Washington Post/AOL Ads

My new house is at:  http://theresawilliams-author.blogspot.com/

AOL Journals: You've Got Ads Move Draws Protest From Some Longtime Subscribers

By Yuki NoguchiWashington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 23, 2005; Page D04

As America Online Inc. turns more toward advertising dollars to offset the shrinking number of subscribers who pay a monthly fee, the company may be upsetting the longtime customers who have remained faithful over the years.

Virginia Heatwole of Rockville, for example, has been a paying customer since 1993 and turned to AOL when she decided to start her own Web log. One of things she liked about AOL Journals was the absence of advertisements on her blog page.

America Online and Time Warner

America Online Inc. is trying to find ways to keep customers coming back to its Internet community while parent company Time Warner Inc. seeks ways to expand its Internet empire.

• AOL Journals: You've Got Ads
• Time Warner to Buy Back More Stock
• Case Quits As Time Warner Director
• Timeline: AOL & Time Warner
• AOL, and Other Online Keys More News

 Now, her personalized Web page that includes her thoughts about nature and spirituality has become a platform for Netflix DVD rental ads.

"They're flashing and screaming at the top of my blog," she said.

The change came last week, when Dulles-based AOL started posting ads on the pages created by AOL Journals, which had been ad-free for two years. Back in May, the company opened the free service to nonsubscribers, saying that those blogs would contain ads but that blogs by paying customers would be ad-free.

The company, which is quickly losing subscribers to broadband service providers, switched to an "audience strategy" earlier this year, offering free music, video, blogs, and other services and features with hopes of increasing the audience and grabbing more online ad dollars.

"The decision to implement banner advertising on AOL Journals is consistent with our business and advertising practices," AOL spokeswoman Kathie Brockman said in an e-mail. The company, which hosts about 600,000 blogs, received several dozen complaints about the advertisements and is taking suggestions into consideration, she said.

"We have advertising on the AOL.com portal, in email, instant messaging, and across our network," Brockman wrote. "It is also consistent with the practices of other major blog providers on the Internet."

Some users of AOL's instant-message service are also dealing with the automatic arrival of new "buddies" on their buddy lists: AOL services called Moviefone and ShoppingBuddy. The links allow users to search for movies and products by typing instant messages, which automatically generate a reply message.

Users were notified of the change through a posting on AIM.com and were given an option to remove the new listings by going to the set-up menu to delete them, the company said.

However the new ads cannot be deleted from the blogs, and that has other bloggers such as Armand Thompson, a Tacoma, Wash.-based U.S. Army sergeant, steamed. In response, he created a new blog at Google's rival blog site, Blogspot, and is trying to move his older entries to it.

His form of protest: keeping his AOL Journal open to speak out against the ads on it.

"It's using their platform against them," he said.

Hallowed Ground

OPEN HOUSE

by Theodore Roethke

My secrets cry aloud.
I have no need for tongue.
My heart keeps open house,
My doors are widely swung.
An epic of the eyes
My love, with no disguise.

My truths are all foreknown,
This anguish self-revealed.
I'm naked to the bone,
With nakedness my shield.
Myself is what I wear:
I keep the spirit spare.

The anger will endure,
The deed will speak the truth
In language strict and pure.
I stop the lying mouth;
Rage warps my dearest cry
To witness agony.

 

 

My new house is at:  http://theresawilliams-author.blogspot.com/

Dear Reader,

The banner ads on this journal are placed here without my consent.  I do not endorse any of the products being advertised here.  My journal was started more than a year before these advertisements became the headers on AOL Journals. This is an invasion, tantamount to theft.

There are many reasons why people keep journals. 

 I speak now on behalf of any and all who consider their journals to be hallowed ground, a place where their "secrets cry aloud." 

I also speak on behalf of some who are dead and therefore cannot speak.  I speak for those who have left us their words, whose journals we visit as we would graves or memorials, whose journals have been defaced with ads. 

This last entry I leave, as a testament to the sanctity of art.

This journal was once my "Open House."  

To AOL:  We do our living, laughing, loving, and dying on these pages.  They are not billboards for advertisers. 

To AOL:  You have defaced my house.

This entry will remain here, as testament of what you have done. 

--Theresa Williams

 

  

 

REMOVE ADS.

Remove the ad banners.

--Theresa Williams

Dear readers, please consider posting a comment of protest at:  http://journals.aol.com/journalseditor/magicsmoke/

My comment to "magic smoke" is posted in the comments section of this entry.

I have moved to:  http://theresawilliams-author.blogspot.com/

If you leave AOL Journals, please go here to post a link to your new home:  http://journals.aol.com/pattboy92/TheGreatExodus/

Sign the petition at:  http://gopetition.com/sign.php?currentregion=237&petid=7527

I will return to this AOL journal only if the ad banners are removed.     --Theresa Williams

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From a reader of this journal:

re. banner ads on online journals-
Jonathan Miller, CEO of AOL. Joe Redling, Chief Marketing Officer.
Corporate Headquarters:
America Online, Inc.
22000 AOL Way
Dulles, VA  20166
(703) 265-1000
Personal calls or letters are often best.
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead
ggw07@aol.com

Literature of Longing

Painting by Chagall

~>~>~>~>~>~>~>

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From "The Song of Songs"

Like an apple tree among the

trees of the forest

is my lover among the young men.

I delight to sit in his shade,

and his fruit is sweet to my taste.

He has taken me to the banquet hall,

and his banner over me is love.

Strengthen me with raisins,

refresh me with apples,

for I am faint with love ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  A fellow journaler recently expressed some sadness at not having found the perfect lover.  The journaler writes of having unreturned love.   I've found that the best writing comes out of such longing. 

Walt Whitman once wrote of the pain of unreturned love, saying,   "Now I think there is no unreturn'd love, the pay's certain one way or another.  (I loved a certain person ardently and my love was not return'd, yet out of that I have written these songs.)"    

There is nothing else to say:  Channel your longing into your art.

 

Reality

What is Reality?

What is the truth?

I'm thinking now of the writer whose self-concept depends on authencity.   Does this describe you?  It describes me.

Perhaps I'm more comfortable writing fiction than non-fiction because I worry that non-fiction has to be completely "true," detail by detail, and I drive myself mad trying to get all the details "right." 

I'm finding more and more that I don't know how to tell "the truth."  I only know how to tell "my truth."  And in telling "my truth," I find myself constantly departing from facts and into the realm of mythology.  I believe there is so much truth in myths. 

A wonderful poem by Rabia al Basri explains the difficulties of writing from the heart, of writing, to, for, out of, or about the Divine source (by Divine source, I mean that mysterious place our creativity and imagination comes from):

REALITY

In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.

Speech is born out of longing,

True description from the real taste.

The one who tastes, knows;

the one who explains, lies.

How can you describe the true form of Something

In whose presence you are blotted out?

And in whose being you still exist?

And who lives as a sign for your journey? 

~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~.~

"In whose presence you are blotted out..."  This is very much what Yolen means, I think, about the self falling away. 

A Movement of the Natural Human Mind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

At Seventy-Five: Rereading An Old Book

by Hayden Carruth

My prayers have been answered, if they were prayers. I live.
I'm alive, and even in rather good health, I believe.
If I'd quit smoking I might live to be a hundred.
Truly this is astonishing, after the poverty and pain,
The suffering. Who would have thought that petty
Endurance could achieve so much?
                                                      And prayers --
Were they prayers? Always I was adamant
In my irreligion, and had good reason to be.
Yet prayer is not, I see in old age now,
A matter of doctrine or discipline, but rather
A movement of the natural human mind
Bereft of its place among the animals, the other
Animals. I prayed. Then on paper I wrote
Some of the words I said, which are these poems.

--------------------------------------------------------------

I love Hayden Carruth's poetry.  His poems are a unique combination of realism and spirituality.  Whenever I start to feel a little off-balance, or lost, I read Hayden Carruth.

A book of Carruth's letters was recently published.  The book is called Letters to Jane.  The title refers to the poet Jane Kenyon, and the letters in the book were written in the months just prior to Kenyon's death from leukemia.  The letters are a window, looking inward at the friendship of two great poets.  Carruth's presence in these letters is huge.

What's wonderful about Carruth's letters to Jane is that they are so honest.  One of the things Carruth is honest about is what it is like to be a writer.  He's so honest in saying that sometimes writers are just wasteful of their time.  For instance, in his letter of May 9, 1994, Carruth writes:

"So I frittered away the weekend: read a short manuscript, wrote a few letters, watched a hell of a lot  of basketball, read what we used to call cheap-screw fiction. I haven't heard that term for a while. At first it meant under-the-counter porn, but later came to mean any escapist literature. As a consequence, on top of the desperation and depression, I feel guilt. What else is new?"

For those who picture the writer's life as one in which the author sits thoughtfully poised over a manuscript 24-hours a day, this may come as a revelation: writers waste time, they struggle to keep themselves on track, they fail, they get depressed.

I find this revelation uplifting rather than sad.  Ah, so, I'm not the only one!

Carruth was also honest about many of his other human failings.  For example, in another letter to Jane he tells about having to take his laptop computer to a repair shop because of "excessive cat hair." Carruth, a lover of cats, says that his repairman suggested he get rid of the cat whereupon Carruth admits:

"I said immediately, 'Oh, I can't do that,' implying that my wife wouldn't stand for it, which was a cowardly way out, and no doubt sexist too. The fact is I wouldn't stand for it either."

I really had to laugh at that.  There are so many useless little lies we tell to save face.

Looking at Carruth's poem just now, I find myself believing that prayer is really an avenue to help us to tell the truth.

How different might my writing be if I thought of it as a prayer?

  

 

Write With Your Whole Life

One of the ideas I've talked about in my journal before is "loving my reader."  This is something I discovered as I was writing my novel, that I needed to love my reader in order to compose meaningful prose. 

I've not talked about what this means, "loving my reader," partly because I wasn't sure how to explain it.

In my reading the other night, I found something that may serve as at least a partial explanation.  It is from Thich Nhat Hanh's The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching. 

Some of us have been asking about the difference between writing that is theraputic to the writer and writing that is theraputic to the reader.  This is an issue I had to deal with my own novel because so much of the book is autobiographical.  How could I write about my own pain in a way that would be meaningful for readers? 

In his book, Thich Nhat Hanh discusses forms of writing.  He tells us:  "Of course you have suffered, but the other person has also suffered." 

I think this is an important realization.

I think this realization is what transforms our own suffering into something our readers can use.  We have to write with recognition that our reader has suffered, too.

Thich Nhat Hanh  says that the other person's suffering is worth our compassion:  "When you begin to understand the suffering of the other person, compassion will arise in you, and the language you use will have the power of healing.  Compassion is the only energy that can help us connect with another person."

When we write, we are making important connections to others.   As Thich Nhat Hanh says, "We know that our words will affect many other people."  So it helps to consider the affect our words might have.

Thich Nhat Hanh says, "Writing is a deep practice.  Even before we begin writing, during whatever we are doing--gardening or sweeping the floor--our book or essay is being written deep in our consciousness.  To write a book, we must write with our whole life, not just during the moments we are sitting at our desk."

I love this phrase:  "WE MUST WRITE WITH OUR WHOLE LIFE." 

I also like the way Thich Nhat Hanh says that writing is a "Deep practice."

I'm not saying that our writing must be light and happy all the time.  A lot of good writing is dark and a lot of good writing--important writing-- expresses hopelessness.  We need to know that others feel hopeless, so that we don't feel so alone. 

But what I believe Thich Nhat Hanh is saying is that when we express anything in writing, we have a responsibility, not just to ourselves, not just to our own anger, our own hurt, our own need, but to our readers. 

One of the things I'm learning as I read about Buddhism is that there is no concept of "self" because we are all connected. 

I am not separate from my reader!

Isn't that just the most amazing thing?