Missive the Fortieth
Something Has Eaten
My Inspiration Tonight.
DATELINE: Friday, December 1, 2000, at 2359 hours CDT.
Conway, Arkansas, USA
By D. Ebenezer Baldwin Bowles
CornDancer & Company
The hour is late. Eloquence is nowhere to be found.
I devoted quite some time in preparation for tonight's Missive the Fortieth. The topic I had planned to explore was Carnivore, the peculiar name for the Federal Bureau of Investigation's program for electronic surveillance of the Internet.
In the big bed this morning, I scrawled a few hundred words of philosophical underpinnings to the argument I planned to set forth. I mined pages written by the French historian Braudel and the Moravian physician Freud in search of allusion and pivot points for digression and speculation. It seemed promising.
Now, after having devoted the past two hours to study of a 120-page electronic document, IITRI CR-022-216, Independent Technical Review of the Carnivore System Draft Report, conducted by the IIT Research Institute and the Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago-Kent College of Law, under contract to the Department of Justice, dated 17 November 2000 — well, I'm no longer up to the task. It wore me out just reading it, must less contemplating the implications.
Issues of law enforcement, the Modern State, privacy, paranoia, packet filters, espionage - they're just too much for tonight's dullard mindset. I remain more than a little fascinated by Freud's concept of "psychic censorship," but I'll just have to pass on it for now.
No Fear of Profundity Tonight.
Instead, I'll prattle a bit about recent developments with corndancer.com and wend my way toward a quick end to this document. I'm determined to not become profound. The well is darn near dry, although I'm assured by counselors that a latter rain will fall soon enough.
Four months and a few days have passed since the website and Letters from Cricket Song were launched in midsummer. I've become comfortably obsessed with its development. Good things have happened.
Mickey Miles, the expatriate based in London, filed his ninth Dispatch on Wednesday. Reverend Bingham from Memphis will release his sixth Epistle on Sunday. "Among the Reeds with Moses and a Tiger," Jennifer McGee's essay, was published a few hours ago as the third installment in our new Saturday's Guest Writer feature.
Welcome to Planet IEP!
Planet IEP, edited by Freddie Elizabeth Bowles with assistance from her colleagues in the Intensive English Program at the local University, joined the CornDancer family three weeks ago. The subsite is an experiment in academic communication that holds great promise. (It also gives me a venue to experiment with html frame sets and explore the finer points of tables.)
CornDancer's General Store has nothing to sell just yet, though products are in the pipeline. Some are quite nice! For now the General Store remains the private domain of the painter and sculptor Treadway, who is a reincarnation of the great Gulley Jimson and creator of the Blue Nudes.
The Business Vortex subsite remains a personal disappointment. I've made some progress there, but four of the eight major categories remain empty. To say it needs work is an understatement.
My young friend Chad Miller maintains his association with CornDancer as gifted intern and technical writer about all things Linux, but his participation is on-hold while he completes his first semester at University. I suspect Chad, undimpled, will return with renewed vigor some season in future.
My hope (may it not grow feathers and fly) is to maintain and build upon CornDancer as long as I'm conscious.
Friendships Renewed, Friendships Gained.
Best of all, I've rekindled several long-held, but all too quiescent friendships and infused them with a sense of vitality — with a little help from my friends! This strange new thing called the Internet is an amazing vehicle when one puts it to the test. (Yes, young ones, to many of us greybeards, the Net is still new enough to be a perceived as a new thing. That's one reason the Others say, 'It's all relative.') I've been able to reach across the void to touch the hearts and minds (an unfortunate political and military allusion, I'll admit) of past sharers and create, jointly, something fresh and current.
I've also made some new cyber pals, which is especially sweet when I consider the potential desperation that might arise from my sustained physical isolation here in the hermitage. Many of my new connections — I might even call them lifelines — are built on links to stellar representatives of the rising generation: students, a soldier, artists, and entrepreneurs. These young men and women provide a balm to the isolation.
Thanks to each of you who've read this far, who participate in CornDancer's casual, virtual community. Let's stay in touch.
WATCH FOR MISSIVE THE FORTY-FIRST
on Tuesday, December 5, 2000.
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