I joined Moveon.org To put My Moral Values Into Action">I joined Moveon.org To put My Moral Values Into Action
Published March 10, 2011 | 
">Bruce WhealtonI have to act on my morals and beliefs. It’s one thing to have morals and a internal guide that tells what is right and what is not right. It is different to act on those morals. For me, as a Christian, this is also a reflection of what I am driven to do as a Christian! Moveon.org is just one organization that works for the rights and welfare of all people, for the value of life itself. To value life itself is to fight for the elimination of poverty… to demand a living wage for all, not our immoral minimum wage that exploits hard working people… and access to health care for all! These are my moral values as a Christian. I hope I can make a difference.
I am part of a group in my Church and have felt inspired to do things that involve giving and acting to help others and putting our teaching, our beliefs, our morals into action.
This is what I wrote for my about statement as to why I was joining Moveon.org:”I am a business owner of Future Wave Designs, a NC Web Design and Web Development company, located in Carrboro. I also work a second job to make ends meet when work is slow in web design and development. I have a background in social work. I want to get involved in doing things that make a difference in my community. I feel that I have a moral obligation to work for a more just and fair society that cares about the people, all people, especially the most vulnerable. This is a part of who I am, my values and beliefs.”
What did I want? Poem by Jean Jones">What did I want? Poem by Jean Jones
Published March 6, 2011 | ">Bruce WhealtonHere is a reflective poem by Jean Jones. For me, I seem to still explore those existential questions… what do I want? Who am I? How do I want to be remembered? One thing that occurred to me, as an insight, is what really matters. It’s love. Maybe that is unoriginal and not the most creative thing to say… but it is what I have come to realize and it is the primary focus right now in life. Being a good person… a good husband… a good friend.
So, here is Jean’s poem.
What did I want?
By Jean Jones
Sometimes it takes a dream to remind me
to remind me what I wanted my whole life.
Some people dream of being famous, some people dream of being rich.
I dreamt of being a writer, and even more so, a good one at that.
I dreamt of a writer whol lived perhaps, in New York,
perhaps a Beat Writer, like Burroughs, except he lived in Wilmington,
like I lived, and he knew the writers I knew, like Ron Bayes,
and Howard McCord,
and there he was on the radio, talking about another writer he knew,
a contemporary who went to school when I when to school,
who got a degree like I got a degree, and he was honoring her,
like I would like to be honored,
and it all came back to haunt me when I woke up:
In the end, I wanted to be a writer and famous,
not famous like American Idol,
but famous like William Burroughs,
so punk rocksters like Ian Curtis who I worshipped,
would pay homage to me like I wanted.
I thought of something I had read before
I went to bed:
from the Bible, of all things, and it opened a window to my heart: It said,
“Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart,”
and He did,
in a dream, in a reminder of what I always wanted: Not fame, not money,
but respect
as a writer, a desire many others I have known,
and some of them that I met also
got famous,
and made a career as a writer,
while others, like me, simply watched them as we
went on with our lives. . .
Another Angel of Death Poem by Jean Arthur Jones">Another Angel of Death Poem by Jean Arthur Jones
Published January 31, 2011 | ">Bruce WhealtonJean wrote this recently and I’ve been meaning to post it here. I’ve been posting some of his poems elsewhere, as well, as part of a project. It will be a book of The Best Poetry Of Jean Jones, in my assessment. For a preview, go here.
The latest addition to the collection “The Angel of Death” by Jean Jones, is reproduced below. I enjoyed this, I hope you will as well. Jean offers this introduction, with his poem below.
The youngest son of the late shah of Iran was found dead Tuesday of an apparent suicide at his home in Boston, after he had “struggled for years to overcome his sorrow,” his brother said.
Pahlavi, 44, died from a gunshot wound that apparently was self-inflicted, said Jake Wark, a spokesman for the Suffolk district attorney’s office.
Boston police said officers responding to a 911 call found the man dead in his home in the city’s South End neighborhood shortly after 2 a.m. Tuesday. A police spokesman did not know who made the call or whether it came from the home.
Fardia Pars, who is close to Reza Pahlavi, said by phone from Paris that Alireza Pahlavi went into a deep depression following the 2001 death of his sister Leila Pahlavi, who was found in a London hotel room at age 31 after overdosing on barbiturates.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/04/alireza-pahlavi-suicide-i_n_804347.html
THE ANGEL OF DEATH MAKES A VISIT BY JEAN JONES
“So, you’ve come by at last.”
“Were you expecting me?”
“Ever since her death, I’ve been waiting.”
“Did you think you’d escape?”
“No. I knew you’d come.”
“Well, unlike the Romanovs, you escaped.”
“No one escapes you. I know that. My father didn’t escape you.”
“No, he did not. He escaped being sent back to Iran in exchange for the hostages, but I claimed him at the end. Do you know what his final words were?”
“I’ve read them many times: “I wait upon Fate, never ceasing to pray for Iran, and for my people. I think only of their suffering.”
“And now it’s your turn.”
“How do you want it to end?”
“There’s a gun there by the desk. You know what to do.”
“Were you there when the Romanovs were killed?”
“I watched how the princesses had to be finished off with bayonets as they had stuffed jewels in their blouses which had deflected the bullets.”
“You make sure it all works out in the end, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“And what happens to Iran?”
“Many believe that Iran’s fate is being left to the hands of six world powers.”
“And what do you think?”
“After this I saw another angel with great authority coming down from heaven, and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. He cried in a mighty voice:
It has fallen, Babylon the Great has fallen!
She has become a dwelling for demons,
a haunt for every unclean spirit,
a haunt for every unclean bird,
and a haunt for every unclean and despicable beast.
For all the nations have drunk
the wine of her sexual immorality, which brings wrath.”
“Operator, I want to report a death at the South End. . .”
Exploring my family tree/Genealogy">Exploring my family tree/Genealogy
Published December 24, 2010 | ">Bruce WhealtonMaybe this will inspire the writer in me. I can hope.
I’ve been studying and finding an interest in genealogy, aka family tree research, aka finding one’s roots, on and off for a number of years. There are a number of reasons for doing this.
I was first inspired to do this in a class that was part of my Master’s Degree program in Social Work. The geneogram was introduced and it bears much in similarity to the family tree. A geneogram usually includes more or a specific focus on family trends that are passed on from generation to generation and other family dynamics.
In addition, the semantic web technologies are perfectly appropriate and helpful for genealogy, and family tree writing. The word Semantics deals with meanings. In the sense of the semantic web we are looking at embedding meaning into web content so that computers can understand it and work with it.
Popular sites like Ancestry.com and Familypedia.wikia.com
exist for this purpose. The latter is a wiki., that uses the mediawiki software, which also powers Wikipedia.org
Build your network and connect using FOAF">Build your network and connect using FOAF
Published October 2, 2010 | ">Bruce WhealtonFOAF is a way to connect with others, network, and to be discovered by others. This can help as a means to post a resume and links to a resume, your contact information, business websites, friends’ websites, blogs, chat ids, email addresses (which can be encrypted to protect against spam) and more.
FOAF is defined as meaning in one sense, Friend of a Friend. More specifically it is a vocabulary for describing people and the relationships between people. The vocabulary allows for specifying websites, online accounts, all the people you know… the various ways that define our network. These days of computer networks can make the word network sound complex but in a way it is just as simple and intutitive as we might think of the word. We have a support network, a friends network, a work network, family network, etc. The vocabulary lets you also describe websites, documents and other resources. You can list your publications and link them to this file. You can have one biographical file and link to that in that one file.
Why this matters
So, why does this matter to you? Computers help us in many ways. The web is made up of computers talking to each other, using software that is layered on other software, such as it is on your computer. This technology that is associated with FOAF is related to the semantic web. This technology helps computers help us to better accomplish our goals. One example is in searching for information. There are other vocabularies that supplement FOAF or otherwise address other information. However, one of the things that we search for is information about people and who best to tell us about the people around us than our friends and the friends of others? The FOAF vocabulary lets you specify the people you know. It’s very simple, Bruce Whealton knows Bruce Smith (imaginary name here).
About FOAF files.
These files can be in an xml based format, which means it is meant to be read by computers (aka machines, aka software). I put mine in a few places that I hope search engines will find. One of the benefits of this is that in the foaf file you can list, among other things, who you know with a link to their foaf.rdf file or other pages that are associated with that person, e.g. their blog, or a website that they are a part of or contributor to, or co-owner of. In addition, the foaf file will have other data about you, your work, your schools, websites, activities… blogs, publications, etc… whatever one wants to share.
How do you create a foaf.rdf file: go here: http://www.ldodds.com/foaf/foaf-a-matic
There is a form that you can fill in and it will generate a foaf.rdf file. You select all, copy and paste that into a text editor then upload to a server in a place where it can be referenced. You could put in links within your websites, in the header, to link to the foaf.rdf file like this:
I hope this helps, let me know if you have other questions.
My file is here: http://brucewhealton.us/foaf.rdf
and http://futurewavedesigns.com/foaf/brucewhealton/foaf.rdf
Bruce
Featured Website Project: Word Salad Online: Part 1">Featured Website Project: Word Salad Online: Part 1
Published July 22, 2010 | ">Bruce WhealtonI wanted to highlight and describe the things I’ve done with Word Salad Online, over the years, especially most recently. In my previous posting here, I mention that I recently installed and setup the Community Builder software which is an extension for Joomla – the software that is used to create Word Salad Online. Joomla is a Content Management System, a dynamic, database-driven application. We contrast that with static websites. In a static website, which is how I did websites years ago, I’d have to recreate Word Salad with each issue that we publish. I’d have to create a new website, 4 times per year, because we publish 4 times per year. Sure, it might look very similar in design but each issue is an entirely new website creation and publication.
With Joomla, I created one website years ago. The content, the articles, the poems, the images, everything, is stored in a database (actually a reference to the image is stored in the database). In a static website, it’s easy to lose content, or lose track of where it is. It is rather cumbersome to have 4 different websites with images and other design elements for each publication that comes out – again, this happens 4 times per year. Joomla makes this so much easier. The poems, the images, the design elements, are kept in one place, in one location. The software organizes this complexity quite well. When we come out with a new edition of the magazine, we just change the menu to display the links to the new set of poems that are part of the new edition, as it is released.
The overall look and feel, of the site in Joomla is controlled by Templates. This helps to create a very consistent look to the entire site. In the next article/posting, I’ll talk about how the templates are created and then move on to talk about Community Builder software.
Word Salad's Community Website">Word Salad's Community Website
Published July 20, 2010 | ">Bruce WhealtonI just installed and setup Community Builder on Word Salad. This tool allows our members to connect with one another. Community Builder is software, and it is an extension to the Joomla software that is used to create Word Salad Online. In a later posting, I will describe what all this means – what Joomla is and why I chose that.
I’d like to invite people to join the site and become a part of the community. If you are a poet or writer, or if you just appreciate such things, you are invited to join. If you have been published on Word Salad you may already have an account. You can then create a profile, with a bio statement and then upload a photo, you can add, if appropriate, where you have been published, any blogs that you have, and etc..
To do this, go to http://WordSaladPoetryMagazine.com/ and click on Login from the Member menu, or if you haven’t joined yet, then please register. After you confirm your email, if you are registering, you can then login. At this point you can go to Member Profile Details – Go here to setup your profile.
You can then connect with other members, most of whom, are poets and many may have been published at some point in the past.
Thanks,
Bruce Whealton, co-editor, publisher, web designer/developer.
Updates to Word Salad">Updates to Word Salad
Published July 18, 2010 | ">Bruce WhealtonI should talk about an update to my blog also. I’ll do that in my next post.
The Angel of Death – Poetry by Jean Jones
I just published a pdf version of this collection with three recent additions by Jean Jones to his long running collection of poetry. Jean had asked me over a week ago to do this. Well, it’s finally available on Word Salad. You can find it by going here and then selecting it from the list. The heading to this paragraph has a link that goes right to the publication. It is in pdf format for printing or download. Perhaps there will be a second edition with more poems and maybe some kind of additional material.
A New Look for Word Salad
Perhaps we even need a new name for the site… not really. The site is named Word Salad. We have a quarterly poetry publication called Word Salad Poetry Magazine (we also have a quarterly of Haiku called Haiku Ramblings). You will also find a few back issues of Word Salad Poetry Magazine in our archives. Actually, we only have the poetry from the past issues available. Much of the rest of the content was duplicated with each edition. Word Salad as a website is larger now. We publish much more on the website. As noted in the above paragraph, we have numerous poetry collections available on the site.
In addition, I see this as becoming a community site with various resources. I have installed a wiki, similar to what you see on wikipedia.org. I called it Wordopedia for Word Salad’s wiki. We just articles to be written for this. I’ve installed “Community Builder” to make the site into a “Community” website. Users can enter a fuller profile and many more features will be available for interacting with others. More on this later.
I have tried to include many of the exciting features of today’s Social Web. As a web designer/developer professional working today, I have to take advantage of all these resources and it only seems natural to share what I am learning.
For social image file sharing (sharing pictures) I use flickr.com and use that to host images that are displayed on Word Salad. My home page, as it were, on flickr is here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/brucewhealton/ and my profile on flickr is here: http://www.flickr.com/people/brucewhealton/.
For social bookmarking I use del.icio.us and my page on delicious is here: http://del.icio.us/brucewhealton
Join me on del.icio.us so that we can share web sites that we find interesting">Join me on del.icio.us so that we can share web sites that we find interesting
Published July 4, 2010 | ">Bruce WhealtonDel.icio.us is a website for searching and sharing useful websites – the sites that you want to remember… the sites that interest you. Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site. Your book marks are saved online so you can access them from anywhere on the web. In addition, as a social bookmarking site, you can share bookmarks, connect with others who do similar web searches and benefit from the shared wisdom of what is useful and interesting on the web. The link below will let you join my network. I also find this invaluable for anyone who does business on the web, because it is all about networking.
Just click on Add me to your network!
If you don’t already have a del.icio.us account you will be able to sign-up in minutes.
Wilmington Poetry Reading: Featuring Ana Ribeiro, followed by Bruce Whealton">Wilmington Poetry Reading: Featuring Ana Ribeiro, followed by Bruce Whealton
Published June 9, 2010 | ">Bruce WhealtonThis is exciting news. Well, part of this announcement isn’t so exciting – the fact that this is a farewell performance by Ana. Port City Poet (Wilmington, NC) Ana Ribeiro is doing her farewell performance at the Bottega in Wilmington, NC. Ana has been running the Port City Poet’s Blog for some time now, and she is leaving for a scholarship, overseas. You can read more about this event on Ana’s blog here: http://poets.blogs.starnewsonline.com/11634/my-farewell-performances-this-week/… It’s always exciting to witness a good poet sharing her original poetry. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make it with various possible job conflicts but as it turned out, I am able to come. So, Ana, being the nice person that she is, suggested that I read with her that night, as co-featured poet, as it were. So, indeed that is the plan. Ana will read from 9:05-9:25pm, with a short break and then I, Bruce Whealton, will read from 9:35 – 9:55pm. It’s always exciting for me to get down there and be part of the poetry scene. It is where I started as a poet and nurtured my poetry, or nurtured my inner poet, as it were (I think I’ve used that phrase, as it were, to many times in one paragraph 
).
The above event is a feature of Jean Jones Presents, an offering on the second Thursday of each month. There will be a poetry workshop as well. Further details are at the link above.
Ana will host another poetry reading at the Brown Coat in Wilmington as well.
Maybe some of my readers are in the Wilmington, NC area… if not, I’ll have to share videos when they become available online.
Should be fun!
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