Wordless Wednesday #2: Stubborn?

Each week, I post a photo and ask you to comment on what Two Kinds of People ideas it inspires. ("There are two kinds of people in the world: … .")

Or, use the photo as a writing prompt. Write something creative and leave a link in the comments so we can find it. You may repost the photo (just add my copyright ©Susan Bearman @Two Kinds of People). If you want to know more about the picture, ask.

I swore to myself the I'd have another 2KoP post up before Wordless Wednesday #2. Note to self: don't swear. If you want good ideas for your own blogs, though, I recommend to posts on Write It Sideways:

Not Just Another Writer's Writing Blog by Susan Bearman (c'est moi)

Is A “Niche” Or “Non-Niche” Blog Right For You? by Sarah Braughman

Second Annual 2KoP Writing Challenge

Check out the winning post here.

[Update 1/19/11 — The ante has been upped! NY Times best-selling author Laura Munson has taken the 2KoP Writing Challenge, posting her version on her fab blog, These Here Hills. She has also added incentive to this contest by kicking in a signed copy of her best-selling memoir, This is Not the Story You Think It Is … . How cool is that?]

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who are entirely self-motivated and those who need a nudge — a poke, a prod or even, if you will, a prompt.

Last year, I posted my first ever Two Kinds of People New Year's Writing Challenge. Firsts are great. They're exciting. They're new. But you never know whether they are something you can count on or just a flash in the pan. Breathe easy, my readers. I am happy to announce the Second Annual 2KoP Writing Challenge. Once something becomes an "annual", you know you can trust that it will always be there for you.

Last year's challenge was thrilling for me, but a little intimidating. There were so many wonderful entries and I got a whole new perspective on what it must be like to be an agent or editor flooded with submissions. With the help of my judges, however, we picked a real winner in Murray Abramovitch's wonderful 2KoP essay on mushrooms entitled: Important Distinction or Just a Truffle?

What I really liked about Murray's essay was his passion for his subject, the information he shared, his excellent writing and, perhaps most important, his sense of humor.

I've been thinking a lot about Two Kinds of People in light of the recent tragedies in Arizona and the Red State/Blue State mentality that has taken over our public discourse. I started this blog in part to show the folly of arbitrary divisions. No matter your political beliefs, I'll bet if you read through all three years of my posts (please, do so now) and picked a side on every issue, your choices would be different than everyone else's. People are too complex to put into a single box. It's the combination of our choices that define us.

Writer and teacher Lisa Romeo occasionally offers writing prompts to readers of her blog, Lisa Romeo Writes. While I'm rarely without a writing idea, every once in a while I like to stretch my creative muscles and do a little free writing based on her prompts at my alternate blog, SFD @ 2KoP. A good writing prompt can take you to places in your own imagination that you've never explored before.

So, join me in a little fun. Pick your own favorite Two Kinds of People topic and write about it. The rules are that simple: write an original Two Kinds of People essay and email it to me by February 16, 2011. The publisher of this blog (c'est moi) and a group of judges of her choice will determine the winning entry.

Prizes: that's right, there will be prizes, as I strongly believe that bribery is an excellent motivational tool. The winning essay will be published right here on this blog and advertised throughout the world via Facebook and Twitter (at least to the people who follow me). You will be read, by actual readers. Wait, there's more. This year, you will have a choice of prizes, either the traditional 2KoP baseball cap or the brand spanking new 2KoP tote bag, both pictured above. One owner of the tote bag (my mom) recently gushed: "Hey, this is a really nice tote bag." You know you want one, so enter now. One entry per person. Feel free to spread the word.

Now, before you start typing away, I have two confessions to make. 1) Though I had been planning to run the Second Annual 2KoP Writing Challenge after the first of the New Year, I kind of forgot, until an alert reader accidentally stumbled upon last year's contest. Somehow misreading the date, she submitted her entry, prompting me to get on the stick and post this year's contest. So you see, I already have one entry (unread, I want to be fair).

Confession #2 (and this one is really embarrassing): in preparing for this post, I found a large envelope addressed to one Murray Abramovitch. I realized immediately that it was the 2KoP baseball cap that I had never actually mailed to him. This is bad. I am sorry. Murray, it's on its way. I promise this will not happen again. Let's just call it a first-year glitch. If you feel the need to berate me for my oversight or, better yet, to tell me how excited you are about this year's contest, leave a comment here.

Happy Haul-idays! 2KoP First-ever Giveaway

There are two kinds of people in the world — those lamenting the decline of publishing as we know it and those who believe that books are just too important to fade away. I love books. I love the Internet, too, but it's not the same as reading a book. I think e-Readers play an increasing and interesting role in the world of writing and reading, but they aren't books.

This holiday season (like every holiday season in my past) — I will be celebrating with books — giving some and, if I'm lucky, receiving some as gifts. Imagine my joy when I learned that Chronicle Books is offering bloggers the opportunity to win $500 worth of books. Even better, if you comment on this post, we could both win. Simple as that. This is my first-ever giveaway post here on Two Kinds of People. I hope it makes you as happy as it has made me. Here's my Chronicle Books wish list, in order of discovery:

Lotta Jansdotter Seedlings Journal $9.95
L is for Lollygag — Quirky Words for the Clever Tongue $12.99
Show and Tell — Exploring the Fine Art of Children's Book Illustration by Dilys Evans $24.99
This is NPR — by Cokie Roberts, Susan Stamberg, Noah Adams, John Ydstie, Renee Montagne, Ari Shapiro, and David Folkenflik $29.95
You're a Genius All the Time: Belief and Technique for Modern Prose, by Jack Kerouac $12.95
Secret Lives of Great Authors: What Your Teachers Never Told You About Famous Novelists, Poets, and Playwrights — by Robert Schnakenberg $16.95
You Know You're a Writer When … — by Adair Lara $9.95
Writer's Workshop in a Book — The Squaw Valley Community of Writers on the Art of Fiction — edited by Alan Cheuse and Lisa Alvarez $14.95
No Plot? No Problem! A Low-stress, High-velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days — by Chris Baty $14.95
Art of McSweeney's — by the Editors of McSweeney $45.00
Creature ABC — by Andrew Zuckerman $19.99
Creature Floor Puzzles — by Andrew Zuckerman $24.95
Duck! Rabbit! – by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld $16.99
Eric Carle Decorative Prints — by Eric Carle $24.95
The Lonesome Puppy — by Yoshitomo Nara $17.99
Creature — by Andrew Zuckerman $60.00
Eric Carle Animal Lacing Cards — by Eric Carle $14.95
Eric Carle Animal Flash Cards — by Eric Carle $14.95
The Doorbells of Florence: Fictional Stories and Photographs — by Andrew Losowsky $18.95
This is My Best: Great Writers Share Their Favorite Works — edited by Kathy Kiernan and Retha Powers $16.95
Walk the Dog: A Parade of Pooches from A-Z — by Bob Barner $9.99
Amazing Animals: Snakes $5.99
Amazing Animals: Parrots $5.99
Animals Nobody Loves — by Seymour Simon $7.99
Simms Taback's City Animals — by Simms Taback $12.99
Happy Hamster — by Mathijs van der Paauw $9.95
Hope Valley Mix & Match Stationery — by Denyse Schmidt $8.95
Animal Greetings Mix & Match Stationery — by $8.95

That's a whole lot of book love (with a few peripherals thrown in for fun). Some I'd like for me, some I'd like for gifts, some I want for other, secret reasons. I know the list is a bit … eclectic … but, hey, I'm hard to pin down when it comes to books. If you would like the chance to win these books, comment here. If you think you might like someone else's list better (to each his or her own), you can check out other bloggers participating in this contest or write your own post with your own list. Be sure to leave a comment here and let me know if you do, but be quick about it: last day for entries is 12/10 and winners will be announced on 12/13. Good luck to us all.

Update 12/13/10: Sad to say we did not win. Congratulations to cakespy.com (sort of. I guess. I'm really happy for them. Really.) Happy Holidays, all. I guess we'll have to go to the book store.

Blogging and Feminism

How good does a female athlete have to be 

before we just call her an athlete?

— Anonymous

There are two kinds of people in the world: bloggers and mommy bloggers.

I've been thinking about this post for some time, not necessarily in terms of blogging, but in terms of feminism and the role it plays now that we are a decade into the 21st Century. I'm getting ready to send my daughter off into the world. She is bright and shiny and full of expectations about college life and beyond. Throughout her childhood, I've been reluctant to saddle her with baggage from times gone by.

On the other hand, I'm a little dismayed at the number of women I've met (many just a shade younger than I) who think that feminists are man-hating, humorless old windbags who have no relevance in today's world. Today's Chicago Woman editor Cassandra Gaddo wrote a great post called Dropping the F-Bomb: Why is Feminism a Dirty Word, that speaks to many of the controversies surrounding feminism and invites us to reopen the conversation.

And we do need to reopen it, because even if feminism is dead (although I hope not), sexism isn't. In fact, it's alive and well in the venerable New York Times, where just this week writer Jennifer Mendelsohn penned an article insultingly titled Honey, Don't Bother Mommy. I'm Too Busy Building My Brand. Not surprisingly, it's gathered a lot of buzz in the blogosphere.

Here's the thing: I don't mind being called a Mommy Blogger (although in this house, I'm Mama, so I guess that would make me a Mama Blogger). After all, I'm a mom and I blog. On this blog, sometimes I write about being a mom, sometimes I don't. I am a proud contributor to the Chicago Moms Blog, where I write regularly about my experiences as a mom.

I guess it's the language that gets to me, because I'm picky about words. Words are powerful — they carry weight and meaning and subtext that is both subtle and profound. "Mommy Blogger", like "Soccer Mom" before it, carries a wide range of connotations, as illustrated a full year ago by the social media guide Mashable, which posted a list of 10 Misconceptions About Mommy Bloggers.

Most style guidelines advise using gender-neutral language whenever possible: server vs. waitress or waiter; manager or executive, not businessman; actor, not actress. In fact, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word "actor" was originally used for both sexes (1581); we didn't see "actress" introduced until 1666, 85 years later. The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) puts it this way in the LSA Guidelines for Nonsexist Usage:

"Sexist practices are those that contribute to demeaning or ignoring women (or men) or to stereotyping either sex; sexism is often not a mater of intention but of effect."

I am arguably a member of the very first post-feminist generation. Women were pretty much done burning their bras by the time I got my first one. (Thank God, or gravity would have taken a bigger toll on me than it already has.) I didn't really follow the doings of Gloria Steinem and Betty Freidan back then, though I have certainly come to appreciate them.

My hero (some might say shero) was my mom, a quiet, reluctant feminist who fought sexism throughout her life and career, even in the female-centric world of primary education. After years of substituting in our school district and many wonderful recommendations, she did not get a job that she and most people in the community expected her to get. When a colleague asked the superintendent why my mom didn't get an offer, he said: "You know her husband. He's a bank president. She doesn't need this job." My mom forged ahead and got a job in higher education.

Sometimes sexism is blatant; sometimes is hard to discern, but it definitely still exists. I worry that our young women won't even recognize it until it has stymied them in some way. As part of that first post-feminist generation of young women, I believe we were sold a bill of goods. We were told we were equal. We were told not only that we could have it all, but that we should have it all. We were still being told how to live our lives.

Most of the women (and many of the men) I know have learned the hard way that it's not possible to have it all, and it's certainly not possible to have it all at once. According to the International Labour Organization, "the redistribution of financial responsibilities within the family has not ben matched by a redistribution of work responsibilities in the home. It is still women who do a disproportionate share of the work around the home. Women are working harder than ever, and many are now working a 'second shift'."

Like Cassandra Gaddo, I strongly believe that we need a new discussion in this country — not just about feminism and its role, but one that examines our core values about work, family, money and priorities. I hope it will be an interesting discussion — a kind, thoughtful one, not the screaming and yelling that today's media uses to mask the real issues.

Back to blogging for a moment. There are a lot of bloggers out there. The most recent statistics I could find, from way back in early 2009, claimed that Technorati had indexed more than 130 million blogs since 2002. Bloggers come in all stripes and colors: there are mommy bloggers and daddy bloggers, business bloggers and entertainment bloggers, rude bloggers and earnest bloggers, successful bloggers and defunct bloggers. This fascinating, evolving and almost indefinable world of the blogosphere is really nothing but bits and bytes, tiny pieces of data zipping around the Interwebs. It is at once profound and deeply personal; and ironically, in light of the backlash against Mommy Bloggers, perhaps the most democratic, egalitarian form of communication in history.

So, while I really don't mind if you call me a Mommy Blogger, why not just call me a Blogger? And while I definitely believe in equality, I don't believe that all bloggers are equal, so how about if you call me a Damn Fine Blogger? In fact, I would prefer simply Writer — Damn Fine Writer, if you insist.

Thanks for stopping. If you want to see me present the other side of the coin, where I argue that males and females are completely different, be sure to catch my latest Chicago Moms Blog post. And I love to read your comments — just click here.

"All this pitting of sex against sex, of quality against quality; all this claiming of superiority and imputing of inferiority belong to the private-school stage of human existence where there are sides, and it is necessary for one side to beat another side."

— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own, 1929

Photo credit: Whistler's Mommy-Blogger by Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com via Creative Commons License

New Year's Challenge

[Update 1/27/11: Be sure to enter the 2011, Second Annual @2KoP Writing Challenge, deadline 2/16/11.]
There are two kinds of people in the world. Are you one of them? 

It's hard for me to believe, but I've been telling you about two kinds of people for nearly two years now on this blog. When I started Two Kinds of People, I named it intentionally to give me a kind of structure on which to hang my essays. It has turned out to be a useful literary device, allowing great flexibility, yet preventing my blog from turning into a brain dump. 

Two Kinds of People is a kind of philosophy — not a way to divide the world exactly, but more of a means for looking at it through a specific lens for the length of a blog post. I have yet to write my own archetypal Two Kinds of People post, the one on which my entire life philosophy is based, but I promise it's coming — this blogging year.

Every time I turn around, someone is suggesting another "Two Kinds of People" topic. "You should write about how there are dog people and cat people," someone suggested. Or "You should write about people who vote and people who don't vote, and then bitch about it." While these are great suggestions, they are not my two kinds of people (unless, of course, I choose to "borrow" one of these ideas some day, in which case, I will give proper attribution — if I remember who suggested it).

So, here's the proverbial deal — the challenge, the contest, the gauntlet, if you will. I am offering you — yes, you — the opportunity to win a guest post here on Two Kinds of People. That's right, you too can be a published author. All you have to do is email me your own Two Kinds of People essay. Come on. You know you want to do it. Use your imagination. Test your creative mettle. Vent your spleen. Expound, explain, expatiate. Teach us something. Make us laugh. Make us cry. Make us understand your Two Kinds of People as only you can.

And, if seeing your essay published right here on this blog is not enough to entice you, the winner will also get one of my groovy new 2KoP logo baseball/golf caps (pictured above). Several experts (including my dad and my brother) will attest that these are the smartest, most comfortable, best looking caps they have seen in many a year. And that's not just because they're related to me or because that was what they got as their gift from me this holiday season. No sirree Bob. They really, really mean it.

The rules are simple: write an original Two Kinds of People essay and email it to me by February 1, 2010. The publisher of this blog (moi) will choose the winning entry and post it for the world to read. And don't forget, you'll also win the cap. 

In the meantime, you can check out my farewell to 2009 in my latest Chicago Moms Blog post and, as always, I look forward to your comments. Just click here. I can't wait to read your winning post, so enter today.

"We improve ourselves by victories over ourself. 

There must be contests, and you must win."

— Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)

author, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Update 2/9/10: Read the winning guest post here. 

Wee Windy City Guest Post

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who have done guest posts on other blogs and those who have not. Check out my first guest post on Wee Windy City, part of Chicago Now.

The Wee Windy City blog was started by a fellow author from the Chicago Moms Blog, Caitlin Giles. In addition to being a brave mother of three raising her children in the city, Caitlin is a wonderful writer (check out her blog, A Hen and Two Three Chicks). In fact, hers was the first "mommy blog" ever recommended to me.

In addition to her blog writing, Caitlin is a frequent contributor to Chicago Parent Magazine and other publications, such as Mindful Metropolis. Her goal at Wee Windy City is to help other families find "the best family friendly activities and destinations in and around Chicago."

As I prepared my guest post, I marveled at how the Internet has changed parenting. Even when my twins were young (not that long ago), parenting small children could be a very isolating experience. One of the best things that ever happened to me as a parent was when my neighbor dragged me to a Mothers of Multiples (MOMs) meeting— a support group for mothers raising twins, triplets or higher order multiples. My preemie babies were still in the hospital, being cared for by many dedicated professionals, but not by their mother. The women in my MOMs group made me feel like a real mom for the first time.

If I were starting that journey today, I could connect with others moms just like me on the Web in a thousand different ways. Just on Facebook alone, there are 117 groups for parents of preemies, dozens and dozens for parents of twins, and 79 groups relating to high risk pregnancies. That doesn't begin to touch the number of articles, Websites and blogs on these and similar issues. I could even start a blog or Twitter about the experience, keeping friends and family up to date without having to rely on the phone tree we used 17 years ago.

As a consumer, I'm fascinated (my husband says addicted) to the ways the Web is unfolding before me. As a writer, I know I must become evermore Internet savvy to remain viable, but I'm torn. On the one hand, people argue that posting and distributing your work for free undermines the value, the skill, the experience and the craft that a professional writer brings to his or her writing. The online version of the American Heritage Dictionary defines "professional" as:

"engaging in a given activity as a 

source of livelihood or as a career: 

a professional writer."

So, as a writer, if you are giving away your work for free, are you in fact a professional?

On the other hand, many others argue that to become a published author, you must build your writer's platform, and that some of the key components of this platform are: starting a blog, creating a Website, blogging or writing for established Websites, and actively participating in online communities and forums. Almost all of this means writing for free.

What's a writer to do? Or a photographer? Or a musician? In fact, what is any artist whose work can be distributed over the Internet (and potentially plagiarized or pirated) to do?

Here's what I know: I don't know. And I know something else: nobody else knows either. Conventional writing — be it for newspapers, magazines, books, or any other traditional format — is in complete flux (which is to say, leaking money faster than a rotten dinghy leaks water). 

And in just the short time (18 months or so) that I've been writing seriously on the Web, things have changed and grown, expanded and contracted, and changed and grown again right before my eyes. 

Writing on the Internet reminds me of a condition suffered by my twins as a result of their premature birth. Retinopathy of Prematurity (ROP, sometimes called retrolental fibroplasia), is a potentially blinding eye disorder found most often in preemies weighing less than 3 pounds. In these very small babies, the blood vessels of the eye can stop developing normally, so the retina sends out growth signals, sometimes causing the development of new, abnormal vessels, which can lead to bleeding, scarring and, potentially, retinal detachment resulting in severe vision impairment or even blindness.

There are treatments for ROP, such as laser surgery or cryotherapy, but the curious thing about ROP is that it can resolve on its own, often with as good or better results than with intervention. Our twins were lucky. Although their ROP progressed to grade 3+, both cases resolved without treatment. 

To me, writing on the Internet is growing in that same frenzied, haphazard, potentially risky way as do blood vessels in ROP, and I believe there will be victims who don't have successful outcomes. But the curious thing about the Web is that I'm not sure we will get any better results if we intervene than if we just wait and let technology take its course. 

For now, you can continue to read me, for free, here at Two Kinds of People and on the Chicago Moms Blog, as well as on a few (strategically chosen) guest posts. If you like what you read and want to pay me cash money for all this talented word smithing, email me here. For the rest of you, you can pay me back by leaving a comment. A little Digg or a Stumble wouldn't hurt, either.

Constructive Criticism

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who can accept constructive criticism and those who throw a screaming tantrum at the slightest suggestion can't. 

For some time now, my brother has been concerned that the brilliant content of Two Kinds of People has been obscured by the faded newsprint background (see photo). I believe his exact words were: "I can't read the damn thing."

read•a•bil•i•ty (noun) — accessibility of text: a measure of the ease with which a passage or text may be read.

Now, being the flexible, mature, stable adult that I am, I have completely ignored his comments in the months since the blog's redesign. Recently, however, he has become more persuasive ("I mean it. I can't read it at all."), so I have modified the design just a bit to accommodate his failing vision. (I'll let you in on a little family secret: he used to be younger than I am, but now he is older.)

As always, I'm interested in most all of your comments and feedback. Please vote in the poll below or leave a comment by clicking here. 

"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. 

Design is how it works."

— Steve Jobs

Premio Dardos!

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who love Italy and those who don't.

I admit it, I'm an Italophile. It's probably because my first foray oversees was to Italy, and it probably didn't hurt that it was on my honeymoon. Since that very first trip, my best dreams revolve around spending six months a year living and writing in Italy, preferably at the Hotel San Pietro in Positano.

Since I am (at least) several best sellers away from realizing this dream, imagine my delight when the talented and bellissimo Cindy Fey from Well All Fall Down bestowed upon Two Kinds of People the prestigious Premio Dardos Award. Molto grazie, Cindy.

You say you have never heard of this incredible honor? Let me explain. "Premio Dardos" means "prize darts" in Italian. The award is granted in "recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing. The award was created with the intention of promoting fraternization between bloggers and showing affection and gratitude for work that adds value to the Web."

Acceptance carries these stipulations:

Step 1: Accept the award by posting it on your blog along with the name of the person who has granted the award and a link to his/her blog.

Step 2: Pass the award to another five blogs that are worthy of this acknowledgement, remembering to contact each of them to let them know they have been selected for this award.

Step 3: Answer the following questions on your own blog, replacing one question that you dislike with a question of your own invention, and adding one more question of your own.

1) What are you wearing right now? Clothes. And really grungy slippers.

2) What is your biggest fear? As posted on the Chicago Moms Blog, suffice it to say that it involves death.

3) Do you nap a lot? "A lot" implies both time and opportunity, both sorely lacking in my life at the moment. I will admit that my endodontist claimed I was the only patient he ever had who fell asleep during a root canal. Time — about 2 hours. Opportunity — sitting in a reclining chair with no kids in sight while being administered good drugs. Sounded like nap time to me.

4) Who is the last person you hugged? My girl, who just wandered over for a random kiss and hug.

5) What websites do you visit when you go online? The aforementioned We All Fall Down, Chicago Moms Blog and its sister sites, The Animal Store, various writing sites and blogs.

6) What was the last item you bought? Girly martinis yesterday evening at The Globe (well martinis, $5 on Fridays) — one for my friend's birthday, which happened to be yesterday, and one for my half-birthday, which also happened to be yesterday.

7) What are you reading? Anne Fadiman's essay collection entitled At Large and at Small. I love the way she ties the most arcane details into a beautiful whole, and her command of the English language frequently makes me feel like a lazy writer. Click here for an excerpt, and check out her earlier collection, Ex Libris, which I thought was even better.

8) If you could go to the Oscars, who would you want to sit next to? Oh, the pressure of what to wear is already making me a nervous wreck. I think Robert Downey, Jr. for fun, or Robert Redford because, well, he's Robert Redford.

9) Has a celebrity's hair cut every influenced your own hairstyle? If I were to go to the Oscars (see question 8), I'd go for the Rita Hayworth do shown here.

10) What is the one skill you wish you had, but don't? Being able to play the piano brilliantly by ear.

11) What is the last movie you watched? I think it was Slum Dog Millionaire, but we may have rented something since then. Clearly, it wasn't very memorable.

12) What is the luckiest thing that every happened to you? My preemie twins survived and thrived.

13) If you had a whole day to yourself — no work, commitments or interruptions —what you would do? Sleep in, meet a friend for brunch, write, have good Chinese complete with Mai Tais with a friend, see a funny movie, stay up late writing.

14) Is there a major goal that you haven't yet achieved? It was humbling and a little daunting to trace back through the winners of the Premio Dardos Award to discover that most of us have the same goal: to get our book(s) published.

15) What is the thing you wish you could forget? My first phone number, which I haven't had since I was eight years old. It's clogging up needed brain cells. I could also stand to lose a few jingles and television theme songs.

16) What is something that those in blogland might not know about you? I'm a rabid University of Michigan football fan and still in mourning over our dismal 2008 season.

17) What states and countries have you visited as an adult? Alphabetically:

States: Alabama, California, DC, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin

Countries: British Virgin Islands, Canada, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Switzerland, USA

18) What do you do to relieve stress? Take a bath; drive and play my music really loud.

19) If you could change one physical trait about you what would it be? I would be tall and thin.

20) In what room in history would you have liked to be a fly on the wall? Let's see, perhaps watching Lincoln rehearse the Gettysburg Address.

21) What is your favorite hotel? As I already mentioned, my favorite is the Hotel San Pietro in Positano, Italy, but I'd love to hear other favorites, so this is my new question.

I hereby bestow the Premio Dardos upon:

Shari at Artichokes and Aristotle

Angela at Domestic Blitz

Peter at Detectives Beyond Borders

Merlot Mom

Kim at Hormone-colored Days

Congratulations to you all.

Please share your thoughts and comments by clicking here.

Fun With Google

There are two kinds of people in the world. Or are there? 

Some time ago, a fellow writer from Off Campus Writers' Workshop, Ruth Spiro, told us about a handy little tool called Google Alerts. (BTW, congrats to Ruth on the publication of her fabulous picture book, Lester Fizz, Bubble-Gum Artist.)

The Google Alerts utility allows you to enter a search term, then crawls the Web and sends you e-mail alerts anytime your topic or phrase shows up online. Ruth shared an anecdote about how she set up a Google Alert for her own name, and found out that a magazine had published a story she had submitted (more than a year before) without notifying her or providing appropriate remuneration. Ruth sent a charming letter to the publication, thanking them for publishing her story and including an invoice. They paid her! You can see, in an environment where writer's are being pilfered and plagiarized without being paid, setting up a Google Alert for your name and your work is a practical and vital tool. 

Ruth also suggested that Google Alerts are a good way to help protect our children and their online reputations. Blogs, Facebook and Twitter represent just a few of the more well-known ways of social networking that are spreading online like herpes during spring break. Many people, especially young people, don't understand how important it is to protect their online identities, yet stories abound of lost opportunities due to an ill-considered blog post, an incriminating photo, or even a brief Facebook comment. Just today, there was a tragic story about a teenage girl who committed suicide because, after breaking up with her boyfriend, he sent a nude photo of her out over text messages, which resulted in crushing harassment.  This lovely pastime has now been dubbed "sexting". As my Dad says, we've come too far.

Not wanting my children to suffer these terrible consequences, I immediately set up Google Alerts for each of their names. (No, it's not spying, it's parenting. There's a difference. Hey, did I just hear you mumble "Patriot Act" under your breath. Clearly, you don't have teenagers.) 

I started getting Google Alerts based on these search phrases and discovered that four of our six children have nominal twins. Our last name is not that unusual, but the spelling is relatively uncommon, so I was surprised at this duplication. Turns out our oldest boy at home (who really is a twin) has a name-twin in NY who is a fashion photographer. I actually had a brief, cool email correspondence with this talented young man. Our second youngest is related by name only to a jazz pianist. Our eldest, who works at Microsoft in Seattle, shares his name with a budget coordinator in Canada; and one of our girls has a name-twin in high school in Auburn, Washington.

This gave me a story idea and led me to Google all of our family names.  (No, it was not wasting time, it was research.  Don't you people know anything about writing?) All this information led me to start thinking about identity and individuality and a few other "i" words. When we are expecting a baby, most of us spend hours, days, weeks poring over baby name books, looking for just the right one that will reflect the person we hope he or she will become. You have to take so many things into consideration: 

• initials (while Pamela Madeline Smythe may strike a chord in your head, you must not saddle your daughter with the initials PMS).
• sibling names (once you've gone down the biblical road with a name like Abraham, you can't really name his little sister Tiffany).
• dangerous nickname possibilities. (Here, I must tell you a little story about my closest cousin. She and I grew up together as the only girls on that side of the family, daughters of two sisters who were very close. She gave her first daughter the beautiful name Alexandra and told me in all seriousness that they would call her Lexie, but spell it with an "-ie" so she would never be called "Sexy Lexy". It still makes me laugh.)

In the end, our children are who they are. They either love their names, or they hate them, and there's not a lot you can do about it.

Fiction writers, however, get to relive the joy and angst of naming people every time we create a new character. My daughter, who is doing a creative writing independent study, raises a lot of eyebrows as she peruses her baby name books in the high school cafeteria. Her teacher/mentor has been needling her for some new character names, and she came up with this gem: Iambic Pentameter, III. I wish I had thought of it.

In addition to name-twins, there is the common myth that we all have a physical lookalike somewhere in the world. My creative writer girl recently ran across the following video featuring a British musician named Geraldine Quinn.  My girl said: "This is what I'm going to look like in 10 years. This woman looks just like me. Smiles like me too."

While there are some striking similarities, with no offense to Ms. Quinn, my girl is much more beautiful. (This is a completely unbiased opinion.) In an interesting twist, when we did a Google image search for Geraldine Quinn, we found that her younger pictures look significantly less like the current version of our girl. Those who know MPB will be amused to see this video of her future self (although she assures me that she will never become this intoxicated). Those who don't will just enjoy the fabulous rendition of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah by Tim Minchin with Geraldine.

Let me know if you've had any good Google giggles or revelations by clicking here. And if you have a little more time, click here to read my new post on the Chicago Moms Blog about Obama's gift giving snafu. 

Watch This Space

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who blog and those who don't.

It's been about a year since my inaugural post here on Two Kinds of People. I claimed then that my primary reason for starting a blog was to get help naming our new puppy, Hazel. Truth be told, I started blogging to learn, well, how to blog.

I've been a writer my entire adult life, and while I firmly believe that good writing will always be good writing, how and where we read and write is changing by the minute, shifting ever more quickly from the page to the screen. A recent study of online behavior found that consumers now spend more than twice as much time online as they do watching television, and eight times as much as they spend reading newspapers and magazines.

The way we communicate and our definition of community is transforming daily. We Twitter and Tweet and meet and greet in ways that weren't even dreamt of ten years ago. I haven't bought into it all (yet), but I love the instant gratification of blogging. There's no waiting for acceptance or rejection. It happens now. And if I were a control freak (which of course I'm not) I might be all aquiver over so much power — my words, my graphics, my layout, mine, mine, mine. (I am not a control freak. Stop saying that.)

The feedback is the best part. In case you didn't know, bloggers live for comments. (Leave a comment, dammit!) It's a conversation with friends and strangers from around the world. That little widget on my sidebar called Feedjit let's me see how and when readers arrive at my site. Someone recently visited from Cairo (Egypt, not Illinois). How cool is that? Another reader landed on my poetry post by doing a google search for the Coleridge quote I used.

I've met really interesting people — other bloggers, of course, but published writers, other moms, entrepreneurs and techies, as well. The women writing with me on the Chicago Moms Blog and the rest of The Silicon Valley Moms Group, have become a family of sisters, mentors and friends. The connections I've made have been fascinating, even though I've only met one person from the blogging world face-to-face. And I've even won some cool free stuff along the way.

It turns out the internet works like my brain (a scary concept, I know). It can take you in a straight line if you're in a hurry, or you can meander along interesting paths if you are easily distracted a creative thinker.

My goal when I started was to learn, and I've learned a lot, including:

• a little html
  
• how to transform a PowerPoint into a video
• how to embed video and add third party code
  
• a bunch of tricks for uploading and exporting and importing and digitizing
• how to let go of a piece writing and not edit it to death

It seems like I learn something new every day, and that's exciting. With all this emphasis on the new, I thought after a year it was time to shake things, so I dropped the old standard blogger template and learned how to do a little online design. What do you think? I even learned how to create and embed a poll to see how you really feel about this new look.

Recent estimates set the number of blogs in the hundreds of millions. Thank you for taking the time to read mine. I'm having a blast. Keep reading and leave a comment (please) by clicking here. Then jump on over to the Chicago Moms Blog to see my latest post entitled Kids are Gross.