I have bipolar disorder. I am still after 8 years trying to sort out the meaning of that - which when I explain to people in our one line American text messaging retention ways - my explaination falls short of what this means for me now.

8 years ago bipolar disorder meant that every night and most days I was confused and sad, wondering why I had had the "psychotic" episode (manic) during my first week of college.

8 years ago in 2000, I spent the summer with Lyme's Disease, then the manic episode at Earlham, and then dropping out to come back to Bristol.

I felt very bad because I was not thinking clearly then, and because I did not know why I had the episode. I feared that I might be a bad person.

In spring 2001 I went to Costa Rica, which opened my world view, but when I returned I fell sick with extreme culture shock and had another hospitalized episisode of bipolar disorder.

By the time of the Costa Rica trip I was on too low of a dose of Risperdal. Though I rave about Costa Rica, the greatest blessing about that trip may well be that I returned to a doctor who cared and who increased my dosage of Risperdal to a high enough level for my extreme need and metabolism.

The medicine began to take hold of me, and people began to speak to me with hope in their voices.

My family was completely uneducated in the beginning on the illness, but also very concerned, caring and compassionate. The illness was hard for all of us, and those who have chosen to keep me in all of my extreme ways are glad that they have.

2001 I worked on recovery. 2002 through 2003 I attended a year of college, with some of the first true success I had seen in my life.

I still had paranoid thoughts in my college, but medicine and counseling sustained me through the year.

I was uncontent with the college that I had chosen, though, and looking for people more like me, I sought to transfer, which really did not last long. In a month, I was depressed. The previous summer I had worked in a vigorous gardening interning position which changed my metabolism to the point that my medicines were no longer effective for me.

I went back to the good doctor in DC, who was head of his hospital research team, and who put me on a double blind Depakote ER research study. The study was a bad idea for me, and I resent the doctor's poor judgement. That doctor was for me a mixed blessing.

I returned home in November of 2004, not thinking clearly at all - psychotic, and somewhat depressed.

Thank God though, that was the last year for me to be in a hospital (one last hospital in Tennessee).

In the four remaining years of my healthy turn around (mostly), I have learned a lot about myself, my role in the world, how I can maintain healthy, what are healthy goals for me, and so forth.

But I am by no means done with the constant job of maintaining my health. I have some ways about me that quite possibly could be unlearned or learned, which would improve me and make me a happier person.

For one I have a habit of starting and stopping things, sentences, jobs, recreational activities. This could be worked on. I am working on this with my therapist, and currently am applying my imporvements also in my work, by being honest and open about what are my differences and disabilities.

Additionally, I have impusive behaviors. For instance I have gone on a trip to Maine with little planning, and I have made two purchases that I found were made more for the instant gratification than in an effort to aquire the good obtained.

Other behavioral differences that I have from the average person are that I am slow to pick up on the emotional signals that others give me, I get some bad insomnia, and I loose track of my train of thought, especially in speach.

But I think it is important not to list only differences that make my life and the lives of others more difficult to live.

There are surely some differences that dont pose a great threat on me or anyone, such as the smaller size of my amygdala (a part of the brain).

And I would like to give tribute to my "illness" for many of my other attributes. Though I said "illness" I am almost ready to mentally rename bipolar disorder as bipolar difference. The reason I am using this terminology (difference) is that I am really think the word is a better discriptor. For while a person may have a difference of being bipolar all of their life, they are not in a state of disorder all their life.

There are cerainly a large number of positive attributes to bipolar difference/disorder. Many things go either way. I personally am more eager to be eccentric and unaffraid of differences than others with out bipolar who I know. From my observation of other bipolar people I have noticed a common eccentricity that goes accross the board. It is not a blaring difference, but an embracing of uniqueness like having a intelectual parade or a woman who wears, even paints her walls in one thematic color, purple.

Other differences that I think is appealing that I share with my bipolar allies is our common creative drive and instincts, our visionary instincts, and our willingness to delve into our own feelings (if someone will be kind enough to listen). And of course through history a great number of advocates, leaders, thinkers, and artists have had te common difference.

Bipolar disorder is a common difference. A chemical and brain physiological uniqueness, that one percent of the world might have. One huge percent of midnight essayists, while their housemate's try to sleep. One huge percent of pacing, purple wearing, speed knitting "creative geniuses", who come together now and then in the face of history books (Napolean), religious texts (George Fox?), and modern blogs and coffee shops.

We are one people. Something to be proud of, something to hold hands together - when priveledge lets us down. But most important we are to live, to live, to solve the true forgotten sadness that brings some to suicide and self abuse. We are to try, to tolerate, and to have compassion for, even if it means having compassion for someone who might seem irrational or personally unsympathetic to us.

Bipolar disorder ebs. It flows. Even for me with most of my symptoms in control. But some of those ebs are good, useful ebs. And some of those flows help bring wisdom to the world.

That is my bipolar history. With some belief in a common difference thrown in for flare. I hope it helps.

I have the inside scoop from a few sources about police brutality that is occurring at the Democratic National Convention. I am doubtful about whether it will hit the news, though I imagine it will be on Democracy Now tonight.

One of my sources is a youtube.com video, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoAVce-Rc2c (Click here). The other is I spoke to a Green Party US Senate candidate from Tennessee on the telephone, who said the police are escalating in brutal ways. He said that this sort of police violence has occurred at all national protests since the one in Seattle, nine years ago... www.YesMagazine.org/wtoquiz

I am interested in what other subscribers to the list serve might know about this issue, and why it is not addressed by conventional Democrats.

I also am writing to inform, and also in an effort to start a dialogue about the presidential candidates.

I am concerned when I hear peace advocates say that they are voting for Obama/Biden, while Obama and Biden are plugged into the war machine. (Cindy Sheehan, Democracy Now, August 25).

While voting for Green Party Candidate, Cinthia McKinney is not the only way, Obama should not be supported by advocates of peace, let alone people who are in opposition to the war in Iraq, and the threat of war in Iran.

To vote for Obama is to _lose_ hope. Obama is no perfect angel; he is no saint. He is completely plugged into the corporate machine, just as much as the Republicans. IS it hopeful to vote for the lesser of two evils? I think not!

This "beach trip" was unusual, as its ocracode shows:

OBX1.1 P5/6/4 L6 S12+b----c---- U10(mountains,freshwater,etc) T0 f0 b0 Rd Bb----m----n---- F+ SC----s--g0 H----f0i0.5 V+++s--m0 E-r--

Here are 4 generations of Hess's on a visit to the Bluff Mountain Preserve, which is not normally open to the public and has what is supposed to be the only fen in the southern Appalachians.

Also, I no longer have a car after that trip. I am, however, looking at various electric bicycles. As someone who hates being posessed by posessions, I'm happy that losing my car doesn't really bother me.

Oh, and Leo has kitty-laryngitis.

Guilt comes with wrongdoing
dissipates with time - a guilty conscience
longs to forget details.

What to do if "sorry" is not enough?

NATURE FEATURE: Creeks sink lower into the ground as the drought deepens.

I'm going to cut down on debian-related stuff further. At least until next DebConf, I plan to reduce my involvement in the project to a minimum.

So, I'm unsubscribing from all (52!) lists now, except debian-devel-announce. Feel free to mail me privatly if you want to ask about anything. I'll still see bug reports.

NATURE FEATURE: Two copperheads slithered into the yard from different
directions in one evening. Despite what I've been told, they smelled nothing like cucumbers and instead stank strongly of skunk musk.

Missed the morning talks.. looking forward to replays being available..

rails

Projects not bothering to release tarballs, and just publishing a git repo (hopefully with some tags!) will only become more common, I think, and it's interesting to see this is already very common with ruby gems.

Faking up an orig tarball is still a reasonable workaround now, but will probably look very retro in 5 years.

Re Debian vs Rails communities, I wonder if there's a generation gap in here somewhere..

rest

(will update throughout the day)

And so I daydreamed early yesterday about this place that I had been to once before in my life. It is a place where a turquiose bridge crosses the Clinch River in Hancock County Tennessee, at Kyle's Ford.

And so I began thinking to myself and longing for this place, but it was also that this place was calling to me.

Now to understand this story you must know about the first time that I went to Kyle's Ford. It was to visit my best friend and her family on Hoot Owl Holler Road.

It was a time of great love and joy and happiness earlier this spring, when the mugwart was blooming and the Nature Conservancy was having an open house of their new Hospitality center.

There is something about this place that was calling to me yesterday. It was calling in the form of these declarations: that Fun is OK, and that Happiness is a worthy goal to work towards. And perhaps most meaniful, that Love is a thing worth working for. And I shall not forget the peace I felt that day, in the early summer sun with the group of poor but concerned Hancock County citizens, talking with my Nature Conservancy allies, and finally dipping with Suggi and Joy in the river. My soul was cleansed that day, not from seeking out purity, but from allowing the easy relief that comes with the virtues I've mentioned above.

I vaguely remember hearing Steve saying something obsucre and intangible about a road that connected me and him, or was it Diantha who spoke, recommending I hesitate before going on my own adventure?

I guess it might have been that day that I found faith, delivering Joy and Suggi to Asheville, as a passenger in my car, contributing as a harmonicist in the back seat. Singing soothing songs, about the stars at night.

And that was that for a long time.

Until now, when summer was looking like it might have ended prematurely, with one full week of predicted low temperatures. And yesterday, oh how I was agitated, and how my mother worried for me, when I told her I was going to "get my possible last summer dip in at the Clinch". "Why dont you swim in the Holston," she worried, "The clinch is so far away."

But this one time, the calling I felt for the clinch was more important just for me, than the gas it would take, or the worrying my dear mother would inevitably do.

So I packed up my car for an afternoon swim, not taking many provisions at all, eager to get started. And off I went into the wild blue yonder.

I want to talk about two catharsise. One is that you dont have to worry a lot about the details - you can take a lot on faith. I am not recommending going driving off the deep end every time you _want_ something, but that if it becomes a spiritual necessity to, for instance, connect with a River - anything can be possible.

As well, I want to talk about the way. Concurrent with the first of my catharsis, if something is best for you, and you work for it hard enough, and you do good, a way will form for you.

So I came to a place just past Gate City on the way to Duffields, and I took one of many possible roads that could take me to the river to swim, which is what I thought I was going to do. But sometimes faith and way and the pulling force of a place is more powerful than even the most inteligent thought.

Cast in a spell by the river and the lush surrounding woods, and the little houses that speckled the boardering ridge, I kept driving, for it was not my time to stop. And I drove and I drove, and I continued to drive, until I completely lost track of time. Then when I realized I had been driving on a dirt road by the river for almost an hour, and no end to the road was near, and when I passed into Hancock County, miraculously, not even aware in my consciousness of what this could mean. Only then did I come out of that road, that sad and lengthy path, to a paved steet, and a familiar bridge - lovely turquiose bridge! And a meadow that I had walked before, and an inn that I have blessed before, and attended a meeting in for The Nature Conservancy. And a little store down the road where I bought a map, cracking with glee inside, and used their phone, to call my dear sweet mother, who no longer had to worry.

And when that cloud of dust fell behind my car, and I myself was on paved ground again, "in civilization", I spent but a minute to pray to the sprite who lives in that part of the river, to thank the God that protected my body and soul and mind. And off I was again to my more ordinary life, having gotten that out of my system, and not to explore for a long long time.

But I do recommend adventures when the time is right and when it feels right. Though I will admit that if I had an electric car, I would not be paying for blood stained oil. But that would be my only gripe.

A final goal related catharsis for the day... My truest goals in purest form are 1. Peace (Personal Sustainability) 2. Love 3. Happiness, and 4. Life (health, sustainance, etc.)

Love,
Maggie

My childhood dreams are mostly done, but I am not. I have added many dreams, and I am still working on the hardest goal - the life partnership.

So I would make a new goal list. Life goals.

1. life partnership
2. happiness - something I only recently have really allowed myself
3. sustainance, and a personal and practical sustainability

And truely, these three goals, are all I can ask for.

Off to work on them.

1. I am a superheroine.
2. I have a boyfriend/(partner) with some spanish name I now forget like Juan.
3. I am integral to a group of people who I solve problems with like crime.
4. I can do magic.
5. I can fly.

I think childhood dreams mean an incredibly large amount to our personalities. They speak somewhat to what we are encouraged to do by others, and an incredibly lot about our internal desires.

1. I think I may be too much of a superheroine. Kindof like one who has to be very taken care of for all practical reasons.
2. I have a lot of love in my life, but not like that! It is a life goal left to develop.
3. Hello Activists and Friends, of course I have succeeded this.
4. In a metaphorical sense.
5. I dont know if this counts but I still occasionally bike ride.

What are your childhood dreams?
Have you fulfilled them yet?
How?
Do you have plans to?

Today I figured out why the awesome window manager's tags are so eh, awesome.

I'm attending debconf via irc and web stream, and have that on tag 9. Which I mostly think of a a desktop, since I generally view one tag at a time, and flip between them like desktops.

But often I want to browse the web, or do something else too, without losing the video and irc offscreen. So from tag 9, I can press mod+ctrl+3 to display tags 9+3 at the same time. And after I've done this, can mod+left/right to go up and down between tags, and tag 9 stays selected and visible. Awesome automatically lays everything out.

Only thing I don't like is that if I use mod+N to switch to a specific tag, it will drop tag 9.

More notes and reactions from DebConf video.

debbugs

Hadn't realised how handy bts select is!

My CVE-XXX-XXXX tags are a fairly large percentage of the 3000+ unique user tags. 2461 to be exact. It would be nice to be able to view a list of all users of usertags, and their tags, in the BTS web interface.

Yay! Don implemented the summary idea already.
(And I implemented bts summary during his talk.)

Local partial debbugs mirror: Crazy idea, but better than bts cache. (And if it provides an incentive for a current and proper debbugs deb to be maintained, that's a win.)

vcs-pkg

I won't bother once again repeating my responses to tired arguments like "git's archive format will change!" Been there, done that, been ignored; stopped maintaining any non-native packages; your loss.

Topgit looks generally handy, and it was neat to have its author on irc during the talk.

video team

Hundreds of remote watchers -- impressive..

Looking forward to the remote controlled telepresence robots at debconf 10!

(Also to a lack of tango loop music.)

bugs in large packages

Bug summaries are not yet shown in the "extra information" in the bug index page.

NATURE FEATURE: The first goldenrod, cool days, and ripening pumpkins...

A few notes/reactions from the talks I attended today from the very, very back of the room. (AKA the skivvies and/or backyard track.)

(titular story by Connie Willis)

DPL talk

FYI, I raised my hand when Sledge asked for a show of hands. :`-(

MANCOOSI

(Is aptitude's dependency resolver deterministic?)

wiki

I doubt that trying to get the whole wiki licensed under a specific license is a good use of time. Since the wiki is not a package that we ship, but is instead a ad-hoc collection of many documents, and many conversations, I also don't see the point of a single consistent license, or any reason to be bothered by content whose license is not specified.

Be very wary of anything that makes contributing to the wiki require jumping through more legal hoops than it takes to contribute to lists.debian.org or bugs.debian.org. Chilling effects can work both ways.

method diffusion in free software projects

Most interesting talk today. Was hoping for some results, but not disappointed. (Yak shaving!)

user and NM surveys

Looked like most DDs in the audience hadn't heard of the survey?

SPI

Nice numbers and more big projects than I'd thought.

Avoided being locked in room, so still not a SPI member.

by Maggie

I cannot wait to lie down
in the field with Rumi

Grasses blowing between
my wide stretched toes

To meet Euclid at infinity.

"Parallel lines meet at infinity." Euclid

The Road Less Traveled By
Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.


When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense

Rumi

Well, close as I'll get this year.

Making the most of it, thanks to the video team.

Chickies hovering by
the lamp of light

Geeks tapping by
the computer byte

Spuds sinking by
all Tevo's might

Blackbirds singing
at the dead of night.

Take those wings
And learn to fly away!

I've been fearing August for months. That miserable hot streak in early June pumped it up to absolute dread. Not being able to escape to winter in Argentina didn't help.

Now it's August and we're going to have a whole week of weather like today's: In the upper 70's (aka mid 20's), breezy, beautiful puffy clouds.

I'm still dreading the second half of the month though.

I dont have time
To cut em all
Before I die

But I have time
To can
These few pears

I'm sure of

It means a lot to me

To cut these back yard pears

To boil up this soup

To can it in a boiling bath

It means a lot to me

My memory was blank for poems
Until I went a driving in
- Chicory Season

Looking at a meer blue weed
Or a magic flower as I know it
- Chicory in Season

Brings me to riding slow
With my feet hanging out the back
- in Chicory Season


More so, my mother plays a role
Always at the wheel
- Chicory Season

Said confidently, my brother Joey
"We've escaped from the funny farm"
- and Chicory Season

A bit embarrassed
Anna would jump out to rescue box turtles
- Chicory Season and


Like every family
We want those acres in the country
-is in Chicory Season

Like so many people
We go driving for the calm country road
-Chicory Season

Picking plentiful chicory weeds through
The station wagon trunk
Chicory Season is in.

Getting real has been a special part of my recent life. No fascads. No false hopes. No perfection. Just simply reality.

This is why I speak more about bipolar now and less about activism. This is why I talk about Mom, in my paper journals. Good things!

Reality is infectious. Making pear butter. Making bread. Swimming. Returning to the sanctity of healthfulness.

Spent the first half of the day working on a web inteface to configure ikiwiki. The next version of ikiwiki will have that and some other neat setup features that make it really easy to set up a wiki.

Then up to Abingdon for VA highlands. I was actually reminded of Edinburgh, but not by the kilts and celtic music; instead by the post-rain damp and little alleys.

Drove Anna's golf cart around the swamp. Suprisingly capable in mud and creek ford and general rough going. (PS, if my next car has internal combusion, please shoot me.)

Another night on battery power @yurt.

Now playing: Cicadas and The Who, loudly.

The metaphor for my writing is evolution. I know that my writing evolves like the drawing of the single celled organism, which has four legs, then eventually is hunch backed and bipedal. Then over time, with resemblances to other modern people, it becomes like me.

I was the last to care about how humans evolved, let alone to believe in the process. All of my family, especially my siblings, urged me to think outside what I might learn in my bible belt Sunday School classes. I was deeply religious when I was 13, an Episcopalian of many generations on my Mom's side.

My writing is much like my own beliefs as well. As interesting as it can be to be confused and brainwashed, sometimes it does not make any sense. On that note, I wrote whole journals while in the mental hospital in Washington DC, where I was deemed by Dr. Peterson "my most bipolar patient", like the "most artistic" or "most likely to succeed "labels I never had received. I would jumble on in my psychotic state. I lost the main notebook when I gave all of my possessions away. But some books remain, with jotted notes in the margins, that I still diligently made, even on my fringes of sanity, and deep into insanity.

Which reminds me of Christocentricism, and its' fixation on the Creation Story, as literal truth. I always have been more metaphoric than all that. I just liked the emotion of church. I liked the way my brain felt there, calm but elevated. Looking straight into wonder. Honestly the most consistent thing about me has been that I have always been emphatic. When I was a Christian my siblings and I had deep philosophical arguments. When I was an atheist in high school I had nothing to talk about with my siblings so I moved on to classmates. I stood on the desk tops and defended Charles Darwin, sexual selection, and natural selection.

Similarly in my writing I am brave, I am bold, I am emphatic. I tell it all as I know it, which can often be very little, on a limited vocabulary, like a budget that can not afford dictionaries, only nukes and arsenals. I always have defended equality because I consider myself gifted in many ways. If I didn't have good family members who loved me, and if I was not reared in a household that valued books I would probably be even more left behind than I already am.

Someday it will hit me that I know so little that I might as well be mute in my mission of information the world.

This evening in a lecture, I was reminded of bluebirds, animals that have evolved some very ancient things, animals who go back far as dinosaurs. Maybe they lived long because they are so profusely blue, a color that attracts others of the species. Maybe there was a mutation that made them alert to fly from their predators. I have an Aunt Ruth who did not have any children before she died. I wonder if she ever felt like a dinosaur. But she is the one who I remember for being featured frequently in early Rodale Organic Gardening Magazines. She has a legacy.

Like a plant or a person, this evolution we are constantly undergoing is not necessarily an improvement. Writing over time does not ensure legacy building. Growing long flower parts does not ensure plant reproduction via hummingbird beak pollination. As I grow older, I evolve, so does my genetic line, and if you trace me back to my ape cousin, nothing is guaranteed except for imperfection. That imperfection magnified over time can be disastrous.

The condition of human beings is hopelessly flawed. We are flawed by the messed up power structure of our governments. We are so flawed that of those of us that understand that, and know we need anarchy, most of us cannot say exactly what that looks like.

My currently evolving goal as a writer is to figure out what anarchy looks like. My goal, my child, my legacy, is to write a more tolerant, equal world into being.

One of my most favorite books to read this year was Food Not Lawns which is published by Chelsea Green Publishing Company. I saw myself in the writer. She was bipolar and found healed herself, putting up gardens in unlikely places. (Ripping up sidewalks to plant tomatoes, borrowing unused city lots for her vegetables.)

Aunt Ruth would be proud. Maybe this Food Not Lawns writer knew something of Ruth and her legacy. That book did a good job of depicting one version of some good anarchy. Now I am ready to find anarchy in some sacred niche of my life. Keep posted... I'll be sure to write it down.