Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:58 PM

I still have lots more to write about BloggerCon; and will probably be adding lots more links to my nascent blogroll shortly. So just because I didn't mention something or someone doesn't mean that I'm not ruminating about it or planning to write it. I just haven't gotten around to it yet. [I prefer to take my notes on paper and synthesize them later, rather than posting as things happen. I may not actually write better that way, but I do write slower.] Anyway, Feedster is keeping a special list for BloggerCon and I'm seeing lots of stuff worth reading. Anybody interested in what went on, I highly recommend it.

Goodnight!

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:45 PM

In briefest, a lot of the panelists were talking very idealistic fantasies of blogging revolutionizing the world. But having taken a class in social informatics last year, these same promises were made (and unfulfilled) for other information technologies.

When Dave Winer talked about blogs as "raising consciousness on a global scale" somebody in the audience said that looking around the room, he saw utopia, saying that we weren't elites before blogging, but now so many strangers at the con recognized our names. Sorry, but looking around the room, I saw a mostly white, educated and upper-class crowd -- in other words, advantaged, and not representative of the world or even the broader culture across the city. And the fact that others in this little clique recognize one another's names was a nice egoboo, but to think that has broader significance felt... rather sad. We may be elite in terms of certain advantages (such as the time and ability to blog), but that doesn't make us better than the other 97% of the population that doesn't blog. Somebody tried to justify it that we were the "right 3%, which I found tremendously and unpleasantly hubristic.

For all the talk that blogging would open up broader exchanges of ideas, I noticed that people trying to bring the rhetoric back down to earth (by mentioning the digital divide, for example) were quickly shot down as pessimists. If we can't have an open discussion on what is practically possible about weblogging, what makes them feel we can open such dialogs on more heated issues. Self-selection is turning the blogosphere into overlapping echo chambers. And when people tried to point out historical parallels, and that human nature doesn't change, Dave lectured doubters on not catastrophizing and suggested blogging could "bring out aspects of human nature" that were otherwise buried or suppressed. That is such a copout, and in my notes I wrote Santayana. Hope is not a plan.

Chris Lydon quipped that "at Harvard, it's not enough that blogs work in practice, but do they work in theory?" But the difference between theory and practice is in theory, there is no difference. And, as another slogan goes, I'd like to live in theory -- everything works in theory. But we live in the real world, and there are real-life hurdles that ought to be addressed -- and many of the panelists and audience members were not only ignoring them, they were making an effort to deny them. Lydon also commented that "he's drunk too much of the Dave Winer Kool-Aid"

Blogging is just a technology. It doesn't make us better people, doesn't by itself improve our lots or say much about ourselves. By the end, I was longing to apply for Indiana U's PhD in Social Informatics where we could discuss these issues in a more academically rigorous manner, and at least the claims would have to be backed up by data. It also made me want to invite being_homeless -- a Boston-area blogger who is genuinely homeless. She blogs from the libraries about her dealings with social services, she has a large readership, but that won't change the fact that a brain injury renders her unemployable and keeps her on the streets. I wish somebody thought to invite her to speak and answer questions; it would've been a useful counterpoint to the hype being spread. Maybe Chris Lydon ought to interview her for a different perspective on blogging. [My husband actually contacted her and she may attend Day 2. I hope she does.]

Whew. Though this doesn't go into the picayune details of my notes, I feel rather better for getting this out. I wonder how welcome I'll be at the Thursday blogger gatherings (or by Dave Winer himself) after this vent. I want to be polite, but I also feel a need to be honest -- this was a major problem for me at the conference.

Anyway, I'm going to try to get back for at least the morning panels of Day 2 (which are open to everyone free of charge! stop by!) I really wish I could attend the afternoon panels by Volokh on Law and the one on Community, but I think they're too close to Yom Kippur, and a girl's gotta eat.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:30 PM

So, I took eight pages of notes in my steno pad today. And I feel somehow obligated to blog it all tonight while it's fresh. Because, given Yom Kippur, it's tonight or not until Tuesday, and I'd like to have some chance of being read by the other congoers through the Feedster BloggerCon Buzz. This may end up as several separate posts; we'll see how it goes. I'm going to try to go through my notes chronologically.

But I'll just begin by borrowing a photo from Dan Bricklin's blog:

That's me in the red sweater, looking up at Chris Lydon. The black-clad shoulder directly in front of me is Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit). The person speaking into the mike is Dan Gillmor and beside him is Doc Searls. So now y'all know what I look like and have proof I was there.

Anyway, let's start through the day, shall we?

• I've seen conferences delayed by technical difficulties, but usually those are problems by the presenter(s), not the audience. I'm rather glad I didn't bring my laptop, because it seemed that everyone around me had some problems connecting to the network, whether WiFi or cabled.
• Because I'm short, I tried to grab a place as close to the front as possible. I chose a seat in the third row. Only after things began did I realize I was seated right behind Jeff Jarvis (BuzzMachine) and Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit). Maybe I should've tried to strike up conversations to solicit links (and a higher hitcount) but I felt shy. [Actually, given my social group, I was tempted to give Glenn a backrub after staring at it so long; but I managed to restrain myself. Sorry, Glenn] On either side of me were David Czarnecki and Griff Wigley and directly behind were Sean Hackbarth and Steve Garfield. I worry that I might've annoyed them by the end by sighing so audibly at certain comments, but I'll get to that later, shall I?
• Ed Cone moderated the first panel, on journalism. He introduced Glenn Reynolds as "to my left... physically" (which garnered laughs) and called him "the Dirk Diggler of hit count" and later, said he's gotten "more hits than Adam Curry in Amsterdam coffeehouses."
• It was fascinating, when the panel discussion began, all I could hear were the speakers and clacking keyboards all around me. Several interesting points were made, which I noted as interesting tangents (maybe I'll take these up in the next few days), but it seemed like every time the discussion between the audience and panel really got going, Dave Winer would speak up (ignoring the rules of the microphone etiquette that he set up) and kept trying to hijack the talk to his own pet issues. It grew incredibly frustrating -- he was trying to overrule the moderator from the audience.
• I raised my hand to ask a question, and by the time I finally got to speak, began with a statement that garnered applause and I've now seen quoted on several other blogs: "We're a roomful of people used to writing monologues trying to have a dialogue." As somebody else pointed out, the key question is often who can speak when; with weblogs, it can happen in parallel.
• Dave Winer was obsessed over why traditional journalism is so opaque -- who watches the watchmen. And he kept trying to steer the conversations to that topic. But, having spent several years reading Romenesko and other meta-media sites, I don't see journalism as so opaque. Ed Cone mentioned blogging a shareholder meeting (where journalists are barred) and noted Salam Pax and Bagdhad Burning and wondered whether in a few years any place will be unblogged. [My unvoiced answer is places with confidentiality agreements and places with press secretaries or other official intermediaries such as the White House or major movie stars]
• After Ed Cone pointed out that the first big blogger libel suit will be a huge deal, Instapundit offered some useful advice, which I want to confirm and possibly take advantage of: "As long as you're not getting paid for it, you can get cheap libel insurance through your homeowner policy."
• Ed Cone closed the panel by calling BloggerCon the ultimate Rashomon experience -- we'll see how several dozen people feel up that elephant.
• Afterwards, Dave asked people how the first panel went, and several mentioned that the means of selecting who could comment was uneven. I actually went up to him over the break and explained that I found it frustrating he was trying to moderate from the audience and he should've either moderated himself or trusted the person he picked; he basically defended his actions by saying he gave the moderator a list of things to discuss and he felt the discussion wasn't going in the right direction. As the conference went on, I grew more and more frustrated with how much Dave Winer intrusively inserted himself into the discussions. I wanted to hear from the panelists who were experts in their fields, not Dave Winer's opinions on what they should be thinking or doing. It started feeling like his vanity project, rather than the kind of democratic blog-like exchange he promised at the beginning. When I approached him at that break, he praised my earlier question and told me that I couldn't possibly be an introvert (Bullshit!) and in the final panel, he started lecturing campaign staffers on how candidates spend their time! Who do you think knows better -- the people who work with and for the candidate or Dave Winer from Cambridge? By the final panel, I was rolling my eyes and sighing audibly every time Dave started to speak. My apologies to those sitting around me.
  [My husband just said that if Dave Winer patronizes me again... and handed me a can of Coke. I don't think that will be necessary.]
• One other amusement at the break -- there was a line for the men's room and no wait for stalls in the ladies' room. I don't know how the gents felt, but all us ladies were delighted.

You know, there was lots more to the day, but I'm getting tired. I'll try to post more tomorrow afternoon.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:50 AM

The general get-to-know-you greeting at the gathering was "Do you have a blog?" and, if the answer was yes, "so what's it about?"

Let's see, I've written about Fox News, Shakespeare, Republican profiteering in Iraq, reviews of Angel & Smallville, Valerie Plame, and Henry VIII's wives -- and that was just for today! Stretching out for the entire week, you add in various religious matters, what my family served for dinner, and some bad jokes.

In other words, describing my blog in a sentence is damned difficult, because it's about whatever happens to be on my mind that I want to write -- which is one of the reason the title of this blog is "Riba Rambles." Fortunately, I've come to terms with that, and am recognizing the perversity of nature that contradicts almost any predictive statement I make about this blog (the moment I say I probably won't be posting for a while, I manage four posts in an afternoon)

Maybe I need a new tagline, beyond "Mental Magpie:" My blog is large; it contains multitudes.

Actually, the toughest part of the mixer is dealing with my natural introversion. We all had nametags, but I only saw a handful of bloggers who I recognized, though I was surprised (and pleased) that several people seemed to recognize my name. Met several people whose sites I'll have to look up on the blogroll. Spotted Adam Curry chatting with folks in the corner; even though I don't read his blog, something about him made me feel all 14-years-old again and "ooh, MTV VJ!" Needless to say, I didn't even bother approaching him, though somebody else who did said he was a bit standoffish.

I did get to briefly meet Josh Marshall who actually approached me, recognizing my nametag. [IASAG, and in such weird ways.] Just out of curiousity, checking my computer I see that the first place I find that I quoted Talking Points was November 25, 2000 and I bookmarked him on November 27. Considering he started blogging on November 13th, (a) I really was reading his site quite early and (b) I'm trying to figure out how the heck I stumbled upon it.

Finally, I must note that I was quite impressed by the gender balance; I was chatting with one of the organizers who said they didn't have exact numbers, but the conference was about one-third female. Which is way better than I expected.

And now, I really ought to get some sleep, since things begin between 7 and 8 in the morning...

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:58 PM

It's been pretty clear for months that somebody from the White House phoned Robert Novak with Valerie Plame's identity. So why is the Justice Department asking State and Defense department employees to turn over phone logs, while phone logs are not in the list given to White House staffers? [via corrente]

Talk about obfuscation -- take what should be a very small investigation and expand it to include three major government departments... It sounds like a great way of giving the appearance of effectiveness without actually accomplishing the stated goal.

And speaking of deceptive misinformation, get a load of this:

I don't have much time to go into the analysis (I should've left work 15 minutes ago) but the full report is fascinating. Only 23% of people with no "misperceptions" supported the war, with support increasing steadily based upon the number of misperceptions the people have until 86% of people who believe all three misperceptions tested support the war (page 11). Supporters of the president are more likely to believe the "misperceptions" than those who would prefer a Democratic nominee (pg 18).

Now, remember, correlation is not causality.

Calpundit also has some interesting analysis of possible flaws (what about people who get news from multiple sources) and next steps (I agree with him; I want to see similar studies on misinformation in other issues).

Anyway, I should get out of here. BloggerCon, here I come!

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:42 PM

In yesterday's review of Angel (which does contain spoilers) the Boston Herald manages to misquote a line in a way that renders the gag totally incomprehensible. It's "goats," not "ghosts" and whether the error was made by the writer or the copy editor, it's still a really stupid error. So much so, that I actually felt driven to blog it.

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:10 PM

So many bloggers are writing about Valerie Plame, Arnold Schwarzeneger and Rush Limbaugh this week that I really haven't much to add.

On Tuesday, Paul Krugman wrote a disturbing article on cronyism in the reconstruction of Iraq. A few excerpts:

It's rarely mentioned nowadays, but at the time of the Marshall Plan, Americans were very concerned about profiteering in the name of patriotism. To get Congressional approval, Truman had to provide assurances that the plan would not become a boondoggle. Funds were administered by an agency independent of the White House, and Marshall promised that priorities would be determined by Europeans, not Americans.

<snip several paragraphs>

And even as the situation in Iraq slides downhill, and the Iraqi Governing Council demands more autonomy and control, American officials continue to block local initiatives, and are still trying to keep the big contracts in the hands of you-know-who.
For example, in July two enterprising Middle Eastern firms started offering cellphone service in Baghdad, setting up jury-rigged systems compatible with those of neighboring countries. Since the collapse of Baghdad's phone system has been a major source of postwar problems, coalition authorities should have been pleased.

[I've seen some articles saying that the lack of cellphones for communications has been putting our soldiers at increased risk.]

But no: the authorities promptly shut down the services. Cell service, they said, could be offered only by the winners in a bidding process -- one whose rules, revealed on July 31, seemed carefully designed to shut out any non-American companies. (In the face of strenuous protests the rules were revised, but still seem to favor the usual suspects.) Oddly, the announcement of the winners, originally scheduled for Sept. 5, keeps being delayed. Meanwhile, only Paul Bremer and his people have cellphones -- and, thanks to the baffling decision to give that contract to MCI, even those phones don't work very well. (Aside from the fact that its management perpetrated history's biggest accounting fraud, MCI has no experience in building cell networks.)
Then there's electricity. One reason Iraq still faces blackouts is that local experts and institutions were excluded from the repair business. Instead, the exclusive contract was given to Bechtel, whose Republican ties are almost as strong as Halliburton's.

[remember, they're the company responsible for the Big Dig, so we know how good they are at sticking to planned budgets.]

And if a recent story in The Washington Post is accurate, Bechtel continues to ignore pleas by Iraqi engineers for essential spare parts.
Meanwhile, several companies with close personal ties to top administration officials have begun brazenly offering their services as facilitators for companies seeking Iraqi business.

By the way, Halliburton's various government contracts for work in Iraq now total nearly $2 billion. [Mercury News] And the Congressional Research Service (a division of the Library of Congress -- I trust librarians) has determined that Cheney still has a strong financial stake in Halliburton, despite his denials. [See Washington Post and Senator Lautenberg, though I wish I could find the report itself.]

Nobody's ashamed that they're profiteering or trying to deny it. In fact, they're trumpeting their intentions quite proudly. Get a load of this quote Liquid List found in a Washington Post article:

"Getting the rights to distribute Procter & Gamble products would be a gold mine," said one of the partners at New Bridge who did not want to be named. "One well-stocked 7-Eleven could knock out 30 Iraqi stores; a Wal-Mart could take over the country," he said.

Yeah, that'll help get the Iraqis back on their feet! Let's just cut the legs out from their businesses!

I'm just disgusted by all this. Lots of little stories from the last several months keep bubbling up:

• In July, Judicial Watch revealed Cheney's Energy Taskforce had maps of Iraqi oilfields
• In August, New Bridge, which has close ties to the Bush administration, offered a very similar interactive map of industry opportunities.
• Has anybody ever explained the evidence of a new Iraqi pipeline spotted by the retired Air Force colonel?
• Riverbend, an Iraqi blogger, wrote about her cousin's bid for a bridge-building contract. Though this anecdote has been quoted in many blogs, it still bears repeating:

  One of my cousins works in a prominent engineering company in Baghdad- we'll call the company H. This company is well-known for designing and building bridges all over Iraq. My cousin, a structural engineer, is a bridge freak. He spends hours talking about pillars and trusses and steel structures to anyone who'll listen.
  
  As May was drawing to a close, his manager told him that someone from the CPA wanted the company to estimate the building costs of replacing the New Diyala Bridge on the South East end of Baghdad. He got his team together, they went out and assessed the damage, decided it wasn't too extensive, but it would be costly. They did the necessary tests and analyses (mumblings about soil composition and water depth, expansion joints and girders) and came up with a number they tentatively put forward- $300,000. This included new plans and designs, raw materials (quite cheap in Iraq), labor, contractors, travel expenses, etc.
  
  Let's pretend my cousin is a dolt. Let's pretend he hasn't been working with bridges for over 17 years. Let's pretend he didn't work on replacing at least 20 of the 133 bridges damaged during the first Gulf War. Let's pretend he's wrong and the cost of rebuilding this bridge is four times the number they estimated- let's pretend it will actually cost $1,200,000. Let's just use our imagination.
  
  A week later, the New Diyala Bridge contract was given to an American company. This particular company estimated the cost of rebuilding the bridge would be around- brace yourselves- $50,000,000 !!

• Two weeks ago, Senator Kennedy called the budget a fraud, saying massive amounts of money were unaccounted for. This week, he gave a floor speech listing just some of the wasteful spending in the administration's latest request for funding. You have to see some of these. [Police training that runs $530,000 an officer!?]
• Congressman Rahm Emanuel has prepared this two page chart comparing what we're paying for Iraq with the domestic cuts. I know it's a PDF, but look at the parallels. [via Mark Evanier]
• When Bush requested the extra money last month, Wampum did a nice layman's comparison of the figures. Or, if you prefer to see the figures graphically, Atrios found this lovely chart:
  

You know, I was hoping to wrap all this up into a neat finish, but I simply don't have one. I'm simply appalled and just need to list some of the litany of abuses.

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:24 PM

Sorry I haven't been posting in a while; been rather busy. And with BloggerCon events tonight through Sunday morning and Yom Kippur Sunday evening through Monday night, I wouldn't expect much more until Tuesday (though I may try to write a BloggerCon update late Saturday night (I don't quite trust my laptop's reliability enough to bring it along)).

• Saw Midsummer Night's Dream at MIT on Tuesday. Though the design notes promised "[p]eriod Elizabethan costumes are used to bring a traditional aspect to the production [though] concessions have been made for ease of movement" and that was one of the lures that drove me to attend, the costumes were mostly abstract and not even remotely authentic. Nevertheless, I did enjoy it greatly. Some design notes of my own:
  • Eight person cast meant lots of overlapping roles. Doubling up Oberon/Theseus and Titania/Hippolyta is standard. The four lovers were also the mechanicals were also Titania's named fairies. Also, several of the minor characters were dropped with their lines reassigned. [Back in college, I saw a 5-person production of MND by AFTLS; I wish I could recall how they divvied up the roles.]
  • The most fascinating casting, IMO, was Puck, who was excellently portrayed by a woman (with bright red hair). I could hardly take my eyes off her whenever she was on stage. She also played the First Fairy (who interacts with and introduces Puck in Puck's first scene). This was done as a sock puppet worn by Puck, with the First Fairy's lines played entirely as mockery.
  • With acknowledgement, they rearranged scenes and lines. The most obvious, and interesting, was moving Titania's explanation of her dispute with Oberon and its effects on nature from Act II into an opening monolog, before the initial scene before Theseus.
  • There are many scenes in which the fairies watch the humans, though unobserved. As written, it seems as though the fairies are hiding. Here, the fairies snapped their fingers and the humans became statues. Then, as if time was frozen for the humans, the fairies could walk around, observe them, and in some cases even manipulate them. Very effective at being unworldly and very creepy.
  • Another clever bit of staging, though not quite carried off completely: when Oberon and Puck squeezed the purple flower into each person's eyes, they actually used a purple pen of some sort to mark their foreheads. That way, everybody in the audience could tell who was under the spell. When Puck gave the antidote to Lysander, he (she; I think of the role as male) licked his palm and wiped it off. But they didn't do the same for Titania, who remained marked through the end of the play. Minor oops.
  • I was reminded several times that this was a college production, even if the college in question is Cambridge University. They definitely played up the bawdier aspects, from Lysander giving passionate speeches about Helena's "bosom" to Bottom's obviously enhanced endowment (Titania spoke about her desire to "kiss thy fair large... ears"
  • As written, the Theseus/Hippolyta relationship has never seemed a comfortable one (he did woo her with his sword) but I've never seen it played so uncomfortably as here. The way lines were interpreted... In Act I, when Theseus says "Come, my Hippolyta" she storms off the other direction. His following phrase, "what cheer, my love?" is more to the others witnessing the domestic spat. Likewise, Philostrate's lines in Act V, describing the entertainments, have been given to Hippolyta, so Theseus's desire to hear the play is overruling Hippolyta's objections, rather than those of a servant. Like I said, real uncomfortable overtones.
  There's more I could write, but dayenu. On the whole I enjoyed myself; I wish I could've attended with friends so I could discuss it with others who saw the same interpretation. Unfortunately, these were the final US performances with a week back in Cambridge next week before it closes.
• On Wednesday, I enjoyed the season premiere of Angel more than Smallville, though the former didn't have enough Spike and the latter didn't have enough Lex. I'm still somewhat new to Smallville, really only starting to watch the end of last season, and honestly I'm watching it for Lex. I find him to be the most fascinating character. Most of the rest of the regulars feel a little too bland for me...
• Last night, I went to David Starkey's reading/signing. Small crowd, but fun. He does a very entertaining job telling the story of Henry VIII's wives. A few notes:
  • Apparently, the TV series for Six Wives was produced before he wrote the book, and there are things in the television program that he wishes he could've done differently.
  • Though I printed out a copy of my review, in the end I didn't give it to him. However, while he was signing my books I did mention my problems with insufficient references to the year and the endnotes (acknowledging the latter was a matter for the publisher) and he seemed properly apologetic.
  • During the Q&A, I also asked him how other historians responded to all his reinterpretations, whether academics agreed with him or disputed his assertions. He claimed that so far everybody had responded positively, giving an impression that many of his revisions were already accepted among historians, and this was just the first popularized history to put it all together. Then again, we have only his word on this. Given the way he mocked and dismissed certain book critics earlier in the talk, word may not be quite so positive.
  • He spoke rather derogatorily about Alison Weir, who I consider the other major current Tudor biographer. He called her a novelist and not a historian, and said that her works may be entertaining, but they aren't scholarly. While that may have been true of her earliest works, her most recent books are much more rigorous and I don't think that's a terribly fair assessment.
  • Starkey's next book & TV series will be a three-volume history of all the monarchs of England. I'm looking forward to it.
• I've been trying to build a blogroll, finally. Right now, I've got 145 links, including blogs I read regularly, blogs I read intermittently, blogs by friends and blogs that have linked to me... Like I said, I've got 145 links right now, so I will probably try to pare it down and organize it better before adding it to the site.
• And, just to add to my task list, I decided to jump in and sign up for NaNoWriMo in November. Given the general tenor of comments when I last mentioned NaNoWriMo, and seeing friends' LiveJournals announcing their participation, I decided to go for it. I may not actually end up writing anything, but I don't think it hurts anything to sign up.

Posted by Lis Riba at 5:20 PM

[Borrowing most of the wording from my husband, though this was something I was planning on posting for a while]

One area that I know I need to work on is in responding to emails. I'm not sure why I have such difficulties with this, but I feel that I clearly have a problem. Far too often when I receive an email, I make note of it so I can compose a reply when I have time to do it justice -- and then that time never comes. I wholeheartedly and abashedly apologize to anybody still awaiting a response from me to an email you sent. It's probably still sitting buried in my inbox somewhere. If you still need a reply, would you be so kind as to send me a reminder? And any advice on surmounting this problem would also be most appreciated, as I've been trying to cope with this for years.

A second area I feel I must own up to involves my plans for lifeandliberty.info. I started it up with high hopes and grand intentions, and I'm really impressed with what everybody else on the planning board has accomplished, but I just don't have the time to devote to it. And I'm sorry if I've let anybody down. I own the domain, but have neither a place to host it nor time to contribute content. I would like to offer management of lifeandliberty.info to somebody who can give it the attention it deserves. Any volunteers?

I don't have time to go back through every post since last year. I mean, we're talking about well over 641 posts since last Rosh Hashonah. But I can think of a few erroneous or misleading posts in need of correction or clarification:

• I don't want to compound the error by pointing out the specific posts, but I inadvertantly violated somebody's privacy by using their real name when I shouldn't've. I removed the name & links from those posts, but I know removing them from readers' memories is harder. [Like feathers]
• August 27: I misunderstood the federal sentencing tables: all times are measured in months and not years. Two lawyers emailed me with that information.
• August 29: wcg commented that the National Guard is not covered by posse comitatus, so my concern over Operation Noble Eagle may have been more alarmist than the facts warranted.
• A general apology for failing to give credit to sources. I do try, but my memory is fallible and I can't always find things again.

I'm going to try to skim through past posts and contents as time permits, and I may have more mea culpas over the rest of the week.

Finally, I also don't think I'll have a chance to update Al Chet before Yom Kippur. I'll probably print out and bring along the current text, and those of you who were interested in linking to it before Yom Kippur, should probably just continue to use the existing version. While I would like to have a revised and updated version before next Yom Kippur, I don't want to commit to anything or make any promises.

Thanks for reading, both this post and in general.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:20 AM

Yes, I have returned. Just a few things I jotted down to blog:

• I heard a blurb on NPR that Congress declared 2003 to be the Year of the Blues. I guess that's why they're sending our boys to war, closing the factories, putting so many people out of work... Gotta give folks something to sing about.
• Services were good. Your basic Conservative-egalitarian service. Nothing fancy, but that's how I like it. I find a certain comfort in tradition.
  • I've got one major gripe with the Conservative machzor that I encounter every year:
    The liturgy is very repetitive. Some prayers are used in multiple places -- that's true for Shabbos as well as holidays. And, I understand publishingwise, there's a balance to be made between usability (which would provide a straight linear path through each service, no matter how few variants there are) and lowering costs (by reducing page count). [I'm still waiting for a prayer book that lists every prayer once and operates like a Choose Your Own Adventure; and I'm surprised they haven't come up with something automated for handhelds, where you enter the day and service and it will provide the proper prayers in the right order.] But I digress.
    The Amidah is a lengthy set of prayers that is read silently and repeated aloud numerous times. And for all the silent Amidahs during the day's service, this machzor provides only the Hebrew with a page reference for those who wish to read it in English to the previous evening's Amidah prayer. My problem is, the prayers for the evening Amidah are somewhat different from those of the daytime Amidah! They're directing people to read the wrong prayers! I hate that. One of the major differences is in the prayers for peace: Sim Shalom vs. Shalom Rav. [I place very high value on prayers for peace]
    Anyway, that's my annual gripe about the liturgy. Hopefully, before next year, I'll remember enough to bring my ArtScroll for those portions. Aside from that, I found the service very good at focusing my attention on the proper concepts, primarily in the Hebrew I find so beautiful and familiar, yet with enough English so I can comprehend.
  • Unfortunately, the first day, we ended up in front of the talking section. [And we claimed our seats first] It's very difficult to pray with proper kavanah when seething in annoyance at the people behind you.
    
    Despite all the jokes, Judaism is, in fact, a very polite religion. True fact: the reason why the Mourner's Kaddish is recited for all deaths is because Jews were too polite to say that certain Jews weren't well-educated enough. See, the Kaddish prayer began as a prayer for scholars, and was recited after study. After noted scholars died, they were honored by holding a study session in the house of mourning, which was followed by the Kaddish. But, rather than deny other, less studious mourners the same comfort, it eventually became a universal prayer. [More background on the Kaddish]
    
    At any rate, the people seated behind us on the first day just wouldn't shut up and wouldn't take their conversation outside the sanctuary. And I just didn't know what to do. I (and others) turned around and glared at them several times, and sometimes they were abashed enough to pause the conversation for a few seconds, but then they were back at it again. I tried wrapping my tallis over my head, hoping it would act as a sound barrier (and they could just think I was feeling particularly devout) but it wasn't terribly effective. I didn't want to make a scene or publically embarrass them; I just wanted them to be quiet so I could pray. Since this kind of thing has happened to me before and will likely happen again, any suggestions for dealing with this situation would be most welcome. I'm considering writing to Miss Manners to ask her advice.
  • I had high hopes that the second day would be better, and we grabbed seats further forward which gave us a few rows buffer between us and them. Unfortunately, Ian woke up that morning with a migraine that stuck with him all day. And shortly after I sat down, I felt a cramp. I went to the restroom once it was convenient, and sure enough, my period had begun. Thankfully, some thoughtful soul had provided extra pads in the ladies room so I didn't have to run back to the hotel for supplies, but even with Midol, much of my mindset was focused on remaining standing during those portions of the service. [Yes, I know Judaism places a premium on health over other observances, and I could've gone home early, but I wanted to be there for the whole thing, and I'm glad I stayed.]
• Silly holiday instafilk:
       Geese and ducks and fish better scurry,
       when I toss my sins in a hurry,
       when I toss my sins in a hurry: Tashlich with the fringes on top!
       Watch my tzitzit and see how they flutter
       They keep me focused when prayers I do utter...
  Take it away!
• Menus for the weekend:
  • Friday night at my parents': 9 people: gravlax, chicken soup, veal (brisket, strip steak & ribs), 2 kinds of chicken, sweet potato crunch, rice & apricot dish, garlic green peppers, green beans. Dessert included tortoni, mocha torte and honey cake
  • Saturday afternoon at my grandparents': 14 people: chopped liver, gefilte fish, chicken soup with knaidlach, roast beef, potato kugel, stuffed cabbage, baby carrots in honey; assorted cakes for dessert
  • Sunday afternoon at my parents': 12 people, similar menu to Friday night
• Saw a full-page print ad for Viagra: "There's no other tablet proven to work better or faster to treat ED"
  I knew that commercial pharmacology was getting more narrowly focused, but really. This is well and good for Ed (Edward? Edwin? Edmond? Neds?) but what about Ralph and June? Where's the tablet to treat you or me?

I'm way behind in email (a couple hundred in my inbox, mostly spam but needs manual filtering), news, friends' LiveJournals and what's going on in the blogosphere. I'm pleased to see that the Valerie Plame issue has finally exploded into a major story. Only one question for the mainstream media: What took you so long?

Anyway, posting may be light for the rest of the week; I've got a busy schedule ahead of me:

tonight:

Midsummer Night's Dream at MIT performed by a touring troupe from Cambridge University

Wednesday:

season premieres of the only TV shows I follow, Angel and Smallville

Thursday:

David Starkey reading and signing at the Burlington Barnes & Noble

Saturday:

all day BloggerCon (and whose bright idea was it to start the program at 7 AM?)

Sunday morning:

more BloggerCon

Sunday afternoon and evening:

Yom Kippur

Monday:

Yom Kippur services

<Phew>
And that doesn't include my nine-hour workdays and all the other chores and tasks that actually need to get done.

Later!