Brands and Products in Country Blues, at WeenieCampbell.com.

Monday afternoon, blog social hubster Anita Rowland passed on after a multi-year battle with cancer. I met Anita a few times, mostly at the Ralph’s-based meetups. Once, though, she and husband Jack came to our house (in an Anhalt apartment building on Capitol Hill) for some sort of party. This was, I think, before the cancer diagnosis. In any case, I enjoyed meeting Jack and Anita. I mourn her passing and find it a peculiar one: I am at a loss for words even when I set myself the task.

Anita, your enthusiastic application of social networking skills helped instantiate a substantial portion of my personal social framework today, and I thank and honor you for it. I believe I have seen the term ‘den-mother’ applied to your relationship to the nascent social space here in Seattle partially defined by blogging and online journaling and so forth.

I would argue, on the occasion of your memoriam, that the unhyphenated term ‘mother’ would be infinitely more appropriate.

I honor your life, and your passing, Mother, even though I did not know who you were or your name when I first began to indulge myself in this medium. Mother, you did not birth me or lead me to online writing, blogging, what have you.

Yet!

Your personal interest in and investment of time and energy and thought led directly to the creation of a distinct – and offline, face-to-face – community of bloggers and so forth hereabouts. Many – I flatter myself – of these are now my own friends, my own community, arms’ length and tiny personal icons loosely joined as they are. Without you, that community would exist in different form, as birthed by another.

I most sincerely bow my head in grief and honor. May whatever comes after, or the lack thereof, be merciful to you and yours. My thoughts are with your family, in sorrow and longing.

The Stranger’s man in Iowa, Eli Sanders, has posted the audio of the entirety of Oprah’s Obama speech given today. Sanders describes it as the best speech he’s ever heard. I’m listening and, well, it’s OK. YMMV.

I’m interested in Sanders’ interest in the speech, though, because I hold his reporting and writing in very high esteem and think he often sees things that others miss. It seems clear to me that Oprah’s, um, intercession in the election this year presages a long-term shift in the relationship of media to politics in this country, something not unlike the engaged and abusive heyday of Hearst’s commitment to political objectives in his media empire.

Oprah is a force for good, as far as is possible in her metier, and a force of nature. At the moment, no other media figure can come close to her appeal and apparent ability to communicate her authentic self via the television camera and broadcast. But her ability is a skill, a learnable skill, one most recently wielded in politics – for evil – by Ronald Reagan.

When I began to write this entry, I was wondering if Oprah’s mediagenic and persuasive presentation would create a competitive force from the right, leading to a spiral of crazed celebrity campaigning from right and left. But I couldn’t come up with a figure on the right that presents with such force and charismatic authenticity.

Then, it struck me: the right has had this style of campaign motivation for years, in the pulpits of the religious right. Now, when I hear a recording of a preacher on the religious speaker working the crowd to accept his prescription for action and spiritual acuity, it leaves me more than cold. I literally cannot understand how or why the speaker’s audience accepts the statements, tropes, and rhetorical distortions as the basis for firmer political or religious commitment, and it often angers me that people fall prey to such skullduggery.

Oprah’s entrance may be the bridge to a wider audience for this style of campaign motivation on the left. The trusted speaker, recognized as an agent of truth and wisdom, is granted by the listener scope and assent for the use of the ancient arts of rhetoric. When I listen to Hilary, Edwards, or Obama deliver a speech, I am listening for tricks, evasions, lies, alliteration, allusion, and so forth.

When I listen to Oprah, I may note an evasive formulation. Early in this speech, she noted that she has voted for Republicans as much as Democrats, a statement that prompted an appreciative or derisive snort from someone very close to the recording device’s microphone. I too snorted, because it strongly implies that Oprah has not voted very often, at least not in her home base of Chicago, where it Republican candidates for local office are often symbolic candidates at best. But I forgave her the statement, because I am willing to suspend my narrowed-eye stance when engaged by her media presence.

In my opinion, politics must be practiced, especially by the voter, as an exercise in skepticism. My analysis is that Oprah’s appeal rests directly on her ability to disengage my skepticism.

If Oprah’s participation in this election materially contributes to the suspension of a skeptical stance on the part of the electorate, that would be an undesirable outcome, President Obama or not. What this country needs is MORE skepticism directed toward our candidates and elected officials.

Can Obama and Oprah sell hope and doubt on the same plate?

I, for one, doubt it.

NW Coyote Tracker is a googemaps mashup which enables collaborative entering of Seattle-area coyote sightings.

It’s time to start poking around in here.

UPDATE: Ooohh, PHP!

As winter darks arrive at 4pm hereabouts, either timed lights or lights simply left burning all day are a necessity. Having found an old-style light timer at a nearby estate sale this summer, I have begun to wonder about what else might be timed. Ideally, I’d like to open the door to the 4:25pm bumper theme leading into the half-hour-end segment on All Things Considered.

On realizing that I have a disused old-style iBook acting primarily as streaming input to my living room stereo and recalling that the dim mists of history inform me that iTunes us schedulable, I googled this script-board exchange from August, 2003 – five years ago.

I have no recollection of it. I still refuse to employ spellckekc. I’ll circle back, it seems.

Boing Boing irrateuse Xeni experienced a Judge Dredd moment at LAX this week. Welocme to the future, citizen. There were only twelve people in this hallway, not thirteen.

teleport is a simple utility to let you use one single mouse and keyboard to control several of your Macs. Possibly useful.

I heard about the bridge collapse on my car radio approximately two minutes after the event, in the midst of rush hour. At home, a reporter describes the traffic on the bridge as “four lanes, bumper to bumper” at the time of the collapse.

Flipping on the tube, helplessly, voyeuristically, sick of the drumbeat of catastrophe, the bridge displays the apparent traffic density of I-5 at 4am. Where are the cars? In the river? It’s to early to say.

Reports indicate that the bridge was undergoing repairs, but I haven’t been able to google up anything. I-5 will be undergoing major, joint-oriented repairs in about three weeks or so, if I recall correctly. I would say that’s what known as a ‘hook’ in the news biz. I expect to see stories on this from all three print news sources hereabouts, the P-I, the Times, and (maybe) the Stranger.

A few years ago I would have set aside time tonight to follow non-journalistic source spotting and integration on websites such as Metafilter. Approaching a decade beyond 9-11, participatory sites whose culture privileges decorum have begun to downplay such activity, and when I began this entry (at a tad before 5:30pm, my time, about 20 minutes after the event) MeFi was silent on the subject. In the interim, a thread has been posted, but I think I’ll sit this one out.

My thoughts are with the families of all the folks caught on that bridge, and, hell yes, with all of us that have to cross a freeway bridge on or way to, or in the act of, work.

Stendec.