Oh BlogHer, BlogHer, I Love You More Than CANDY!
Mamacita says: Last July, I went to the BlogHer conference; I couldn’t find enough positive things to say about the experience! I had a wonderful time. I met wonderful people. I did wonderful things.
This coming July, I’m going again. I can’t wait. I signed up almost as soon as the sign-ups opened, and honestly? I’ve been counting the days since I got home from San Francisco last year. This year, the conference is in Chicago, which is, of course, a toddlin’ town. Tony Bennett thought so, anyway.
Last year I was on a panel; this year, I’m going to be mic jockey. Truthfully? I love BlogHer – the concept and the actuality – so much, I’d mop floors and scour toilets just to be a part of it.
The conference is sold out, and it doesn’t even happen for four more months! That tells ya something about how much other people love it, too! See? I’m not the only one!
If you want to go, and aren’t signed up, you might still win your way to the Windy City. (alliteratively speaking) Go to the BlogHer website and look around for contests. You might also Google “Blogher contests,” as many bloggers and businesses are offering free passes as contest prizes.
You all know by now how much I love Christmas – the tree, the reunions, the food, the love – but the fact is, I just might love BlogHer even more. That’s silly to say, because there’s no comparison between two such different things, but to me, Christmas Day and BlogHer have much in common. They’re both only once a year. They’re both much anticipated. They’re both full of friends and fun and love and new experiences.
And for me, they’re both so wonderful, well, there are no words good enough.
I wake up on Christmas morning full of anticipation, and I wake up at BlogHer feeling the same way.
Hurry up, July. I want my BlogHer conference, and I just can’t WAIT!
I even got my picture taken with a celebrity, as you can see. The Michelin Man makes me a bit nervous, actually. That’s just too much how I look in the mirror. Sigh.
But a few of those chins are gone. Sixty pounds of chins gone, in fact. That’s a lot of chins, but not enough. I’m still working on it.
Oh, BlogHer, BlogHer, I love you more than candy.
Quotation Saturday
Mamacita says: So often, someone else can “say it” so much better than we can. Well, better than I can, that’s for sure!
1. It is a man’s duty to have books. A library is not a luxury, but one of the necessaries of life. –Henry Ward Beecher
2. The dangers of knowledge are not to be compared with the dangers of ignorance. Man is more likely to miss his way in darkness than in twilight, in twilight than in full sun. –Whately
3. Those who live in the Lord never see each other for the last time. –German motto
4. It is better to be a beggar than ignorant, for a beggar only wants money, but an ignorant person wants humanity. –Austippus
5. Geology gives us a key to the patience of God. –Josiah G. Holland
6. A family without government is like a house without a roof, exposed to every wind that blows, like a house in flames. A scene of confusion, and commonly too hot to live in. –Matthew Henry
7. Example is more forcible than precept. People look at your six days in the week to see what you mean on the seventh. –Richard Cecil
8. A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. –Edward Abbey
9. People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure. –Russel Baker
10. If you surveyed a hundred typical middle-aged Americans, I bet you’d find that only two of them could tell you their blood types, but every last one of them would know the theme song from the ‘Beverly Hillbillies’. –Dave Barry
11. When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist. –Dom Helder Camara
12. Never judge a book by its movie. –J.W. Eagan (That’s for sure!)
13. Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious. — Brendan Gill
14. Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies. — Thomas Jefferson
15. Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer. — Mark Twain
16. Courage is often lack of insight, whereas cowardice in many cases is based on good information. –Peter Ustinov
17. When you are dissatisfied and would like to go back to youth, think of algebra. –Gene Yasenak
18. Truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is boring without it. –Pearl S. Buck
19. Don’t smother each other. No one can grow in the shade. –Leo F. Buscaglia
20. Don’t wait for the last judgment. It takes place every day. –Albert Camus
21. If you can’t sleep, then get up and do something instead of lying there worrying. It’s the worry that gets you, not the lack of sleep. –Dale Carnegie
22. If you aren’t rich, you should always look useful. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine
23. Never stand begging for what you have the power to earn. — Miguel de Cervantes
24. There are three ways to get something done: do it yourself, hire someone, or forbid your kids to do it. –Monta Crane
25. If you want a thing well done, get a couple of old broads to do it. –Bette Davis
26. Chop your own wood, and it will warm you twice. –Henry Ford
27. Always go to the bathroom when you have a chance. –King George V
28. Don’t carry a grudge. While you’re carrying the grudge, the other guy’s out dancing. –Buddy Hackett
29. Never do for a child what he is capable of doing for himself. –Elizabeth G. Hainstock
30. When a friend is in trouble, don’t annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it. –Edgar Watson Howe
31. Have the courage to act instead of react. –Earlene Larson Jenks
32. You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was. –Abraham Lincoln
33. Either do as your neighbors do, or move away. –Moroccan Proverb
34. A tough lesson in life that one has to learn is that not everybody wishes you well. –Dan Rather
35. Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do and damned if you don’t. –Eleanor Roosevelt
36. Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you. –Carl Sandburg
37. Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is? –Frank Scully
38. Never try to reason the prejudice out of a man. It wasn’t reasoned into him, and cannot be reasoned out. –Sydney Smith
39. Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness. –James Thurber
40. We should try to be the parents of our future rather than the offspring of our past. –Miguel de Unamuno
41. Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience. –George Washington
42. The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
–William Blake
43. Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong. –Leo Buscaglia
44. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same. –Carlos Castaneda
45. Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten. –G.K. Chesterton
46. Life is not holding a good hand; life is playing a poor hand well. –Danish Proverb
47. Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of the imagination. –John Dewey
48. Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
–Thomas Alva Edison
49. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. –Albert Einstein
50. An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don’t. It’s knowing where to go to find out what you need to know; and it’s knowing how to use the information once you get it. –William Feather
Mamacita Says: Where Are All The Sidewalks?
Mamacita says: Neighborhoods are supposed to have sidewalks. Period.
I don’t know what kind of schooling our urban and suburban designers “graduated” from, but their education has been sadly lacking. Neighborhoods are supposed to be just that: NEIGHBORhoods. These days, even if two houses are right close together, it’s impossible to get from one to the other without walking across the yards or going into the street; that’s because most modern neighborhoods are being designed and built without sidewalks.
It’s almost as though the people in charge of building places for people to live are interested in that and only that: places IN WHICH people may dwell. Alone. Isolated from everyone else dwelling nearby. They don’t seem to be interested in designing NEIGHBORHOODS wherein people may LIVE. With NEIGHBORS. You know, people with whom one might have supper or barbecues, or from whom one might borrow an egg or a cup of sugar, or get advice about pretty much anything. NEIGHBORS. People whose first and last names we know. Children we recognize when we see them skating and riding their trikes and bikes on the SIDEWALKS all around the block.
But oops. “Neighborhoods,” and I use that term loosely, no longer have sidewalks, and we don’t know who is dwelling in those other houses near ours, and even though we’re dwelling near other people, we’re not LIVING near them, because we’re all holed up in our hermetically-sealed houses, many of which were designed with windows that don’t even open, getting our exercise via our Wii and conversing with people online only.
Gone are the days when any kid was everybody’s kid – watched over, guided by, and occasionally disciplined by other people’s parents because that’s what nice people did. Many modern parents would call the police if a “neighbor” dared tell their perfect child to stop picking someone else’s flowers or pushing, shoving, hitting, or otherwise bullying another child. It’s too bad that our communal living conditions have DEvolved to this level: that we are no longer interested in helping each other and each other’s children become decent citizens. It’s a moot point these days, anyway, because in far too many contemporary housing developments (they’re NOT neighborhoods!) there are no sidewalks for kids to play on anyway, and nobody ever goes outside except to water or mow those smooth lawns that never saw a badminton net or croquet hoop. Besides, if kids played on the lawns, the lawns would be MESSED UP. Oh ick. Perish THAT thought.
I’m not talking about rotten kids – and yes, there are such kids. I’m not talking about hoods, or bullies, or mean kids, all of whom might be a lot less mean, bully-ish, or rotten if their parents allowed NEIGHBORHOODS to help raise them, which in turn means allowing kids to let the consequences of their own actions fall on their own heads by means of being allowed some free play and having eyewitnesses who don’t hestitate to step in and tattle. I’m not talking about “free range kids,” which is a euphemisms over-protective parents use to describe other people’s kids who are allowed to BE kids and play outside with no hovership involved. Then again, maybe I am. How sad, that such a euphemism even exists, when “free range” is how children are SUPPOSED to be. Don’t confuse this with neglected children who roam because they have no place to go and no one to care. NEIGHBORS call the cops when they see that. People living in housing developments don’t even notice, because nobody ever goes outside. Heck, even our cars are inside.
Yes, it’s a scary world. Yes, there are perverts and molesters and all kinds of monsters “out there.”
I’m not sure today’s overprotected, obese kids would know one if they saw one, unless there was an interactive Wii game about it. Even then, seeing it in real life wouldn’t mean anything. Our kids have no experience in dealing with adults other than parents and teachers, and such inexperienced kids would probably go with anyone who told them to. Kids who play outdoors are much more savvy than that; they know what each other’s parents look like and any strange adult would stand out like a sore thumb.
Turn off the tv. Unplug the video games. Not forever, but for most of the oncoming summer’s daylight hours. Open the door and insist that your kids spend HOURS outside. When they look at you blankly and ask you what they’re supposed to do, tell them to use their imaginations and don’t let them back in the house until it’s suppertime. It’s awful the way so many of today’s kids don’t even know how to climb a tree, and even if they DO know how, Mommie is standing underneath, wringing her hands and begging Billy or Susie to “Be CAREFUL, darling!!!!! and otherwise scaring the poor kid to death and giving him/her the assumption that there is always danger involved in the big frightening outdoors.
When your kids come home covered with bruises, scratches, scrapes, and bumps, don’t make a big deal out of it unless they were caused by another child, on purpose. Even a broken bone from childhood’s play isn’t really a big deal. Kids fall down and kids break their arms and legs. We’ve lived with that for generations, and when we do, it’s not so traumatic when it happens. Many parents SUE when their kids gets hurt while playing. Unless there was shameful neglect, which doesn’t happen often, this is ridiculous, and such people are morons. Kids are SUPPOSED to be covered with band-aids and dirt. If yours isn’t, at the end of a lovely summer day, then you’re doing something wrong.
There is something very creepy and Twilight-Zone-ish about a neighborhood in summer, with no kids playing all over it.
Quite frankly, I don’t think kids who live less than a mile from school should even be riding the bus. Walking in groups is safe. Press charges again anyone who interferes with them, and I include bullies in that.
Take back our NEIGHBORhoods!
