WordPress switched it’s framework that the old themes were built on, to one that supports social media and mobile media. All the new themes don’t have sidebar widgets but the widgets follow at the end of the blog. All the old themes are considered retired and no updates are being done on them. They have been trying to fix issues for the ones that they can still work with. Last week wordpress did a site update and some of the blogs that had old themes ran into trouble with their side bars. This was an answer that came from one of the techs when asked about it a few days ago.
But as with any software the code eventually becomes dated, the theme no longer supports all the features on WordPress.com, and the continued cost of maintaining it just becomes too high. At that point we retire the theme. We don’t send out notifications when this happens.
You can keep on using the theme, but as the different coding languages evolve and we introduce new features and software updates, eventually the theme will start breaking. We still try to fix any bugs that occur, like in this case, but there will come a day where something will break that we simply won’t be able to fix.
I ran into trouble a couple of years ago. I switched themes but I didn’t really like it so I switched last Spring to one that they had just started offering. It works well with food and craft blogs. If you are using a theme from before 2015 I would consider switching to one of the themes they are offering now. I am still updating. I have recipes that I have to recode to make them printable. It is something they added in the recent couple of years. It takes a while to do 175 recipes.
Most of the early reblogs I did here the links no longer worked so I cleaned them up this past week. I still have a few more to go. I just simply deleted them.
I just wanted to give everyone here a heads up on this.
It took a good man. A big, strong, solid, vibrant, loving man.
It took him, and knocked the wind out of his sails. Drained his big, strong, solid, vibrant, loving body and weakened it, day by slow, excruciating day.
Took his pride. Took his feelings. Took his hopes and wishes away, and left him hollow.
With skeletal eyes, it made him gaze at me. Causing constant pain, it led him to hold my hand and say nothing.
As fond as I am of making a short story long, this shall be a relatively brief post for a change.
I’m going to step back from blogging and the blogosphere for the time being. I have some health issues that keep compounding themselves and I am discovering that dealing with them is taking all my energies and efforts. The dialysis is not working as well as hoped and now I’m going through six months of drug therapy to squash a so called pre-cancerous condition.
So, I’m going to float for a while and remove myself from all the sturm and drang that we get caught up in on a daily basis and concentrate on healing.
I’ll miss you guys a lot more than you’ll miss me, so I probably won’t be able to resist a peek now and then when I have a good day.
Hopefully, I’ll be back in the Spring, meaner than before.
Wow. I step away from this place for a few months, and we get a whole bunch of new readers! Wow.
I love it!
I am so very grateful for Dick and Aunt Sam’s suggestion to start posting about food. Food is such a basic need, a staple in all our lives. As is, unfortunately, money (or the lack thereof). So great recipes that are easy on the budget and yummy to the tummy are very, very welcome here. Trucking Momoe took the idea and ran with it and won an award, for crying out loud! I am so proud of our Momoe, and so thankful for the new visitors and readers that we’ve gotten since then.
I have to apologize for being away for so long, folks. Adjusting to my new life in PA has been an ongoing struggle. I love it here, I am grateful beyond words to my mother for taking me in, and I’m happy to be working and making new friends. But wow, it’s hard. And also awesome. Hard and awesome, all at once. It’s a lot to take in.
My mother is going through a hard time, lately, with her depression and the subsequent meds she needs to take for it. I wish there was a Happy Pill that I could give her, instead of all these crazy meds she has to try, to see what works with what, and what doesn’t. I hate to see her on a roller coaster when I wish she could just coast through life with a smile on her face. But she handles it with grace, so I have no complaints. And I’m working again, but only part-time, with no benefits, and that’s a struggle but at least I have a reason to get up and get out of the house four days a week, heh. Having been working at Hemlock for the past six months, I’ve learned a lot about living in a gated community, and all I can say is that the politics are ridiculous and my management is clueless. But…it’s a job. Could be worse.
And I’ve fallen in love. Met a nice guy in May and even though it’s probably too soon to say I’m in love, I know it when I see it. We have our ups and downs already, but he’s my buddy and we work it out. So, it’s all good.
I don’t know, I just keep waiting for everything to fall into place and make sense again. And it’s not happening yet. And I get so impatient. I want full-time work with benefits, I want to not be broke anymore, I want my mother better and my man happy and myself happy and my friends and loved ones happy, and…so far, it’s an uphill struggle. I don’t know how to contribute more, here at Paradigm, while I’m in this mode — this holding period, if you will — while I’m waiting for the dust to settle around me. But please believe me, I am keeping up with the posts and the readership and I’m loving all the contributions. AND the new readers!
Give me a little time, and things will improve, I promise. Thanks so much for your patience, and for being here, my friends. I love you all and am grateful to you.
Four days ago, our longtime fellow TPMCafe denizen, hoppycalif2 stated the following in a thread at the current Cafe site:
And today, Sunday 02/12/12, during an interview with Brian Lamb on C-SPAN’s “Q&A” Josh stated that the Cafe was coming back onto the front page in some form or other.
Although, Josh said nothing about re-establishing the reader’s blog section during the chat.
Hello, friends. I just wanted to point out the new CENSORSHIP banner on the corner of our page, and urge you to click on it to learn more. It will be on our site until the vote on January 24.
In honor of the season, I have added snowfall to our Paradigm page. Only problem is, you can’t really see it because of the white background. But…trust me, it’s there. 🙂 Stare long enough, and you’ll see it, I promise.
I’d like to take this opportunity to wish all of our writers and commenters and readers a very merry Christmas, happy Chanukah, happy winter solstice, and to thank every one of you for being here. I’m always happy to see new subscribers, and this year we’ve gotten several. Thank you, thank you, for reading our blogs. Thanks for joining us, and for enjoying us.
I wish everyone peace, and I hope 2012 is kind to us all.
It all began with a Michael Moore visit to the View. It was nothing short of appalling. So we will call it Exhibit 1:
For the longest time I just didn’t know what to say about that clip, I’d certainly read all of the criticism of Moore after this episode. I’ve been formulating what I want to say since then, and reading as much as possible about onslaught of commentary that followed his outburst of what can only be called blatant racism. And in a sense I think Professor Harris Perry (ProfHP), was really responding to this, after being exposed to much of the diva outbursts that attempt to denigrate the Presidency of Barack Obama, in the so-called progressive blogsophere. I am going to introduce this clip as the penultimate example of racism in the so-called progressive community, and I am using Moore’s gaff first because it is a blatant example of employing a stereotype to describe ones disappointment in the President. Does Moore really believe this? Moore definitely caused an avalanche virtual debate. I did read much of it. However as a white person, I still believe I have much to learn about racism and how it manifests in the most blatant and subtle ways. Ultimately in order to bridge our racial divide white people have to listen. But in a deeper sense first and foremost ProfHP does have some real hard evidence of racism in the so-called progressive community and that begins with Michael Moore’s statement on The View. That does constitute evidence, it really does. Why would you stoop to a stereotype to register your already well-known disappointment in the President? So we have one significant piece of evidence or outright racism, because unlike what Joan Walsh writes, evidence that is not in the form of a poll can also be relevant and serve as examples of racism at work, because most progressives don’t believe they are racist! They would never admit to it to a pollster, and that means we have to have other means of gathering data, come on, this isn’t that hard.
Exhibit 2: So after ProfHP’s original piece appeared in The Nation, Joan Walsh weighed in, with an okay blog, but it didn’t tell the entire story, and her blog required proof of racism via poll data. Poll responses about subtle racism cannot be supported without actual working evidence, which is often the things people say and write. Joan Walsh used the conservative talking point, there is no evidence to conclude such things, when in fact there is evidence, first and foremost Michael Moore.
Exhibit 3: The leader of the group New Progressive Alliance, Anthony Noel, told an African-American blogger to get over being black and to start debating like a human. What? OMG, I don’t know how to respond to that kind of racism and I can’t believe this is actually happening and this does constitute evidence, cold hard factual evidence of racism among the so-called progressive blogosphere.
Exhibit 4: David Sirota’s response to ProfHP: Boy that guy is one mad upper middle class employed talk show radio host isn’t he, I had never read him prior to this, so I delved into his stream of consciousness, and that is what it was a stream of consciousness wrapped in white-hot anger. So let’s get to Sirota’s criticism, to which he claims not one person has taken on his so-called facts to challenge him, people have just called him a racist. Well Dave if the shoe fits buddy, I guess you will have to wear it. Sirota wrote this:
By seeing this record and then explaining away declining liberal support for President Obama as a product of bigotry, Harris-Perry exhibits the ultimate form of both denialism and elitism.
But does she really exhibit the “ultimate” form of both denialism (which is not a word for the record) and elitism, (hello pot, meet kettle). Because there is ample evidence of her thesis. Sirota doesn’t want to acknowledge it, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t evidence. First of course this elitism crap is being carried too far, Sirota by definition is a liberal elitist, he should quit pulling the faux populism card. But what does account for the declining support of so-called progressives? Hell according to politifact.com the President has accomplished many of his campaign promises, in fact he has accomplished 147 of his campaign promises. Why are his accomplishments never acknowledged or if they are they are written off as tiny and not worthwhile and doesn’t make him progressive etc and so on. The list of his accomplishments are here: Politifact.com. Was Clinton a surrender monkey when his health care bill failed and he never talked about universal health care again? Health Care was huge, and because of it more people are covered.
Let’s go over more examples of racism in the Progressive community and these do constitute proof, the proof folks like Walsh, Sirota and Lyons are demanding.
The problem is less Obama’s failure to target black unemployment per se than his weakness on the jobs issue generally. Race comes into the equation because of an almost pathological aversion to conflict on Obama’s part, which has been widely attributed to his wish to bridge racial and ideological gaps.
What? It is as though Kuttner doesn’t realize that the President through policy implementation has successfully “strengthened Small Business Administration programs that provide capital to minority-owned businesses, support outreach programs that help minority business owners apply for loans, and work to encourage the growth and capacity of minority firms.” So actually the President is working to help minority communities by supporting the growth of business, which can only serve to help any given community by providing more jobs. So that makes Kuttner’s analysis not just wrong, but weird. Is it direct racism? Maybe not, but it is subtle, if Kuttner had done his homework he would see the President is implementing the same kind of policies the Clinton Admin for minority owned business. These were programs that were immediately ended when Bush took office. No doubt African-Americans have suffered a great deal during this terrible recession, greatly. However, this is a statistic that never changes, it doesn’t matter who is in office or what his color might be. African-Americans have always suffered more during economic downturns and as a people we should attempt to address and make corrections. It is all our responsibility, and we should start by getting Republicans out of congress. So when I read this particular line made me feel uncomfortable; is it subtle racism? It makes me think Kuttner believes the President is just looking for approval of white, protestant men, otherwise, why is up with the sloppy statement based on some sort of ESP?
Race comes into the equation because of an almost pathological aversion to conflict on Obama’s part, which has been widely attributed to his wish to bridge racial and ideological gaps.
The basic problem is that the Rich ate all the pie. What do you intend to do about it? Snuggle up to their Democratic Party incarnation some more in the hope of getting some crumbs? There used to be a term for that, on the plantations. House N****r.
No one is going to tell me this isn’t evidence of racism amongst so-called progressives. Was it necessary to head directly to plantation talk? Was it? How can anyone write that there is no evidence of some divisive racial language used by some people on the left?
Exhibit 7: Now let’s get to Gene Lyons, who perhaps responded like a bully and then pulled his own race card. Lyons in retaliation asserted that ProfHP was a fool, and that was bad enough, but then came the most troubling paragraph:
Furthermore, unless you’re black, you can’t possibly understand. Yada, yada, yada. This unfortunate obsession increasingly resembles a photo negative of KKK racial thought. It’s useful for intimidating tenure committees staffed by Ph.D.s trained to find racist symbols in the passing clouds. Otherwise, Harris-Perry’s becoming a left-wing Michele Bachmann, an attractive woman seeking fame and fortune by saying silly things on cable TV.
If I didn’t know better, I would have figured this was written by one Rush Limbaugh, not just denigrating the Professors expertise but making a claim that she used her blackness to intimidate tenure committees, OMG, and yet there is no racism in the so-called white progressive community. This type of commentary makes me nearly speechless. I said nearly. When the President was elected I was naive enough to believe that so-called progressives would never ever stoop to racially insensitive speech. I.Was.Wrong.
Once Upon a Paradigm 
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