Category Archives: blather

BlogHer ’12 Diary: Through the Looking Glass

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My apologies in advance for the length of this post. It could have been longer, but in deference to those who don’t want to read every excruciating detail of what I did and who I saw, this is the abridged account of my trip…

When I signed up for BlogHer ’12 last year, I don’t think I had a clue of what I was getting myself into. I’d only just started my blog at that point, and my primary motivation was to spend quality time with my besties of 5-1/2 years, Daily Cynema and My Kinda Rain (the latter, whom I still hadn’t yet met IRL). At least a month ago, maybe two (time passes so oddly in the interwebs), I got added to a Facebook group for BlogHer ’12 attendees. The group was a great place to ask questions of the veterans about things like business cards and media kits, and it eventually turned into a constant chatter of shoes, cab ride hookups, and sniping. In other words, it was like every other BBS-type setup I’ve ever been on. You can’t put that many people in an enclosed space, even online, without some measure of “Lord of the Flies” action coming out. It’s just the nature of things.

So, as prepared as I could be, I set off with my rolly bag (a standard carry-on), packed with clothes and an empty duffel bag. The train ride from Providence to New York was a blast; my seatmate was another blogger who works near me, and we chatted the entire way down with each other and the nice young man who sat across from us on our speedy Acela voyage about 200mi south. The first evening was a matter of settling in; my besties and I hung out briefly and then we adjourned to a relaxing dinner of tapas and sangria with long-time friend Local Kitchen, who was super-cool about braving midtown traffic to come meet up with us.

Our first full day in New York was spent primarily doing touristy things, like getting My Kinda Rain on camera for Good Morning America, as she tried to get a hug from Sam Champion, followed by a trip to the other end of the island to bear witness at the World Trade Center Memorial. From such joy and amusement to such sorrow and stillness…it was quite a contrast. I’ll never understand the people who grin and mug for the camera in front of a monument to the death of thousands of people. But, I suppose this is neither here nor there.

The rest of the day was spent on more BlogHer-type stuff, going to the opening address, which was delivered via satellite by none other than President Obama (!!!), followed by “Evening at the Expo”, an opening sprint through the expo area to get a sense of which vendors were there to try to gain our ears (and vice versa). We eventually finished the night off at one of the hotel bars, commandeering a sizable portion of the back area with a number of bloggers and a couple of company reps. Much conversation ensued, and that’s all a good thing.

Our second full day in New York, the first full day of the conference, was spent bouncing back and forth between “Geek Bar” sessions (intimate gatherings in shared space, to talk about specific topics on blog maintenance, improvement, etc.) and the expo. When we missed lunch entirely due to our workout with Bowflex (which won each of us our own Bowflex CoreBody Reformer!), we ended up “eating at the expo”, walking through and nabbing samples here and there to sustain us for the evening. The night was punctuated by unbelievable events, like waiting in a seemingly endless line to gain entrance to the Hasbro party in Times Square, only to discover (much to our delight) that we did manage to be part of the coveted first 300 entrants (which meant we would receive a “swag bag” of goodies upon departure).

Swag is a major component of this conference, whether plucked from the expo floor or obtained through one of the parties held on or off-site. In some cases, it’s clearly just a gift; in others, it’s an invitation to a review or an offering to encourage further contact. This, dear readers, was the reason I brought the empty duffel bag, and I filled it to the brim over the course of the long weekend. We finished the night at a BlogHer institution: the Sparklecorn party. Part 80’s dance revival, part gay nightclub, part rave, and part “lots of random stuff in one place”, Sparklecorn seems to have something for everybody (except those who don’t like to dance, drink, or wear glowing items).

Sparklecorn Cake

This is no mere My Little Pony…

 

The last full day in New York, which was the second day of the conference, we started off with a breakfast held by Disney Jr. The new channel took over the space on my Comcast dial previously reserved for SoapNET, so I’m still mourning the loss of “Beverly Hills, 90210”, but the breakfast took some of the sting out of it. Not only did I get a hug and smooch from Minnie Mouse, I got to bring home two Minnie dolls for the kids and a really swanky iPad cover for dh. Yes, I can be swayed, but I still miss my shows. Ah well. I also got exposed to more of what dd’s friends are likely watching (and probably ds’ friends, as well), so I’m a bit more prepared with an answer when they ask to turn on the TV.

Following the breakfast, we had more Geek Bar sessions, which we mixed in with logistics – getting our Bowflex equipment to the business center to ship home and starting the potentially endless process of sifting swag into piles to keep, exchange or toss. (There is a swag exchange where people drop off swag they don’t want and pick up any spare swag they want from what was discarded by others.) This was followed by the really fantastic experience of going to my first Disney advance screening, a first look at “The Odd Life of Timothy Green”. (I’ll be posting my review later this week.) I’ve been to a handful of screenings, at best, but never for anything Disney, so this was a real treat. We then followed that up with a  post-screening reception, with movie-themed drinks and swag. Of course, swag. More and more swag. Twenty-four swag.

Sunday morning, we all scattered to the four winds. My Kinda Rain took off well before dawn so she could make it home in time for her daughter’s mid-morning baptism. Daily Cynema had a shared cab organized to get her to the airport in plenty of time for her flight, so she headed out around dawn. I took off for Penn Station shortly thereafter, lingering long enough to get a shower before heading home on the earlier train I’d rebooked to the night before…so I could be home to have lunch with dh & the kids.

Amazingly, the swag is almost entirely unpacked. Some of it has already been put to good use (like the Disney Jr. items). Some is about to be put to good use (things I don’t need but that I’ll be putting into an opportunity drawing to raise money for my marathon walk next month), and some will either get used shortly (for evaluation and potential outreach to a company) or will be Christmas gifts for the kids.

My overall evaluation of the value? Impossible to quantify. I packed so much into the weekend – seeing old friends, making new ones, and building a sense of what I want to do with this blog for now – that I can’t even get my brain screwed on entirely straight. I will be tinkering, somewhat, but my core message and focus will remain the same. If I add a review or giveaway here or there, know that it’s only for things I actually WANT to review or give away. I have no desire to become a clearinghouse or paid ad. Anything new I can do will be based on new relationships I’ve formed that allow me to offer things I like to others. So there will be slight tinkering. All in all, it was an amazing time and I’m very glad I went. We’ll see if I make it to Chicago next year…but if My Kinda Rain and/or Daily Cynema are up for it, then so am I.

An open letter to the Paterno family from a PSU alum

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I wrote about the Sandusky scandal after the story first broke, and I haven’t stopped being upset about it. Today’s announcement that Penn State would face fines, post-season suspension, loss of scholarships, and a 5-year probation under the strict watch of NCAA observers should have come as a surprise only to those who expected the “death penalty” (shutting down the football program entirely).

So, what came as a (sad) surprise to me was hearing that the late Joe Paterno’s family referred to the NCAA ruling as “panicked”. Worse still, they claim that the punishments “defame the legacy [of Paterno].” In all fairness to their grief over the loss of their family patriarch: YOU HAVE GOT TO BE F*%$ING KIDDING ME.

Who defamed the legacy of Paterno? Joe Paterno.

Here’s why: there’s ample evidence that Paterno knew Sandusky was preying on little boys, and yet he didn’t call the police. Joe Paterno was scared of calling the cops? This was his one failing, as so many have suggested? It’s a pretty big one.

I’m not one to claim that all of this falls on Joe Paterno’s lap. The ultimate failing lands squarely on Sandusky, who will hopefully rot in jail before he rots in hell. There are few things more deplorable than raping children…although I’d be hard-pressed to say what those things might be. Genocide, maybe?

Others at Penn State should also pay for what they’ve done, well beyond what the University is doing in dishing out settlements quickly and quietly (as they began doing the day after Sandusky was found guilty). These individuals (and groups) include EVERYBODY associated with the football program from the Paterno era – coaches, trainers & staff – as well as everybody in Old Main (the administration building) who knew and didn’t lift a damn finger to stop it. Campus police needs to be purged of anyone who was there at that time and who knew, and the Board of Trustees’ surviving members from the Paterno/Spanier eras should be ritually purged from the campus, never to return. Their incredible failure of governance – the one real responsibility they had – was nigh unto criminal.

So then we get down to the actual punishment. Is it panicked? No. Is it severe? Yes. Is it punishing innocent students? Absolutely. But what the NCAA is trying to do is make a point: Penn State football can only be allowed to exist if it can be part of the school, not the point of the school. Building up any mortal to be a god is colossal foolishness, and the Paterno statue was nothing but the second coming of the golden calf. Let it sit in a warehouse, much like the Ark of the Covenant at the end of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, hopefully never to see the light of day again.

Joe Paterno did some great things, and I was damn proud to root for Penn State football during and after my time on campus. But Paterno failed critically as a leader, and while he tried to lift up young men to his own gain, he failed young boys and, ultimately, the entire Penn State community as well. He shouldn’t bear that burden alone, and hopefully Spanier and others will face some form of criminal or civil proceedings so they receive punishment well in excess of banishment from the campus they so miserably let down. Current PSU President Rodney Erickson now has a supreme challenge – not just to rebuild a football program but to rebuild a school and a nation of alumni that so desperately needs to heal. And putting one man’s “legacy” above the school he was supposed to serve is just self-serving bullshit.

Let me be clear: we got off light. There is NO PUNISHMENT SEVERE ENOUGH for the rape of children. None. Nothing takes that back. Nothing erases that, and nothing makes it all better. Even revoking someone’s universal bus pass isn’t enough to make up for the loss of innocence, the pain, the internal agony of it all. WE GOT OFF LIGHT. So bitching and moaning about how it’s too much and the football program will take a decade to recover…it falls on deaf ears when spoken anywhere near me. It will take some of these victims their entire lives to recover, if that, and football doesn’t hold a candle to the importance of a human life.

I will continue to root for Penn State, both on and off the field. The challenge to all of the Penn State community – current students, faculty, staff, and alumni – is to rebuild our school into a place where we would never again let that happen.

Where we will never again let a wolf prey on lambs.

Where we will never again raise anyone to heights where mortals cannot tread.

Where we will accept responsibility for our failings and take our medicine like grown ups.

Where we can ALL be proud to bleed blue and white.

Where we can all answer with no shame in our hearts: WE ARE…PENN STATE.

No Adventuring this week: What Gives?!

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It’s a crazy time of the year in our household, and the CSA boxes are most definitely part of the insanity. Seeing as how I’m getting ready to attend my first BlogHer conference in a few weeks, I’ve had to practice my elevator speech when faced with the inevitable question: “What is your blog about?” Really, my blog is about four things:

  • CSA and learning about eating local
  • Cooking, heavily focused on crock pot and recipes featuring CSA box items
  • Fitness – which will get louder as my marathon walk approaches, and…
  • Balance (which also includes my random musings about parenthood, things that bug me, etc.)

As we looked over this week’s CSA box contents, both DH and I were meh about the whole thing. Dear Lord, do there have to be still more cucumbers that I don’t want to deal with?! (The cosmic punchline being that my sister handed me a bag with four ginormous cukes today, insisting that I should “do whatever [I] want as long as they don’t come back home with [her]”. Her garden is overrun by cucumbers of considerable size.) So, we didn’t order the box. And then, when dh went to the farm stand today with the kids, he returned with some more blueberries, some raspberries and a half-pint of their SO DELICIOUS cherry tomatoes (which were gobbled up over the course of dinner). I queried him about whether we were going back tomorrow to do a MYO box, and he responded that the selection was only so-so. There wasn’t much that he was excited about, and the selection “wasn’t that good”.

Well, hmm.

This is an interesting turn of events. We’re not required to work from a box, because we didn’t purchase one, and there’s not much that’s exciting at the local farm. Sure, I could hit up the grocery store, but they’ve already telegraphed what they have that’s local, and the list is short and undistinguished. I could go to Whole Foods and hope they have more to offer, but I’m just not feeling it this week. I think it comes down to three problems:

  • The opt-in weekly program doesn’t require us to participate
  • The selection isn’t inspiring a MYO
  • My head’s so far into BlogHer that it’s, ironically, not into the CSA game

And this is where I laugh a bit. While it’s going to be a bone of contention with some PR folks at the conference, I’m sure, that I haven’t selected only ONE core competency to make the focus of my blog, the blog really represents who I am. I’m trying to figure out what it means to eat more local foods – what the cost is to our budget versus the cost to the greater good (health, the environment, the local economy, etc.). I’m a food-lover, and I grew up in a culture that places very high importance on good-tasting food. So, of course, if I’m going to talk about what will become ingredients for recipes, why not talk about the recipes, too? Thus, the cooking.

What about the fitness? Well, I’m sorry if it seems a bit silly, but I think it’s a big deal to walk 26.2 miles, and it’s not something I think anyone should attempt lightly. I learned quite a bit from web sites and friends about what I need to do to prepare, and I’m trying to pay back some of that goodwill by posting about my experiences training and walking, so some other n00b doesn’t go into their first marathon completely unprepared.

And “balance”? “Blather”? Yeah, yeah. My head is filled with all kinds of knowledge, both potentially classifiable as useless (such as how the Washington Redskins came to be known by that name) and useful (such as the critical differences between the European Union and the United States that will make it easier for the US to weather continued global recession). Sometimes I just feel the need to get stuff off my chest. If it bugs you, don’t worry. Just go look at the Chocolate Chip Muffins recipe or something, and all will be right with your world.

In other words there will be no CSA post this week…but I’m still very busy lining things up for BlogHer such that I should (hopefully) very soon have even more interesting things that will help bolster what I’m already doing. So, stay tuned…