Blogging

Guest Post: Pronouns

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Pronouns can be indicative of subtle racism.

Today I’ve got a guest post from Jen Marshall Duncan, another white mom with biracial children. She’s a teacher in Iowa. Her blog, Empatheia, is one of my regular reads because she is insightful, articulate and intelligent, a real gem in the blogger world.

I came across this “I Don’t See Race” poster on Pinterest and it really struck a chord with me. I live in a university town that has been deemed “a hotbed of liberalism.” The town has a rich and storied history of leftist leanings: protests against wars/conflicts, marches for women’s rights, and lots of pride in our home grown son Zach Wahls who is touring the nation to talk about being raised by two moms. Yet for all of these leftist leanings, there is one area where my community of  is still lagging behind instead of progressively forging ahead–that area involves the issue of RACE. Many people say things like “I don’t see race,” or “It doesn’t matter what color someone’s skin is; everyone’s the same.” That is the motto until something happens that makes our community uncomfortable….like changing demographics.

For the past 4-5 years, our community has become more diverse. Our schools overall are now just about 30% non-white, but due to city planning/zoning issues, almost all kids of color were enrolling in the same 2 elementary schools. Our hotbed of liberalism knows that diversity is good! Diversity is beneficial! Everyone learns to be a global citizen in a diverse environment! But until 5 years ago, that diversity used to stem from visiting professors’ families. Now it stems from struggling families who move from Chicago to make a better life for their children.

Just like in the rest of the country, these days high minority enrollment is found in the same schools as high poverty enrollment. Studies show that in U.S. schools, skin color and poverty correlate.

Kids in poverty don’t always have easy lives. Sometimes they are a little behind their peers in learning because it’s hard to learn when you worry about meals, clothing, having shelter, etc. Having so many of the kids who need extra help be the same kids who are of color is problematic enough, but then having so many of those kids also be in the same school building is really problematic. It seems like our community is trying to push them out.

The school district wanted to spread the diversity around, and many parents complained saying, “Well, we’d have to bus those kids. They would move farther away from their homes. It would be hard for those parents to participate in school activities if they don’t have transportation.  Let’s just help them by letting them stay where they are.”

Hotbed of liberalism. People who don’t see race. It doesn’t matter what color a person’s skin is.

But it really does matter.  Because if it didn’t, the pronouns wouldn’t be there. Phrases like “Our children, our community our district and what is best for all of us” would replace the “those kids, those parents, them… they…”

The Pinterest poster above drew an immediate response from someone who admits she is privileged, but she worked her ass off to get what she’s got. She then asked, “am I a racist?” and answered herself, “I don’t think so.” Soon after she wrote, “what IS it THEY want? Just for me to give more and more until I have nothing? Enough already, be an AMERICAN AND WORK FOR IT” (those are her capitalizations, not mine.)

“THEY”

A simple little pronoun. A small word with huge connotations.

THEY are not truly American. THEY have different needs than US so maybe THEY should stay in their own neighborhood school.

All of this from people who don’t see race. Don’t see skin color. Don’t treat people differently based on race. Leftist-leaning progressives who will give up an evening to march in protest against a war on the other side of the globe…but won’t open their eyes to really see the people in their own city.

To all of the people who “Don’t see race”: You may be a good person. But make yourself better. Open your eyes and see people as who they are. We all have names. We all have characteristics that make us unique. There is no “THEM”.  There are only individuals of all shapes, sizes, colors, heritages and backgrounds. And WE are all doing what we can to thrive and survive, day by day. See us. All of us.

Jen Marshall Duncan lives in Iowa and blogs at empatheia, where she  writes about her experiences in a mixed race marriage,  raising  3 biracial children, and her experiences as a teacher of kids who don’t fit into traditional high school settings.

Happy Mother’s Day: Guest Posting and Other Random Thoughts

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Happy Mother’s Day to all the mamas!

I hope everyone is having a great day.

I got my very first Annika-hand-crafted Mother’s Day gifts this year thanks to some very special and awesome preschool teachers.

On top of these awesome gifts, four years ago I also got the best gift ever, my daughter Annika.

Along with Annika teaching me about motherhood, she has also taught me about learning to think about some of the racial issues in this country and how they affect our society.

Today I’m guest posting over at another blog. Empatheia, written by another mama to biracial kids. She’s a great writer and a teacher, as well as being a mom to three kids. Her blog often discusses the disparity in our schools, as well as racial issues. She’s one of my internet buddies. So read my post and then please browse some of her articles. I promise you will leave feeling enlightened.

Here’s my article: http://jenmardunc.blogspot.com/2012/05/yes-this-baby-is-mine.html

Chuck E. Cheese!

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So, I don’t normally write posts advocating any business, but when I got a message from one of the marketing peeps from Chuck E. Cheese asking me to write a post in exchange for free pizza and games, how could I resist? I mean, every kid should experience gorging cheesy goodness, along with an overstimulating experience of the action-packed game room at a pizza place, at least once a year, right?

I asked one of Annika’s friends’ along for the ride to Chuck E. Cheese yesterday, and they had a blast!

At first they didn’t get it.

Why is everyone dancing with a big mouse?

Annika, who doesn’t know that the rides at the grocery store actually move if you put money in them, was unsure about a few things initially.

Hey, this thing is moving!

But it didn’t take long.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

They rocked out.

Singing "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" by Pat Benatar

We ate pizza.

Say Chuck E. Cheese!

Overall, a fun time was had by all. Thanks Chuck E. Cheeeeeeeese!

I wrote this in exchange for pizza, and gold coins, which were eventually turned into two rubber bugs, a temporary tattoo, and two packages of Sweethearts.

Why Mommies Can’t Be Wine Bloggers, Except When They Can

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Today I’ve got a guest post by another Austin mom blogger. In her spare time, she writes about wine, instead of whining about having no spare time. Enjoy!

Andrea and her daughter, Amelia.

Andrea Middleton is the marketing director for a Central Texas general contractor, wine blogger at Wine Scamp, and mother to an exceptionally determined 2.5 year old daughter. She lives in Austin, Texas with her husband, Tom, a native Texan. She’ll talk your ear off about wine if you give her half a chance.

They say that before you have kids, your pets are your kids, and after you have kids, your pets are your pets. This is quite true, much to their chagrin, of my household’s two cats Spike and Max. What truly surprised me was how a similar shift came about in my relationship with wine. In my B. C. life (Before Conception), wine was my passion and, for a time, my professional focus. Wine was the perfect combination of sensual pleasure and intellectual stimulation, a pursuit that enriched my life on multiple levels. I worked for a wine distributor for 5 years, selling wine to bars, restaurants and stores. I taught a wine class, and, once I left the beverage industry, started writing a wine blog in 2008. When I got pregnant in the spring of 2009, my blog was doing really well in its niche, and had reached the time commitment of a part-time job. Which was fine, because I loved the community of wine bloggers and wine enthusiasts that I had joined.

Then, a sperm found an egg, and… let me explain. No, it is too much; let me sum up: pregnancy kicked me right in the nads, emotionally and physically. Morning sickness was crippling, and lasted way longer than I had ever heard it did. The only thing more powerful than fatigue was the complete brain-fuck that hormones were successfully performing on my psyche. Wine blogging ground to a halt. I lurched over to a small temporary blog, Careening and Gestating, just so my voice wouldn’t completely be silenced by the relentless change affecting my life. My successful wine blog, Wine Scamp, stood abandoned.

Amelia was born after a harrowing 54 hours of labor, and then the hard stuff began. Only someone who has survived the death march that is caring for a high-needs infant in his/her first year of life can understand how your existence is pared down to the bones of a life that would make the strictest hermit aghast. Everything that had made my life enjoyable before becoming a mother was stripped away from me: food, sleep, books, sex, solitude. But I kept the wee tyrant alive for the first year, and then the next, and slowly pleasure started returning to my life in little, furtive sips.

Don’t get me wrong – I love my daughter madly, and reading “Duck! Rabbit!” to her eclipses the experience of drinking (most) good wines. At least, it does the first 8 times we read the book. After about the 9th time, I admit to thinking longingly of a vintage California sparkler. After the 20th time, a white wine spritzer would do.

Now that my indulgences are back, I find that my relationship with wine has changed somewhat. I can’t afford to drop $20 on a bottle very much any more, which means I drink a lot more duds. Let me tell you, wine isn’t nearly as interesting when it tastes like crap. To all you who don’t like wine much, I honestly think that (a) you may simply not have found the kind of wine you like, or (b) you can’t afford to drink the kind of wine you’d enjoy. I know the latter is frequently the case for me.

And then there’s the fact that the fight for Andrea’s Champion Comfort Ingestion Item has been won by chocolate, once and for all. So when I have a bad day, I don’t think longingly of the great bottle of wine I’m going to open, but rather the great ounce of chocolate I’m going to enjoy. This mindset does not a prolific wine blogger make, let me tell you.

Ironically, I was brought back to blogging through a fundraiser for my daughter’s day care teachers. I volunteered to conduct a wine tasting as part of the event, and some mama friends read the Scamp and praised me for it… which did the trick. (My poor husband, of course, had been telling me for years how great I was at writing about wine, which didn’t even dent my conviction that wine blogging was firmly set in my past. “Thank you, honey, that’s sweet,” I’d say. Like I have time for that anymore, I’d think to myself.) I started writing again, and it’s been about 2 months now of about 2 posts a week. Not bad for a work-full-time-outside-the-home mommy of a toddler, if I do say so myself. Oddly, I find that what brings me back to wine blogging isn’t so much the wine itself as it is making wine more accessible and interesting to people. I guess I’m more of a wine educator than a wine drinker – who knew?

OK, probably everyone knew that already but me. Don’t you hate that?

Happy New Year! A recap of favorite posts

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Happy New Year to you! I’ve been blogging for over a year now, but 2010 was the first full year.

Here’s a recap of some of my favorite posts to entertain you over the weekend. Here’s hoping that everyone begins 2011 with a fresh and relaxing weekend.

Just one of the things nobody warns you about parenthood

My daughter is not the color of food

Finding a Biracial baby doll is starting to stress me out

Being single-ish means more than the fact that I’m not getting laid

Drlogging

The First Sense to go is Fashion: or What the Hell are Jorts?

Apparently I could even be the nanny

The weird wacky world of Motherhood

My sexy muffin top

Speakers on SEO, organization = a spinning head from Bloggy Bootcamp

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Bloggy Bootcamp
Bloggy Bootcamp

Aside from spending a lot of time at the hospital last week, over the weekend I spent my Saturday at Bloggy Bootcamp hosted by SITS Girls. By lunchtime I felt like I had gotten my money’s worth ($125). And by the end of the day, my head was whirling with information, new relationships, and then, there was a cocktail party to go to! Aside from all the education, it was also nice to be in a room full of women and NOT be talking about breastfeeding and potty training.

When I was telling Toyin about it, I told him I felt like I’d just had a semester’s worth of classes crammed into one day. It was an incredible experience for many reasons, one of them being the knowledge that blogging is still highly uncharted territory in the world of communication and media influence.

There’s no telling where the blogosphere will go in the future and I’m excited to be a part of it.

The information shared by six speakers, along with host/organizer Tiffany Romero was so much I worried that I would get home and forget some very important things.

There’s no way I can go over all of the speakers for the day, but the two sessions I found the most informative, because they spoke to my personal needs, were Tip Junkie’s Laurie Turk, who spoke on organization and Angela England from The Untrained Housewife, who spoke on SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Organize your time

The first tip from the Tip Junkie was, get your schedule organized. Set a time to write every day. And secondly, when sitting down to work, do the most important task first. It seems, given my background in journalism that this would be common sense. But it’s been a few years since I was ruled by the world of time clocks instead of child clocks. Child clocks are way less forgiving, and they give you way less time to screw around.

In any case it was nice to hear that I’m not the only person who logs on to Facebook before writing a blog post only to find an hour later, I’ve wasted all my work time looking through baby photos and commenting on my friends’ kids’ bowel functions for the day. Don’t get me wrong. That stuff IS important. But Laurie says, get the big stuff out of the way first, so you can play and not feel guilty about it later.

The Tip Junkie had lots of other great advice for would-be professional bloggers.

Schedule your blog posts for the same time every day. This keeps you on a schedule and it helps your readers know when you’ll have new posts. (Clearly, I don’t do this. I need some serious help in this department!)

Set an alarm for when online time is done. When you’re working against a clock, you’re more likely to get your important tasks done.

And the Tip Junkie didn’t stop there. She had lots of other great tips for making your online presence more organized. Laurie suggests doing these things to your front page:

  • Declutter your sidebar.
  • Use a profile picture, of yourself, not a cupcake.
  • Make sure you have an RSS feed available for your readers. (Yippee! I have that.)
  • Put up links for your social bookmarks. Have at least three. The most obvious are Twitter and Facebook. Pick one more and you’re good to go.
  • Have a search bar. (Score two for me!)
  • If you have sponsors, put them underneath your own stuff. It’s your blog. Make sure you are the top dawg y’all.

These weren’t the only tips the Tip Junkie had for us, that was just the tip of the organizational iceberg.

Humanizing SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

The other topic I found unbelievably informative was on SEO. This talk was given by Angela England from The Untrained Housewife. For months now, SEO has been somewhat of a mystery to me. I’d Google it and come up with vague articles about metrics and keyword searches. I’d ask Toyin to explain it to me and he’d start droning about metrics and keyword searches and my eyes would glaze over. I just didn’t get it.

I understood the concept. Google uses certain keywords to rank web pages in order and the higher your page ranks, the more likely you are to get found.

Then Angela explained it in human terms, while offering practical tips for increasing your rankings.

Google is like a very, very literal child. It doesn’t get witty titles. It doesn’t understand sarcasm or metaphors. It understands words and you must use enough of them, in the right places, and with their actual meanings to make Google understand what the heck you are talking about.

SEO tips

Here are some solid and practical tips from The Untrained Housewife for making our blogs more SEO friendly.

  • Make your titles more active, more literal. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s really boring. But if you want to rank higher in Google, you’ve gotta make the title say what the article is really about.
  • Use bold subheads. See, how I did that up there? Looks like I’ve already learned a couple of things.
  • Cut out fluff. Focus on the topic, don’t meander. That kind of sucks because one of the things I like about blogging is that I was able to meander more than when I used to write news articles. Ah well. Maybe one day we’ll create a more user friendly Google robot.

Here’s an article written by Angela on one of her other sites, about SEO. It’s a briefer version of what we learned at Bloggy Bootcamp.

I’m going to just go ahead and say here that I’m a little embarrassed about not understanding this stuff sooner, because, quite frankly, these are pretty standard journalism rules too. Make it simple and make it obvious. And use lots of words that describe what you are talking about. It all seems so clear now.

More SEO tips

  • Fix your permalink structure to ensure that your URLs reflect the post name. This is an easy to fix setting in WordPress under settings and then permalink.
  • Crossposting is highly valuable, which is why guest posting is a valuable tool for bloggers, not only for new readership, but for higher search rankings.
  • Use keywords in your photo descriptions.
  • And finally, my new favorite blogging tool, the Google Keyword Tool. This is a free tool that lets you put in a word and it will tell you how much it gets searched, other similar search words and the competition rate for those search terms. I’m in love with it already. I feel like a dork for not knowing about this because I’m pretty certain that Toyin has told me about it before. But what the heck, now that I’m a little more tech savvy, maybe I won’t glaze over when he starts talking about metrics and blah, blah, blah.

I’ll have to just start tuning myself out I guess.

When you know you’re really grown up: The third installation of Drlogging

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The other day I was trying to figure out how I would take off the tags from one of Annika’s toys while out in public and I thought, “Maybe I need to get a pocketknife.” This is one of those thoughts that stems from having grown up in west Texas on a ranch. Yeah. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that before. My family lived on a ranch in Trent, Texas for seven years, during some of my formative years (7-14).

I know I’ve gotten old because I can remember a time when it wasn’t an unusual thought for a mother of four to see pocketknives at the local five-and-dime and go, “Hey, those would make nice stocking stuffers for the kids!”

Yep, I really did own more than one personal pocketknife before the age of 10. You can’t make this shit up people.

I know I’m getting older because the world has changed so dramatically since I was a kid.

When I was a child I swear to all that is holy I was certain that by the time I was the age I am now (38) we would have flying cars. I am still a little pissed that we don’t. I’m sure the technology is there, but can you imagine the bureaucratic bullshit we’d have to go through to get them in the air? Think of the traffic laws.

People would have to learn how to read longitude and latitude. We’d have hologram Stop signs. There would be airplanes constantly buzzing around drawing traffic lines and when you get pulled over, you could be all, “But officer, the white line was fading, it’s not my fault the crop duster ran out of gas!”

The thought of it reminds me a little of learning how to drive when I lived in Okinawa, Japan.

My ex was in the Air Force and we lived there for three years. In Japan, they drive on the other side of the road, because of the British occupation and all after WWII. That wasn’t the scary part. Although, I won’t deny having had plenty of brain fart moments where I accidentally drove on the right (wrong) side of the road. Luckily, it only happened on base, and the military police were pretty forgiving about that kind of stuff.

No, the scary part about learning to drive in Okinawa was the way Japanese people drive. If you’ve ever been to New York City, multiply that times 1000 and then add in the fact that the people who are screaming and honking at you speak another language and you don’t understand the street signs. Okinawa is extremely hilly too, which means if you are not on a main road, chances are you can’t see much more than 50 feet in front of you. Add in the fact that most of the roads are only about a car-and-a-half wide. That means that when you’re driving, you’re essentially playing chicken and as soon as you both get to a about 10 feet from hitting each other, you both swerve (and scream the first 20 times) and then keep on going.

It’s fucking nerve wracking at first. But then after awhile, you get used to it and it seems pretty normal. Then you move back to the United States and you’re all, “Wow, these roads are HUGE!” And then you feel sad because you feel like you bonded a little with those people you came close to dying with over and over again.

My point is, and I will admit here that I really don’t have one. I’m a little drunk. For the past few nights I’ve fallen asleep with Annika and not gotten to drink from the three bottles of wine I found on sale at CVS. Needless to say, when I awoke at 2:30 this morning, I was kind of peeved and yearning for a drink. I laid (is is that right? I don’t know) in bed for about half an hour reading Facebook and Twitter then I decided, WTF, I’m 38-effing-years old. I can get up and have a glass of wine if I want to. It’ll help me sleep. So I did.

The End.

Moving into a new realm as a blogger, RUDE comments!

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It was bound to happen. I got my first hateful, vitriolic, spewing comment on my last post Dr-logging. Before you read it though, let me set you up with some context.

Before digital cameras, when we were in our teens, my older brother once took a dump so glorious and huge that he snagged my mom’s camera and took a photo. I’m not sure if he did it for bragging rights with his buddies or to shock our mother. Whatever his reasoning, it definitely had the latter effect as she was flipping through family photos fresh from the developer. Once she got over her shock though, my mom shared that photo with the rest of the family and we all had a good laugh over it.

One thing I do like about my family is that we all have a pretty infantile sense of humor.

When I got this comment, I felt how my mother probably felt. After I got over my shock and queasiness, I realized that it isn’t so bad. I mean, it’s just one person’s interpretation of a small group of words from a person she doesn’t know. The comment isn’t funny and it is definitely less tasteful than my brother’s contribution to the commode, but I don’t take it personally. In fact, I think this comment says more about the person who wrote it, than me, the person she wrote it about.

So, in all it’s gloriousness, I give you, Momsoap readers, a huge steaming pile of shit. Enjoy!


Note: I removed the first line of the comment because it insinuated something horrible that I don’t want to think about and I think it’s bad karma to repeat it.

From Amy, apparently a huge fan:

“Don’t blame your parents for your lack of class.. (sic) You are lucky they still talk to you at all. Looking at this from the outside . (sic) You have alot (sic) more work to do.. (sic) Very infantile. You strike me as very “Me ” oriented and incredible spoiled. Did your Mother poison you? .. (sic) Beat you.? (sic) make you leave home to fend for yourself @ 13? No? then (sic) straighten the f up.. (sic) Show some class and respect. Since you no longer want or need them . Don’t go calling for your slice of their pie…when they die. People like you should live on an island.. (sic) If you don’t teach your child consequences they learn they can do whatever, to whomever, when ever.. (sic) The prisons are full of “Time Out Children” Everyone hates something about their parents or we would live at home forever…. Do your child a favor … Show her how powerful a working mother can be…. (sic) Get a job .. (sic) Then maybe you would’nt (sic) have so much time to bitch about how awful your life is and maybe you would actually have a life . (sic) which means you would’nt (sic) have time to write all this CRAP… (sic)

Your parents are your Parents.. (sic) You will miss them when they are gone and will have regrets because you wasted so much time being a self absorbed child,…REALLY!”

That’s the end. Me again.

For the record, Dr-logging is something I do at home, with a couple of glasses of wine or beer, when Annika is gone with her father. And when I said I am still a drunk, I meant the common agreement in our society that once you are a drunk, you are always a drunk. I do not drink heavily anymore.

I chose not to publish this comment with the post because it’s insulting, rude, wrong (as in, incorrect) on many levels, and distasteful. Amy may say the same about my posts, but hey, it’s my blog. Nobody’s holding a gun to her head and forcing her to read it.

However, the ex-newspaper reporter in me couldn’t in all consciousness just delete it. However, insulting and gross it is, it’s the opinion of a reader. (And it’s my first nasty comment! I am a big fan of firsts.) I would never want anyone to think I just post comments by people who love me even though there is no code of ethics for bloggers saying that I have to publish this big steamy pile of poop.

The end.

Oh, p.s. Amy, if you had read very many of my posts, you would have known that you didn’t need to write “f” instead of fuck. Obscenities are completely welcome here. Maybe you should let one out every once in a while. It might relax that huge stick in your ass.