Hello from Anitra

I just recently discovered Gather.com and I think it's polite to introduce myself.

Short Intro: I am an activist, writer, teacher, and Raging Granny (hence the hat); I am married, retired (after 20 years in computer programming but before 65, due to bipolar disorder), a USAF veteran, and I live on Social Security in Seattle WA USA. I use the web in teaching, research, and activism.

More? ...

My name really is Anitra: it is a Norwegian playwright's idea of what an Arabic princess's name ought to sound like and my mother convinced my Danish father that it was Danish, so that he wouldn't name me Brunhilde Siglinde. My ancestry is half Dane and half Scot, with a few English that neither side of the family talks about.

I am interested in many things, I write about all of them, and I put most of what I write up on websites. My main focus in activism is on homelessness, poverty, and related issues -- and everything is related. I have 2100+ pages on my home site, "Anitra's Web." Sometimes I say that my life is an open website. The main thing I use the Internet for is to promote homeless services and homeless organizing, and people have to be able to find me for that, so there's no point in trying to stay anonymous.

I am an old-fashioned liberal, which means that I am pretty well ready to disagree about politics with just about any of you young whipper-snappers that think you are "liberals" or "conservatives" and could not define either well enough to pick it out of the sock hamper. I love being proved wrong, by the way. 

I am a freethinking Christian humanist, universalist, unitarian, and a religious naturalist. Or in some dictionaries, "Damn heretic." I do enjoy a nice bout of theological debate, but I will not let doctrine justify bigotry and division. Doctrine divides, Spirit unites.

My parents were both wordaholics and bookaholics. I was born hooked. They were pushers; I was exposed to it constantly from infancy. I never stood a chance! My Meyers-Briggs profile is ENTP and my "thinking style" profile is high on verbal, analytical, and kinesthetic. I "think out loud" -- I have to be writing or talking (while moving my hands around a lot) in order to work out ideas -- and for the sake of my face-to-face relationships I do most of my "thinking out loud" on the Web. While you are deluged with many long articles and with comments the length of essays, know that you have the eternal gratitude of all of my friends and loved ones.

Some other places I publish:

• Real Change, Seattle's street newspaper. I also do public speaking for the Real Change Homeless Speaker's Bureau. (The photo at the left is me kissing up to the real owner of Real Change, Sid the Cat.)
• I make most of my comments on news items and websites on StumbleUpon.
• I also have a MySpace page and blog.
• I've recently started posting on Yahoo Answers.
• The homeless/low-income writer's group I started at Real Change has its own blog.
• And I've started a blog for the new tenant's garden of the building where I live.

Related pages:

• My Wesley has two blogs that occasionally mention me: one for his Real Change columns, and a personal blog.  He also has one of the best art blogs I have ever seen.
• My sister Adrienne is very active on MySpace.
• My Dad is on MySpace!
• Tim Harris, he whom Sid allows to be known as the Executive Director of Real Change because Sid hates doing paperwork, has a blog that is very personal and very political, too; and he occasionally gives me credit for some good ideas. 

My favorite sig line is:

Write On!