The Gettysburg Address

I am reposting this, from 2019 and as far back as 2015, because it still matters, remembering what our nation is about.

Looking back,I first posted these words here in 2015 after an incident in Baltimore triggered violence and looting. I reposted them two years later, a month after this president took office and thinking about what it means to be American and what is worth fighting for.

Today is the anniversary of those words being said overlooking the battlefields of Gettysburg. Two minutes that sum up what is worth fighting for and why we must continue to fight for what we believe.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863

The Gettysburg Address

Still on the Brink of the Web

A year ago, a first big wave of migration from Twitter happened and I found myself trying Mastodon and CounterSocial. Mastodon felt better somehow and it’s very nice, has great community, you can work up some conversation if you persist and post and leave comments – but that’s how ALL social media works.

Today I see a FB memory that I was trying these out and now we’re in the middle of another round of shouting about how awful Twitter/X is and especially because

the owner is a loud jerk who allows others to be loud jerks. OMG the other N word! OMG! Another round of migration.

Oddly, this is not at all my twitter experience. I don’t see any of that and it’s a MUCH better platform for getting faster news. I’ve laid off it for a few days because a part of me is bothered by the jerk-who-owns. (since the first migration, I’ve actually increased the number of artists and writers I see there as well as adding some excellent opinion people)

But, despite following so many of the same accounts of news and opinion people in Mastodon and now Threads (another arm of FB so don’t bother telling me how wondrously shiny and human it is – it also has a board of directors and a profit motive and an often jerky bossman), there is just not the same stream of information there. I don’t know why these news and opinion folks say they’re on other platforms and then don’t mirror their posts but they don’t.

Mastodon at least has the ability to find people across the fediverse, to search for hashtags etc and to f-ing edit posts. So despite and because of its reliance on volunteer folks willing to run physical servers, it has a lot going for it. Twitter has lost a lot of features but keeps its speed of delivery. FB is just awash in fake ads and other crap.

Deep in my gut I think that even if the Far Right folks prevail in real life, no one will care as long as their cat pictures and videos can still be posted. I am SO positive about this. I hate it. I remember when I had to continually explain what a blog was, so there’s not much can be done about my disappointment in this.

Congratulations for making it this far.

Still on the Brink of the Web