Thank you for attending the demonstration near you yesterday on Solidarity Saturday. It’s important to turn up in physical as opposed to digital form, to link arms, to carry signs, to speak out, to be counted on this important issue.  This is a terribly old fashioned way to petition the Government for redress of grievances, to take the First Amendment’s phrase, but alas, it’s all there is.

Today is Solidarity Saturday.  Your bloguero and thousands of others will brave the cold and head to Albany, New York,  and other cities across America for demonstrations in support of Wisconsin’s beleaguered public workers and their unions.  So the first  bird (in this case a phoenix, for America’s labor unions) is this: join me in Albany, New York today at high noon or in the zillions of other places where at the same time  progressives will apply shoe leather to pavement, lift every voice, link arms and stand up for public employees.  You can find the demonstration nearest you by following this link.  As Mother Jones said, “Pray for the dead, fight like hell for the living.”  Your bloguero notes in passing the additional salubrious effect of exposure to cold winter air in battling cabin fever and inevitable Seasonal Affective Grumpiness (SAG).

The phoenix was your first bird.  The second bird (in this case almost a complete turkey):  the Dream Antilles Weekly Digest.  Your bloguero notes that this week was not the finest  at The Dream Antilles, but also, thank goodness, not its worst .   It was a  week dominated by concerns about events in  Wisconsin and never ending Winter.  Here’s what there was:

The week began much as it ends with Solidarity With Wisconsin’s Workers, complete with Pete Seeger and historical video, a recollection of the importance of unions public and private and a call to stand in solidarity with the workers in Wisconsin.

Haiku for a blustery, winter night with high wind and low, low, low prices temperatures.

Cuba’s Celebration Of Books: Can We Have One? notes the  delights of the Havana International Book Fair and wonders whether an event like that, focusing on the reader, wouldn’t be wonderful for New York City.  The Dream Antilles began as a Lit Blog.  Sometimes it actually finds its way back to its original topic.

In response to a New York Times piece prematurely hinting at  the demise of blogs and utterly clueless about the evolution of the Internet, your bloguero felt compelled to post I’m Nor Goin Nowhere, complete with Bob Dylan video and an analysis of why people migrate from platform to platform as the Internet evolves.

Your bloguero confesses it.  Your bloguero always aspired to be a philanthropist.  Alas, that has not happened yet, though, of course, hope for such things springs eternal.  Buying some pizza for the demonstrators was as close as your bloguero came this week to being a philanthropist.  Ian’s Pizza answers your bloguero’s telephone call.  The Governor answers the call of “Koch.”  Please contrast and compare.  The story of feeding the demonstrators and a call for others to buy pizza for those in Madison is in Feed The Wisconsin Demonstrators Pizza.  The success of this movement is noted in today’s New York Times

Annoyed that none of the major Democratic powers had visited the striking demonstrators in Madison, your bloguero issued an invitation to the President, Obama: Please Go To Wisconsin.  As I look out the frozen window here in preparation for today’s demo, I note in passing that Our Nation’s President has not responded to this clarion call for action.  Question for later: how not surprised is your bloguero?

Haiku about yet another approaching, forecasted snowstorm.  Yes, it did arrive.  Yes, there is more snow.  Columbia County, New York has had a snow cover for months.  Climate change has made this winter in your bloguero’s humble opinion the worst in decades.  More to come, he fears.

And you end up where you began, today is Solidarity Saturday.  Be There.  I hope we can all push back from the monitor and keyboard, pull on the appropriate clothing, and get out there.  After all, what else is there to do?

Your bloguero notes in passing that this Digest is a weekly feature of the Port Writers Alliance and is supposed to be posted early Sunday morning. Well, things happen.  The best laid plans of mice, etc.  Or as your bloguero’s great grandmother, an organizer of the ILGWU used to say, “Mann tracht; Gott lacht.” See you next week if the creek don’t rise on Sunday early.

I just ordered 2 pizzas to be delivered to demonstrators in Madison, Wisconsin.  Rachel Maddow has the story:

You’re probably already familiar with ordering take-out food online. Some restaurants let you do it directly and others use a middle man service, but the idea is that you log on, place your order, plug in your credit card info and tell it where to deliver the food. But there’s nothing that says you have to have the food delivered to yourself. In fact, there’s nothing that says you have to even be in the same country as the food you’ve just ordered.

And so we arrive at Ian’s Pizza by the Slice where donations literally from around the world are coming into their State Street store in the form of online pizza orders to feed Wisconsin protesters. As Politico reports, “On Saturday alone, Ian’s gave away 1,057 free slices in their store and delivered more than 300 pizzas to the Capitol itself.”

You get it.  I got it.  I sent 2 20″ 3 topping pizzas to the assembled democracy demonstrators.  Join me.  It’s easy.  You go to badgerbites.com and order a pie for the demonstrators.  You know how to order for yourself.  It’s just as easy to order for others.  Go for it.  It will make you smile.

And by the way.  This does not mean that my allegiance to Pizza Bob’s in Ann Arbor has been violated in any regard.  The way I see it, when in Madison, you do like the Badgers.

simulposted at The Dream Antilles

Pitchers and catchers reported to Spring Training, so the end of winter must be nearing.  Ojala! That’s good, because your bloguero has an acute case of seasonal affective grumpiness (SAG) that just won’t quit.  Tonight there is a high wind warning.  That means gusts of over 60 mph.  If Winter is going out to go out like a lamb, at the moment it’s acting like Rodan.  But enough about him and your bloguero, here’s what this week brought to read and look at:

Solidarity With Wisconsin’s Union Workers features a great historical video and Pete Seeger singing Solidarity Forever.  Normally, your bloguero would have cross posted this, so consider it a gift if you read this far.

Almost Spring Haiku.  Things started to melt, your bloguero was inspired. Briefly.

Futbol, Galeano, Mexico a story by Uruguayan genius Eduardo Galeano about football and Mexico and some context by your bloguero.

Hello Cruel World!, an invitation to blog readers who might be looking for a new place to hang out to visit Port Writers Alliance blogs.

Haiku  that wonder about what one tells oneself, about one’s inner voice.

Your bloguero notes in passing that this Digest is a weekly feature of the Port Writers Alliance and is supposed to be posted early Sunday morning. Well, things happen.  The best laid plans of mice, etc.  See you next week. if the creek don’t rise on Sunday early.  

Welcome, welcome, welcome. Bienvenidos!  This is a blog welcome mat.  Welcome to a wonderful, corner of the Leftblogosfero that you might not have encountered before.  Especially if you are leaving the Orange Giant and looking for a new place to hang out.  And, of course, welcome to the Writers Port Alliance!

If, like me, you miss the free-for-all (one with some basic, human rules of respect and decency for others) of the old group blogs, and if you’re looking for a new “home” for your pajama clad (or unclad or formally attired) self, you’ve found the right place for joining once again in the unrestrained, unsegmented joy of reading and writing in the Leftblogosfero.

A blog free-for-all.  That’s what I was looking for when I originally came here.  The fun of a crowd of participants.  The excitement of learning others’ views.  A free-for-all.  A “place” where everyone and everything got mixed together and you could pick and choose at your leisure.  It’s a noun (a phrase?) I haven’t used in decades.  In fact, it’s been so long, that I wanted to check its connotation:  

Definition of FREE-FOR-ALL:

a competition, dispute, or fight open to all comers and usually with no rules : brawl; also : a chaotic situation resembling a free-for-all especially in lacking rules or structure (the press conference deteriorated into a free-for-all) …

Synonyms: affray (chiefly British), broil, donnybrook, fracas, fray, free-for-all, melee (also mêlée), rough-and-tumble, row, ruckus, ruction

Antonyms: order, orderliness

Ooops.  Free-for-all.  Well, so maybe it was the wrong word after all.  I don’t think of this blog as a fight or a donnybrook.  Truth be told, donnybrook is one of those words I know, but it isn’t in my primary vocabulary.  And when it comes to my brothers and sisters in the typing class, we all know and dread what can happen when the basic rules of human decency are breached.  So it’s not about creating chaos, or biting off other combatants’ ears, it’s about freedom and excitement that group blogging is so very good at.

There are eight blogs in the Writers Port Alliance.  You can find their links at the top of the page.  Two of these (The Dream Antilles and Ignoring Asia) are solo acts; the others, group blogs with varying points of view and characteristics.  They are much smaller than the mega-blog, which means that they are slower to gather comments, and that essays are available for longer before they are disappeared and pushed off the page.  Items printed in one space might fit in all or some or none of the others, and the members and writers cross-post freely.

Welcome!  As a favorite band says, “Just poke around.”

originated at The Dream Antilles

Unlike Stupid Bowl 2010, an occasion on which your bloguero’s use of various intoxicating liquids led to an uncharacteristically  spectacular flame out and a gigantic, public crash, in which the biggest injury was self-inflicted embarrassment that would persist unabated for a full calendar year, Stupid Bowl 2011 was mild.  It ended in relative quiet and probity, and was quickly eclipsed by the excitement of AOL’s buying Hufflepuffle and, much more important, Egypt’s Televised Revolution.

As usual, your bloguero had no idea what the week would bring.  Self absorbed, he was thrilled that he would not spend the year until Stupid Bowl 2012 in penance and vain attempts to apologize for his unfathomable folly and excuse his bad behavior.  No.  He would be able to move on.  What a relief.  But he admits it: his having committed to writing this Digest did cause him some slight concern.  What, he asked, would happen if he couldn’t bring himself to write anything this week?  What if the writing muse were on vacation and the story warehouse were padlocked? Maybe he could avoid this potential problem be being abducted to someplace in the Caribbean  with coco palms and warm beaches and, best of all, lacking all Internet and/or electricity.  Alas and alack.  No such luck.  No space ships.  No armed kidnappers.  Not even an invitation to escape. Nada.

If you look at the last week in The Dream Antilles you will find:

A Haiku about snow.  Because of ice and sleet, my dog friend was finally able to walk on top of our deep snow cover.  A brief reflection on the canine world.

Huffpo Bought By AOL. The news that the beleaguered, dinosaur of dial up, AOL, bought Huffington Post and made the doyenne of coy self promotion, Ariana, even richer.  A $315,000,000 deal built at least in part on the backs of those who blogged and wrote for free, who were, of course, screwed in the deal.

Sorry, Ariana and Markos, No More Free Content For You.  I didn’t write anything at Hufflepuffle, but I was sure that when dailyKos was eventually sold to a group of investment bankers and venture capitalists-I think this is now likely– I wouldn’t be paid for all of the writing I posted there, that Markos would argue that I got the “exposure” I deserved and that nothing further not even a propina piquena was required.  So, though I think the GBCW genre has fallen on bad times since ErrinF penned her immortal screed, I waved my middle digit in the rear view mirror and rode away on a cloud indignation.  This was surprisingly easy.

Skewering Spiderman.  How often can you find a review that says this?  “Spider-Man” is not only the most expensive musical ever to hit Broadway; it may also rank among the worst.”  Ouch.

Brian Jacques, RIP.  A children’s author I really loved to read to my kids passed on.  In his stories good always triumphed.  He will be sorely missed, though I’m sure that for generations to come parents will enjoy reading his works to their kids.

Mubarak To The World: I Fart In Your General Direction.  No Nixonian adieu for the perennial tyrant.  No.  Instead, defiance and indignation even as he was secretly packing his bags and moving his money around getting ready to do the Mobutu.  

A Haiku about a subzero night sky.

A Haiku about Haiku.

And Now Algeria? wonders whether the demonstrations we saw on Saturday in Algiers and elsewhere are the starting bell for events like Tunisia and Egypt.

A Piece Of Internet History marks the end of dKos as we know it, and the transformation into what I think amouts to “Left Coast Facebook^TM.”  

This essay about what is on The Dream Antilles. It’s supposed to be a  weekly Sunday morning very early digest for the Writers Port Alliance. As you can see, today is Saturday.  I’m putting this up now, because I won’t be able to on Sunday. See you next week, if the creek don’t rise.  On Sunday early.

   

I Taunt You

Well, once again the pundits have shown that they can get it wrong.  Very wrong.  Today’s supposed love fest, to be commenced when Mubarak would go somberly on TV and announce in tones reminiscent of Richard Nixon that he was stepping down or ceding power, is canceled.  Until further notice.  Mubarak insists he will remain  Apparently until he is forced to leave.

And he’s served notice that the force requiring him to leave isn’t going to come from the millions of demonstrators.  Or from the US and EU, which have propped up this tyrant, our Man in Cairo, democracy be damned, for thirty years.  No.  He’s going to stay the course.

Said the tyrant petulantly in today’s television speech:

“We will not accept or listen to any foreign interventions or dictations,” Mr. Mubarak said, implying that pressure to resign came from abroad as opposed to masses of people demanding his ouster through his country.

Well, ok, then.  That will put the US and the EU and pro-democracy forces across the world on notice and in their place.

Let the demonstrations continue.  This guy clearly has to go.

I know all too much about writing for free.  I do it here all the time. It’s a labor of love.  I’ve been at it for more than 900 blog posts and more than 5 years.  I know about writing without being paid for it.  Despite that, and despite my understanding that when I post at group blogs I know I won’t get paid, I am absolutely furious about the AOL-Huffington Post Deal.  Why?  Because the writers are getting screwed, and they’re not going to get a cent out of the deal. Not a sou.

The news this morning–  I’m sure you haven’t missed it–  was that that beleaguered, dinosaur of dial up AOL has bought Huffington Post and made that doyenne of self promotion and faux progressive politics, Arianna, an AOL executive.  Here’s the essence of the story from the New York Times: