Escaping gravity: some reflections on organizing

To see a world in a grain of sand…And eternity in an hour. Blake Caress the details. Nabokov Organizing is hard, often frustrating work. It takes an enormous amount of energy to get people to fit their personal vision into a collective effort and even more to help them focus on what matters as opposed to what doesn’t. In doing this work you have to deal with every sort of personal quirk and idiosyncrasy found in a, hopefully, large group of people. Of course, as an organizer you are also part of an broad effort to make life better for people. And if you are organizing in a democratic fashion, your goal is to empower people, to lift them and their ideals up, and give them a vision of a better world that they themselves have created. Doing that kind of work is inspiring. But sometimes the disconnect between our… Continue reading

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-07-19

has a new job as chauffer for the Mt. Airy Chronicle's newest editorial intern. See her first article http://tinyurl.com/lvs9oo # had my first Norristown Zep sandwiche today and my first milkshake in a year # Continue reading

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-07-12

is it conceivable that state politics in NY is even screwier than it is in PA? # It's 2009 and black kids are ejected from a pool in our region because of skin color! A response is being planned.http://tinyurl.com/lmog59 Continue reading

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-07-05

is striking the Wellfleet set. # Abba is still an incredible restaurant. # Twitter:Blog Post:Mishna FaceBook:Comments:Gemara When will the first great redacted book in a 1000 years be published. Or did I miss it? # Twitter:Facebook; Blog Post:Comments, Mishnah:Gemorrah. When will the first good book in a thousand years be one that has been redacted? Continue reading

Sweeping the Sand on the Cape

There comes a day, in every trip to the Cape, when you have to decide whether to sweep all the sand you’ve brought into the house. Sweeping is how we reaffirm our  committment to civilization. It generally happens on Thursday. Continue reading

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-28

is upgrading windows 7 beta 2 to rc 1 so that I'll have a working computer when I get back from vacation. Ugh! # is getting ready to go on vacation, which means working like crazy Continue reading

New Facebook address and tools.

My new Facebook address is /marcstier. And if the tools I just set up work, what I’m currently writing in Microsoft Word will post to my blog Marc Stier at Large (http://blog.stier.net), the blog will then automatically create a tweet which will then automatically update my Facebook status. Or I’ll create a cosmic conflagration. It’s one or the other. Here goes. Continue reading

Do we daydream anymore?

Do we daydream anymore? I’ve been wondering about that in the last few days after a conversation with a close friend in which we mutually confessed our penchant for daydreaming. My fear is that daydreaming is a lost art. But perhaps that is just a solipsistic point of view—just because we generally don’t see other people daydreaming, doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. I want to write here about why daydreaming is so important to me, why I fear it may be a phenomena in decline and why my daughter gives me some hope for the future. Continue reading

A Truly Nasty Bug

FINALLY I seem to be getting over a truly nasty virus that attacks soul as well as body This has been an extraordinarily unpleasant experience. I had a fairly normal cold for a few days starting last Friday and kept working through it as I always do while coughing and hacking away. Then on Monday, I started feeling this incredible and unremitting fatigue. It particularly attacked my hands and arms. I couldn’t lift my arms above my shoulders without feeling exhausted. And my arms and hands would get tired after two minutes of typing, keeping me my favorite thing to do with my clothes on, writing. Continue reading