Prometheus 6   

Drylongso

Over there in the sidebar is a link to Drylongso, a blog with an ezine attached. Both blog and ezine look long and hard are race and gender issues. The ezine part is ready when it's ready…and it's ready right now.

This time around the ezine topic is "PLAIN BROWN WRAPPER: Gender Issues in Sepia Space"…sounds like a fusion of everything it looks at, but it actually is a distinct topic.

There's a lot to the issue, and I haven't read it all yet. So far I've gotten a short story about a young woman who plans to approach stardom by losing her virginity on the Internet…you get to vote on aspects of the deed, like what she wears and such, for a small donation via PayPal or something. In light of what I understand the plans of a band called Hell On Earth was, it's an entirely too believable possibility. And there are several poems in the issue, one of which I snagged pretty much at random.

But the first thing I read was the roundtable discussion by email for which the issue was named.

I have to admit, part of the reason I went there immediately is that I know or know of most of the players.

Art is what I call "locally world famous"…known to at least seven of ten Black activists who are online. He's someone I've encountered at odd intervals since maybe a decade before the Internet opened up to the public. My impression is that all aspects of his reputation are well deserved. Haven't got a clue what he thinks of me.

Dr. Goddess and Lisa I've know for years from a mailing list, the very one Dr. Goddess discusses in her first comment of the discussion, in fact. The relationships have not been all sweetness and light, but we're at a point of mutual respect and friendship.

Michael Bowen is Cobb, someone I think I have a mutual understanding with. One thing about blogs is, you get so much of a person's position undiluted by branched discusions and flame wars that you can figure out pretty quickly if someone is fronting or what.

Kali Tal is someone I've no knowledge of at all.

On the purely conceptual level of the topics they discuss, it's an interesting and worthwhile read. Given the stereoscopic view afforded by my past interactions with the players I know, it's fascinating. The rest of the issue looks interesting too (though there's one article I just knw I'm going to have issues with).