JulieLeung.com: a life told in tidepools

This panel probably was the highlight of the conference for me. Why? I didn’t know what to expect. I’ve watched and participated in panels in the past that were a bit rocky and rough. And I wondered whether this would become an inquisition into our bedroom life or a heated spotlight where we’d have to defend our decisions and the lines (curtains) we had drawn.

But this session became a great time of conversation between panelists and audience, dialogue and microphone moving across the stage and across the theater, lively, fresh, insightful and intimate. Kris Krug was an awesome moderator, stepping into the role only days earlier. More than one of us had considered teasing him about his own relationship but he was quite interested and thoughtful, listening, learning and teasing Chris a bit too.

Chris Pirillo and Latthana “Ponzi” Indharasophang shared from their experience blogging about their relationship. I appreciated their honesty and openness. Chris expressed how he is different in different places, how the person he is on his blog is not who he is in your living room. I have seen this from personal experience, getting to know him, noticing that he doesn’t show up at my house dressed in bubble wrap or wearing RSS written on his chest. Chris is intentional about which sides of himself he reveals, and yet he also reminded us that we never see all sides of anyone, even ourselves. A small thing can look very large (to others) in blogs, Chris emphasized. He pointed out that people see themselves in your posts (in other words, people don’t listen to who you are but respond from what they think you are, projecting themselves onto you). Ponzi said that in contrast to Chris’s intentilonal multiple sides, she is who she is on her blog, She puts herself there. Ponzi did quite well on the panel, especially given the circumstances. 🙂 I appreciated both of their perspectives and found both to be valid and refreshing.

Maryam Scoble described what it was like to be Robert’s wife, to have many people know who she was or at least think they knew her, yet she had not written or said anything herself. She opened my eyes to the perspective of those who only exist online through other’s blogs and eyes. Darren’s blog widow also asked a question along this aspect. It seemed to me that one of the reasons Maryam started blogging was to have her own voice and represent herself, as well as show what it is like to be married to Robert. It was great to hear from her.

Jen Wiederick told stories and gave illustrations from her dating life. I’d only read her blog for a few weeks so I did not yet know the different ways she blogs about her relationships. I was intrigued to hear how the blog plays a part in her dates. Sometimes guys think they know a lot about her from her blog, when she’s only posted part of the story, and sometimes guys are completely unaware she has a blog. She talked about using her blog as a tool, and I agree it can be a tool, to build up or destroy a relationship.

Ted and I (our first joint appearance!) shared how blogging has strengthened our marriage. When pressed to remember specific quotes from one of us, I think I focussed more on others, hoping to understand and learn from them. (I do remember Ted said something that surprised me – I hadn’t heard it before and I was surprised he said it in public – so I won’t print it here!) But I think we both agreed together that blogging has built our relationship stronger, and afterwards we both agreed it was a great panel.

Go read Jen’s summary of the panel, different from mine, also Maryam’s wrap-up.

Arieanna once again caught some good quotes.

Picture here.

I think this would be an excellent topic to repeat, with other panelists. Amba wrote a post earlier exploring the many aspects of blogs in the bedroom:

There are so many possibilities. Dueling blogs. Linking and funneling traffic to each other. Competition and traffic envy. Sidelong communication and subliminal messages to each other through seemingly straight-ahead blogging. Bloggy voyeurism, bloggy exhibitionism, bloggy snooping, discoveries, revelations, suspicions of that too-friendly commenter. The ruefully familiar phenomenon of the blog widow/widower. “Desperate Blogwives.” What fun.

I read criticism saying (I’m paraphrasing here) the panel was like People magazine, too focussed on celebrities, gossip or personal situations. I thought we covered topics that would affect anyone who blogs and loves. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts and presentations, what we put in posts impacts relationships. Although they may have been cloaked in specific posts or circumstances, I think each panelist shared important principles and perspective. This is a topic I’ve longed to cover in a conference session and I think we made a great beginning. Perhaps future panels could cover specific aspects or scenarios,

I’d like to see Anita and Jack, Enoch and Tania, Marc and Lisa, Tom and Dori and others…(Kris and Sarah?!)

And, I have to say, I wonder why Robert wasn’t in the panel? I’d like to see him on it too! After all I think he’d make some sparks…

Bonus link: for more on blogging from the bedroom see the SXSW Interactive panel Bloggers in Love, Sunday March 12 3:30 pm. take a peek…

Northern Voice has come and gone (along with my laptop – couldn’t resist that quip) so I’ll try to make this summary quick…or at least put it all in one post oops..three posts, for those who would rather read about other adventures in my life..

We crossed the border Thursday night, February 9, and showed up for Moose Camp on Friday morning before Northern Voice on Saturday.. These two days are a bit of a blur for me, I confess, so I’ll mention a few highlights. On Friday I appreciated the opportunity to visit Nancy White’s session at NetSquared North, a nonprofit bootcamp. I also enjoyed the various Photo Camp topics. Although the BBQ at Stanley Park sounded fun, we had concerns about walking back and forth in the cold with kids, and so we went on a Greek adventure instead…

The audio is up!
First a big thank you to Bruce Sharp for posting the audio of my talk “Starting with Fire: Why Stories are Effective and How to Blog Effective Tales“.

Starting with Fire …and starting early!

Saturday started early as I prepared to speak, getting up for one last rehearsal before shower and breakfast. It’s an honor to be asked to speak at a conference, and an honor to be asked to speak first, to be given the opening keynote. It is also humbling to do a keynote, as I learned. I wanted to do my best to get the conference started, to represent and open NV, to keep everyone awake at 8:45 on a Saturday morning, so I put everything I could into preparing the talk. After munching scones in our hotel room, we got up and walked down Robson as a family, admiring the sun rise in the city.. Soon Darren introduced me and it was my turn on the stage.

Stories and challenges

When I proposed “Starting with Fire” to the Northern Voice organizers in November, I wanted to challenge myself and others. I was hoping to inspire bloggers to share and post more stories. And I challenged myself by proposing a talk that crossed disciplines, required research and contained multiple purposes. As Tim Bray noted, this talk was less intense than “Making Masks” and I intentionally wanted a different tone. Sharing stories has been essential to me, and I hoped to encourage others to keep that flame going. I was also eager to share what I had learned and hoping to listen in turn.

As I mentioned in the beginning of my presentation, I was fascinated when I started studying stories and discovered the many reasons why stories are essential, from neuroscience to psychology to culture. I wanted to share what I had learned. I kept the “how” simple, so that stories would seem accessible, not lofty or complex but something anyone can share easily in a post. Yet the topic of storytelling is complex and I look forward to developing these ideas further and watching them grow.

The more I thought about stories, and assembled concepts together, the more I realized that there is more to storytelling than simply telling stories.. We come to storytelling from the history of humanity, as one of many in a circle, needing humility to listen. Stories survive us and stories allow us to survive. But it is only as we listen with humility that we can allow other’s stories, truth, faith, love, to live within us. I want to pursue this.

Mistakes made

I have two regrets, both related to each other. In my original proposal for the talk, I had wanted to use a third of the time for conversation and interaction. However, as I practiced, the presentation was still coming together, evolving with each version, and often lasted close to 40 minutes. Instead I was surprised when the clock on my display said I had only taken 31 minutes or so on the stage. I should have asked if we had time for questions. I regret that I didn’t.

I also regret that I didn’t practice my talk thoroughly with the dual-display mode. In Keynote, the only way to see what will be seen when I present, is to plug the laptop into another monitor. This means hijacking Ted’s computer, which I should have done instead of relying on memory. I had forgotten that. Keynote also reduces the space for notes when put into double display mode (why doesn’t the program let you know this ahead of time?!) So when I encountered some of my slides on stage, I suddenly realized I lost some of my lengthier notes. The first couple times I improvised, but for my penultimate paragraph, I wanted those notes, those specific words, and paused to try to see if I could get them. It was awkward and I apologize. I would appreciate more opportunities to practice speaking somehow (Darren, did you join Toastmasters?!)

Learning and responding

As I am beginning to learn about both storytelling and giving presentations, I’m grateful for community and conferences that provide me with encouragment, inspiration and opportunity. Thank you to everyone at Northern Voice for letting me speak. Thanks for listening and responding.

Nancy White commented that I should share the dark side of stories. I’ll think more about that one...Beth Grigg disagreed with me about voice. David Drucker was disturbed by the partial picture I painted, when I told a tale from my childhood of the power of stories. I’m sorry.. I had hoped the story could stand on its own as a snapshot and illustration and I did not intend to disturb anyone. (update: David responded to my comment with clarification on his blog.) Alan Levine thought I didn’t spend enough time on the “how” of blogging stories. From my clock I know I spent 20 of my 30 minutes on the “how” but I could improve. Perhaps by adding more examples. Or turning the talk into a conversation where we share with each other. I am thinking of trying a conversational version of “Starting with Fire” at the next opportunity I have, perhaps Seattle Mind Camp in May.

More from others…look in this Technorati search…also
Arieanna, Tris and Mack caught some of my phrases. Nancy White’s notes seem fairly thorough.

Neil Jensen started sharing his own family stories. Backspace was nice. Ponzi mentioned the call for “encore” (I though iti was just Ponzi yelling encore – she’s such a fan and friend!:-)).

My favorite picture of my presentation is probably Kris Krug’s but I also liked Tim Bray’s angle. Thanks to everyone for the pictures in the northernvoice Flickr tag.

My research and resources are listed here:http://del.icio.us/julie_leung/storytelling

The Seven Competencies of Online Interaction

Another highlight was Nancy White’s excellent Seven Competencies of Online Interaction. I dashed into her session, abandoning Ted and kids, when I saw her first slide with the word “storyteller”. Nancy influenced my thoughts as I was writing my talk, through email dialogue and her blog posts, and I enjoyed learning from her in-person presentation.

The Place of Face to Face

In the NetSquared session I attended as well as the last session on Five Ways Your Blog Can Change the World, the role of face to face interactions versus online was discussed. Nancy pointed out in her session that some people, such as HIV workers around the world whose organizations will never send them to conferences or Armenians who spend five months of the year unable to leave their village due to snow, will only have online community as an option. I think Robert Scoble hits it well when he wrote that community comes from hanging out together. Sometimes people wonder why go to a blogging conference, but at a blogging conference you will make connections that don’t happen any other way. There’s something about being in the same time and space as someone else that pulls you together. Perhaps you sit or park next to each other, eat lunch, grab a cup of coffee and bump into each other, stumble into their talk. Sure, we can find rich connections online. But blogging conferences prove that there’s no replacement for face-to-face.

Mommy and Daddy Blogger bonding

Those of us in the kid room created our own community, simply because we were all there together, with common purpose and goal (survival as parents!). It was fun to see Eric Soroos and Rose and Ben again after literally years. Also Beth Grigg and her clan, Lauren Wood and Tim Bray. We hung out with Anita Rowland, whose wisdom and patience with kids inspires me. And Darren wrote some kind words about our kids.

I like the community created by Northern Voice and wish we could continue it throughout the year in person. Perhaps we could get together for a Photo Camp or Photo Walk in either Seattle or Vancouver (before or after Gnomedex?) Perhaps a bbq, in honor of Lee and Sachi LeFever?!

(Note: I started writing this piece on Saturday the 18th but it us still valid and so is my gratitude!)

It’s cold enough outside to freeze a paper cup of water into ice ()the girls tried it as an experiment), cold enough that the flowers refuse to open in the afternoon and some have fallen and wilted this weekend, so cold the sunshine doesn’t tempt us to go outside and bask in its light. Yet the tulips have emerged, green arrowheads rising in the dirt, the tall daffodil stems announce the arrival and the yellow and purple crocus proclaim spring is coming.

And on this cold day, it was spring cleaning I did, polishing places in the house that hadn’t been polished in a while (furniture polish makes me feel ill), dusting, wiping, scrubbing, organizing.

It’s a time of cleaning. A time of new. A strange time of transition perhaps, complicated by confusion, but a time of change.

I’m grateful to everyone who has emailed and commented in this past week, reminding me of community and reminding me why I’m here in this place called the blogosphere. Thanks. Thanks for your care, companionship and comraderie. Thanks for taking the time to stop by.

I felt better from the moment I published the post describing the theft. Was it that I had notifed any readers and released myself from the guilt of my absence, my responsibility to blog and email? Was it the expression of my emotions? Was it the sense that I was not alone? I don’t know. But I’m grateful. This week was a busy and bumpy one, but at this point the big piece remaining is getting a replacement computer for me, and the insurance hoops for that.

Sometimes I feel frustrated, when I wish I could do a task online as I remember it. I am not used to restricting my computer time to the end of the day. I keep a list with paper and pencil on my desk of the tasks I will do at 10 pm.

Then again there is freedom in everything. And as a few commenters have mentioned, I will grow and learn from this experience. I do feel lighter. I have opportunity to examine my use of the internet, email and blogs and to make changes.To try different paths and ways of living online. It’s a season of cleaning, spring cleaning. It’s a bit chilty and a bit scary but it feels good. It’s a new feeling, a new season to savor. Thanks!

While we were wandering through the Vancouver Aquarium on Sunday – and throughout the weekend – I was compiling a list in my mind of reasons why I like Canada. Loss of laptops aside, these observations are still valid. I did this last year after Northern Voice so I suppose each time I cross the border I realize why I like it there. Plus, Darren introduced me on Saturday as being from Bainbridge Island, B.C., so perhaps I seem a bit Canadian anyway. 🙂 Instead of ending today’s postings on a sour note, I thought I’d add this list of things I like in Vancouver.

1. The city is beautiful. People say Seattle is beautiful, but I gasped when I turned my head to cross the street and saw mountains, appearing clearer and closer than the Cascades or Olympics do for those of us in Puget Sound. The buildings themselves are intriguing, architecture with texture and curves. Ted and I wished we had had a day just to wander around and photograph Vancouver sights.

2. The strong German-speaking community – and Chinese community – are appealing. It seemed every time we spoke German with Boris – or rather Boris spoke with us and we smiled politely in return – someone else at the conference chimed in auf Deutsch. And it would be wonderful to raise our kids in close proximity to Cantonese community.

3. Vancouver and Canada in general seem to realize that the world is wide and not all white. There’s a larger perspective on life on this planet and identity. as a Canadian. Perhaps I am extrapolating. But I was encouraged as I walked down Robson Saturday morning to see an ad mentioning “Vijay”. Where in North America would one see ads incorporating someone named Vijay? Perhaps the Bay Area. Perhaps.

4. I prefer the Olympics coverage offered by CBC to NBC. Saturday night, we turned on the tv and first saw the Canadian broadcast. It was mellow, an older fellow at the desk allowing a young skier from Alberta to babble for a while after winning her gold medal.No quick cuts, emotional manipulation or jagged questions, as we’ve seen on our home sports programs. Plus the commercials were adorable and family-friendly. My daughters loved the beavers on the escalator. Once we turned on NBC, the tone was different. Soap opera actors emphasized figure skatings struggles with an exaggerated script. Everything seemed hyped and heated.And narrowed to Americans. I can’t leave my kids alone with American tv because the commercials are often for adult shows, featuring intense violence or sexuality images (or even ideas of dating ala Bachelor style – ugh!). Bring on the animated beavers!

5. The price of life – break-ins not included – seems less in Vancouver. Parking at Stanley Park was only $3 for all day. Here state parks are $5 for a day and most city parking rates are much higher. It costs $10 to park at our ferry terminal. We also noted that the food at the Aquarium seemed reasonably priced, especially for a large attraction. A $3 plate of fries filled our family.

6.2010! Need I say more? Ted and I joke that we will celebrate our 18th anniversary by escaping to Vancouver’s Olympics although logistics make it highly unlikely. I hope that Northern Voice 2010 includes a ticket or two to an Olympic event. Or maybe a wide screen tv.

7.If you do need the police in Vancouver, they can come on horses, which is helpful for amusing children. And they seem to be pretty responsive too.

I’ll post this now and let Ted have this computer again…but perhaps I’ll add to this list as I remember what I noticed this year. Yeah, we liked Vancouver. Perhaps even enough to risk crossing the border again…

I hope the Vancouver drug addict who has my laptop is enjoying the presentation I wrote on storytelling.

‘Cause I’ve got a story to tell!

After our great weekend at Moose Camp and Northern Voice, we decided to stop at the Vancouver Aquarium on the way home, a tradition we started last year after the first Northern Voice. The kids deserved a day of fun for them since they had put up with two days of rather-grown-up blogging conferences. Taking the time for family and photography would help us relax and savor the short vacation before heading back into reality.

Surprise in the Stanley Park parking lot

Three hours later, ready to hit the road, I looked in the van and saw the glove compartment open. With a strange sensation of both horror and numbness, we knew the laptops were gone before we looked for them. The thieves knew what they were doing, and knew what they were taking They were not starving: Coca-Cola and wine were left behind. No, they wanted our valuables, the unzipped suitcase proving their priorities.

At first I was calm. Worse things have happened to me. Worse things could have happened. I wanted to do damage control for the kids (since I’ve failed at that in the past) and pay attention to them while Ted focussed on the loss and made a list for the police. It was a larger loss for him since he lives more online than I do. I felt I could forgive the thieves.We were okay., Not great, but okay.

But in the past few days I’ve been surprised at the emotional reaction within me. First I wanted to tell someone. Anyone. However we had forgotten to charge our cell phones – and now the chargers were gone with the thieves. I had to wait until we came home hours later and I typed out a few emails to share the news.

Looking in the mirror and living what I learned about storytelling

Ironically, I spent weeks studying the power of storytelling as I prepared for my presentation at Northern Voice. Yet I don’t know why I have an urge to tell people our computers were stolen. I realized that not only did I want to tell people, but also I was seeking a certain response to my story to satisfy something within me. Perhaps I am putting the pieces together as I talk. Perhaps I am finding power in the powerlessness. Perhaps it is the way I am grieving this loss. Perhaps, in the break of trust we feel, I am searching for community, searching for a sense of empathy and understanding, searching for someone who will show me the world is okay again.

vowing to be no longer a lurker

Nancy White in her excellent presentation on Saturday (see video here) said that lurkers were the greatest potential powerful force – or something like that (of course, my notes are gone now). At the time I felt convicted, realizing that I need to take more time to comment on posts. I think aggregator reading dissuades me from commenting (too much work to click in and out from the feed, plus my aggregator didn’t allow me to comment on some systems) and I also am trying to do too much with the time I have, rushing when I read.

But I am suddenly seeing the power of response, the power of lurkers, so to speak. Is it that I want my experience validated? I crave conversation. I want to know I am not alone. This is the largest tangible loss I have experienced during my blogging days, the largest loss that I can describe explicitly in this public space and probably the most black and white. It is easy to see that we were wronged. Even if we were stupid to leave our laptops in our van, someone else still took our valuables out of our locked vehicle.

Isolation

The loss of my laptop and the crime itself have isolated me and cut me off from communication and community. I was angry yesterday morning that I had to spend a day driving to the dealer (an hour from our house) to have the van evaluated and repaired. The kids and I had other plans we had to cancel, plans with our homeschooling group, some of our best friends. I was mad that I – and my three kids – had to pay the price for someone else’s actions with both time and money..and further isolate ourselves.

More than that, of course, without a computer, I can’t send email or blog. We have an old ThinkPad that Ted helped resuscitate since Sunday. I can’t watch videos, as I discovered last night when it crashed. But for the moment it works for email and blogging (note: the ThinkPad is being rebuilt as I finish this post). Although we bought software this fall so we could watch tv on our PowerBooks in time for Turin, we will be missing this Olympics, another loss for our figure-skating-fan-family. We are waiting to work out details with the insurance. And waiting for the next generation of Macs to become available. I may be limping online for a little while perhaps until April.

Even my camera is affected. The cable for downloading pictures was in my laptop bag. And the kids and I fillled up the memory card while we were in the Aquarium. I had imagined coming home and trying to make more videos. The kids wanted to post pictures. Now I’ll be happy if we can figure out a way to get the images off of the camera sometime. Photography too is a way to express myself, a way that has been cut off by the crime.

Counting our losses

The losses are tangible, large and sentimental. The poster Nancy White made with the girls during the Blogs in the Bedroom session was taken too. I wonder what the thief thought of that! At least I uploaded some photos to Flickr before we left the hotel. I lost photographs. I lost my entire “Starting with Fire” talk. I had a backup copy of my presentation, but it was in Ted’s bag. I still have a stack of printed papers I used when compiling my notes, a stack I had planned to toss when returning from the weekend, but now will keep. So the talk I gave on Saturday was exclusively for Northern Voice! Thanks to Nancy’s detailed notes and othersn(I’ll list more links later) I’m sure I could put it back together if I wanted to do so. I also lost my remote for presentations, two DVDs I brought to amuse the kids, a copy of The Cat in the Hat and a book of letters written by Jim Elliot (that should give me pause).

But I think I am more disturbed by the emotional impact. I miss the first computer that was truly mine. I liked that laptop! I’m missing my pictures and notes. I’m missing the Mac software I had figured out how to use, now that I’m back to an old Windows machine. I’m surprised by my sorrow.

Losing my religion of locks …and control

I’m overwhelmed by the work. I’m surprised at the amount of energy it has taken me to write this blogpost.I had a good cry on the drive home, after we crossed the border. At night I fall asleep early, too tired to do what I need to do to keep the household going, clutter accumulating on my desk and in the corners of the countertop. There’s a feeling of depression perhaps and certainly futility. My faith has been broken, not my faith in people as much as my faith in locks. Mitch Ratcliffe wrote a post on locks at the end of last year when he installed the first lock on his home titled How I got a key to my house after five years, and I drafted a post in response, describing how I had grown up believing in locks (yes, I also lost all my drafts of posts – another reason to publish rather than polish!). Locks were like religion to me. We believe in deadbolts. At every home Ted and I have had together, we’ve been meticulous about locks. The last thing I do at night is check the doors. I constantly lock the car. Even though I live on an island with a low crime rate, where many still leave doors and cars open. Yet not even a lock protects us from harm. Certainly I don’t like knowing strangers have rummaged through my underwear but I like less the reminder that I can’t control what happens to us.

I need normalcy to return. Yet I know things will never be what they were.

Failing at forgiveness

I’m realizing I am lousy at forgiveness. I’ve felt that I have learned to forgive others in my life. In particular I like to think I’ve been able to go forward from a painful childhood and build my own family in better ways. But I am seeing how hard it is to forgive someone when you have to live with the damage every day. I’m wondering whether I know how to forgive at all. Maybe I’m only able to forgive when the situation improves and I can forget about the loss. Wow. Losing my laptop affected my lifestyle, my community, my mental and emotional wellbeing. It was one thing to sit on the curb outside the Aquarium while waiting for the Mounties to arrive and think I could forgive the thieves. I’m finding it is another thing to return home and constantly change my routines because of someone else’s choices and crimes. Even as I write this post, I am always aware of what was stolen, as I try to hack in html instead of my WSIWYG ecto editor I enjoyed. Forgiveness is indeed divine, something beyond my own abilities and limits. I can only imagine how those with larger losses in life try to cope. I think I am finding more sensitivity and insight for others in painful situations, seeing into the stories around me.

Bad Things Happen

And Good Things Happen with Bad Things. I’ve been amazed by Ted’s response to the situation, his kindness and calm demeanor, despite the fact that a stolen computer might be near the top of his list of nightmares.He never once blamed me, although I blamed myself, since I was the one who locked the car (I am now quite certain, based on evidence, that I did lock it). Even now he is sharing his Linux box with me as the rehabilitated ThinkPad crashed this morning and needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up, more work for my thoughtful husband and technologist who wants me to maintain my online life somehow in the midst of this loss.As I wrote on his Valentines card yesterday I love him more.

This incident has also been a good opportunity. for uis to talk to the kids. Abigail reacted “I didn’t think something like this would happen to us.” I remember being her age and feeling the same way – only when my parents divorced. Bad Things always happened to other people. There must be something that happens around age seven or eight when you begin to realize that the world is not safe, a loss of innocence perhaps, a gain in awareness of reality and the ugliness of life. Even Elisabeth, our three year old, felt compelled to tell her swimming teacher about the theft in her preschool babble. Living on Bainbridge Island and in our home, our kids probably inhabit a relatively safe world, one that was rocked by an opportunist on Sunday in Stanley Park.

Ted and I have taken this opportunity to let the kids know that Bad Things Happen. Conversations have included topics from Nancy Kerrigan’s knee (it fit well with Michelle Kwan’s swan song and the OLympics) to child abductors to stories of stealing from each of our own childhoods and one particularly animated tale from our early married life involving earrings and a chase scene. We read the Bible as a family, and even if one disregards any spiritual value to the tales in that book, from the beginning the stories reveal how people do Bad Things to each other. So on the one hand, crime should not be a surprise. Yet it’s another thing to tell your kids how awful humans can be to each other, and to have them get a glimpse of it with their wide trusting eyes.

the story behind the stealing

One highlight of the experience was meeting the Vancouver Police Mounted Squad. The horses cheered up the kids, and the police had stickers to distribute too. The officers said that the theft rate is due to the drug problem in the city. They suspected our computers were probably stolen by someone who needed cash to get a hit or get high.

More than once I’ve wondered about the person or people who took our laptops. “Stories make us merciful,” I said on Saturday from the stage. I imagine the story behind the stealing. I don’t know what it is. I’ll probably never know. We don’t expect to see those laptops again or find out who took them. But I want a story to make me merciful. I want a story to help me be compassionate. I want a story to help me forgive and forget…and go forward.

Yesterday after making a stack of sandwiches for lunch and wrestling with emotions of frustration and anger, we headed to the mechanic, prepared to spend the day sitting in the lounge. I was pleasantly surprised when the dealership fixed our car for less than expected. On the way home, I stopped at a park and let the girls get exercise. As the three became a blur of purple and pink against the green, bouncing across the grass in the sunshine, I think I felt their freedom. I think I felt forgiveness.

how to help

Here’s a way to help me: Please leave your blog url in the comments below to help me rebuild my list of aggregator feeds. .I also lost the list of blogs I read! If you don’t want to leave it publicly, please send it to harrowme AT yahoo.com. Thanks. And thanks to all of you who responded so kindly to my anniversary post (I’ll use that list of links too) and to Ted’s post.

Thank you for listening!