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I’m not too excited by meme tag. You know, one blogger tells about his 6 favorite Star Wars movies and challenges 6 friends to do the same. It’s sorta like breaking your friends writer’s block with chain mail.

I don’t condemn the practice. I steal memes from other bloggers all the time. (A meme, you know, is an idea. We bloggers call things by different names so as to impress you with coolness.) I defy you to find an original idea.

It’s just that I worked through endless writing prompts all the way through college. And I’ve given hundreds more prompts to the teenagers who’ve populated my classroom chairs, lo these 25 years.

So now, S’mee over at Knot in the String has tagged me with a meme. The “NO TAGGING” neon sign seems to have not been working. I respect S’mee, and I think the idea she is spreading is a good one. So I will relent, partially. I will blog on this meme, because it’s worth stealing.

My plan is to be a stick in the mud, though. I’ve found that as a teacher, every time I open my mouth and assign a writing topic, sooner or later, somebody expects me to grade what they’ve written. They’ll be no grading here. That’s too much like work.

BTW, The writing prompt is:

• Write about a time when you were the recipient of service,
• Write about a time when you gave service,
• Write about a time when I witnessed service being done by one person to another.

I encourage you to steal this idea. When you are done with your version, let S’mee know. She grades hard but she has been known to give out stickers and cookies for good work.

Oh yeah, my response is the next post.

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Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The short description in the header reads “I’m just sayin’.” When I started this little project, I thought I would just write things I thought about. The kind of thing I would say to people if they listened.

That was pretty easy when no one was reading.

I didn’t know that clean water and poverty would be such a hit. I’m gratified that somebody thinks willisays is worth reading. I’m still not sure why I get hundreds of hits a day now. Even when I don’t write anything!

A new feeling of responsibility has overtaken me. I have to have something important to say for the folks. I have to avoid offending readers. What would happen if people stopped coming by? The $4.00 in Amazon kick backs would dry up.

Yeah, it sounds pretty lame when I write it out. But that’s been me over the past few days and weeks.

I’m glad that’s over.

I worked on the Yes on 8 campaign Tuesday. I live in California. I think marriage is important. It seemed like the thing to do. I didn’t have any money to give, so I worked on the campaign. (The $4 from Amazon hasn’t got here yet.)

I kept having this nagging feeling though. I saw the New York Times picture of the two gay dad’s struggling to provide for their kid. My compassion for them and others like them has really grown. They have a unique struggle. I started to worry that I was just making their struggle harder.

These people who live differently that me were just trying to make their way in life. They were no threat to me, I began to think.

Well, you probably heard that Prop 8 passed. Just before the election though, there started to be vicious attacks on my religious beliefs. The attacks continue. But the attacks have spread to all members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Erinannie at Moments of Clarity and Chaos shares the too common experience of this week:

At some point in the morning I got a ‘tweet’ about the No on Prop 8/anti-Mormon rally today in L.A. At first the way this tweet was written was specifically anti-Mormon. It wasn’t about civil liberties, or the CA state constitution, or even about love and marriage. It was flat out a threat against Mormons.

Not once have I made a public comment, whether on my blog or on Twitter, about Prop 8. In fact, I have very conflicting feelings about it, and have steered far away from any conversations on the subject. The bottom line is that I don’t live in California, and therefore, don’t feel that I should exert any influence over another state’s vote. I know many people disagree in different ways over that position. I don’t really care.

So you can only imagine how shocked I was when I personally started receiving threats today all because my Twitter account has me identified as Mormon. I was told to go to hell in more ways than I can count.

I’m having a hard time maintaining my compassion. I haven’t threatened to kill, made fun of beliefs or picketed sacred places of anyone who disagrees with me. But that’s what I get in return.

The unnoticed attack on freedom of thought has been fought slowly in the past.  Now that a major counter-attack has been won, the silent enemy is revealed.

Firesign Theater did a radio sketch in the late 60s that I remember well. Several hippies are talking assuring themselves and each other with the lines “I’m groovy. Are you groovy?,” “Yeah, I’m groovy.” and “We’re all groovy.”

Another man enters the scene and they start a new chorus. “He’s not groovy.” and “Hey, you’re not groovy.” The man protests that he is too, groovy. But the group decides that, in fact, the newcomer is not groovy and needs to be sent back to for regrooving. The result, they hope, is that the man will return groovy, just like them.

I understood hippies to favor peace, love and understanding in the world. Being different was OK. We should all have tolerance for one another, according to this counter culture. Turns out, they wanted everyone to be the same different as their different. The hypocrisy of “Tolerance for me, but not for thee,” was evident to my almost adolescent mind.

I’m often reminded of the self-groovy crowd when I hear people hold forth on their political opinions. Presidential election years seem to bring out the “groovier-than-thou” attitude in many Americans. Perhaps it is that I just hear from old hippies or wish-they-were-hippies.

I don’t decry this generation or this election cycle as being any worse than others. (I’d be happy to share the details of the Jefferson/Adams nastiness in 1796 and 1800 with anyone who is interested). I’m not really surprised, for instance, by those who loudly claim that George Bush has trampled civil rights and will shout down anyone who disagrees with them.

It’s easy to lose the capacity for rational thought when you refuse to consider opinions other than your own. You believe X. You only listen to people who believe X. It becomes easier and easier to be intolerant of any one who does not passionately embrace X.

The image of standing in an echo chamber shouting, comes to mind.

The case of CoachDeb is instructive here. CoachDeb is the Twitter name of Deborah Micek, a successful business mentor who lives in Hawaii. People follow her on Twitter, read her blogs, listen to her webinars and podcasts, buy her books and attend her seminars. People do all that because Deb helps them improve their business and make money.

To some of her followers, all the free advice and helpful instruction was not enough. Deb spoke her mind about the recent presidential debates. That wasn’t groovy, for some.

Deb noticed that more than a few people stopped accepting her free success advice because they didn’t agree with her politics. Not that it really hurt her bottom line. The incident just serves to illustrate the tendency of some people close up their minds when they get information they may have to think about. Even when it means losing access to information that could be very useful.

Those who have read this blog for very long may have already guessed my conclusion. I like to think about things and consider different points of view. I get comments from all sorts who have definite views on various topics. I thank you for sharing them. Honest discussion is valued here.

I like to think I have enough confidence in my positions to withstand criticism. And the ability to change my position when new information comes to my attention.

I’m just sayin’

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Many teachers find that Twitter is a better online collaboration tool than wikis or blogs. Some of the reasons include:

Easy access- Twitter is invisible technology. The student doesn’t need to learn a set of buttons and menus.

Low Risk- Reluctant learners can handle 140 characters (usually less). There’s little chance of failure.

Real time- Students see their project grow as they work. Collaborators can work from different computers with out fear of clogging the project (a problem with many blogs and wikis)

No formatting- Given bells and whistles, many students will ring and toot instead of write. The simplicity of Twitter offers only a place to add text.

Concise writing- 140 characters means each word has to be necessary. The process of posting to Twitter forces students to become better writers.

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So part of that is learning how different stuff works. I really liked a lot of things about that other theme. It’s called Andreas. I never could figure out what the black figure in the middle of the header was. It looked like a guy dancing on a rock.

This new one will let me change the color scheme and header pictures easily. At least the author claims it will be easy. So we’ll see about that.

Also, I didn’t like how that last theme handled quotes. This one makes them look better, I think.

As always, any hints or suggestions are welcome.

So, what do you think about the theme?

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I'm in the blue seats on the right. Pic taken by Alan Levine

Saturday’s Word Camp proved to be a good one. I learned a lot of things about WordPress and a lot about blogging. I got some inspiration, some great BBQ, and WP swag.

Perhaps best of all, I got to spend the weekend with son 3. He’s in SF studying programming and music. He lives with a house full of room mates and knows a really good Thai restaurant.

I took some pictures with my cell phone but I like this one taken by Alan Levine before his presentation. He started off the morning with an overview of WordPress in education.

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Matt Mullenweg, the original progammer of WordPress will be there with a host of WordPress glitterati. Bloggers and developers together for a day. I’m thinking I’ll become a better blogger just by osmosis.

The scheduled speakers cover the spectrum. I’ll be focusing on improving willisays. That and spending some time with my son who lives in SF.

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Downtown Bangalore via Wikipedia

My blog dashboard says,

Most users ever online were 27, on August 7, 2008 @ 3:43 am

Now I’m wondering what I wrote to get 27 users, let alone all at one time. It must be my sparkling personality, my well written prose, my….

What’s that you say? Bots?

How could that many bots congregate on my server all at once? I think it was a Rwanda classroom full of kids with their new OLPCs. Or maybe it was lunch break at the customer service center in Bangalore. Maybe a bunch of footballers in Perth found my site at the internet pub.

It was probably just bots. Time to look around for one of those plugins that tell where people come from and what they look at on the blog.

I’d appreciate any comments you have on any design or funtionality you have any thoughts about.

UPDATE: Random spaces between paragraphs. I have no idea what’s up with that.

UPDATE: It’s a new theme. New toys!

WordPress 2.6 is available. The last time I tried to upgrade I was off the blog for 2 months and everything was lost.

I had things going pretty good too. 19 people visited my blog one day. So, with trepidation, I enter the gates of upgrade. Hoping to see you on the other side.