Shirley Chisholm: November 30, 1924 - January 1, 2005.
More of her thoughts...

• "It is not heroin or cocaine that makes one an addict, it is the need to escape from a harsh reality. There are more television addicts, more baseball and football addicts, more movie addicts, and certainly more alcohol addicts in this country than there are narcotics addicts."


• "You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas."


• "Of my two handicaps, being female put many more obstacles in my path than being black."


• Racism is so universal in this country, so widespread and deepseated, that it is invisible because it is so normal.


• In the end antiblack, antifemale, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing - antihumanism.

Valentine's day: sent my wife a collection of my poems in an ecard that took me quite a while to format... but her ecard never arrived??? Soooooo, I copied the confirmation that I sent to myself as a Cc:, which I did receive, and played with some HTML coding and made an HTML document for web viewing as well as a hard copy for presentation. The hard copy was arduous, as I had to 'print the screen' multiple times as I scrolled through my document using a freeware utility for Windows called PrintDeskTop... v1.05, a must have utility, to get the artwork, .gif's, to render on the printer as it appears on the screen. Just printing the document using typical printer commands allowed only the 'print' to print discarding the artwork (of angels and hearts in this case). Then I literally cut and pasted the document together with scissors and glue to make one six-foot long roll of artwork and poetry.
I sent my Mom a different set of poems in an another ecard from ldsecards.com/ that rendered well. I received a confirmation that she received it.

Weather: On and off rain from still more warm weather systems until this second week of March which is wonderfully in the 70°'s (Fahrenheit) with plenty of sunshine... starting off allergy season in earnest.

Finally got my 10-speed bicycle tuned up after all these years. It may be the only transportation Gail and I have if she doesn't prioritize some urgent repairs to her van... soon. Down now for ignition problems. Seems the ignition key will start the van, but will not shut it off when finished (with the key turned to the off position). We have to disconnect the battery and then further turn the ignition on to stall the van to stop... which must be doing wonders for other systems... not to mention the squelchy-grindy noises it makes when one does that with the van already running.

My vincas, or periwinkles (or myrtle), and plum trees are blossoming enmasse. Daffodils in yellow bloom... well, one of ours did anyway... everywhere else they're blooming like mad. Manzanita with red and pink buds and blossoms... falling to the ground as I hack the tree limbs down for fire wood. Bees and hummingbirds have re-emerged from their absence. It looks to be a glorious Spring.

Ice hockey season cancelled?... go figger. Escalating costs (including salaries) causing financial burdens were bound to bite some major sport hard. I feel for the hockey fans. I was very angry over baseball's past boondoggles when they occurred. I personally like the idea that one enlightened sports person, not I, came up with... tying salaries to performance as in days past... not allowing guaranteed multimillionaires to rest upon their laurels... if that's what they sit on. But, the present day athlete is but a commodity in a big business market and will continue to garner whatever the market will bear, inevitably, until that market crashes.

March madness begins !!! (college basketball)

Updated Gail's XP machine with SP2 and a few other patches before Microsoft gets heavy-handed and updates her computer on their schedule. It takes forever on her dialup connection which tops out at 1 Kbps but typically runs at between 600-800 bps when downloading. I often dream of broadband...

Firefox 1.0.1 released (4.7 MBs download)... an update that (complete article)...fixes a few security holes and some other bugs." I've been very happy with Mozilla's Firefox browser. I rarely use Opera anymore and I'm weaning myself off IE6 more and more. It's interesting to read of Microsoft's frenetic activity in their IE7 project. The only complaint I have with Firefox, and it may be my 'puter not being set properly and not their browser (though IE6 is unaffected?), is the way the Java Applet for "Poetry in Motion" works with the mouse... a very haphazard delayed motion.

Free Java Scripts... for web developers... cool!!!

Physics and technology news... to peruse. The sciences, in general, have always fascinated me. I also watched PBS's reruns of their "Nova" programs on "The Elegant Universe" about string theory and the pursuit of the "GUT", or "grand unified theory" of force(s). It's as simple as black and green, or greene !!! (John Schwartz and Michael Green and Briane Greene)... almost. Of course there's Beyond String Theory"... to further warp one's mind about.

Instead of leading the world, there is no Kyoto accord agreement for the U.S.A. Guess that confirms that our country doesn't walk the walk when we talk the talk of environmentalism. And all that money wasted on studying cow emissions too. It always comes down to dollars and scents (sic).

A wonderful interview with the prophet, Gordon B. Hinckley, in 1997 I came across in my email while perusing a Google News Alert. I missed the recent interview with Larry King on CNN, but of what I have heard of the recent interview, it pretty much follows the same vein as the interview of 1997.

The Sumatra earthquake, last December 26th, has been upgraded substantially in magnitude to 9.3 Richter in force.

Mount St. Helens in Washington State, U.S.A., is showing renewed activity.

BIG EARTHQUAKES... from the bigquake mailing list I subscribe to:
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake in Kepulaun Talud, Indonesia at: 4.77N 126.34E Depth 20km Tue Feb 15 14:42:23 2005 UTC
Location with respect to nearby cities:

• 195 km (120 miles) SE of General Santos, Mindanao, Philippines


• 265 km (165 miles) SSE of Davao, Mindanao, Philippines


• 1230 km (770 miles) SSE of Manila, Philippines

• 390 km (245 miles) WNW of Tristan da Cunha


• 3180 km (1970 miles) WSW of Cape Town, South Africa

• 65 km (40 miles) W of Baubau, Sulawesi, Indonesia (pop 54,000)


• 285 km (180 miles) E of Ujung Pandang, Sulawesi, Indonesia

• 60 km (35 miles) NNW of Kerman, Iran (pop 384,000)


• 180 km (110 miles) NE of Sirjan, Iran


• 260 km (160 miles) ESE of Yazd, Iran


• 740 km (460 miles) SE of Tehran, Iran

• 285 km (175 miles) S of Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia


• 350 km (220 miles) WSW of Medan, Sumatra, Indonesia


• 385 km (240 miles) WNW of Sibolga, Sumatra, Indonesia


• 1590 km (990 miles) NW of Jakarta, Java, Indonesia

• 230 km (145 miles) NW of Saumlaki, Tanimbar Islands, Indonesia


• 370 km (230 miles) SSE of Ambon, Moluccas, Indonesia


• 660 km (410 miles) N of Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia


• 2550 km (1580 miles) E of Jakarta, Java, Indonesia

My entries... poetry.com: " Poetry in Motion "...
& Haiku daily contests:

Kyoto Discord Fend not for the earth Until the politicians Are thus endangered ? :Bobby Nichols 2-17-200

"Kyoto Discord " a Haiku: ... the photo was of an elk, or ilk, in a meadow... giving me pause to consider my words, above, about the U.S.A and the Kyoto accord. We were made caretakers of this wonderful earth, and we will be held accountable to a Higher Authority.

Kwaheri ya kuonana !!!