About a month ago, Haloscan, the company that provided the commenting interface for this blog, went under and I switched to something call ECHO by JS-Kit.

It isn't working very well. Some people have been unable to comment, either because the commenting box doesn't show up or because they are told that their comments are too long (even though they aren't). Sometimes the comments don't load for a long time, which slows the loading time of the blog.

Unfortunately, the blogging software I use is only compatible with ECHO, but I am actively looking for other platforms that might work. In the meantime, if you would like to comment but can't or have been having problems, please let me know at writingtosurvive(at)gmail.com or fill out my contact me form. I apologize for the hassle and hope that I can come up with a solution quickly, or that the folks at JS-Kit can help.

Image: My mother and me on a non-windy day in December at the Berkeley Marina.

Tags: JS-Kit, Halocan, rapidweaver, rapidweaver commenting problems, Comments, Echo, technical glitches

George "Knobby" Michael?

You can try to get to this blog directly by searching on just my first and last names, but Google won't send you here. Despite the fact that writing to survive is mine and I have the metadata to prove it, most people who are looking for Jennifer Trinkle arrive by way of my guest post at La Belette Rouge or via PublicLiterature.Org. At least Bing puts writing to survive on the first page of results when you search for my name. But the blog itself doesn't have enough Internet power or back links or whatever it takes to convince most search engines that it's mine.

Some people who end up here via Google or Yahoo are looking for information on myelofibrosis. Although I did write a post about Kevin's death from the disease, I want you to know that his ending was dramatic. Atypical. He lived almost ten years after his diagnosis, which is also very unusual for someone who was diagnosed relatively young. Kevin was waiting for a stem cell transplant when things fell apart, which may have saved him, but might have hastened his death, too, if it hadn't been too late anyway. Every time someone lands here looking for information on the disease I feel guilty, since the ending of his story was so idiosyncratic and terrible. It's not like this for everyone. It isn't, really. There's hope.

But at least these searches make some sense, are tied to a particular name or a disease that I discuss in a bit of detail. And the searches for writing prompts or writing to survive have led people to the right place, though I think that the person searching for writing prompt using a toaster really needs to visit one of koe's blogs. Based on the keywords, however, a lot of you who end up here through an Internet search leave disappointed. Writing to survive is a friendly place. I want to answer your questions, want to give you what you seek, so once again, I will attempt to provide clarity, to transmit information.

Yes, this is not a squirrel blog.

Perhaps you were looking for birching stories, or variations on the theme (victorian birching stories, birch corporal punishment, bad boys birching stories). Or you were looking for information -- or something else -- about drunken teenage hookups. One person arrived by searching on the domain name submissivelouise.com. There are no birching stories here, though I did once mention a neighbor's birch tree, and while I took part in more than one drunken teenage hookup back when I was a drunken teenager, I don't tend to write about such things, at least not in the way you might hope. As for submissive Louise, I wrote a brief post about a dog with that name who was not the dominant type.

Some searches are from people looking for answers to matter-of-fact questions: Why is George Michael's nickname Knobby? (Beats me.) Can stork bites spread? (Not the birthmark variety.) How do puffins survive in the cold? (Sweaters and booties.) Can one survive on writing? (Not alone.)

Other queries get me wondering: How did Duran Duran's John Taylor cut his foot in 1984? Was he badly hurt? Was the search on an interesting story about me is i was 8 i was trapped inside of a burning building. it was about 2:00 a.m. when my father smelled smoke in the kitchen a misplaced copy and paste or was this person hoping that someone else in the Interlands had written about his or her private life story? Who "gestures and halts and falls"?

Footsie, neighbor?

I can tell you the good and bad about xylitol. Bad: it can kill your dog, though our dog survived her small exposure. Good: it is low in calories and oh so sweet. Will it make your gerbil listless and cold? Perhaps. But I don't know a thing about xylitol squirrels and this is definitely not a squirrel blog (Or a blog about autodidacticism).

Google leads you here, seekers of information. You are hungry for stories, for hard facts, for the light of knowledge. But once you get here, do you stay? Do you note the address and come back and visit from time to time? Not necessarily. I need better keywords, need to provide the right breadcrumb trail. I need better search engine optimization.

I need clarity.



Confidential to I'm in love with a childhood friend: Most of us have all been through it. Examine your feelings and figure out what's really going on. If it is really love, fess up and get it over with. Good things may happen. Maybe you can become footsie neighbors, or at the very least, you can move on with your life.

Squirrel image from here.

Foot image from here.

Tags: Fred, Jennifer Trinkle, stork bites, puffins, Google, search engines, search strategies, SEO, search engine optimization, the half-life of linoleum, xylitol and dogs, Squirrels, 80s music, keywords, myelofibrosis, La Belette Rouge, Bing

My parents, all gussied up for the 1968 Senior Prom. Oh, if I could only still hold you two responsible for my neurotic ways! Instead, I will use you as photographic filler.

1. I find this task terrifying. Why? On one hand, I am pretty boring. On the other, I have all these worries that I am used to keeping mainly to myself. I am neurotic, for lack of a better term. So I find myself thinking of writing things here like "I am pathetic and antisocial." or "If you met me in the flesh, you'd be questioning whether I was really the person who writes this stuff." OK. Let's just say I'm insecure.

2. To continue in the same vein, now that it is possible that a lot of people from my past, childhood friends, old high school buddies, people who knew me in college, read this blog, I wonder what they think about these stories of mine. Did any of them know this stuff already? Do they look back at me with kindness or do they judge me? I'll never know, so I think I'll go for the kindness angle.

3. I will listen to a song over and over again when I have it stuck in my mind. Recent selections include Finish What You Started, All Come True, Funk #49, and Hot Sauce. Oh, and Ball and Biscuit.

4. While I am a good cook, some might even say a great cook, the only things that my son will eat in my presence are noodles with butter and cheese, packaged macaroni and cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches, pizza crusts, and rice and beans from Chipotle (yes, he even refuses my rice and beans). Pasta with cream sauce? No. Soothing, buttery polenta? I don't think so. Anything with a green fleck or two in it? You must be joking. This would drive anyone crazy, but I had an epiphany the other night about why it was driving me murderously crazy. I have "meal issues," probably from a childhood of bad dinner table experiences, from being made to stand at the table as a three-year-old on a regular basis, to being totally ignored or berated by my former stepfather at mealtime, to finally being rejected as a dinner partner by my mother and Kevin when I was fourteen. My son's unhappiness with my food offerings felt, well, deeply personal. Once I realized this, my irritation level at his dietary preferences went down several notches. Though I still find them maddening.

5. You know that I don't drive, right? But did you also know that I don't bike, skateboard, scoot or Segway? It's a wheel thing, I suppose.

6. I really should be working on my novel. On my good (or is that "crazy"?) days, I have these grandiose notions of the brilliance of my writing. On my bad (or is that "realistic"?) days, I think my writing will never amount to anything. So blogging keeps me going while also distracting me from the larger purpose.

7. I hold on to people in my mind, keep crushes for decades, never really forget a friend, even if I haven’t spoken to them directly since middle school or even earlier. These attachments keep me plugged into the world, gossamer threads from my mind to yours. All it takes is a little tug -- a photo, an email, a similar name -- for me to conjure up the smells, the meal, the pains and joys, that awkward conversation we had fifteen years ago.

8. It could be that three cats, one dog, one child, one husband, a two-story house, and a backyard is too much. So I don't vacuum nearly as often as I should, the toilet needs scrubbing, and I finally stopped watering the impatiens after six months of careful attention.

9. My only regret is that I should have kissed him when I had the chance. Just to get it out of my head. This was years ago, when I was so focused on doing the right thing, on keeping a tenuous hold on my first marriage. But that kiss will never happen and as time goes by, the moment and its importance feel more and more distant. Still, I think about it sometimes and try to console myself with the fact that it would have been destined to end badly and my desire would have gone the way of most, shot through with sadness and regret.

10. I talk to my mother on the phone almost every day. Sometimes more than once a day. I worry about whether this is healthy, not because of our conversations or how I feel afterwards (I feel fine), but mainly because I think it can stand in for interactions with other people, like people on this coast or friends I haven't spoken to in ages. Maybe it gets in the way of potential friendships. Maybe I should pick up the phone and call my father every once in a while. Or maybe I'm just neurotic and worry too much.

There you go. Another morning of novel-writing gone. But this was more fun.

Tags: Awards, blogging, Honest Scrap Award, La Belette Rouge

Surely there are hidden meanings everywhere, waiting to be uncovered. This was my hypothesis when I started my latest self-improvement project “Barbara’s Weekly Epiphany.” All I had to do was approach the world with a childlike sense of wonder, to keep my eyes and mind open, maybe even wear my heart on my sleeve. All of that information that has beaded off my consciousness, repelled by my cynical attitude and “been, there, done that” grubby cliché-ridden approach was going to be captured now, in a mind as open as my VW sunroof on a light-pierced June afternoon.

I started a blog about the project, wanting to share my insights with others: epiphanyquota.blogspot.com. First epiphany? You have to sell your ideas, sell yourself, if you want to succeed. You have to believe in you, or no one else will. Second epiphany:  fake it ‘til you make it is more true than you think. Third epiphany? In the middle of a crowded public park, if you close your eyes and quiet your thoughts, you will hear the vibration of the world, the sound of its heartbeat.

The blog started getting a fan base, made up mostly of earnest young men drawn by the stock photo I’d put up that looked vaguely like me fifteen years ago. They were drawn by that and the supportive and slightly flirtatious comments I’d left on their own blogs, encouraging observations on the quality of their writing, the strength of narrative voice and character, how close I felt to them though we’d never met. These exchanges led to other epiphanies, ones that I didn’t share on the blog:  bullshit actually works; the reality of the online world both mirrors and denies the reality of the solid world; men will believe anything.

One of them -- let's call him Brad, a name that fits in its brevity and practicality, that matches his corny, Hemingwayesque writing style -- got a little too interested. How was I supposed to know that he would take my ego-stroking seriously? I thought I had covered my tracks (always cover your tracks, a too-late epiphany), but somehow he found my phone number. I have an old habit of letting the machine pick up and would stand over it, listening to these silences injected with anticipation, the light touch of breath, the occasional throat-clearing. The messages hovered in the air, sticky and thick, for hours after the caller hung up. Brad eventually told me he was responsible, in an email where he attached a photo of someone, I presume himself, in flagrante. I immediately moved the sordid pic to the trash, changed my number, and blocked his emails. There are some sick fucks out there.

I type this in my ratty old bathrobe, a mangy Pomeranian on my lap. But I could be lying. You never know.


*From a Round Robin prompt last winter ("my latest epiphany"). Every word of this is made up. Really. And I'm all for positive thinking, have spent years faking it and am on the cusp of making it.

Image: "Epiphany," Henry Ascensio. From Tavistock Gallery.

Tags: satire, online identities, power of positive thinking, cliches, epiphanies, flash fiction

Tags: blogging, blogging break, guest post, home, the things we carry, La Belette Rouge

But that isn't the point of this post. I want to apologize for being an absent presence in the blogging world. I haven't been up to visiting or commenting on blogs. Updating this one has become increasingly time-consuming. Because of the software I use, every time I have a new post I must export the entire blog and then upload it onto a server, a process that take about half an hour or more. It isn't simple or quick. Writing the posts takes a long time, too, sometimes five or six hours. I have limited writing time and have to start pursuing freelance work. There are a few reasons for this, including the fact that my husband is about to take the equivalent of an 8% salary cut through 21 furlough days in the next year. (Ahhh, California!) I would also like to chip away at longer stories and to deepen my writing which just isn't possible in the blog format.

I'll be a more present online presence soon, one way or another. In the meantime, please don't take it personally that I haven't been by. I'm trying to be present in my own life, figuring out a way to get beyond the longing to immerse myself in deep narrative. To move beyond the longing, I have to leap in or give up. I have no intention of giving up.

Image: Rainbow in Berkeley, June 2009.

Tags: Morphine, blogging, rainbow in Berkeley, writing, storytelling, blogging break, Pets, rapidweaver, california

I was tentative at first, hid myself behind veils and a false name. Over time, the veils slipped away, I walked out from behind the curtain, showed my face to the light, revealed my name and purpose. And being seen is ok. It's good. I want people to know me for who I am, for who I was, to keep the secrets from defining me.

Because the secrets don't define me. Even better, after seeing the light of day, after being transformed into stories, they have become almost irrelevant, forming and transforming experiences, important ones, but not the core of who I am.

Visitors to this Web page, however, may have a different impression. In the interest of shaping writing to survive to better reflect reality and also to bring a more professional feel to the page, I have made a few changes. They're subtle — a new tag line, slightly different selections in Excerpts from Life, a more complete look to the food writing page, which I've renamed Kitchen Detour. Most of the old stuff is still here, stories of angst, secrets revealed, but you have to dig a little deeper to find it.

Next post: Crumbling beneath the Formstone. Or something along those lines, with a departure from post titles derived from pop music.

(Image: Mirror, Little House by Jennifer Trinkle, 1986.)

Tags: blogging, self-promotion, secrets, anonymity, emotional striptease

Back when I was into admiring my own legs. Mirror, Little House, 1986?

I wonder if he (or she: yeah, right!) was disappointed. From a little box on Google or AOL or Yahoo, he typed "she was drunk" naked legs and somehow ended up at writing to survive. Yeah, I've written the sentence she was drunk here once, in one of my short pieces of fiction. Check one. Certainly legs come up somewhere on the blog, perhaps in that same piece, but for sure in Heartbreaker with the line admiring my legs in the dashboard light. Check two. And you might notice a link to Robin Easton's wonderful blog Naked in Eden along the sidebar. Check three.

But did this anonymous surfer, this seeker of information on a drunken woman, perhaps one with naked legs, leave happy?

I'll never know.

What about the Bertie Wooster fan who typed in their hero's name but added an interesting second search term: birching? I have never written about this practice, a form of corporal punishment that involves hitting someone's bare skin (usually the buttocks) with a birch rod, though I have mentioned the Neighbornator's birch tree. Google lumps the blameless tree together with its not-so-innocent use. Combine the search engine's folly with my post on a crush -- I had a nickname for him, a code word really, so that I could write it in my notebooks without fear of discovery. Bertie Wooster. -- and another imprecise conclusion is reached.

There is always an answer, some reason why writing to survive becomes a search result. It's no mystery. You can look at the keywords and the text to figure it out. Still, I have to wonder why some people decide to click on a link to this blog when there are better sources of information out there. For example, yes, Happy Easter the hamster may have been in the early stages of rigor mortis when we found his corpse in the basement, but this doesn't mean that I know anything about the actual process, what the body goes through after death. Inevitably the people searching on how long rigor mortis gerbil and how long does it take until rigor mortis disappears had to move on to more authoritative sources. And, sad soul who turned to the internet to find out whether hamster rat poison survive, I think that the two are a fatal combination, though you have my deepest sympathy. I've been there.

Google searchers, AllTheWeb seekers, AltaVista clickers, I'll never know if you found what you were looking for, if what you sought was on this blog, because you probably didn't leave a comment, just came and skimmed. Most of you left in a hurry, though a few clicked through a page or two. I'd like to know, was it satisfying? Did you leave happy, or did you still feel a yearning for information you didn't receive?

There are stories behind every search. The people who usually end up here are often led by a sense of anxiety, fear, or worry. I'd like to soothe, to provide reassurance. In that spirit, I give you the below list, question and answer, taken from the searches that led people here.

can my relationship survive if I am twenty years her senior?
It depends.

crush on married woman
I'm a married woman who is prone to long term crushes (though I seem to stay away from married men even in my fantasy life). I never expect anyone to have a crush on me. Enjoy the unreality of it all and don't go any further.

dysfunctional families at easter dinner
What makes Easter dinner different from any other dysfunctional family dinner? It will be predictable, probably unpleasant. Prepare yourself.

explain hangover to parents
They've probably experienced a hangover before and know the symptoms, but you can always blame it on a tummy bug. Chances are they will choose to believe you. How old are you, anyway?

My striptease saved my marriage
Is this a hope or a statement of fact? I am doubtful of the ability of striptease to save anyone's marriage.

Bad stepmother blogs
Despite my one post complaining about her (which no longer feels relevant, but served a purpose at the time), I love my stepmother and would never claim that she is bad. Still, I'm sure there are plenty of blogs out there that discuss "bad" stepmothers. This isn't one of them.

Just remember: someone knows what you've been looking for, or at least they know the words you've chosen in an attempt to find it. Luckily, though, they don't know your name. Not yet, anyway.

(For an earlier post on the same topic, see How did you get here?)

Tags: Google, search engines, internet searches, irrelevant results, keywords, misleading tags, search strategies

Tags: The long goodbye, writing prompt, blogging, Joe Jackson, faction, blogging break, grandfather, grandmother, burn injuries, friends in the blogosphere

Tags: Free Bird, Beauty & the Beast, End of the blog, Lynyrd Skynyrd, drama camp, The long goodbye

Gabby Hyman, of Dr. Bob's Nightmare

For Ginsberg's was the syncopated flurry of Coltrane, a cool hipster rap sung in crowded bookstore reading rooms thick with tobacco smoke and a counterpoint of cheap Mexican weed. Bad Gerry was sung to Vivaldi played on a sturdy hi-fi set as you gazed out a dormer window across the Monongahela River where black sparrows alit like a puff of factory smoke in a tree laid nude by winter.

Tags: blog of the month

Tags: blogging break, Best of writing to survive

Revellian Dot Com: Reader Beware. Some of the time.

I can’t do it.

I can’t possibly sum up Revellian.Com. Even its tag line, Psycho-Linguistical Dialectology: From the Edge, while pithy and funny and in a sense descriptive, doesn’t do blogger Bobby Revell’s work justice.

I could say that one of the hallmarks of Bobby’s blog is his transgressional fiction, dark tales with vivid descriptions and on-the-brink characters oozing bodily fluids and squinting through a lucid haze. These stories may not be for everyone. As I write, the latest post on Revellian.Com is "The Demon Witch: Sexual Psychotropic," with lines like "Undulating intentions as she oozed, sticky slime slug melting atop as we engrafted–merging fluidic flesh. She hungered for my warmth and I for iced mucous–malignant sludge folding into one. Suckling human lozenge." Perhaps this is not your cup of tea (and you have been warned). But even a squeamish type–like me, for example–can see the humor and surreal eloquence in Bobby’s fiction.

To call Revellian.Com a horror fiction blog would be misleading. Balancing out the fiction are articles on blogging, with content that delivers. Bobby picks apart the world of money-making blogs and cuts right to the chase on Entrecard, arguing that while it helps raise stats, the quality of the Entrecard traffic is generally low, with most participants staying just long enough to drop. He also takes on the "holy trinity" of Twitter, Facebook, and StumbleUpon.

Just when you think you've gotten this blog figured out, that it's a little transgressional fiction mixed in with informative blogging tips, Bobby gets personal, writing about his struggles with depression. He discusses philosophy. And to lighten things up, there’s twisted humor as well!

Revell has been writing most of his life. He is also (among many other things) a guitarist and a student of several martial arts and the practice of Zen, interested in "the mysteries of human thought and everything in between." He believes "in truth, not mythology." And his platform, Revellian.Com is definitely worth a closer look, no matter your predilections.

Tags: blog of the month

Jennifer recovering from a late night, 1988? Or another photo to continue the ruse?

How would you feel if I was actually a 25-year-old male advertising copywriter from Peoria? What if I really lived in Buffalo, NY? Or if I was pushing 70, mother to a multitude of now middle aged children, grandmother to teenagers, a Brit using the blog to flesh out a character? This "Jennifer" person you think you've been reading could be someone I’ve been keeping in my back pocket for years. writing to survive might be some kind of grand fictional experiment, an attempt to create a flesh and bones person out of ethereal imagination.

And my stories? What if these were figments, scraps from my mind, absolute fiction masquerading as angst-ridden past? It could be that you've been reading full-blown literary lies à la Margaret B. Jones, the wannabe memoirist who made up a gangland childhood. Turns out my parents have been married for forever, I waited until marriage (or at least love) to have sex, and I’ve never touched a drop of alcohol. Oh, and that isn’t my son, he’s a nephew (never mind that I have no nephew).

Would you feel betrayed?

Don't worry. I don’t have it in me to lie like that, though you'll mainly have to take my word for it and trust your gut. There were times in high school and college when I was a serial liar, self-serving and hidden. My mother believed the stories about my solo nights, even when my boyfriend's car was parked right outside the Little House ("Oh, the car? Dirk leaves it there when he goes to the Cassady's. Sometimes he's had too much to drink, so he stays at their place for the night." "That's exactly what I thought, Jenna.") Later, I hid my unfaithfulness from my college boyfriends, created a protective distance by pursuing empty hopes with relative strangers.

Living a life of lies is a dirty business. I was becoming unrecognizable, murky, untrustworthy, a bad friend. So I stopped lying and regained a hold on fidelity. And while those old kinds of lies are no longer tempting, I still struggle with my tendency to exaggerate minor facts or to deny my feelings. Attempting to be good is a life-long process.

There is a difference between making things up to avoid punishment and creating stories to entertain. Stories aren't lies (and sometimes the lies we tell in our life stories aren't fibs either). If the blog tale is well-told, the characters believable, the created world tangible, so real you can taste it, does it matter if it actually happened? How would you know if it did?

We’re taking it all on faith in this blogging world, want to believe that everyone is who they present themselves to be. For the most part, I think people are genuine. Yes, we have plenty of time to shape our online selves, but we’re generally real. Still …

There must be bloggers, perhaps ones you read every day, who have created fiction under the guise of truth. Their blogs are ostensibly about their day to day existence, may even include some pieces of fiction or poetry or personal essay, but some of the facts have been turned inside out.

Maybe the writer doesn’t want to be identified, or is playing, having fun being someone else. The character that demanded life is finally born in a blog, fully realized, solid, interactive (the fresh-eyed college graduate moving back to her hometown; the landlocked fly fisherman reminiscing about his days of streams and trout; the tech-savvy doting grandma with an herbal tea obsession, a minor character in a SAHM's life). Or they add a totally fictional detail, erase a husband, gain a Weimaraner, make a virtual move from Asheville to Albany.

And what of it? Readers are entertained, the writer has an enthusiastic, satisfied audience. These are tenuous connections we have, the lengths of spider's silk stretching across the ether from blogger to blogger. Many of us have never even spoken. In these circumstances, does the truth matter?

I'm still trying to figure that one out.

Tags: blogging, truth, lies, fiction, faction, facts, fictional characters, trust, memoir, openness, storytelling

In the beginning, there was Anonmomous.

Then it was simply Jennifer. But there were slip-ups. The PublicLiterature.Org stories with my full name. The e-mails I sent to others from my personal gmail account. The few blogging awards that went to Jennifer Fullname instead of to just Jennifer.

My father found the blog. I accidentally sent an e-mail to my ex-husband from the writing to survive account and I'm pretty sure he's been here. I have a sneaking suspicion that my brother-in-law has visited at least once. A friend from elementary school found me here. For a while the first hit on a Google search of my name (yeah, I google my own name. I'm not the only one, right?) was the blog, for reasons that are somewhat mysterious. Until today, the two weren't directly connected.

It's one thing to write to complete strangers. It's quite another to realize that people who may be a part of my story are reading. Or that casual friends might come upon this and find out more than they ever wanted to know about me. But as I kept on leaving the door ajar, I realized that I want to be open, needed it. What's there to hide? Just me.

So.



Here I am.

Jennifer Trinkle.

All other names have been changed to protect the innocent. In most cases.

Tags: openness, anonymity, secrets

Candy Tothill of Inside Candy

I am officially jealous. Well, not exactly jealous, just dumbstruck with admiration. South African blogger Candy Tothill is a business owner, a mother to three, and one hell of a writer (who in her spare time is working on a book). Her blog, Inside Candy, is an enticing combination of poetry, rant, and keen observation.

Candy’s writing is evocative. Her poems dance around sadness and loss as she captures the elusive nature of a moment or a fleeting thought, the glimpse into someone else's window, a view into another way of being. In between the poems, she mixes it up with critiques on South African politics and thoughts about life. And while there's a lot of good stuff on her blog, she's written for several publications, too.

So, what are you waiting for? As Candy says, "Be not afraid. It will only offend readers to whom life itself is offensive."

Tags: blog of the month, Reviews, writing

I let the first U.S. punk compilation slip out of my hands. Album cover from Rate Your Music.

Jean of Jean’s Musings – a lovely blog that I recommend highly – has passed a meme my way, a request to list five things that you might not know about me. Given how much I’ve revealed here, that’s a tall order, but I think I can dredge up some obscure facts.

*I once had a Secret security clearance. The think tank I worked for did a lot of work for the defense department and the library was responsible for the classified document collection. Getting the clearance was nerve-wracking, as was the proximity to potential national secrets. It was a relief to leave it behind.

*Although we do have a television, I don't watch it (this despite the fact that we've had mysterious cable access in our last two houses).

*Punk music was the soundtrack of my life for a long time. I knew my now-husband was a good match after we watched a movie that included the song Viva Las Vegas. As we were leaving the theater I told him “Every time I hear that song I …” He finished the sentence, “think of the Dead Kennedys version?” That’s right. Ahh, love.

*I got my license at 25 (or was that 26?), but I don’t drive. You wouldn’t want me to. Trust me.

*Despite a lifelong allergy to cats, I have never lived without at least one kitty, except for a brief pet-free period in college and graduate school. They are worth the asthma, the itchy eyes, the mounds of tissues.

An extra fact: I’ve got some recipes in the Nov/Dec issue of Vegetarian Times, along with a short profile in the contributers column. Go to your newsstand or local library and take a look. I'll be putting up more information on the Food Writing section eventually.

If you have your own five facts, I'd love to read them.

And for your listening pleasure, Viva Las Vegas!

Tags: Memes, Music, job, Dead Kennedys, Punk, Viva Las Vegas, VT, driving, cats

Tags: Awards, Reviews, Memes

The Georgia Wonder

This month's featured blog, the Virtual Dime Museum, is a shift from personal history -- October’s Melindaville -- to popular history, offering a change of pace for November.

The Virtual Dime Museum provides a peek at advertisements, news stories, and sundry entertainments from the mid-1800s into the early 20th century. It is full of oddities and bizarre medical concoctions, sideshows and haunted houses. Writer Lidian, born and raised in New York City and now living in Canada, has created an entertaining and well-written three-ring circus of pop history, Brooklyn and New York history, and Victorian pop culture.

The Big Bad Bilious Wolf

Whether it’s digging up an 1896 item about a skeleton hand found in Flatbush or profiling Victorian fascinations such as the animated bust, Lidian brings a sense of humor to the Virtual Dime Museum. Her interests in genealogy and history combined with her mad research and writing skills results in a diverting and dryly funny read. And if you like your pop history a little more recent, check out her other blog of kitsch and camp, Kitchen Retro.

Tags: blog of the month

What could life be like after recovery from hardcore drug addiction?

Today Melinda Roberts Tyler is a successful and award-winning professor of psychology, happily married to her soulmate, full of warmth and gratitude for life. Over fifteen years ago, however, she was a heroin and cocaine addict living on the streets of San Francisco, at rock bottom with very little will to live.

Melindaville chronicles her journey from hardcore addict to honors student and professor. It is a fascinating, though often harrowing, story. After moving to San Francisco to pursue an acting career in the early 1980s, Melinda gets involved in the burgeoning punk scene and performs as part of the band Wild Women of Borneo. Along the way she becomes an exotic dancer and high-priced call girl, as well as demonstrates an entrepreneurial spirit by starting “the world’s first fantasy phone service,” Julie’s Hotline. As her dependency on drugs intensifies, her life begins to fall apart. It takes twelve years of addiction before she begins to put it back together again.

The blog contains excerpts from her memoir in progress (working title: Lost and Found: A Journey) as well as consciousness-raising posts on the nature of addiction as a health, not moral, issue, with underlying causes and more sophisticated solutions than “just say no.”

Melinda’s ultimate goal is to use the proceeds of her eventual book sales to fund a foundation for sex workers. Drug addiction and the sex industry are intertwined. Many sex workers choose that path after suffering childhoods of abuse. Maybe they start working in the business to support an existing habit or begin using just to get through the workday. Drugs like heroin or cocaine provide compelling comfort in a small package, a way to numb the pain of the past and present.

Melinda plans to fund treatment and higher education for these men and women who are so often invisible and voiceless. I can think of no better champion.

Tags: blog of the month

and

Karen has another blog, Five Little Kids Named Larrow, where she writes stories about a very difficult childhood with an amazing clear-headedness, capturing the child’s innocent point of view. I think she's courageous, too, as well as a fine writer and photographer. Through the struggles of the past and present, she always finds a way to rise above. Thank you, Karen. You really are a good friend.

Also last week, Dori of A Yellow House in England passed the I Love Your Blog award along. Dori’s blog is about her adventures as an American expat married to a Brit. Written in a breezy conversational style with tales of little towns she visits and other stories from her life, A Yellow House is a fun read with some nice photography as well.

Finally, Susan Helene Gottfried of West of Mars not only received a bunch of awards (no shock there!), but she also gave a shout-out to blogs she enjoys reading, including writing to survive. Go to her blog to read her always-engrossing fiction, to peruse book reviews, or just to join in on the conversation.

I’ve been in a bit of a blogging slump lately, not feeling creative or chatty enough to leave comments. I’m getting tired of dropping my Entrecard all over the place. I haven't had much to post about. Even in my current ennui, I recognize that this virtual universe has helped bring me back to life. Blogging and the support of fellow bloggers can take a large part of the credit for connecting me with the world again, not only after a hard year in a strange place, but also after many years of keeping most people at a polite distance, years of sitting on my secrets and keeping my mouth shut.

This wasn't even the point of starting a blog for me initially. Building a community was far from my mind. I just needed an impetus to start writing. In that sense blogging has helped me connect back to myself, has helped the words flow.

I’m not sure where I’ll be going with this space. Starting next month, I will be taking a writing course in which will entail writing every day, including holidays and weekends. I hope this little push will not only help me find a local community but will also propel my writing forward. It doesn’t mean I’ll stop blogging or commenting, but it does mean that I will have to cut back. Or maybe I'll bring you all along with me on this new venture with updates and postings of my half-baked work. I don't know exactly how it will work.

What I do know is that I am grateful for my blogging friends. You have supported me on my journey and I look forward to having you along for the rest of the ride.

Thank you.

Tags: Awards, Comments, writing

• Hangover existential angst
• Underwater handstand
• How to survive traveling with a crazy boyfriend
• Brain nubbin
• Capricious father
• We have nothing in common but love – can our marriage survive
• Flim flan recipe
• Marine bloodworms
• Submissive Louise
• Teen girls baptized in diapers

Tags: Google, internet searches, search strategies, irrelevant results

John of Storied Mind passed along the Brilliant Blog Award, which is quite an honor from someone who I think has a brilliant blog! The premise behind Storied Mind is that writing and creating stories about one’s experience with depression can help break through its deadening effects. Storied Mind also aims to create a community, a place where people can gather and discuss their experiences with depression. All of this is beautifully done, with thought-provoking posts that dive deep into the experience of mood-related disorders and what may work to reach clarity. Thank you, John. I am truly honored.

Kimmy of The Eagle The Lion and The Dove passed another award my way, the I Love Your Blog award. Kimmy’s blog is all about focusing on the light in darkness, seeking the beauty in the world and ourselves, knowing that none of us is perfect. It’s a great dose of daily inspiration. Thank you, Kimmy – I’m so happy we found each other via Entrecard!

As a way to share the love and highlight some outstanding blogs that are part of my daily reading, I am planning to have monthly reviews, with a feature on my sidebar linking to the Blog of the Month. Stay tuned for the October selection.

Tags: Awards, sick kid

Tags: Comments

Writing to survive has been recognized by two wonderful bloggers this week.

Kathleen Maher of Diary of a Heretic was the first one to pass along the Excellent Blog Award. A warning: once you visit Kathleen’s blog, you won’t be able to stop reading! You can also find more of her fiction in The View from Here.

Then Bobbi of My Muse and Me passed the same award my way. I’ve recently come upon Bobbi’s blog and have been enjoying the mix of fiction, poetry, and discussions of everyday life.

Thank you both very much for the honor!

Early on, I decided that I wasn’t going to pass on memes or awards. Initially, it was because I didn’t want to trouble people with meme postings, and then it became difficult to decide who to pass on awards to: so many choices! The downside to my approach is that I never spread the love. I’m trying to think of a way to recognize some of the wonderful blogs I read on a regular basis, maybe by writing the ocassional review or by coming up with my own award.

Next week: a return to writing about writing? More about my mother’s visit?

I won’t know until I start typing.

Tags: Awards, Memes

Tags: Reviews, existential angst, emotional striptease, housewife, family

7 FACTS about Jennifer 

1 - WORK: I was a reference librarian for about ten years, first for a state legislative agency, then for a Washington, DC think tank, and finally for the "world's greatest deliberative body." Four years of working 40-50 hour weeks in a basement paging through Congressional Records, locating report language, and watching C-SPAN with my colleagues for the laughs led to disillusionment and burnout. (Note: There is really much more to the job than that, but an exhaustive listing of what we did would bore most readers). I quit to go to culinary school. 

Took a detour to be a stay-at-home mother and freelance writer. 

2 - EDUCATION: After one false start, I received a bachelors in philosophy, a masters in library science, and a certificate from a culinary school. My first college experience was about drinking; my second, about thinking, my third, about getting a job, and my fourth about taking a chance while I still could. 

3 - FRIENDSHIP: When I do make a friend, it is generally for life (even when I am not good at keeping in touch). I’m still figuring out how to make connections as a reserved person without a traditional working life in a place I don’t know very well, since we’re still fairly new to Northern Californa. It isn’t easy, but I am getting there. I don’t need a posse, just a few confidants. 

4 - RELATIONSHIPS: My second husband and I have been married five years as of last Saturday, and have been together for ten. After a tough 2007, we’re in a good place now. Happy belated anniversary, honey! 

5 - WWW: The Internet was just taking off when I was in graduate school. I remember becoming quite engrossed in the usenet groups. Gopher -- a kind of menu-driven WWW -- was the hot technology during my first library job. It’s a totally different world now. Completely addictive, too, especially now that I am blogging. 

6 - FITNESS: Run 3x a week when I can, other exercise on the off days, walk almost everywhere. I’ve been mainly vegetarian (some fish) for 13 years and don’t see going back to eating meat. 

7 - DREAMS: One basic dream: that I make an authentic life as a writer. A better way to put it: I am living an authentic life as a writer, making the dream a reality. (Thank you to The Fearless Blog for cheerleading the idea that we must think something to make it so.)

Tags: Memes, DC, job, College, librarian, running

According to Angel, A Kick-Ass Blogger is a blogger who can grab your attention and give you something to chew over for the rest of the day and in doing so, entices you back for more. A Kick-Ass Blogger is someone who is witty, articulate, and informative. I was introduced to Here and Now via Entrecard, and I am continually impressed at how direct Angel is in dealing with some difficult issues, sometimes through poetry, other times by just writing out her thoughts for the day. Thank you, Angel. I am honored.

Tags: Awards, Memes

Marlene of The Fearless Blog has presented me with the Arte y Pico award, which is given to bloggers who inspire others with their writing or artwork. If you need inspiration and a dose of motivation, Marlene's blog is a good place to start. For a wonderful example of her work, take a look at Straddling Between Two Worlds on the PublicLiterature.Org website.

Thank you, Marlene! I am honored.

Tags: Memes

Tags: writing, secrets, storytelling

Tags: Memes, Music

Who would have thought: me, here?

There have been a few surprising turns in my life. Spending five years in the midwest? Never would have anticipated it. Cooking school in New York? No way. Being a stay-at-home-mom in Berkeley, California? Oh, but I would never leave the East Coast again ...

And most surprising of all: tell my secrets to the world (well, to a small group of loyal readers) on a "blog"? You must be joking.

So now I pass it along to the following bloggers, if they wish to participate:

Clinically Clueless
The Pitfalls of Life
Geoffrey's Farrago
Shiv's Brain
The Essence of Bobness

Tags: Memes

Tags: blog redesign

Tags: blog redesign

Tags: librarian, job, blog redesign

Tags: human rights