Part Twenty-Four

I Claim Each Connection

Joan Ann Lansberry

January 7, 1998

Night so slow to dawn,

quickly now, before it comes,

think your thoughts sublime.

Laura Darlene Lansberry
1-2-98

Laura wrote this haiku to be the signature header of each edition of the philosophical e-mail list she's begun. What the ancient Greeks did, gathering together in small groups, she has brought to the electronic medium. She and Julia often engage in such conversations, talking late into the night. They love to solve the problems of the world. I would join them more often, except that I sometimes grow too weary and need sleep! Laura hopes to bring the same intensity of expression to these written conversations.

January 9, 1998

You never know when a poem
may sneak up behind you
and whisper
"Here I am,
Hear what I have to say. . ."
If it happens,
LISTEN
and capture those words!
Do not let them float away
and disperse
like puffs of a dandelion
disappearing beyond the pale horizon.

JAL, 1-9-98

 

January 11, 1998

I have been surfing the web since October of 1995. I was surprised to find the text of an old letter preserved within one of our computers which spoke of this event:

                                         
Dear Paul and Dan,                           October 29,  1995

     Hello!  How are you?  Happy Halloween!  We are having a good
weekend.  For yesterday, the three of us experienced a historic
event. 
     We went up on the Internet!  Yes, our small computer connected
with computers all over the country and in the world.  What an
experience.  Our newspaper is available on line on a program
called StarNet.  This links to the internet, world wide web and
all that stuff.  You read a news article and below are
'footnotes' that  you can click on to read other related items.
Those are the items that originate all over the world.  We
were in Chicago, we were in Turkey, etc.!
Since that day, I have never learned who was directly responsible for the net's existence. I had vaguely assumed it was a group of people. But today I have 'met' Tim Berners-Lee.

Berners-Lee graduated in 1976 with first-class honors in theoretical physics from the Queen's College at the University of Oxford. In 1980, after various software-writing jobs, he spent six months at CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics near Geneva, where he designed a calendar program called Enquire to keep track of his own random associations; it later became the basis for the Web. He returned to CERN in 1984 as a software engineer.

The rest is ancient Web history. Berners-Lee wanted to create a means for far-flung researchers to share one another's data and work easily together. So, in 1990, he wrote specifications for HTML (hypertext markup language), HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) and the precursor of URL (uniform resource locator). . .

Berners-Lee and his CERN compatriot Robert Cailliau put the free Web software on the Internet in 1991. It didn't take off until 1993, when Marc Andreessen and his colleagues at the University of Illinois, who had seen one of the early Web browsers called ViolaWWW, wrote the now famous Mosaic. Between 1991 and 1994 the number of Web clients grew from about 10 to 100,000.

I discovered this information through following a series of links. Todays Starnet featured an article about the Unitarian Universalist church. At the bottom of the article was a link to the Boston based Unitarian Universalist Association's web site. That site had a link to the Scientific American article Molding the Web, December 1997, which profiled Berners - Lee. They proudly made this link for he discusses his identification with U. U. within the article:

Berners-Lee says he had a Protestant upbringing but rejected literal Christianity as a teenager because it was incompatible with science. He now describes himself as a Unitarian Universalist. "It tackles the spiritual side of people's lives and of values and of the things you need to live your life, but it doesn't require you to believe six impossible things before breakfast," he says wryly.

The depth of the spirit of the man who now directs the World Wide Web Consortium, ( W3C), which insures cohesivity standards for the Web, is shown:

No matter how many interviews the seemingly shy Berners-Lee agrees to, no matter how often he is asked to give a "vision" talk, no matter how hard he tries to speak slowly, there is a point at which the 42-year-old British physicist cannot contain his enthusiasm. In his world, the Web can empower people and transform society by allowing everyone self-expression and access to all information.

"The Web can help people to understand the way that others live and love and are human, to understand the humanity of people,"

Berners-Lee expounds, almost tripping over his words.

I cried when I read these words. The man whose vision has made this wondrous thing happen had in mind people like me. People who use the web to give all who care to come and read insights into the reality of their lives. It is part of what I hope we are communicating with our website as a whole. Many write us letters of how they have come to understand the beauty of their own humanity better. "Andrea Galla" wrote:

Guided by whatever force I came upon your website. And something happened; something so long waited for. I came home. I read - and am still reading - the articles, the poems, the essays. I wonder where you were so long. But then again, there's a time and a reason for everything.

And I cried. Not sorry for that. But it's so astonishing, almost bewildering, an experience to see the pieces fall into place at last, to feel that deep, warm sense of recognition, to silence the urge for rationalization and defence and at the same time see a circle closing...like your rainbow did.

I owe such a debt of gratitude to Berners - Lee, Mark Andreessen and the others like them, who have worked to make just such comings together possible.

January 12, 1998

"Sappho"

Words of Sappho:

You may forget but

Let me tell you
this: someone in
some future time
will think of us

From SAPPHO, a translation by Mary Barnard, Shambala Publications

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
*. . . .*. . . .*. . . .*. . . .*. . . .*. . . . *

IF SHE COULD

Sappho would have
reached
out her hand
to meet mine,
and we'd touch palm to palm. . .

And with my other hand,
I would have grasped
and pulled her
into the present.

She and I,
lovers of the beautiful, both. . .

She would have so marvelled
at today's creations. . .

JAL, 1-12-98

 

January 15, 1998

"The Balance We Need"

I've been finding some real gems of written word out on the web. Previously the search had often turned up plastic, like the kind you find in bubblegum dispensers. The "jewelry" is dispensed with big cheap gum balls. These sickening sweet globs don't chew well. I spit them out, disappointed. Or, worse, I find their discarded wrappers, along with the rest of the flotsam that settled into the author's mental gutters. He found an art in them. Maybe there is. But I can't see it. So I drift along, shuffling along the web road of life, and sigh: "No pickins' today. . ."

However, people have decided to surprise me lately.

One author shared her musings about what being a writer means. In "Defining Myself as a Writer" Leah, (somebody, she must have given her last name, SOMEwhere on her site...http://members.aol.com/zoe98600/www/), seeks to know whether she deserves to call herself a writer. Her honest dialogue moved me to respond, as if almost in a trance. Those words of hers had hypnotised me, and I wrote as I thought:

Defining Myself as a Writer....

Hm-m-mm. That is a constant inner dialogue with myself. I remember when I was young and my father told me "You think you're an artist! You don't draw, you don't paint..."

So with this learned fearfulness, (How DARE you think you're a writer...you vain creature of illusions!)

(...gosh...am I going to send this rant???)

I return back to the inner dialogue, The STRUGGLE, the fuzzy, but gradually clarifying view of perfection, a goal seen in the distance. I get closer to seeing what it is. I see it in the words of writers who move me, make me feel things, make me ponder truths. This holy grail that ever fuels the fire of my soul. . .

(What the hell, it beats boredom!)

I think that's the balance we need. We must take ourselves seriously and yet not TOO seriously.

Remember to have FUN in life. We forget that. My painting teacher told me HER teacher told her "To be a great artist, you must suffer." My very young soul thought (as does my slighter older soul now) , "Oh, yeah, cutting off your own ear really helps your art???"

I add "To be a great artist, you must laugh...laugh deep from the well of the incredible richness of life. Laugh, and love and feel it all, the whole gamut of this stuff called life. Be aware to every sensation. Listen for ephemeral delicacies. Look for ephemeral delicacies. The very act of looking will improve your vision. Look and wonder. Ponder. Ponder everything. Don't be afraid to look under rocks. Truth redeems the 'dirt' and 'bugs'. Cry. Don't be afraid to cry. Sob 'til you think you're going to fill the ocean. You'll 'weigh' less. Your soul with the lightness of burdens released will dance again. Dance! Feel the pulse of the music deep within. It's calling to you. It wants you to dance. You want to dance. Yeah, get out of that chair that holds you...it is not your slave. Listen to your body. Eat when you're hungry. Sleep when you're tired. Lay your head on that pillow of dreams and float. It's all right, ALL RIGHT. Everything in your life is meant to be. Hard, scary, silly, merry, angry, it is all part of the whole. Love the whole, the whole of your inimitable existence. Love and share your ephemeral delicacies. Eat those ephemeral delicacies....plump berries of life. They go "pop!" in your mouth, all those beautiful berries, and the juice tastes so GOOD. Eat! Be greedy for life, but share your treasures. There is plenty of room at the table of life."

January 16, 1998

Last night we watched 187,a movie about a teacher whose spirit was broken by gang violence. Oh, the terrors it brought to me as I lay later, as sleep evaded me. I lay there, sobbing. I woke Laura and Julia with my sobs. My terrors called forth to theirs, and none of us got much sleep last night. There were no HEROES in that movie. We need heroes. This, too, is a paramythic vision we must have, or else the spirit dies.

We were all drained this morning. However I found a new source of strength. By following the advice of inner voice, I am beginning to DANCE! No vision for anyone else to watch, I nevertheless swirl and thrust about as the music moves me. I rejoice again in the strength I am discovering I haven't lost completely. One song on the Silly Wizard Live Wizardry cd calls me out of my chair and into action. Donald McGillavry is a traditional song of fury. I imagine inner and outer foes as I, sword in hand like Highlander Macleod, battle against dread evil. I hear of McGillavry's valiant heroism and it calls up heroism within me. No, I will not let myself be broken!

How dare they say I'm "anti-family"!
I feel the blood
of all my ancestors,
celto-czech,
swedish, german, ALL,
coursing through my veins!
I claim each connection,
for all my ancestors
were
SURVIVORS!
Because they survived,
I was born
and survive!
I will not let my spirit be broken.
I may falter,
but ne'er give up the fight.
I survive.

JAL, 1-16-98

go to main index of all our pages Continue Forward in Time
"Something Really There" Index, Book One of the Journal
Main Journal Index Page