Tag: bloggers

Introducing Tuesday Tours: Random Worthy Blog Posts

Tourist with suitcases
Welcome to Tuesday Tours.  There's so much good stuff out in the Blog Universe; we all have our blog readers filled with those we love.  It's tough to keep up though, so until further notice, I'll be offering Tuesday tours of some of my own frequent favorites.

One of my favorite bloggers, Pundit Mom, offers posts at two ends of the spectrum as the week begins.  Both are worth reading.  The first:  advice to the Obamas about the neighborhood around Sidwell Friends School.  It's just fun.  The second is a serious post with a serious question:  When is it right to tell an airline official that a passenger is making you nervous
? 

Concerned about what's going on in Israel?  Check back daily at Writes Like She Talks, where Jill Zimon has her finger on what's up all over the Web.  Here's a sample.

The wise Maria Niles is looking to figure out all those generation labels like X and Boomer and Millennial — and what they mean (and what the heck her own is.)

Also "generationally speaking," you know that all last year I wrote comparing 1968 and 2008.  Well,  Time Goes By columnist Saul Friedman has done me one (actually two) better, writing of lessons from his own iconic president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Obama's point of reference, Abraham Lincoln. 

Beth Kanter is a legend.  Rightfully so.  So when she offers 52 ways for Non-profits to use social media efficiently as a New Year's gift to her readers, I'm figuring that at least some of them can help the rest of us too.

Two of my favorite moms have something special too:  I'm late on this one, but Her Bad Mother's description of a willful three-year-old (it's long so wait until you have time) is priceless.  Some kids are just strong strong little people.

Also, Woulda Coulda Shoulda's Mir Kamin celebrated her son's last single-digit birthday with a wonderful hymn to a newly-nine-year-old.  She never misses, that one.

Finally, this one – because the happy family in the photo is mine.

Blogging Boomers Carnival #95!

GENPLUS
 The Blogging Boomers Carnival is here again – this time at the home of the remarkable Janet Wendy Spiegel – GenPlus.  Find links to posts about divorce, pop culture, newspapers, recessions that might turn into depressions, vacations south of the border, job hunting and more.  there's never a dull moment so stop on by.

BLOG THE RECESSION

Blogtherecession4 The economy’s slow, even on the Internet, so one of my favorite (and most audacious) bloggers, "Motherhood Uncensored," has come up with a solution: blog the recession.  Here’s how she explains it:  "The premise is simple. If you read blogs, then for the month of
August, make the "pledge" to click through from your feed reader. No
obligation to leave a hilarious comment or send a long stalkerish email
(although both, within reason, are always lovely). Just click through
to the blog (not on ads unless you are so led) and if you’re feeling
generous, click around to their older posts.   Just those extra page views can make a big
difference for bloggers who could really use the help, or in my case,
where page views don’t matter so much, a big fat ego boost."

So while you’re on hold, or just kind of wandering, do a good deed and click around a bit.

BlogHer, Bella, Books and Us Women

Bella_bw1_2 Two weeks ago I spent the weekend with 1,000 remarkable women.  You know where; the Web has been full of posts and tweets and messages about BlogHer, the women bloggers conference.  Since its founding, BlogHer has held four conferences, and I’ve been to three of them.  For those three years I’ve wondered at the strength and power of both the gathering and each woman, most far younger than I, who is part of it.  Audacious and rambunctious, honest and gifted, they are far beyond where I was at their age.  I’ve always known that all of us, sisters from the 70’s and 80’s and 90’s, scratched and kicked and pulled and fought to move our lives, and those of the women around us, forward.  In many ways, we made a difference.  I’m proud of that.

Today though I was reminded of a real heroine, one whose star lit the way for much of what we did, in a wonderful piece in The Women’s Review of Books: Ruth Rosen‘s review of  Bella Abzug: How One Tough Broad from the Bronx Fought
Jim Crow and Joe McCarthy, Pissed Off Jimmy Carter, Battled for the
Rights of Women and Workers, … Planet, and Shook Up Politics Along
the Way–an oral history of the life of Bella Abzug.  Among other things, Ruth says:

She fought for the
rights of union workers and African Americans, protested the use of the atomic
bomb and the Vietnam War, waged endless battles to advance women’s rights, and
spent the last years of her life promoting environmentalism and human rights.
When she plunged into the women’s movement during the late 1960s, Abzug infused
feminism with her fierce, strategic, take-no-prisoners spirit. As Geraldine
Ferraro reminds us,
She didn’t knock lightly on the door. She didn’t even push it open or batter it
down. She took it off the hinges forever! So that those of us who came after
could walk through!

And with a bow to Bella and so many others, walk through we have.  It’s tough to pass the stories ‘I walked six miles to school in the snow’
fogey.   Younger women, though, would find courage to fight their own
battles in Bella’s story and in many of our own."

For me, Bella was a brave, untamed beacon of defiance and energy. Her story, and ours, laid the ground for these determined, gifted "blogger generation" women. I would so love to be able to tell them about her – and about all of us, just so they could know the solidarity, the battles, the anger and the hope.  And why seeing them all together, hugging, laughing and raising hell, makes me so damned happy.  And that Bella would have loved them.

FIFTY-SOMETHING MOMS AND I’M ONE OF THEM!

Fifty_something_buttonThis is really exciting.  Silicon Valley Moms has launched a Fifty-Something Moms blog and I’m honored to be one of them.  Although it’s been around for a while, the site’s OFFICIAL launch is today.  I’ve only posted twice so far, once on being a "fake grandparent" and once on  childbirth for us in the First World versus for women in developing nations but hope to post at least once every two weeks.  There are plenty of lovely posts already so have a look.  I’ll be mentioning posts from this sister blog as we move forward.  It really is an exciting project – as are the other blogs that share the franchise –  Silicon Valley Moms Blog, Chicago Moms Blog, DC Metro Moms Blog, New York City Moms Blog and New Jersey Moms Blog, with a Deep South Moms Blog launching soon.  So get over there.  Now!

NABLOPOMO GRADUATION DAY MINUS ONE

I_heart_bloggersSo here’s what I know so far:

  1. Everyone loves COSTCO.  Yesterday’s post garnered a ton of traffic; I was frankly amazed.  Of all the things I’ve written about, from Vietnam to Jewish funerals to East Berlin to my kids to Bruce Springsteen, this is the one that hit something.  Not sure what but it’s kind of interesting, no?
  2. Writing every day is definitely good for you.  Hard, but good. 
  3. As I’ve continued to write, I’ve discovered both a capacity to be honest and a certainty that there are things I will never write about.  Those things belong to others, people I love to whom they happened.  They belong to them.
  4. When you’re writing but you’re beyond tired, you should wrap up your document and go to bed.  Which is what I’m going to do now.  Tomorrow we’ll celebrate graduation day together.  G’nite

USE BASIC NEWS ETHICS AND HELP SAVE BLOGGING

Dollars_2 One of my favorite bloggers sent me a note asking my opinion about a service that pays bloggers to  write about client products.  It's not secret, the writers disclose their contracts.  Even so, I told her that as an old newsie, I thought that, unless she was desperate for money, she shouldn't go near the idea.  WHY?

Understand, this is NOT selling ads on your blog or being part of a syndicate like BlogHer, my favorite entity on the planet, or Federated Media, founded by the amazing John Battelle.  That's an advertiser paying for a separate, discrete place on the page.

This entity, and others far more insidious, including sub-rosa corporate and political efforts, threaten the credibility of the writer and, even more important, of the medium.  I was reminded of this after reading a speech on the dangers faced by legitimate blogs and bloggers, given by the early Internet pioneer Jason Calacanis.  In it he reminds us what happened to e-mail because of spammers and urges bloggers to fight such developments in our thrilling new medium.  Here's what he says about what spammers did to e-mail "Many of you built this city — this trusted medium — with hard work and good intentions.  Then, along come the spammers, and they piss in the well, ruining it for all of us."

Yeah I know it's a real guy image but the fact remains, there's a thin line between talking about or reviewing material and taking money to sell it.  Usually, by the way, not what it would cost to reach the same people some other way.  And almost inevitably, taking blogging closer to the diminished credibility so much a part of my former world of "mainstream journalism.