Dear Kitty

[I posted this opening to The Diary of Anne Frank a few months back because I thought it was the true precursor to blogging. Lately I recommended a book to Rageboy about voice and the end of patriarchy called THE BIRTH OF PLEASURE by Carol Gilligan. She writes wonderful stuff in that book about Anne Frank's diary entries and how they let Anne define a new voice. There were in fact three versions of the diary -- the first one which was raw and unedited, the second version edited by Anne right before her death, the third and the originally published manuscript which was edited by her father. By comparing the three versions, Gilligan shows us how the first one with it's honest, sexy, vivacious voice shows a girl becoming a woman and by establishing a new voice, becomes a new self. This is exactly what I think is happening with blogging, we are finding voices that will ultimately make us new selves, or as David Weinberger likes to say, "we are writing ourselves into existence." If Gilligan is right and we're witnessing the end of patriarchy, the fresh honest style of blogging by both women and men will certainly hasten its demise.]

July 8, 1942: "Margot and I started packing our most important belongings into a school bag. The first thing I stuck in was this diary ....Preoccupied by the thought of going into hiding, I stuck the craziest things into the bag, but I'm not sorry. Memories mean more to me than dresses."