Don’t Mess with Textas

Earlier today, I was at a meeting where someone made an announcement about another meeting–the topic of which related to “teens who text instead of talking to their parents.” The person organizing that meeting went on a rant about how teens are “texting, tweeting, FaceSpacing (sic)–they’d rather talk to someone 20,000 miles away, than talk to their own parents!”

I leaned over to the friend next to me & said, “if my kids knew about this kind of intervention, they’d stage it on me, not vice versa!”

He leaned back & said, “I’m pretty sure someone made similar complaints when they invented the telephone–’No one writes letters anymore!’.”

on twitter and the iranian revolution

Demostration in silence in front of governmental TV station ... on Twitpic

Way back in the first year of this blog, a little thing called Hurricane Katrina happened in this country. I was having kind of a slow week at work, and I sat in front of my laptop, day after day, watching the unfolding of a horror show that was fairly unprecedented in our country.

One of the things that amazed me, at the time, was the online community’s response. I found blogger after blogger who was doing something about the tragedy—the one I remember best being Liz at Badgerbag, whose daily messages from the Astrodome, where she was volunteering, were rage-filled and compelling. It wasn’t just that bloggers were blogging about their feelings—though that was going on too—but that they were actually doing things that helped people, and helped themselves through a period of emotional upheaval.

Flash forward five years to the present day, and it’s now Twitter that is allowing people to ‘do something’ in support of a situation that they are outraged about—theft of the Iranian election. I’ve been watching the hashtags #tehran and #iranelection over the past couple of days, and have been truly inspired by what I’ve seen, which is a community coming together in support of members at risk, who have developed an informal code of conduct (ie—don’t re-tweet using an Iranian’s Twitter ID; if you’re outside Iran, change your time zone & location to Tehran to confuse the Iranian military; change your profile picture to green to show solidarity with Moussavi’s supporters; don’t trust specific newly-created Twitter IDs, as they may have been created by the Iranian government to spread disinformation, etc.).

And that community is interested in viral expansion of support for the Iranian protesters. Within five minutes of the time that I posted a tweet saying that I didn’t know how to change the color of my profile picture, five different Twitter users responded to me with suggestions—2 of whom actually sent me a version of my profile pic in green. In fact, it can be a bit difficult, at this point, to find new info, because so many people are helpfully re-tweeting other’s responses. On the other hand, with the mainstream media being shut out of news coverage by the Iranian government, it’s the first place that many of us have heard about protesters being killed, or about the dorms at Tehran University being attacked by police.

It’s not just a visible show of support that people are manifesting, although that’s important. After reports that the Iranian government was shutting down cell networks and blocking activists’ Twitter accounts, people starting setting up proxy servers, and creating Denial of Service attacks against the state websites. One user even posted a guide on his blog, to explain to other users what they could do to help organizers in Iran. (Edited to add) And here’s a link to set up your home computer as an anonymous proxy for Iranians. I’ve linked to the Mac one, but there’s a Windows version too.

It’s a little humbling, to watch in real time as a father in Iran worries about his daughter, and tweets that he’s just heard that there are military police in the park that she was last in. And it can feel so far away, that park, and that girl—so far away that there’s nothing we can do to help. But every person reading this can do something to help that girl, right now. You can pick up the phone, and call your congressman, and tell him or her to ask the US to intervene. You can wear green to work tomorrow, even though it’s not St. Patty’s Day. In most big cities, you can find a peaceful demonstration in solidarity with the Iranians, and you can attend it.

What gives me hope about both of these examples is the fact that people are willing to do something. Social media is giving us new ideas about exactly what to do, but it isn’t capable of making us care about something if we’re truly apathetic about it. The world wants to help.

(Note: Here’s a link to the Twitpic photo above–I couldn’t make it work with html.)

the year in review

It’s my blogiversary today! Yes, it’s been four years of Bumblebee Sweet Potato. I have to admit, this is the year that I came close to quitting blogging, and as I’ve gone back over the posts from this year, it shows. Nevertheless, I’m still here, and here, without further review, are my favorite posts from each month of the last year:

February

It was around February of last year that I settled on a presidential candidate. After flirting (not literally!) with John Edwards (whew! dodged a bullet there), I decided to vote for Obama in my super-Tuesday primary. The first of many Obama-related links on my blog was this. Still good.

We also had some bullying in the neighborhood, and the Bee wrote her brother a very sweet Valentine’s Day note.

March

In March, we had a lice outbreak, which happily did not require a massive haircut for the Bee. The Bee also had her first experience with standardized testing. And then I wrote about my habit of sneaking into the Bee’s room to cover her hands with lotion (note to self, need to do it again tonight!). Finally, I reviewed the Iraq War, which was celebrating its fifth anniversary.

April

I posted about my oh-so-pomo experience of finding out that my brother was married from Facebook. The Bee was in a play, and after it was over, she got that haircut that she’d dodged in March.

May

May started with some of the unanswerable questions that all parents have (hmm, I may need to do an update post of this one soon). We had some more bullying this month, too. And the end of the month found me wishing that the end of school would come even quicker.

June

I discovered the beauty of being a boring parent, and bemoaned the tiresomeness of boring graduation speeches. Also? I’m not getting any better at keeping my friends close.

July

Around the middle of the year, we started having one transition after another. We went on vacation, and oh, how I’m missing those hot days now! Right after we came back, landisdad & I both turned 40, and celebrated by canceling our cable.

August

Continuing with our year of transitions, the Potato turned five, and I worried how he would ever sit still in kindergarten. Shortly after that, we said goodbye to daycare, forever.

September

My kids started attending the same school for the first time since the Bee was in daycare. And after the start of the school year, my blog (and the rest of my life) pretty much devolved into all politics, all the time. Plus, the  change kept coming, as the Bee turned 9.

October

I publicly wondered, for the first time, about whether the blog was over. Plus? More politics, even at school and landisdad & I celebrated our tenth anniversary. This was also the month that the McCain campaign added me to their mommyblogger listserv, but I spared you all that pain.

November

Well, the transitions kept coming, as we all know, and I presented President Obama with a bill for my services. Then I reflected on the fact that the Bee is in a boy-dominated class this year.

December

For some reason, {cough} no linking {/cough}, December saw the fewest blog posts of any month of the year. I wondered about the Bee’s expanded vocabulary, though.

January

So far, this year is starting off with much more of a focus on the traditional mom-blog topics, than the political. But it’s early.

the end of blogging?

Last week, both Elizabeth at Half-Changed World and Phantom Scribbler posted musings about whether Twitter & Facebook were causing a death of blog conversation. They both talked about the fact that their own personal blogging has changed dramatically since the early years, and how they felt less connected to their blogging community now than when they first started their blogs.

At the time, I wasn’t really sure how I felt about their posts. I have a Facebook page & I Twitter, and I have this. They’re not the same thing. Partly that’s due to my decision to keep this space totally private from anyone in my meatspace life–except for my husband. I have had the dissonant moment of a casual acquaintance knowing something new about me because they read it on my Facebook page. But because no one in my work or personal life reads my blog, it never sparks a conversation in my real-world existence. The only community it exists in is my blogging community.

Then last night, as I was watching the debate, I simultaneously started watching the Twitter Election Feed. (Which, btw, should really be called “Zeitgeist.”) And it clarified some thinking about the whole issue for me.

I first came to reading blogs obsessively during the ‘04 election. At that point, I read political blogs (dailykos first and foremost among them) exclusively. I started my second blog then (my first literally had one post. ever. and hardly even counts as a blog), a short-lived livejournal experiment. I was trying to be a political blogger, but ultimately I found it too difficult to be both timely (given that I had a real, election-related job) and also to be circumspect about my role in the campaign that I was working on (since I was blogging anonymously).  I did comment on blogs fairly frequently, but I never found a successful formula for political blogging myself.

And after a while, to be honest, I found it pretty boring to comment on a blog post that 200+ people had already commented on. It’s one thing to read through a whole blog post, and then come up with a response to it. It’s a whole ‘nother thing to read a blog post, then 200 people’s responses to that post, and then to feel like there’s anything new left to say.

Reading the Twitter feed last night reminded me of my early days of reading political blogs. Except–and here’s the good part–I didn’t have to read all the comments. I could flip away for a minute, come back and write a tweet commenting on some part of the debate, and I didn’t have to worry about whether I was being repetitive of someone else’s comment. Because the point of that Twitter feed (at least for me) is to see what the common threads are–not to find a single voice, but to hear the voices of many. There are interesting things that I’ve found as a result of that Twitter feed (like this! and this!)–but for the most part, what interests me about it is the hot flush of feeling in so many about the candidates they support. (Anecdotally, I’d say that Twitterers were about 60% for Obama, 40% for McCain. Maybe 65/35.)

When I first found the mommyblogs, I found something that I didn’t have in my personal life–a community of strong, funny women who also happened to be mothers. A place (or set of places) where I could hang out and kibitz about potty training, or sleep deprivation, or raising anti-racist children. The fact is, it’s easy for me to have political conversation every day of my working life, and I have a spouse who is very interested in political discussion too. The reason I never succeeded as a political blogger was that political blogs weren’t filling a void for me.

But mommyblogs do.

Don’t get me wrong–my life has changed since then, too. When I first started the job I have now, I was telecommuting, and the one place I occasionally worked out of did not feature a single other working mom. I was parenting a kindergartener and an 18-month-old, and I didn’t know a lot of other moms in my community. Almost four years later, I’m the PTA president, I work in an office every day, and my office now has three other working moms–one of whom has kids the same ages as my kids. I’ve got less of a void, when it comes to the mom conversation that I once did.

But it doesn’t mean that blogging isn’t an important source of conversation for me. I miss the commenters that I had, back when I first started blogging. I’m happy, when I open landismom’s email account, and see that I have a new comment on a post. It’s just that the void that blogging is filling has gotten a little filled up, and that place inside me no longer feels as empty.

One thing that I wonder about is how my need to blog, and the communities of people whose blogs I read, will change over the course of my life? Right now, I don’t read the blogs of anyone who is caring for an elderly or sick parent. But I bet that’s a thriving blog community. I bet there will be a point when I’m looking for that. And when I need that community, I’ll know where to look.

Several people* on Phantom’s blog commented about how they first turned to blogging in the isolation of new parenthood, and that obviously happens for lots of folks. You get stuck in a house all day with an internet connection, you’re bound to start looking for some other people in similar situations. I think the interesting thing about the future of blogging is going to be what happens when the bloggers move on to other voids, other isolating experiences, other needs to express themselves. Two of my blog-friends recently went through major blog overhauls–where they went from having blogs that were clearly identified as mommy blogs, to blogs that were somewhat more heterogenous in scope. I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of that, as we mommy bloggers realize that we’ve started to like the sound of our own voices–and that we don’t just have to talk about our kids to be heard.

*Tangentially, I’d like to say, that Phantom doesn’t have too much to worry about, as far as community goes, if she can still write a post that gets 53 comments. I think my personal best is 26.

is Ashton Kutcher in the house?

You may remember a post I wrote a while ago on BlogHer about Facebook and family etiquette. I was reminded of this recently, when in a kind of stinging gesture, my brother (yes, the same brother in that post) eloped with his girlfriend. And guess how I found out?

Yes, it’s true.

I found out that my brother had gotten married from Facebook.

Apparently, telling their seventy-eleven friends on Facebook was more important than picking up the phone and calling people in their actual families.

I’m getting kind of old, I think.

I waited until well after April 1 to post about this, as I wanted it to be clear–this happened in real life. I was not punked.

I have, at this point, talked to my brother, and I’ve basically forgiven him for it (although will I ever let him forget it? Not likely!). I’ve also ‘met’ my new sister-in-law, by talking to her on the phone for the first time (previously, I had only met her on teh internets). I’m feeling oh-so-very-pomo.

We did, eventually, get a wedding announcement, and I guess there were days when just getting the wedding announcement with no phone call would have seemed like the height of bad manners. Those days appear to be over.

I’ve been having some work experiences lately that I describe (mostly to the other moms that I work with) as my ‘cautionary tale moments.’ As in, ‘observe me, the mother of school-aged children, you mothers of less-than-school-aged children.’ Learn from my (and landisdad’s) mistakes. Do not forget to sign your children up for spring break camp until the week before spring break. You will be bringing that kid to work with you ever day during spring break. And that? Is BOOOORRRRRIIIINNNNNNGGGGG! Just ask my 8-year-old.

But I digress.

The thing that’s going on with my brother though, while it feels like a potential cautionary tale, is a little hard to translate into an avoidable mistake.

What I really can’t get over is that I appear to be related to a person who I only know through the internet.

I guess back in the day, when people lived in one village their whole lives, it was possible to have a cousin or something in a neighboring village whom you had never met.

But in this day of hyperconnectivity it seems both ridiculously old-fashioned and also (as previously pointed out) post-modern, to have this problem.

Do you think a complete set of William Gibson novels would be an appropriate wedding gift?

more guilt for the working mom

Hat tip to Erin for this one:

Parents spend more quality time with first-born children.

I have a sort of duh-science reaction to this article, I have to say. One thing that I’m not entirely clear on is what exactly is involved in quality time–does that mean you’re only spending time with one kid? And that the time spent is not doing things that qualify as chores? Or eating?

‘Cause if that’s the case, I think I spend about six minutes a day with each kid during the work week. Holy crow, they’re both destined to fail!

Well, at least the Bee can’t complain that I don’t spend as much time with her as I do with her brother…

link dump

I’m adding some new blogs to my blogroll. Check them out!

Waiterrant. I’ve been lucky to spend only a short part of my life waiting tables. While that was a valuable experience, and I wouldn’t have foregone it, reading this guy’s blog makes me sooooo happy I don’t have to do it any more.

In the mom blog universe, there’s Deep Muck Big Rake, where Becky recently blogged about her need to acquire snacks that started with the letter ‘Q’ for preschool. She’s also a book blogger, with tastes that are similar to mine.

I’ve been reading Staci from A Mommy With Attitude for a while. Queen of the spit-take. That’s all I’m sayin’.

Tracy from Mother May I is a great photoblogger, check out the adorable kid pics.

I’m guessing that Flea from One Good Thing is one of those bloggers that everyone except me has been reading for years. Check out this post about her home state, South Carolina.

In 2004, by the end of October, I had sworn off political blogs like DailyKos and MyDD. PunditMom is making me re-think that decision, just in time for this year’s election.

What are you reading lately that makes you smile?

year four? really?

Yes, it’s my blogiversary. Time for my annual redesign, and for my year-in-review post. Salud!

First, let’s get started with a little reminiscing about the Potato’s destructive tendencies. I have to say, he’s gotten a lot better about this in the past year (knock wood).

Then, of course, I hosted my first Carnival of Feminists.

Shortly thereafter, I wrote about my family’s need to communicate via the printed word.

I spent a bunch of time last year filled with anxiety about two things: my pending term as PTA president, and my need to get a copy of the 7th Harry Potter book without being spoiled. Parental anxiety was also the topic of this post about my dreaming fears, and this post about my waking ones..

As far as the kids went, the Bee started learning some complicated math and the Potato learned to make complicated noises. We all continued to learn together how to fight without nuclear (family) destruction. We went on a fabulous family vacation. The Bee started third grade, and had a slightly difficult period of adjustment.

This was also the year that I started using social networking sites using my real name, and having some concerns about that. I got a sneak peek of what my life will be like when the Bee hits puberty. And a hint that we might have done something right in raising her.

not posting every day in November

Jeez, I’ve been trying to catch up on my blog-reading, and it’s quite a lot of backlog! Seems like everyone and her mother is participating in NaBloPoMo.

I have to say, despite my love of the blog, I will never participate in this bloggy goodness. My work life is generally crazy in the fall, and given that there are elections every single year means that I’m never going to be able to seriously commit to blogging daily in November.

On a completely unrelated note, I’ve been thinking about making some Christmas presents this year, particularly for the kids. I haven’t got a great idea about what to make, though. I’ve been thinking of doing some baking for various extended family members, but I haven’t come up with any plan for what to make for the kids.

I can’t knit or crochet. I’m a decent hand-sewer, but I don’t have a machine. I’m thinking about some kind of sewing project, but I haven’t really been inspired to create anything yet. Maybe I need to go to the fabric store and just wander around aimlessly.

the crazy, mixed-up world of anonymous blogging

I was reading this post on GoogleBlogoscoped earlier today, and I’m all in a tizzy about it. I’ve been thinking a lot about online privacy and public life lately, and I feel uncomfortably conflicted about it all. I had a kind of funny experience on Sunday that sparked some of that thinking, but it’s also that I’ve started using several social networking sites using my real name, and it’s making me think about things that I don’t have to think about when I’m blogging anonymously here (or elsewhere).

When I first decided to launch my own mommyblog, it seemed logical to me that I would adopt pseudonyms for myself and my kids. Content lasts for a mighty long time on the internet—if I do a google search on my real name, I can find email postings to listservs that I did more than five years ago—and I didn’t want to write things about my kids, using their real names, that would affect them negatively later in life, either in personal or work-related settings. That meant I had to give myself a pseudonym, too.

In most of my web-based existence, I’m landismom, mother of two kids, who writes semi-regularly about the joys of working parenthood. In a small portion of my web-based life, I’m my real self, a person who has occasionally been quoted in the newspaper, or has been listed as an endorser of political events, or has given money to particular charities. In my book-trading universe (which has to be tied to my real name, for purposes of sending and receiving books), I have a different handle—but that’s just a screen name, not something I think of as a real identity.

In the past year, though, my ‘real self’ has started to do more social networking sites, like LinkedIn and Facebook. I’m much more conservative in my content production on those sites—mostly I just joined them because someone I know in real life invited me, and then I found them to be useful in some way. I’ve communicated with my youngest brother on Facebook more in the last six weeks than I did in the previous six months.

There’s a part of me that wants to have some cross-over between my two online selves. I’d like to be able to share my blog, occasionally, with family members, but I also like the absolute freedom that blogging pseudonymously allows. I don’t want to have to censor myself, the way that I censor myself in the online content that’s attached to my real name, and the more people who know who I really am, the more I’m going to feel as if I can’t.

Then I surfed over to SoloMom’s blog today, and read her story about having her online profile modified by ivillage (and her firing by ivillage for complaining about it), and the whole thing came back up again. I guess I can’t call her SoloMom anymore, but wtf? Who actually owns her identity, her or ivillage?

I realize that the questions of navigating online identity and privacy are only going to grow more complicated as teh internets get more and more intertwined into every aspect of our lives. Entire college courses will be taught (if they’re not already) about the implications of what we reveal, or hide, from the online world.

It’s enough to make me want to pull all my online content down, whether it’s attached to this identity or my real name, until some more cogent method of dealing with online identity is contrived.