personal political

brit election blog

The Guardian's British election blog is an interesting example of the use of weblogs. If you click on comments for any entry, it tells you what the main Guardian and BBC headlines were at the time the entry was written, which underlines how knowledge changes by the minute.

I'm waiting to see how George Galloway has done in an east London seat - he was a Scottish MP who was expelled from the Labour Party for being vociferously anti-war; in this election he has taken on a pro-war Labour MP (unfortunately, a black woman).

Later: Galloway won! That's remarkable, though not everyone likes him.

maternal blogfest

The school holidays are over. There were 18 days of them, of which I only worked for five days, so I had a little mini-holiday of my own. We went away for two different long weekends and had glorious sunny beach times (even though we're almost two thirds of the way through autumn, I am still in shorts and t-shirt today).

The past few days have been such a whirl of events (including co-parent's birthday) that I haven't got around to mentioning my first-ever meeting with fellow bloggers - or should that be sister bloggers, as it was a gathering of mothers who blog: Lucinda (visiting from Melbourne), Liz and Elissa.

I have met other people in the flesh who I first connected to via the Internet - in fact, a couple of women have become real-life friends, such that I almost forget that I first 'met' them via email discussion lists. But these were the first bloggers I've met, which has the interesting added component of a degree of pseudonymity - some of us had never even seen photos of each other. We met for lunch and there was barely a moment's silence over the course of two and half hours - even so, I went away and kept thinking of other things I'd have liked to discuss. It's completely fascinating to me how alike and yet different people are for real, compared to their writing. Words on a page or on the screen can never completely capture all the dimensions of any one person. Then again, neither can face-to-face interaction, of course. Just as when I read their blog updates, I was left feeling that I wanted more! I hope we can get together again.

'mommy' blogs

The New York Times has an article about parents (mostly mothers) who blog. It's basically a piece of fluff written in that airy weekend-magazine style which can be so irritating. (It's in the Fashion and Style aka women's section.)

Although I read several blogs by other mothers, most of my meaningful communication about the nitty gritty of raising a baby/child has been in email discussion lists. I was very lucky to find a great 'due date' list while I was pregnant - over 60 of us are still together years later, chewing over the issues which arise as our kids go through the same life events at roughly the same time.

This article, without using the word, effectively accuses parent bloggers of narcissism. The parenting blogs I read do grab me because of the women (and some men) who write them, not because of the children who are nominally the subjects. But it's nothing to do with narcissism and everything to do with the power of good writing and the urge to communicate with others about the elemental human experiences which parenting opens up.

blood at blogtalk

Rebecca Blood is going to be at the BlogTalk Downunder get-together in Sydney in May.