That's some fine jounalisming there

Wow, kiddies, be careful what you say on the Internet - it may be quoted somewhat out of context 6 years later! Yesterday, I was flipping through the newspaper at work (I'm supposed to do this for my position, don't fret), and I see my name as I fly by a story on the features page. I normally don't pay much attention to the celebrity adoration pages, but my own name tends to catch my eye. The article is entitled "Just say nOprah" and I smirk, then read to see what some famous Heather Weller has said. Heather Weller, a stay-at-home mom from Worcester, Mass., expressed her views on an Internet message board discussing Oprah's Book Club. "Does Oprah have some sort of mind-control device we don't know about?" she asked. "But I have to say anything that gets people to read is a good thing. It would just be nice if it also got them to think." Huh... Worcester, Mass.... snarky about Oprah's book club.... pro-reading.... that sure SOUNDED like me, but it rang no bells whatsoever for me. And the stay at home mom thing? That's SO 3 years ago! What the heck? So, thank goodness for Google. Turns out... it *was* me, go figure. I wrote that in a response to something someone wrote on epinions - get this - in April, 2000. Guess I hadn't updated the old epinions profile in quite a while, eh? The last thing I wrote there was barely in this millenium! (You can read the full comment here - they didn't quote my winking smiley, dammit!) I'm a curious type, so I take to some searching. Turns out this Ariel Brewster is a Masters Degree candidate at the Columbia University Gradutate School of Journalism. Who has honed her skills teaching "creative writing and literacy classes at prisons in California and New York." Well, good for her! I wonder if she also wrote that article about prison romances also available from the Columbia New Service. What amuses me is my little quote was the closer of the story in the original edition and in any other online references I've found to it in other markets - but here, the local paper bumped me way up. But, really, is this what graduate level journalism is about?? Sitting on your computer searching for something someone wrote (a tiny little piece of what someone wrote, no less) before you were probably even an undergraduate student (oh. my. god. am I that old?!)?? Is that really among the best anti-Oprah comments online?! I don't know whether to be flattered or annoyed, and I go back and forth between the two (and totally forgetting about it, too). I think my surrogacy journal has been quoted in some international media source at least once, too, now that I think back. I don't know why it bothers me so much that someone uses a personal website (or comment on a commercial site like epinions) as "research" but it does. Especially to just quote from it freely. I guess I'm relieved she mentioned this was something said on a message board, so at least it didn't sound as if she called me up to get a quote and I came up with that off the top of my head (or that I care enough about Oprah in general to be worthy of tracking down for a quote). But it just seems so.... lazy. I wonder if the journalistic community has developed guidelines on this. Anyhow... it was a weird experience, to say the least. If I were going to be quoted in major media, I wish it would've been over something better than Oprah! (Heck, I wish they'd quoted my more recent mention of her in relation to the Olympics! ;-)) It's funny, the local "alternative" paper (which is about as old as I am, and hardly a hip and happening wonder, but comparatively, well.... it all depends on the company you keep, I suppose. Anyhow, they have begun in the past year to quote from local blogs each week. Sometimes it's about local news happenings (there was a whole slew of them when Tatnuck closed - I wonder if the O'Coin's closing will make it this week... I don't know, Tatnuck wasn't around as long, but it tended to elicit more rabid affection. Perhaps booklovers are just more passionate than ass sitters who visit O'Coin's for their next recliner - that said, both departures are devestating and shocking, if possible predictable. In yet another example of Worcester never allowing for more than 4 or 5 degrees of separation, O'Coin's president is the husband of Rowan's first preschool teacher, whom we still hold in great affection. Um, wait, this wasn't meant to be about O'Coins, my parenthetical notations tend to take over sometimes. It's when they tell me to kill-kill-kill!!! that I start to worry.) Aaanyhow, what the heck was I going on about? Oh! Right! WoMag (isn't that just so cute!? They're all "outside the mainstream media" ahead of the trend of Brangelina [or Bennifer]'s and such with their two-words-meshed-into-one nickname), and their quoting of local blogs. They range from big local news to reviews of the latest concerts. Well, really, that's all they seem to have, I don't know if that's much of a range. Perhaps that's all Worcester bloggers write about. *shrug* So did I have a point to any of this? Do I ever? Hello, READ the title people, it's called randomness for a reason. Just because I'm trying to prove I really do take pictures of people with the new camera - Rowan playing in the snow last month (why would she want to pull the hood OVER her head??):

Sharing my lunch with seagulls

So, I'm home. I ran away, you see. I have some issues with this whole terminology, but so be it, I had nothing to do with the naming process, so I shan't complain. Basically, my church has a weekend-long retreat for women in the congregation to escape. Until this year, it had been in the Berkshires, but this year it was moved to Rockport, MA, which is right on the ocean, and is very quiet at this time of year. Nice and reclusive, but the weather was picture perfect, snow-free, warm enough to walk the oceanfront in just a coat without feeling chilled to the core, bright sun in the sky. Ahhhhh. I ended up with an efficiency unit all to myself, so I didn't feel bad when I'd run in and throw down stuff, then run out again (though I keep rooms in hotels and such so much cleaner than anything at home, go figure). I didn't have to worry about what music I put on the radio before bed, or going out on the deck at midnight to take pictures leaving the doors wide open. I brought (as you may have guessed) my spiffy new camera, and two books to help me learn more about how to use it. The first was Mastering Digital SLR Photography by David Busch, which I set out to read - I'd heard severl times that it was a great book for learning how to use a digital SLR and a great resource for a beginner. Um... no. It might be a great book for someone who is moving from a film SLR to a digital, but it assumed WAY more knowledge than I posess. So, I gave up on mastering, and ended up trying to just understand! So, I pulled out Understanding Exposure by Bryan Peterson, and am so much happier. Perhaps after a few months of understanding, I can try to master again, but boy, I was annoyed. It reminds me why I don't like to buy books online, it's too hard to trust reviews and book descriptions sometimes, especially on technical books (because, really, what some people see as the perfect book to teach them something may use a technique that would just leave someone else dry). And can I just say that I'm tired of non-fiction writers who think they have to be comedians? Yes, a little humor now and then throughout a book can break it up, but must every other paragraph try to show how witty you are? If it's that important to you, get a blog for goodness sake! :-) I also watched the Oscars for the first time ever. I don't think I'll go out of my way to do it again, but at least I've had the experience (at least I got to show off my own wit at times... it's not as much fun making snarky comments alone to the TV!). What was interesting was the mix of women there. There are women I know pretty well, and some who I knew "who they were" - though I may not have been able to bring a mental picture of them up on demand if you said their names, and some I swear I'd never seen before in my life. In some cases we had lots in common, in some cases very little beyond a shared Sunday morning experience each week, but somehow, we always found something to talk about. Things like this remind me how much more quiet and withdrawn I am by nature than I want to be, and how even when I try not to be, it doesn't work. But, you know, that's okay. For every person like me, there are at least a couple more who will fill the conversational voids, and who will make the first effort. I'm sure there are people who think I'm a royal bitch in life because I'm not Suzy Sunshine about reaching out and making new friends (silver as they may be), and if you don't know me, you might just think I'm snobbish, and sometimes I think it really does hold me back, and sometimes I wish I had rooms full of friends... but the reality of it is that being outgoing takes the life force out of me, and I'm happier with strong connections to a few people who put up with my need for space when they arise, but who also know I will be there for them when they need me. At least, that's what the magazines tell me I should believe. Perhaps it's most telling that one of my favorite moments of the weekends was Sunday. About 16 of the 25 of us decided to visit their local Unitarian Universalist congregation, so we walked down. Four of us were leading the way, then there was a small gap, and the rest were bringing up the rear. The first of our people told the woman doing greetings out front that we were from out of town, visiting, and the local woman smiled and was very welcoming. And then, you could see the moment she spotted the other 12 or so behind us. "How many of you are there?" she asked as a bit of fear washed over her face. I think we literally doubled the number of adults in their service. It wasn't until later when we were all back at the Inn I thought and said to someone "Can you imagine the poor person who brought the coffee hour snacks that day when s/he saw us??" I just picture someone frantically cutting cupcakes into halves! But, that was just backstory to the favorite moment... so we do the service, and everyone pours into the foyer for coffeehour, which was quite crowded, and I was like "um, get me OUT of here." So, I took off on my own. We were free to come and go as we wanted during the weekend - this wasn't some work-type retreat with a set schedule and classes and forced bonding activities, etc. The only scheduled thing was breakfast each morning, and that's just par for the course at a B&B. (-begin aside- Oh. My. God. Fidelity Investments is using Inna Godda Davida by Iron Butterfly in a commercial. To sell investments. Investments are things sold by stiff shirted and underpanted old men. It is so NOT something sold by drugged out rock stars. Sheesh. The Boomers are taking over. My poor father must be having a heart attack when it comes on the TV. -end aside-) Anyway, so I took off on my own, for the first time over the course of the weekend after the service in Sunday. There were all these cute little shops, I'd seen some the day before with a group, but it's much different shopping with a group, and walking with a group, and all sorts of stuff. So, I checked out things, I had brought my camera so I was finally able to get as many great (and lousy) shots as I wanted without holding people up, or having to rush to catch up, or worrying that they think it's weird I lay down on a rock to get a picture (of course, one of the women in the group is a professional photographer, so there was a whole OTHER layer of insecurity there!). I ended up buying lunch at a little cafe and asked them to wrap it to go (I'm still not ready to eat alone in a restaurant, I figure that's a few rungs up on the ladder of human independence), and headed out to find someplace nice to eat. I ended up sitting on a deserted beach, where I found a nice large flat rock to sit on, and ate a pretty retched sandwich. And before long, a persistant seagull came and stood to watch me for several minutes. It didn't approach, didn't move much, just... watched. A small piece of turkin (or chickey... not sure what the fowl was) fell from the sandwich to the bag between my feet, and the seagull stepped a tiny bit forward, ever hopeful. Finally, I'd eaten what I could and gently lobbed a piece of the bread to him (I can't imagine tossing a piece of the turkey/chicken to him - I would feel so icky encouraging some sort of cannabilism or something). And suddenly, there were tons of seagulls. I don't know quite what happened, neither the lone seagull nor I made a sound, I didn't make a big production of tossing the food - they just KNOW when someone got something. Fortunately, the bread was thick and yicky so I had plenty to share. I created quite the ruckus of seagulls, but as soon as the food was gone, so were they. So... what do you think? Decent shot for getting it only by tossing up mayonnaisy bread and trying not to get the mayonnaised fingers on the camera while firing off shots while tossing? (Click for the bigger version) Hilight of my weekend.. lunch with the seagulls. Goodness, I am an oddball!