DISQUS

i like your images! thanks for visiting my blog.

fascinating! i love posts like these. i always like to point out that communication, online or offline, is so much more than just shuttling bits and of information back and forth.

my grandparents' generation often didn't want to have telephone conversations - so little chance for expression! then we used to say that we can't express emotions or subtleties in email. i hear that less and less now. once everyone is used to twitter, facebook messages, etc., will that change, too?

don't have an answer. just wondering.

hm, interesting info. i was kinda wondering why he called mental illness "brain disease". that might explain it ...

mother-daughter relationships are, more often than not, complicated. so this one is complicated, too. as is typical with daughters (and sons) of famous and groundbreaking mothers (and fathers), she has had anything but an easy life. and because her mother is alice walker, not jane doe, talking about it publicly is a temptation she can't resist - i understand that.

the other thing is that childbearing, birth and childrearing comes easily and joyfully to some of us and not to others, for reasons that are probably both environmental and inborn. pregnancy and birth were ridiculously easy for me - childrearing, which i have done for 36 years and am now repeating in small ways with my grandchildren, is something that i still have to work very hard on.

now imagine someone like alice walker, who maybe found childrearing alien to her nature, combine that with the fact that she DID have something in her life that WAS close to her nature (writing and activism), add the fact that these things were reinforced by her peers - is it surprising that her parenting fell by the wayside?

i don't want to excuse her lack of (and, the way rebecca makes it look, commitment to) parenting - but what i just said is likely part of the explanation. i do hear rebecca's confusion, outrage and bitterness, and from what she said, it's totally understandable.

however, rather than implying that we must all be perfect mommies, i propose that as a community of parents and children, we need to look at what can be done. birth control and sex education are still in a sorry shape in most places of the world. adequate, culturally sensitive daycare, parenting education and parenting support are sadly lacking. most mothers, alice walker including, i am sure, would rather reach out for good and easily given help than neglecting their children.

i am a big fan of alice walker, and this post will not diminish my admiration for her books. it just underscores the human imperfection in everyone. alice walker does not hide this imperfection in her books, so i don't feel "betrayed". i had never put her on a pedestal, so she can't fall off it.

following all these people is becoming a bigger and bigger thing to manage for me.

the reason why i don't used tweetdeck?

one is that it doesn't get along with my laptop. i keep my laptop intentionally slow and memory-poor - otherwise i go berserk with it and start doing things like going on second life, which my family would kill me for.

the other is that i LOVE the visual part of twitter. the avatars, the backgrounds - yum. tweetdeck does away with it all. twitter is my online living room. i don't want a generic looking living room!

if you can think of a solution to these two problems, i'd be very very grateful!

karen, thank you so much for thinking about this in so much depth!

i must say that i find the third topic terribly interesting. without much reflection, i'm thinking how this could touch on the topic of internet addiction. it may also be a good time to talk about something like 2nd life (something that i have stayed away from precisely because i'm already skirting internet addiction - don't want to tempt myself too much!)

the first topic is interesting to me, as well - diversity is something that is never talked about enough, and there is no question that most mental health services are used and provided by caucasians. (btw, are you aware of the chinese mental health group at the CMHA - which just got cut by 30%?)

actually, all three topics are interesting :)

thanks so much for the shoutout!

<abbr>isabella mori’s last blog post..MentalHealthCamp - a whole conference about mental health and blogging</abbr>

preloved sounds like a great store, i'd be tempted to spend quite a bit of money there, too.

looking forward to the pillows!

oh! cruel and unusual punishment! but that's what you get for eating your fish and chips on the $10,000 mahogany table.

my daughter and i used to have a standing date, every last wednesday of the month we'd go out for dinner. one of those was at TGIF. i have to say that it was so awful that we now avoid TGIF like the plague. the place was ice cold, the food was below mediocre, and the service was arrogant. maybe it was just that particular location, at metrotown in burnaby (a satellite city to vancouver, canada)? i'm glad you liked your experience!

oh gawd oh gawd oh gawd!!!

( i don't swoon easily bu RDJ... )

woot! a fellow nanowrimoer!

yay! you look like such a happy couple!

awesome post, tojosan. plus you helped me find a few more choice twitter friends.

yeah, my site has been down on and off the last two days, too. i'm glad that things like that don't faze me much anymore but still, it's a bummer.

international no diet day? what a cool idea. sorry i missed it; would have been perfect for my blog ...

hello there - just got your message re the bloggers alliance. i am/was the vancouver bloggers meetup organizer - passed on the "blogging sword" to a friend a few weeks ago; unfortunately he had to leave the country for a while, and when he's back, we'll make it official on meetup. let's talk! i'm moritherapy on twitter, and raul, my friend, is hummingbird504

hey patrick - THAT's where you are hanging out now! was wondering where you were ... good post. i'm quite interested in spammers, and of course it's a tragedy that this happened.

tried "tweet this" for this post - interesting tool but a) it didn't lead back to your post and b) can't find more about tweet this - what's their URL?

and there is a certain feel and look to print that will take a long time to be equalled by online.

portability is HUGE for me. i read everywhere.

what is the challenge?
i am confused, as always.
and the old frog smiles.

you were here and i missed you????

i love kinder surprises. i buy one for everyone every easter. i like putting the little toys up on the ledge over the stove.

wow, that's quite the post, todd.

i'll have to try pathwords.

right now the only attraction that facebook holds for me is scrabulous - among other things, it's a nice way to do something online with my friends and family. my husband just discovered it. he doesn't do too well in f2f scrabble but he beats the living daylight out of me in scrabulous!

i love this question, "And for those of us involved in building the Facebooks and Twitters of the future, is it possible that our own disorders get coded into the very design of the products we release, further propagating the possible problems?"

is it possible? no, it is inevitable. the question is not whether but how.

at northern voice, there was a whole workshop about techies with ADD.

and as you mention, the question is not only about the connection between being a techie and having ADD or some such three-letter thingy but also between being an early adopter and ADD. i myself have to say that i am a sucker for anything new and out there (surprise, surprise, i also like science fiction). i score high on an ADD diagnosis as well as on bipolar scales, and i know i'm not alone with that here on the web.

normal? do you want to be normal?

just finished writing a post on twitter :)

to me, the conversation is important. i feel most comfortable having a good balance of followers and follwing-ers (followees?)

a few people seem to follow me for reasons that are utterly unclear to me or suspiciously look like spam. not interested in adding their spam or silence to my day; that's why i have a few more followers than followees.

overall it works well: every day i marvel and smile at my twitter circle.

i just want to thank everyone for trying to be civilized about this.

let's not forget that in many ways, we're all trying to learn this stuff as we go. and we're trying to learn multiple things. how to have/be/promote community online. that in itself is a huge can of worms (or vase of flowers, whichever way you want to look at it). what is community? who is community? what does it mean, what does it look like to participate in it? what does it mean to be community based? it's not as if we have rules around it, so what can we do but interpret it for ourselves and hopefully negotiate some meaning around it?

the same with advertising on blogs. it's not as if this is an established practice. yes, people have been doing it for a few years (although most of them only for a few months) but that's not enough time to have solid agreements in place.

this is all frontier stuff. it's the wild west. we can shoot each other or we can raise barns together.