I am not an A-list blogger/social network updater.

I’ve always been more than just a little bit quirky and nerdy, and I still am. I don’t care. I’ve never been cool. Not then, not now. I don’t care. (much)

In my Reader/friend list/etc. are people whose writing I read regularly. Are they A-listers? I don’t know. I don’t care, either. They are people I like, and even love, with blogs/updates/etc. I find interesting.

Would I delete any of them, and replace them with A-list people, so there would be nothing but the cool kids in my Reader/Facebook/Twitter/etc.? No. Why would I do that? I don’t blog to be cool. (good thing, huh.) I blog because “it’s” in me and “it” wants to get out. My blog is like a friend. It’s THERE for me. And since I went all WordPress, it really IS always there for me. I also blog for businesses.  I go all watchdog on their comments, too, but I only delete the spams, robots, and obvious sales pitches.

The people in my Reader are friends.  They listen. I listen. They help. I help. We laugh and we cry and we are THERE for each other.   I include all my business blogs in the same Reader – you might be surprised at the connections to be made that way.

What, she mixes business and pleasure?  She does indeed.  Much of the time, too.

She considers her clients to be a kind of friend?  She does that, too.

The Blogosphere is full of friends, seen and unseen, business and pleasure.  Both kinds are real. I consider them all to be real life friends.

Sometimes we pick our friends and sometimes they pick us. (insert crack about picking nose here) This holds true wherever we go. The internet is a place to go. There are lovely people there. There are also some awful people here.  You know, just like in real life.  That’s because the Blogosphere IS real life.

Delete an active blog from my Reader?  Delete someone who comments sincerely?  Delete a real person, someone who isn’t a robot, and who updates/comments in real time?  Why would I do that?  Why would I pare down a list for my personal convenience at the expense of possibly hurting someone’s feelings?

Nobody can ever have too many friends. And I’m still discovering treasures out there. Why would I stop mining for gold just because I found some already? In fact, if anyone is reading this and you know I don’t know you yet, tell me. I’m happy to meet you, and of COURSE you can sit with us.

Sometimes I read about a blogger going through his/her Reader/Twitter/Facebook/etc. and weeding out anyone who isn’t considered ‘popular’ by other bloggers, or who isn’t, apparently, useful enough. Some bloggers only want to hang out with the A-group. I can only assume they were like that in high school, too, and haven’t grown out of it yet, still, in real life. And I find this attitude sad, and even. . . . sick.  Okay, the word I’m actually thinking of is “pompous.”

I am not an A-list blogger. I’m often one of the first to be cut. That’s fine. Populate your feeds with well-known A-table people and see how many comments you get – that aren’t strictly business – from them. See how much advice and support you get. See how they will get to know you personally, and want to hang out with you. And when you comment on some of those A-list blogs. . . . oh, but wait a minute. Some of those blogs don’t ALLOW comments.

Don’t you get it? REAL bloggers welcome comments, and not just from people they know. Not from spammers or morons, but from real people who take notice and care. Many of those A-list blogs aren’t even real blogs any more; they’re just webpages with articles and self-promotion and speaking engagements.

Preaching to the choir is fine if you really don’t want to learn anything new from someone who isn’t already IN the choir.

But that’s okay. You’ve a right to please yourself; we all do. So delete everybody who isn’t ‘somebody.’ And yes, I know, that would be me. Go ahead.

That’s not how I do this, but we are all different. Sometimes, discovering just HOW different, in certain ways, is more than just a little bit disillusioning.

Sometimes it’s a LOT of disillusioning.

Do we EVER get to leave high school, I mean completely? Why is this nonsense still going on, and why is it still bothering me?

But it is. And it does. I wish I could say it didn’t, but it does. It even, kinda, you know, hurts.

But that’s okay. I understand. I’ll just take my plate lunch and go sit at another table.

You sit there and wait for the cheerleaders and the jocks and the student council president and the homecoming queen and people who can do something for you, and while you’re waiting for them, the rest of us will be sitting over HERE. And we will be having way more fun than you.

What do I know. I’m not cool.

But I know what the “social” in “social media” means.  And it doesn’t mean excluding people.  Well, unless they’re proven sociopaths, axe murderers, compulsive liars, dirty rotten scoundrels (although some of those guys are kinda fun), simpering morons, people who get in the “20 items or fewer” with a mounded cartful, or sissy sparkly vampires.  (brooding vampires welcome.)

Move over, B-table friends.  It’s my deal.  Double-bid, no-trump, high-low euchre, coming right up.  Pass the SweeTarts.  And yes, we’re all really listening.

Well pootie-doo, they removed all the videos! When they put them back in again, I’ll show you my favorite one.

Add to it the fact that I met several old friends and made several new ones, and I’d call it a perfect day.

Just perfect.

Except ours.

The sad fact is that far too many Americans don’t know beans about how to use their own language.  This is inexcusable.  Poor language skills are also poor communication skills, and poor communication skills are responsible for more losses, heartache, and laughter at the expense of the ill-equipped person, than we’ll ever be able to count.

I’d even go so far as to say that ignorance of one’s own grammar is a handicap, except that I fully believe it’s self-inflicted – after a certain age – and self inflictions are one’s own choices and doings bad habits, which are choices, which we are personally responsible for.

I have little sympathy for an adult with no grammar skills who isn’t working like the very dickens to improve those grammar skills  I consider bad grammar to be the easy way out for people who really don’t care about clear communication or how they come across to others, including prospective employers.  I feel that unrepentant bad grammar shows blatant disrespect to our nation, our collective culture, each individual culture, and every person within earshot.

In today’s economy, it’s even more vital that people brush up their communication skills, ie grammar, because for every one highly coveted job opening, there will be several hundred applications.  This gives HR permission to be highly selective, HIGHLY selective, and if your cover letter has a misplaced comma or a misspelled word, why would you even be considered?  There are probably dozens of applications in the stack that were filled out by people more careful than you, better at communication than you, and who want the job badly enough to do a better job of presenting themselves than you did.  Having only to choose between a candidate whose cover letter earnestly vows that the applicant has “always stroved, to prefection” and one whose cover letter vows that she “is a hard worker and a quick learner,” guess who deserves to get the job, and who needs to sign up for a quickie grammar/spelling review course down at the learning center?

It ain’t rocket science; it’s a simple matter of learning how to use one’s own language.  I tell my students at least once a month – ask them; they’ll tell you – that if a business has a misspelling or grammar error anywhere on the premises on anything official, there are probably worse doings back in the kitchen.  Error in the front?  Error in the back.  Misspelling on the signs?  COUNT YOUR CHANGE.

Check out the signs at any place of business; they’re mirrors of the communication skills of the workers and owners.  “No checks excepted?”  Nice!  I’ve got a third party check from Outer Mongolia I’ve been trying to cash for ages; good to know this place is willing to take it.   “Eggs: .99¢”  Super.  But where in the world will I store all those cartons?  The tomato’s are on sale?  The tomato’s WHAT are on sale?

And don’t you hate it when you loose your dog?  Then again, that’s how many of us lose our dogs.

Social media indeed – Every single communication attempt in a place of business is social media, and sometimes it’s telling us to go elsewhere rather than risk our money and our lives in a business that cares so little about communication, ie what its employees and representatives are actually telling prospective customers or clients.

The easiest way to improve one’s grammar skills is to do the same things we did when learning how to speak in the first place:  imitate the grammar of those around us.  Sometimes this must be adapted, naturally, if those nearest to us are Jethro Bodine or Larry the Cable Guy; then again, those people are paid to speak like illiterates and in real life probably have mad grammar skillz that persuaded someone to hire them as spokesmen for Stupid Inc.

Pretending to have bad grammar for big money is one thing, but having bad grammar because one doesn’t know any better is quite another, and quite without excuse.

Students are sometimes offended when the school tries to teach them proper grammar because that’s not how anybody they know speaks.  Families are sometimes offended when their children come home from school trying to speak properly instead of speaking the same way the family speaks.

These families are. . . . well, perhaps I’ve said too much already about mentality and insecurity.  And when people try to play the culture card, I’m further convinced of their contempt for education and intense fear of questioning.  Besides, educated people often speak one way on the job or out in the world, and quite another way when they’re at home.  Knowing how to speak properly doesn’t mean abandoning a culture; it means adding another culture to the one you already have.  Who says one of them has to go?  Nobody.  Keep them both; just know when you need to use them.

Everyone’s grammar skills could use some improvement.  Let us all listen to those around us and learn to differentiate between good language usage and poor communication skills, and try to imitate the speech patterns of people who know their language.

“Enquiring” minds might want to know, but “inquiring” minds want to know the truth.  Statue Of Elvis Found On Mars,  indeed.

P.S.  “Done” is not a helping verb.  I done checked; it ain’t on th’ list.

Basic Elevator Etiquette for Dummies:

1. Push the appropriate button. If the button is already glowing, do not push it. If you repeatedly push an already-glowing button, everybody will know what you are.

2. Stand back. LEAVE ROOM FOR PEOPLE TO EMERGE FROM THE ELEVATOR.

3. When the door opens, WAIT UNTIL EVERYBODY IS OUT BEFORE YOU GO IN.

4. The people coming out of the elevator have the right-of-way over the people going into the elevator.

5. WHEN THE ELEVATOR IS COMPLETELY EMPTY, then and only then, calmly walk towards the open door. Do not push. Do not shove. The elevator is not going anywhere. It’s not like a subway, or a train, or an airport shuttle. Step inside the elevator and position yourself as far away from the other passengers as possible. If the elevator is crowded, do not take up more than your fair share of space no matter what you might be carrying. Hold your packages close to your body. Pull your wheeled briefcase as close to you as possible. Do not allow your child to touch anything or anybody, or move away from you for any reason.

6. Anyone who farts or who has a lighted cigarette in an elevator is fair game for murder. Nobody will tell on you. Everybody will help. You might even get a medal. If not, you should.

7. Once inside the elevator, do not reach across people to push a button. If your button is not already glowing, ask someone near the buttons to push it for you. Be sure to say please, and thank them nicely when they do it. Do not use a tone of voice that suggests that you’ve seen too many old movies about buildings that employ an actual elevator man.

8. If you stink, take the stairs. I’m not kidding.

9. ESPECIALLY do not violate #’s 2 and 3.

10 If you violate #’s 2 and 3, you are an idiot. “Dummies” books are beyond your intellect. You suck. You’re probably ugly. Your mother dresses you funny. You smell bad. Nobody likes you. Your spouse is changing the locks as we speak. Your children tell their friends that you are the boarder, and that their real parent  lives in Paris and films documentaries.

There. Now you know one way to tell smart people from stupid people, and nice people from rude people. It’s a pretty good indicator.

Elevator etiquette is a kind of social media, you know. When you or your representative behave like a tool in the elevator, I consider that to be an indication of how you conduct your business and treat people in general. And if I see you doing any of the above things, then no, thank you very much;  I’m no longer interested in doing business with you. Rude and stupid outside the office = rude and stupid inside the office.

“Let me sum up,” as Inigo Montoya might say.

BEHAVE YOURSELF.

Rude, crude people used to be the exception, and everybody else pointed and laughed at them. Sadly, rude crude people are now the norm, and sometimes I think they’re competing with each other for the rudest crudest simpletonian  numbskull award.

There would be a lot of ties.  Someone would probably turn it into a reality show.

It looks like you.

And why should you be interested?

Because it could have been you. Maybe it was you.

Women remove their bras for many reasons. You know them, so I won’t list them. But I will add this one: so we can check for lumps.

I would, of course, be participating in the Army of Women’s “Blog For Your Breasts” project in any case, since I am a human being, a woman, and an owner of breasts, but I have a particular interest in this project because I love my sister and I loved my mother-in-law.

Several years ago, my sister discovered a lump. She immediately contacted her doctor, who saw her right away, but even so, by the time her doctor saw the lump, it had grown bigger. He put her in the hospital, and the lump, along with pretty much everything touching or near the lump, was removed.

My sister underwent chemo. Our mother drove a hundred miles every few days to take her. My sister has very few memories of those trips; chemo takes it out of you in more ways than one. Her hair fell out, and even though she works for a big insurance company, that company refused to pay for a wig so she could continue to work. She finally did get one, however, and knowing my sister, I’m betting the company finally agreed to foot the bill. Harsh as the chemo was, it did the trick, and my sister has been cancer-free for several years now. She makes jokes about being lop-sided, but with the exception of her chest, everything about her, physically and mentally, including her hair, which grew back super-curly, is intact, for which all who love her, and that definitely includes me, are grateful. Every time I see her, I think about that time, those weeks in which we weren’t sure we were going to be allowed to keep her around, and I am so grateful she beat the odds that tried so hard to beat her down.

To be truthful, when it comes to this sister and any kind of odds, I’d bet on my sister every time. She’s tough and she’s good and she’s ALIVE. Love you, Teresa. Always have; always will.

My mother-in-law discovered her lump many years ago, but she didn’t tell anybody. By the time she showed it to her sister, it was huge. By the time she showed it to me, it was even huge-er – and black.

We had to bully her into going to the doctor; she was convinced that if she continue to ignore it and pray, it would go away without any effort on her part. I guess she forgot that God helps those who help themselves, because she put all the onus on God and flatly refused to do any of the work herself for years. Meanwhile, the lump put out roots and waxed strong.

Finally, she let us take her to the doctor, who, naturally, was horrified, both at the state of the lump AND at the state of her stubbornness. She underwent surgery; the lump was removed, as were as many of its clinging roots as possible. However, those of us who garden know what roots can do; they can live for a long time when the bulk of the growth is long gone; those roots can fester, evolve, and grow. Those roots can put out rootlets far from the original root. Think “strawberries.”

It was only when someone at work knocked her down and broke her hip that we discovered the extent of the malignant spread. The growth had grown, and poured itself forth throughout her entire body. Still, she upheld her claim that she would be healed without any help from humanity. I admired her faith, but I can’t admire her refusal to work along with her faith. (I believe that attitudes like this often dissuade others from “believing,” in fact. Sigh.)

Again, we bullied her into undergoing radiation treatments. From the very start, she was convinced that these treatments would not help her; I wonder still if that attitude was a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In the fall of 2008, she was still getting around, driving, eating, and working three days a week as a newspaper reporter. She retired in December of 2008. In February of 2009, she was gone.

Many people, including me, firmly believe that if she’d had that lump taken care of back in the mid-nineties when she first found it, she’d still be alive today. I suppose part of it was a generational and upbringing thing; she didn’t want to expose her breasts to a male doctor, and breasts are a private part that aren’t supposed to be exposed at all. She was brought up VERY strictly, with many rules and regulations that were ridiculous. It’s a bloody wonder she was able to rise above many of them at all. Sigh. She was much loved, and will always be missed. She was a wonderful mother-in-law, and was always very good to me.

Both of these women were brave, courageous, and bold, just like Hugh O’Brien’s Wyatt Earp: “Long live (their) fame, and long live (their) glory, and long may (their) story be told.”

However, if “it” should happen to you, please follow my sister’s example, not my mother-in-law’s.

Want to know more about the Army of Women? Click here.

Want to get involved? Click here.

In other words, we attend some conferences for certain reasons, and we attend other conferences for other reasons.  Often, these reasons overlap, and just as often, they do not.  Don’t expect every professional need you have to be satisfied by every conference; you need more than one, to wit, a combo of conferences.

In the long run, however, by attending various types of conferences for various reasons, I have learned far more than I ever learned in graduate school.

At first, everyone at every conference was new to me; even those whose blogs and websites I’d been reading for a while, but had not actually met, seemed new in many ways.   No matter what kind of conference it was, though, I felt I already knew these people somewhat because of their online presence.

Now, since I’m no longer a conference newbie – well, not as much of one as before -  I feel almost as if it’s Old Home Week when I go to a conference.  It’s wonderful to see familiar faces, and just as wonderful to see unfamiliar faces which I know will be familiar at the NEXT conference.  I’m far from being an A-list writer,  but the actual A-list people don’t seem to know how A-list they are and are really, really nice.  (This attitude can be different, though, depending on what kind of conference you’re attending and what kind of expectations you bring to the table.)

I guess you might say I’m thoroughly hooked on conferences.

They have greatly enhanced my ability to do my writing gigs, my social media gigs, my watchdog gigs, my teaching gigs, my help-my-students-become-writers gigs, and my time-to-surf-and-find-new-things gigs.

At each conference, I’m agig agog at the awesomeness of the attendees and presenters.  I’ve never met such smart people in my life.

For a small-town chick like me, it’s been a whole new world.  Alert Aladdin at once.

Another reason I love conferences is that because I’m a small-town chick, there really isn’t anybody close to home who understands what I do for a living.  At conferences, I can have actual conversations with actual people who actually understand!

Conferences help me hone my mad skillz.  Come with me next time and we’ll hone together.

It’s rare that any piece of knowledge you pick up pertains only to one aspect of your life.  I went to WordCamp Chicago to hone my mad social media and computer  skillz, but I also learned a great deal that I can take back to my college students and use, as well.

There’s no such thing as knowing enough.  Nobody will ever know enough about anything.  No matter how much we know, or think we know, there is always more to learn.  It doesn’t matter what the topic is; there’s always more to learn.

At  WordCamp Chicago this weekend, I learned so much my head is spinning.  This is good.  As my head is spinning – EXORCIST – I am extracting tidbits of coolness from it like water from lettuce in a salad spinner.  And once I soak up all the water, I’ll start in on the lettuce.  When the lettuce has been absorbed, I’ll go to another conference and start again.

Nobody ever knows enough about anything.

And I shall add:  those who think they know enough had better be careful.

Businesses have clients and customers, and schools have students.  Clients, customers, and students know an awful lot, and if  the time comes when they know more than we do. . . . well,   we’ve succeeded, actually.  They won’t need us any more.  And then, we go to another conference or take a class and catch up and then we’ll be needed again and it starts all over again.

I’ve heard teachers say that certain students or whole classes made them nervous or even annoyed them because the kids knew more than the teacher.  Whose fault is this, I might ask.  A teacher who doesn’t continue to learn, year after year, for the entirety of his/her career, is not an educator.  He/she is only a lecturer, and probably a boring one that the kids could run rings around.  I know teachers who’ve used the exact same lesson plans for over thirty years.  I’ve worked with people who refused to learn even how to access their email.  I have had colleagues who hated it when there was a really bright kid who already knew every minute detail of the textbooks, tests, and topics in a class.  I’ve known teachers who resented it when a child asked a question the teacher couldn’t answer.  As for me,  I LOVE it when my students have questions I can’t answer.  It means we all go nuts figuring that answer out, together.  Cool!  Get to the lab, people and activate your schema!

When your customers/clients/students are able to run rings around you, and you permit it, and you don’t do anything to make yourself more knowledgeable, you’re not going to be good at whatever it is you do.  You won’t even be passable.  I don’t want you teaching my children, and I wouldn’t trust you to be competent at running a business.  Frankly, I don’t even want you dressing my cheeseburger.

If your business is kids and you don’t know what they’re reading or listening to or playing, what excuse do you have?  You have no excuse.  I don’t mean that you have to be one of them, because we’ve all seen THOSE pathetic souls, age 54, in Miley Cyrus jeans, Tinkerbell t-shirt,  and pink-tipped hair.  I mean, if you’re going to be able to communicate with your clientele in any kind of place, YOU have to learn some new tricks, old dawg.

In fact, I personally think that if your business is kids, you not only need to know what they’re reading, you need to read it, too.  How can your excited students talk to you about the Black Family Tree permanently stuck to the wall, with some of the faces burned away, and why, if you don’t know what that is?  And frankly, if you teach and you DON’T know what that is, shame on you.  You’re not keeping up.

Keep up.  Never, ever, ever stop keeping up.

When you stop keeping up, ie when you stop learning, call the mortuary and have them drive over to pick up your useless self.  You’re certainly not making viable use of yourself any more, nor any part of yourself.  Even if you’re working out three times a week, if you’re not learning anything, you’re not using your brain, and once you stop using your brain, you’re dead.  Worse than dead, really, because you’re not doing your fair share of thinking, participating, and contributing, but you’re still using up oxygen, resources,  and space on the planet.

Harsh?  Not really.  In this economy or any other kind of economy, what school or business can afford to keep dead weight?  And why should they bother?  Dead weight brings everybody down, and nobody has the right to do that to other people.

Get rid of the dead weight in our schools and replace it with learners.  Learners on both sides of the desk.  A teacher who doesn’t continually educate himself/herself throughout a lifetime?  Not possible.  I mean, not if that person is a REAL teacher.

No matter what line you’re in, make sure you are a lifelong learner.  Keep up.  Ponder.  Suppose.  Infer.  Make connections.  Rejoice in learning as many new things  as you can, every moment you’re lucky enough to be alive.

Never.  Stop.  Learning.  And never stop loving learning.  And if you do decide you’ve learned enough and you’ve earned the right to stop learning and just sit around watching tv and yelling at the weatherman and the referee and drinking beer and feeling great that you don’t have to learn anything else ever again, please, for the love of all that is holy, keep away from my children.  And everybody else’s children, too.  You’re toxic, and I don’t want your poison to infect or infest anyone else, least of all an innocent child.

Learn things.  And when you’ve learned those things, learn other things.  Etc, etc, and so on in patternlike fancy.

And while you’re at it, learn to use and understand proper context.  I mean, holy scheisse on a stick, there are some really ignorant cusses out there.  Let’s eliminate them all with education.

When most of us first started putting bits and pieces of ourselves “out there” for “strangers” to see, we didn’t use our real names.  We made up fake or cute names for ourselves, and for our spouses and children, too.  After all, the internet is huge and strange and full of dark, creepy neighborhoods and “iffy” people, and if nobody knew who we really were, we felt safer.  Well, I did.  Now, most of us don’t bother with the original fake names; we use our real names because everybody knows anyway.  Heck, pole dancers are coming out of the woodwork these days, trying to buy “Mamacita” from me, but they can’t have it.  Not officially, anyway.    They can sign their posts that way but they can’t have the url’s or the Twitter name.

But, most of you know who I am now.  I don’t mind.  I like it.  Some of you know where I live because you’ve been here, and that makes me happy, too.

Fake internet names.  It’s almost funny now.

Then something happened.

Those internet strangers. . . they turned into real people.  Then the real people turned into real people with actual names and locations.  And then, well, then. . . a lot of them turned into real and actual friends.

Not just people with whom we exchanged advice and ideas and conversation, but friends.

I know there are those who do not believe an internet friend is the same thing as a real-life friend, but they are wrong.  In fact, I think we sometimes end up knowing more about an internet friend – assuming (and we have to assume this) – that we’re all telling the truth about ourselves – and I think we are.  Oh, there’s the occasional scam.  I’ve been scammed that way myself twice, BIG TIME.

This made me perhaps a bit more wary, but ultimately, I trust people because that’s how people become trustworthy, and I know that 99.99% of the blogosphere- at least the neighbors I’m familiar with – is populated with awesome people, and I’m proud to know them.

Proud to know them, both online and off.  Yes, I’ve met many of my online friends for realz, as the kids say, and it’s bloody awesome when that happens.

Conventions, conferences, meetings, Tweet-ups. . . . these are safe and convenient ways to meet online acquaintances and friends, but let me tell you something.  When someone you have come to know well and like and love to talk to invites you out to visit, that’s a happening one never forgets.  It’s a blind friendship date, and mine turned out wonderfully.  You know who you are, you wonderful, beautiful, fabulous people you.

But I digress.

Blogging has changed me.  It has encouraged me to be retrospective, to look inward and find ideas I didn’t even know I had.  It has helped me understand myself and other people.  It has forced me to look at things I’ve done, or that other people did, with fresh eyes.  It has helped me forgive.  It has made me look closely and from afar, because both microscope and telescope are equally important.  It has helped me deal with various situations.  It has renewed my trust in people.  It has helped me find myself, and others.

Part of these changes came naturally, as a result of this new way of looking at and expressing myself.  However, some of the changes came in another way.

Comments.

Total strangers who had something to say about what I had said.  People who were kind, and unkind, and full of wonderful advice.  People who came back to this blog again and again, like people with something in common who meet for lunch.  Occasionally someone told me off, which I occasionally needed.  People made accusations, and yelled at me with capital letters.  Sometimes my daughter and sister commented, telling me that my personal view of a situation or occurrence wasn’t necessarily the only one.  We all need to be reminded of THAT, you know.  It helped.  All of it helped.

In other words, after six years of blogging, I think I know myself better.  I think I understand other people a little better.  I think I’m able to look back at certain situations with a more understanding eye.  I’ve “met” people who were hurting much more than I was, people who were much more talented than I am, people who were WAY nicer than I am, people who were mean and hateful and dishonest, people who were kind and loving and genuine, people whose creative talent made me stand up in awe, people I’ve actually really met, people I can’t wait to meet, people who banded together and raised money for someone in need who they’d never actually met, people who were hurting, people who were helping, people who were living in the Blogosphere as if it were an actual neighborhood (which it IS),  people I’m now working for, people I’d love to work for, people I like so much there simply are no words. . . . .

Before I moved to the Blogosphere, my world was pretty limited.  I taught in the same room in the same building all day and then I went home.  Sometimes, after school, I waited tables all night and cooked in a deli all weekend.  We never had much money.  Every day was pretty much the same, and I’d been working with the same people for years and years.  It’s not just online that people are fooled about other people.

Once I moved into the blogosphere, though, my entire life was different.  I had a different job, different schedule, different EVERYTHING, including a different outlook on life.  It took a little while to let my guard down and trust people, but once I did, it was liberating.  It was like one of those corny commercials that show a woman running along the beach, arms uplifted, living the moment.  It seriously was.  And we all know that most corny things are also true things.

Anyway, now that Scheiss Weekly is six years old, I wanted to thank you all for freeing me from the cage in which I was apparently living, even though I didn’t realize it at the time.  A public school teacher is a slave, and I’m not kidding, and most of them don’t even know it until they leave and start doing something else.  But that’s another post, isn’t it.

I am free, and doing work I LOVE, and meeting all kinds of people and finding them awesome.  Nobody will ever cage me again.  And if I want to show my students that all things are in some way connected, I damn well will and nobody can stop me.

I love my blog.  I love the Blogosphere.  I love the people I’ve met through this blog and through people I met through this blog.  They are real.  We are all real  The Blogosphere is real.  It is here, and it is now, and it is here to stay.  Twitter and Facebook, etc, are all wonderful and I like them and I use them but ultimately, somehow, it always comes back to the blog.  Some things need more than 140 characters to be said properly.

This is a long post.  If you’ve made it this far, I thank you.  Corny, sentimental mush?  Oh, sure.  I’m good at that; just ask my kids.

But just so you know it’s really me. . . . . BEHAVE YOURSELVES!

We all hope that we’ll react heroically, but the fact is, NOBODY knows until after the fact whether he/she will even do the right thing, let alone go above and beyond the right thing.

When disaster strikes, many people shrug and go about their business, secure in the safety of geography and circumstance while others disregard both of those, rub their hands together, and set to. Jim Turner, for example, wanted to do more than just watch people suffer on the news, and, with some help from WhatGives.com, did a 24-hour telethon to help the people of Haiti that is still being Twittered. Check for the hashtag #HART; that’s Jim’s telethon!  Jim’s a hero.  So are many others.

1. I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom. — Bob Dylan

2. A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

3. The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else. –
Umberto Eco

4. Heroes are people who rise to the occasion and slip quietly away. — Tom Brokaw

5. Heroes come along when you need them. — Ronald Steel

6. A hero is a man who does what he can. — Roman Rollard

7. I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced that they are about to change the world. I am more awed by…those who…struggle to make one small difference after another. — Ellen Goodman

8. Real heroes are men who fall and fail and are flawed, but win out in the end because they’ve stayed true to their ideals and beliefs and commitments. — Kevin Costner

9. How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes! — Maya Angelou

10. The cowards think of what they can lose, the heroes of what they can win. –J. M. Charlier

11. I am of certain convinced that the greatest heroes are those who do their duty in the daily grind of domestic affairs whilst the world whirls as a maddening dreidel. –Florence Nightingale

12. The hero is known for achievements; the celebrity for well-knowns. The hero reveals the possibilities of human nature. The celebrity reveals the possibilities of the press and media. Celebrities are people who make news, but heroes are people who make history. Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities. –Daniel J. Boorstin

13. A hero is simply someone who rises above his own human weaknesses, for an hour, a day, a year, to do something stirring. –Betty Deramus

14. True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost. –Arthur Ashe

15. The world is moved not only by the mighty shoves of the heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker. –Helen Keller

16. In our world of big names, curiously, our true heroes tend to be anonymous. In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the person of solid virtues who can be admired for something more substantial than his well-knownness often proves to be the unsung hero: the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the honest cop, the hard worker at lonely, underpaid, unglamorous, unpublicized jobs. — Daniel J. Boorstin

17. Heroism is not only in the man, but in the occasion. — Calvin Coolidge

18. A boy doesn’t have to go to war to be a hero; he can say he doesn’t like pie when he sees there isn’t enough to go around. — Edgar Watson Howe

19. The hero, in living her own life, in being true to herself; radiates a light by which others may see their own way. — Laurence G. Boldt

20. Hard times don’t create heroes. It is during the hard times when the ‘hero’ within us is revealed. — Bob Riley

21. Our young people look up to us. Let us not let them down. Our young people need us. Saving them will make heroes of us all. — Gale Sayers

22. Receiving far less attention are the working class heroes, who go about their solitary work routines with quiet dignity, come home from another grueling day, yet still find time to interact with their children. — Armstrong Williams

23. Man’s greatest actions are performed in minor struggles. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment and poverty are battlefields which have their heroes – obscure heroes who are at times greater than illustrious heroes. — Victor Hugo

24. We need more everyday heroes. Heroes are ordinary people who take a stand for what is right. — Blaine Jackson

25. What the world needs now, more than ever before, are every day heroes who are ready, willing and able to make a difference. — Greg Hickman

26. If you’re going to do anything that pioneering, you will get those arrows in the back, and you just have to put up with it. — Randy Pausch

27. If you’re never scared or embarrassed or hurt, it means you never take any chances. — Julia Sorel

28. In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing you can do is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing. — Unknown

29. If your purpose of life is security, you will be a failure. Security is the lowest form of happiness. — David Kekich

30. Dr. Martin Luther King is not a black hero. He is an American hero. — Morgan Freeman

31. A ship in harbor is safe — but that is not what ships are built for. — John A. Shedd,

It’s easy to get a mind-fix that these catastrophes usually happen far away to people we don’t know, but the fact is, we’re all in this together.  Today, it’s someone else who needs help; tomorrow, it could be us, right here.

Let the good that we do come back to us.  And even if it doesn’t, let’s do it anyway.

Tune in tonight and tomorrow to the Haiti Assistance Relief Telethon. Listen.  Call in.  Do what you can.  On Twitter, look for the hashtag #HART

You can’t live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you. — John Wooden