BlogRhet Meme Again - reformatted

1. Go back to first or early post. How would you describe your voice back in those early days? Who were you writing to? What was your sense of audience (if any) back then?

My first post was only a few months ago, so please understand that I am quite new at this. I'm a grandmother and a senior citizen with a brand new 65+ designation. Because I am older, I have more time to read and write, leisure to think things over, time to research, fewer drains on my energy and time than the 'mommybloggers' with whom I decided to associate myself. And I need the time and leisure because my mind does not work as fast as it did thirty years ago, I tire sooner and I can't juggle a multitude of tasks and do them well, the way most of you do and the way I used to work.

When I started blogging, I had been reading and commenting for some months, and had been reading discussions about blogging and occasionally looking at blogs for several years. But the mommyblogs were introduced to me by a friend of one of my daughters, who had started one and gave the address to my daughter who passed it on to me. Justmakingitupasigo (N) is a journalist and writes amazing stuff. I had read her published pieces and started to read her blog daily. It was a revelation to me, a combination of letter writing, personal history recording and tour de force opinion pieces. From her blog I followed links into the mommy blogosphere and found other voices, all different and all compelling. I was hooked.

I was hooked and I soon wanted to be part of it. N encouraged me -- she said my writing was good enough and that I should go for it. I love to write, I always have, and I've always known I am good at it but writing has always come second to something else. I took a Community College course in advertising and revelled in the writing parts of the course, I wrote speeches, articles for newspapers and edited and corrected other people's work. In all of these, writing was a tool and not an end in itself. The writing I took most care with was done in the weekly huge letters to my mother and my aunt that I sent for many years, chronicling my children's progress, discussing current events, talking about my life. They lived a long way away and I needed to keep in touch.

So, when I started my blog, it was that voice I used. I wrote as if I were writing home. You need to understand that my mother and my aunt, my mother in particular, were highly educated and articulate women, from a generation where that was not usual. And I grew up as a somewhat precocious and precious only child, in a milieu where words and writing were highly regarded and erudition encouraged. My peer group always found me a bit much ('What's with you, did you swallow a dictionary?') and I learned to tone it down when I was with my peers, but I love well crafted conversation, either oral or written, almost more than anything else. And in the mommybloggers I found a whole community of women who were writing about things that interested me and writing with a craft and skill that I recognised and wanted to be part of. I realized that I could write at the very top of my ability level and that there was an potential audience that would appreciate it.

I was also going through a rough patch in my family life and I wanted to write about that. So the blog was going to be absolutely secret from my nuclear family -- in the same way that my letters to my mother were private. When I wrote to her I might omit something that might distress her, but I said what I thought. I did write about it, and it helped. And I started to get comments, which helped me think things through and gave me some needed support. My first reader was N, bless her. I told her about the blog because she had pushed me off the dock, after all, and I really wanted her feedback.

2. Do you remember when you received your first comment? What was it like?

On my very first post, which was essentially a 'Hello here I am', I got three comments. I was struggling with Google Blogger and these wonderful women dropped by, read my post and were kind enough to leave a compliment and advice on how to do things, like links, that I was struggling with. I had been reading and commenting on their blogs as 'anonymous' but signing the comments with 'Mary G' and I guess when they saw my name come up with a link in it they were curious enough (and generous enough) to follow it back. It meant a lot to me.

3. Can you point to a stage where you began to feel that your blog might be part of a conversation? Where you might be part of a larger community of interacting writers?

My fourth post, On Blogging (1), was about that sense of belonging that I was beginning to think I might have. I have linked it, but I am going to quote a paragraph here because it is key to this discussion, I believe.

I've looked on the internet before and not found the kind of interaction I wanted. News, gossip and information, lots of it. Political discussion ad nauseam. Lots of sex talk of a type that I find really boring. A lot of kids whom I find really incomprehensible. (I've got two teenaged male step grandkids; guys, I do try!) Then I found 'the mommy blogs'.

GingaJoy says " it would be very easy (and interesting) to do a content analysis
of our blogs to show that we are presuming a shared knowledge among our readers
(related to kids, breastfeeding, sex, etc). This will reveal a great deal about
our perceived sense of audience and also our community."

Even though I'm a senior grandmother, I still feel empathy with this group. I'm a North American, university degreed, privileged woman who is awed by the eloquence, depth of knowledge and feeling in the blogs I am reading. And I'm totally fascinated by the networking.The temptation to jump in and write comments was too much for me. That's where I started.

A few posts later, I wrote this:
And some of us shape ourselves with words. Some people do it in conversation or in diaries or in ritualized words of promise or prayer. Blogging, putting up the words on the screen, reading what others have said, responding to that, reshaping the thought pattern, refining the images, setting the words out so that others can read them, rereading the words in the light of the comments they receive,; all acts of defining self. If I have found a common thread in the mommy bloggers' world of words I'm learning about, that is it.

4. Do you think that this sense of audience or community might have affected the way you began to write?

Well, yes! I found I had readers, readers whose own blogs were wonders of tautly crafted prose, humour and well researched opinions. It was as heady as a glass of champagne. My main worry had been whether I actually could 'belong' to a group of women the age of my daughters or even much younger, but I found myself accepted. I mostly got a comment or two on whatever I put up and that was (and still is) plenty to keep me encouraged. I think the best day I had was when one of the wonder women nailed me on a usage error in a post where I was babbling on about good grammar and syntax. I loved it. When I was at university, my mother and my aunt would correct my letters in red ink and send them back to me if I made an error. I was home!

I have learned about memes and Monday Missions which means that I have learned that you can also play in the blogging world. Doing some of these challenges has made me stretch myself in ways that I had not tried for years. I also found picture essays which inspired me to try a few of my own, and I found BlogRhet, which has pushed me into some research and precision in remembering and interpreting what I have read so that I could participate. I don't think my 'voice' has changed, but it's difficult to do self analysis on that. That could be because I am still very new at this and so I have not had time to develop my voice. It could also be that I am old and set in my writing ways. But I don't think so.

There's a common thread of childcare and related issues that runs through all of the blogs I read. Even though my time with young children is far behind me, I still speak that language and having a four year old granddaughter for whom I am backup caregiver has made me current once more with baby and preschool issues. Just as compelling for me and for the bloggers whose work I am drawn back to again and again are the issues surrounding parenthood, of the world in which these children live and which they will inherit, the role of women, the problems surrounding children with special needs. A second thread is that of self, of identity and self denial, of how the whole spectrum of career/home/family problems affect each woman (or man) who is juggling them all. So, yes, it's a kitchen catch-all drawer world in here.

I believe that in the writing I do here I am fully myself in a way that I can't be elsewhere. I can say what I want to say, and damn the torpedoes. With one exception, that I want to highlight. I started this blog assuming that it would remain completely secret from my family. Because of that I discussed something that would have rightly distressed them, had they known. I have now decided that I don't want to be that secret and so I have gone back through all my posts and removed all references to it. It surprised me a lot to find out that I had to edit only a few posts to do that. Clearly, the preoccupation I had when I started did not last. Probably because the problem has to some extent resolved itself, I think, but mainly because it has turned out that that was not what I wanted to write about at all. All along I have been careful to avoid identifiers of my family and I will continue to do that. But this is me, and anything short of broaching their privacy goes. So yes, that is a profound change.

I'm not out of the closet, but the door is open. For me, that's huge, and it has happened because of the world I have found here and the amazing people that inhabit that world.

I am tagging Justmakingitupasigo, Half ofthe Sky and Lawyer Mama.

BlogRhet: The Blog on Blog Action Survey (And Yes. This is a Meme).

This link takes you to BlogRhet

The BlogRhet Meme

NOTE: I have reposted this material above (BlogRhet Meme again, Reformatted), because [censored] Blogger does not seem to want to let me reformat the end paragraphs big enough to read. Sigh.

1. Go back to first or early post. How would you describe your voice back in those early days? Who were you writing to? What was your sense of audience (if any) back then?

My first post was only a few months ago, so please understand that I am quite new at this. I'm a grandmother and a senior citizen with a brand new 65+ designation. Because I am older, I have more time to read and write, leisure to think things over, time to research, fewer drains on my energy and time than the 'mommybloggers' with whom I decided to associate myself. And I need the time and leisure because my mind does not work as fast as it did thirty years ago, I tire sooner and I can't juggle a multitude of tasks and do them well, the way most of you do and the way I used to work.


When I started blogging, I had been reading and commenting for some months, and had been reading discussions about blogging and occasionally looking at blogs for several years. But the mommyblogs were introduced to me by a friend of one of my daughters, who had started one and gave the address to my daughter who passed it on to me. Justmakingitupasigo (N) is a journalist and writes amazing stuff. I had read her published pieces and started to read her blog daily. It was a revelation to me, a combination of letter writing, personal history recording and tour de force opinion pieces. From her blog I followed links into the mommy blogosphere and found other voices, all different and all compelling. I was hooked.

I was hooked and I soon wanted to be part of it. N encouraged me -- she said my writing was good enough and that I should go for it. I love to write, I always have, and I've always known I am good at it but writing has always come second to something else. I took a Community College course in advertising and revelled in the writing parts of the course, I wrote speeches, articles for newspapers and edited and corrected other people's work. In all of these, writing was a tool and not an end in itself. The writing I took most care with was done in the weekly huge letters to my mother and my aunt that I sent for many years, chronicling my children's progress, discussing current events, talking about my life. They lived a long way away and I needed to keep in touch.

So, when I started my blog, it was that voice I used. I wrote as if I were writing home. You need to understand that my mother and my aunt, my mother in particular, were highly educated and articulate women, from a generation where that was not usual. And I grew up as a somewhat precocious and precious only child, in a milieu where words and writing were highly regarded and erudition encouraged. My peer group always found me a bit much ('What's with you, did you swallow a dictionary?') and I learned to tone it down when I was with my peers, but I love well crafted conversation, either oral or written, almost more than anything else. And in the mommybloggers I found a whole community of women who were writing about things that interested me and writing with a craft and skill that I recognised and wanted to be part of. I realized that I could write at the very top of my ability level and that there was an potential audience that would appreciate it.

I was also going through a rough patch in my family life and I wanted to write about
that. So the blog was going to be absolutely secret from my nuclear family -- in the same way that my letters to my mother were private. When I wrote to her I might omit something that might distress her, but I said what I thought. I did write about the rough patch, and it helped. And I started to get comments, which helped me think things through and gave me some needed support. My first reader was N, bless her. I told her about the blog because she had pushed me off the dock, after all, and I really wanted her feedback.

2. Do you remember when you received your first comment? What was it like?

On my very first post, which was essentially a 'Hello here I am', I got three comments. I was struggling with Google Blogger and these wonderful women dropped by, read my post and were kind enough to leave a compliment and advice on how to do things, like links, that I was struggling with. I had been reading and commenting on their blogs as 'anonymous' but signing the comments with 'Mary G' and I guess when they saw my name come up with a link in it they were curious enough (and generous enough) to follow it back. It meant a lot to me.

3. Can you point to a stage where you began to feel that your blog might be part of a conversation? Where you might be part of a larger community of interacting writers?

My fourth post, On Blogging (1), was about that sense of belonging that I was beginning to think I might have. I have linked it, but I am going to quote a paragraph here because it is key to this discussion, I believe.

I've looked on the internet before and not found the kind of interaction I wanted. News, gossip and information, lots of it. Political discussion ad nauseam. Lots of sex talk of a type that I find really boring. A lot of kids whom I find really incomprehensible. (I've got two teenaged male step grandkids; guys, I do try!) Then I found 'the mommy blogs'.
GingaJoy says " it would be very easy (and interesting) to do a content analysis of our blogs to show that we are presuming a shared knowledge among our readers (related to kids, breastfeeding, sex, etc). This will reveal a great deal about our perceived sense of audience and also our community."
Even though I'm a senior grandmother, I still feel empathy with this group. I'm a North American, university degreed, privileged woman who is awed by the eloquence, depth of knowledge and feeling in the blogs I am reading. And I'm totally fascinated by the networking.The temptation to jump in and write comments was too much for me.

A few posts later, Iwrote this:
And some of us shape ourselves with words. Some people do it in conversation or in diaries or in ritualized words of promise or prayer. Blogging, putting up the words on the screen, reading what others have said, responding to that, reshaping the thought pattern, refining the images, setting the words out so that others can read them, rereading the words in the light of the comments they receive,; all acts of defining self. If I have found a common thread in the mommy bloggers' world of words I'm learning about, that is it.

4. Do you think that this sense of audience or community might have affected the way you began to write?

Well, yes! I found I had readers, readers whose own blogs were wonders of tautly crafted prose, humour and well researched opinions. It was as heady as a glass of champagne. My main worry had been whether I actually could 'belong' to a group of women the age of my daughters or even much younger, but I found myself accepted. I mostly got a comment or two on whatever I put up and that was (and still is) plenty to keep me encouraged. I think the best day I had was when one of the wonder women nailed me on a usage error in a post where I was babbling on about good grammar and syntax. I loved it. When I was at university, my mother and my aunt would correct my letters in red ink and send them back to me if I made an error. I was home!

I have learned about memes and Monday Missions which means that I have learned that you can also play in the blogging world. Doing some of these challenges has made me stretch myself in ways that I had not tried for years. I also found picture essays which inspired me to try a few of my own, and I found BlogRhet, which has pushed me into some research and precision in remembering and interpreting what I have read so that I could participate. I don't think my 'voice' has changed, but it's difficult to do self analysis on that. That could be because I am still very new at this and so I have not had time to develop my voice. It could also be that I am old and set in my writing ways. But I don't think so.

There's a common thread of childcare and related issues that runs through all of the blogs I read. Even though my time with young children is far behind me, I still speak that language and having a four year old granddaughter for whom I am backup caregiver has made me current once more with baby and preschool issues. Just as compelling for me and for the bloggers whose work I am drawn back to again and again are the issues surrounding parenthood, of the world in which these children live and which they will inherit, the role of women, the problems surrounding children with special needs. A second thread is that of self, of identity and self denial, of how the whole spectrum of career/home/family problems affect each woman (or man) who is juggling them all. So, yes, it's a kitchen catch-all drawer world in here.

I believe that in the writing I do here I am fully myself in a way that I can't be elsewhere. I can say what I want to say, and damn the torpedoes. With one exception, that I want to highlight. I started this blog assuming that it would remain completely secret from my family. Because of that I discussed something that would have rightly distressed them, had they known. I have now decided that I don't want to be that secret and so I have gone back through all my posts and removed all references to it. It surprised me a lot to find out that I had to edit only a few posts to do that. Clearly, the preoccupation I had when I started did not last. Probably because the problem has to some extent resolved itself, I think, but mainly because it has turned out that that was not what I wanted to write about at all. All along I have been careful to avoid identifiers of my family and I will continue to do that. But this is me, and anything short of broaching their privacy goes.

So yes, that is a profound change. I'm not out of the closet, but the door is open. For me, that's huge, and it has happened because of the world I have found here and the amazing people that inhabit that world.

I am tagging Justmakingitupasigo, Half ofthe Sky and Lawyer Mama.

Jen(Ponderosa)'s Monday Mission - verse or worse.

Oh it's Grama this and Grama that and Grama! Come and play!

We have the grandkid for a week -- her parents are away;
She likes to come and stay with us because she gets to play,
And look at all the birds and bugs and chipmunks eating bread,
And watch the squirrels and butterflies and squash mosquitoes dead.

Grama? Grama, Grama! Look at this!
I found a little turtle -- hear him hiss?
Grama? Grama, Grama! Here's a snail!
I'm gonna put him in the water pail.

There's a box with colour markers and some paper and some glue,
There's a bag of plastic dishes and some rubber froggies too.
There are china birds for let's pretend -- a good one and a bad.
And in the yard there's rocks and weeds and neat stuff to be had.

Grama? Grama, Grama! See me run!
Come on Grama! Run too. We'll have fun.

Grama? Come and play with me, make the birdies talk.
It's a sunny day outside, let's go for a walk.
There's a LOT of bugs out here, put my bug stuff on.
I saw a chipmunk over there, oh look, oh now he's gone.

Grandma, you look funny in that hat.
Grama, look, your tummy's kind of fat.
Grama? Grama, Grama! Where you're at?

The stars are twinkling overhead, (Grama, there's the moon!)
All the toys are put away. It will be bedtime soon.
Grama, read another book? Where's my bedtime snack?
It may seem like forever, but her parents will come back.....

It won't be long enough until her parents take her back.

Mummy? Mummy, Mummy! I had fun.

with apologies to Rudyard Kipling

Grandma is grossed out.

I bought my four year old blossom a Happy Meal the other day. Her mother lets her have one very infrequently for a treat and since I was babysitting, I thought I would indulge both of us. (I have a low taste for cheeseburgers -- tsk!)

This is what came out of the Happy Meal box. It has a battery. It cries and says 'TA TA'. The mind boggles.

Little Stuff loves it.

Lilac Watch

The lilac is now in full bloom. The purple ones are everywhere -- we passed two fields of them this afternoon. That's an unusual sight, as lilac usually only spreads by putting up suckers at the planting site in eastern Ontario, but in places where there is limestone close to the surface it really thrives and will spread. It was absolutely beautiful.

My white is a new plant from a very old stock, a bush planted somewhere around 1900. I have purple ones of the same vintage or even older, but the white I am nursing along, as I love this kind the most. Almost as much as the hybrid double purple which is really not hardy in Zone 4, but is doing its best.

The blackflies and mosquitoes are also in full presence, which is why Little Stuff is done up in netting. She is also glaring at a bee that was investigating the blossom nearest her. She does not like bugs. So her mother bought her this netting suit to make her stay with her grandparents a little easier.

She goes home tomorrow, to her 4th birthday party. I am slightly limp, but it's worth it. Only, what do you say when the kid comes up with "Grandma, how do you make water" as we are putting along in the fishing boat. I ducked. "Grandpa will know," said I.

Preoccupied, one and two.

This week I am looking after Little Stuff while her parents are at a conference. This is fairly high intensity work, as she is convinced that Grama is a full time playmate. So far to-day we have planted some of the planters, trekked around the yard feeding birds and deer, picked several bouquets of wild flowers and gone swimming. It is still not suppertime yet.

Just at this moment, I am trying to explain how mosquitoes and black flies operate. The comment I just got is that 'An itsy bitsy teeny drop of blood is all they get. They can't get all the blood in my tummy.'

I am now getting demands to colour on the computer. Her parents have a drawing pad and a colour adapter. Little Stuff thinks this rig is pretty primitive. But she needs to do it *now*.

How you mothers of little ones do this all the time is beyond me.

Further comments - 10:45 pm

Little Stuff is now sleeping peacefully. Phew.

My girls were fifteen months apart, and they played with each other. I would set up an activity for them, or start them on something and they carried on. They also watched television, probably far too much television. Sesame Street, daily. Mr. Roger's Neighbourhood, daily. It didn't seem to hurt them -- and they learned a lot, especially from SS. When they were four and five we moved into a neighbourhood that had a lot of other children their age. We had a big, fenced yard, and they played outside in a big group, under my eye through the kitchen window, or in a playroom in the basement if the weather was bad. I think I was very lucky, in hindsight.

I was an only child of an older mother myself, and my mother played with me a lot. So did my grandmother because I stayed with my grandparents often. I clearly remember her making me doll clothes, singing to me, taking me for walks. And so I am applying this model to Little Stuff, who is an 'only' in most senses of the word as her brothers are 14 and 17. I will be looking after her for three weeks this summer and am using this week as a trial run. She will play by herself if I am doing something obvious, like cleaning the kitchen, but working at the computer, reading or just taking a break are not activities she recognises as legal for grandma to do alone.

It's the constant chatter that may drive me demented by Friday. I don't remember my daughters doing this, but maybe it's protective amnesia. The child is a talking machine. Best score on grandma today -- we were talking about raccoons going out at night, and I was trying to explain this. 'Do you mean they are nocturnal, Grama?' says the precocious brat.

Oh, my.

Cogito (deinde scribo), ergo sum

Slouching Mom has tagged me to participate in a meme, the instructions for which are to write several statements beginning with "I am".

She begins her compilation by saying '…this, by the way, is not unlike one of the most widely used personality tests known as the "sentence completion" task. I’d recommend not drawing conclusions about personality on the basis of the sentence completion task, because as an assessment tool it is neither valid nor reliable. And with that I’d like to conclude today’s lecture on personality testing.'

Thinking up 'I am' sentences is turning out to be a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. It may not be a good test of personality but it is testing. Ah, well. Here goes:

I am thinking. I am writing. I am thinking some more.

I am a procrastinator.

I am sitting in my office, surrounded by piles of paper, on the floor, on the desk, on the worktable, each pile representing a job that I need to get done.

I am not doing these jobs.

I am thinking up sentences starting with 'I am', wasting valuable working time. Um, that's not true.

I am wasting valuable time I could spend reading blogs.

I am convinced that I am blowing this.

I am.

Cogito {deinde scribo}, ergo sum.

I think {then I write}, therefore I am.

Under the Mad Hat's comment group inspired me to do this.

Two drunken professors were leaning on a bar arguing about the relative merits of their favourite poets. The rest of the patrons joined in and challenged the profs to make up a couplet in the style of their favourite, winner to be given the right to call his poet the best.
The subject was decided on -- a man with bowed legs walking down a road.

Prof #1, who taught the Romantics, declaimed
'Over the hill and down the road
Walks a man whose legs are bowed.'

He received much acclaim, but the Shakespearean prof was declared a winner with this submission:
'Lo, what manner of man is this
Who wears his balls in parenthesis'.

Sorry!

Pants on Fire?

I have just read a really good op. ed. piece by a woman who writes for our local paper on raising kids which discusses, among other things, the lies we tell our kids. One thing I promised myself when I became a mother is that I would not tell my children 'white' lies, the untruths that adults supply to keep the little ones tranquil. This determination was sourced from an experience of my own childhood.

When I was eight, my grandfather, who shared a house with us and who was my best buddy, suffered a traumatic stroke. This was the 1940's, and so he was nursed at home. I vividly recall being taken in to see him in his bed, with his face all slack, and that he could not speak. I was there because I had demanded, insisted, nagged and whined to be allowed to see him. Within the next couple of days, he died. I was in bed but when I heard thumping and footsteps on the stairs leading to his upstairs apartment, I called out to my mother to ask what the noise was. She told me that Grandpa was worse and that he was being taken to hospital. The next morning my parents told me the truth. I still vividly recall the outrage I felt. I was convinced that I should have been there and that my mother had unjustly shut me out.

Believe me, I am not the most truthful of souls. Ask me how I like your new haircut or whether the colour of the house trim looks good with the brick and I will string you a line with the very best. If I'm late to a meeting or late with a report, I can (at my age!) come up with a fine and figmentary story. But to my daughters, if the dog had to be euthanized or their father hospitalized, I told the unvarnished truth. Last fall we had Little Stuff staying with us for a few days and one of the morons from the Hunt Camp next to us fired at a grouse from the road in front of our house. (Illegal in Ontario to shoot from the road, by the way.) I told her the truth, which was that the man had shot a bird. When she asked me why he had done that, I told her that he wanted to eat it. I was not sure that this was true, but the guys at the Hunt Camp eat what they shoot in the general way of things (and gift us with stuff like spiced bear sausage), so I thought that was justified.

Her three year old self took this very calmly. We had, in fact, had chicken for supper and she happily gnawed on a drumstick. The concept of bird as food was not a big issue. In my experience, children hear the truth with respect and process it better than the white lies told to protect them. If the cat is run over by a car and you tell a preschooler that it has gone away, I would just about bet that the kid will bring the matter up day after day after day -- 'is kitty back yet?' -- until you want to pound your head on the kitchen counter.

It's a big issue. It goes into a lot of areas where we all have our fortresses and out insecurities. ('What is truth? said jesting Pilate. And would not stay for an answer.) And I am pretty sure I would be lying if I said I had *never* told my children a lie. But I did try. And I still do.

Your haircut? It looks as if it would be really easy to take care of in hot weather. And the paint is truly dramatic with the brick.

Monday Mission

Jen at Under the Ponderosas has undertaken to set up the new round of Monday Missions. There are some challenges that are really hard to resist! This week's task is to write a post in the form of a weather report. I have modelled mine after the Environment Canada graphic.