washwords

UPDATE: well whaddya know? The offending site has closed registration. hmmmm, cause that convinces me the posters were legit.

As a former journalist, and current federal government employee (for an organization respected for its non-partisan nature), I generally keep my politics to myself and I definitely try to keep them off the blog. It’s one of the reasons I’ve kept this blog quasi-anonymous. ¹ Probably the closest I’ve come to politcal posting is linking to other folks’ political posts or maybe my  convention haikus.

But one thing (okay two things)  I do feel free to rant about: 1) word abuse and/or 2) people who use words to try to manipulate. (See, for example, “Toxic”.²

And when I hear people calling Sarah Palin a feminist or a choice for the Hillary-supporters, I feel angry, politicized. When I see folks, my SISTERS and fellow women (presumably) ³  writing pages and pages and PAGES of vitriol anti-obama and pro “lady VP at all costs, yay!” I feel sad. Really sad. Read more »

or are we going on about the wrong things?

For example:

1) Miley Cyrus in the (red satin) sheet(s.) Okay, maybe it’s because I’m not a mom (of a teenage girl), but I don’t get it. Miley poses for an artistic lovely shot by one of the world’s best photographers and it’s a National Crisis. Meanwhile, Jamie Lyn Spears (same approximate age) gets pregnant and gets a RAISE, not to Read more »

One of the things I love most about the blogosphere is the strange and wonderful ease with which you can find people and topics of interest, some by design and others by wonderful accident. See my blogroll below, at the bottom of the page, which contains both friends, some of who encouraged me to write (again); and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, the fabulous things I’ve found, some via these friends, some by searching for terms or concepts (poetry!, washington!, pope!) and some by true and beautiful serendipitous accident.

But what happens when these two worlds collide? What if, by complete and seemingly implausible accident, you stumble onto some beautiful writing… but beautiful writing of someone who is not exactly a stranger, but not a friend, exactly either.

I stumbled onto the writing of “C” (not her real name, to protect the very much innocent) this way. C, some Read more »