, that’s me. Tonia was so good on Sunday, and the podcast happened because she brought me food all day, and basically left me alone to to work. Eventually I came up for air, and I sat down at her work laptop on the kitchen table (on weekends there are five laptops in this house - Tonia swears they follow her home) and I got to read the thing she was so excited about.

Written by a guy named Clay Shirky it’s a transcript of a talk he gave at the recent Web 2.0 conference, about the impact of gin in the early industrial age. No really. When people were moving from farms to factories, society was so whacked out by the upheaval of a long standing social order that pushcart vendors sold gin in the neighborhoods, and everyone basically went on a bender for an entire generation. Eventually society sorted itself out and and realized that there were some good things that could come out of life in the cities, like museums and libraries and basic education for children. Once an entire generation of people were done freaking out about changes to society, there was a whole lot of what Shirky likes to call “cognitive surplus” that made all the good things we associate with the industrial age happen.

I love looking at parallels between the industrial revolution at the turn of the last century, and the information revolution at the turn of the most recent one. When my casual interest in the scouting movement last summer morphed into a sort of minor obsession this year, what struck me were the similarities between the Modern Age of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, that gave rise to scouting, and the Modern Age we are living in now. The world looks a lot different, but despite the proliferation of modern conveniences, we are not so different from our great grandparents. We worry that the world moves too fast, just as they did. We long for real community, and connection with self and others that seems to be missing from our own age. I am becoming convinced that this is what drives the crafting movement of our own Modern Age. There isn’t much else to explain our desire to make things by hand, in a world that no longer needs us to do that.

Clay goes on to say that TV sitcoms are the gin of our age. That we’ve been on a Gilligan’s Island and Desperate Housewives bender for some time now. An entire generation of people lost to Lost. It’s my generation, and it’s hard to argue with what he says. It’s not like I watch a lot of television, but I do watch. I’m gutted that I was so focused on getting the podcast out, that I completely forgot about the BBC biopic about Jane Austen last night. I would have loved to have seen it. Reading Shirky’s piece, however, reminded me this morning I really didn’t miss much.

Did you ever see that episode of Gilligan’s Island where they almost get off the island and then Gilligan messes up and then they don’t? I saw that one. I saw that one a lot when I was growing up. And every half-hour that I watched that was a half an hour I wasn’t posting at my blog or editing Wikipedia or contributing to a mailing list. Now I had an ironclad excuse for not doing those things, which is none of those things existed then. I was forced into the channel of media the way it was because it was the only option. Now it’s not, and that’s the big surprise. However lousy it is to sit in your basement and pretend to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience it’s worse to sit in your basement and try to figure if Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter.

Not that a wonderfully produced costume piece on the BBC in anyway compares to Gilligan’s Island, but I realized as I was reading Shirky’s piece over again that I’d actually been occupied last night doing the very thing that his article talks about. I was producing media. I was creating. I was doing something.

It’s better to do something than to do nothing. Even lolcats, even cute pictures of kittens made even cuter with the addition of cute captions, hold out an invitation to participation. When you see a lolcat, one of the things it says to the viewer is, “If you have some sans-serif fonts on your computer, you can play this game, too.” And that’s message–I can do that, too–is a big change.

This is it in a nutshell. Why I began podcasting. Because some guy with poofy hair who used to be on MTV talked to me every morning in a podcast recorded on his kitchen table, and his message was that I could do it too.

This is something that people in the media world don’t understand. Media in the 20th century was run as a single race–consumption. How much can we produce? How much can you consume? Can we produce more and you’ll consume more? And the answer to that question has generally been yes. But media is actually a triathlon, it ’s three different events. People like to consume, but they also like to produce, and they like to share.

Everyone in the Yarniverse seems to agree that the Internet has changed so much about the way knitters relate to their craft. Yarn and needles will always be the same, but how we find the patterns we use, the way we share information about materials and method, that’s all changed now. We have stopped spending so much time mindlessly consuming media, and we choose instead to spend our surplus cognitive capital in such exciting ways. We write, we connect, we create, we share. I do worry that Big Media and Big Government will one day find a way to stop or slow the pipeline, and the free access we have to the network, this thing that makes it all possible, will no longer exist. Which will be great for Big Business, but will be very bad for people. It’s nice to know that there are clever people in the world, people like Clay Shirky and Lawrence Lessig and Yochai Benkler, who are thinking about these things; about the way that people connect and share and build upon ideas. And they are talking about them. They give me hope.

You can read the full text of Clay Shirky’s article here. He’s also written a book. It’s on my reading list.

My friend Chris has arrived, bearing the foodstuffs of My People. Jif. Nilla Wafers. REAL Maple Syrup. A&W ROOT BEER! I am so happy.

We haven’t seen each other in eight years, and it is wonderful to be in his company again. I’m showing him Wales.

He’s cooking me food. Any hope I had of “dropping a few” before I hit the cruise ship in a few weeks has been utterly abandoned. To a good cause. He’s an amazing cook, and it’s just one of the things he does with great passion. He’s a registered nurse, lives in Wyoming, is gay, and single. Did I mention he’s a great cook? Just saying…

Blogging will be sporadic at best over the next month or so. During a recent run down of my schedule for April and May, Z likened it to a Death March of Fun, which would be a lot funnier if it weren’t true. Chris’ arrival signals the beginning of said march. More, as and when.

As I type, protesters gather in San Fransisco along the route of the Olympic Torch. I’ll wager many, if not most of those gathered have little idea that they are hypocrites. Strong words. I know. I’m little disgruntled. Banners hang from the Golden Gate bridge, and “Free Tibet” is the mantra, but what does it really mean? I want to ask those people why it is that they’re there.

That the people of Tibet live under an oppressive government, there can be little doubt. China’s record of human rights abuses is well documented. I read recently in Julia Sweeney’s blog her account of the plight of Tibetans, and I couldn’t help but feel moved. It’s heartbreaking, what’s happened to the people and their culture.

Just moments ago I heard the Chinese Governor of Tibet on Radio 4, insisting that the Olympic Torch will travel through Tibet, as planned. He issued a stern warning that protests along the Tibetan route will not be tolerated. He explained that China had brought democracy to the people of Tibet, that before the Chinese government got involved, Tibet was a feudal society, with a rigid social caste system.

Obviously what they call “democracy” in China is not really democracy - a few more freedoms and you’d be a little closer, but still not there. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press would do, though, for a start. Still, I couldn’t help thinking that the Chinese rhetoric, about “bringing democracy” to a people hungry for change, sounded very familiar. Where had I heard that before? Oh yes. I remember now. It’s not terribly different than the rhetoric coming from Britain and the US, with regard to Iraq.

Let’s look at the similarities. Invading a country illegally, and overwhelming the population with vastly superior military forces. Check. Topple the country’s government and imprison and/or assassinate its leaders. I’m not saying Saddam Hussein was a noble leader and a great guy, and didn’t deserve what he got. And the Dalai Lama fled Tibet, yes, a technicality. If he’d stayed, he’d likely still be in prison. Or dead. So, check. Set up a new system of government and instill your own handpicked leaders to rule the country. Check. Set up camp, stay for decades, even if it’s clear that the people you came to “save” want you out. Check, and… well I guess we’ll have to wait and see about the staying for decades part, though it looks fairly clear that we’ve settled in for the long haul.

And therein lies the hypocrisy. Why do the banners flying from the Golden Gate bridge say “Free Tibet” and not “Free Iraq”? Perhaps the image of gentle Buddhist monks fighting, in robes, for their freedom, is simply easier to identify with than that of machine-gunned wielding, armed to the teeth Muslim insurgents, fighting for exactly the same thing. Maybe it’s that it’s China’s fault, not ours. It’s always easier to put someone else’s house in order than it is to see the dirt in your own. I know whenever a friend is in trouble, any friend, I feel certain that life would improve for her, that life would be so much better for her - perfect, in fact - if only she’d step out of the way and let me run her life for a little while. I’m sure I know best.

I’ll be the first to admit that my own reason for shouting “Free Tibet” at the TV last Sunday, as the Olympic Torch made its halting progress through London, is that China scares me. Not the Chinese people, mind.* China. It’s big, it outnumbers me, it’s exhaling carbon into my atmosphere; gobbling up resources like there’s no tomorrow, and if it keeps on like this, there may not be. Still, the difference between “Free Tibet” and “Free Iraq” is one of semantics. I know this. And maybe some of the San Fransisco protesters do too. China is embarrassed by “Free Tibet”, and that is not a bad thing. It’s good to see China with a little egg fu yung on its collective face. Pardon me for a moment while I wipe my own.

*My father visited China years ago, and found the people warm, friendly and very ready to laugh at the tall man, with the red beard, wearing the Emperor’s robes at the Summer Palace. Chinese people are, by my father’s accounts, wonderful. I hope to visit them one day.

Not a lot of blogging going on of late, which is good, as I am quite bereft without something to feel guilty about. I’ve made great strides in the proposal, and can’t count on any guilt from that quarter, so it’s good to have an infrequently updated blog to fall back on.

At last, I know what the book’s about. Mostly. I have a Selling Handle that made me cringe to write. (I think I may have a problem with capitalism. I know. You’re shocked. We’ll see how much of a problem I have with it when I cash the check.) I have a Concept Statement, and a page called About the Author. That was more difficult to write about than I thought it would be, but gosh, it’s nice to write about a subject you really know. I have several pages written About the Competition, which isn’t about competition at all, so much as describing what books are likely to be on the same shelf of the bookstore as my book.

My book. I love saying that. If I swear by all that is holy never to utter the words, “As I say in my book…”, once it is published, can I be just a little insufferable now?

Moving along, the next section of the proposal was About the Book, which was hard going because I had no idea what the book was about. “Well, it’s like scouting, but different, and there’s some knitting, and some badges…”

I had to skip About the Book, and add it to the tail end of the month when, hopefully, I will know what’s in the book, and be able to write about it. With that out of the way it should have been full steam ahead, but then I hit a passage in Book Proposals 101 that read, “After your preliminary research, you’ll have some sort of files, note cards or jottings. Divide this information into groups…”

Jottings? I was supposed to jot?

I panicked, before remembering that I have badges. Who needs jottings! I have badges. Tonia helped me divide the material up, arrange it, and find connections. And then, there it was. My table of contents.

Of course almost a month has elapsed since I felt the heady TOC excitement of my book, made tangible, and it’s been kind of a hard slog of a month as I fumble around looking for where I last left my voice. I wrote two BEAUTIFUL pages of prose, honest to god I felt invincible and like use of the English language was my super power — “All shall love me and despair!” — I read it over and over again before I realized, lovely as it was, it read like the opening of a dissertation. A kick ass dissertation, to be sure, but not really what I was going for. Not at all. And it only took me an entire day to realize that, and only a weekend to let go of those two pages of beautiful prose. So there’s some progress. But I still mourn their loss.

I needn’t have worried about the voice though. I found it again after reading old stuff I’d written for the podcast. I don’t know why writing for the podcast, or here, for that matter, is different than Writing the Book, but it is, and I’d much rather it wasn’t. (Note to self - it’s all just writing, now get on with it.)

Re: the hate video - I realized reading your comments that I was so busy feeling outraged by the anti gay hate speech, I hardly noticed the perverted Christian doctrine. Seriously, I had to go back and watch it it again. “Did she even mention the bible? Oh, yes. There it is, of course she did.”

Reminds me of a gay Jewish comedian I once saw, who could not believe his ears when someone called him a “kike” (which is a really bad word for a Jew, so don’t ever use it) and he totally thought the guy had said “dyke”. And he was like, “Well, you’re close…” Then he finally twigged what the guy had said, and he realized that homophobia was SO distracting, he sometimes just forgot all about antisemitism.