Do You Read Blogs?

I started reading blogs before I started writing a blog. So many different people write blogs: actors, atheletes, authors, journalists, musicians, chefs, singers, politicians and everyday people. And with all these people writing blogs, I wondered if people where really reading any of them.

The first blog I read on a regular basis was by Jorge Garcia, an actor best know as Hugo (Hurley) on Lost. I stared reading his blog half way through the run of Lost. At the time, he was living in Hawaii and working on Lost. His blog was called Dispatches from the Island (such a clever name!). He wrote about Lost but also wrote about things he did and loved (baking bread, gardening and his dog) and things that happened to him (a strang drunk who fell asleep in a backyard tree and a mouse loose in the house). Now, with Lost over, Jorge still blogs at Further Dispatches (
http://furtherdispatches.wordpress.com/).

Almost all of the other blogs I read have to do with the publishing industry. I read the blogs of a few of my favorite authors, a local literary agent who has great insight in the business and a hillarious site from an agent who posts blurbs from query letters he has received (if you've ever written a query letter and gotten a rejection letter in return, check out SlushPile Hell).

I have two friends (that I know of) that blog and I check their blogs regularly as well, both of whom are super talented and creative.

So I guess I want to know, do you read blogs? If so, what are you reading?

Who is Reading This?

Writing is kind of a strange thing. You can write for yourself, in a journal, where nobody but you will ever see it or read it, or you can write for other people, in hopes that they will read what you write. I do both but I would much rather do that latter.

Ever since high school I've known I wanted to write. I got a degree in journalism and worked for several years as a reporter for a small town (population less than 5,000) daily (Monday through Friday) newspaper. I was getting paid to write but it wasn't easy. It was long hours and bad pay. We covered our town and neighboring towns and counties. We were everywhere with our notepads and cameras (we were our own photojournalists as well) covering everything from crime (very little) and trials (man is stabbed by screwdriver over parking space) to 4-H (hated the pig judging at the Arkansas Valley Fair) and high school volleyball (my sports reporting was TERRIBLE!). After my first few months at the newspaper I knew people many not have known my name but they knew where I worked. I once got pulled over for speeding on the way to a school board meeting and the state trooper didn't give me a ticket because he recognized my name from the newspaper.

At that time I tried not to think about people reading my stories. I knew the circulation of the newspaper but had no clue what people were really reading. Some days my byline appeared once and some days I'd have a couple stories in the newspaper. Every so often my story would appear on the front page, above the fold (and the obituaries, yes dying made front page news in this town) and sometimes I'd be back on page four, five or six. The only time I really knew if someone was reading one of my stories was when they complained. I was got corned in the Walmart by a school board member who was very angry over something I wrote.

I'm learning that blogging is a lot like writing for the newspaper, you never really know if or who is reading this blog. But that's okay with me because I'm writing and that's what really matters to me.

Table Envy

One of the blogs that I read on a regular basis is by a NY Times best-selling British author who lives in a Connecticut seaside town and is about the same age as me. Okay, I’ll say it right at the beginning, I’d like her life (she’s an author, she’s British and she lives by the ocean!).

Anyway, she often blogs about dinner parties she hosts or ones that she goes to. It all sounds so sophisticated and lovely; it gets me to thinking, why don’t I have dinner parties? It doesn’t take me long to realize the answer to that, my table.

Here is my dining table. It can seat four people, so it’s rather small but it fits my needs. It’s big enough so that I can have family dinners for three (the extent of my family). And it’s big enough for me (and one other person) to do any crafting projects (like scrapbooking). So I don’t have a dining room per say, I have a dining area that isn’t separated from the living area and the kitchen. Don’t get me wrong, I love my home. It may not be very big but it’s spacious enough to hold small parties but just not sit down dinner party.
But someday I’d like to have a nice big dining table that seats at least six (don’t want to get too carried away). And on this table would be a lovely table setting with my great square plates (because let’s be honest, food just looks better on square plates), cloth napkins and a beautiful bouquet of flowers in the center of the table. I love the idea of having friends over for good food and conversation, sitting around eating wonderful meals I created, drinking wine, talking and laughing and then eating a decedent dessert and drinking coffee (okay, I don’t drink coffee but I would make it for my guests, I do own a coffee maker). What a wonderful evening!

But I’d have to get that bigger table first.

Yes, I Sneak-A-Peak

I admit, I do sneak-a-peak. I don't know why I do it and I'm really sure when I started to do it but I do it 99% percent of the time. And here's what I'm sneaking a peak at: the last page of a book. I get somewhere around 30 pages into a book then I flip to the very last page of the story. Sometimes I read that entire page, sometimes just the last paragraph and sometimes I just skim the page.

Does this ruin the story for me? No. I admit that sometimes I become aware of who makes it to the end of the story and with whom, but I would say it doesn't really reveal the end of the story for me. For example, right now I'm ready a mystery by Tana French called The Likening. I read the last page and all I know for sure is that the main character doesn't die. Since this story is narrative in first person I already knew there was a pretty good chance she wouldn't die, so no harm.

I know a lot of people don't understanding why I do this and I'm not really sure either, it's just something I do. It's very rare that I start a book and dislike it so much that I'll read the last page to find out how it ends and then toss the book aside. But that does happen. Either way I'm compelled to sneak-a-peak almost every time.

Hooray for Autumn!!!!

Fall is my favorite season. The days are warm and the nights are cool and crisp allowing for great sleeping weather with the bedroom window cracked open just a little bit. But autumn in Colorado is really quite different from the autumns of my childhood in New York and Connecticut. In Colorado, autumn lasts two, maybe three weeks. It's really not a complete season. The mountain peaks already have snow on them and usually by this time in October we've had at least one snow fall (this year it hasn't happened yet).


Today was beautiful day with blue skies, temperatures in the upper 60s and the leaves starting change. It's the leaves I miss the most. The aspens here in Colorado are pretty but change to just yellow and sometimes orange. Back east it's a sunset of colors: red, yellow, orange and purple. And the sunlight seems to have some sort of mystical essences as it shines through and the leave crackle under your feet.

A co-worker just came back from a vacation in New York and showed me some photos he took of the changing leaves. It made me miss the those autumns of my childhood, racking piles of leaves just to jump into them, going to a pumpkin patch to pick out a pumpkin, dragging my feet through the leafy woods surrounding our house.


Yes, nostalgia is setting in.

Hope Realized

I work for a mining and engineering consulting firm. Most of my co-workers are mining engineers and geologists. I am not (proof that God has a sense of humor). The company I work for is a consulting firm. We are hired by mines, mining companies and banks from all around the world to produce reports on mines (mine plans, due diligence, feasibility studies, cost analyses, reclaimation plans, etc.). Some of my co-workers have worked at or in mines. I have never set foot in a mine.

Just a few hours ago all 33 miners who had been trapped in a Chilean mine for 70 days were rescued (http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/13/chile-second-half-rescues/?hpt=T1&iref=BN1). It's a great thing but it makes me think that the general public doesn't realize how much of an impact the mining industry has on our daily lives and the risks that miners take to do their jobs. I know mining can have a negative impact on the environment (and our company does usually address environmental issues and plans) but I think we take for granted what our life would be like without coal, without iron, without silver, without copper or nickle or talc.

The men who go down into the mines like the one in Chile do so knowing they are risking their lives. Their work environment is dangerous, something most people will never have to experience sitting in their offices and cubicles. And there are a lot of mines out there that are not safe. It costs money to make mines safe so the companies running the mines pay for the bare minimum and take the risks. Earlier this year a mine collapsed in West Virginia and those miners weren't as lucky as the ones in Chile. Of course, after a tragedy like this occurs it's reported that the mine had a bad safety record. The penaties mining companies pay for bad safety are less expensive that paying for the improvements. Thousands of miners die in mining accidents each year. By far the worst mining safety record belongs to China. Even today, hundreds (if not thousands—the secretive Chinese government does not reveal figures) die every year in Chinese mining accidents.

But now is a joyful time because the miners in Chile were rescued and reunited with their loved ones. But take a moment today to think of all the things you use on a daily basis that came from mining and about the men who's job it is to get it for us.

Banned Book Week

This week (Sept 25 – Oct 2) is Banned Book Week.

I never really understood the whole banning of books. If a parent doesn’t want their child to read a certain book, then it’s their responsibilities to do so (just like with television). It’s not up to the libraries and bookstores to police your values. We all have the freedom to read what we want (ever hear of the First Amendment of the Constitution?) and decide for ourselves what we want to read. If you’re concerned about what your child is reading, then it is your responsibility to police that. Nobody has the right to tell me what I can or can’t read.

Now, stepping off my soapbox, back in March the Huffington Post listed the 11 most surprising banned books (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/29/the-11-most-surprising-ba_n_515381.html)

Here’s the list:

1. The Dictionary, both the Merriam Webster and the American Heritage Dictionaries (Really?)
2. Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (banned for obscenity and negative light in which the country was painted (lol).
3. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig (because it portrayed policemen as pigs)
4. The Bluest Eyes Ever by Toni Morrison (obscene language and gratuitous violence)
5. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle (banned jus t this past January because author has the same name as obscure Marist theorist – but not the same person).
6. James and the Giant Peach and The Witches both by Roald Dahl (obscenity and violence and sexism)
7. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (sexually explicit and homosexual themes)
8. Little Woman by Louisa May Alcott (who knows?)
9. For Whom the Bells Tolls and A Farewell to Arms both by Ernest Hemingway (sexual content and pro-communist views)
10. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein (promotes disrespect, horror and violence). Side note: become one of the most banned books in the 1990s.
11. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle (battle between good and evil).