2003.12.17 - wednesday, 8:57 p.m.

i began this entry on the day in question, with the intention of filling in some of the blanks in the morning - actually i am beginning to write this around 2:15 pm in the afternoon, and am wondering whether - as a matter of procedure - to have the entries correspond to the date and time i write it, and/or to the date of the activites or events i am describing - i am inclined towards the latter.

much of the day's focus was on the people's agenda for economic justice - reaching out at a grassroots level, and getting more elements organized for an online information strategy for a people's agenda.

i had a wonderful conversation with lena climbing bear, who works with the south carolina fair share campaign in columbia - lena thinks i sound like her brother, and then went on to say that he only speaks spanish to her now, although she barely understands a word. i also spoke with anton gun, executive director of south carolina fair share and talked with lena and anton about what i have been working on in terms of preparations.

both agreed that i should talk to ladon james, with the center for community change who is based in washington. i had left a couple of messages for ladon, and she called back later. we talked briefly, and i gave her an overview of my activities and plans and she will phone back tomorrow morning - friday - and will connect me to drew who is compiling the list of state and city contact people and organizations, that i offered to post on the web site when i have the information.

i set up about half a dozen email lists at yahoogroups.com for the people's agenda: [ej-news], [ej-outreach], [ej-housing], [ej-pc] (planning committee), [ej-issues], [ej-arts] and will add more as needed.

i also set up a few new lists for the gandhi-king season: [gks-schools], [gks-outreach], [gks-quotes] and am planning to allow for subscription to these lists at the gandhi-king and economic-justice web sites shortly.

i spent a lot of time on the phone, not only calling people about the people's agenda, but also following up on my decision not to go to washington, and considering whether to take a train to baltimore on friday to visit with andrew and to attend homewood meeting.

eventually - after a phone call from my older son, justin - who was planning to come to new york to visit and is considering a january journey to south carolina, which i expressed interest joining him for - and after talking with peggy, who said this weekend would not be a particularly good one to visit, as she and andrew will both be very busy with final arranements for the holidays - so it looks as if i will be getting to baltimore some time in early january.

i made some interesting headway in relation to potential sources of support for the online framework i have been considering. i had been curious as to who was hosting the university of the poor web site, and discovered through godaddy that the site is registered to humanrightstech.org, based in philadelphia. i looked at the human rights tech site - www.humanrightstech.org and found an interesting speech by chris caruso, director of human rights tech at a yale conference earlier this year on grassroots use of the internet.

i left a message for chris, and went on to visit the site of the organizers collaborative - www.organizenow.net, based in cambridge, massachusetts who had been the primary organizers of the yale conference, and who are planning a follow up conference this march in cambridge. i left a message at the number for the organizers collaborative and later got a call back from rich cowan there. i described my plans and what i have been up to and he expressed interest, so i agreed to send rich an email message with more specifics and an identification of where i could use some help.

having been pointed in the direction of learning more about using cascading style sheets - css - in my web site design, and having recently begun to convert to the use of styles for text formatting in the web pages i have been generating, i spent a little time browing through some introductory information on how one can use css instead of the table and cell format that i have been using for almost all of the web pages i create.

i found some interesing sites including css Zen Garden and have been mulling over the question of how best to learn about cascading style sheets

by the end of the day, i realized that i was actually very happy that i had not gone to wahington, so i had accomplished much more - i believe - by staying here and making the phone and electronic connections.

2003.12.17 - wednesday, 4:46 p.m.

well, this is my first entry in diaryland, and i am curious as to where it will lead.

it has been a very interesting day, with much of interest to record.

i had been planning - until last night - to travel by train to washington, to participate in a meeting of the planning committee for the launch of a people's agenda on economic justice - www.economic-justice.us in columbia, south carolina on january 30-31, 2004 - on the eve of the 2004 presidential primaries in south carolina and elsewhere.

however, without going into details as to the reasons, i had realized after a lengthy process of reflection, that my presence at the planning committee meeting might not be welcome, and that it might be more prudent to stay here in new york.

one of the reasons i had been eager to go was to get a chance to visit with andrew, my 18-year-old son who is a freshman at university of maryland in college park, just outside washington.

the long and the short of it is that i now am planning to go to baltimore on friday afternoon, and to ride down to college park with peggy, his mother, to pick him up.

if the plans work out, i would - in addition to visiting with andrew in baltimore, attend the meeting for worship with a concern for business at homewood friends meeting on sunday afternoon, to request that my membership be transferred to morningside meeting - a few blocks from where i live - and which i have decided to join.

i was able to overcome any disappointment i had felt about not attending the planning meeting, as i discovered that i could be more effectively staying at home and connecting up with grassroots organizations - and potential supporters, including a very interesting open source web design site www.oswd.org

the link to the page for registering on the site wasn't working, so i went to the irc link irc.oftc.net/oswd - which opened up a lot of doorways - to discovering more about cascading style sheet and an open source, multi-platform internet relay chat (irc) browser - at www.xchat.org - which has some interesting features, including the option of having a trasnparent background, that among other things allows you to see your wallpaper behind the text.

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