We've won for now!

The following is an excerpt from an email I received from fellow activists Tiffiny Cheng and the rest of the fine folks at Fight for the Future regarding the fight to stop SOPA and PIPA:


Hi everyone!

A big hurrah to you!!!!! We’ve won for now -- SOPA and PIPA were dropped by Congress today -- the votes we’ve been scrambling to mobilize against have been cancelled.

The largest online protest in history has fundamentally changed the game.  You were heard.

On January 18th, 13 million of us took the time to tell Congress to protect free speech rights on the internet. Hundreds of millions, maybe a billion, people all around the world saw what we did on Wednesday.  See the amazing numbers here and tell everyone what you did.

This was unprecedented. Your activism may have changed the way people fight for the public interest and basic rights forever.

The MPAA (the lobby for big movie studios which created these terrible bills) was shocked and seemingly humbled.  “‘This was a whole new different game all of a sudden,’ MPAA Chairman and former Senator Chris Dodd told the New York Times. ‘[PIPA and SOPA were] considered by many to be a slam dunk.’”

“'This is altogether a new effect,' Mr. Dodd said, comparing the online movement to the Arab Spring. He could not remember seeing 'an effort that was moving with this degree of support change this dramatically' in the last four decades, he added."


Tiffiniy, Holmes, Joshua, Phil, CJ, Donny, Douglas, Nicholas, Dean, David S. and Moore, Fight for the Future!  http://fightforthefuture.org

Just a Note to My Faithful Followers

As I pointed out in April, I'm remodeling my blog site.  I never claimed to be a fast worker.  For the most part since then, it's been little things, but, as you may have noticed, as of 2012, I repainted and moved some furniture around—a much different look and feel.  I hope no one ran off in terror thinking they'd stumbled into unfriendly territory.  Rest assured, it's still my place and I welcome you all and appreciate your visits.  I hope you like the changes.  They will continue as I bide my time and carefully consider just what it is I'm doing here.  If you have any comments, suggestions or ideas, I'd love to hear them, so feel free.

New Year, New Look & Resolutions

I have never understood New Year’s resolutions. Just what compels us to think everything will change in the time it takes a ticking second hand to sweep from 11:59:59 to 12:00:00, turning December 31 to January 1? I guess it’s hope that as we throw out the past year’s calendar, too we can be rid of defects and failures and do a better job of it all. What an odd notion in the dead of winter when it’s spring that brings birth in nature. Still, how many of us commit to new ways and plans for the coming year, only to watch them die like seeds sown in January snow-covered sod before the month’s end? It’s almost as if we guarantee our hope’s failures by labeling them New Year’s resolutions, especially when they are so often born of bacchanalian celebrations on New Year’s Eve. Our champagne conspiracies lose their effervescence overnight.

It’s not even a week into 2012 and I am already hearing people’s tales of failed resolutions—relapses into smoking, binges off diets, exercise regimens forsaken, and the list goes on. Then there are those still trying to decide just what their resolutions should be, as if there is a government mandate requiring a resolution-registration-fee submission before the month is out.

Since it’s usually so clear in our minds just what needs to be fixed on the first, I’d say the need for change was realized and considered at length long before. It’s not as if clarity suddenly strikes us in the midst of a bash at the stroke of midnight. Must we reserve action toward salvation until the last day of the year? And, truly, can’t we choose to begin again anytime? There’s no time like now, upon realizing the need, to improve ourselves and change our ways, regardless of the date.

However, with tongue in cheek, I say it must be coincidental that I, too, am choosing this week to try to better honor adherence to something I’ve wrestled with since my teens, though then it was merely a vague sense of something undefined and unfulfilled. And, yes, this all still relates to Cookie, my muse.

I must first acknowledge and laud her for rousting me from bed in the middle of the night before deep sleep set in, to tap out thoughts she filled me with before they were irretrievably entwined with a dream lost upon awakening. This has been happening with increasing frequency since she made her presence known. Not to make light of her inspirations (or question her sense of timing), but that is, after all, her job, and mine is to respond; that is the pact of our partnership. To do less would lay waste to the gifts she bestows. It seems the more responsive I am, the more she’s willing to share.

Not that Cookie, this time, disclosed the hitherto unknown to me. Rather, she reminded me of something from long ago, yet it’s literally right in front of my face every day; she’s now made profoundly clear its importance. A framed text hangs on the wall I face while at my writing desk. I was first shown this years ago and I liked what it conveyed so much, I finally printed it, framed it and hung it last year. Its author is Rebecca St. George, whose tutelage helped me immensely (and still does) when I studied under her in a writing class years ago, the very same Rebecca I mentioned in my post, “A Thousand Words:  The Birth of 'Charlotte'.”

Rebecca is no stranger to the muses’ ways; hers appeared in her life decades ago, and all I have seen of her writing tells me she’s quite worthy of him and heeds his guidance well. I have no doubt he inspired her to write the words that were perhaps discussed at a muse meeting and agreed on as a code of conduct, if you will, for writers. And from there, out they went to deliver it to all their charges, their distribution methods myriad, mystical and magical. But that’s all silly speculation on my part, but not so the knowledge, deep within me, that resolving to follow its guiding brilliance is fulfilling Cookie’s intent that I have a creative, productive 2012. By moving me to share it, she obviously wishes that, as I do, for all of you.

Copyright, Rebecca St. George