Blog Indiana: Ever Good & Always Better!
Mamacita says: I go to a lot of conferences, and each one serves a different purpose. The big conferences are a whirlwind of cool, from parties to swag to meetups to packed sessions to celebrities to tears to laughter to screaming meltdowns when we catch sight of bloggers long loved online and now within touching distance. . . . There’s just nothing like a huge conference.
However.
There’s just nothing like a smaller conference, either.
My favorite smaller conference is, by far, no holds barred, Blog Indiana.
I’ve been to all but one Blog Indiana conference, and each year it just gets better and better. The first year was good, and each year since it’s still good but even better. A little bigger, and a lot better.
This is saying a lot, because each Blog Indiana has been so good, I’ve left thinking, “This was perfection and couldn’t possibly be improved upon.” And I was wrong each year, because the next year was good, too, and better than the year before. Ditto for each successive year. Good. Great, even. How could it be better than it is this year? And every year, it is.
The two founders of Blog Indiana, Shawn Plew (@hoosierplew) and Noah Coffey (@noahcoffey) do a splendid job. I have nothing but praise for them. Nothing but praise. Praise. Awesome job, guys, and my students will tell you that I do not banter the word “awesome” about unless I really mean it.
I really mean it.
At Blog Indiana, the sessions are relevant, the speakers are interesting, and the information the attendees come away with is useful. I learn more at this conference than at any other conference. It’s better than grad school. The food was great, there was Diet Pepsi in every room, and those cookies were to die for.
I’m diabetic and I ate my share of cookies, so cross your fingers that I don’t die for them. Or from them. Prepositions. . . .
I am a pro at cookie rationalizing: if you drink diet soda with your cookies, the sugar/calorie count is halved, so you can eat more cookies. Or something.
Shawn and Noah honored me this year by allowing me to be a presenter. I think it went well; nobody stalked out, even when I said “shit.” Like, maybe, eight times. There was no porn, though; that was just a rumor.
For trusting me with a session, Shawn and Noah, I thank you profusely. Please trust me with a session again next year, maybe? Please?
Also? For a conference about the internet, there were a lot of people using those super old-school notebooks during the sessions. Nothing will ever replace the surge of creativity that flows from the brain, down the arm, and out the fingertips.
It’s too late to make a long story short, so let me finish with this: Make a note RIGHT NOW to reserve August 8 & 9, 2013 – you don’t want to miss Blog Indiana. Seriously, you don’t.
It would be like missing Christmas morning.
BlogHer 2012: My Perspective
Mamacita says: I’ve only just returned from New York City, where the best BlogHer conference yet was held. While I may be home now, my head and heart are still mingling with the 5,000 women (and men) in the Hilton hallways and session rooms. Oh, and behind the registration desk, which is the best job EVER because everybody has to register, so the volunteers there get to see everybody.
My roommate was the fabulous Fausta , who is quite possibly one of the kindest, most interesting, and just basically one of the loveliest (inside and out!) people I’ve ever met. I miss her already. Love you, Fausta.
I thought the BlogHer sessions were wonderful this year, too. Late on Friday afternoon, during a panel made up of three of my favorite people (Neil, Laurie, and Schmutzie), a topic came up that I wanted to comment on; sadly, while I can speak to a crowd with relative ease, I am far too backward to comment on someone else’s session in public. Out loud. You know, where PEOPLE can hear. However, there was something I wanted to say, and I’m going to say it here instead of there.
The question was: What is the Blogosphere for? Money? Fame? Personal venting?
In speaking of whether or not bloggers should go for the money, I am of two minds – possibly more than two.
If a blogger is offered payment for doing what he/she would be doing anyway, I say “go for it.”
If a blogger is offered payment for doing what a business orders him/her to do, regardless of the blogger’s personal ideals, I say “when pigs fly.”
However, what I wanted to say most was this: I think the best and – in my opinion – the most important thing about the Blogosphere is that it is the village without which we cannot most effectively and wisely live our lives.
Before you start, I already know that people have been living their lives effectively and wisely ever since there have been people, but in the 21st century, an era in which so many people are isolated – far away from parents, family, and others who have nourished them through their formative years, the Blogosphere can provide a support the likes of which is unparalleled in human history.
In the Blogosphere, we can find people who know the answer to our questions and problems. We discover that WE know the answer to other people’s questions and problems.
We learn here, among writers from the United States and Australia and France and Pakistan and Outer Mongolia, that being ethnocentric simply makes no sense. It never did, but proving it was harder. Now, someone in Venezuela can tell someone in Scotland that a crying baby doesn’t necessarily mean a distressed baby. Someone in New Zealand can counsel someone in Alabama about a spouse’s infidelity. Someone in Latvia can assure someone in Nova Scotia that it’s normal to feel depressed after having a baby. Someone in Nigeria can prove to the universe at large that not everyone there is a prince seeking a sympathetic soul to deposit the crown jewels in his/her checking account in return for a cut when the boat docks.
In the Blogosphere, we learn that no matter where or how someone lives and what he/she looks like, our hopes, dreams, problems, heartaches, aspirations, etc, are intrinsically the same. We all want our children to be healthy and happy. We all want to be loved. We all have to eat and sleep, and we all wear clothes. Well, most of us, anyway. Every culture has courtship, and mealtime, and infidelity, and birth, and death, and marriage, and friendship, and children, and jobs, and abuse, and religion, and politics, and sports, and education, and tragedy, and accidents, and miracles, and conflicts. In every culture, most people are nice, and genuinely want to help each other. Until recently, our knowledge of these desires was limited. Now, our knowledge is global. The Blogosphere has brought us together. REALLY brought us together.
The Blogosphere has shown us that our mealtimes don’t have to consist of the same old thing week after week. Want some suggestions about dinner? Google it.
We know that not all rashes, sneezes, bruises, etc, are fatal, because someone in Chad posted about being overly concerned about trivial childhood injuries.
We know that the mole on a loved one’s neck should be looked at by a doctor, because someone in the Yukon Territory posted about waiting too long to have his/her own mole checked out.
New parents, empty-nest parents, recently divorced people, grieving people, rejoicing people are reassured. The Blogosphere gives us proof that real people are turning their lives around, educating themselves, coping, enduring, laughing, crying, and generally all doing the same things, sometimes in the same way, sometimes in different ways, but still doing. We all hope, and dream, and long for friendship and love and cool shoes, which we sometimes find a thousand miles away on the feet of a blogger in Kyoto, and which we can order from the same Japanese shop.
Parents of special needs children find and help one another. Homeschooling parents find and help one another.
Lives have been changed and even saved because someone on the other side of the planet posted something.
The Blogosphere has proven that cultural universals exist outside the pages of a sociology textbook. We really ARE alike in more ways than we are different, and our differences are not to be feared, either.
In the olden days, generations lived together in one place, even in one home, and there was always someone more experienced to give actual advice that really worked. Now, few houses are multi-generational, and new parents are on their own, except for a few thousand well-intentioned advice books, none of which was written about your specific, individual child, or a child who resembled yours. The Blogosphere, however, houses a LOT of people in your situation who have tried, rejected, tried, and found success at whatever you’re trying to do. And, if they haven’t found success, they can at least sympathize in a knowledgeable and empathetic way.
To sum up the Blogosphere would seem to be complicated, but it isn’t. I believe the Blogosphere can be summed up thusly:
We are not alone. We were never alone.
If you receive monetary compensation for your interpretation of this, good for you. If you do not, good for you, too.
It would have taken too long to say this in a spoken comment, anyway.
I Love Little Pussy
Mamacita says: People with tiny, limited vocabularies scare me.
I am positive that these are the people who melt down in public and starting stabbing everyone within reach.
It’s a fact that the person who throws the first punch generally has a smaller vocabulary than his/her victim. People with small vocabularies have trouble understanding basic conversation. People with small vocabularies often don’t have enough words to communicate their thoughts, or understand other people’s conversations. Picture a toddler trying to communicate – a tiny child with not enough actual words to convey what he/she is trying to say to you. Quite often, the toddler will give up and just start belting anyone and anything in his/her path, or the child will simply melt down in a tantrum of frustration. This, much of the time, is forgivable in a small child; it is NOT forgivable in an adult.
Violent adults are often like this – many violent people are just frustrated at their own lack of ability to understand others and to communicate to others.
This is no one’s fault but their own, by the way. Tiny-vocabulary adults will get little sympathy from me. Life is full of choices, and if they’ve chosen not to expand their horizons with cool new words every day, so be it. They’ve condemned themselves to a life of mediocrity. You can buy a dictionary and a thesaurus at the Dollar Tree.
Every book we read expands our vocabularies, and simultaneously our ability to connect with the universe. Non-readers don’t experience that.
Back in the middle school, almost every. Single. Fight. was started by a non-reader with a small vocabulary. He/she just simply ran out of means of communication, or misinterpreted the other kid’s words, and acted out in the only way he/she could understand: physically. I believe the same is true for adults who don’t know very many words.
I think what annoys me most – at least right this moment – are people whose vocabularies are so limited that they know only one meaning for a word: people with no comprehension of context or multiple definitions depending ON that context.
There are, as we speak, committees of “concerned parents” trying to edit classic children’s and adult literature. They read that “. . . Scrooge had no further intercourse with the spirits. . . .” and assume that Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present had a little thing going on, ifyouknowwhatImean. These people hear the Christmas carol lyrics “. . . the ox and ass kept time. . . .” and simply HAVE to change that dreadful word to “lamb.” They want no part of singing – or hearing their innocent children singing – about donning their gay apparel.
Apparently, such people do not own a dictionary or thesaurus, and have no concept of multiple definitions or context. They hear a word and know only one meaning.
I have little patience with these people, because I do not suffer fools gladly. I don’t think anybody should, in fact. Perhaps, if fools were not catered to so much, people would try not to BE fools.
I am not speaking of English language learners, or SPED, so don’t start with me. I am speaking of people who just simply find it easier to be ignorant of their own language, and force everybody else to dumb down to their level.
This is inexcusably horrible.
Here is a piece of advice I give my students each semester, and now I give it to you: Keep a dictionary in the bathroom. Learn at least one new word in all of its nuances with each twosie. If you’re going to be sitting there for a while, learn several new words.
Keep a thesaurus in there, too, if for no other reason than to be able to describe your awesome pooping experience in words other than “stinky, loud, and big.”
Give your kids a thesaurus apiece and encourage them to fling cool big words at each other. Do not make your kids share one thesaurus; each kid needs his/her own.
And keep your ignorance away from our libraries. They have trouble enough with budgets without having to deal with ignorant gits with tiny linguistic skills.
Also? Shame on you.
I Love Little Pussy, by Jane Taylor
I love little Pussy,
Her coat is so warm;
And if I don’t hurt her
She’ll do me no harm.
So I’ll not pull her tail,
Nor drive her away,
But Pussy and I
Very gently will play;
She shall sit by my side,
And I’ll give her some food;
And Pussy will love me
Because I am good.
I’ll pat little Pussy,
And then she will purr,
And thus show her thanks
For my kindness to her;
I’ll not pinch her ears,
Nor tread on her paw,
Lest I should provoke her
To use her sharp claw;
I never will vex her,
Nor make her displeased,
For Pussy can’t bear
To be worried or teased.
==
With your mind out of the gutter, “concerned parents,” that’s a lovely little poem. Too bad these parents have succeeded in having it removed from many elementary anthologies. A lot of “concerned citizens” might want to concern themselves with their own brainwaves before “concerning” themselves with trying to limit anyone else’s.
Vapid, specious pablum-eaters.
