Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Go To Bed Right Now

9:43pm ... why not ... get a good night's rest. Yes.

blank thing

[leave this blank.]

Alone But Not

You still visit my bed, did you know? This morning early, very early, I was waking up slowly, very slowly and stretched out flat on my belly against the new clean sheets and I remembered your touch. Happy to remember it.

How you might reach over, just run your fingers down my spine, from the tippy top edge of my hair, a messy blond pile of hay straw in the morning, counting vertebrae to see if any had slipped away over night, down to the arch in my low low back. With your finger, you stroke those indents -- kidney marks -- one on each side, above the edge of my panties, then linger there.

With one eye, I crack a look to the left, but don't see you, instead I meet the light of day. I grind my hips into the bed longing for you. If I arch my back, maybe you will appear. I remember too much. I want to feel the weight of you on me. I want you to pin me to the bed. It would be a fair fight.

Sorry, No Berkman Bits or Bytes

A bunch of folks have asked me if I'll be at the Harvard Law School Berkman Center for the Votes, Bits and Bytes program December 10-12. Sorry, I won't. I will try to make the Thursday night program at The Kennedy School at 6:00pm if I can.

I'm booked for Tom Peter's Reimagine Summit in Vermont at the Equinox on December 10-12, so I'll be heading north.

If you plan to be in Boston early for the Berkman event, drop me email and maybe we can hook up.

The Art of Alpha Female Blogging

Okay, I wrote this little thing about blogging and doing it doggy style (not necessarily at the same time) here on Seth Godin's cool site Change This.

And Stowe Boyd at Corante had some nice words for me about it too.

And then there's the question of the muffin. I'll get back to you on the muffin. I had another picture in mind.

Monday, November 29, 2004

Happy Birthday Dad!

Today is my dad's birthday and he would have been 86 ... wow ... if he were still here. But he IS here and watching over all the goings on, I assure you.

He was a genuinely funny, silly, witty, nutty person and I loved that about him. He was brilliant with words and just as wild with ideas. And what a helluva story teller!

I Love François

I am crazy for François Truffaut and got the movies La Nuit Americaine (Day For Night) and also Baisers Volees (Stolen Kisses) on DVD the other day at the bookstore and they are so terrific.

Making People Laugh Is Not Taken Seriously

Or Being Funny Isn't Serious. Or Wipe That Smile Off Your Face. Or ... well you get the idea.

What I MEAN to say is lately, I've been hearing a number of wise people mention this.

First a fellow blogger friend up from Washington DC mentioned it to me standing in Urban Outfitters next to a pile of pants and a Ms. Pac-Man game, the store in Harvard Square, and I was looking rather preoccupied, but I heard him loud and clear and it was a very wise thing he said.

And then today, I watched Moonstruck and the director, I think it was Norman Jewison, or perhaps the writer John Patrick Shanley, said it -- that they lost an oscar to The Last Emperor and how often in Hollywood, it seems as if comedy is not "serious enough" to gain certain honors, when anyone who writes comedy knows how truly difficult it is.

It's serious work being funny. And much more difficult than being serious. You can be serious within a wide range and pull it off. If you're trying to be funny, it's a very narrow walk you walk and either you hit it right in the sweet spot and you make people laugh or it falls flat. So flat.

Weirdly, even if you hit it just right and you have people rolling in the aisles, your work will not be as "esteemed" as movies, plays or books about people going about their "serious lives."

But I believe you have really improved a person's day, hell their life even, if you've made them laugh. Try it. It's not easy.

We're Doing Our Christmas Shopping At Robert Hall's This Year!

If you remember this radio jingle, well, you're cool.

BTW, I think I'm doing most of my holiday shopping here, so I can avoid all the totally crazy people.

Sunday, November 28, 2004

My New Jewish Husband

So I went to Barnes & Noble in Burlington tonight single and came home married to a nice Jewish man. Well ... not really.

See I got my kid a CD for Christmas and then I saw these two ladies at this "FREE GIFT WRAPPING" table in the corner and I thought it would be a very good idea to get the thing wrapped since I hate wrapping stuff. My son wasn't with me so I had a prayer of him actually getting a surprise if I brought it home covered up. I also liked the free part of the gift wrapping, but I wasn't quite noticing a key fact.

All the Christmas wrapping paper was BLUE.

So then, they took my kid's CD and started picking the price stickers off -- this is a real service, I stink at picking off stickers -- and then they are wrapping it in this blue paper and I'm just this Christian girl that doesn't pick up on things so fast sometimes.

So they asked me about my kid and if he liked celebrating BOTH holidays and I still wasn't getting it ... but then ... oh yeah, blue paper ... oh yeah ... right ... I LIE, "Yeah, he loves celebrating Hanukah and Christmas."

And they're looking at me in bright pink with blonde hair, and I really do NOT look too Jewish, so they ask me, "So is your husband ... "

And now I lied once, and since I don't have a husband anyway, he might as well be Jewish, right? So now I LIE AGAIN, "Yes, right, he's Jewish. But you know how it is, he makes me do all the gift shopping for his family and mine ..."

What the hell am I saying? This on a Sunday spent feeding Christians Nilla Vanilla Wafers at church this morning as the coffee hour hostess. Anything for free gift wrapping. And I'm not wanting to start a religious or ethnic war or something. Maybe they won't give me the blue paper if they find out I'm into Jesus. Some days you just need a handy Jewish husband.

So now they are going on about how their husbands expect them to most of the shopping too. One lady points out the "DONATIONS FOR HADASSAH" lucite box on the corner of the gift wrapping table.

So it isn't even free, this free gift-wrapping?! Great. I have a new Jewish husband who makes me do all the gift buying and NO free gift wrapping and my chinese-american kid is going to get a CD with blue Hanukah paper on it, so just to kind of mix them up completely I say ...

"My kid is so into the holidays, he's been trying to talk us into celebrating Kwanzaa." Well this throws the two Hadassah ladies off, as I put a mingy $2 in their donation box. "But I put my foot down -- no Kwanzaa," I explain. They seem to think this is reasonable. I've found something we can agree on.

They hand me the wrapped CD and then I tell them I gotta go because my husband wants to go home right away. (He wants to watch those two sexy French movies I bought on DVD. He's no fool.)

I Know We're Cool

Stefani sings about some funny things like being cool with your old lover married to someone new and you too.

It's hard to remember how it felt before
Now I found the love of my life
Passes things, get more comfortable
Everything is going right

And after all the obstacles
It's good to see you now with someone else
And it's such a miracle that you and me are still good friends
After all that we've been through
I know we're cool
I know we're cool

We used to think it was impossible
Now you call me by my new last name
Memories seem like so long ago
Time always kills the pain

Remember Harbor Boulevard
The dreaming days where the mess was made
Look how all the kids have grown, oh
We have changed but we're still the same
After all that we've been through
I know we're cool
I know we're cool

Yeah, I know we're cool

And I'll be happy for you
If you can be happy for me
Circles and triangles
And now we're hanging out with your new girlfriend
So far from where we've been
I know we're cool
I know we're cool

C-cool, I know we're cool
I know we're cool

Fiddler And Fiddling Around: If I Was a Rich Girl

Holy Heck! The second cut on this Gwen Stefani CD Love.Angel.Music.Baby. is a rap thing based on Fiddler's "If I Was A Rich Man" -- featuring Eve -- very cool.

Rainy Sunday Lunch

What's with this changing weather and my need to hibernate under the covers all afternoon? I made a great lunch of lamb chops, sizzly and salty, on a bed of shredded red cabbage, slightly sweet and sour, with small green peas. Perfect meal on a rainy Sunday, but this led to a long nap and most of the day gone in a flash.

Saturday, November 27, 2004

Hockey Mama

There was an open skating session at the local ice skating rink this afternoon at 3:00. I was thinking of going, then thinking of bagging it and just taking a nap, but then I went.

It was terrific. There were some ex-hockey playing guys there skating really fast, leaning way into it. Great to watch. And I was right in there with them, skating really like hell on wheels. I played ice hockey in high school on a girl's team -- I wasn't very good -- but today skating I was thinking that I still skate fast and dangerously like a guy.

I had so much fun this afternoon, but I'm so tired out and sore now. I had dinner out with a friend and we were both too tired to take in a movie as we'd planned.

Kinsey

Really want to see this, but is it true, it's not showing in Boston?

Sleigh Full of Songs

Loving this CD you can get at Starbucks. A great thing to give friends. Louis Armstrong's Cool Yule is the best and Nina Simone's Feeling Good is particularly terrific.

Friday, November 26, 2004

Match.com Rocks Her World

Well, I have a pretty blonde friend who signed up for Match.com and she seems to have found a really terrific man thanks to their database, or should I say, date-a-base. I'm having lunch with her tomorrow and want to hear all the dirt.

I have to tell you I know a lot of folks who have joined Match.com and have been pretty happy with the results. I think it's kinda cool. Still, I would never do it myself. I just don't have the guts. Also, I kindof run into nice guys on my own pretty much.

Reading Gladwell's book Blink has given me a new perspective too. One thing that comes out loud and clear is that when we are asked to describe what we like about a product, a service or even a person, we often don't know what the hell we're talking about. We might say we love the guy who wants to take long walks on the beach, but then fall for the guy that never wants to leave the house. Guys might say they want a ski boarding girl go-getter but fall for the girl who's winter sports expertise ends with making angels in the snow.

On the other hand, there are new fangled dating solutions that seem to work in person. Gladwell writes persuasively about "speed dating" in one chapter, and finds that this can be very effective.

Speed dating is where a roomful of men and women are paired off, each combination chatting for six minutes, checking off on a private tally sheet if they like the person or not and want to make email contact later. A bell rings when the six minutes is up and then the man moves on to the next woman.

Gladwell discusses how our unconscious can very quickly -- like in a few seconds -- determine fairly reliably if we will like someone. Our unconscious mind is so much more effective than our conscious mind when it comes to making split-second decisions.

Shhhhh! Renee Blodgett's Birthday Tomorrow!

Don't tell ANYBODY, but it's Renee's birthday tomorrow! Shhhhhhhhhhhh!


Gwen Stefani
Posted by Hello

Love. Angel. Music. Baby.

Gwen Stefani's new CD is out now. Check it out.

Friday After

Okay, I know this is supposed to be big deal and big shopping day, but really, do I care?

Okay, it's true, I rank high in most of the "female" stereotype categories, love to take baths, love pink things, love books that make me cry, love sexy lingerie, love high heels, but I totally HATE shopping believe it or not.

Just Blah-blahing about Blogging

The post after this one was just a test thing I did last night to show a friend at the Thanksgiving dinner how EASY it is to blog and how you can blog about anything. He had been telling me about why there were all these kids hanging out on the Wed before Thanksgiving in the town center and when we sat down to blog, I said, why not blog about that. Watch.

Thursday, November 25, 2004

Hanging Out In The Center

So Tim clued me in to what was going on Wednesday at noon in the center of our town. There were massive numbers of teenagers hanging out because school was a half day. Apparently according to him, the middle school teachers actually tell the kids in his class, DON'T go to the center and hang out and "loiter" -- so as he astutely points out -- that only encourages more kids to go hang out in town.

I noticed it because it's hard to even walk down the street with so many teens hanging. Weird thing is -- I kind of like them -- they are cool, like cool music, dress in a cool way -- I think the teachers don't like them because the teachers are boring and kindof a drag.

So anyway, the real inside scoop is that if you live within walking distance of town -- you don't go "hang there" like it's a field trip or something -- if you live nearby you can go there any time you want -- so the hanger-outters are kids who don't live near town. Very interesting.

One Down One To Go

Had a lunchtime visit with my sister and now a dinnertime Thanksgiving is coming up. Very caloric day. Glad I'm so crazy for cranberries. I'll eat more today than I eat in a year I think.

The weather has changed dramatically -- the 65 degree sunny day yielding to an end of day temperature drop of 30 degrees or so. And what a wind has blown up. I've been dragging my fur hat and gloves with fur trim around with me all day and I'll definately get a chance to use them. Brrrrr ... winter is here.

Thanksgiving With Martha Behind Bars

Admit it, it's nice to know Martha Stewart can NOT come over and see what a mess you're making of the Thanksgiving feast this year, right? She always made me a little paranoid.

I do hope she's doing well wherever she is today -- nothing personal -- but I always felt like she might drop in right around the time I'd pulled the turkey out of the oven and dropped it on the linoleum -- the second time.

Evil Balloons

Those balloons in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade look so harmless ... but beware!
After 1997, new regulations made it so the helium balloons can't exceed 70 feet in height, 78 feet in length and 40 feet in width, says Kazan. Most weren't that big anyway.

Strong winds that year hurtled the Cat in the Hat balloon into a lamppost. Debris from the lamppost fell into the crowd, hitting a Manhattan woman, who suffered a skull fracture, then went into a coma for nearly a month. Yikes.


Have a great Turkey Day.
Posted by Hello

Gotta Get Going

Ut oh. I gotta get going as I am kindly invited to two Thanksgivings today. And I can smell my neighbor's turkey cooking (burning?) already this morning. What time did she get up?! 3:00am!?

Thanksgiving At Grandma's

For many years when I was married and lived in California, we would have Thanksgiving at grandma's house in Stockton. Since she was Chinese, we'd have Chinese Food for Thanksgiving and it was terrific!

Can We Call This Cranberry Day?

My favorite thing about Thanksgiving is anything cranberry-ish.

I love cranberries. I love cranberry-orange relish. I love cranberry muffins. I love the cranberry rolls from Iggy's Bakery. I love Body Shop Cranberry Bath Gel. I love the band the Cranberries.

Having Fun

I'm not sure you're all having fun today on Thanksgiving. Sometimes, if you're mixing generations, you'll notice if you're young -- you're not having fun at all.

Well, I can say one thing for sure. I always have fun when I do completely stupid searches in Google Images.

And today, I couldn't resist searching for "having fun".

My questions are: 1. Is Natasha really having fun? 2. What about those folks at the Brazilian Embassy doing the limbo -- are they having fun? 3. And how much fun was Brian having shaving off his fro?

French Manicures

So a lot of women you'll see today will have a French manicure like this. It's a brilliant thing, because even if there's lots of dirt under your nails, the white stripe keeps them looking clean.

It's very odd to me, that this has become a style which one associates with clean, classy, nice girls. The odd thing about French manicures is that this is the type of nail polish job you see most often now in porno pix. I don't get it. I hate French manicures for this reason. In the 1950's the bad girl painted her nails bright red. Now dirty girls paint their nails white. Go figure.

Photo Credit: www.canoe.ca
Posted by Hello

Thanks

Here's thank you in 465 languages, just in case you plan to say thanks to a LOT of folks today. Happy Thanksgiving.

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Bridget Jones

Saw the new Bridget Jones movie today. I loved it. I forgot how good all three of them can be -- Renee Zellwegger, Colin Firth, Hugh Grant.

It's NOTICEABLE how plump Bridget is -- makes you realize we are always seeing stick figure women in movies. And there's something winning about her goofy antics and curvy figure. She drives men mad worldwide and there's something appropriate about her having so much girly meat on her. Zellwegger is really brave to go heavyweight for these movies. It pays off in her characterization.

Hello = IM + Pix

You might be using HELLO software to post pictures to your Blogger weblog, which is a great way to use it. But you should fire it up and use it to do IM with friends too, because it lets you send pictures very easily and then chat about those pix in IM format with someone.

I figured out (by accident) that if you type the word "love" or "heart" this pretty pink heart falls down across your screen, like confetti -- it's so cool.

Also if you type the smiley face emoticon ... you guessed it ... a yellow smiley face guy falls down across the screen. If you write any of these queue words twice or three or more times, that many hearts or smileys start raining down. Very fun.

Rock Stars of Business

Well, it sounds a little wild, but it's true. They ARE the rock stars of business.

And a special shout-out to Tom Peters who IS the Mick Jagger of business whether he says so or not. That's high praise as I understand Mick Jagger really did attend The London School of Economics.

I'll be at the way cool Reimagine Summit at his place in Vermont December 11-12 and can't wait for that.

Thankful

I'm so thankful for all the people I work with. I could have an endless list here and I'll revisit it during the next few days. All the bloggers, all the writers, all the editors, all the readers of my blog, all the others ... it will take days.

Especially thankful for Anita Sharpe and Kevin Salwen at Worthwhile, who had a vision for a new magazine, let me share it, let me watch them build it from scratch and let all the people who work on the magazine believe there could be a BETTER way to work and were brave enough to show us all how.

Thankful

I'm very thankful for my ex and all his kindness and love for me and my son. That may sound ironic, but it's not, and the less we're married the better we get along. He's a good man. And as if my kid didn't have enough aunts and uncles on my side of the family, he has a whole slew more thanks to his dad's big family. I'm so thankful he's got a wonderful grandmother, Lai, who loves him like crazy, a terrific Auntie Mui who's a gifted teacher, a kind and considerate Auntie Mae who is amazingly creative and makes beauty whereever she goes -- especially with cool clothes, coats and backpacks she buys my kid -- one excellent Uncle Roy who is amazing when it comes to building, mechanical smarts, just plain get-it-done ability -- my son never stops raving about his uncle -- and also the awesome Aunt Myra who is apparently too cool to describe according to her nephew and hosts wonderful family events and is just swell.

Thankful

I'm very thankful for my mom and dad, both gone now, who taught me so many things, gave me a great attitude towards the world, made me appreciate everything I have.

I'm thankful especially for my mom and for the fact that she was a terrific mom and very thankful that I had a baby before she passed away so I could give her a wonderful grandson to enjoy. I'm blessed in that way. Today is my mom's birthday too.

Thankfully

Been feeling thankful. Will start posting my thanks list today.

How To Spell Extortion: Start with F C C

You might think the word "extortion" starts with "e" but you'd be wrong.
Viacom will pay a record $3.5 million to settle dozens of federal investigations into alleged indecency on TV and the radio, and introduce delays in more live programming to help catch troublesome material before it gets on the air.

What a great way to make money and FAST too! Just like the mafia.
Viacom has five days to pay the $3.5 million fine, according to the agreement. Diamond said it was the commission's largest settlement.

Tuesday, November 23, 2004


Under water explorer ...
Posted by Hello

Nuestros Nueve Bungalows Privados

Muy bueno.

Moorea Beach Club

Great hotel, Mandalay Bay and nice that they have "european bathing permitted" there.

Book Report City

Not only am I writing a book report of sorts, but my son the 4th Grader has to do two book reports by tomorrow and we've been having a heck of a time getting them out.

The one about his book, Ultimate Aircraft, was really fun because we got to scan in pictures of his three favorite aircraft -- the B-17 Bomber, the Lockheed SR 71 Blackbird stealth plane and the Bell AH-1S Cobra attack helicopter. How can you lose with great pix like that?

I don't think I'll ever get over what it's like to do a book report or science project in elementary school these days, compared to the dark ages (before internet) when I had only the very out-of-date Encyclopedia Brittanica (offline version -- books) to use for research.

Crazy Busy

What a day! There is so much to do between now and Thanksgiving. I'm doing a book review of Malcolm Gladwell's new book BLINK for the next issue of Worthwhile and got it in an Adobe PDF format (it's still in manuscript, to be published January 2005) to read just ... yesterday. I don't know what yesterday even is, as I stayed up way too late reading it -- it's great -- and then got up way to early to keep reading it.

Because I printed it on my trusty HP printer, it's loose pages, and it's all over my bed and things start getting crazy when it gets out of order.

So, this morning after reading from 3:30am until about 7:30am (with the bus about to arrive at 8:00am, my son wanting breakfast, the manuscript all over the bedroom), I dove into the bathtub fast, grabbed clothes to be dressed enough to go to the busstop. This included a bikini bottom under my jeans as I was not at all clear where actual standard panties happened to be hiding (in some basket of clean laundry somewhere) and a pink fur hat which covered my dripping wet hair.

Outside, there was a frosting of frost on everything -- it looked like those fancy sugar-dipped fruits -- and soon the same quaint look was coating my tendrils of blonde icy locks. I wore clogs and no socks ... whoops ... in the frosty morning bus line-up, hoping neighbors would not notice. I felt like some Club Med refugee or something, what with wet hair and bikini bottoms on below all the other layers and no socks.

And that was just the beginning of the day ... I can hardly describe the rest of the whirlwind day ... now to write a book review.

A Goodnight's Sleep

So Andrew Sullivan got a good night's sleep and STILL managed to blog a little. If you wonder what the test for sleep apnea is like, check out his blog.

Thanksgiving Run Through

Last Friday, I stuffed a turkey, roasted it, took it over to a friend's house, we made the cranberry sauce from scratch (very easy), broccoli, mashed potatoes, gravy, fresh rolls, the whole nine yards. It was SO good and kindof fun to do an early version of Thanksgiving, just to remember all the details, check to see if I had all the kitchen tools I need, inventory the spices, etc. All systems go for Thursday. Although I'm thinking seriously about doing a goose or duck instead, just for fun.

A Great Big Kiss

Good piece by Steven Levy about the Jobs/Bono alliance you might have missed:
"We want to stop running from the future, but walk up to it and give it a great big kiss. Give people what they want when they want it."

Monday, November 22, 2004

Here At The Homework Factory

My kid has so much homework between now and noon Wednesday for the Thanksgiving Holiday Break. The shortest school week in history with the weighiest pile of homwork. Ugh.

How To Stay On Your Diet Over The Holidays

Easy, just buy one of these and keep a lot of mirrors around the house and especially in the bedroom.

Seattle End O January

I'll be in Seattle at the end of January and will finally get to hang out with a bunch of my pals there.

Lunch At Long Last

Finally having lunch today with my buddy Betsy Devine and potentially new buddy Tony Kahn. What a bio, holy heck, and his Morning Stories is a great show.

With all their world-trotting schedules, it's been tough to get us all in one place at the same time. That place will be WGBH today, and I can't wait!

Bye-Bye Comments

A funny thing happened this weekend. A blogger mentioned one of my posts, copied it and then set up a discussion about it. I figured that author would appreciate me commenting on my post on his site. I wrote a comment on the post Sunday morning and it was instantly erased by the author. I've reproduced the comment below. It was in no way offensive and I'm not at all sure why it was erased.

This blogger has a history of erasing comments, so I should not have been surprised. I find it fascinating as I continue to study "How To Build A Blog" that certain bloggers actually feel the need to control the conversation on their site to such an extent. (I especially like this new term "de-publishing" and the conversation that it brought to the blogosphere.)

I had been writing lately about which Alpha Bloggers have comments and which ones choose NOT to deal with comments. There are good arguments on all sides, and for a long time I did not have comments here and now I do.

After the Dean blog and other political blogs bravely hosted a veritable flood of comments, I rethought how I felt about comments. They took a leadership role in saying community matters. The community argument won me over -- that despite the risk of people writing stupid, nasty, rude things -- I do believe that hosting the conversations of your readers and thereby creating a community does matter very much. You have to be open to people saying ... whatever. I think you must resist controlling other's opinions. The idea that you prune and weed your garden of comments to make only nice things bloom on your site is interesting to me.

The comment I wrote went something like this (I can't recall it verbatim):

Dave et al: Thanks for all your captions. This pic was originally on Chris Locke, aka Rageboy's blog. I couldn't come up with much of a caption. I posted it because it reminded me of something I'd been reading -- Frans de Waal's great book called Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes. It ends up that male chimpanzees have predictable stages of anger that lead to a blow up, whereas female chimpanzees often get very angry very quickly without much warning, much to the dismay of their male chimpanzee mates. Also Professor de Waal suggests that male chimps are quick to allow even their enemies a way back to reconciliation, where female chimps more likely hold a grudge and are reluctant to offer the olive branch of truce. Needless to say, I'm talking about CHIMPS here and won't jump to the conclusion that HUMAN males and females also behave in this way.

Sunday, November 21, 2004

Great Weekend

Now I could really use another weekend. This one was non-stop.

Thought You Had A Rough Week?

Check out Brad Feld's description of his week.

Friday, November 19, 2004


He's in ... TROUBLE!
Posted by Hello

Taking The High Road Through The Mud

It was fascinating to watch the Clinton Library Dedication ceremony yesterday with presidential rivals burying the hatchet, taking the high road, praising one another in a pouring rain.

It's the closest thing we've seen to real leaders really taking the high road, putting bipartisan badmouthing behind them for once, and giving us a vision of how we might transcend this muddy mess known as the 2004 election. Clinton made a big effort to explicitly and repeatedly praise both Bush and Bush Senior. Bush also rose to the occasion. It was so out of the ordinary -- the new normal of dirty politics -- it bordered on the surreal.

How To Build A Blog

As you read blogs, you'll notice there are different ways of building a blog and they vary greatly. Many of the popular ones are constructed of links to other people's writing, other people's ideas, with less new writing by the person who authors the blog. Nothing wrong with this, but it's inherently a different model from blogs which are "written" with lots of original material by a given author. The difference creates a spectrum of blog styles with personal commentary blogs at one end (they sound more like op-eds) and at the other end, a collection of links, which you could call the "Editor's Choice" style at the other.

For instance, if we look at some of the best known blogs, a blog like www.andrewsullivan.com is more "written" by Andrew Sullivan and has a great deal of his original writing -- new, fresh and daily -- than a blog like Scripting where Dave Winer might simply link to an interesting post and not comment on the link at all. He can also write long personal essays mixed in with the links. As a matter of housekeeping, he tends to put his long essays in a database he'll often link to and this keeps his opinion stuff on one convenient shelf.

Scoble falls into a more commentary category and in fact has a link page, just for the purpose of pointing out links which he doesn't feel the need to comment on, while his main blogpage will tend to have more beefy writing by him on it. Jarvis' Buzzmachine may fall towards the commentary category. A blog like Boing Boing with many authors tends to be more about links, less about commentary. Instapundit ... not sure, but if I remember right, his is a pretty even mix of links with quotes, then his punditry and commentary to match.

I'm going to analyse these sites on a particular day and give you the numbers on how many posts, how many are pure links, how many are links plus commentary, how many are just pure commentary. Be back soon with that.

Boing Boing on Brain Food

Interesting piece on how we process music in the brain over at Boing Boing.
When they scanned the brains of musicians who had chills of euphoria when listening to music, they found that music activated some of the same reward systems that are stimulated by food, sex and addictive drugs.-- Norman Weinberger, Scientific American

Wired November 2004

Got a chance to really read Wired cover to cover yesterday on the flight home from San Francisco. Seemed the appropriate reading material for such a trip to the Bay Area. Great stuff about Creative Commons, don't miss it and also a terrific CD of music to "rip, sample, mash, share" as they put it.

Okay, here's the thing -- as the New York Times discussed on Wednesday when they profiled all the Silicon Valley leaders being interviewed by Charlie Rose to talk about the upturn in business there, concurrently with Carly Fiorina announcing great earnings at HP, things feel MUCH MORE BULLISH there.

I was actually in meetings at HP HQ a few doors down from the room they seemed to be setting up for the Fiorina announcement and press conference. Much hustle, much bustle. The feeling feels good. Best feeling I've felt there in a long time and I've been visiting the area (probably two or more times a year) since 2000 when I lived in California.

I was there for a conference when I worked at Harvard Business School Publishing in 2002 that took place in Cupertino and the business climate at that point was NOT bullish, I can tell you that.

The Wired CD I'm listening to is good. The David Byrne cut My Fair Lady and Gilberto Gil's Oslodum are -- NO SURPRISE -- really cool. Liking a bunch of the other songs too.

Unpack Suitt Case

Good to be home, got the washer sudsing and the suitcase unpacked. I hate leaving my suitcase full of stuff for a day or two or three ... which is all too easy to do. It makes me feel very unsettled. And it used to be a thing my ex and I disagreed about. He could leave a suitcase sitting around for way too long. That drives me crazy.

Thursday, November 18, 2004


Sweet Dreams.
Posted by Hello

Orange SUV With The Blogger Plates

Okay, yesterday in Palo Alto, parked right in the parking lot of my hotel, I saw this big orange Nissan Murano with the "BLOGGER" license plates -- come on, fess up, who are you? I left my card in their wiper -- surely they noticed it?

Take A Bow Ladies

It was nice last night at The Tech in San Jose, as I spoke on the ONLINE DIVAS panel to mention (what I consider obvious) that two of the most important innovators in the blogosphere were women. Since the crowd was full of people who didn't know blogs and blogging all that well, I was happy to mention Mena Trott and Meg Hourihan and their roles in this industry. I think the fact that women were involved in building the tools of blogging is a big reason the tools are so great.

Just Say No

Ut oh. I'm really hungry and could just eat and eat like a pig tonight. It's 11:00pm ... way too late to eat ... but it's only 8:00pm in California, which is why my stomach's saying GO FOR IT!

TV In Mid-Air

I really do appreciate having DirecTV on JetBlue so during the flight today, for instance, I didn't miss the Clinton Library rainy day umbrella celebration. They have figured out something pretty brilliant to give everyone a little TV all their own on board, especially cross-country flights. Sometimes, you do want to check out the news while it's happening and arrive on the other side of the country knowing what's been going on that day.

Jetlag Thursday

Okay, now that I'm back from Palo Alto and it's 10:30 here and I'm wiped out and NORMAL people would not even bother trying to go to bed before midnight EST since that's only 9PM PST, well, weirdly, since I always go to bed way too early, it appears that I'm kindof finally in sync with regular east coast people.

That should last for only a day or two I figure. BTW, it's so good to be home, even though I had an awesome time in California, it's nice to settle back in -- and especially into MY bed.

Mrs. See's Candy

It's hard to resist bringing back some Nuts and Chews from San Francisco when I visit. Got a bunch for my kid today and he flipped for them.

Diva-licious

Long day of travel but I'm back in Boston now. And it's not even that cold -- makes it much easier to get back into the swing of things here. Still, it's getting near 10PM and I feel very 7PM. This does not bode well for an early meeting tomorrow.

But anyway ...

Last night's event at The Tech was terrifically fun and what with being an Online Diva and all ... how could it have been anything but a blast?!

I have to say, as much as I was mouthing off and talking about how blogs are giving us all a new way to share our thoughts, opinions, ideas, I still get back to that Cluetrainian notion that these tools are all about VOICE.

I met so many interesting people last night and our panel with Cammie Dunaway from Yahoo, Marissa Mayer from Google, Jere King from Cisco and me -- well, I could have listened to each of them for an hour, so it was too short to my mind. Moira Gunn, thanks too or your moderator-ing, just wish we'd had more time and more time for questions.

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Eucalyptus Morning

There are certainly heavenly smells that remind me how much I love and miss California. Eucalyptus is one of them. I went out walking this morning, along El Camino and side streets, thinking of my kid and how we loved spotting the mission bells along side of the road half hidden in the eucalyptus trees, and a gardener was trimming a hedge and pruning eucalyptus trees.

A rush of the green dry perfume of the eucalyptus overwhelmed me. Gorgeous place this strange California.

It also reminds me of my first trips here, when I was just newly married, in love, walking the Berkeley campus with my first husband (his alma mater). He pointed out the large eucalyptus trees with their weird bark and unusual medicinal, healing smell. The trees are still here. Bittersweet to know we no longer walk hand-in-hand.

Tuesday, November 16, 2004

Online Divas Event

People are still asking me about the event tomorrow night at THE TECH in San Jose. I'm blogging via the hotel TV which is not a forgiving interface, let me politely put it that way, so I can't give you a link. But check out www.thetech.com I believe it is.

Wednesday, November 17, 2004 @ 6:45pm

ONLINE DIVAS

The Tech Museum In San Jose

Sponsored by SAP, Comerica, Yahoo!

I can't wait to meet the other speakers from Google, Cisco, Yahoo! And the amazing Moira Gunn will be our lion tamer-ess, I mean moderator.

At The Party Last Night: Ms. Blodgett

Of course, Renee Blodgett was at the party last night. Your party just isn't chic and fun and smart unless she is there. She is great and I hate her leaving Boston (we miss her) and moving to SF. Still, she can be that much more effective for her many clients being based here.

And the girl never quits. She was giving me a hard time about why I don't have a link to NewsGator on my site and made me see why it was a very good idea to add one.

Don't Make Me Name Names

So the NCWIT meetings had a terrific crew of people to begin with, but now I've met a whole bunch of new folks who are terrific. Fun to chat with the charming Lindsey Duran from Google and spitfire Kellee Noonan from HP, not to mention the terrific Barbara Waugh also from HP, and how about the quietly impressive and generous Sean Kelly from Microsoft and I finally got to say hi to some of the Board Members like the plucky Brad Feld from Mobius Ventures and wry Michael Borrus from Petkevich & Ptnrs.

Poor Brad, I couldn't stop raving about Frans de Waal's book Chimpanzee Politics: Power and Sex Among Apes. Needless to say, being a venture capitallist he totally "got" what Professor de Waal had to say. His most wonderful brother was there too and didn't miss a beat. We had a serious consideration of how male apes work up to anger and confrontation over a predictable set of stages and tend to calm down and welcome other losing apes back into the game, as compared to female apes who can get insanely furious all of a sudden and afterwards might hold a grudge and have a burn all bridges attitude towards others. Whoa.

During the day of presentations, I also enjoyed meeting and listening to Nancy Ramsey who is dynamic, articulate and a serious go-getter and go-get-doner as well. Oh heck, I forgot to mention, the utlra cool Heidi Roizen was at the cocktail reception too -- enjoyed meeting here but never got enough talk time. And Michael, who was that lovely brainy woman with the good ideas about everything standing next to you -- the one I thought was your wife -- she was terrific.

NCWIT Just Too Cool

Well, these meetings here in Palo Alto have been so much fun. Do you mind if I tell you every detail?

So the NCWIT is the National Center for Women and Information Technology, but you knew that already right?

So you thought maybe it's only full of women and there were not a load of terrrifc, smart, sexy alpha male members of NCWIT? You'd be way wrong. But I must say the women folk are seriously cool too.

So yesterday morning they pick us up in a super cool leather benches on each side van with champagne glasses -- no champagne actually -- and this van his a BIG video screen and they show us a terrific video called "I'm An Engineer" about brilliant girl geeks which Cisco produced. If you thought guy geeks were cool (and I do) you will love these girl geeks. I'll try to get it posted here so you guys can see it..

And that was just the beginning of the day. The van was taking us from our hotel to HP headquarters where we are having meetings, most graciously hosted by HP and the Anita Borg Foundation. In the lobby, like the Hard Rock Cafe, there were glam photos -- headshots of the stars -- the real folks -- Hewlett, Packard and Fiorina -- talk about hot. . I was privately so turned on!

I was in a holy place -- believe you me -- because I bought a new HP printer fax scanner copier about a month ago, that also lets me slip my digital camera disk in to make pix and I'm wild for it. And nobody is twisting my arm or
paying me to say nice things. I'm just plain wild for HP.

I'm Gonna Add Some Bottom

Listening to that old hit -- Dance to the Music -- is it Sly and the Family Stone? I don't remember. But check out the lyrics: "I'm gonna add some bottom" and then the bass guy plays a great funky base line. Love it.

And his colleague says, "You might wanna hear my organ ... I said Ride Sally Ride" now wait a minute ... and everyone's always saying rap music is a little too lascivious.

Monday, November 15, 2004

In Palo Alto For NCWIT @ Hewlett Packard

Great to be in California -- in Palo Alto actually where we kick off meetings for the National Center For Women and Information Technology at HP. Party here tonight also and rumor has it I FINALLY get to meet some new blogger friends like Brad Feld, who I still have not met in
person.

Also getting very excited about the Online Divas bash on Wednesday evening at The Tech Museum in San Jose, where I'm speaking. Google it.

Saturday, November 13, 2004

Worthwhile Way Cool On Newsstands

Hey, how totally cool. Worthwhile is now a real readable, buyable, browseable, for real magazine. Check us out at newsstands at Borders, Barnes & Noble and other cool places around your town.


Snow Day Two
Posted by Hello

Friday, November 12, 2004


First Snow -- My Backyard
Posted by Hello

French Onion Soup

Good idea for a snowy Boston day. Must dash out for some good bread to go with it.

"Real Fountain Of Youth"

Robert Giardina, the CEO of Town Sports International (which includes New York Sports Clubs, Boston Sports Clubs, etc.) writes in this issue of STRONG:
"Simply put, the payoff of regular exercise is huge -- incalculable, actually. And your investment of time and energy is as little as three times a week for 20 to 60 minutes each workout."

I think he is so right. To be healthy and be fit makes everything else in your life -- physical, mental, sexual -- really work. He mentioned this piece from USAToday as well called Exercise: The Real Fountain Of Youth.

Skating On Thin Ice

Took the plunge and signed up for skating at the local rink. We have a terrific rink but it's kind of expensive, and I didn't want to sign up and find that we didn't even have the time to skate.

Yesterday was a vacation day from school and I spent a lot of time skating yesterday and it was just totally fun.

Good way to spend time with my son -- he's dumping figure skating lessons and going with hockey this year -- I wanted him to know how to really skate before he started wielding a stick.

So we can spend a lot of time together blading up the ice. It's the best. They play corny music, but still there's something lovely and relaxing and calming about gliding around and around and around and around.

Two girls were peeking at him from outside the rink at the far corner of the ice stadium. I asked him, "hey, do you know those girls?" He looked over. They saw him looking. They burst into giggles and ran off. I think my kid has some fans.

Snow

It's supposed to snow today in Boston ... and I'm really into it, amazingly. I think this will be a good ski season and I know a lot of skiers suddenly. Can't wait to do some skiing.

Party On!

I hear it's your birthday ...

Warm For No Good Reason

I had been walking in the woods, warm for no good reason on a mid-November day, even the sinking sun was trying hard to look summery but didn't. It was cold and I should have felt it. But I did not.

Pale yellow circle of late light, that sun, cut up in shards by the sharp noisy bundle of bare tree branches, windblown and rattling like sailboat masts sans sails, the sun was heading out. Friends had lit a small bonfire and we were roasting food around it, crouching down, huddling together, trying to stay warm.

I was warm. I was warming to you, thinking of you, wondering about you. Afterwards in the car heading home, it was past dusk now, just dark, they all had their headlights on. And I was looking at the evenness of the traffic, the tameness of their progress homeward and I realized most of these people actually wanted these simple, level-headed, mostly ordinary lives.

There was a love song on the radio, velvety and red and passionate against this black and white scene of cars, evening, traffic, people in grey overcoats. And again I thought, listening to the singer sing of love, they don't want too much passion in their lives, it makes it harder to live, harder to just go home and hide in your house. Passion comes running after you, stalking you down a street, forces entry into your locked vestibule, lobbying for your favor, half in and half out of your door, there could be kisses and all that pressing against one another can make a mess of a house some days, some nights.

They don't want that -- most people. They don't want what I feel in my heart most days, boiling like a crazy cauldron, that passion, that desire I feel for you that no overcoat can stop, that longing to find your skin under all those layers, to share mine, to mutually unbundle. They want the sameness of this even slow deliberate traffic. Too much passion in a winter wood, around a throbbing bonfire is just too much some days for some people.

Thursday, November 11, 2004

Please Believe In Yourself

I have a friend who's really a good writer and is just starting to blog and sends me things she's written asking if I think they are good enough to post.

First of all, she's just plain good and shouldn't hesitate to post things.

Secondly, it seems to me, a blog is a sketchpad, a place to try out things, and the last place you should feel you can only post "perfect" writing. Forget that. If a blog doesn't make you feel MORE free about writing than any other medium, then there's something wrong. It should make you feel free.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

New Kids On The Block

In my son's class this year, for some reason, there are a lot of new kids. There are kids from the other side of Boston who've moved from one suburb to this suburb. There are kids who are here for a year from France thanks to a parent's job transfer and speak almost NO English. There are kids from Korea and China who really speak ZERO English.

And there is another wave that these new kids are crashing on -- the "gang" feeling of my kid's friends who have now been together for Kindergarden, First Grade, Second Grade, Third Grade, now Fourth Grade, not to mention all the after-school atheletics which build friendships, Soccer, Little League, Hockey and then throw in the Boy Scouts, the summer camps, the community stuff, all creating a very solid, bonded, tight group of kids in this town.

And I'm seeing something I hate. I'm seeing them be really rather exclusive and rude to the newcomers. This hits me hard because I was "the new girl" in third grade and it was rough as hell.

After our divorce, we got good counseling about trying NOT to move into a new town, a new house, a new life since this would only make it that much harder on our son. My ex and I both followed this good advice and stayed in this town, me staying at the same address and him moving about 5 minutes away -- good for our kid, probably in some ways less good for us. It's an expensive town. It's a very MARRIED town. It's hard to be divorced here. It would be a lot more fun for my ex and me to move somewhere else, as well as a lot easier financially.

The irony of the whole thing is that staying put has been very helpful for my kid, but now he's one of the "oldtimers" clique at school who don't cotton to letting the new kids in! This drives me nuts on one level, and on another, I see this rootedness is important for him as he's gone through our separation and divorce over the past few years.

Then this morning, I was thinking about this notion vis-a-vis the blogosphere. There are blogger pioneers here who expect to be given their due for being here a long time. It makes it hard for new bloggers to get into the mix. You see it online, as little spats erupt, but you see it even more so at conferences. It's ironic for me too, that I'm a bit of an oldtimer now. I was the "new girl" about 2 years ago around here.

I often get asked to mention a new blogger's blog or put them in my blogroll. Sometimes I drop the ball, not because I want to exclude someone, but more because I just get so damned busy. Also, if you have a big bunch of friends, it is hard to add another NEW big bunch of friends to your life. It's terrible to say, but it's true.

Still, I give my son bloody hell about being a snob and excluding new kids at school from events, parties, all social gatherings. I hate that kind of thing and felt the sting of it when I was 10 years old.

Where am I going with all of this? I'm not sure. When it comes to these kinds of situations, I don't know how to hit the right balance honestly, but I think being aware of it is the place to start. And I always vote for going up to a new person and saying, "Hi, how're ya doing?" in a friendly way, no matter who you are and how long you've been here.

Ashcroft: No Champagne Corks Yet

Yes, John Ashcroft has resigned, which couldn't be better news. However, don't start popping the champagne corks yet. Bush has the ability to replace him with someone worse, although it's hard to imagine there could be someone worse.

Polar Express Today

We'll head out later today to see Polar Express. It opens today and tomorrow is NO SCHOOL! Veteran's Day holiday.

The weather sure is cooperating with the "polar" theme -- 17 degrees this morning.

Okay, You're Done

A sage writer once told me ... and I honestly don't remember who it was ... that you'll know you've written something good and you're done with it when you can read it and say, "No one else in the whole world could have written that, but me." I agree.

Dirt And Salt

I was rereading something I'd written recently and I'm editing. I've been reading it and rereading it and re-rereading it and now the words all seem to be a bit of a blur at this point.

In one section I refer to death and sex. For some reason, I read the sentence very quickly and thought it said "dirt and salt."

On second thought, perhaps this is as good a description of death and sex as any other.

Make Friends The Old-Fashioned Way. Buy Them.

JetBlue's got good deals going on.
Make friends the old fashioned way. Buy them.
For a limited time, JetBlue is offering a free* ticket on the same flight when you book one-way or round-trip flights between the following cities:
» Washington DC and Long Beach, Oakland or Sacramento
» Denver and New York City (JFK) or Boston
» New York City (JFK) and Salt Lake City or San Jose
» Long Beach (LGB) and Fort Lauderdale

Just think of the places you could go! Check this out.

Reading: Carlos Santana, Back On Top

A friend reminded me about how nice it is to dive into a book now that the season's changing and the election's over and it would be good to focus on something ELSE. Here's what I'm reading. Check it out.

17 Degrees

Brrrrrrrrrrrrr ... only good news is snow in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont. Get those skiis on folks.

Tuesday, November 09, 2004

The Way My Mom Cooked

My mom cooked very basic American food. Actually, these days you might call it "Comfort Food" since some of her knock-out meals were Meatloaf, Sloppy Joes, Fried Chicken, Pork Chops with Apples, Beef Roast, Beef Stroganoff, Barbecued Ribs. Most nights she baked rolls, did gravy, had a great salad ready. Mmmm ... I can remember some amazing stuff. Strawberry Shortcake from scratch in early June. Peach Cobbler late August. And Apple Crisp in the fall, like I made tonight.

She grew up in Oklahoma, then Detroit, finally settling in Connecticut. She just knew how to make a great dinner and have it miraculously appear every night on the table around 6:00pm. You could count on it.

When my older brother went off to college and had to manage without her cooking, it was a tough row to hoe for him. When he'd drop back in for a visit, there was one refrain after every meal, "Do you have any idea how much this would cost in a restaurant?!?" and he was right, not only was my mom a great cook, but cooking saves a great deal of money. I was talking about that over here.

Anyway, I am so glad I learned so many recipes from my mom. It's something that will be passed down through my family and way beyond. Every now and then, when I forget the certain way she did her barbecue sauce from scratch or the yeasty cinnamon rolls she called "Saturday Treats", I call one of my sisters and they remind me. By the end of the phone call, we're all drooling remembering some of her best meals. Thanks, Mom.

Dinner: Most Delicious

I love to cook, though I'm not a particularly fancy cook.

I like the way cooking lets you celebrate the seasons -- makes you think back to Novembers gone by -- ones in my mom's kitchen for instance.

Tonight I did Pork Chops, Broccoli with Cheddar Sauce, Rice (with salt, pepper, butter) and for dessert, homemade Apple Crisp from scratch with Vanilla Ice Cream. The hot and the cold of the apple crisp mixed with the ice cream was so good!

On a November evening heading for 18 degrees tonight, it was a perfect dinner.

Health Dept: Good News

Got the mammogram results -- looks like no lumps or concerns at all, after last week's scare. Thank goodness. Gives you a whole new appreciation for ... everything.

Daily Candy

I was interviewing for a job recently and the person I was meeting with had a weblog. The fun part was how much I could learn about her before I met her. The even more fun part was she mentioned some of her favorite websites and said she loved the email she got every day from Daily Candy. So I signed up for it to get a sense of what she liked for a week or so before I met her.

Meanwhile, nothing happened with the job, it wasn't quite the thing I wanted to do, but I'm still reading Daily Candy every day and I like it a lot. Check it out.

California Here I Come

It will be fun to be in Palo Alto next week. Now the temperatures have dipped around here (try 35 today...and possibly 18 tonight), it will be a treat to be in California.

The Barren Queen

Been reading about Queen Mary of England, daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, who was known as the "Barren Queen" and never was able to have children.

The whole thing is very interesting for me and I wonder if anyone who has had a child like me, easily and naturally, can ever know what it's like for another woman who is eager but unable to have a child. It's really so sad.

Cold November Day, Sunny Beach

It's gotten so much colder from the warm weekend -- it's really November. Maybe, I could go find a nice warm beach.

Yes, Yes, About Comments

There's something wacky going on with my comments, so I've turned them off for a bit. They will be back. Thanks for all the emails about it. I know they aren't working.

Monday, November 08, 2004

Bricklin: Gathering Around The Table

Dan Bricklin wrote about the evening at Harvard's Berkman Center the night after the election where David Weinberger was leading a discussion on The Net and Democracy.

It was a great group and here's a picture Dan took -- he takes great pictures -- of us all listening to David Isenberg, who's showing me his fingers -- sorry, just kidding -- enumerating some solutions to the problem I meant to say.

In the same post, Dan says something amazing about podcasting. He draws a parallel to pod casting and people listening to little audio interviews and Islamist's use of audio cassettes to spread their messages. Don't miss it.

Incredibles: Incredible Movie From Incredible Pixar

Really enjoyed The Incredibles this weekend, but there's so much more going on with it than the label "great kid's movie" might suggest ... or "family fun" or whatever the hell it is they use to market it.

It spends no small amount of time showing:

1. how a man's life and career can hit the skids in middle-age and he can feel all dressed up with no place to go;

2. how a woman's life is all about stretching (Elastic Girl as the Mom is superb) and sacrifice and compromise even for a superheroire;

3. how a marriage works and how hard it is to keep it working;

4. how hard it is to be true to yourself and your talents and your own values;

5. how working for a corporation makes you want to ram your boss through a few walls some days (as the progtagonist in The Incredibles does, incredibly);

6. how letting your children become self-actualized -- find and own and demonstrate their unique strength -- is tough for parents;

7. how a really fine bunch of writers and animators and graphic artists can use animation to go WAY beyond telling Bambi;

8. how fucking fantastic Pixar is;

9. how the dynamics of a family are always interesting and unexpected;

10. how good and evil still is the best story in town.

I HEART LA

Glad to see Andrew Sullivan took a weekend off, headed to the West Coast and stopped being a total anti-Los Angeles snob for a few days. I used to suffer from the same disease, growing up in Greenwich, Connecticut, being an East Coast snob for most of my life, but then ending up in LA from 1990 - 2000 and loving it.

He describes that great area called "walk Temple" in the LA Classified ads -- Fairfax near the Farmer's Market -- which I love too. Miss Dupar's for sure. And anything within walking distance of the La Brea Tar Pits can't be bad, He admits to having a wonderful visit to the City of the Angels and no car required:
It was made even better by staying right next to the CBS studios in Fairfax, across the street from Farmer's Market. You can walk everywhere for food, movies, coffee, books, or just people-watching. I usually feel at a loss in L.A. because I don't know how to drive a car. But not this time.

Personal Democracy Forum: Symposium of Post-Election Thought

Nice fresh meat. Yes, over at PDF: Personal Democracy Forum, where I write about politics, we're posting a number of excellent writers and their post-election thoughts.

Don't miss it. Here are a few tidbits:
I think the big lesson was really that technology mattered very little in this election. Many people used the Net; some even posted blogs, wrote or disseminated campaign messages, and otherwise used technology. But in the end, I don't think "technology" changed many people's minds about any of the issues. -- Esther Dyson

And this too:

Video is the most convincing mass media ever invented-- and it is starting to come to the Net. Stepping beyond the few broadcast companies, we can have a plurality of voices, which would be refreshing. This election we saw the first starts: the Jon Stewart on Crossfire video was downloaded 1.5 million times just from iFilm; Eminem's Mosh video was downloaded around 1 million times just from the Internet Archive ... -- Brewster Kahle


And one more I like a lot:
We clearly now have a much more connected electorate, and we will have much more connected governance. Campaigns on the Democratic side — especially Dean's and Kerry's — famously made use of the Net to raise money and drive grass roots support. What the Democrats missed, along with the mainstream media (which, by November, had annexed A-list political bloggers on both sides) was the equally — and far more effectively — connected grass roots work fed artfully by the Bush campaign on the Right. President Bush's "moral" messages, especially those regarding gay marriage, resonated with many of the country's (reportedly) 80 million fundamentalist Christians, who have long viewed the Net as an ideal environment for the evangelical work that energizes their faith. -- Doc Searls

Sunday, November 07, 2004

Lovely Weekend

Amazing weather -- so lovely and warm for November.

Friday, November 05, 2004

BloggerCon Fun

A few people asked me if I were going out to Stanford for BloggerCon, and one friend who left a message on my cell today figured I was already on a plane headed West, but no can do this year.

You guys have a blast without me and best of luck, Dave on your event. I know it will be terrific.

Mary Hodder On Blog Transparency

This should be an interesting discussion at BloggerCon. After the role the blogs have played in this election, it should be particularly interesting. Check this out:
I'm interested in making a list of the values we believe are necessary for blogging or are open questions to discuss in the Core Values of the Web session. I'll start it here:

1. transparency of relationships and motivations for writing and linking
2. transparency of identity, including pseudonymous writing
3. excellence of content—by which I mean writers honestly writing what they believe, even if it turns out to be untrue in the iterative process, versus publishing known untruths
4. editorial independence
5. linking for attribution of ideas

Online Divas: Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose, 17 November 2004

I'll be speaking on November 17th at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, as one of the Online Divas, thanks to the Anita Borg Institute. If you're in the Valley at that time, please do come to the event, it should be great.

My co-divas include Cammie Dunaway (Yahoo!), Moira Gunn (TechNation), Jere King (Cisco), Marissa Mayer (Google).

Here's the background:
November 17

Online Divas: Conversations with Innovative Women in Technology
6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
New Venture Hall

Sponsored by SAP, Comerica Bank and Yahoo!

This is the second in a three part speaker series held in collaboration with the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology, the Alliance of Technology and Women (Silicon Valley chapter), the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and The Tech Museum of Innovation. This informal series will explore how women in the field of technology impact the present and future of technological innovation.

Online Divas
Join a panel of Silicon Valley's cutting-edge technologists and thought leaders as they share their experiences, failures and successes for developing cultures in which innovation thrives. Breaking free from perceptions, the panel will discuss proven techniques for teaching innovation. They will focus on processes and steps to encourage creativity and innovation, including diversity, entrepreneurship, discovery, empowerment and sustainability.

Moderator:
Moira Gunn, Commentator for National Public Radio
Panelists:
--Cammie Dunaway, Chief Marketing Officer, Yahoo!
--Jere King, Corporate Communications Services, Cisco Systems
--Marissa Mayer, Director of Consumer Web Products, Google
--Halley Suitt, Founder, "Halley’s Comment" Blog


6:00- 6:45pm Registration and Networking
6:45- 8:45pm Program, Discussion, and Q&A
8:45- 9:00pm Program Close

Advanced registration
$25 for members of any of the partnering organizations
$40 for non members
(Registration at the door will be an additional $10.)
Children ages 12-18 accompanied by an adult, as well as full time students can register at the door for $5.

PopTech Pix

There was a great woman from Adobe I met that first night at Poptech. Here we are with Bob Metcalfe and ... yikes, I'm not sure who the other gentleman was.

Post-Election Etiquette

Called this "Election Etiquette" but should probably have called it Post-Election Etiquette, but you get the idea.

Don't forget #2:
2. When tempted to drive over the lingering lawn signs in your neighbor's yard, throw the car into PARK and resist. Instead, send your kids over with scissors after dark to destroy them.

Been Offline All Day

Blogger was just not working at all until now. It's very frustrating.

Thursday, November 04, 2004

Harvard Last Night

At the Berkman Center last night, on the Harvard Law School campus, I had a fun time at David Weinberger's session on Democracy and the Net where some great folks like Dan Bricklin, Wendy Koslow, David Isenberg, Rebecca MacKinnon and others popped up.

Wait a minute, "a fun time" ... okay, maybe that wasn't quite the right term. Of course, I have a fun time most everywhere, but honestly the mood last night when my friend, Nathalie Panier and I walked in, was SOMBER after the election slaughter, to say the least.

Nathalie is a Frenchwoman from Grenoble, who's been transferred here with her start-up company. Our sons are in the same grade at school and my kid, knowing I spoke French, hooked both our families up. Nathalie and her son Geoffrey have become good friends and needed as many French-speaking friends around here as they could get.

Nathalie had never been to Harvard, so not only did we have a fun time at the law school at Harvard Berkman, but then we went on a tour of the campus and made the scene at the Harvard Coop, the bar at Grafton Street, wandered into the shops that were still open and just had fun knocking around.

Back to David's discussion. We had a lot of to say about the "what next?!?" problem. I think there's a feeling among us (mostly all Kerry supporters) that we're "all dressed up and no place to go" after learning how to use the web to foster democracy and create a way to connect with others (Blogs, MeetUp, MoveOn, etc.) The election loss -- which was quite close, so everyone stop freaking out -- hit us hard, in a way similar to how you felt the wind knocked out of you after the Dean campaign ended, which energized so many people to participate as citizens -- many for the first time ever.

Call me Pollyanna, but I compared it to being a person who was out of shape, decided to run the Boston Marathon, had never run any long distance and then didn't manage the 26 miles but ran a very impressive 10 miles.

That's how I feel about my experience. I started to be involved in politics and learn about being a net citizen and get right in at a grassroots level like I had NEVER done before.

Okay, I didn't run the whole marathon. We didn't win. But I can run 10 miles now! And I couldn't do that before.

So I said a few things about this last night

1. Let's not let the energy of these new democratic muscles were flexing just dissipate; let's keep at it;

2. Blogging the truth about your life and being there to inspire or give permission to other people to be do that, or simply giving them the encouragement to be BRAVE and try things is what the blogging infrastructure we're building is all about;

3. We need to study what happened with all that momentum towards citizen democracy in the Dean campaign, understand why it wasn't channeled into electing Kerry and not let that ever happen again.

David Isenberg had many good things to say about how this makes you feel as a blogger, rather raw and vulnerable, maybe even paranoid about continuing to be so outspoken under this Bush administration. I agreed.

Dan Bricklin brought up a bunch of things about how each technology (even blogging) takes a while to move from rare to generally accepted by the public. He said he was quite surprised how often he heard the political pundits mention the word "bloggers" in the last few days and how that was really rather shocking considering how new it is.

Rebecca MacKinnon told us cool stuff about some of the blogging efforts she knows of which are involved with human rights activism worldwide. I hadn't met her, and it was good to finally get to do that.

David Weinberger always says brilliant things and I figure he'll write about them today.

Afterwards, Nathalie and I discussed the thing in French and of course, how the French and other Europeans felt about Bush. As we walked through Harvard Yard, I showed her the statue of John Harvard in his rather chilly chair. In the Coop we looked at the massive amounts of books and talked about the people who had studied at Harvard, taught at Harvard, or were just part of the Cambridge community. She was pretty impressed, but so was I as I thought about the many bold and brave minds that had traipsed through those same streets. It was an encouragement in its own right, to remember all the people who had been at Harvard before us, been brave enough to think new things, speak about them, make the world change through ideas.

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Onward

Congratulations to President Bush on his second term win.

Grateful thanks to John Kerry, his family, John Edwards and his family for all their gutsy, hard work and a battle hard fought.

Theo van Gogh: In Memoriam

This is really so dreadful. Thanks to our Dutch blogging friends for telling us what it feels like over there -- it's really shocking.
Precies een jaar geleden was Theo van Gogh bij mij thuis in Amsterdam. Ik wilde hem helpen met z'n internet site, meer weblog vorm aanbrengen en een rss versie. We hadden veel gemeen, behalve dat hij Bush een fantastische president vindt. Maar dat leidde juist tot een boeiend gesprek waar ik ook wat van opstak.

Boston: Beautiful Day

The rain really cleared the air and with a bunch of fall foliage left -- it's awfully pretty. Heading to HLS Berkman tonight to hear David Weinberger speak on the Net and Democracy.

Tomorrow Is Another Day

When exactly did or does tomorrow start? This election day feels endless.

The Story The Republicans Will Invent

I can hear it already. Shall I write it for them?

1. The Republicans will say the "public" can't wait 11 days for Ohio to resolve the provisional ballot count.

2. The Republicans will say the "public" will be in danger if we don't announce Bush is the president and scare the heeby-jeeby's out of the terrorists.

3. The Republicans will have one helluva mess on their hands if they try to jam that story down our throats.

Morning Talk Shows: Do They Dare?

We're coming up on 7:00am and I haven't turned on the TV, but I will.

I'm wondering if the morning talk shows will dare to let Andrew Card declare Bush a winner -- as if it were news -- which it is not.

Here we go ...

The Not So United States

Last night, Mark Shields, the Democratic political analyst on PBS TV was talking with Jim Lehrer and David Brooks, about how a majority of Kerry supporters are clearly on the coasts and in the big cities.

Despite all the happy talk about everyone just getting along and all lining up behind whomever ends up being President ... it's hard to see that happening.

So why don't we just split the country right now -- this morning. We can call the ocean-edgy states the THE UNITED COASTS OF AMERICA (UCA) and we can call the South and Mid-West and West THE UNITED BIBLEBELT OF AMERICA (UBA).

If you're a Democrat and don't live in a coastal state -- all three of you -- move. And if you're a Republican living on the water, get your crap in a pick-up truck and relocate to Wyoming, you'll love it there. Yippee-I-Yo-Cahier!

The resettlement should be done by the weekend, long before the votes are ever counted.

Fool Me Once

Sit back, relax and let them LEGALLY count all the votes before any Floridian rush to judgement. Wasn't it Bush who reminded us, "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me!?!"

ChangeThis.com Rocks

Seth Godin's site ChangeThis is full of great new manifestos on a wide range of subjects -- check out Dave Balter on Buzzmarketing "The Word on Word of Mouth". Excellent piece.

Boies Will Be Boies

Hope David Boies is headed to Ohio.

What Is A Weblog? (Nov 25, 2002)

This is something I wrote about two years ago. I only repost it because there's something strange going on with my archives and I couldn't get at it, except by Googling it and finding it on someone else's site. Ironic.

I literally had the experience of reading a part of it last week on someone else's site, kindof liking the words, wondering who wrote it, then going to a NEXT page to realize that the author was ... ME!? Weird.

So here it is again and feel free to comment now as to whether it holds up still after two years.

What Is A Weblog? by Halley Suitt

Every few months it seems like all bloggers are called upon to answer the big existential question, "What's A Weblog?" Whether it's over a light dinner of Beef Wellington for 24 in the formal dining room after riding to hounds in my friend's weekend house two hours out of London, at 14th and 2nd waiting for the bus by the New York Eye and Ear Institute, at The Body Shop at the Denver International Airport in front of the Oceanus shower gel or simply on Sand Hill Road driving too fast in a Lexus SUV sucking down Jack-In-The-Box Cappacino shakes and tacos, or eating a pita at a lunch joint in Georgetown, the question keeps coming up. What's A Weblog? I'll try to answer it. Here goes:

1. A weblog (or blog) is a daily online diary on the Net where you write and publish at the near-same moment to a few million of your closest friends, except only about 20 people actually read what you write. Each entry is called a "post" and the person writing a weblog (or "blog") is called a "weblogger" or "blogger."

2. A blog is a love letter, scribbled on three-hole paper and scrunched up all sweaty in your hand that you try to pass to the cutest looking guy in class and he drops it and walks on it and then your friend goes to retrieve it and bring it back to you, unread while you die a thousand deaths.

3. A blog is a new medium as new and weird as the novel was a few hundred years ago. It's a medium that has embedded news, non-fiction narrative, fiction, poetry, graphics, music and most importantly hyperlinks to all other media which gives it its quintessential differentiating characteristic -- it can NOT exist outside of the web. It's a purely networked form. Writers love it because (oh shit, shall I spill the beans, it's EXACTLY how they think and experience the world. Scary, eh?) Talk about baggy monsters.

4. It's telepathic training wheels -- that is, it's a very early stage on the way to the REALLY big next big thing -- brain-to-brain telepathic transfer. Bye bye telephone, bye bye writing, bye bye fortune cookies, bye bye every other way you used to communicate. Blogs open up people's minds, you travel the road with them, see it all through their eyes. It's all we've got now, but soon enough we'll all be in bed with each other, embeded with each other I mean.

5. Blogs are embarrassingly textual and visual now, but will soon be audio/video. Don't hold it against them. They're trying to get there asap. You will hear them talking soon. Yes, that A/V guy who was a putz in 8th grade will be king. Just get used to it.

6. Blogs are one of the last places where you can still tell the truth.

7. Blogs are one the first places where women are finally telling the truth.

8. A weblog is good way to make friends, visit friends, love people and not leave your house.

9. A weblog is my head, open to you, day and night, at your convenience. Come on in. Please take your shoes off at the door, I hate having to vacuum after you leave.

10. A weblog is watching brains at work, especially watching brains with the ultimate prosthetic device -- everyone else's brain and the whole net connected. Weblogs let you watch people learning at lightning speed. Awesome to witness.

Election Day2: Kerry/Edwards Statement

Mary Beth Cahill has released this statement around 2:00am EST:
“The vote count in Ohio has not been completed. There are more than 250,000 remaining votes to be counted. We believe when they are, John Kerry will win Ohio.”
Yes, it's called democracy. People vote and you count the results ... no matter how long it takes.

Election Day2: Ohio

Per usual, went to bed early, got up early but 2:47am is even way too early for me.

I hear it all comes down to Ohio.

I hope Kerry and Edwards will not concede until it's clearly counted.

It would be lovely for everything to be finished, determined, clear, over, but given the choice of LEGAL and FINAL or just final made up of spin, wishful thinking and macho bravado -- give me LEGAL AND FINAL. Surely we learned that in Florida 2000.

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Election Day: Ut Oh, Getting Tired Here

Maybe I should make a prediction before I go to bed.

Here's my prediction -- when I wake up in the morning, Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania still won't have final counts.

Election Day: In The Thick Of It

All the networks are roaring along here at 9:30pm EST -- only 6:30 in California. And what's the results -- still too close to call and it's not clear who's leading.

When will we know? Looks like the Ohio and Florida counts may take quite a while.

Over on David Weinberger's IRC channel we're yucking it up.

Election Day: Do Women Experience Politics Differently From Men?

I had an interesting conversation with a nice man I know about this subject -- do women experience politics differently from men? I think we do.

Lately, I've been writing a lot about politics and have had the great opportunity to write on the new blog, Personal Democracy Forum launched by Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry, with a terrific team of men and women writing on the intersection of technology and politics. Make sure to check it out today.

Strangely, there's everything about politics that women should care about -- it's about your home, your safety, your work, your money, your kids, your family, your partner, your marriage, your body, your rights, your ethics. But there's something about the practice of being political that turns many women off.

It always seems to me that guys talk about politics like it's a sporting event. That people refer to it as a "horse race" is no accident. My friend said he had to admit the way men talk about it is rather testosterone-fueled -- it's a big competition -- winner v. loser -- rank, power, position.

And so I told him this is the reason I was trying to write about it from my point of view, which is a woman's point of view, a more personal point of view. Check this out. And read this great piece by a woman blogger friend of mine, Renee Blodgett.

I think if we can understand politics from a personal point of view, we are more than engaged in a political conversation, but if it's all facts and figures and who's winning and who's losing, it's a bore, at least for me.

The conversation started because he was surprised I wrote the personal blog post about going to the doctor this morning. I was unsure about writing that post, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to make it clear how women's lives are involved in the world in worldly political ways but also in very intimate personal ways as well.



Election Day: I Voted

I decided to walk over to the school where I vote, it's not far. It takes about 10 minutes. Lately, for exercise, I've been trying to walk as often as I can and NOT take the car. It's actually a lot harder to do than you'd think. In your mind, you kind of figure a trip takes this long or that long depending on where you're headed, but you notice, you tend to base everything on driving, rarely on walking. Sometimes, although the distance isn't that long to a place, I don't walk because I'm vague on how long it actually will take.

So I walked out and then realized I hadn't brought my wallet for ID, went back got it, then walked the 10 minute walk through the neighborhood, past pretty houses, great fall foliage (still hanging on) and patchy sunshine and clouds.

Glad I walked. You see so much more and other people walking nod at you and you actually feel like you live in a neighborhood. I got to talk to three people (two women and one man) holding signs on sticks near the entrance to the school. One was a union guy in overalls and a hardhat holding a Kerry/Edwards sign.

They told me there weren't long lines, not to worry. I chatted with the women, they asked me where I got my hat (the black fur Elmer Fudd hunter earflap hat). It was about 45ish out and since I had a cold anyway, I figured a hat was a good idea. It was.

I walked up to the school which is under construction, although the building where we vote was not, and noticed there was no lines.

It's Boston, no surprise. We're not a swing state by a long shot. Our Republican governor didn't even do much campaigning in our very Democratic state, but instead was in New Hampshire trying to help Bush here.

Inside the school, they checked my registration on their list, did NOT need my ID and I voted. We vote on paper ballots that look a bit like SAT forms with little white bubbles that you color in black to indicate your choice. So the booths are only little desks with side flaps so no one can see what you're doing, a black felt pen on a string.

Afterwards, you feed them into a machine that looks like a scanner and sucks the forms up, doesn't give you anything back.

Outside, in the hall, I asked the policeman, a big guy eating a bagel and drinking coffee, if there had been long lines. "About 130 people were in line here at 7:00am. They started lining up around 6:20." Glad I missed it.

Election Day: Last Thing On My Mind

It's nearly 8:00am and I still haven't voted, honestly it's the last thing on my mind suddenly, despite being really into politics and really into this election.

I have a 9:00am appointment to follow up on a ... how to put it ... breast cancer scare. I was picking up a bunch of laundry the other day, holding it tight to my chest like you hold a baby and had a very sharp pain in my right breast, no where near reasonable for the task. It wasn't like I was pressing the laundry hard against my chest at all, that was what was alarming.

I have a good friend (known him since he was 10 years old) who's a breast cancer surgeon now and I talked to him first. He told me not to worry but to get it checked out. It could a lot of things other than cancer.

So all the other stuff is a tumble -- chads, voter suppression, touch screens, democracy, blogs, news, Bill O'Reilly, Jon Stewart, and what's his name, Karl Rove, Mr. Bush, Mr. Kerry -- it suddenly doesn't seem to matter that much.

And just like all of us are eager to get SOLID REAL election results, despite visiting the doctor this morning, I probably won't get a real answer as to what is going on with that pain for a few days or many weeks. I guess we'll all have to learn to be patient today.

Election Day: Discipline -- No Blogs, No TV, No News Yet

You have no idea how hard it is for me to get up and NOT look at the news on the Net, not read blogs, not flip on CNN on TV, but this morning, I'm forcing myself to avoid all that and just be open to ... what the hell is it called ... oh yeah ... REAL LIFE.

Election Day: So Much For 7:00am Voting

Well ... the road to hell being paved with good intentions and all that ... I can report that at least I did NOT go back to bed, but decided I really needed to do yoga.

I use this yoga tape -- AM Yoga w/Rodney Yee. It's only 15 minutes long, but some mornings, things are already so busy by 6:30 or so, that I can barely calm down enough to do the thing.

For people who exercise regularly to the same routine, you'll know what I mean here, but there's something really interesting about doing the same jogging route, the same exercise tape, the same step class, the same kick boxing routine, the same weight lifting circuit every day for the following reason. Doing the same practice everyday let's you gauge exactly how your body is feeling on a given day, as well as your mind.

With yoga, it's particularly pronounced. When you get into a routine, you start to notice some days it's easy to go to that quiet, calm slow place (my tape always ends with a seated meditation, my legs folded up like yoga teachers love to do) and other days, your mind and thoughts and psyche, even your physical body feels like it's nearly flying around the room out of control.

It tells you volumes about where your health and wellbeing are. It tells you volumes about where your emotions are. You can feel the sadness, happiness, nervousness of your heart and mind right there in your body and I think, you start to be a permeable membrane for the vibrations of the world around you.

This morning, my energy was so darting around the room and bouncing off the walls, I could barely do my yoga tape. And, of course, those are the days when I MOST need to do it. My favorite part of doing yoga is actually rolling up the mat after I'm done. It means I did it! It means I can do it tomorrow. It means I took the time to care for myself and often, that time is hard to find.

I can feel the amazing energy of this day starting to pulse around me. Now that I'm done, I take away a calm feeling which, believe it or not, I finally reached at the very end of my yoga practice.

I've had a cold that won't quit and I coughed through a bunch of the tape as I lay flat on my purple yoga mat and my nose and throat got more congested. That was not exactly meditative, but that's another thing yoga does. It gives you the most incredible detailed inventory of your body. Especially for people with bad backs, this tape is the best. You don't do very difficult back exercises, but you do just the right ones to get the tension out of your back and get a very precise reading on where the stress in your body is lodged.

The 15 minutes seems like nothing AND everything. Many mornings I neglect to do it and always regret that. On the mornings I do it, I'm always glad I did. On the mornings I'd love to skip it, I blow the whistle on myself and admit that I need it more than ever on those days.

So ... (deep breath) ... I'll be a little late to vote maybe ... but what the heck. Later