Liz Henry's blog http://www.blogher.com/blog/64/atom/feed 2009-07-27T21:32:53-05:00 Ragtime blogging http://www.blogher.com/ragtime-blogging 2009-11-16T22:09:20-06:00 2009-11-16T22:14:07-06:00 Liz Henry It's day 29. Does your computer know when your period starts? My iPod just warned me that I'm about to be incredibly cranky. Using my past blog posts as a guide, by searching for key words like "horrible cramps" and "PMS", I found some details of my last few periods to set up the background data. For years I've found myself blogging in the middle of the night while crying and complaining. Then some commenter, usually my sister, will go "Your life sucks? You mean just like how it did right about this time last month?" How embarrassing that it always hits me as a giant surprise.

]]> It's day 29. Does your computer know when your period starts? My iPod just warned me that I'm about to be incredibly cranky. Using my past blog posts as a guide, by searching for key words like "horrible cramps" and "PMS", I found some details of my last few periods to set up the background data. For years I've found myself blogging in the middle of the night while crying and complaining. Then some commenter, usually my sister, will go "Your life sucks? You mean just like how it did right about this time last month?" How embarrassing that it always hits me as a giant surprise.

That can lead to its own endless loop of wondering whether I'm having a "real" emotional reaction or whether it's "just my period", or whether blaming actual emotions which are *all* real on PMS is a big old bunch of hype and lies and cultural conditioning. I used to believe that, probably because in my teens and twenties I bled like a delicate little bird-fairy made of mist and lace and rubies. Then I hit 30, went through pregnancy, and realized other people weren't just making that stuff up. Cramps can be horrendous. That scene in The Long Secret when Beth Ellen lies around for a whole day absolutely overcome by ennui? Suddenly understandable. Bouts of despair and irrational sobbing? Check. Ready to bite everyone's head off? Going to kill anyone who says the phrase "Just a cramp" as I moan in pain clutching my belly? Yes!! Making dumb jokes about getting a six-pack of Big Red? Uhhh no. Well, not until just now.

bh-post-craftastrophe

Then there was that time I Twittered, "It's like there's a murder victim in my pants." Did everyone need to know that? Probably not! But what a relief it was to say. It made me laugh. It reflected the reality of what I was dealing with that day. And a lot of people wrote me back to commiserate. That was amazingly comforting.

Do you blog about your period? Do you announce it to all and sundry, or do you draw a merciful curtain for the sake of your readers, co-workers, family, friends, and your own dignity?

Here's a quick link round-up:

bh-post-womanist-musings

* Womanist Musings warns us all of the perils of tampon theft! Especially if you're her children, and are playing… tampon bumper cars?!

I sent the unhusband to the store to get me a brand new box.  When he arrived home, I read them all the riot act.  “There is no reason for any male person in this house to be using my tampons,” I announced.  "I have absolutely had it and from now on Mommy’s tampons are off limits”. 

* Heather from No Pasa Nada gets cranky about politics and television and gets in fights and feels icky: Guess what! I'm getting my period!

bh-post-sarcasticmom

* Sarcastic Mom with her short but heartfelt Letter to PMS:

Dear PMS,
I do not like you. You do not actually make me more powerful, you just make me want to break people in half all day long. You do not help me deal with my emotions more effectively, you just make me cry at things that should not be cried at (the fight scene in Ice Age? Really? No. Really?)

Her blogging muse apparently fled in terror from her rampaging uterus!

* Blogger Queen describes her ideal PMS hospital ward completely cracked me up.

* Rita Arens in Mommy's Bloated and Bleeding. Get Excited! has some previous link-roundup action going on and some hilarious commentary. "You will need to explain to your daughter what it is going to feel like to have her period.  Like hot, buttered squash is filling your tummy, but not in good way. Oh, and you're leaking."

* Loralee's Looney Tunes recommends the PMS Buddy app for men. I confess, I tried this app, because my relationship with my period is so deep in denial, it might as well be happening to another person. Now I have a little warning meter graphic that goes "into the red". Note that you can put all the women you know into it too. Find out if you're all synchronized. But for actual usefulness, I prefer iPeriod, which has a calendar with little mood icons and, amusingly, a checkbox for when you have a "love connection". You know that someone had a lot of creative business meetings to think of that name for it.

Uterus piñata

As a final low yet uplifting bit of humor, I leave you, dear readers, with the Poke-Mons Pikachu menstrual pads from Helen Killer's Regretsy blog, thewomen's underwear with Robert Pattinson's face on them for Twilight fans who really, really want Edward to drink their blood, and Craftastropher's highlighting of the Bedazzled Menses felted, rhinestoned fake tampon finger puppet.

bh-post-regretsy

p.s. Usually I advise you all to "Enjoy" and I love your blogs and love everything but NOT TODAY. Thank god I'm finally done with this post that I hate, the way I HATE EVERYTHING.

]]> Cuban bloggers kidnapped, beaten http://www.blogher.com/cuban-bloggers-kidnapped-beaten 2009-11-09T12:58:24-06:00 2009-11-09T13:01:16-06:00 Liz Henry Yoani Sánchez, popular Cuban blogger from "Generación Y", was forced into a car and beaten by secret police in Havana along with Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo and Claudia Cadelo, who writes for OctavoCero and Global Voices.

]]> Yoani Sánchez, popular Cuban blogger from "Generación Y", was forced into a car and beaten by secret police in Havana along with Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo and Claudia Cadelo, who writes for OctavoCero and Global Voices. Sánchez was recently refused a visa to travel to New York to accept the Maria Moors Cabot prize from Columbia University. Sánchez, Cadelo, and Pardo Lazo were on their way to an anti-violence protest in Havana.

Sánchez blogged about her arrest and beating in her post A gangland style kidnapping/ Secuestro estilo camorro:

We cried in each others arms in the middle of the sidewalk, thinking about Teo, for God’s sake how am I going to explain all these bruises. How am I going to tell him that we live in a country where this can happen, how will I look at him and tell him that his mother, for writing a blog and putting her opinions in kilobytes, has been beaten up on a public street. How to describe the despotic faces of those who forced us into that car, their enjoyment that I could see as they beat us, their lifting my skirt as they dragged me half naked to the car.
I managed to see, however, the degree of fright of our assailants, the fear of the new, of what they cannot destroy because they don’t understand, the blustering terror of he who knows that his days are numbered.

She and her friends were pulled into an unmarked car, beaten up, and dumped out on a street corner.
Claudia Cadelo blogged about their kidnapping and the beating: I prefer victim to executioner and Violence against nonviolence:

I have felt the guilt and the blame, I have wondered so many things that I don’t have time to answer myself. I have tried to reconstruct the facts two millions times but I think the gaps are getting worse. I don’t remember Tweeting from the patrol car, I don’t know if the first Tweet was when I was fervently clutching Yoani’s waist or when I saw her legs sticking out of the black State Security car. I don’t remember if I called, did not call, who I called. I can’t even recall the face of the Security agent who was next to me.

They were arrested and beaten up, but the march against non-violence went on.
In this video, Yoani speaks out against Internet censorship during a debate about the Internet and Cuba. She stands up around minute 3:00. Many alternative bloggers including blogger
Reinaldo Escobar were blocked from attending the debate.


And here is an article which quotes from Rafael Hernández, one of the organizers of the debate: Blogs y debate excluyente
Censuras y ataques personales hacen retroceder el debate público.

Yoani Sánchez appears to be part of a group of bloggers who struggle to get their posts out of Cuba. They want an open flow of information to and from Cuba. Currently they have to struggle to gain brief access to the net, and email out their writing to friends and fans abroad who re-post them. She and other "alternative bloggers" could post pseudonymously, but they choose to write under their own names despite the risk of jail and possibly their lives. Sánchez's blog Generación Y gets millions of hits per month from all over the world, easily making it the most popular blog from Cuba.

Miriam Celaya from Sin Evasión recently wrote about Yoani Sánchez's class for bloggers.

Classes began just this Monday, October 26th.. There were about 30 people there, where we initially imagined 15. The group, a generational and professional veritable kaleidoscope, revealed known and “new” faces, all of them hopeful and optimistic in their desire to seek and find the unprecedented adventure of achieving the requisite knowledge for free expression. A current of empathy and respect prevailed in this first meeting as a good omen of better times ahead.

For some of us, a few months ago, Yoani opened the path and started to train us in the use of the virtual wings. Now, those who, thanks to that, have our own web spaces, are a group of restless idealists of the most varied training who will be alternating between the teacher podium and the student desk, according to each case, and putting in the maximum of our best energies in boosting the possible utopia of giving and receiving knowledge that very soon will be at the service of freedom.

This is not an isolated incident. Over 20 journalists and bloggers are jailed in Cuba. Just this fall, Luis Felipe González Rojas and Yosvany Anzardo Hernández, two bloggers from the online newspaper Candonga, were arrested and beaten up in the city of Holgún. Their computer equipment was confiscated.
Related links:
* Yoani Sánchez and other bloggers seized by Janine Mendes-Franco from Global Voices. This is an excellent link round-up with excerpts from many posts translated into English.
* Women's Rights blog at Change.org

* Along the Malecón: Yoani and other bloggers. A timeline of political incidents that have affected bloggers and blogging in Cuba.

* Committee to Protect Bloggers : Yoani Sánchez Briefly Detained

* Candonga is 404 not found at the moment.

* cubaencuentro.com has a post honoring Yoani Sánchez listing many of her acheivements, and including a long list of journalism and blogging awards she has won.

* Milena Recio's Thoughts on the Cuban blogosphere from June 2009. Recio wrote a great Three part report on blogging in Cuba back in 2006. My impression is that things are much the same as she reported in 2006, but that since the spread of cell phones, computers, and other technology was allowed in 2008, more people have slipped the leash and are using social media.

* The Committee to Protect Journalists: CPJ condemns assault, harassment of Cuban bloggers. They also have an excellent report on the current Cuban blogosophere: Special Report: Chronicling Cuba, bloggers offer fresh hope and a report by Laritza Diversent, blogging from Havana: The alternative Cuban blogosphere.

* Cuban Bloggers Arrested from Uncommon Sense.

* Voces Cubanas has been up intermittently, but blocked within Cuba.

* Sandra Álvarez from Negra Cubana is still blogging about race, culture, literature, and cultural events in Cuba. (@NegraCubana.)

* Bloggers Cuba is strangely silent on the subject of the attack on Yoani and other bloggers. Another good, but somewhat stilted, "official" Cuban blog. (@BloggersCuba).

* Hechizamiento habaénico by Lia Villares, a great blog about art, literature, politics, and culture. Poems by Legna Rodríguez, Adrianne Rich, José Lezama Lima are side by side with complicated rhizomatic photos and hip videos and sidebar widgets that demand, "¡facebookéame!". (@liavillares

* Zenia Regalado has been blogging for almost five years, mostly about culture and literature.

* Elsy Fors on NotiCuba hasn't been blogging for a year, but her journalism is interesting and good. Take a look!

* Videos from Yoani posted by one of her fans overseas.

I'd also like to point to a fascinating interview with journalism professor Daniel Salas about blogging and the Cuban blogosphere from El Último Swing. (English from Google Translate ).

Salas says, "I'm not interested in people who want to overthrow the government; I want to work for socialism." I understand a little bit of where this is coming from. Any attempt to read about Cuba gets me a sort of official story, which is mostly bare reporting on literary and cultural events, musicians, and dead poets. And it gets me a lot of very angry right wing Cubans in exile who really, really want to overthrow the Cuban government. It is possible to find people in between, like Salas and like Yoani Sánchez, and I appreciate them very much.

What distinguishes Cuban bloggers around the world?
DS: Que demasiada gente y demasiados poderes están mirándonos. DS: That too many people and too many powers are watching us. Que todo lo que hagamos puede ser usado en nuestra contra. That everything we do can be used against us.

I agree with Daniel that there is a lot of unjust hostility towards Cuba and its government around the world and I see his point about workers caring more about making better wages than about "the digital divide" and access to computers. And yet I still believe that working class people and socialism itself benefits when everyone tells their story in a public forum and can access information. Yes that will result in criticism, and the world mass media can jump all over sensational events. But everyone and every country has to weather that kind of storm. It's a necessary part of criticism and improvement!

I agree more strongly with Yoani that the flow of information can't be stopped,


If you understand Spanish you may also want to listen to Yoani's audio interview thoughts on her detainment and on the violence to her and her fellow bloggers.


And to round things off, here are my past posts on the Cuban blogosphere:
* Looking for Cuban blogs where I spent some time watching Cuban bloggers appear and disappear off the net, even personal bloggers, people talking about art, libraries, their daily lives, children, science, and so on -- people who weren't overtly political in their writing.

* Latino, Caribbean, and South American Weblog Award finalists in which I notice with annoyance that all the Cuban and Venezuelan finalists are political conservatives mostly in exile criticizing their countries giving a one-sided picture of blogging from from those countries.

As a better model for blogging and free speech to address the issues Salas raises, I would instead point to the Elecciones 3D project from Venezuela which was careful to include and aggregate many viewpoints.

But that's for political blogs, and could never fix the problem that a blogger writing frankly about the ordinary details of her daily life might add to a negative worldwide perception of Cuba. I think those perceptions have to be faced head-on no matter what they are. Just as in the United States we have to write frankly about racism, poverty, inequalities in health care and education, and prisoners unjustly imprisoned, torture, and war crimes.

So, I'd like to add my voice as a blogger to the crowds denouncing this and all other violence against writers, journalists and bloggers.

Please blog about Yoani, Claudia, and Orlando's detainment, and you might also follow Yoani and Claudia on Twitter and Facebook, as a show of support. (Yoani: @yoanisanchez and Facebook. Claudia: @claudiacadelo).

]]> Multiple baby cute overload! http://www.blogher.com/multiple-baby-cute-overload 2009-10-26T22:20:57-05:00 2009-10-26T22:20:57-05:00 Liz Henry This week I'd like to highlight some of the bloggers in our network who write about parenting twins, triplets, quadruplets or quintuplets. I looked at over 100 blogs by parents of twins and more. By the end of the day it was like complete overload! In fact I kept thinking of the Rules of Cuteness, like "A thing, accompanied by a smaller version of that thing, is always cute." My new rule: a small child, accompanied by one or more siblings of the same age, is always cute!

]]> This week I'd like to highlight some of the bloggers in our network who write about parenting twins, triplets, quadruplets or quintuplets. I looked at over 100 blogs by parents of twins and more. By the end of the day it was like complete overload! In fact I kept thinking of the Rules of Cuteness, like "A thing, accompanied by a smaller version of that thing, is always cute." My new rule: a small child, accompanied by one or more siblings of the same age, is always cute!

Saia and Chago's mom Jo Anna blogged recently about her twins' growing independence. Six years old and Chago's already asking for the car keys while his twin sister plummeted off the high dive for the first time without hesitation! She writes beautifully about the transcendental weirdness of getting tattooed in for the love of ink - or maybe pain - but probably both, a nice thoughtful interlude about herself and life in general in the middle of thoughts on parenting and photos of cute kids. If you like fantastic, thoughtful writing, take a look at this great blog. The kids have their own videoblog, The Saia and Chago Show.

Jac from The Tubre Quads blogged her childrens' birthday - celebrating their lives with stories and lots of photos of "the cupcakes". She writes frankly about how challenging it can be to keep up with four two year olds. Just three years ago she was "a 21 year old newly married chick in college" and then… quadruplets! I enjoyed reading her blog and how she always comes back to a positive philosophy:

They have helped me grow leaps and bounds in my faith. They bring out the best in me and they bring out the worst in me. They make me a better person by bringing out the worst, so I can grow and work toward maintaining the best in me all the time.

Heather from The Cox Quads cracked me up with her sarcastic thumbs up for the dorky but necessary quad stroller! She documented their latest shoe shopping trip. Every post of Heather's made me laugh. Check out this one where she thinks "Holy crap, I have four babies!" for the millionth time and then photographs their all their little feet poking out from under the table. Cute and hilarious!

And here's a few more:

* Nonlinear Girl, mom of four month old twins, claims that it does get easier.

* The Twincredible Twosome goes to preschool - a LEAP school for kids on the autism spectrum and neurotypical children to learn together.

* Lani from Triplets: Who Knew? w went back to work at her job in catering and bartending at a resort. She's looking into hiring an au pair!

* Casey and the Quilao Triplets hanging out with their friends Gen and the McNulty Quads. I noticed lots of parents of multiples and twins hanging out together and imagine that it must be a different pace of life and thus particularly easy to be with other families of multiples! It's so cute that they had a play date and then went home and blogged it all up with a million photos!

It was especially noticeable and touching in all the blogs I read this weekend that the blogging moms and dads depend on their family, extended family, friends, and community to help out. On trips, playdates, special events, and for extra care and respite -- as well as just plain getting all the stuff that many babies can use -- all these bloggers' communities came through for them. Their blogs are like a celebration not just of their cute kids but of community interdependence.

I hope you enjoy this little window into the rambunctious world of blogging twins, triplets, and quadruplets!!

]]> Answering hate with sparkly ponies http://www.blogher.com/answering-hate-sparkly-ponies 2009-10-20T01:01:42-05:00 2009-10-20T01:04:04-05:00 Liz Henry I hate to start a post with hate. Sometimes it's got to be done because it's the background we work against, but here's some hope beyond the hate. Many women who work on open source software have been the target of hateful threatening emails and comments by a guy calling himself MikeeUSA over the past five years. Last week his software code was thrown off a large open source code archive, Sourceforge. He cried censorship and said his creative work had been destroyed.

]]> I hate to start a post with hate. Sometimes it's got to be done because it's the background we work against, but here's some hope beyond the hate. Many women who work on open source software have been the target of hateful threatening emails and comments by a guy calling himself MikeeUSA over the past five years. Last week his software code was thrown off a large open source code archive, Sourceforge. He cried censorship and said his creative work had been destroyed. Meanwhile, a group of women associated with geekfeminism.org obtained copies of his code, edited it to take out the misogynist statements, and republished it.

We did more than that though, we added ponies. Personally, I made quite a lot of his game maps hot pink, also replacing some dull graphics with Creative Commons licensed images of toy ponies.

The "creative work" itself was very bad, barely functional code, and was mostly to generate extra maps for a game called Crossfire. It was laughable. You can look at some of the ongoing changes to the code here in our public repository. It had fairly random exhortations like "Death to Women's Rights" and anti-feminist ranting. In short, it was stupid and yet not anything I'd call the FBI over.

MikeeUSA's writing elsewhere has called for men's rights to rape women and girls to assert their property rights over them. He also has called for other men to go out with automatic weapons, assassinate political figures, and massacre random women at "women's shelters or rape crisis centers". As I read through his more vile rantings I did end up feeling that it was crucial to notify the FBI tip line that he is a possible danger to people around him.

Over the weekend as this unfolded, there was interesting tension brewing between people who wanted to defend extreme cases of free speech, and people like Beth Lynn who want to exclude hate speech from our professional lives and from open source developer communities.

Because of the GPL license, once we had the code in our hands, we could legally copy it, modify it, and re-publish it as long as others in future are also free to copy, modify, and use it. So that's what we did. Basically, we treated the hate speech like it was a software bug.

That was an elegant way to address a nasty situation brewing - likely not a great way to defuse MikeeUSA, who needs serious help, but definitely a good way to demonstrate we are part of the FLOSS world and here to stay, following in the footsteps of all the others who have been pointing out this jerk's activities and resisting him despite scary threats.

If you've been in that kind of situation, you may know what it's like to think over your commitment to public speech and resistance, and to continually evaluate what risk you and your associates or family may face. It is very helpful to have support. There are so many of us to get each other's backs now. It feels to me that we are continuing to decentralize as a movement and at the same time are more visible to each other.

Meanwhile in other blogs by women in open source and free software:

* Several women from the Free Software Foundation gathered for a summit on women working in free software. Fantastic! Here's their minutes on the Women's Caucus meeting.

* Hilary Pike and Diane Curtis blogged about the Systers code sprint at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.

* The entire Grace Hopper Conference Blog is fantastic and inspiring! I'm resolving to go to this conference for women in computing, next year no matter what. Recent conference reports: Motivación e Inspiración: Latinas en GHC09 by Natalia Villanueva-Rosales, and Cross-Cultural Communication Challenges Faced by Women in Computing and The Fight or Flight Moment: Understanding Why We Leave or Stay in Industry by Barbora Dej.

* Clara Raubertas blogged beautifully about Software Freedom Day.

* Adria Richards videoblogs about Blogalicious with description of the Saturday keynote on marketing and women of color who blog, on blogging conferences in general, and finally the last couple of minutes she advises all of us who blog to go to blogging conferences and dive into learning about our blog software!

* Sarah Allen onUltrasaurus reports back from the Berkman Center Ruby on Rails Workshop for Women. It sounds like a great class!

* Liana Leahy,one of the Ruby on Rails event's organizers and teachers, had to spend a lot of time just defending the idea that there was an event particularly for women, which she writes about in several posts. In …to encourage mixed gender collaboration Liana reiterates (in response to accusations of "reverse sexism"):

The focus of the event is to encourage women to participate in open source development. So workshop coordinators made the request that men who wish to attend find a woman to sign up who might not otherwise have considered checking out a tech event. There was never any intention to exclude men from the event, but rather enlist their help in broadening the community.

This after earlier posts where her patience was clearly tried, Dear minority fringe and SRSLY Redux which has its own paragraph in bold print for the following statement:

The point of the event is to encourage women developers. So the caveat that a man is asked to encourage a woman to sign him up as her guest feels entirely appropriate.

and an earlier post, SRSLY?? as well as the event announcement.
Liana, you are so awesome for doing this. I wish I could have been there. And I admire you for sticking to the focus and the purpose of the event. Is it sexist for an event to focus on women learning technical skills with each other? BlogHer says… no it isn't!

]]> Blogalicious Power!! http://www.blogher.com/blogalicious-power 2009-10-13T00:19:20-05:00 2009-10-13T00:33:48-05:00 Liz Henry The Blogalicious conference this weekend in Atlanta was mind-blowingly great. Over 250 bloggers, primarily women of color, " black, white, Latina, Caribbean, Asian-Pacific, and Native-American bloggers, among other nationalities", gathered for the weekend to talk, make connections, support each other in our writing and careers, and celebrate each others' fabulous blogging. The knowledge shared during Blogalicious was phenomenal.



]]> The Blogalicious conference this weekend in Atlanta was mind-blowingly great. Over 250 bloggers, primarily women of color, " black, white, Latina, Caribbean, Asian-Pacific, and Native-American bloggers, among other nationalities", gathered for the weekend to talk, make connections, support each other in our writing and careers, and celebrate each others' fabulous blogging. The knowledge shared during Blogalicious was phenomenal.



Personally, it was a highlight of the conference to meet some of the more technical women, like Adria Richards who blogs about business and tech, and software like Wordpress, Joomla, and Drupal. Adria and I had some excited conversations about teaching people more about WordPress and other platforms commonly used, basically, about empowering women through giving them more capability to control everything about their blogs. Or, even just knowing enough so that they don't get overcharged for blog setup, design, hosting, and maintenance. My geeky heart also thrilled to Corvida Raven's technical skills. She really came across for me in the panel "Taking Your Blog to the Next Level". But not only that, she shone out as the sort of person whose enthusiasm catches everyone on fire. I think that everyone in the room for that panel walked out infused with extra confidence about taking control of their own technology. It is rare to hear a speaker who can talk about computer software and nifty new tools with clarity and in a way that makes people feel they can tackle the complications, instead of leaving everyone mystified and insecure and convinced they have to ask for help. And also representing in the especially-geeky area, Rosemary from The Sexy Geek Files and Leticia from Tech Savvy Mama! Thank you Adria and Corvida, Rosemary and Leticia, for geeking out! May there be much more of it!


The best thing, though, was listening to all the women there connect with each other and getting into interesting and productive conversations. There was so much spontaneous sharing of knowledge and a lot of positivity. The general atmosphere was like this: Here's what I'm trying to do, and here's where I've gotten, how about you? What do you want to do? Can I help you get there? From what I saw and heard, the women at Blogalicious were taking away validation, inspiration, and an implicit promise of future networking support from their fellow bloggers.


The Broke Socialite says it best and I'd like to highlight and amplify some of her words:



This conference literally took my breath away. I've never been involved in a gathering that was charged with so much intellegensia and emotion. Most everyone was passionate about whatever it was that they brought to the table...be it "I want to start a blog; so I'm here to absorb every piece of information possible" to "I'm a veteran blogger...how can I help someone else build her brand?"

What I loved most was the authenticity of the attendees and the organizers (these girls are the best, y'all...I just met them last Thursday and their passion, smarts and sincerity bring tears to my eyes right now)...everyone was so open. It makes my heart sing.




Read her whole post; it sums up the core of the conference! Like The Broke Socialite, I came out of the conference refreshed and inspired. Heartened and with the feeling of having some of my mojo back, ready to fight a thousand battles, knowing that my life has a point to it and all our work is valuable; last but not least, feeling like somebody's got my back. There was so much love and sincerity at this conference as well as hard core expertise, knowledge, and let's not forget the great swag and parties - fun and profit, an important part of life! 



The panels I went to were excellent. Audience participation was very high, with tons of questions, commentary, and a very open and welcoming attitude. I especially enjoyed the plenary session on Social Media and the Woman of Color, with Gennipher Weeks, Gwen Peake, and Jessica Carter demonstrating in-depth knowledge of the current web 2.0 landscape.

The keynote speeches I saw had everyone's attention. The first was by Karen Walrond of Chookooloonks (and BlogHer), on the principles all bloggers should keep in mind. Her beautiful photography illustrated each simple point on her slides as she spoke eloquently about blogging your passion and being creative. Denene Millner, author of many books and blogger on MyBrownBaby, read an amazing and beautiful story about her journey of her career through political journalism and writing books, then her relationship with her mother Betty Millner, how it changed when she had her own babies, and her love, respect and grief for both her parents. As she broke right down and cried while describing her formerly strict mom's coddling of her grandbabies I felt very moved at how complicated and deep people's relationships with each other can be.

The parties were great too.

These women with their computers,




Blogalicious - Saturday morning


went right to this party and wore tiaras and Disney "princess" mouse ears while they danced joyously,





We had some great parties! I seriously hope no one videoed my attempt at wheelchair dancing because at some point I had some cocktails and did a wheelie or two to Push It and a pretty good cumbia.

The three founders of Blogalicious, from MamaLaw Media Group, are often called "The Justices" from their blog names Justice Fergie, Justice Jonesie, and Justice Ny. They radiated warmth, capability, and deep connectedness with their community in many dimensions. It was awesome how they worked together. I especially loved the moment where City Councilman Ceasar C. Mitchell presented an official proclamation of welcome to Blogalicious at the opening plenary session. During his reading of the proclamation he said in his listing of their impressive credentials as lawyers, writers, and entrepreneurs that the Justices were invited to write on thebump.com. He looked up and said, "What… what is the bump dot com?" There was some explaining and gestures demonstrating a belly bump and the councilman did a double take. "Really!?! The…Really!?" The room burst into appreciative laughter at the sight of the Councilman trying to wrap his mind around this way of framing motherhood with authority and importance. But that was sweet to have the City of Atlanta recognize the conference! It was also beautiful to see the Justices in the moments where their supportive husbands brought in their kids. Their moms, sisters, aunts, and cousins also contributed to the conference by volunteering and doing much of the event organization.



And how about the event organization? Impressive and just about perfect. The wireless worked, the food was great, there was a lot of attention to aesthetic detail. The one imperfection was the lack of power strips in the main room and the panel rooms. Those power strips are very expensive in hotels so I hope that future sponsors will sponsor this particular kind of "empowerment" in the form of electricity for all of our laptops, phones, cameras, and gadgets!



Sponsor presences were useful and not obtrusive. In fact I felt that the way the sponsors were brought in was likely to be very valuable and educative for those sponsors in how to best reach this community, of women of color who are writers and social media experts, with great reach and influence.

And from the other side, I saw many instances of the conference attendees respecting the relationships particular bloggers have with the sponsors -- for example, asking as a matter of course what Twitter handle or hashtag they should refer when they thanked a sponsor for being there, or for particularly good swag! That to me was a very interesting demonstration of respect for sponsorship, transparency, and basically, where the money is coming from. In return, I think that marketers and sponsors are opening their minds and their ears to hear the value of social media and diverse voices: inclusion is more powerful than exclusion. 

Part of that value may come not simply from some ideal of "diversity" but from the things people know from intersectionality of race and gender, whether you call it that or not -- with one result being that we are all not operating on quick assumptions about each other but that our different experiences of intersectionality make it easier to treat other as three dimensional human beings, to see each other automatically as complicated with complicated histories. That is a benefit and a strength!



The keystone of the whole conference for me was the Town Hall conversation between marketers and bloggers, Marketing to Women of Color: The Real Deal. It was a moderated dialogue between marketers and bloggers and was easily my favorite talk of Blogalicious. Cheryl Mayberry McKissack was a great moderator and got the best out of her 10 panelists. I was struck by the marketers' savvy about social media and blogging, compared to my general impression of the state of marketing online a few years ago. They described a big part of their jobs as educating their clients about what influence and reach mean: that they're much more complex than a single metric or ranking can express. The bloggers, all great speakers, were Veronica Arreola from VivaLaFeminista, Heather Barmore from NoPasaNada, and Shameeka Ayers (The Broke Socialite). They referred to the Women of Color Marketing Panel at BlogHer 2009 and to Stefania Pomponi-Butler and Kelly from MochaMomma's original point in 2007 at BlogHer Business, about marketers not approaching women of color who blog or their readers. I hope someone transcribes or summarizes all that the panelists at the Blogalicious Town Hall said, or that there's video.



If you want to meet some fantastic bloggers you could not do better than to click on the links for all the panelists from Blogalicious and read their blogs and Twitter feeds. You could also do a Twitter search on blogalicious09 and follow whoever says something of interest to you. You also might do a Google Blogsearch over the next few weeks to see who's talking about it. Including but not limited to!



  • Kacee, on Blogalicious '09

  • The Dancing Hotdogs with Take One: Blogalicious 2009

  • Xiaolin Mama with a Blogalicious 09 Recap

  • That's So Yummy Amazing Weekend Due to Blogalicious 2009

  • The Broke Socialite's So Blogalicious! So Refreshing!

  • Thoughtful Cyn on What's Wonderful about Blogs & Blogging

  • Stefania from CityMama and Momocrats - Blogalicious '09: Wish I could just bottle up this feeling and take it with me everywhere


    • 


    As a member and employee of BlogHer I felt especially proud that so many people at Blogalicious had become aware of each other or had met in real life at BlogHer conferences over the past few years. It makes me happy to be part of an organization that has a strong commitment to inclusion. We especially can see that reflected in our conference speakers, who are 80% new speakers each year which prioritizes fresh voices, and this year with steady improvement, our conference speakers were 30% women of color. 

It is even better and makes me even happier to see a blogging conference with 99% women of color as expert speakers on the topics of blogging and social media. It seems very clear to me that Blogalicious will extend its own reach and empowerment through conferences, as well as through MamaLaw Media Group's network to connect women of color who blog with marketers and sponsors, The b-Link

    I would like to add there is NO EXCUSE for us to ever see another "Web 2.0" or *ahem* "White 2.0" conference without the involvement of some of these women and their hundreds of contacts and colleagues. I hope y'all heard me. That was bold and in caps for good reason! However, one of the great things about Blogalicious is that it shows we do not necessarily need to be vying to get into the door of some other person's conference or get the attention of Mr. A-Lister even if that brings us cash and reputation. We've proved it over and over again, even while there are many amazing, supportive men in our lives. My point is, though, Blogalicious is one more example of the power women have in ourselves and in solidarity with each other.

    I felt welcome and appreciated at Blogalicious as well as very appreciative of being there. As a wheelchair user I felt very appreciative at the decent access of the hotel and the baseline of people's politeness at not being questioned 80 times a day about my disability and physical health, which white women even feminist allies and so on, often feel very entitled to have my time in educating them and sharing my personal medical information at their whim and "need to know". Like most people, I don't enjoy talking about the same thing over and over, being othered, put on the spot and questioned about things that aren't anyone's business and that if you care to know you could read about on one of my numerous blogs -- duh.

    I was struck by how many aspects of Blogalicious paralleled the ways that BlogHer conferences are structured, a good working structure for a conference with a lot of transparency about its sponsorship, as well as inclusiveness of a broad range of topics and of a large base of people. We share a core of positive, proactive, strong determination to support each other in our goals, make our dreams as writers and entrepreneurs into reality, balance work and family and life, and control our lives and careers. I was proud to work for BlogHer and that we contributed as sponsors to Blogalicious. Now while I'm well aware that it's not about me, I aspire personally to be a good ally to women of color. It is making some of my own dream come true to work for a woman-centeric company that works hard on inclusivity and diversity, to support other women - all other women. I can't wait to go to Blogalicious 2010, which will be in Miami! I forsee a beach party and much more Latina presence at the conference! We can do it! But, until Miami, I have a lot of new blogs and Twitter feeds to read and am happy to have met so many colleagues and new friends. If I sound overly starry eyed, click on the links and read up on other people's posts, because so far they're all saying similar things!

    ]]>         Working Women With Disabilities http://www.blogher.com/working-women-disabilities 2009-10-05T22:45:22-05:00 2009-10-07T14:47:26-05:00 Liz Henry October is Disability Employment Awareness Month. Let's look at blogs out there by women about disability and work! Patricia E. Bauer hits right on target as usual: President urges employers to welcome workers with disabilities. I'm all for that. Here's a quote from President Obama's Proclamation:

    ]]>     October is Disability Employment Awareness Month. Let's look at blogs out there by women about disability and work! Patricia E. Bauer hits right on target as usual: President urges employers to welcome workers with disabilities. I'm all for that. Here's a quote from President Obama's Proclamation:

    In the past half-century, we have made great strides toward providing equal employment opportunities in America, but much work remains to be done. As part of that continuing effort, we must seek to provide opportunities for individuals with disabilities. Only then can Americans with disabilities achieve full participation in the workforce and reach the height of their ambition.

    My Administration is committed to promoting positive change for every American, including those with disabilities. The Federal Government and its contractors can lead the way by implementing effective employment policies and practices that increase opportunities and help workers achieve their full potential. Across this country, millions of people with disabilities are working or want to work. We must ensure they have access to the support and services they need to succeed.

    Right on. Well, how do we get to that culture of fostering and encouraging employment opportunities? What's blocking people with disabilities right now from having jobs?

    How about all the disabled people I know who are working incredibly hard. Doing fantastic, great work.

    Who's paying them? Often, no one. I'm a wheelchair user and have a full time job. Universally, people are surprised to hear that, even people I know as colleagues in social media.

    As I wrote and deleted drafts of this post -- mostly angry, despairing, bitter , soul-searching rants -- I asked myself, "Who do I know who's disabled, and has a job?"

    Not a lot. I know few people, mostly online. My friend Haddayr, a advertising copywriter and science fiction author. Denise, for example, from Dreamwidth. Rivka from Respectful of Otters. Katja Stokley from Broken Clay. Mel Chua. They're bloggers and writers who represent as well as doing their day jobs. And people I don't know, but hope to meet someday, like Laura Hershey and Kathleen Martinez and Simi Linton.

    But who do I know who's doing fantastic work? I can name so many.

    We can't work, often, because working risks our benefits that are essential to survival. Working denies us health care. We can't own more than $2000 of assets, or we don't get Medicare or Social Security benefits. We are trapped in a cycle of poverty. Programs that promise to help or employ end up tickets to exploitation. So we end up working for free.

    I look at this grant to Cornell University and you know what? Great. But I'm not holding my breath. They just got 1.6 million dollars. How much of that is going to actually go into the pockets of people with disabilities? NOTHING ABOUT US, WITHOUT US. I hope they hire some people with disabilities, with that grant, and that, when they interview disabled people about their actual experiences working, that they pay them for their time.

    You want to know what would help people with disabilities get jobs? How about asking them what they think would help?

    My message back to President Obama is to look for some of the people doing amazing work. Then, ask why they're not being paid. And pay them. Change the policies of health care and benefits so they can be paid without risking their lives or their already precarious ability to live independently.

    Hire them. Don't exploit their labor.

    If you can't hire them without screwing up their benefits and health care? Get in there and navigate the maze of policy and bureaucracy that blocks them. How about this radical idea. Hire people part time, and give them insurance. Enable all people at your company to live a life in balance that doesn't drive their health into the ground.

    Better yet, you as a company, as an employer, can say, "We want everyone in this country to have the health care they need to survive day to day, without it being tied to their employment."

    Here are some of the people who are not just working, but who are great writers and thus, advocates who benefits all of us with disabilities. They mean a lot to me and have made a huge difference in my life. The solidarity I've found in their keeps me going in my own daily work.

    Wheelie Catholic, advocate, thinker on human rights and social justice, and a fantastic writer.

    Glenda Watson Hyatt from Do It Myself blog.

    Jen Cole and Alejandra Ospina who run GimpGirl, an organization with a 15-year history, for women with disabilities.

    Wheelchair Dancer writes about performance and physically integrated dance.

    UberGeekChick, who does a podcast about computer programming and self-expression, is an open source contributor, and who takes Twittering to great heights.

    CripChick, a fierce outspoken activist and talented writer!

    Eva from The Deal with Disability who shares her point of view of how people see her in daily life and the assumptions they make.

    FridaWrites who argues beautifully for universal design, access, and human rights.

    Book Girl from Falling off my Pedestal.

    Nick Dupree who is an advocate for Community Choice.

    Barriers, Bridges, and Books talks about some of the complexities behind work, life, and disability. Now for example, if you have a disability , you may need some extra health care. But to get Medicare, you cannot own more then $2000 in assets. This is part of what traps people with disabilities into a cycle of poverty.

    In Falling, Terri describes her fears for her teenage daughter's future.

    Gayle DeVilbiss 's video of her story of misdiagnosis, chemo, and then being denied Social Security benefits, on Disability Information and Resources blog.

    Wheelie Catholic reports on the Sears discrimination case.

    Katharine Ganly on Global Voices Online talks about people with disabilities trying to survive, get an education, and work in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

    Read on into a great analysis, in Disability and Employment in Argentina: The Right to Be Exploited?

    Being disabled, physically, may mean being deaf, having mobility impairments, being blind, being exhausted or in pain, having a chronic illness or mental illness, and so on. Those are differences or impairments. Personally I use the word disability as a cultural and political affiliation. But being "disabled" doesn't mean we can't work. It means we might need to work differently. And it means we have a harder time defending our own rights and asking for accommodations.

    What can you do as employer?

    - Don't make assumptions. Ask what you can do, and mean it. Don't then subject your disabled employee to a backlash.

    - Provide deep information. A map of your office complex with elevation changes, level or ramped paths and handrails marked, elevators, bathrooms, and parking. That will be useful, and appreciated, by more people than you would predict. We might have to plan. We might have limited energy. Deep access information gives people what they need to make informed decisions.

    - Work out technological solutions. Telecommuting!

    - Try to educate yourself. Read some blogs, some books, and so on. I'm a little skeptical of diversity training. I recommend the WisCon feminist science fiction convention's guide to disability access at events. It applies to many physical environments and events.

    - Be flexible. You know what helps me most - beside telecommuting half the week - in my work at BlogHer? This:

    A couch! Thank you, BlogHer, for the glorious, amazing, couch in my cube. And for not minding too much when I'm lying on the couch on my back, computer on my stomach, my back and my leg experiencing awesome pain relief.

    - Be inclusive socially. Plan your office social time with everyone in mind. (I swear, many places, they might as well have had special events underwater. Oh, there's no ramp and you just realized and "wouldn't mind carrying me up the stairs"? Thanks for the pain and loss of human dignity. Now let's party. Or get to work. Or now that I'm completely pissed off and discombobulated, how about I give an hour long public speech.)

    - Don't be a jerk. I mean this nicely. Joking about a person's disability is rarely cool. Pressure is on that person to get along, to be a supercrip, to show they can "do it all" and can tolerate whatever gets thrown at them.

    - Actually help people with their paperwork situations. Defend your employees. Help them fight their fights just as you might help your employee from outside your country with a visa situation.

    Thanks for listening.

    What do you think about my suggestions for employers? Do you have thoughts as a person with a disability or impairment? What work do you do? Do you get paid? Are you self-employed?

    Or, as a friend, family member, ally, co-worker, or employer of a PWD, what in your opinion could be helpful to remove obstacles, and to decrease the huge unemployment rate for people with disabilities? We have a lot of moms of kids with special needs here on BlogHer and in the network. I would challenge all of you in particular to radicalize politically beyond support groups or cures, to connect with adults with disabilities who are advocating for social change, to look ahead to the future.

    ]]>         Food bloggers to be friends with http://www.blogher.com/food-bloggers-be-friends 2009-09-28T22:55:04-05:00 2009-09-29T00:04:31-05:00 Liz Henry This weekend at BlogHer Food I met some amazing bloggers. At lunch I gossiped with Sassymonkey and her friend the marine scientist who was carrying around a crocheted lobster, whose name and blog I wish I knew! At lunch, Mrs. L from Pages, Pucks, and Pantry and Karen from Cook4Seasons were sitting next to me. Mrs. L writes about scrapbooking, hockey, and food, a great combination!

    ]]>     This weekend at BlogHer Food I met some amazing bloggers. At lunch I gossiped with Sassymonkey and her friend the marine scientist who was carrying around a crocheted lobster, whose name and blog I wish I knew! At lunch, Mrs. L from Pages, Pucks, and Pantry and Karen from Cook4Seasons were sitting next to me. Mrs. L writes about scrapbooking, hockey, and food, a great combination!

    Pages, Pucks, and Pantry

    Karen just finished chef school to be a Natural Chef. Cool! I got them to talk about Typepad, WordPress, Blogspot, and how they felt about blogging platforms and their code -- my favorite subject right now. How do BlogHeristas feel about the software they use? How into it do they want to be? Do they aspire to look under the hood and control what's going on? Or do they long for their very own pet web developer to take care of things? Opinions were divided, as some people want to focus just on writing, photography, and of course… food! Others were more open to treating their blog templates just like they'd treat learning to make a pie crust or bake a loaf of bread.

    Cook4Seasons

    This is my soapbox (yay blogging!) so I'll tell you what I found from the many conversations at BlogHer Food. Bloggers tend to start out on Blogspot/ Blogger, because it's free, and many continue along there very happily, eventually creating custom themes or adding more and more elements to fancy up their sidebars. People who can afford to pay a bit for hosting, and want technical support but who also want to run ads, tend to start out or move to Typepad. There is definitely a core of Movable Type users as well. The perception I saw was that some bloggers went with WordPress because of its reputation and the idea of having control over their own software and platform. In each group of bloggers, some of them hire consultants or get friends to do their coding, and others learn to tinker with their sites. Universally there was a bit of a guilty reaction, as if people felt they "should" know more or do more. Was that me guilting people out? Or is it the technology and something of a gender issue? It also may be a communication style issue, because people who I know are expert all said they weren't.

    I liveblogged two panels in the afternoon. How Food Blogs Can Save the World absolutely rocked. Lydia was earnestly passionate about bringing fun, happiness, and respect in the form of COOKIES to families in women's shelters. I loved her point about it being good to do something beyond meeting a person in trouble's basic needs. Because, hello, when do you need cookies more than when you're down?! She described the process of starting up a cookie decorating an donating event. What she does now is to facilitate other bloggers hosting events locally, hooking up with local shelters. Pim's vivaciousness and full life came through in her talk, clearly a fun person who loves the net, and who figured out how to balance her regular blogging and a fantastic yearly event that raises thousands of dollars and keeps people involved. I love when she said "Oh, it's BlogHer, I can say this here!" Exactly! Yes you can! And Valerie represented her blogging group with quiet, steadfast authority describing exactly what they do and how they began interacting with United Nations groups like the World Food Programme. They were all impressive. If you want to use your food blogger powers to do some activism, I recommend you read the panel transcript and take a look at all of their blogs.

    The other panel I liveblogged was The Meaning of Identity and the Value of Voice in a Crowded Blogosphere. In other words, identity and voice. The panelists, Ree, Garrett, Dianne, and Susan, spoke as writers. They were all fantastic speakers! For the rest of the day, I searched for Susan Russo from Food Blogga, who writes about cooking as an Italian-American from Rhode Island, so I could ask her if she grew up shopping at Ruggieri's or what. The discussion between Dianne and several journalists in the audience was especially interesting, as they talked honestly about moving back and forth between traditional print media, newspaper or magazine journalism, and blogging, where they had to work to develop a personal voice that journalism trained them out of using.

    Consuming Lily

    During one of the breaks, I ate incredible mushroom soup that tasted like bacon and talked with Consuming Lilly, an extremely geeky anthropologist of food history and I think women's history. She along with a few other people really made my day by telling me that my talks at BlogHer Boston and DC helped them grow more confident about the technical aspects of their blogs!

    Ugly Green Chair

    Then there were the parties! I hung out with an extremely lively crowd of women including Megan from Not Martha and Whitney from Ugly Green Chair. We had some good dirty low down blogging and Silicon Valley gossip going on and a LOT of giggling. I don't know who started it, but someone told someone else to go order a "silver fox" cocktail from a particular bartender. The joke was that the *other* bartender was a rather handsome and distinguished looking older man with silvery hair. So, the hapless blogherista who went up to order a silver fox, a cocktail which apparently doesn't exist? Marcello the St. Regis bartender poured one out for her, made up on the spot, and didn't even wink. For the rest of the evening he brought us all "Silver Foxes" and cosmopolitans. At the next party I ate super delicious tiny tacos and Scharffenberger chocolate mousse cakes and incredible things from Foodzie - I especially recommend the Mayan chocolate caramel candies. Then hung out a little while with Grace Davis: Pioneer Woman has a cute photo of us!

    Talking to so many food bloggers opened my eyes to the world of storytelling, technical skill, family history, and politics that make up the craft of writing about food. Everyone I talked to was multi-dimensional, thoughtful, funny, and laid back. Or maybe that's just the sorts of people who came up to talk to me and I'm lucky that way. But it's my impression that this small gathering of food bloggers tapped into incredible talent. Just like the first BlogHer conference attracted a lot of the most passionate writers on the net, this first BlogHer Food conference I think will be a real catalyst for a core of very dedicated women and men.

    ]]>         Your blog about illness, pain, or disability means the world to me http://www.blogher.com/your-blog-about-illness-pain-or-disability-means-world-me 2009-09-14T21:05:16-05:00 2009-09-14T21:59:33-05:00 Liz Henry Blogs about illness, medical troubles, or disability have been central to my life in the last few years and have helped me more than I can say. It's Invisible Illness Week for people with non-obvious disabilities or chronic illness. So, this week I'd like to highlight a few bloggers, including people in caretaking or support roles, who share their thoughts on chronic illness, cancer, or disability along with all the other things they write about!

    ]]>     Blogs about illness, medical troubles, or disability have been central to my life in the last few years and have helped me more than I can say. It's Invisible Illness Week for people with non-obvious disabilities or chronic illness. So, this week I'd like to highlight a few bloggers, including people in caretaking or support roles, who share their thoughts on chronic illness, cancer, or disability along with all the other things they write about! It's especially good to look around and think how medical difficulties don't make you suddenly a one-trick pony. These bloggers write about everything. Their lives and the beauty of their relationships shine out through their stories. Even when they're cranky!

    Aimee's mom is battling cancer. And Aimee's battling it with her, caretaking, being her mom's support through all the visits and bills , pain, exhaustion, and difficulties.

    From diagnosis through treatment and recovery, fighting cancer is harder than anything I’ve ever known. It’s not any one thing, it’s everything.  Every blood test, rude staff member, doctor’s visit, and new medication just adds to the strain.  It takes a toll on your body which forgets how to sleep or eat normally.  It wears out your heart, which feels like it’s shattering into thousands of pieces, and just when you think you’ve collected all the shards to put it back together, it breaks again. 

    How hard it is to have people ask how you're doing - routine, friendly greeting - and not to be able to say, "Fine". In Aimee's case the answer might be more like, "Enduring." Her strength and her love for her mom really come through, as she explains exactly what it's so hard to tell people when they ask how it's going.

    Wife of a Wounded Marine

    Wife of a Wounded Marine is written by another person whose life is affected by medical troubles you can't see when you look at her. I like how she sees her life, not denying the difficulty or her own fallibility but facing life head on and looking to the future.

    After many hospitals, leg salvage, amputation, miscarriage, overdose, trips, celebrities, love, and borderline hate, we've made it and are finally entering into the next phase of our lives. I am not perfect and sometimes stress gets the best of me but I am human (and a young one at that) that is going through very serious things. I'm just doing the best that I can to juggle being my husbands backbone and still have time for myself. I write this blog to vent, to get away, and to share my story.

    What a blog. Karie has a gift for telling it like it is. In her sidebar you can trace the story of her and her husband's last year, through the moment when she learns he was wounded, to photos of the daily care of his leg wounds, their battle to save his leg, dealing with the Veterans' Administration, and on through amputation and a long, long rehab. She sees and can't look away from the terrible trauma of having been a soldier in war. Physically, emotionally, and the way their buddies are also dealing with trauma.

    The crazy part is more often then not terrible things like this act as a domino effect on these guys. The grief of their friend dieing in turn causes them to go have a drink or take that extra pill to get away from it. These guys are broken in a lot of ways and just don't know how to deal with this stuff anymore. They can't bear any more pain.

    The ripples of our loved ones' battles spread through all our lives. Like Karie all we can do is hang in there and be supportive. Being there, witnessing pain and difficulty, and providing companionship is amazingly important.

    MLOKnitting

    I always enjoy MLO's book blogging and comics blogging! Lately she has also blogged a lot about ovarian cancer and what it's like to go through chemo. I thought her post on being on the wrong floor of the hospital was a good bit of patient advocacy; because she had to be in the wrong ward, she ended up with nurses who didn't understand proper pain management for people with cancer. In MLO's case, her husband stepped in and watched the clock for her and fought to get her pain meeds on time! Good work, MLO's "DH"!

    BeTwinned

    Diana from BeTwinned eloquently describes the alienation that can come with illness and specifically with breast cancer. A year later, she looks back on her surgery, and still can't quite bring herself to tell her story. I like how she gives herself time to heal and cope. Her entire blog lured me in, with not just stories of cute twins, but her dramatic re-evaluation of her life's priorities, a move across country, and a very full experience of daily life, overlaying imaginary and fantastic over reality like a kaleidoscopic filter -- like this moment when she archeologyplayed and worked at archeology in her own yard

    :

    When I started to mercilessly tear out the ivy, my gardening shears made a funny noise, not at all like gardening shears should sound against the earth.  I suddenly felt like Dorothy when she’s going along the ground, looking for apples, and she suddenly comes across the feet of the Tin Man.
    Turns out that my shears were tapping stone, not earth.  I pulled back some of the ivy to reveal a huge flagstone underneath.

    Asthmagirl
    Asthmagirl has a fantastic life kayaking, cycling, and working in the tech industry. But she has an extra job, or hobby, just dealing with her cranky lungs. It's like being Ginger Rogers and having to do all the dance steps backwards in high heels. After many nights of almost no sleep she envies her baby grandson's peaceful naps. She talks about hot flashes (and a dramatic improvement in their frequency!) Most of all though in her blog I notice that like many other with a chronic illness or medical problem, little things can loom large. Stuff that happens that might seem minor to healthier folks can affect her life drastically. A cold can be the straw that breaks the camel's back. Making the decision to go on an airplane can mean risking months of trouble, pain, loss of sleep, loss of privacy, and huge medical bills.
    I don't usually do this but I have to link to my own blog. A couple of years ago, as I faced a difficult diagnosis, I wrote about Pain, Disability, and Parenting. It might be helpful to some of you if you're in pain, facing illness, and trying to figure out how to still like yourself and find a good role to fill as your relationships with others change in response to crisis. The blogs about disability that I found through the Disability Blog Carnival and Blog Against Disablism Day really changed my life. I worried (and still worry) a lot about how I've become less nice, less useful, less interesting; alienation, ill temper, worry, exhaustion, all have taken their toll. I think that's a common thread through many of the blogs highlighted here. I read all these women asking themselves -- who am I becoming? And what does that mean to the people around me? Maybe some people don't worry about being less nice because they're just too awesome!
    Like NieNie!
    NieNie Dialogues
    Nie Nie from the Nie Nie Dialogues whose blog regularly makes me burst into tears at work, not in the bad way of crying at work, but in a way that makes me grateful for everything in my life. How to explain it? Her appreciation of all the simple and complex pleasures in life, her quiet enthusiasm, and I think especially the way she is surrounded by love and friendship. With a few words and photos she looks back on the anniversary of her accident by hiking up a mountain with family and friends

    including quite a lot of blog readers and blogging community. And then with family -- a big extended family -- a party with cupcakes and kids to commemorate her and her husband's survival.

    Tonight I overheard the news on TV at my parents house. The anchor was explaining a accident in Salt Lake. Then she ended with "...and now she is in critical condition in the hospital.....Did you hear about Dennis the special monkey who gets carried around on a leash?...bla bla blablaaa bla......"
    And that was that.
    And I thought, wow.
    For that woman in critical condition she is still in critical condition with doctors and nurses trying to save her life...her LIFE! She has a family who is in critical condition too emotionally strained with the news. And we are in a moment saddened by her heart-breaking news but then it disappears . . .

    Thank you for that beautiful and compassionate thought, NieNie!

    Suzanne White on Momocrats tells how her insurance company cancelled her policy when she got breast cancer. Her insurance company used an error a student made on her chart when taking her medical history to deny her claims and cancel her insurance completely.

    "What do you want me to say? "asked young Ralph.

    "Just  say that you made a mistake. Tell them that I did not have cancer before. That, as far as you know,  I  had never had cancer. Explain that you wrote down something that wasn't true by mistake."

    "Oh I couldn't do that." Ralph told me. "It would ruin my medical career."

    "Ralph," I said, as calmly as I could manage. "if you don't write that letter to Blue Cross, you will be ruining my life and my children's lives. I will lose my house and my career as an author will be over as well."

    Suzanne lost her house and everything she owned, to pay for her mastectomy and chemo in the U.S. Her second mastectomy years later in France was free, and saved her life.

    And to finish off my roundup, another appreciation post by Angela from Never a Dull Moment, who has rheumatoid arthritis and who is also the parent of a child with special needs. Angela starts off by letting us all know in detail how awesome her new laundry room is, which leads her to think of all the friends and relatives she appreciates in her life,

    Weekends like this remind me of how blessed I am. Sometimes I tend to have myself a nice little pity party: look at everything I can't do, I'm so tired, my joint hurt, blah blah blah. But when I take off the blinders created by that pity, I realize I am surrounded by people who make up for my limitations and cause my life to feel full, even overflowing. And I'm not just talking about my mom and husband.

    I love that! It's good to keep in mind that illness and disability are like a course in valuing interdependence -- not loss of independence. I'm not saying be Pollyanna every second. While it's impossible to be the perky, plucky sick girl all the time, thinking of friends isn't something to deny the bad or unjust parts of life -- the good things are a counterbalance to bring your mind and emotions back on course.

    Thanks to all of you this week. Because of your blogging, and your telling your stories, you're helping other people feel less alone. Keep up the good work!

    Do you write about illness or pain? Or you do choose not to share it? Are there blogs about medical issues that have been important to you?

    ]]>         How to detect and fix the latest WordPress attack http://www.blogher.com/how-detect-and-fix-latest-wordpress-attack 2009-09-08T01:13:56-05:00 2009-09-08T01:13:56-05:00 Liz Henry If you aren't using the latest version of WordPress, currently 2.8.4, your blog might have been hacked. There's an attack going on right now that breaks into your blog to create, and then hide, administrator accounts.

    You can see if this has happened on your blog by going to the Dashboard and then the Users panel. The number listed in parentheses after Administrators should match the number of actual admins that you have for the blog!

    ]]>     If you aren't using the latest version of WordPress, currently 2.8.4, your blog might have been hacked. There's an attack going on right now that breaks into your blog to create, and then hide, administrator accounts.

    You can see if this has happened on your blog by going to the Dashboard and then the Users panel. The number listed in parentheses after Administrators should match the number of actual admins that you have for the blog!

    WP users panel

    If that number is higher than the amount of admins for the blog, you probably have hidden users. You could try turning Javascript off in your browser to see those hidden users.

    Then, delete them (if you can) from the panel. I didn't try this myself, but I think it will work.

    Or, you can use mysql or phpmyadmin to delete those users from your database. If you don't remember how to connect to your database, look at the files in your wordpress folder and read the contents of wp-config.php. That will have the username and password and database host name. You might also need to look at the help or FAQ files for your web host.

    In phpMyAdmin, you can find and delete the hidden users by connecting to your database, then browsing the users table. Check the boxes by the wp_users and the email fields (or just check all of them) and then click Browse again. This should show you a list of all the users on your blog.

    This is what a row of user data should look like in phpMyAdmin:

    wp_users-sql-good

    This is what a "hidden user" account will look like. It'll be a name that doesn't show up in your WordPress Dashboard, and it won't have an email address in that 5th field. Might be a good idea to delete these users right away.

    wp_users-sql-bad

    I followed Lorelle's instructions for how to recover from my WordPress blog being hacked. That worked fine:

    * I did an xml export from the Dashboard and made sure I knew what that file was named and where I saved it.
    * I did an sql dump of the whole blog (from the mysql command line, but you could do one from phpMyAdmin too) Just to make sure I would have everything, and so that I could do some forensics later on the contaminated db.
    * Then I deleted that db, made a new db, and saved the information on how to log into it. You could also drop all the tables in the old one, I guess, and keep using it. While you could leave the old db there, it seems unwise.
    * I deleted all the stuff in my wordpress folder on my server. If I'd thought, I would have saved a few custom banners and images first.
    * I downloaded WordPress latest version, 2.8.4 and unzipped it, along with some themes and plugins.
    * I then went to the url for my blog and told the install screen a blog name and my email address, and got a new admin password. Voila, new empty blog.
    * Then, from the WordPress Dashboard, went to Manage and then Import. I imported the xml file as a WordPress import, with its attachments. This brought me all my pages, posts, comments, and so on.

    A little tweaking and my blog was as good as new.

    Total Crisis Panic Street Sign (While Danger is "Eminent" sometimes, like Godzilla, I don't think that's what the signmaker meant!)

    I think for your average user, who finds upgrading and installing a bit scary, this will seem even more scary. But it's not bad at all. It just requires you to follow the steps, write down or cut and paste all the information you will need to keep track of:

    - one set of info for your web host account
    - one set for your sql database account and phpmyadmin
    - the information for your blog itself, for the WordPress install
    - where you're saving the export file with your blog posts and comments!

    In a pinch, if you really mess up in this process, you can get a backup and restore from your web host.

    Now, even though I went through this process, I think that someone might potentially write a plugin or script to reveal and delete those hidden users. It might not catch all the modified data touched by those users, though. Spam may already have been inserted into your old posts, or some other havoc wreaked, which you could catch with Exploit Scanner

    or some other useful tool. The problem with this approach might be that there are multiple versions or exploits based on this security flaw and no one is sure yet if it's modified core WordPress code or created some other exploitable security hole. So at this point, I think it's best to do a clean install if you think you can manage it.

    If you're not sure, turn off Javascript in the browser, go to the Users panel, and delete the people who shouldn't be admins -- at least. And maybe there will be an easier fix in a few days -- keep checking the WordPress development blog to see if it says something more useful than "OMG, you dumbass, why didn't you upgrade right away, never, never, never do that again!" (Thanks... I know... thanks for the lecture, grumpy sysadmin...)

    When I did this -- and I had to, because "upgrade WordPress to latest version" was not #1 on my to do list, and a blog of mine got messed with -- I had to re-install my plugins and go through the steps to re-create my blog. This goes to show that it's a good idea to keep a worklog of all the things you've done to a blog, or a wiki or any sort of installation, so that you can recreate it from scratch! You can do this on your blog itself, by creating a section in your About page or somewhere else, listing the plugins you use, and when you've upgraded, and so on. It is especially useful to share this information a group blog where you might have more than one administrator. If you haven't ever done this, be sure to do it next time and then write a really cranky blog post about how you don't understand how anyone in the world could be so clueless. HA.

    Here's some more links on the subject!

    WordPress Codex FAQ: My site was hacked
    Old WordPress Version attack warning: please upgrade
    Checking your WordPress security

    Thanks to Lorelle again for a fantastic post! The links at the bottom of her long juicy explanation, Old WordPress Versions Under Attack, make really great reading. Happy upgrading, change your passwords to something that isn't your kid's name, and don't panic.

    ]]>         Women in the Indian blogosphere http://www.blogher.com/women-indian-blogosphere 2009-08-31T20:01:18-05:00 2009-08-31T20:01:18-05:00 Liz Henry This week I took a look at the Indian blogosphere, starting with BlogBharti, a group of about sixteeen bloggers who link out to all the blogs they can, celebrating the Z-list. In its first year, BlogBharti posted about to 3,087 different blogs!

    ]]>     This week I took a look at the Indian blogosphere, starting with BlogBharti, a group of about sixteeen bloggers who link out to all the blogs they can, celebrating the Z-list. In its first year, BlogBharti posted about to 3,087 different blogs! This is a very good blog for monolingual English speakers to add to their reading list. Recent posts and links out include a beautiful photo and travel blog by Neelima of Pondering Musings, and another thoughtful "musings" blog by Shalini on travel, creativity, and daily life: Of Travels and Travails.

    On Rehab's blog Outlandish Musings she celebrated the Wall Project in Mumbai, which you can also see documented on the Facebook page for The Great Wall of Mumbai, with hundreds of huge murals painted along the Western Railway line. They're so beautiful!

    That is three random musings blogs in a row, did you notice?

    Psych Babbler wrote recently about Fairness Cream which for a moment I thought was something magical that Harry Potter would use at Hogwarts to make people stop cheating at Quidditch, but then realized was about skin lighteners; about racism in culture and advertising. She writes about her life in Australia and India, about work, education and psychology. Every once in a while lets loose in a good hard rant like on Fairness, on movies about kids with autism, on cricket, and on the pain of seeing homophobia, sexism, and racism among some of her friends, wishing they would be more open minded.

    blogher9-saricladbride-1

    The Sari-Clad Bride, "The Chic Guide to Planning a South Asian Wedding", is a fashion blog, highlighting clothes, photography, and everything else you can think about relating to weddings. Shopping, planning, videos, makeup, bachelorette parties, books about how to relate to your new mother-in-law -- this blog has some really great posts and advice.

    Sumedha from Bits of Fluff, blogging from Singapore, has her fluffy moments and her more political posts as well! I enjoyed her feminist take on The Misuse of the "Elegant Sari", a critique of a parody photo and post in a Calcutta newspaper that is meant to imply that because a group of male politicians is dressed in women's clothing, they are incompetent and perhaps humiliated; that being like a girl or a woman is such an insult:

    And to top it off, the caption below the picture reads "We apologise to women who may feel the elegant sari has been wasted on our administrators". Because, of course, the first thing that will enter a woman's mind after seeing the picture will be "Oh my god, how can they waste our precious saris on such useless men?? They are not worthy of wearing them!" Annoyance and indignation at the gender discrimination and the extreme sexist statement made by a state newspaper are unlikely to occur. Since, you know, our job is to wear the "elegant sari" and stay home while the men are taking care of the country.

    I also loved Sumedha's post on how blogging opened up her ability to write.

    Then a friend gave me the link to his blog, and I became a regular reader. The links he’d posted on his blog led me to new blogs, and those blogs led me to more, and suddenly, a whole new world of writing opened up to me- a world where people wrote about their thoughts and ideas, their observations and everyday lives, as well as fiction.

    Earlier this year an activist campaign by the Consortium of Pubgoing, Loose, and Forward Women started on the Pink Chaddi Campaign blog and Facebook group. In response to violence against women by or encouraged by right wing political groups, the Pink Chaddi Campaign encouraged people to send pink underwear (Chaddi) to Sri Ram Sena group's headquarters. Specifically it was a response to t he 2009 Managalore Pub Attacks in which a group of 40 Sri Ram Sena people beat up some random other people at a pub because they were "violating traditional Indian values". Leaders of the group while apologizing said that it was done to "save our mothers and daughters". Ouch. You can find some very interesting videos and links to more feminist activism if you search for "pink chaddi" on YouTube. Piles of underwear, parody songs making fun of the conservative party, and news stories on women, freedom of choice and action, and the Internet.

    Aishwarya on Kaleidoglide writes about culture, feminism, sexuality, politics, and books, especially science fiction and fantasy and YA books. She suggests that Frankenstein is a perfect book to discuss with kids or teenagers, describes some Arpit Dugar's novel Nothing for You My Dear: Still I Love You ...!, and Tamora Pierce's fantasy novels as well as long analysis of Tolkien including this really great point about the Silmarillion:

    But more and more I find myself seeing him as a man who was really into structure. The Silmarillion is an obvious example of this. It's not the history of a race, it's a mythology. It is told in exactly the way such a mythology would be told. The minute you come to that conclusion, you're asking who the "teller" of the Silmarillion is. And it's no longer how Tolkien envisioned the history of the elves, it's how Tolkien thinks the elves would tell their own history.

    If you want to look for more blogs by women in the Indian blogosphere take a look at The WIP (The Women's International Perspective), click through the archives and blogrolls of the women I link to in this post, or keep an eye on the Global Voices blog for political news in English, or Sepia Mutiny a South Asian diaspora blog by desi writers mostly in the U.S. And, though you've probably already been reading Snigdha Sen's blog here on BlogHer, I'd like to link everyone out to her fantastic posts.

    ]]>         I love your random, rambling little chronicles http://www.blogher.com/i-love-your-random-rambling-little-chronicles 2009-08-24T21:28:56-05:00 2009-08-24T21:31:45-05:00 Liz Henry Just My Blog. Random Little Thoughts. Rambling Chronicles. Have you ever thought about what these sorts of blog names mean - do they seem ordinary to you? To me, the names of "Just a Ramble" blogs reflect a particular stance about writing, experience, and life. Rather than focusing on a particular topic, they positively assert subjectivity -- an over-fancy word for valuing individual points of view.

    ]]>     Just My Blog. Random Little Thoughts. Rambling Chronicles. Have you ever thought about what these sorts of blog names mean - do they seem ordinary to you? To me, the names of "Just a Ramble" blogs reflect a particular stance about writing, experience, and life. Rather than focusing on a particular topic, they positively assert subjectivity -- an over-fancy word for valuing individual points of view.

    At times I've thought: Why do so many women present their identities this way? Are we putting ourselves down? What's going on? I felt ambivalent. Have you ever had someone ask what you write about, and said, "Oh, I don't know - just life." After a lot of thought and reading, here's where I've arrived:

    Our little musings and chronicles defy categories and taxonomy. They're a way of evasion. We won't be pinned down. We don't fit in a box. We're explorers: we range broadly over any topic. We explore what we don't know, rather than beating our chests about that one thing we know so well. We defy logic and structure. What we write about, that so-called nonsense, ranting, spewing, and trivia -- "Just Life" -- is incredibly important! Our patterns of rambling are an extraordinary assertion of our freedom to write, and include all of our experience, the parts that get left out of work life, or business, or relationships -- or left out of history. Our everyday lives and thoughts are important - that's something BlogHer has always recognized -- that we're writing history.

    The use of "just" or "little" is certainly self-deprecatory; but that can be seen as humility. It's declaring that we get to write and blog, though we aren't experts with formal credentials. It's an evasion of having to argue, to prove ourselves. To know what we're saying, to be sure, to be right. We get to say what we want, no matter what. Randomness is a virtue.

    So I'd like to honor some of the women who follow the rambling path. They chronicle their own overwhelmingly busy or interruption-full daily lives, or their attention wanders from politics to parenting to book reviews. All beautiful!

    * http://www.justmylife-mygripespot.blogspot.com/ Just My Life is one of my favorite blogs EVER. She's never pretentious and always hilarious and honest - with a gift for storytelling and detail that cracks me up every time.

    * http://pam-randomthoughts.blogspot.com/ These random thoughts include ambivalence about going back to work, a help wanted ad for her life, and classroom management techniques not quite working when it's your own kids.

    * http://www.justgirlinworld.com/ Just a Girl in the World actually does ramble, all over the world! What she'll miss about New York, and how she feels about her uprooted, nomadic lifestyle.

    * http://www.ramblingsbyreba.com In which Reba enjoys her obscurity and drama-free blog life, shows us a lovely enormous pile of books, and explains how procrastination has its rewards.

    http://boondockramblings.com - Three reasons not to leave your 2 year old alone for just 2 minutes, and how to get around your spellchecker.

    * http://occasionalramblings.com - Those playlists where the music turns out to have unexpected sweary bits. Details, details! And what you find when you zoom in on the cropped-out bits of your photos, very funny!

    * http://mcmamasmusings.blogspot.com/ - McMama muses on living every moment to the full, and her ambitions to be a runner.

    * http://chroniclesofmomnia.blogspot.com/ hits a sort of jackpot by having the tagline, "The rantings and recollections of one semi-delusional mom." I could definitely recite her incantation against getting her period at an inconvenient time and I also enjoyed her gross and funny post on the horrible smell coming from the plaster cast on her child's broken arm.

    Using some variant of "crazy" sometimes asserts freedom from logic or often, exasperation with a world that doesn't quite make sense, or where we don't fit perfectly. There are lots of random crazy ramblings that take a strong stand in non-linearity. But I thought I'd mention some bloggers' critiques of casual use of "crazy" and "insane". In fact there are many declarations, rants, and heated debates on the subject. Here's a couple of starting points for critiques of the careless or pejorative use of "crazy", which is harmful to people living with mental illness:

    Feminists are fine with being bigots if it's just ableism
    Fighting Ableist Language by Jill from Feministe.

    So, if you're still with me in my own little ramble, I'd like to put our chronicles in another context, the context of the history of women's diaries, letters, and autobiographies. Take a look:

    Here's a big database of North American Women's Diaries and Letters, Colonial to 1950. It has the full texts of hundreds of fascinating diaries.

    The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon and her amazing lists.

    Elegant Things
    A white coat worn over a violet waistcoat. Duck Eggs. Shaved Ice mixed with liana syrup and put in a new silver bowl. A rosary of rock crystal. Snow on wistaria or plum blossoms. A pretty child eating strawberries.

    Ida B. Wells and her Memphis Diaries. An ambitious young writer's daily life, and research into the practice of lynching in the U.S. South.

    Mary Chesnut's thoughtful, well written Civil War diaries.

    The famous diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus (1915-1977) who lived much of her life in extreme poverty in a favela in Brazil and who made her own house out of cardboard and flattened cans for herself and her three children.

    I dreamt I was an angel. My dress was billowing and had long pink sleeves. I went from earth to heaven. I put stars in my hands and played with them. I talked to the stars. They put on a show in my honor. They danced around me and made a luminous path. When I woke up I thought: I’m so poor. I cant afford to go to a play so God sends me these dreams for my aching soul. To the God who protects me, I send my thanks.

    Enjoy! And, ramble on!

    ]]>         I love how your blogs are complicated http://www.blogher.com/i-love-how-your-blogs-are-complicated 2009-08-17T22:24:14-05:00 2009-08-17T22:25:07-05:00 Liz Henry I love blogs that are complicated, that don't fit neatly into a little magazine-column slot by topic or focus, or that don't simplify life, or a concept, down to a little point like a too-sharp pencil. White on Rice Couple, Angry Black Woman, and Nyonya Food stood out to me this week as blogs that I love because of their breadth and complexity!


    ]]>     I love blogs that are complicated, that don't fit neatly into a little magazine-column slot by topic or focus, or that don't simplify life, or a concept, down to a little point like a too-sharp pencil. White on Rice Couple, Angry Black Woman, and Nyonya Food stood out to me this week as blogs that I love because of their breadth and complexity!


    White on Rice

    White on Rice Couple is a wife & husband mostly-food blog. I love how it's way more than recipes - it's a garden, kitchen, food, and travel blog, complete with cute photos of Diane and Todd on their motorcycle. Inspired by the concept of Victory Gardens, they explain how you can have your own garden even on a patio, or indoors. They analyze and think about food and travel and the things they do - in depth, but always in a way to where you can tell they have a great time. It's a blog full of deep enthusiasm!

    Why “White On Rice Couple”?
    Because it’s a fun term that describes us well. Todd was born on a cattle ranch in North Eastern Oregon and Diane was born in Da-Nang, Vietnam. Without taking ourselves too seriously or sounding corny, we do  enjoy each others company, companionship, love and friendship. In other words we stick together like “White On Rice”, inseparable.  Often times though, we’re literally taken as a sexual connotation and readers come to us hoping to find porno. To their pleasant surprise, they’re bombarded by food, our garden and our dogs. Bummer for them.
    And yes, we like to ride free and fast too. But SAFE! Just don’t tell Diane’s mother.

    I love how they're so outspoken, opinionated, and full of enthusiasm -- all with great writing. Read what Diane has to say about loving old objects... antique store or junk shop, how old objects are full of stories and secrets, family and history - the beautiful ways they hold ghosts.

    Angry Black Woman

    The Angry Black Woman is a fantastic politics and culture blog. Its three writers, The Angry Black Woman, karnythia, and unusualmusic, keep up a high degree of awesome and passionate analysis as they take apart bigotry in the U.S. health care system, invite readers to help compile lists of Mindblowing Science Fiction by People of Color, or do high level roundups of racism in casting of Asian-American actors including but not at all limited to Avatar: The Last Airbender. Recently, I especially loved their posts for International Blog Against Racism Week; karnythia's We Have Feelings Too or The cost of Being a POC in Race Discussions, and The Angry Black Woman's Intersectionality,

    You’ve seen us talk about it a lot as concerns feminism, and how mainstream feminists relate (or don’t relate) to women of color. How the issues that we face as people of color, as people of color from various cultural, ethnic and national backgrounds, AND as women are different to the ones faced by white women. They are related, but not always the same. We cannot divorce our gender from our race/ethnicity.

    This is a blog whose continued existence heartens me daily. It stays complicated!

    The comments on ABW are always interesting, instructive, and sometimes infuriating. The blog's writers have had to learn over the years how to be community moderators on very hot topics: racism and sexism in all their incarnations. To that end they present Required Reading and very clear rules for their commenters and for email feedback. It is really worth studying their techniques of community discourse.

    Nyonya Food

    On Nyonya Food, Bee Yinn Low passes on recipes that are her family tradition; Chinese or Peranakan cooking from the Malaysian Straits. She takes an in-depth look at individual ingredients like tamarind, and goes into detail about how to make Assam Laksa (Nyonya Noodles with Fish Broth. I like how each recipe has several photos in a little slide show, and all the family history Bee puts into her recipes.

    With collaboration of my family members—aunt, sister, and sister-in-law—Nyonya food is a website dedicated to Nyonya cuisine, culture, and traditions. It’s also a place my family and I document all precious Nyonya recipes passed down from our late grandmother—recipes and foods that grace many family celebrations, festivities, occasions that so often conjure sweet and nostalgic memories. Nyonya food is a native cuisine of mine; it is the food of my childhood.

    Growing up with my late grandmother—a fantastic Nyonya cook and famed kuih maker of her time—I savored many delicious Nyonya dishes and learned the ropes of making Nyonya food by spending a lot of times in my grandmother’s kitchen. I was introduced to traditional Nyonya kitchen utensils and tools such as batu giling (the stone slab used for grinding spices or “rempah“), wooden coconut grater, various Nyonya kuih molds, pots and pans. Nyonya recipes are also passed down to the women in my family as the cooking process is an intimate family affair where everyone contributes to the kitchen chores of prepping and cooking.

    I'm constantly impressed by the depth and complexity of some of the food blogs out there in the blogosphere. The best ones are really about something - about our relationship to food and cooking, treating it as the important topic it is, echoing into all aspects of our daily lives, memory, and survival. Bee puts all that passion and thought into her posts - very inspiring - what are we creating, doing, making, as we cook? I'm thinking about it, though my own cultural insights from my childhood cuisine are mostly about World War II and women's liberation by way of canned food.

    Here's a few more blogs from the network for your enjoyment!

    * Teen Book Fanatics - A mom and her daughter read and review the same books, each in their own posts, with a focus on YA fantasy, paranormal romance, urban fantasy, manga, historical fiction, graphic novels, and science fiction! There is a summary post on each book. Then Diane and Leah give a brief opinion of the book.

    * Moms of Faith is a blog and a community, with many resources for Christian homeschooling moms. Though I am not Christian I am interested in how a lot of strong communities of blogging women who don't just have a religious affiliation but who integrate their religion through all their lives and thought and writing. I translate it in my head to the way I personally feel about ethics and feminism.

    * On To Be Thode, Stefany, who's been a stay at home mom and a nurse, writes about her life with 5 children. She's going back to school to become a Certified Nurse Midwife. Good luck Stefany!

    * Living with Lindsay is a decor and home improvement blog with lots of photos!

    * The Activity Mom documents all sorts of fun and inexpensive things to do with small children. I love it! I could mess around with muffin tins and clothespins all day long. No need for any sort of fancy electronics or a jillion dollars to entertain and educate a toddler!

    * Adventures in Debt is good! If you've gone looking for financial advice and stories you may have noticed a lot of very generic "information" out there. This blog is about stories and opinions, strategies tried out & which ones are working out for her and her friends.

    Thanks to all of y'all for making my job at BlogHer so much fun and writing blogs so good that I can end every paragraph with an exclamation point!

    ]]>         What can you do to help women blogging in Iran? http://www.blogher.com/what-can-you-do-help-women-blogging-iran 2009-08-11T00:56:08-05:00 2009-08-11T00:56:08-05:00 Liz Henry Last week I went to a panel discussion on the Iranian protests and digital media. It was at the top of a long, long, long flight of stairs at PariSoMa, a co-working space in San Francisco. The high-ceilinged room was crowded with folding chairs, bicycles, little bits and pieces of art, video equipment, and people in geeky (or green) tshirts poking at their laptops and and cameras and phones.

    ]]>     Last week I went to a panel discussion on the Iranian protests and digital media. It was at the top of a long, long, long flight of stairs at PariSoMa, a co-working space in San Francisco. The high-ceilinged room was crowded with folding chairs, bicycles, little bits and pieces of art, video equipment, and people in geeky (or green) tshirts poking at their laptops and and cameras and phones. Despite the stairs, I had a weird surge of love for it as a scene, as I thought over years of San Francisco and Silicon Valley geek events. Everyone is so earnest. I live Twittered the entire evening under the tag #BayFF inspired by the speakers, the audience, and by that odd feeling of buoyancy, of watching something unfold. Because whatever was said, the people in the room were making connections, and would go off and *do something* - write blog posts or code, or connect activists and hackers, would make something new happen.

    The discussion brought together many activists, bloggers, hackers, and computer security folks to talk about how Iranians and others used the Internet, especially social media, during the presidential elections and the protests. Cyrus Farivar, Jacob Appelbaum, and Danny O'Brien, the panelists, were joined by various audience members who got up and took the microphone. Cyrus, author of a forthcoming book The Internet of Elsewhere, described Iran as one of the most developed Internet countries in the Middle East, with 35% of the country online, or about 20 million users. The Persian blogosphere has been huge for years and has been from the start used for political and cultural debate in Iran. Cyrus added that about 70% of the country's population is under 30, and they tend to be the heavy users of the net, so much of the country is young, educated, and wired. Literacy is high and more women than men go to university. The government, though, has matched pace with the general population since the early web, buying up domain names similar to activist sites - cybersquatting - and spreading disinformation. However, Western attention has mostly focused on the dissidents in this situation, but there are bloggers and social media users from many different perspectives for example, if you're a blogger in the U.S. and following #iranelections on Twitter, you will get a skewed view of what the people in Iran are thinking. Cyrus recommends Global Voices as a good alternate source for news and as a starting point to find bloggers from all over the world. Their Iranian blog roundups are great.

    Jake Appelbaum or @ioerror talked for a while about the Tor browser. He says that before the elections, about 150 people were using Tor to browse the web anonymously; after the elections, that number rose to over 7000. The EFF blog explains one way we might be able to do to help free speech online in Iran: by running a Tor bridge or relay. In fact, I wrote about using Tor for free speech on BlogHer last year, suggesting that it may be especially important to diffuse and explain this technology among women bloggers, who may be less likely to have access to their own personal computer, but may share a computer in a household, lacking domestic privacy as well as privacy from their government.

    I heard at the discussion that Austin Heap is working on another tool that may be helpful as well. He could not make it to the panel but is blogging and twittering about his project.

    Seth Schoen from the EFF mentioned another good way for people to help online free speech for bloggers in Iran. There is an online book called Circumvention Tools, which explains some ways for people to avoid censorship and filtering and being identified by their governments. Seth asked for people who are not uber-geeks to try to follow the instructions in the manual, and help to improve it when it isn't clear. If you are a technical writer or an early adopter of web tools and software, you might be ideal to help rewrite and edit this useful book, which is being translated into many languages!

    On BlogHer previously, Kim Pearson described the protests of the Iranian presidential election and Neda Agha Soltan's murder.

    Iranians Blogging is a useful directory of Iranians blogging inside and outside of Iran, in English.

    This book, We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs has a chapter on women blogging in Iran.

    Western culture teaches us to feel sympathy toward these poor women are not free to wear blue jeans, Uggz and make-up. Avari writes, "These women activists are less interested in whether or not to wear the veil and more concerned with gaining access to education, wider employment opportunities, equality at work and better health care for their families.
    "You say Father can get a second wife; but we don’t even want the familiar scent of our mum’s beds to change… You say Father is allowed to give Mum a beating once in awhile; well, when we grow up we’ll show you who needs a beating."
    -By Antidepressant

    Here are some women blogging mostly in Farsi, I'd like to link to them although the automatic translation from Google Translate is not yet good enough for me to understand much of what they're writing about. But, if you read Farsi, you might like them. If not, take a look anyway

    Parastoo, one of the first women to start blogging in Iran. (in English translation) - @parastoo (And an older blog mostly in English: Iranians for Peace.

    Leila from Femirani (in English translation) - @femiran

    Sibiltala in English translation). Her writing seems beautiful, I would love to read a real translation of her post about living in Iran, and roots, and her grandfather's room.

    Women's Field - Meydaan.com, a news site.

    In English mostly, Nazy from Berkeley, with beautiful video clips and photos. Nazy's blogroll is a good place to continue branching out to find more Persian blogs and news sources, many in English.

    On Iranian Women Can't Keep Quiet or Zaneirani, Sheema Kalbasi blogs passionately about politics.

    I am an Iranian Daughter - a Farsi teacher's blog about her everyday life.

    Iranian Girl: an iranian girl is writing about anything!! - This blog is so interesting, I could read through its archives all day, about daily life, working in the computer industry, and so on, but sadly she stopped blogging here in 2007.

    What can we do as bloggers to help women blogging and writing online in Iran? First of all, I think, read them and blog about them. Second, it seems fairly clear that helping to spread the use of anonymity and privacy tools, internationally, will be useful -- but we need to make sure that information gets out to all bloggers, not just to the hacker-y dudes who have their own Linux servers or whatever. Third, go take a look at that Circumvention Tools book and see if you can contribute! (Anyone who wants help getting started with that, I'm happy to help; contact me in comments or email me, liz@blogher.com.)

    Liz Highleyman suggested to me after the panel that we might follow the model of Indymedia's journalism to increase coverage of Iranian politics in English. I don't know very much about Indymedia, but figured I'd put her idea out there.

    And one last thing, please add more blogs in comments if you can, I know there are many blogs and yet I could only list a few.

    ]]>         Your blogs are my BFF! http://www.blogher.com/your-blogs-are-my-bff 2009-08-04T12:09:00-05:00 2009-08-04T13:02:29-05:00 Liz Henry Not that I'm recovered from BlogHer '09 yet. But as I ease back into my work routine, once again I'm overwhelmed with cool blogs. It's like I'm still at BlogHer in the swirl of creative, writerly women, looking over their shoulders at their laptop screens... So here's a few blogs that caught my eye.

    .

     

    ]]>     Not that I'm recovered from BlogHer '09 yet. But as I ease back into my work routine, once again I'm overwhelmed with cool blogs. It's like I'm still at BlogHer in the swirl of creative, writerly women, looking over their shoulders at their laptop screens... So here's a few blogs that caught my eye.

    .

     

    Grace in the Home

     

    Joanna of Grace in the Home and her You Know You're a Good Mom When..." list. M&Ms for dinner, moth-squashing, taking the batteries out of Elmo and claiming he's "napping". She seems to have a little Barry Manilow problem, she handles rude ladies in the Old Navy with aplomb, and she set out 26 weeks ago to lose 60 pounds... and did it. Joanna is a mom blogger with a lot of wit who writes about Christian life, shopping, recipes, parenting, and health. I still can't quite get over the Barry Manilow part, where she has a musical marathon with her 4 year old, starting off with "Copacabana":

    Because this is the standard by which I judge all other musicals. And it’s my job to give my child the best education possible about important things like musical theater and what can happen to a person’s face when they have too many plastic surgeries.

    Funny!!

    fragile heart
    Fragileheart's dreamy, thoughtful journal approaches life, relationships, work, news, social media, all through an emotional lens, or I might describe it as deep emotional analysis. You might really enjoy fragileheart's posts and comments if you like to ponder how you feel about friendship between girls - and Facebook, or changing identity and when you don't recognize yourself in the mirror, or the nature of happiness and love:

    Something else that came up as a debate within myself is whether its better to be the kind of person who lives and breathes for another person or to be the kind of person who can bounce back from anything because all they really need is themselves to be happy.

    How hard it can be to find balance! Fragileheart asks very good questions in nearly every post. Take a look, maybe you will connect.

    The Other Lion

    the other lion writes about parenting and about medical issues and special needs, especially as a parent of a child with autism. She and her son both have Fragile X syndrome. Her journal has a combination of photos and descriptions of daily life with her beautiful son, the nitty gritty of treatments, appointments, evaluations, medication; all the familiar elements of a parent telling it like it is.

    Vintage Books My Kid Loves
    Vintage Books My Kid Loves picks a book a day to write about, with a focus on picture books for younger children. I am slightly shocked but pleased to find that the 1970s are now Vintage. I love My cat likes to hide in boxes, and The Giant Jam Sandwich. Vintage book blogger San Antonio Scribbler's archives go back for two years, so be warned, you might get sucked into hyperspace and come out in the universe where you've just read all the archives of a blog until 2am and used up all your online bookstore gift certificates in a frenzy of one-click foolishness!

     

    Just Between Us

    On Just Between Us BFFs Kristan and Angie blog about all sorts of things - life, design, fashion, relationships. The incredibly cool thing is how well their blog design reflects their friendship and their collaboration: their posts appear side by side instead of in sequence, using the WordPress theme Grid Focus. Kristan is a bit more of a poet and philosopher, with text and bits of dialogue; and Angie has an eye for beauty and design -- though they both defy categorization. The blog turns out like a slightly surreal exercise in literary counterpoint, where though Angie's photos don't directly illustrate Kristan's musings, they are related tangentially. I think it's a beautiful way to blog with another person!

    As always... enjoy... and remember I LOVE YOUR BLOGS!

    ]]>         From OSCON to BlogHer! http://www.blogher.com/oscon-blogher 2009-07-27T21:03:43-05:00 2009-07-27T21:32:53-05:00 Liz Henry This week I bounced from a technical conference in San Jose, all the way to BlogHer in Chicago, and I'd like to highlight some of the great talks and the women I met at both conferences!

    ]]>     This week I bounced from a technical conference in San Jose, all the way to BlogHer in Chicago, and I'd like to highlight some of the great talks and the women I met at both conferences! At OSCON, O'Reilly's open source software convention, I especially enjoyed Kirrily Robert's keynote on Women in Open Source developer communities (video and summary). On her blog at Infotrope Kirrily writes about coding, open source, and geek culture, and she's a founder of the excellent Geek Feminism Wiki.

    I think it's important for us as bloggers and as women to participate in open source. We use a lot of software. And just like we want to be able to open up the hood of our cars, and be able to study and fix the engine, or at least know enough so that our mechanics don't rip us off, we need to know something about our computers and software, the tools we use every day. Not only that, we can join in to make those tools better. FLOSS or Free/Libre Open Source Software is a movement that helps make that possible, but as Kirrily Robert explains in her 15-minute keynote, women are not well represented in most open source projects.

    As part of Ignite OSCON, I gave a 5 minute lightning talk, "Your Flying Jetpack", along with Kirrily's textile geek talk, Sandy Jen from Meebo, Librarian Avenger on film ratings, and Selena Deckelmann's super inspiring talk "How a Bunch of Normal People Used Technology to Repair a Rigged Election".

    Another highlight of the conference was talking with Denise Paolucci, one of the two founders of Dreamwidth, a blogging site based on LiveJournal. Denise and her business partner Mark released the open beta of Dreamwidth this April, raising thousands of dollars from the sale of seed accounts. Though she started out as "the suit" for the company, Denise has learned to code and filed 50 patches in the last code release. Dreamwidth is unusual in being an open source project with a majority of women developers. Its friendly developer community, great step by step documentation, and hosted developer environments make it a good project for women who want to learn to code, to work with others, or just to get the warm fuzzy feeling you get from contributing to open source software to make it better, fix its bugs, and add cool features.

    Denise Paolucci and Liz Henry at OSCON

    I also met Akkana Peck who did a good session on fixing bugs, Val Aurora, Emma Jane Hogbin, and my friend Kirsten Jones from Applied Minds. There was a Women 2.0 meetup on Thursday evening, but I missed it!

    At BlogHer '09 I've been camped out in the Geek Lab. We had small, short sessions on HTML, CSS, beginning blogging, video blogging, Typepad, Expression Engine, Squarespace, Dreamwidth, Photoshop, making blogs accessible, social media mashups, Apache and .htaccess, Unix one-liners, and PHP. The several WordPress sessions were especially popular!

    Though I missed the sessions, I heard from many people that the HTML and CSS by Virginia DeBolt and WebGrrls CTO Nelly Yuspova were well attended and appreciated! I talked with bloggers afterwards who said "I had no idea it was that easy to build my own web sites from scratch. I thought it would be hard!" Sarah Dopp headed a general discussion of CMS tools, and then Shazia Mistry demoed some ways to make useful layout modifications in WordPress by using template tags. I could see people looking at the Stepping into Templates page in the Codex and lightbulbs going on over their heads. Shazia is not only a kickass php and WordPress coder, she's also a great designer. I also caught part of Skye Kilaen's talk on creating accessible web sites and thought that Skye presented with fantastic clarity!

    Around 15 people came to Nelly Yusupova's talk on the php behind WordPress. We looked at the index.php file that you can find in any WordPress template, and went through line by line with very basic explanations of what's happening on each line. Some people here don't have any programming experience, others have a little they've taught themselves, and a couple of people are programmers who don't know much php but are curious to check it out.

    Last but not least! Gena Haskett's presentations for the Video Geek Lab were amazing and she has great write-ups: Core Skills for Video Resources, Creating Instructional Tutorials for Users, and using video blogging for documentary videography and citizen journalism.

    Gena Haskett's videoblogging class, BlogHer '09

    On Day 1 the Geek Lab room layout was a bit confusing. Sarah Dopp and and a few others asked for that to change, and as always BlogHer's conference organizers responded with amazing speed. On day 2 the room was more welcoming and a good place for people to meet and hang out as well as to come to sessions. I love to teach, I learned something in every session, I love coding with other people and believe it or not I also love fixing stuff for people, especially at BlogHer! My vision for next year is that we have the possibility to keep expanding the "Geek Lab" part of the conference to have longer workshops and classes. Many BlogHer members are web designers and developers, and it would be great to get all of them involved in this project. There was talk of having some more local BlogHer meetups specifically for coding, looking at each others' blog templates and so on, and sharing information in a peer to peer way rather than teacher-with-students style.

    I also had mad thoughts about a BlogHer posse going to OSCON next year, and vice versa. And inviting some of the more bloggeriffic DevChix and LinuxChix. And swarming into smaller, less expensive conferences like Open Source Bridge and WordCamps together, full force, so that we feel supported and have someone we know we can talk to at these conferences. What do you think?

    Thank you to everyone who taught and learned and hung out at our Geek Lab room at BlogHer! Please comment and leave your feedback if you participated, and let us know what you'd like to happen next year!

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