Some days you have no choice

Some days you do ...

I choose, Belgian Dark Chocolate.

You Asked for it ~ A Pieced Blog

I only have a couple photos of my quilting projects - but I *DO* quilt.  This project I'm showing you is pieced by a traditional pattern called "Arkansas Crossroads."  My favorite thing is to find a contemporary fabric that I can work into a traditional pattern for a new interpretation of both.  The quilt below was a Christmas gift to my Mother-in-Law.

This morning as I walked my dog outside, a doe strolled around the corner of my house.  She saw me, saw the dog and came up to check us out.  At her closest she was no more than six feet away from me.  She on one side of the rose bush and me on the other.  Wow. 

The kids and I have had a good week settling into school.  I will admit.  I was feeling tired and discouraged about teaching them this summer.  We had gotten into some bad habits of sloppiness - on their part with their work and on my part with failing to hold them to a higher standard.  But it's amazing what a couple of new notebooks, cool pencils with neat erasers, and a new text will do to recharge our interest.  It would be an understatement to say that Tucker is 'kinesthetic."  If he ever gets still, like you or I if we sat down to watch a bit of tv - he goes to sleep.  So he NEVER stops moving.  I've introduced MORE movement into his school.  For his math flashcards, he has dances.  Any problem that involves the number 6 for example, is answered as he hops on his left foot.  He's doing really well, and I'm highly entertained by the whole process. 

Tim has been in Florida all week.  He's supposed to be home tonight sometime around midnight barring delays for the storms that are predicted for the Tampa area.  I'm probably not going to wait up for him.   I'll briefly feel guilty for that, then I'll turn out the light and go to sleep.  I'm not pleasant when I'm sleep deprived so he'll be the better for it if he doesn't see me until tomorow morning. 

I have no plans for this weekend.  Do to being told to take it easy all week, I have a pile of things that NEED to be done, but haven't been.  So I should porbably plan to catch up on them.  But you know what?  I still don't feel all that great.  I've been told to expect that it can take up to two weeks before the residual ache in my back is gone.  Are you guys tired of hearing me whine about being sick?  *I'M* tired of hearing me whine about being sick. 

How about a few quotes on health and healing? 

Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.  Albert Schweitzer

Be not slow to visit the sick.  Ecclesiastes

Be careful reading health books.  You may die of a misprint.  Mark Twain

Quit worrying about your health, it'll go away.  Robert Orben

A hospital is no place to be sick.  Samuel Goldwyn

All of us at certain moments of our life, need to take advice and receive help from other people.  Alexis Carrel

Making it Personal

The best selling theological works of the 20th century were not written by a professional theologian.  They were written by a Professor of Medieval Literature at Oxford University who discribed himself as a "cranky prig".  When asked how it was that he considered himself qualified to offer his opinion on theological matters, C. S. Lewis said that he had often observed that the layperson has an advantage when communicating to other laypersons.  The professor sees all the myriad possibilities implicit in the question, the layperson or underclassman is able to hone in on just what it is that the questioner really wants answered.  In this way, I approach the questions of "right to privacy" and "copyright" which I raised on Tuesday.  I want to know what they mean for me personally.

I approach the right to privacy from my sense that I have the right to determine when and how information about myself will be shared publicly.  I approach copyright from the perspective of a writer.  I want to know what my rights and obligations are legally and morally.  I want to know when I have rights to my work, and when I have transferred that right to another.  So I ask questions.  I ask my attorney, and I look it up.  Earlier this week, I posted some information that I've found regarding privacy, copyright and infringement.  I suspect that in my effort to stick to general principles, I made things confusing for some.  So let me reframe the question,

Does anyone have the right to post private information about me, to use my name or likeness without my permission?  If I send a poem, essay, photo, screenplay, short-story, book review, interview, or any other original work through email, have I "published" that material, have I forfeited my right to privacy regarding my work?  And, do I retain copyright of that work?

In regard to the right to privacy, I quoted a long section which I will quote in part here.  The common law secures to each individual the right of determining, ordinarily, to what extent his thoughts, sentiments, and emotions shall be communicated to others. Under our system of government, he can never be compelled to express them (except when upon the witness stand); and even if he has chosen to give them expression, he generally retains the power to fix the limits of the publicity which shall be given them.  There are distinct limits to the right to privacy when we look at email.  If you send or receive email through the server where you work, recent case law says that your employer has the right to view that mail.  However, this is not a blanket severing of your rights.  An employer may have occasion to review corporate email, but not to publish the contents of that mail.  In other words, you don't have any reasonable expectation that the naked picture you are sending your husband will be considered private.  Those guys down in tech support may see it, too. But, the fact that your privacy is limited, doesn't mean that you have lost entirely the power to fix the limits of the publicity that photo will receive.  If you get a few knowing looks at the company Christmas party, suck it up.  If that photo winds up all over the Internet, your rights may have been violated. 

Persons have a right to Privacy.  Mara pointed out that Stanford maintains a website which answers general questions about law.  Under the section of Copyright Law dealing with Releases it says, "Every person has the right to be left alone - this is called the right to privacy. A release is needed to use a living person's name or image in a manner that constitutes an invasion of the person's right to privacy."  There are several ways in which a person's right to privacy may be invaded including false light, disclosure of private facts, and intrusion.  

It is sometimes permitted to quote another person's work under the Fair Use Clause.  When I quoted BabalontheBride in my previous blog, I did so believing that quote to be legally Fair because I quoted her for the purpose of placing my commentary in a specific context.  Fair Use generally protects a person who quotes a portion of a work for purposes of review or commentary.  I say generally, because a number of successful suits have been brought even against persons publishing on the Internet in which the author received damages for and/or injunction against having his work published because the use was determined to have been Unfair.  Standards for determining Fair Use include:

1. Transformative - You use the quoted material to create a new work, provide a new perspective.
2. The Nature of the Copyrighted Work - Quoting factual material such as found in biographies is more likely to be allowed than quoting a novel.
3. The Amount and Substantiality of the Portion taken - The less you take the more likely your copying will be considered Fair Use.  The one exception to this is when creating a parody of the original work in which case the courts have allowed larger portions of the work, even the "heart" of the work to be copied.
4. Effect of the Use upon the Market -  Does your use deprive the owner of income or undermine a ne wor potential market for the work.
5. The "Fifth" factor, Are you Good or Bad? -  Fair use involves subjective judgments and is often affected by factors such as a judge or jury's personal sense of right or wrong.  So if your use of the material is considered offensive, you could still lose an infringement case even if in every other way it appears that you complied with Fair Use.

As an author, I email all kinds of material to different people for different purposes.  My poems, short stories, articles, book reviews, and essays go out to people who critique, people who edit, people who publish and some people because I can count on them to always tell me that I'm brilliant.  My work doesn't have to be valuable monetarily in order for me to desire to retain my rights to determine how my work is used or published.  It's MY work.  I want to know whether emailing that work in any way diminishes my rights in regard to that work. 

If the Xanga Team is not going to protect me from uses of my work which infringe upon my rights, I want to know that.  Well, really that's not the whole truth.  I don't want to know whether the Xanga Terms of Use cover the issue of my potential invasion of privacy, or the infringement of my rights to my work.  I want to know that Xanga has policies and procedures in place to block or remove material that invades my privacy or infringes upon my rights.  See I believe that you have the right to speak your mind, express your ideas and argue your viewpoint.  But, in upholding and promoting your rights, I wish in balance to retain my own rights. 

The Stanford website has a section advising websites on how to stay out of trouble.  They post five guidelines: 1.  Assume the material is protected.  2.  Read Click-Wrap Agreements  3.  Remove Unauthorized Material  4. Investigate Claims Promptly  5. When in Doubt, Seek Permission.  

I have been verboodled.  Somehow (probably because I'm WAY behind on my reading here, I missed the fact that I had been verboodled until the lovely and efficacious Daffodilious called it to my attention.  But I must say that it ranks in the top ten coolest things ever to have happened on Xanga as far as I'm concerned.  I kow I'm not the only person verboodled in that post, and the fact that I am in such exalted company only makes it better.  (And just because I'm not sure this dead horse is COMPLETELY dead - I will point out that Virgil's copying of the unique styles of different Xanga writer's is Fair Use as a parody.  Plus its funny.)

I welcome any commentary and discussion of the ideas I express here.  Comments that question my conclusions are valuable in helping me to see where I may have overlooked a point in thinking through an issue.  When such points are raised, I have in the past and will continue to consider them and revise my statements when I am persuaded that such revision is needed.  I am not fighting with anyone nor have my feelings been hurt by comments left here over the past couple of days.  I very much appreciate that some of my friends have expressed their concern and I thank them for it. 

Oddly enough, a LARGE number of people (that would be at least 3  ) have added me to their SIR in the past several weeks.  I'm not used to posting the names of people who subscribe here, because often they either introduce themselves and get involved in the comments section, or they drift away when they realize that I don't post much about fabric quilting.  But I would like to welcome these new subs and say that I believe that the people who read and comment here are the cream of Xanga.  I very much hope you will find this to be a place where you feel welcome to express your views. 

Reinventing the Wheel

Last week I raised the question whether the Xanga Terms of Use have been consistently enforced, and I claimed that in fact they haven't.  This led to a extended discussion with many excellent blogs written in examination of the existing Terms of Use.  Several people made statements which I've been considering for the past several days. 

BabalontheBride said, So this is the thing, other than something being illegal there is no reason to get your panties in a bunch about a post on Xanga.  These are the illegal things to watch for, Kiddy Porn and someone threatening bodily (or property) harm who presents a reasonable threat.  Her statement got me wondering whether or not the specific issues that I was concerned about on Xanga required a lot of angst and revision of the Terms of Use at all.  Perhaps, a look into the existing legal definitions and limitations would provide the answers to the questions I was asking.

Is it true that the only things to watch for are kiddie porn and credible threats?  During the discussion last week, I was brought to consider an additional question raised by comments on this site and others.  If you have sent email to someone, do you have any legal right to control what is done with that email later?  This question was asked because in several different situations and for multiple different reasons, some people on Xanga have reposted email that they received.  Most everyone has an opinion on whether or not reposting email should be prohibited but no one I've talked to argues whether it is a legitimate question to be settled.  The obstacle to agreement seems to lie in whether we see email as private communication or as publication.  The ease of forwarding has led many of us to consider anything we receive in our Inbox to be fair game for passing on at our discretion. 

Before we try to reinvent the wheel, (or even rewrite the Terms of Use) it is useful to see whether the question has been addressed with existing law.  See, it is a fact of life that while Xanga has the right to limit posting and content even further than the law would limit them, no corporation may decide to broaden the limits into areas prohibited by law.

So is private email addressed in any area of law?  The answer is yes.  First, it falls under the legal right to privacy, and second it is addressed in copyright statutes.  The legal right to privacy is not new.  An 1890 article of the Harvard Law Review, discusses and defines the right to privacy.  I'm assuming that most people aren't going to want to take the time to read that entire article, so I'll give you a few of the highlights.  

 The common law secures to each individual the right of determining, ordinarily, to what extent his thoughts, sentiments, and emotions shall be communicated to others. Under our system of government, he can never be compelled to express them (except when upon the witness stand); and even if he has chosen to give them expression, he generally retains the power to fix the limits of the publicity which shall be given them. The existence of this right does not depend upon the particular method of expression adopted. It is immaterial whether it be by word or by signs, in painting, by sculpture, or in music. Neither does the existence of the right depend upon the nature or value of the thought or emotions, nor upon the excellence of the means of expression. The same protection is accorded to a casual letter or an entry in a diary and to the most valuable poem or essay, to a botch or daub and to a masterpiece. In every such case the individual is entitled to decide whether that which is his shall be given to the public. No other has the right to publish his productions in any form, without his consent. This right is wholly independent of the material on which, the thought, sentiment, or emotions is expressed. It may exist independently of any corporeal being, as in words spoken, a song sung, a drama acted. Or if expressed on any material, as in a poem in writing, the author may have parted with the paper, without forfeiting any proprietary right in the composition itself. The right is lost only when the author himself communicates his production to the public, -- in other words, publishes it. It is entirely independent of the copyright laws, and their extension into the domain of art. The aim of those statutes is to secure to the author, composer, or artist the entire profits arising from publication; but the common-law protection enables him to control absolutely the act of publication, and in the exercise of his own discretion, to decide whether there shall be any publication at all. The statutory right is of no value, unless there is a publication; the common-law right is lost as soon as there is a publication.

Now, I'm not an attorney, but I would imagine that an argument could be made that sending email might constitute publication because of the whole forwarding thing.  If I were going to play lawyer (and I've wanted to play lawyer at least once in my life ever since I fell in love with Perry Mason reruns as a child), I'd throw in terms like whether the sender had a "reasonable expectation" that the email would be considered "private" or "public" by the recipient.  At that point, copyright law steps in to close the breach. 

And the doctor said ...

I'm going to live.  Okay, it was never in question whether I'd live so that's unfairly dramatic.  No the question is whether or not the raging infection I contracted is going to leave me with permanent organ damage, and the answer is that it's too soon to tell for certain.

I am experiencing symptoms that could be indicating that it will go either way.  I'm choosing to focus on the preferred option, that as the infection recedes - so will the symptoms. 

Hey! I jus thit spllchekir an four th firth tame never I has na errrrrrs.  So I'ma hit sbmt b3fhor I meesss u.

Sacred Snacking

Every family eventually develops its own unique culture and identity.  We drift into traditions and habits that become our defining characteristics.  We find our sacred ground.  In my family, the pinnacle of sacredness, is our snack food.  I came to a realization over the weekend.  THEY can have their snackfoods in the regular pantry.  In fact they already do have a shelf that is entirely dedicated to "boys snack foods."  Mom's food on the other hand is going to have to go into a box with a padlock. 

I didn't want it to come to this, but I have no choice.  See I've been doing this "eat healthy, watch your portion size" thing.  Which means in practical terms that MY snacks last longer than the 24 hours after we do our grocery shopping.  In fact, I've been known to make a box of chocolates last three weeks.  But, now that my boys are tall enough to reach the shelves (and now that my husband KNOWS that they are tall enough to reach the shelves - come on, he doesn't really expect me to believe that he isn't at least a co-conspirator in the larceny ...) my snacks are disappearing at an alarming rate.  Something slightly LESS than 24 hours after the last trip to the grocery, Momi had nothing left. 

The Schwan's man stops by my house every fourteen days.  The last time he was here, I bought banana popsicles for Tucker, Michael's favorite - Chocolate Fudge Brownie Chunk ice cream, Tim's favorite - Mixed Berry Frozen Yogurt, and my favorite - Rocky Road.  This is barely a week ago.  On Saturday, I opened the Freezer for my first scoop of Rocky Road and found - an empty space.  So I went looking.  I looked behind the frozen vegetables and under the lean cuisine.  I looked past the roast on the third shelf.  Finally, my husband stuck his head around the corner - "what are you doing?"

"I'm looking for my Rocky Road, I know I bought a carton ..."

"Oh," he says with this really sheepish look, "I, ahem, saw that empty carton in the trash."

I caught one of the perpetrators on film with my Reduced Fat Cheese Nips ...

But it doesn't really stop at my Cheese Nips, ice cream and chocolates, which offense is quite bad enough.  No, they've noticed that I eat everything more slowly than they do.  And they've started saying things like, "Momi, why don't we "help" you out with that."  The last time I took them to lunch at Fazzoli's they "helped me out" of my bread stick and half my sandwich, then they "helped" me out of the extra breadstick that the nice woman with the basket brought to the table while I was at the drink machine getting refills. 

I've heard rumors about the appetites of male children as they approach their teens.  I'll admit that Michael is getting almost close enough to start thinking about that magical day, but he's only 9.  And really, at 6 1/2 Tucker can't blame his snitching behavior on teen growth spurts.  So I'm forced to conclude that they are simply addicted to snack food.  Their addiction has numbed them to all the moral considerations inherent in stealing from their own sainted MOTHER.  And for their own good, and protection of my sacred snacking, I must take drastic measures.   We Verrette's are snacking people.  If I accidentally get out of the snack habit through long term deprivation of the opportunity, I may find myself on the outside looking in to my own family's culture. 

I'm going to the doctor this morning for a follow-up lab and to be yelled at for not coming in to be seen sooner.  I'll let you know later how that goes. 

Sunday Musings

I'm supposed to be "being good."  Tim and the boys have gone off to the mall to see a movie (I think they are planning to catch Spy Kids 3D so I'm almost glad I'm too sick to go.)  There are few things more dreary or repulsive than listening to a sick person talk about symptoms - so I won't do that.  But I will thank you very much for your prayers and your well-wishes as I'm in the process of recovery from what has turned out to be a medically interesting condition.  If only this were a reality show on TLC instead of my life, I'd be fascinated by all the chemistry and bacteriology I've been learning over the weekend. 

I wonder what it is they envision that I'll be doing while they are gone.  I have a long list of things I'm supposed to NOT do.  I'm not supposed to do laundry, dishes, vacuum, or clean the bathroom.  (All of which need to be done and it's driving me crazy.)   I'm not supposed to be outside getting hot, or heaven forbid I should bend down to pull a weed.  We aren't even going to discuss the yard and how much I want it to be mowed.  No, I'm supposed to be "being good." 

I've had enough of lying in bed during daylight hours to last me through until at least next month.  I don't want to watch tv.  (OH, and let me tell you there's a story there.  I've lost another battle over the television.  For the past four years we've had only the five or six local channels that can be picked up with a regular antenna.  As of last week, we now have over 100 channels because of this little dish ... )  I don't want to read.  I'm bored and restless, and I really, really want to vacuum. 

  I hate being sick

Emerge - Emergent - Emergency

So during the five hours I spent in the local ER yesterday --- isn't that a great dramatic beginning?  I'll get back around to the how, and why in a minute, but for now, I just wanted to describe what I heard.  See, lying on that table, with my eyes closed and sort of drifting in a twilight place.  I heard voices murmuring, and indistinct except for their tone and pitch.  I heard the hum of equipment and the rhythm of feet on the hard floor.  None of the contributors thought about his or her part in the symphony.  They simply were there.  But nonetheless a distinct music emerged from the mix. 

Okay, the explanation.  I knew earlier in the week that I didn't feel well.  I even began treatment for my symptoms.  But the treatment didn't effect the particular bug that I've picked up and well, after the lab work yesterday, the doctor said - you have what we call a "raging infection."  I was almost proud of myself for being truly and totally sick - no half measures for this gal.  So I got an injection of antiobiotic, Came home with a prescription for more antibiotic.  I have to go BACK to the hospital today so they can see if THIS antibiotic treatment is actually working ... Have I mentioned that I really dislike hospitals?  Have I mentioned that I REALLY dislike needles?  The only way I can tolerate an injection is if I can watch them give it to me.  I have to SEE the WHOLE needle emerge from my skin.  See, my paranoid delusion is that the needle will break and rocket to my heart - and no more quiltnmomi.  (I might get that answer to Tucker's grim reaper question ...) 

The last time I had a needle enter my skin in a place I couldn't watch was when I was in labor with Tucker.  Fourteen hours of hard labor made me okay with the possibility that the needle might kill me, I just wanted it to be over one way or the other.  I know, that probably makes me a coward and a wuss.  I can own that about myself.

I made it 6 and 1/2 years since the last time - I've been given 24 hours to get ready for the next time.  And in the meantime, I'm going back to bed.  Because even though my system is full of antibiotics - I don't feel any better.