rosie is roxy is roshan

thanks for the reply. i'm a quite advanced "yogin" but haven't

been practicing lately.  it is partly because i get very absorbed in writing and the time goes by and i just sort of lost the discipline. i'm going back to it. in fact i'm plannig on taking a long break from the site because i just seem incapable of finding the balance between that part of my life and this one it's astute that you noticed.. i

there's no way not to ake it personally when you have four blogs in a row that took weeks to conceive and a full day to write and really should've been articles and they have zero or one comment or the same old chats with the two close friends when some adult's B high school English essay has twenty comments. Sorry but that's the cold truth.  I'm always so surprised when the fish pop up and say they read me regularly.  i know you are the general readers and you're right you don't have the time to make the comments nor should you that's why you're READERS and you're the ones we reallly write for and i try to remind myself that you're out there because...so many of you have told me...but it's usually when i'm in trouble like now...

whereas the regular blogging community DOES have time they have MORE than enough time..they spend half their lives on line  you see...and...well..it just seems...pointless... 

well anyway thanks for the comment i'll take it as a "sign" that i'm doing the right thing by taking time off to get back to yoga and also performing music which i used to do regularly...my life has defintiely become unbalanced...the internet is so many extraordinary things global mind next evolutionary step information power to the people political change, electric age yada yada yada.

but it's...not a place...to live your life...

yet it's...so easy...to fall into...so easy...when you're a writer... 

you take care

roxane

Hi Rosie Jan,

I read most of your blogs. It is so obvious a lot of effort has been devoted to each of them. Don’t take it personal if you don’t see that many comments. Life is busy for most of us, so not that much time to sit and comment regularly.

I don’t know why, but I have following question for you! It seems, mentally you are doing a lot and very active! How about physically? I mean, do you go to a gym regularly? I believe mental and physical activity should go together, and each should have its own places! What do you think? :)
ps: call me "sha"

why don't you come up..

for the "talent show" in San Francisco on April 25th? I am going to be there!

Regarding the Irish and how they deal with disagreement (my ex-husband was raised in Dublin and I know many of his friends too...) after you rest check out the "I am wrong you are right" article, my two posts the first one is called paranoia and the second one is called culture.

The first one I wrote to everyone in general and the second was really a response to someone who contended that the issue of always thinking you're right is not cultural, but I didn't address it to the person speciifcally because they always think they're right, always think I'm wrong. always belittle me aggressively and don't apologize etc. 

three guesses...

have a nice rest...  :o)

i don't know... but sometimes

i feel like i'm "hiding out" in a nice safe little blog.  it's a pretty vicious world out there.  i know i have a choice... either participate and wait for the inevitable abuse or just avoid all together.  we talked about that before... you know how i feel.  i don't understand the mentality that has to be one or the other.  black or white.  it's not the passion and the name calling so much.  i'm irish for gods sake.  you don't KNOW how insulting it can get at our dinner table.  but it's done with respect.  does that make sense?  sometimes i see a very civil and entertaining dialog.  there was one between kaveh and captain.  it was great!  you see it occasionally elsewhere.  rosie...you've always done a great job of playing mediator.  or, if it's your own blog, you defend and clarify your position without personal insult.  but it seems to becoming more and more the norm to just have a free-for-all mudslinging pigfight.   i don't know.  it's so exhausting sometimes.  husband says i shouldn't get involved in something that has zero chance of ever resolving itself.  maybe he's right. 

anyhoo.  i'm tired today.  i just want to go home and curl up and hibernate.  busted our ass this weekend getting unpacked and i'm whipped.  but very happy with the results.  i love our home.  i love to walk in the door and see a beautiful mixture of persian and "early attic".... LOL.  i feel at peace in our new space. 

i'm rambling.  sorry.  :-(

Decorator has more than a point. As usual I always

contended there was a middle-ground solution. Rather than permitting people to be nasty based on idealistic abstract ideas of civil libertarianism or removing their posts which really does violate the ethical spirit of  civil libertarianism the posts should've remained but with the offending parts ex'ed out. I was allowed to do that when I used to be a moderator in the old days and so that's what I did. It took a little extra time but in the long run it created less work because people learned damn quickly. I mean what could they do write a post saying you just ex'ed out the part where I called him an idiot how could you? Whereas if you delete you get the inevitable complaint  but all I said was he didn't understand that...and then also this kind of militancy develops..and then it gets out of control. And then to cope with it some moderators delete too much and others  not enough and then the complaints become about arbitrary moderation. And round and round she goes...

Of course I did suggest several times that the ex'ing out system should be reinstated but it never was. Usually there is a golden mean between extremes but you have to be willing to give the idea a hearing and then implement it...

I don't mind that you didn't comment on those blogs although I highly doubt they were out of your league LOL But blogs like that not only take a lot of work they are usually the fruit of weeks sometimes months of gestation, bouncing around ideas conceptualizing developing both consciously and unconsciously. this being the case if I can't get even five people to give some kind of response I feel like I'm spitting into the wind.

and honestly I'm not even really talking about the I would say now four people that I am close friends with onsite. As I said you usually comment sometimes you don't but I always know I have your support and we  make an impact on each other.

I would like to know that about my writings from other people as well. My newsfeeds yes my comments on threads yet I get feedback but I just don't on my blogs. So it starts to feel pretty pointless.

I am sure others feel the same way because it is true I have noticed not only on the political blogs but on blogs in general less commentary. But as I said all three of the blogs you mentioned plus the Stairway to Heaven I worked on for weeks at least in my mind the last one actually for years...my point being...pointless...

I have even noticed the same thing with j's writings in a way. If it's sexy if it's juicy if it's travel photography, if it's about a function coming up that people are invited to tons of comments..if it's a photo essay of a theatrical function (he has posted these numerous times) no comments..now what does this mean? That people are not interested in theater. So so what, don't you think he at least merits a thank you? I mean who pays their rent?

Now there is the case of Robert and his videos (not to keep harping on that family but these are really the two most glaring examples of my point..) This is an adorable talented kid. He's our youngest blogger.  Almost no one encourages him except Nazy and me, unless it's some kind of expose of his uncle, you know, shaving or something...how can a kid get one comment for posting really excellent high quality photos?

Then there was Kouroush. When he was terrifying the website everyone got at him, got at him but when he switched to writing beautiful humanitarian lyrical poetry, who encouraged him?  We three stooges...

These three people I'm singling out here are to make this following point:

ingratitude. rudeness and ingratitude. that's how i see things like that.  you can blow sunshine up your friends' a-ses in your social clique you know, til the cows come home but if you can't take two minutes to glance at a kid's work and say, Nice Robert, I just don't get you (not you, I mean you as in youmanity. I don't get IT...)

I read the "What is Hamas?” blog when it came out,

…also the one about labor and Africa.  I didn’t comment because they were out of my league, too political, but your writings were superb as usual. I think ‘Decorator’ has a valid point.  At a minimum serious Articles should have been commented by the registered users only with the approval of the Editor for posting, I now believe.

When there is no decorum

When there is no decorum people will give up. Why should they bother. In a battle between the lots (rednecks) and intellectuals who do you think will prevail? Where rules and reason are laxed.

People are discussing things more under the news feeds

than they used to but I think this is causing a corrolary problem: there are almost no serious political blogs. I have noticed also that when there are people still don't comment on them much. i don't know if you saw the one I wrote called "What is Hamas? I think it was very important and no one commented. The one on labor in Iran got one comment. But this is not exclusive to me. I do think people still comment on political blogs by right-wingers and zionists to trash them though.

I think the focus is also shifting to the articles. For a while the blogging threads were  very active, the articles were virtually uncommented. I warned them, I told them you're fighting and fighting, this is getting like a pressure cooker, it was during Gaza. I said go to the articles, some of them are written by experts, you need air, you're shouting in an echo chamber. But of course they didn't listen to me.

Now you will find that there is always at least one article running that has an enormous amount of comments.

This is just a video of Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now but thank you for acknowledging it.

What happened to making comments?!

It's like we went from having opinions about everything to having almost no opinion about nothing.  It's not just your blog, it's like that almost everywhere, except where there is drug or sex.

By the way where I am right now I can't view the video clip, so no comment.