Automatic letter writer

Helping animals has never been easier since I discovered IDA's (In Defense of Animals) fantastic, automatic letter writer. My god! That sentence sounds like the opening line in an ad for a veg-o-matic in a ladies' magazine but what the hell? It is a goddamn magic letter write-o-matic. Anyway, now I won't feel bad about asking people to write letters on behalf of downtrodden animals so watch out!

Here's how it works. All you have to do is pick the issue you want to address and click on the link. That takes you to the typical email campaign page containing a draft letter on the issue. You can email it as is or edit it as you see fit.

Now here's where the cool, automatic letter writing feature comes in. Once you settle on the words, click "confirm". At this point you can also print the letter out and mail it. Your printer will spit out a nice, clean, professionally formatted finished product ... your letter, as your wrote it, dated, addressed. Just push print and sign. It's great. It is the fast food of activism but not cheezy because a hard copy letter has a bit more heft than a form email. My printer spit out 6 lovely letters in about 10 minutes. Try one out. See how easy it is.

OKAY, that's it from the arm chair activist for now. I've got to get to work on Driftwork. Even on such short notice, and no promotion, we actually gotten some good submissions and the deadline is coming up fast. We're taking it to the printer on the 12th. By the way, we've extended the submissions deadline until this Monday, so think about sending something.

Please support Bill to Protect Animals Sold in Pet Shops

Please Support Ban on Force-Feeding of Birds in New Jersey

Stop Horse Massacre in National Wildlife Refuge

Help Protect Pacific Coast Marine Animals from Drift Gillnet and Longline Fishing

Urge Gov. Blanco to Approve Law Protecting Animal Companions in Emergencies






animal welfare activism pets letter writing

Campaigns Wikia

Jimbo

Here's a better link to Wikipedia's new political discussion wiki. At this point the structure of the wiki itself is being discussed but this page gives a better idea of the overall vision. I signed up yesterday but am still exploring the site. This is a new project by Jimmy Wales, the guy who founded the online collaborative encyclopedia, Wikipedia. For that reason alone it's got potential but, as the t shirt says, "What better place than here, what better time than now?"









Campaigns Wikia politics Jimmy Wales Wikipedia campaigns

Reno morning and the political blogosphere

So, I'm off to the see the doctor. He's supposed to take the stitches out today. That's the Big Event d'Jour so gotta go. In the meantime, check out Wikipedias new political wiki. I will do a longer post about it later but, it's all right here. Jimmy Wales has posted an an open letter to the political blogosphere. Looks really promising!

Haloscan's new free features

If you use the free version of Haloscan for your blog comments here is a little news you may not have heard but I'm sure you'll find interesting:

"The new database servers installed last week gave us more breathing room to free up some existing features for more users:

* We no longer move old comments to another database for active, non-premium users—we started un-archiving millions of old comments for users on the free plan earlier this week and all your comments (old and new) should be in your accounts by now.
* Searching of comment / trackback pages is now unlocked for non-premium users
* Mass deletion of comments / trackback pings now available for all members
* And the biggest change—email notification of new comments is now 100% free! So be sure to go and activate the free email notification if you haven’t already done so.
* Update 6/12/2006: Comment threads will always have correct comment counts now no matter how old they are or how many comment threads you have in your account (before this upgrade, the system used to be able to fetch accurate counts for the newest comment threads only)."


Another thing they've changed for Blogger and Blogspot users (others to follow) is that they expanded the blog post retrieval feature to support the comment and trackback management pages. That means that now you see human-friendly blog post titles instead of the cryptic ‘post ID’ numbers you used to see when you went there.

You have to log into your account to enable the new features so, if you haven't already done it, get going.

Gustava Santa Ana for the Anthropocene

Gustava Santa Ana in his jail cell
Patron Saint of the Lost and Forgotten
Antigua, Guatemala

Amid the thunder, rumble, pops, crackles, rips, hisses, thuds, cracks, bangs, shots and blasts exploding all around Alligator Creek tonight for fucking hours now, the cacophony of Fourth of July firework celebrations, and the shouted refrains of a drunken, late night domestic argument drifting over the creek—

there are creatures outside—more than I know—frogs—insects—alligators—telegraphing one another through the blighted dark—croaking—buzzing—an occasional growl—and a bird repeating a tuneless descending one note whistle. Perhaps they are assuring each other that it will be, they will be, okay?

I'm here . . . I'm here . . . we are still here . . .

July morning , the jaguar and the crow stone

Mr. Lee and I went out briefly this morning and visited with some friends. I'm not complaining about having to lay low while me knee heals. Perhaps I am enjoying it too much so it was definitely good for me to get of the house for a bit. It's been almost 2 weeks since the surgery and in that time, spring has been very busy pushing everything out and up. Might as well push me too. A time lapse view of the most ordinary place always amazes me.

One thing I've really missed is the lavender explosion. On summer solstice eve I first noticed some of the flowers were going to open in the morning but I missed it all. I had surgery and the bees got everything. I'm happy for them. Imagine all the lovely lavender honey they're socking away. Mr. Lee tells me they are positively, face down drunk in the flowers. I'll have to get a photo but everything is such a big deal on crutches, or perhaps I am just terribly lazy. Mr. Lee tells me I am perhaps the laziest person he has ever met in his entire life. Of course that's not true. I am merely very selective about how and where I direct the fulcrum of my raw, to some terrifying, energy. Today, I photographed the crow stone and the jaguar and converted the July Early Morning AVI into an MPEG for your viewing pleasure. Yes, yes, it's under 30 seconds.


But before the film, a bit of background on the jaguar. Mr. Lee bought him for me last fall when we were in the Yucatan. We were kind of hijacked into spending the night with a Mayan family who lived in the jungle along the road to Bonampak, a fabulous but once extremely bloody Mayan pyramid and city. I say hijacked because their hospitality was mainly a way to hold customers hostage for the night. It was really awkward because the adults just wouldn't let up. They kept bring out more and more stuff for us to buy. We bought a lot. The kids were great, especially the beautiful Leonardo. He was about five and really wanted to communicate with me. He and I stood by the jeep for hours making signs and faces, talking with our hands, drawing pictures for each other and trying out our few words and finding and reading them from my handy, pock-size translation book. He did somersaults for me and climbed up and picked oranges for us to share and I gave him one of my favorite pens and notebook and all the other kids who were standing around staring at me, energy bars.

Once we felt we had let the adults work us over enough, we thanked them profusely and got up into our tent like monkeys scampering up a tree. The tent is on the top of the jeep. We left before they could get at us in the morning. But I love the jaguar. One the adults carved it from balsa wood. Those are eyes on his body. He sits under my monitor and I think of them often, especially Leonardo who is so talented and so trapped. They didn't even realize that they are counted as Mexican citizens. They are Mayan but they have a giant satellite dish on the top on their home and love watching soap operas on television. I think, in certain ways we are more primitive then they are. At least we threw our tv away about 4 years ago so we have wrestled ourselves partially free from the state brain drain. I posted one of Mr. Lee's letters on my blog back then if you'd like to see a photo of Leonardo if you'd like to read more about it.

Now, on with show...

First off, the short I promised the other day. As you might guess, it's an early morning view from my window. (:30)

2nd of July...

And now
the moment you've all been waiting for

Ladies and Gentlemen
Girls and Boys
and
Children of all ages...

Now....

from the ancient, lost inland sea
and mysterious mountains of the Great Basin
The Invisible Theatre is proud to present
The Touchstone of the Gods
Seer and knower
of all secrets.

It puts to test
the heart and mind
of all who dare
to gaze upon it.

It has the power to
HEAL
or
DESTROY
whatever it touches.

Now...
...for a short time only...

on very limited loan from the
Crows

I give you
the One
the Only
the Magnificent....

CROW STONE!!!

mayan yucatan daily life crows july morning