Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Where did she go? An answer to the demise of Molly

Since I haven't had much of a chance to blog (and surprisingly, this new semester seems to offer a chance to blog again,) I thought I would check on my blog roll.

And there it was. Molly Saves the Day was gone, gone dark, being used by another for unknown purposed. However, I was able to find this post from December 31 by Plain(s) Feminist: just plain feminism about the situation with Molly and her blog. In addition to finding out possible reasons why Molly went walkabout, she also writes that other feminist blogs have vanished overnight, or have posted strange entries. In short, she believes that these have been hacked and entries are purposefully weird, intended to speak for the absent or retired blogger.

Therefore, I will strike Molly Saves the Day for now, and add this South Dakota blogger who is a leo, feminist, mother, and professor.

Fire: from the personal to the global


Fire
Originally uploaded by chacal la chaise.
Usually, I focus on whatever impacts my personal situation--reveries about life in general, my continuing education, and of course, my family. However, this morning I heard a voice that prompted me to write about something that was tested not far from here at the White Sands Missle Range Trinity Site.

What I heard was the computerized voice of Steven Hawking as I listened to CNN on the SatRad. At first, I thought I was hearing some outtake from Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. Intriged to what I could locate on the intertubes, I googled "doomsday," where I found this article at Nature.com, which stated: "The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the hands of its Doomsday Clock to five minutes before midnight — the metaphorical marker of the end of humanity."

The Doomsday Clock is a serious attempt to focus the public's attention on the devastating power of nuclear weapons and their proliferation, whether dirty bombs to the U.S., Russia, and other countries acquisition them. And according to the bulletin, we are that much closer to midnight.

From there, I went to You Tube to see what the keyword would produce. I found two, which are appropriate. The first is by 19-year-old Nightmare415, who posted this video last summer.



The other video is by Juan Carlos Marti (aka josecarlosmarti). Marti's provides an excellent "fail safe" metaphor to the clock immediately before it strikes midnight. (embedding disabled at their request).

While we cannot stop the hands of that clock, we can stop and think about where our leaders are taking us now. Whether in their bellicose rhetoric, or their actions, we have the responsibility to voice our opinion through letters to the editor, online petitions, and of course, our vote.

Sometimes you need to get away from it all.

And sometimes, it's time to return and be part of the larger world.  Between the first of 2023 and February 14, I painted many watercolo...