Oh, I know I’m late to this game. But I’ve arrived, and it wasn't easy.
If you haven’t tried this, go copy the questions I’ve left in the first comment, paste them into your own comment and answer them in ONE WORD. I know some of you have done this already in other places. Feel free to do it again.
Do it anonymously if you don’t want people to know who you are.
Go on... I double-dog dare ya.
1. Where is your cell phone? purse
2. Your significant other? forever
3. Your hair? bottle
4. Your mother? sigh
5. Your father? hero
6. Your work? satisfying
7. Your dream last night? confusing
8. Your favorite drink? martini
9. Your dream/goal? peace
10. What room you are in? office
11. Your hobby? writing
12. Your fear? illness
13. Where do you want to be in 6 years? 49
14. Where were you last night? home
15. Something that you aren’t? naked
16. Muffins? absolutely
17. Wish list item? thinner
18. Where you grew up? everywhere
19. Last thing you did? exercise
20. What are you wearing? white
21. Your TV? off
22. Your pets? comfort
23. Friends? love
24. Your life? wonderful
25. Your mood? peaceful
26. Missing someone? always
27. Car? own
28. Something you're not wearing? bikini
29. Your favorite store? grocery
30. Your favorite color? cobalt
31. When is the last time you laughed? morning
32. Last time you cried? Saturday
33. What makes you smile? Urchin
34. One place that you go to over and over? Crazy
35. One person who emails you regularly? boss
36. Favorite place to eat? deck
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
The good doctor
One of the most wonderful things about motherhood, and there are so many, is the chance to wander back through and reconnect with the things that made my own life more interesting when I was a child.
Dr. Seuss was my best friend then. “Green Eggs and Ham” was the first book I read by myself. Horton helped me learn the importance of standing up for my friend, Dara, whom everyone else on the playground teased into tears. My first pet was a turtle named Yertle. And of course there’s the Grinch, who’s a big part of my life to this day.
My daughter is following in my footsteps. “Green Eggs” and “The Cat in the Hat” are among her favorite books. Others float in and out. And the Grinch, well, he’s her most favorite character of all.
It turns out Dr. Seuss had a good deal more in mind than the whimsy of young readers when he wrote some of his most beloved books. A good deal more, indeed.
I’m so glad to have him around again. I think maybe this time, I won’t let him go.
Dr. Seuss was my best friend then. “Green Eggs and Ham” was the first book I read by myself. Horton helped me learn the importance of standing up for my friend, Dara, whom everyone else on the playground teased into tears. My first pet was a turtle named Yertle. And of course there’s the Grinch, who’s a big part of my life to this day.
My daughter is following in my footsteps. “Green Eggs” and “The Cat in the Hat” are among her favorite books. Others float in and out. And the Grinch, well, he’s her most favorite character of all.
It turns out Dr. Seuss had a good deal more in mind than the whimsy of young readers when he wrote some of his most beloved books. A good deal more, indeed.
I’m so glad to have him around again. I think maybe this time, I won’t let him go.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Sister, sister
Mean girls are the bane of my existence. Since I can remember, I’ve found myself on the wrong side of one or another of them. Apparently I give off a serious vulnerability vibe, because if there’s one mean girl in a crowd of 100, she finds me and makes my life miserable. Well, for awhile, anyway.
Then, something magical happens and, as mysteriously as she decided I was bad news, she decides I’m OK, which makes room for the next mean girl to find me and make my life miserable.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Women just suck sometimes. Or maybe I should say some women just suck. Whichever. It seems that everywhere I go there are mean girls waiting — and most of the women I respect would say the same thing. We suffer at their hands — in the breakroom, in the hallway, in the ladies room — despite our fervent attempts to grow-the-fuck-up and move pass that crap. Somehow, we always seem to let them suck us back into 10th grade.
This is part of why I’ve fallen in love with the Sisterhood of the Jaunty Quills, a blog written by a group of women writers whom I don’t know, and whom I hope won’t be offended by my calling them romance novelists. (There are few things I love more than a well-written romance. I can lose and find myself, fall in and out of love, and end up feeling better about the general state of things, all before the book ends. I cannot say the same for James Joyce.)
Two weeks ago, I went looking for an old friend — someone I let get away when I was young and foolish. I want her back. So, of course, I Googled her name. And holy shit, there she was. All over the place. A novelist. With a whole bunch of titles to her credit.
That search led me further into her world, which is dominated by women. The deeper I delved, into blogs and writer’s workshop sites and convention recaps, the better I felt about where I was headed. The reason was clear pretty quickly.
Despite the fact that these women are competitors — for book deals and for readers — they have each other’s backs. You can feel it as you wander through their vast online presence and blogospere. They share secrets. They celebrate successes. They commiserate and prop each other up. They welcome newbies into the group. They mentor and friend.
After a while, I started digging around for nastiness. Some kind of catty behavior had to be there, in this group of competitive women, didn’t it? In a word, no. In fact, the harder I looked, in blog after blog and website after website, the more sisterhood and good juju I encountered.
These women could be at each other’s throats. They could snipe and peck each other to death, and frankly, it’d be hard to fault them. Times are tough, even in the business of romance.
Instead, they nurture and guide. And they’re shameless about it.
These women, collectively, seem to have figured out what so many women haven’t: Success for one of them is good for all of them.
Score one for the sisterhood.
Then, something magical happens and, as mysteriously as she decided I was bad news, she decides I’m OK, which makes room for the next mean girl to find me and make my life miserable.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Women just suck sometimes. Or maybe I should say some women just suck. Whichever. It seems that everywhere I go there are mean girls waiting — and most of the women I respect would say the same thing. We suffer at their hands — in the breakroom, in the hallway, in the ladies room — despite our fervent attempts to grow-the-fuck-up and move pass that crap. Somehow, we always seem to let them suck us back into 10th grade.
This is part of why I’ve fallen in love with the Sisterhood of the Jaunty Quills, a blog written by a group of women writers whom I don’t know, and whom I hope won’t be offended by my calling them romance novelists. (There are few things I love more than a well-written romance. I can lose and find myself, fall in and out of love, and end up feeling better about the general state of things, all before the book ends. I cannot say the same for James Joyce.)
Two weeks ago, I went looking for an old friend — someone I let get away when I was young and foolish. I want her back. So, of course, I Googled her name. And holy shit, there she was. All over the place. A novelist. With a whole bunch of titles to her credit.
That search led me further into her world, which is dominated by women. The deeper I delved, into blogs and writer’s workshop sites and convention recaps, the better I felt about where I was headed. The reason was clear pretty quickly.
Despite the fact that these women are competitors — for book deals and for readers — they have each other’s backs. You can feel it as you wander through their vast online presence and blogospere. They share secrets. They celebrate successes. They commiserate and prop each other up. They welcome newbies into the group. They mentor and friend.
After a while, I started digging around for nastiness. Some kind of catty behavior had to be there, in this group of competitive women, didn’t it? In a word, no. In fact, the harder I looked, in blog after blog and website after website, the more sisterhood and good juju I encountered.
These women could be at each other’s throats. They could snipe and peck each other to death, and frankly, it’d be hard to fault them. Times are tough, even in the business of romance.
Instead, they nurture and guide. And they’re shameless about it.
These women, collectively, seem to have figured out what so many women haven’t: Success for one of them is good for all of them.
Score one for the sisterhood.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
A question from the audience
How do you feel about that Iraqi journalist going to prison for three years?
— Anonymous
I think he got what he deserved.
Throwing a shoe at someone is naughty. No matter how frustrated or angry we get, we don’t throw things at people, regardless of who it is. When we are naughty, we deserve to be punished. In my mind, it’s that simple.
I suspect Anonymous expected that I, a pretty vocal NOT-fan of George W. Bush, would think it somehow OK to throw a shoe at a man whose policies and morals I did not agree with. I couldn’t feel more differently. Even if throwing a shoe at someone were OK in any instance, I would think it wrong to do so at the President of the United States. Maybe it's the military kid in me — or just the American in me — but it’s a kind of disrespect I can't abide.
He threw a shoe at the President of the United States. He was sentenced to three years in jail. I’d say the sentence was a bit harsh, except everything’s relative in a society where it’s legal to kill your sister for dishonoring your family by being raped. (But that’s another blog post, isn't it?)
Anyway... that’s what I think. What say you, dear reader?
— Anonymous
I think he got what he deserved.
Throwing a shoe at someone is naughty. No matter how frustrated or angry we get, we don’t throw things at people, regardless of who it is. When we are naughty, we deserve to be punished. In my mind, it’s that simple.
I suspect Anonymous expected that I, a pretty vocal NOT-fan of George W. Bush, would think it somehow OK to throw a shoe at a man whose policies and morals I did not agree with. I couldn’t feel more differently. Even if throwing a shoe at someone were OK in any instance, I would think it wrong to do so at the President of the United States. Maybe it's the military kid in me — or just the American in me — but it’s a kind of disrespect I can't abide.
He threw a shoe at the President of the United States. He was sentenced to three years in jail. I’d say the sentence was a bit harsh, except everything’s relative in a society where it’s legal to kill your sister for dishonoring your family by being raped. (But that’s another blog post, isn't it?)
Anyway... that’s what I think. What say you, dear reader?
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Why you should care about your newspaper
Ebolavirus.
It’s the stuff nightmares are made of. A fever that kills 90 percent of its victims by the second week. Of course, by then, death is welcome. Most of them die from shock, after losing too much blood for the body to function. They bleed from every orifice, including the eyes and ears. It's horrific, even to watch.
Ebola is a Biosafety Level 4 hot agent — an organism so contagious and so deadly that once a doctor or researcher encounters her first case, she's forever changed by it.
There have been many outbreaks of Ebolavirus in the 50 years since it was discovered. All of them have been in rural Africa. Well, except one, in Reston, Virginia. But that strain — at least for now — only appears to affect non-human primates. Even so, the research lab where the outbreak occurred was closed, condemned and sealed off in 1989. They tore it down in 1995. You don’t take chances with Ebolavirus.
So if this thing is so contagious and deadly, and it’s been around for 50 years, why aren’t we all dead?
Ebolavirus is too virulent. It kills its host too quickly to survive long enough to kill enough hosts to be dangerous in the epidemic sense. And we'd better hope that never changes. Or we’re all shit out of luck.
The news business has not been so fortunate.
About 15 years ago, the industry’s version of Ebola appeared. It was an odd and interesting new organism, with a .com-shaped tail.
There were, of course, several strains of Ebolavirus-News. Most of them immediately set about killing off the news industry, by stealing and repackaging our information, then giving it away for free. They lured away our talent, with the promise of pool tables, company cruises and free lunch every day. And they scoffed at our venture capital-free business models and chuckled at our old-fashioned ways.
As we all know, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The outbreak eventually died out, but not before significantly wounding its host. There have been many outbreaks since, with roughly the same results.
In the past decade, Ebolavirus-News has mutated into many different forms — blogs, news aggregators, social networking sites, talk shows. They continue to feed on the news industry, by stealing our work as the basis for their own analysis and repackaging of it. They undercut us in the marketplace because they don’t have the overhead we do. Why would they? We’re doing their legwork for them.
Readers, viewers and users are complicit in this. They’ve stopped paying for our work in favor of the free versions of our work they can get from the people who steal it from us.
Sadly, we’re beginning to succumb to the infection. Last week, the Rocky Mountain News shut its doors. No one believes it will be the last. In fact, most of us believe the flood gates have finally opened.
Good riddance, you say? Not so fast.
How much news do you consume in a day? How many news sites do you visit? How many blogs do you read?
Is it important to you to know what your government is doing or what’s happening in Iraq? How about on Wall Street? On Main Street? On your street?
Do you care what your school system has in store for your kids? Does it matter that there’s been a string of burglaries in your neighborhood? Are you interested to know which roads are under construction or which grocery store is coming to your area of town?
Do you care about Darfur? Afghanistan? Climate change? The battles for equal rights?
Where do you think news about that stuff comes from?
It comes from reporters on the ground in the areas of the world that you care about. They’re employed — and paid — by real news organizations. The people and organizations who steal their work and serve it to you for free can do so because they pay nothing for it. They don’t have staffs. They don’t have bureaus. They don't have someone at the courthouse watching and reporting on the Enron trial. They don’t have someone in New Orleans feeding you news about Katrina. They don’t have White House reporters or business reporters or cops reporters or entertainment reporters or environment reporters or city reporters. They have NO reporters. They feed on the news industry.
And they’re killing it, fast.
Think about this the next time you decide not to renew your subscription and just read for free online: Eventually, the virus will kill its host. Then the virus will die, too.
And then what?
It’s the stuff nightmares are made of. A fever that kills 90 percent of its victims by the second week. Of course, by then, death is welcome. Most of them die from shock, after losing too much blood for the body to function. They bleed from every orifice, including the eyes and ears. It's horrific, even to watch.
Ebola is a Biosafety Level 4 hot agent — an organism so contagious and so deadly that once a doctor or researcher encounters her first case, she's forever changed by it.
There have been many outbreaks of Ebolavirus in the 50 years since it was discovered. All of them have been in rural Africa. Well, except one, in Reston, Virginia. But that strain — at least for now — only appears to affect non-human primates. Even so, the research lab where the outbreak occurred was closed, condemned and sealed off in 1989. They tore it down in 1995. You don’t take chances with Ebolavirus.
So if this thing is so contagious and deadly, and it’s been around for 50 years, why aren’t we all dead?
Ebolavirus is too virulent. It kills its host too quickly to survive long enough to kill enough hosts to be dangerous in the epidemic sense. And we'd better hope that never changes. Or we’re all shit out of luck.
The news business has not been so fortunate.
About 15 years ago, the industry’s version of Ebola appeared. It was an odd and interesting new organism, with a .com-shaped tail.
There were, of course, several strains of Ebolavirus-News. Most of them immediately set about killing off the news industry, by stealing and repackaging our information, then giving it away for free. They lured away our talent, with the promise of pool tables, company cruises and free lunch every day. And they scoffed at our venture capital-free business models and chuckled at our old-fashioned ways.
As we all know, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. The outbreak eventually died out, but not before significantly wounding its host. There have been many outbreaks since, with roughly the same results.
In the past decade, Ebolavirus-News has mutated into many different forms — blogs, news aggregators, social networking sites, talk shows. They continue to feed on the news industry, by stealing our work as the basis for their own analysis and repackaging of it. They undercut us in the marketplace because they don’t have the overhead we do. Why would they? We’re doing their legwork for them.
Readers, viewers and users are complicit in this. They’ve stopped paying for our work in favor of the free versions of our work they can get from the people who steal it from us.
Sadly, we’re beginning to succumb to the infection. Last week, the Rocky Mountain News shut its doors. No one believes it will be the last. In fact, most of us believe the flood gates have finally opened.
Good riddance, you say? Not so fast.
How much news do you consume in a day? How many news sites do you visit? How many blogs do you read?
Is it important to you to know what your government is doing or what’s happening in Iraq? How about on Wall Street? On Main Street? On your street?
Do you care what your school system has in store for your kids? Does it matter that there’s been a string of burglaries in your neighborhood? Are you interested to know which roads are under construction or which grocery store is coming to your area of town?
Do you care about Darfur? Afghanistan? Climate change? The battles for equal rights?
Where do you think news about that stuff comes from?
It comes from reporters on the ground in the areas of the world that you care about. They’re employed — and paid — by real news organizations. The people and organizations who steal their work and serve it to you for free can do so because they pay nothing for it. They don’t have staffs. They don’t have bureaus. They don't have someone at the courthouse watching and reporting on the Enron trial. They don’t have someone in New Orleans feeding you news about Katrina. They don’t have White House reporters or business reporters or cops reporters or entertainment reporters or environment reporters or city reporters. They have NO reporters. They feed on the news industry.
And they’re killing it, fast.
Think about this the next time you decide not to renew your subscription and just read for free online: Eventually, the virus will kill its host. Then the virus will die, too.
And then what?
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Grounded
At 7:15 a.m., 15 minutes after we were supposed to board, the gate agent announced we were “under a delay.“
“Please check back at the gate every 10 minutes,” she said.
We finally boarded at 8:15 a.m.
“Howdy folks, from the flight deck. We appreciate your patience during the delay. One of our generators is malfunctioning so we had to shut it down. We’re OK to fly with just two generators, so we’ll be on our way shortly.”
Gulp.
Fasten your seat belts. No tampering with, disabling or destroying the lavatory smoke detectors. Your seat serves as a flotation device. Blah, blah, blah. I settle into a Sudoku and try not to think about how many generators we won’t be flying with.
We taxi and then stop short of the runway, where we sit. The air comes on. The air goes off. We sit some more. And more. And more.
“Uh folks, from the flight deck, we’re gonna go back to the gate. We’re still getting an indicator light that we need to check out, so bear with us. I’m pretty sure it’s just the indicator light. But we have to be sure.”
Uh, yes. A good plan.
Gulp.
Back to the gate we go. To sit. And sit. And sit.
Whisper, whisper, whisper go the flight attendants.
Grumble, grumble, grumble go the passengers.
In come the maintenance guys. Out go the maintenance guys. In come some more maintenance guys.
“Uh folks, from the flight deck. Working on it, blah, blah, blah. Bear with us, yada, yada, yada.”
More maintenance guys. More whispering. More grumbling. Etc.
Finally, we learn the truth. Plane was broken. It’s been fixed. Yay!
Except now the crew can’t fly because of contract issues and FAA regulations. Boo!
We’re trying to round up a crew right now. Yay!
We expect to leave around 3 or so. Boo!
Except that we might have to cancel the flight entirely if we can’t round up a crew, which is likely. Double boo!!
Those are all the tea leaves I need to read.
I got off the plane, got my company’s money back and decided to try another day.
Thanks for your good thoughts. Onward.
“Please check back at the gate every 10 minutes,” she said.
We finally boarded at 8:15 a.m.
“Howdy folks, from the flight deck. We appreciate your patience during the delay. One of our generators is malfunctioning so we had to shut it down. We’re OK to fly with just two generators, so we’ll be on our way shortly.”
Gulp.
Fasten your seat belts. No tampering with, disabling or destroying the lavatory smoke detectors. Your seat serves as a flotation device. Blah, blah, blah. I settle into a Sudoku and try not to think about how many generators we won’t be flying with.
We taxi and then stop short of the runway, where we sit. The air comes on. The air goes off. We sit some more. And more. And more.
“Uh folks, from the flight deck, we’re gonna go back to the gate. We’re still getting an indicator light that we need to check out, so bear with us. I’m pretty sure it’s just the indicator light. But we have to be sure.”
Uh, yes. A good plan.
Gulp.
Back to the gate we go. To sit. And sit. And sit.
Whisper, whisper, whisper go the flight attendants.
Grumble, grumble, grumble go the passengers.
In come the maintenance guys. Out go the maintenance guys. In come some more maintenance guys.
“Uh folks, from the flight deck. Working on it, blah, blah, blah. Bear with us, yada, yada, yada.”
More maintenance guys. More whispering. More grumbling. Etc.
Finally, we learn the truth. Plane was broken. It’s been fixed. Yay!
Except now the crew can’t fly because of contract issues and FAA regulations. Boo!
We’re trying to round up a crew right now. Yay!
We expect to leave around 3 or so. Boo!
Except that we might have to cancel the flight entirely if we can’t round up a crew, which is likely. Double boo!!
Those are all the tea leaves I need to read.
I got off the plane, got my company’s money back and decided to try another day.
Thanks for your good thoughts. Onward.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Fear of flying
I’ve never been a particularly comfortable flier. Being a bit of a control freak, it weirds me out to be at the mercy of someone else’s training and good judgment. Not that I’m that great on my own. But at least my mistakes are my mistakes.
I also have trouble getting my arms around the mechanics of it. Hard as I try, I just can’t let go of the idea that flying thousands of pounds of people and tons and tons of luggage and cargo in a big, heavy, metal machine has to, in some way, defy the laws of physics or something. I mean, I get that jet engines are mean, angry beasts, but when you consider that if the folks at Boeing use one millimeter too much paint on a 747, the whole thing could come crashing down, seems like a fair bet that that one extra pair of jeans you packed might doom us all.
I used to be a white-knuckle flier. I never stopped flying, but I sure wanted to. Then one day I read a startling statistic: The odds are far greater that I’ll win the lottery than they are that I’ll die in a plane crash.
From that day until today, I lived by this credo: The day I win the lottery is the day I stop flying. Seems like a good compromise.
Anyway. I leave tomorrow morning on a business trip, flying across the country to the City by the Bay. And I’m scared, dammit. I have a strange sense of foreboding. Or I’ve just let my imagination run wild. Whichever. They’re one and the same when you have to board a plane in 8 hours.
I don’t know why it’s taken such hold this time, this fear I had managed to stuff inside my carry-on bag for so many years. Maybe it’s Sully and his death-defying feat in the Hudson. I figure this century’s already had its one air travel miracle. So if the plane I’m on goes down, I'm toast.
Maybe it’s the other 47 plane crashes we’ve heard about in recent weeks. Seems like every time you turn around, a plane somewhere has skidded off a runway, plunged into the mountains, landed on a house. My heart skips a beat every time.
Or maybe it’s just that finally, for the first time in my life, I have so much to lose.
Prayers are welcome. White light, too.
Will write when I’m home.
I also have trouble getting my arms around the mechanics of it. Hard as I try, I just can’t let go of the idea that flying thousands of pounds of people and tons and tons of luggage and cargo in a big, heavy, metal machine has to, in some way, defy the laws of physics or something. I mean, I get that jet engines are mean, angry beasts, but when you consider that if the folks at Boeing use one millimeter too much paint on a 747, the whole thing could come crashing down, seems like a fair bet that that one extra pair of jeans you packed might doom us all.
I used to be a white-knuckle flier. I never stopped flying, but I sure wanted to. Then one day I read a startling statistic: The odds are far greater that I’ll win the lottery than they are that I’ll die in a plane crash.
From that day until today, I lived by this credo: The day I win the lottery is the day I stop flying. Seems like a good compromise.
Anyway. I leave tomorrow morning on a business trip, flying across the country to the City by the Bay. And I’m scared, dammit. I have a strange sense of foreboding. Or I’ve just let my imagination run wild. Whichever. They’re one and the same when you have to board a plane in 8 hours.
I don’t know why it’s taken such hold this time, this fear I had managed to stuff inside my carry-on bag for so many years. Maybe it’s Sully and his death-defying feat in the Hudson. I figure this century’s already had its one air travel miracle. So if the plane I’m on goes down, I'm toast.
Maybe it’s the other 47 plane crashes we’ve heard about in recent weeks. Seems like every time you turn around, a plane somewhere has skidded off a runway, plunged into the mountains, landed on a house. My heart skips a beat every time.
Or maybe it’s just that finally, for the first time in my life, I have so much to lose.
Prayers are welcome. White light, too.
Will write when I’m home.
Quote of the evening*
“Mommy, I love you. But sometimes I just have to be naughty.”
Urchin, 03.03.09
* 'Twas a very long evening, indeed
Urchin, 03.03.09
* 'Twas a very long evening, indeed
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