Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

Hi Everybody,

I can't believe it, but Worlds are actually finally here and so my quest for the world record in the 200m resumes. I leave the country today for a training camp in Australia and then on to Christchurch, New Zealand. Competition begins January 21. While I am gone, I might have sporadic access to this account. As much as I'm there focusing on what I'm there for, I do like to know what's going on back at home especially because I still have to wait until the end of Jan for competition to actually begin!

Inbox zero across all (non-list) e-mail boxes: Agaric, personal, and People Who Give a Damn. (Though 15 drafts of replies remain to send.) New e-mail i receive is likely to get a quick reply: sorry, this does not fit in my plans. Those plans are: Publish the Definitive Guide to Drupal 7. Do Anjali Forber-Pratt's site. Do well-paying Drupal work. Start Visions Unite for real. That's January, February, March, and April.

A close friend often talks about his eyes being opened: to a better understanding of how the world really is; to a better way of living; to more open and understanding ways of thinking, feeling, being. And he frequently tells me i'm already there.

(Talking about Germany, here, i don't know that the U.S. can be said to have learned in the first place from its centuries of extreme, institutionalized racism and their aftermaths.)

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has courted growing anti-immigrant opinion in Germany by claiming the country's attempts to create a multicultural society have "utterly failed".

Speaking to a meeting of young members of her Christian Democratic Union party, Merkel said the idea of people from different cultural backgrounds living happily "side by side" did not work.

[This is a Facebook comment left in response to a New York Times article by Ted Fishman, "As Nations Age, A Chance for Younger Nations", which the always fascinating and engaging Kara Andrade posted a link to.]

Helen Thomas is more than politically savvy enough to know that resigning now and letting Israel's right-wing lobby take credit for forcing the end to her career does far more damage to their cause of Uncriticizable Israel than anything else she could do.

You only have to reach 99 people.

Well, once there are three million of us in the United States, and sixty million in the world. Us, in this case, meaning people who care enough about making things better to regularly, personally bring news and information about making things better to ninety-nine other people.

That is the larger us, because pretty much every person has something they would work to make better when given sufficient means, motive, and opportunity.

Another rallying point for PWGD.

how individual Americans come to genuinely question authority on their own [...] remains a mystery to me. Apparently, each one arrives there by a different personal route. (Well, duh!) Just like I did.

But when we arrive, despite that there are many others like us, we find ourselves in relative isolation, even on the Internet which is supposed to be our great gathering ground.

[This was not supposed to go to twitter, was meant to be a note not a blog entry, but anyhow, a snapshot of what I'm always thinking about: how to make a network of everyone who cares about anything a functioning, world-changing reality.]

A goal of PWGD is to be able to know the most radical goings-on at a given time and place. Going to be in Ireland and the UK in May? Here's what's happening.

A suddenly open night? Events near you that hour with a reasonable attempt at indicating available space

Reading White Oleander, by Janet Fitch. Right in the middle now. Through to the end of Chapter 17, Astrid is at Claire's. (OK, it's official, I do not remember names. I just had to look up Astrid's.) It's been too long since I've read anything not online; read anything that is not politics or technology, Drupal.

It is good. It reminds me that I am moved by words, no by narrative, as much as anything. That I am made to care about the characters.