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Writer’s Bloc: From a Piece of Mail

As a part of the writer’s group I work with, aptly titled “Writer’s Bloc” — the “k” omitted on purpose — I set out to put something down out of a long distant memory. The subject of the assignment was “a piece of mail.” The memory I eventually picked was not entirely accurate or truthful perhaps, but in spirit one of my favorites. The time I chose was WWII. The experiences are still vivid to me and it was a period of history I was curiously fond of, in spite of the “seriousness” of it all.

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The Worst Weather for Mail Carriers

“Benedetto,” our postman, rings twice and arrives again in today’s blog post.  Yesterday, I spent an hour chatting with him — “chatting” means me listening to him and not saying a word — and enjoying his wild windings and I’ll share some of the learned fascinations with you.

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Up from the Hate Box: The Homo Retard Prom

Every day some sort of hate mail arrives in my Inbox and quickly gets filtered into the “Hate” label and away from my immediate eye. Two of the most popular triggers for an email to be filtered into the “Hate” pile are “homo” and “retard” and in a single message yesterday, both of those cue words landed in the heap.

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Google Gears Goes Offline

Google are making many surprise moves early in 2009 and I love them all.  The latest Google gift is the ability to use Google Gears to work offline with Gmail and your Google Calendar. 
Google Gears worked up offline access for Docs last year and now, as you can see below on my Mac Desktop, I have direct access my mail, sked and workload 24/7/365 and I could not be happier.

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Voter Caging Means Junk Mail Trumps Civil Rights

If you aren’t aware of the direct marketing junk mail campaign term “Caging” — and its relationship to “Voter Caging” and the stolen 2000 and 2004 presidential elections in the United States — you are not alone.

You were failed by the mainstream media as “tens of thousands” of minority votes were caged in the 2004 presidential election in Florida — 35 students at a traditionally Black college in Jacksonville alone — as well as the caging of over 35,000 voters in Ohio and many more in other states. Republicans challenged the legitimacy of Black voters via a junk email scam. Here’s how it worked:

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