tech, art & democracy news for October 10

hi folks,

hope you all had a great weekend and are doing well.

new content in the loop includes links to Unicef and to the Red Cross/Red Crescent. these organizations are helping to clean up after the devastating earthquake that hit Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan this weekend.

other new content in the loop: the ideapark.org community is organizing a traffic drive to benefit pet adoption initiatives in Southwest Virginia and across the nation. Petfinder.com is in the spotlight, along with several pet rescue events coming up soon in Southwest Virginia.

the first of these events will be an open house at the Giles County animal rescue on October 15. also, there will be a pet supply drive to benefit the shelter on October 22.

and on October 29 there will be a fundraiser and a pet adoption meet & greet at the Westlake Shopping Center in Moneta, Virginia. Cats, dogs, and miniature horses will be there, and a variety of fun activities are planned.

news on any these events can be found in the ideapark.org loop.

speaking of pets...2006 is the year of the dog and I have just added the image above to some items in my cafepress shop. this picture is a sumi ink drawing of a blue heeler, one of my all-time favorite breeds.

other new items in the shop include a "say no to cruel & unusual coal mining" sticker.

so, I have made a little Ning page to keep track of some of the Traces bookmarks...Ning was all the rage in Technorati last week and it appeared in the technorati top ten briefly today. I am not a huge fan of some of the content you will see if you visit the main Ning pivot, but the concept behind the Ning community is pretty great.

in art news...a stonemason friend will be exhibiting some work at the Traces gallery in Floyd soon...he says he plans to include some work which illustrates the "mason's marks" stonecutters traditionally used to "sign" their work.

also the Sustainable Living Education Center in Floyd will be hosting an exhibit of art, design, writing and handcrafts during the month of December 2005. If you are interested, please call Jeri Dewey at the Jacksonville Center at (540) 745-2784.

some rumblings of discontent within the technorati search pages today... headlines have included "technorati sucks!" "technorati search results are manipulated." it's a bit ironic, if you ask me...although I really can't blame these authors for being a bit frustrated with the search tool that first broke the "news" that Christopher Walken was running for president.

I still think that Technorati more than makes up for its shortcomings by getting the international community to take notice of stories like today's Guardian Unlimited article about the struggle for democracy in Taishi, China.

well that's all the time I have for right now. have a great day. thanks for reading.

--Suzy

tags: Virginia, Floyd, Moneta, Giles, Newport, Pearisburg, New River Valley, earthquake, petfinder, China, Kashmir, mountain, democracy, land rights, mountaintop removal, coal, energy