Hey, Sorry I Haven't Been Around Much, Folks

But I've had a busy couple of weeks. Aside from my involvement in an epic arms race against fuzzy, adorable, rapacious baby rabbits with a taste for rosemary, sage, oregano, dead nettle, (poisonous!) tansy, and, hey, apparently, ANYTHING THAT GROWS, I've been working on a series of interviews with political candidates.

If you'd like to see what I've been up to, go read the first half of my MOMocrats interview with Nebraska Senate hopeful Scott Kleeb, a cattle rancher, duck hunter, and genuine cowboy who also happens to have a Master's in International Relations and a PhD in History.

I promise to be back here soon with the final post in my Victory Gardens series, as well as a meditation on the question of whether or not to have a second child.

Conversations with a Four-Year-Old: Just Wait 'Til He Finds Out Where Chicken Nuggets Come From

At the library, MOTHER and CHILD read a book about insects together.

CHILD: Is that dragonfly eating a butterfly?

MOTHER: Actually, I think that dragonfly is eating a moth.

CHILD: But moths are like butterflies. I like moths and butterflies! That dragonfly should not eat butterflies. Why do dragonflies eat butterflies?

MOTHER: Well, lots of insects eat other insects. All sorts of animals eat other animals. That's just the way the world is. Besides, dragonflies eat lots of bugs we don't like, too. Like mosquitoes! Mosquitoes bite people, right? And dragonflies eat mosquitoes. So we should be happy when we see a dragonfly. More dragonflies means fewer mosquitoes.

CHILD: It still shouldn't eat butterflies.

Later, at home, CHILD watches as MOTHER scrubs toilet.

CHILD: Are you washing that toilet with water?

MOTHER: No. I'm cleaning it with a mixture of water and bleach.

CHILD: Why are you using bleach?

MOTHER: I am using bleach to clean the toilet because bleach kills germs.

CHILD: You mean, after you use bleach to clean the toilet, the germs will be dead?

MOTHER: Yes.

CHILD (accusingly): What germs are you killing?!?

MOTHER: E. coli, for one.

CHILD: But I like E. coli!

MOTHER: No, you don't. Really. At least, not outside of your intestines you don't.

CHILD: Hmph. You should not kill so many things.

Sentence of the Day

"Last week, there was a new kid at the library, and Rachel and I didn't know who nor what had brought her there."

Said my four-year-old.

Who apparently uses "nor" now. And the appropriate construction, "X and I."

(Yet still says things like "hadded" and "runned.")

To the People Who Are Still Concerned That I Have Yet to Enroll My Child in Full-Time Preschool:

I have great news! I've hired a nanny.

She has a humanities degree from one of the top twenty universities in the country. I checked out her college transcript, which she included with her resume. She has taken college-level course work in English, Spanish, biology, physics, calculus, anthropology, philosophy, linguistics, art history, American History, European History, Eastern religions, Western religions, and Greek mythology, which I think positions her to offer my son an excellent, well-rounded classical education.

She speaks three languages! She has already begun giving my child Spanish lessons. Admittedly, her Hindi is a little rusty, but she assures me she can teach my son proper pronunciation when she reads to him in that language.

She has a history of volunteer work and work with non-profit organizations, which I think bodes well for her ability to teach good ethics and an appreciation for the human struggle.

Organic gardening and baking are two of her favorite hobbies. She has already instructed my son on basic plant life cycles, pollination, and the value of beneficial insects, and taught him how to start several different varieties of edible plant from seed in biodegradable peat pots. In addition, she has shown him how to bake whole-grain bread from scratch, and she uses baking as an opportunity to teach fractions and basic nutrition.

When it comes to art, though her drawing skills are not the best, she assures me that her skills as an award-winning amateur film photographer and her coursework in art history will allow her to teach my son basic aesthetic principles. Once he masters the crayon line drawing, and his art skills begin to surpass her ability to teach, she plans to personally transport him to the local art museum once or twice a week for lessons in other media.

And though she has no musical background, she has promised to provide weekly lessons with a professional children's music instructor to counter her inadequacy.

When it comes to physical fitness, as a former distance runner, she understands the value of daily exercise and promises to make a point of engaging my son in frequent physical activity outside. She also plans to attend all of his occupational therapy sessions, and has pledged to learn as much as she can from his occupational therapist about how to help him meet the physical challenges presented by his sensory disorder.

And in order to make sure he receives adequate social contact with other children, she has enrolled him in a weekly storytime club at the library with several other children his age, has set up regular playdates with several neighbors' children, and has arranged weekly group swim lessons this summer.

This nanny I have hired has three years of prior experience working as a paid childcare professional, and four years of additional volunteer experience working with a special-needs child.

Best of all, she has offered her services, 24-7, FOR FREE.

I know. I know! Unbelievable, isn't it?

It must be his red hair.

Conversations with a Four-Year-Old

CHILD: Mommy, do you wish I could always be three?

MOTHER: Why do you say that? What makes you think I wish you could always be three?

CHILD: Well, you seem sad about me turning four.

MOTHER: I'm so happy that you turned four! I'm so proud of you. You're such a big boy now!

CHILD: But, you still call me Baby sometimes instead of Big Boy.

MOTHER: I'm sorry. I keep forgetting, don't I? I just got so used to calling you Baby when you were little. I'll try harder to always call you a big boy from now on.

CHILD: Do you miss me being a baby?

MOTHER: Well, Mommies always remember their children being babies. And as I see you get older, I do miss some things about when you were a baby, sometimes. I miss being able to carry you around in the crook of my arm. I miss the way you always wanted to snuggle with me. I miss the feeling I had teaching you your very first words, when you just started talking, and showing you everything in the world for the first time. But that doesn't mean I don't love you the way you are now. In fact, you're a lot more fun to be around now. We can play games together, and talk together about all sorts of things. And I'm so proud of you for learning so many things, and for growing into such a kind and smart big boy.

CHILD: So you're sure you don't want me to always be a baby?

MOTHER: Yes.

CHILD: But, why do you look sad sometimes when you talk about my birthday?

MOTHER: Well, to tell you the truth, I'm happy and I'm sad at the same time when you have birthdays. Mommies are always a little bit sad when their kids get older. I get a little sad on your birthday, because I know that every birthday you have brings me one year closer to a time when you won't want to live with me anymore.

CHILD gasps, blinks back sudden tears.

CHILD: But, Mommy, I won't ever want to not live with you and Daddy! Not ever!

MOTHER: Oh, I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to upset you! Don't worry. You'll still be living with Mommy and Daddy for years and years. I'm talking about someday far away, when you're all grown up.

CHILD: Hmph. Well, maybe when I'm one hundred years old, then I won't want to live with you anymore. When I'm a hundred, you'll have to live without me.

MOTHER: Okay. When you're one hundred years old, I'll let you go.

You Decide!

Does standing on an aluminum ladder outside today in a cold drizzle in between thunderstorms hacking a quick fix for my loose downspout with-- wait for it-- duct tape-- qualify me for:

1.) A Special Homeowners' Quick Fix Badge

or

2.) A Darwin Award

?

Answer in comments.

Happy Mother's Day to Me

The wind and storms have killed four of my bean plants, nearly knocked over a young apple tree, and worsened a problem we already had with a loose gutter to the point of emergency.

And Isaac woke up this morning crying that his stomach hurt, and later spewed his breakfast all over the sofa. So far today he's been able to keep down six crackers.

So . . .

Instead of the sappy book-length combined Mother's Day/kid's fourth birthday post I'd planned to write today, I'm just going to send you here for a series of posts on what some moms I hang with want for Mother's Day.

I wish all my mama friends a Happy Mother's Day that involves getting properly pampered.

And I hope all of my readers will take a moment today to remember this day's original meaning, and pray/meditate/think strongly about bequeathing our children a future of peace.

Meanwhile I'll spend my day mopping up vomit and starting some new bean sprouts while my husband is outside on a ladder hammering on the roof in gale force winds. Wish me luck.

Hangin' at the Democratic PARTY

Here I am at the Missouri State Democratic Convention in Columbia, Missouri, blogging from an overpriced hotel restaurant with crumbling '70s decor, lamenting the fact that my hash browns are soggy and my eight dollar breakfast includes nothing to put in my coffee but partially hydrogenated soybean oil with corn syrup solids.

My husband and I, who are both pledged Obama delegates to the Missouri State Convention, arrived last night to discover the largest collection of liberal bumper stickers we had ever seen in one parking lot:

Seriously, EVERY car had at least one sticker.

Because we're parents of a (four! FOUR! *SOB*)




four-year-old, we of course showed up about an hour later than we'd planned, but just in time to crash the fringes of a paid dinner party we were too poor to spring for we arrived too late to attend that had trickled out from a convention hall into the hotel lobby.

We ran into a bunch of delegates from our own Fightin' First Congressional District, as well as some great people from the Second and Third Districts that we knew from Obama campaign emails and meetings. We also happened across Russ Carnahan and Clint Zweifel. (No pictures of them yet. Sorry. Will attempt to rectify.)

The Obama afterparty was dominated by people from the east side of the state, as demonstrated by the choice of pizza:


And the fact that everyone kept asking everyone else where they'd gone to high school.

Interestingly, there were a ton of delegates there who had graduated high school in the year 1998, including, of course, my husband, myself, and these guys:


Perhaps this abundance of High School Class of '98 members getting involved with the delegate process to make SURE their votes count has something to do with the fact that we all voted for president for the first time in the year, ahem, 2000?

(Notice to the Supreme Court: We're after you next.)

Anyway it was inspiring to see that so many 20- and 30-somethings are participating in the delegate selection process, many of them for the first time.

I've been passing out MOMocrats cards to everyone willing to talk to me, and I'll be blogging a recap of the whole convention for MOMocrats as soon as we finish our Mother's Day "Dreams of a Mother" Series.

And now I'm off to try and find Senator Claire McCaskill, to see if I can convince her to write a guest post for MOMocrats.

Fundraiser in Honor of Jessica and Kelli

Kim from Parachuting Without a Net has started a website in memory of her two daughters, Jessica and Kelli. If you go there you'll find information on a fundraiser that Kim will be holding in Collinsville, Illinois on July 13th to honor her daughters' lives. Proceeds will benefit a scholarship fund in Jessica's name and the school cheerleading team Kelli belonged to.

Using a photo Kim sent me, I made the button you'll find in my sidebar to support Kim's effort. Feel free to copy it for your own use if you'd like to help publicize this event.





----------------------------

As an aside, I know I've been lax with the posting here lately, and I hope you'll all bear with me. It's been a crazy busy couple of weeks with birthdays, appointments, work in the garden, work on the house, and many other things. But I'm headed to the Missouri State Democratic Convention tomorrow, and you can bet I'll be posting about THAT in detail!

My Victory Gardens, Part Two

Read Part One.

During my pregnancy with my son, on the verge of new motherhood, in the midst of my joy at prospect welcoming a new life, I found myself, as I think many women in that position do, more acutely aware than I ever had been before of the worst aspects of the world I would be bringing my child into, and helplessly anxious regarding my certain inadequacy as to act as a permanent shield against heartbreak and danger.

Driven by some nascent maternal desire to create an orderly, welcoming corner in an endlessly uncertain world, I started gardening in earnest during my pregnancy.

The apartment my husband and I shared at the time was tiny, and lacked a yard, but I was determined. I filled our tiny balcony with a motley collection of pots, and planted them with herbs and tomatoes.




The tomatoes didn't last long in such a confined spot, with a lack of good sunlight; after months of clinging tenuously, they succumbed to spider mites. But the herbs flourished, and soon I had a minature forest on my balcony. I was officially a gardener.

And every place we've lived thereafter, I've found a place to create a spot of green, for a boy whose fifth word was flower.

Momocrats Exclusive with Barack Obama

So, the ABC Democratic Presidential Primary Debate, with its tabloid focus on tangential, media-manufactured campaign "controversies" that have nothing to do with the actual concerns of American citizens made me really, really angry.

But rather than expressing my anger by investing in voodoo dolls of Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulous, I decided to put that frustrated energy to good use by asking my fellow bloggers over at Momocrats what questions they wished had been asked at the debate. I organized those questions by topic, and edited some of them for clarity. At the suggestion of the group, I added in some reader questions that had been submitted to us previously. And then I wrote this post.

The rest of Momocrats crew thought it would be a good idea to forward our questions to the Clinton and Obama campaigns.

And today, you can read the Obama campaign's response.

Barack Obama answered five of our questions.

Hillary Clinton? The ball is in your court.

(And, ABC? I am available to host This Week, if you promise to provide on-site childcare.)

All Right, What Can I Say

I am a terrible blogger. Garden series still not finished. Partly because, well, I've been actually planting a garden. (Spring waits for no woman. And my some of my seedlings are busting out of their peat pots.)

And more because I've just been all out of sorts this week. It's not just the car break-in (and the shooting I witnessed a couple of blocks away AS I was standing in the dark street in a pool of shattered glass next to my car giving the police officer my statement about the break-in -- did I mention that here on the blog? No? Well, now I did).

Like I said in response to some comments on my last post, I'm actually kind of accustomed to violent shit like that happening, though it has been a pleasant while.

It's more that I just feel sort of cumulatively worn down lately by minor mishaps, unfortunate occurences and petty thievery (not just the car theft-- petty thievery like banks charging nonsense fees, insurance companies trying to retroactively deny claims they already paid half a year ago, etc., etc.-- I'm sure you've all had the experience.)

And then I feel really guilty for feeling worn down by this B.S., when some of my blogfriends have much worse things going on. Like Dana who recently lost her whole blog due to a server disaster. Or Andrea whose baby had some weird unexplained respiratory attack the other day that briefly turned her blue. Or Kim, who, as I type this, may or may not be watching the special investigative report that is on KSDK right now about the crash that killed two of her daughters. (The report they have been advertising, like, EVERY TEN MINUTES for days now with an image of the smashed vehicle. Merciful heavens, Kim. I hope you've been watching Channel 4 or something instead.) Or Rebecca, who just interrupted her book tour to go to one of her best friend's funerals, AND who had her car broken into, too, so somebody could steal an MP3 player.

I could go on, and on. It seems like a lot of people I know/read have had a pretty crappy couple of weeks (months, years-- fill in the blank) lately, actually. And that makes me feel like a whiner for letting the little stuff-- the tangled-in-red tape kind of stuff-- get me down.

I think I need to get outside more this weekend. And maybe drink a little. Anyone want to join me?

As If the Earthquake Weren't Enough Excitement

As my Twitter followers already know, my car was broken into last night at a blogger meetup.

(No, it wasn't a fellow blogger who smashed my car's front passenger window and stole my husband's semi-concealed MP3 player and its radio-broadcaster-hookup doohickey. At least, I don't think it was another blogger. I mean, after all, the officer who took our police report did say it was probably a troubled teen, but Dwight claims he was out of town.)

I will totally blog about this later in more detail. Perhaps when I'm less pissed off, so I can be all perspectivey. And I also plan to finish my gardening series. But, in the meantime, if you're hankering for some lengthy text, check out my mammoth new post on global food inflation over at Momocrats.

This Earthquake Pansy was Freaked Right the Eff Out

We interrupt this gardening series to say:

At four in the morning my husband and I were awakened by 5.2 magnitude earthquake.

At first I thought my husband had gotten up and for some reason was shaking the bed. Then, as I noticed he was still lying silent beside me, and the rocking increased, and I realized that in fact my whole house was shaking, my thought process went thusly:

This is an earthquake.

But, we don't have earthquakes here.

Well, actually, we do, sometimes, but I don't want to think about that because that makes this even more scary.

Could it be something else? Like a gas explosion or something in a nearby neighborhood?

No, this is definitely an earthquake.

And then my husband sat up and said, "This is an earthquake!"

Just as I was priming to jump out of bed and run to my son's room to take him outside or under a doorway or something, the earthquake stopped.

The kid slept through the whole thing.

Meanwhile, I couldn't sleep for another hour. I just lay in bed with my eyes open, reminding myself over and over again that the big earthquakes are supposed to come first and any shocks after that are supposed to be minor.

And before any of my California readers mock me, note that this Midwesterner faces down house-flattening thunderstorms, roaring tornadoes and rushing flash floods on a regular basis without batting an eye. But an earthquake? That's just NOT NATURAL.

(Except when it is. But let's not remind me of that. Okay?)

My Victory Gardens, Part One

I started my first garden on my bedroom windowsill, when I was still a teenager in high school. A biology teacher had made a class project of repurposing clear plastic food takeout boxes as mini-greenhouses for starting seeds. It was supposed to nudge us to think of creative ways to reuse and recycle common waste containers; it wasn't meant to be an ongoing project.

But once those seeds had opened, and spread tiny green wings, I found couldn't abandon my little sprouts of rosemary and thyme. So I scrounged things resembling pots from around my home, and dug dirt from who-knows-where, and transplanted my seedlings, and prayed, and within weeks of creating my plastic greenhouse, I was tending my first tiny herb garden.

At the time, my family was struggling financially. My mother, my sister, my little brother and I were living in tiny bare bones apartment in a faceless brick apartment building in a post-industrial, semi-urban wasteland near the airport, right next to an infamous eminent-domain-created ghost town.

It wasn't really safe to spend much time walking around outside in that neighborhood. My sister had been shot at, once, while she was out after dark trying to coax a stray kitten into a box so she could take it to a shelter. The bullet had come so close, she had felt it brush her hair.

And there wasn't much to look at outside, anyway. The landscape was dominated by dirty parking lots, crumbling buildings, litter, and weeds.

It felt so nice to have something green in that place. Something growing and alive and scented of sunlight and good earth. I used to bury my nose in the rosemary plant and breathe its clean, spicy scent before I went to sleep at night. It seemed to clear my head. And to this day, the scent of rosemary calms me.

I don't know why those herbs grew so well on my windowsill, under my untutored care. I've had a lot of trouble, in years since, convincing herbs in general and rosemary in particular to thrive indoors. Herbs, for the most part, crave the sun, and a windowsill generally just won't do it for them unless it has excellent sun exposure.

I also don't know how I kept the cats we had from eating those plants, or knocking them over, especially given I was mostly at school all day.

But somehow, they managed to make it in those tough surroundings. After all, they had a gardener who needed them. And they had no place else to grow.

St. Louis Bloggers' Guild

There's a lot of talk these days about the power of blogs.

Newspaper editors, public relations executives and marketing gurus all chatter in stage whispers about bloggers and blogging, flashing to the world their newfound hipness to the view of social media as the latest Next Big Thing.

For ordinary bloggers and savvy internet users who follow blogs, of course, social media stopped being the Next Big Thing and became just The Thing to Do sometime circa 2002.

But those holding the keys to the Information Kingdom were bound to notice eventually that legions of formerly voiceless peasants seem to have acquired soapboxes and megaphones.

And now, huge corporations court bloggers' favor; newspapers snatch up blog content to fill out their coverage (and don't always bother to ask permission, or credit the bloggers they "borrow" from); advertising executives create MySpace and Facebook pages, begging people to make friends with brands, and marketing departments pay out millions to social media "experts" for tips on designing the perfect corporate blog.

Among all this talk of "harnessing," "leveraging" and "monetizing" the world of blog content, little attention is being paid to the rights and interests of the people who originally created that world of content: the bloggers themselves.

Newcomers to the blogosphere seeking to cash in on the value of blog content need to be reminded: It's not just blog content that has value. It's bloggers who have value. Without the people who write blogs&mdash without the skill, dedication, and talent blog authors tap to draw in their audiences&mdash there would be no value in blogging.

And occasionally bloggers, too, need to be reminded that they themselves, as content creators, have value. While many seasoned bloggers have come know all too well how important it is to be vigilant about defending one's work, some casual bloggers find it hard to fathom that their little amateur online journal project could really be worth something to anyone other than themselves. They don't understand why big-time publications might want to exploit it, why mega corporations might want to buy it, or why sploggers might want to steal it.

So I'm pleased to announce the formation of a new organization, founded by a group of local bloggers who care about building and protecting the local blogging community: The St. Louis Bloggers' Guild. Dedicated to promoting and protecting the rights and interests of St. Louis bloggers through education, community outreach, and cooperative community-building, The St. Louis Bloggers' Guild will be accepting new members shortly.

Go check it out.

Someone Call Mike Huckabee

And tell him there's come good eatin' in my back yard if only he'll bring his own BB gun and a BBQ grill.

In one week, our friendly neighborhood squirrels, in some sort of spring-induced frenzy, have chewed off HALF of one of our trashcan lids (which, mind you, already had a convenient squirrel access hole that had been chewed last season), and gnawed a four-inch by three-inch hole through tough, quarter-inch thick acrylic to get to about a quarter cup of seed inside a bird feeder (seed which they then apparently chose not to eat, preferring to dump it on the ground).

Apparently, they're just not getting enough plastic in their diet.

They weren't nearly this bad last year. Any suggestions?

The Business of Blogging at Camp Baby

So, I know it's been a couple of days since I said "I'll post more tomorrow" . . .

I blame my librarian, who made me check out this book, and Barbara Kingsolver, who wrote it. And Spring, for making me need to start seedlings, for my garden.

(And I blame Barbara Kingsolver for making me feel guilty about not starting even MORE seedlings for my garden. All while sort of mocking me for being a vegetarian even though she used to be one. SHAME ON YOU, Barbara Kingsolver. SHAME ON YOU and your glorious descriptive passages and your superior gardening skills. May you be cursed with mountains of zucchini and enough Juliet tomatoes to start a tomato canning factory. Which of course you will never start, because that would be encouraging people to eat processed food. Mwa ha ha!)

Anyway, on to my post.

********

I went to Johnson's Camp Baby with an agenda. And it wasn't just to escape the family, jump on sleep in a big comfy hotel bed, suck down free booze, snag some fabulous (and trust me, it was really fabulous, as in, free Nintendo DS fabulous) swag, and fall into a fangirl swoon in the celebrity presences of Catherine and Kristen.

(What? Did you think I was going to say Ted Allen? Hah. As if I have time these days to watch Bravo. He IS a sweetheart, though. He's recently started a blog, and he asked us all for blogging advice even though he apparently gets paid two dollars a word writing for Esquire. I thought that was rather noblesse-oblige-y of him. In a good way.)

(Can you believe it? Two dollars a word?

Do you think I could convince Esquire that I have a penis?)

(Where was I? Ah, yes.)

I went to Camp Baby with an agenda, and that was, to ask whatever Johnson and Johnson executives I happened across some serious questions.

As the mother of a young child, I wanted to know what Johnson and Johnson has been doing to address the controversy regarding synthetic estrogen mimics, such as paraben preservatives, and phthalates and BPA leached from plastic packaging, in children's cosmetic products.

I wanted to know what Johnson and Johnson plans to do to reduce the presence of potentially dangerous contaminants, such as the carcinogenic petrochemical 1,4-Dioxane, in soaps and lotions for babies.

I wanted to ask where Johnson products are made, and how factory workers are treated, and how the products are tested for safety.

I wanted to ask whether Johnson's has considered introducing a line of plant-based cosmetic products with organic ingredients to offer eco-conscious parents more options.

Liz wanted me to ask an excellent question about whether Johnson and Johnson has any plans to introduce more eco-friendly product packaging.

And of course, as I mentioned before, given the early controversy about the invitation process, I planned to ask about what Johnson and Johnson's plans to do going forward to make sure nursing mothers don't feel discriminated against at future events.

This may not seem like a particularly long list of questions to ask over the course of three days. But, considering that there were 55 or so other outspoken bloggers attending this event, and considering that the event planners had scheduled the event down to fifteen minute increments, packing each day of the conference with speakers and activities, getting my two ten cents in proved to be a little challenging.

I was able to talk with Lori, the person from Johnson and Johnson's communications division in charge of organizing the Camp Baby event, immediately upon arrival at the hotel regarding the nursing mothers situation. And I do mean immediately: having read my blog post the night before, Lori was actually waiting for me in the hotel lobby, ready to have a conversation.

I must admit that I was so surprised by her eagerness to speak with me that, for a minute, I was fairly certain she was about to lead me out the back door and stuff me into an unmarked van bound straight back to the airport for rousing too much rabble about a free, expenses-paid (and did I mention totally free? Plane ticket, too?) three-day conference/vacation.

However, Lori was actually quite gracious, and spoke with me for a full half hour about what she feels Johnson and Johnson has learned about working with mothers of babies from this inaugural event. She also happily accepted my offer to send an emailed list of suggestions to her (which I have, and which she actually read, despite its being, in typical Jaelithe style, about three pages long).

So, mission fairly well accomplished there.

But what about my other questions?

Luckily, I quickly discovered I wasn't the only blogger there with an agenda.

People like Kristen, Izzy, and Karianna wanted to know about synthetic chemicals and contaminants in Johnson's products, too. Plenty of other bloggers besides myself were interested in asking questions about product packaging, product testing, and product safety. Questions about environmental sustainability. Questions about working conditions. Questions about corporate vision, and corporate participation in efforts to improve local communities.

During every single question and answer session I witnessed, my fellow bloggers did me proud, with many intelligent, well-spoken women asking the same sort of questions I wanted to ask, and offering the same sort of feedback I wanted to offer.

Okay, so I still did hog the mic a little.

On the whole, I think the bloggers in attendance presented a fairly united front in favor of:

• Better product labeling, with full ingredient lists available on the internet
• More information about company history, factory locations, employment practices, and production processes on the internet
  
• Safer, more environmentally-friendly production and packaging methods
• More transparency in all corporate communications with the public regarding product information and product safety
• More options for consumers, including fragrance-free products for children with allergies or sensitive skin, and more eco-friendly, plant-based options for environmentally conscious consumers
• More corporate recognition about how production practices affect the surrounding communities

Honestly, it seemed to me that some of the Johnson and Johnson execs and guest speakers were a little taken aback at just how much thought most "Mommybloggers" really do put into their everyday purchases.

During one presentation by a Johnson and Johnson scientist focused on product safety, the presenter quipped that by the end of her presentation, she'd have turned us all into amateur scientists. And I had to stifle a laugh, considering that I was sitting three feet away from a former neuroscientist, and couldn't glance in any direction without my gaze falling on current or former nurses.

To be sure, the non-scientist, non-health-professional members of the group were a majority. But many of them, I am sure, were teachers, or lawyers, or reporters, or professional freelance writers, or ad execs, etc., (and many others, I am sure, had been such, before they became stay-at-home-moms).

The type of people who read Newsweek in addition to People and Vogue.

The type, in other words, who are in fact already pretty comfortable with bar graphs.

During one feedback session, when a PR expert asked the crowd what they look for when visiting corporate websites, I said, "I go to corporate websites to find out more information about the philosophy of the company. I also try to find out where the company's products are made, and how the company's employees are treated, and whether the company tries to use eco-friendly production practices. I also look for ingredient lists, and product safety information."

And the PR expert responded, somewhat incredulously, "Really? Do you really look for all that information before you make a purchase?"

To which not just I, but about half the women in the room, answered, Yes, of course we do, when we are looking for products we plan to use long-term for our kids.

And why wouldn't we? Bloggers tend to be intelligent, educated, curious, opinionated, and tech-savvy as a group. We like the internet, we're comfortable on the internet, and we know how to use the internet to pull up vast amounts of valuable information in seconds with the click of a mouse.

And most mothers I've met are concerned much more than the average childless person about things like product safety and environmental protection, and most mothers I've met make an active effort to educate themselves on such subjects.

After all, it's our kids' health we're protecting with information on product safety. It's our kids' future we're protecting the planet for.

I think most corporate marketing departments have a bit of an unfortunate misconception about Mommybloggers.

They see us writing about chronic sleep deprivation, picky eaters and potty training, and perhaps the prevalence of such quotidian subject matter leads them to believe such mundane matters are mostly what we think about.

But our brains are quite capable of multi-tasking, and many of us are well accustomed to typing research questions into Google with one hand while we rock a baby with the other.

And so it happened that, during the very last question and answer opportunity, this time at Johnson and Johnson corporate headquarters, when Ray Jordan, Corporate Vice President of Public Affairs and Corporate Communications at Johnson and Johnson, asked the bloggers for final thoughts on how Johnson and Johnson can continue to build good social media relations, my last message to Johnson and Johnson was not something that had been on my original agenda.

I said, "Don't underestimate us. There are scientists in this room. There are health care professionals in this room. The bloggers in this room are smart, and educated. We like having access to detailed statistics and scientific information. We can handle it."

To which Ray responded, "So, are you trying to say that Moms have a branding issue?"

Which I think means he totally got me, actually.

So I'm feeling pretty positive about the business side of this event. I hope we bloggers who attended did a good job of representing the concerns of today's moms to Johnson and Johnson.

And I hope Johnson and Johnson was listening to our suggestions.

I really do think that Ray and Lori were listening.

*****

By the by, here are some encouraging facts you may not know about Johnson and Johnson that I learned while attending the conference:

• A founding partner of the EPA's Green Power Partnership program, Johnson and Johnson is one of the largest corporate users of solar power in the United States.
• Johnson and Johnson sponsors the nonprofit group Safe Kids Worldwide, which promotes public awareness campaigns to educate children and parents on how to prevent accidental injury, and supports legislation designed to reduce accidental injuries in children.
• Johnson and Johnson helps fund InfantSEE, a nonprofit public health program that provides free eye exams to kids under the age of one.

I especially encourage my readers to check out the InfantSEE program. The program director spoke at the conference, and I have never seen a man more sincerely dedicated to a good cause.

(I'm still using Burt's Bees lotion on my kid until Johnson and Johnson comes out with an eco-friendly, plant-based line in recycled plastic packaging, though.)

(Are you taking notes, Ray?)

Back from Outer Space

So, I'm back from Johnson's Camp Baby and I have lots and lots of thoughts about the business side of things there. But I'm trying to collect them into some sort of big picture assessment that will be both insightful and fair. As one of the invitees who does NOT have some sort of ad-related restriction on blogging about an expenses-paid event, I feel I have an obligation of sorts to cover this well. Hopefully I'll have a nice, lengthy, typically tortuous Jaelithe-Style post up tomorrow, but right now my head feels like it's stuffed full of cotton.

No, I'm not still hungover. Really!

I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I came home to a house that looked like my son's toys had seen a better party than I had, and a kid who still insists the fact that I left him alone in the loving, perfectly capable hands of his other parent for a total of two and a half days is absolute proof that I no longer love him and am even now secretly planning to run away from home, never to return.

(So THIS the kind of appreciation, devotion and trust sacrificing a full-time career and social life for nearly four years so you can stay home with your kid gets you. NOW you tell me.)

Oh well. It was worth it, damn it. Dana and Lisa and I formed a St. Louis posse, and my two awesome wingladies made it much, much easier to pretend I was an extrovert for three days. Kristen braided my hair. Glennia gave me a hug, and a stack of Momocrats magnets to pass out, which made me feel all giddily official.

Carmen and Karianna and Christina and Lisa all talked with me about raising quirky kids, and in their group presence I felt for the first time since my son's diagnosis of Sensory Integration Disorder like I could talk to other parents openly about my son's sensory problems without providing a book's worth of explanation first. Because they'd all been there, or at least had visited a nearby town.

And on the way home I made it all the way through airport security wearing a Mominatrix t-shirt. Which I figure was practically like making out with Kristen and Debbie at the same time. And what could beat that?

Reservations Made, with Reservations

So, I'm off to Johnson and Johnson's Camp Baby tomorrow. A two day conference, all expenses paid.

As any Mommyblogger who has been paying attention knows, there has been more than a little controversy surrounding this event, largely because of Johnson and Johnson's decision to ban all children, including nursing babies, from the event. Many better bloggers than I have already written in depth about this subject, so I find myself without much new to say.

Before the controversy broke, I had been getting pretty excited about going to this event. First of all, it's a free trip, and who doesn't get excited about being offered a free trip? And secondly, due to several random unfortunate events, I haven't been able to make it to a BlogHer convention yet, and so Camp Baby presented itself as a fine first opportunity to finally meet several of my favorite fellow bloggers in person.

I was a little disappointed, mind, that some of my friends who had also been invited hadn't been able to register in time and wouldn't be able to go, and I understood their frustration at being shut out before the registration deadline. But when I found out there had only been 50 spots available, I could understand why the event had filled up quickly, and though I wished J&J had been more clear to invitees about how limited the space was, I understood why they couldn't accept every reservation.

However, when I first found out that some nursing mothers (of very young babies) had been enthusiastically invited to the camp, had registered, and then had essentially been disinvited from the camp after asking that arrangements be made so that they could bring their nursling infants, I was seriously upset.

Upset enough to email my contacts at J&J to ask them flat out why a company that focuses on making products for infants wouldn't be concerned enough about the health of infants to want to encourage breastfeeding by treating nursing mothers with respect.

Upset enough, in fact, that for a little while I considered canceling my reservation.

But then, two things happened to change my mind.

The first thing that happened was that one of the women in charge of organizing Camp Baby, Lori, responded rapidly to bloggers' complaints. She responded to my email. She responded to other bloggers' emails. She sent out a general apologetic email to the entire list of invitees.

She started calling several bloggers in person to apologize for the missteps, and wrote about the problems on Johnson and Johnson's own company blog, openly admitting that the J&J had made a mistake in not making the event requirements more clear from the beginning.

It seemed to me that Lori did feel sincere regret that some invited bloggers had been offended, and it seemed to me that the event organiziers at Johnson and Johnson sincerely did want to learn from their mistakes.

And the second thing that happened was that I talked to my mom.

My mom nursed me, and my little sister, back in the early eighties, when nursing in public was far less acceptable than it is now, and nursing mothers had far less support. She nursed all three of her children past their first birthday. She was a lactivist before lactivist was a term.

So I was interested in what my mother would have to say about this issue. And when I talked to her about it, she said, "If this is an all-expenses paid trip, surely, if you cancel, Johnson and Johnson can find another blogger who doesn't care nearly as much as you do about making life easier for nursing moms to take your spot in a heartbeat. Since they seem contrite and willing to listen, why don't you go on this trip, and talk to them while you are there about ways they can do more to accommodate nursing mothers in the future?"

So, that's what I'm going to do. But I'd like your help.

What would you like me to say to the event organizers at Johnson and Johnson about ways to better organize future bloggers' events?

And are there any other queries you'd like me to shoot their way while I'm in New Jersey tomorrow?

(Don't worry about asking me to ask whether they plan to try to reduce the presence of phthalates and parabens in their baby soaps and lotions. It's already on my list.)

Better Know a Delegate*

In February, I received an email from a local group of fellow Obama campaign supporters and volunteers mentioning that the Missouri State Democratic Party would be holding caucus meetings in March at the ward and township level to elect delegates to the Missouri State Democratic Convention.

Even though I would consider myself to be a pretty well politically engaged citizen— I follow political news closely; I research political candidates; I attend political rallies; I vote regularly in both national and local elections; I have been known to voluntarily watch CSPAN—I had never been to a Missouri caucus meeting before. As a matter of fact, I had never really considered going to my home state’s Democratic caucus before.

Why not?

Well, in Missouri, we hold a Democratic presidential primary, and the number of delegates assigned to each candidate is determined by the results of that primary. The Missouri caucuses are held, not to choose a candidate, but to choose which Democratic party members from each ward, district or township will be sent to the Missouri State Democratic Convention as delegates pledged to vote for a particular candidate, and then to select a small number of those state-level pledged delegates to be sent on to the Democratic National Convention.

In the past I have trusted that, if I voted in a primary, my voice would be heard by the state party; the election of delegates seemed little more than a symbolic process to me. In recent decades, most Democratic presidential primaries have been decided long before the Democratic National Convention, and the delegates who attended most recent national conventions have done little more than ratify the ascendancy of an already chosen candidate.

But, as any Democrat with a television or internet access knows, this election cycle, things are different.

This time, the fight for the 2008 presidential nomination may well continue right into Denver. And even if it doesn’t, the 2008 Democratic National Convention is certain to go down in history, either as the first to nominate a woman presidential candidate, or the first to nominate an African-American presidential candidate.

This year, I found myself very interested in the Missouri caucuses.

And so, I went to my township caucus meeting, where, much to my surprise, I was elected a state-level delegate on the spot, without even having to plead my case—the turnout at my township meeting was so low that I was basically pressed into service. My husband was also named an Obama delegate at the same meeting.

Thursday night, we attended the Congressional District Caucus Meeting for Missouri's First Congressional District.

If you'd like to read my account of the national-level delegate selection process there, go and check out my very first post at Momocrats!

I'm really honored to have been invited to join this group of passionate, intelligent, opinionated women bloggers. Whether you're interested in a parental perspective on progressive politics, or you're just looking for more news and views about this year's historic Democratic presidential primary race, if you haven't visited Momocrats yet, you don't know what you're missing. Go check it out!

*As always, props to my secret lover Stephen Colbert.

Conversations with a Three-Year-Old: Motherly Love and Life in the Womb

MOTHER: Hold still please so I can put this lotion on you. It's good for your skin.

CHILD: Lotion is not good for your skin.

MOTHER: Yes it is. This lotion is.

CHILD: No it's not!

MOTHER: Of course it is, silly. Why would I, your mother, who loves you and wants you to be healthy and happy, purposefully put something on your skin that was bad for your skin?

CHILD: Well, when I was a baby you didn't always do good things.

MOTHER: What do you mean? What did I do that was bad when you were a baby?

CHILD: When I was a baby, I bet you used to put VINEGAR on my skin!

MOTHER: I did not. Why on earth would I do such a thing?

CHILD: Because when I was a baby, you didn't know yet how much you loved me.

MOTHER: I did too know I loved you when you were a baby.

CHILD: No, you didn't. You didn't know how much you loved me because all I could say was "Dada."

MOTHER: Do you mean you think I didn't love you because you said Dada as your first word instead of Mama?

CHILD: Yes.

MOTHER: You silly boy. I didn't mind that you said Dada first. I loved you before you could even talk. I loved you before you were even born!

CHILD: You did?

MOTHER: Of course I did. Before you were born, when you were still inside my belly, I used to talk to you and sing songs to you and I would tell you how much I loved you. And I would put my hands on my belly so I could feel you kicking me. You would kick and kick, and my belly would jump up every time you kicked me.

CHILD: Oh, I'm sorry about kicking you so much when I was in your belly.

MOTHER: Well, that's all right that you kicked me. I didn't mind.

CHILD: I couldn't see you while I was in there. I thought you were a drum.

MOTHER: You thought I was a drum?

CHILD: Oh, yes. It made a great sound when I kicked you. THUMP. THUMP.


Edited after reading comments regarding my son's future as a professional drummer to add:

The best part about this, really, which can only be appreciated by someone who knows Isaac well, is that, if left to his own devices, he would listen to music all day long. And when he's listening to music, he drums on things CONSTANTLY. When he was about six months old, I got him a new big boy high chair and the very first thing he did when I sat him down in it for the first time was drum on the tray. He drums on the coffee table. He drums on the floor. He drummed on our old glass dinner table so much I started to fear he'd hit the right frequency and shatter it, so I gave it away and bought a wooden dining table instead.

And his Kindermusic class teacher has specifically said to us, "You have a fantastic future drummer on your hands," because he can already do simultaneous independent rhythms with each hand.

When I was pregnant with him, in the last few months of my pregnancy, whenever I would sit near some device playing music with a strong beat, he would kick in time.

Blog Blast Update

Remember when I posted a lengthy series recently as part of a St. Louis bloggers' blog blast about BlogNetNews, an "aggregator" site that seems to be walking CROSSING a very fine line between blog aggregation and splogging?

The inimitable Queen of Spain recently discovered her blog content is being scraped by BNN's parenting site.

After reading Erin's post, Victoria from Anachroclysmic also wrote a post detailing her recent confrontation with BNN's quickly-becoming-infamous Dave Mastio.

And the expanding conversation about the BNN controversy has now come full circle, as Buster of InMuscatine, one of Mastio's earliest and most vocal critics (and a blogger I singled out in my series as one whose original work Mastio repeatedly refused to remove from BNN) came across Victoria's post, which linked back to both Erin's post, and mine.

Buster has issued a modest proposal some bloggers who have been unable to get their content removed from BNN may wish to consider.

Personally, I think the best way to stop BlogNetNews from taking advantage of and disrespecting bloggers is to keep blogging about how BlogNetNews takes advantage of and disrespects bloggers, thereby forcing BlogNetNews to display content about Dave Mastio's own devious and inappropriate behavior.

But Buster's idea might work, too.

In case anyone missed it, here are the posts from the original St. Louis BNN Blog Blast (if I've left anyone out, as I'm sure I have since I'm half asleep, do tell me and I'll add you in):

News-Bitch
Little Bald Doctors
Mamalogues
Super Fun Patrol
Slacker-Moms-R-Us
A Bun's Life
The Broad Brush
Prologos
Highway 61

Also, this is the post on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Virtual St. Louis blog, tentatively proposing a joint venture between the Post-Dispatch and BNN, that prompted me, and other local bloggers, to investigate the new BNN St. Louis site in the first place.

And here is the paper's reaction to our reaction.

(Fifty points for anyone paying attention who can catch the irony inherent in that second Virtual St. Louis post's title.

Not that my post titles were that original, or anything. I'm just sayin' . . .)

Conversations with a Three-Year-Old: Computer Shopping

FATHER: So, which of these two laptops here do you like better?

MOTHER: Well, this one has a built-in web cam. That would be nice whenever one of us goes on a business trip-- we could use it to talk to the kid at home over video.

FATHER: This one has a bigger screen, though.

MOTHER: That's true. That screen seems a little brighter, too. But this one has more hard drive space!

CHILD: Excuse me.

FATHER: Just a minute. Mommy and I are talking. This one has an Intel processor, and that one has an AMD. I think that's the biggest reason for the price difference. Well, that and the larger screen.

MOTHER: But does it really matter anymore whether you get Intel or AMD? I mean--

CHILD: Excuse me!

MOTHER (to CHILD): Just a minute, dear. We have to make an important decision. (To FATHER) As I was saying, is there really a difference between AMD and Intel anymore in terms of performance? I mean, aren't they considered comparable? Plus, the AMD one has that cool label burning feature in the CD drive.

FATHER: That's true. But, are you sure you dont--

CHILD: EXCUSE ME!

MOTHER and FATHER: Yes?

CHILD: You said this one here has more hard drive space, right?

MOTHER: Yes, sweetie. That's what Mommy said.

CHILD: Okay, then. This one has more hard drive space. It says it has 250 gigs, right? More hard drive space means more space for music. We need this one.

MOTHER and FATHER stare at CHILD in stunned silence.

MOTHER: Okay, I guess we need this one, then.

FATHER: Yep, this one it is.

Conversations with a Three-Year-Old: Phobias

MOTHER and CHILD walk down a garden path on their way to an Easter egg hunt. Another family passes by, pushing a crying baby in a stroller.

CHILD: Mommy, why is that baby crying?

MOTHER: I don't know, dear. Maybe the baby is hungry. Maybe the baby is tired. Maybe the baby doesn't like this chilly wind.

CHILD: No, I don't think that baby is hungry or tired or cold.

MOTHER: Why do you think the baby is crying, then?

CHILD: I think that baby is afraid of Easter.

Fun with Google

StatCounter informs me that certain persons are finding my blog by searching for "wanton debauchery photos."

What an erudite way to search for racy photographs! Heavens. That's practically Victorian.

I'm sorta proud that the dirty minds coming to my blog are at least smart dirty minds.

(Was it you, Dwight?)

Last night I was number three on Google for that phrase, but this morning I've already dropped to number four.

Well, that's okay. This post might bump me back up.

On Whining

Okay, I'm watching all this news coverage of the flooding around here and I'm realizing I really AM being a whiner when I complain about a couple of little puddles of water in my basement. I hereby rescind my petty complaint. There is some serious stuff going down in southern Illinois and southern Missouri today. I hope all the people I know who live in those areas are doing all right.



(I do still wish my kid could bring himself to eat something other than three crackers and a pretzel today, though, and I wish he could ditch the cough that's making him sound like an 80-year-old smoker. Can I still have that whine?)

One of the Things I Like Least About Being Sick

Is how dirty and neglected my house gets while I'm ailing.

I was sick with the flu and then a post-flu sinus infection (I think that's what it was-- I didn't bother to get it officially diagnosed) for almost the entire month of February. And then, after about a week and a half of relative wellness during which I made several relatively futile attempts to catch up on the housework while also catching up on freelance work and blogging, I find myself sick AGAIN with some new virus, not to mention exhausted after three straight nights of spending half the night awake comforting my sick child (who was up half the night for three straight nights with a vicious hacking cough), and the other half of each of those nights trying vainly to snatch some sleep while listening to my poor congested husband, who doesn't normally snore, buzz like an angry army of chainsaws.

There is currently an obstacle course made out of toy blocks and cars completely covering my noticeably un-vacuumed living room floor. My dining table is covered with un-sorted mail. A pile of dirty dishes languishes in my un-shined kitchen sink, and that pile is beginning to overflow onto my un-wiped counter. My office is stacked with un-filed papers. My bedroom floor is strewn with un-washed clothes.

And it's all I can do to keep up with throwing out the tissues my kid keeps using and dropping on the floor.

I'd post pictures, but, really, I don't want to be that cruel to a sick woman.

To top it all off, we have water seeping in the basement from the torrential rains, and yesterday for reasons unfathomable the toilet in the bathroom we just remodeled just started leaking water into the basement. And not clean water from the tank, either-- it leaks right over the stack when you flush it. Which must mean the brand new wax seal we fitted the toilet with just a couple of months ago must be faulty. Which means we have to take the whole toilet apart again, and replace the wax seal again. Like, immediately, if we want to be able to use it. (We do have another bathroom, thankfully, but still.)

I feel like my house is falling down around my stuffed up ears. I feel totally overwhelmed today.

Luckily, I can push all thoughts of the state of my house right out of my head just by thinking about how my already underweight kid has lost like half a pound this week from throwing up / not eating because he's so sick, and now the size 2T pants that my almost four-year-old JUST started being able to wear without a belt about a month ago are now falling off of him again!

Yeah, I might be in sort of a whiny mood today . . .

Conversations with a Three-Year-Old: Physics

CHILD: Look! Look at my finger!

MOTHER: Don't stick your fingers in random holes in the computer. You know better than that.

CHILD: But, why shouldn't I do that?

MOTHER: Because you might get a shock or something.

CHILD: But why?

MOTHER: I've told you before. Because computers have electricity inside them.

CHILD: But why do computers have electricity in them?

MOTHER: Because computers run on electricity.

CHILD: But why do computers run on electricity?

MOTHER: Because computers need electricity to work.

CHILD: Why?

MOTHER: Because they need the energy from electricity to do things, just like how we need energy from food to do things.

CHILD: But, why?

MOTHER: Because!

CHILD: Why because?

MOTHER: Because I said so!

CHILD: Just because? Just because you said so?

MOTHER: Well, no, not really because I said so.

CHILD: Then, why?

MOTHER: Because e=mc². Can you say that? E equals M C squared.

CHILD: Because e=mc²?

MOTHER: Right.

********

I suppose this means he's feeling a bit better now. Right?

Too bad I'm not yet.

Edited to add: Bonus questions from the last hour:

"Mommy, what are Democrats and Republicans?"
"Is Hillary Clinton a Democrat?"
"Why is John McCain a Republican?"
"What does personal responsibility mean?"
"What does community mean?"

"Mommy, what is a virus?"
"Are viruses mean?"
"What do you mean viruses don't have brains? What is a brain?"
"But, why is my brain inside my head?"

"Mommy, why does your blog have all those whys on it?"

True Geek Confession*+

When I'm stressed and I feel I need a moment to sit and collect my thoughts in silence, I like to sip cup of tea.

Earl Grey.

Hot.

* Props to my woman Dawn, per usual.
+ Inspired in part by Dana's most recent confession of Sci Fi geekitude, and in part by the fact that I am actually sitting here right now soothing my sore throat and my unruly soul with a cup of hot Earl Grey.

Sick

Everyone in the house is.

Blech.

St. Louis Blog Blast on BNN

Go here for a list of bloggers who have participated so far.

Start here for my take. (Be warned. It's long. Four posts! And you may be forced to learn something technical-like.)

The Fine Line Between Aggregation and Splogging: Part Four

Crossing the line

In the three previous posts, I've discussed the some of the similarities between blog aggregation and splogging, and also pointed out the some of the differences that set well-intentioned blog aggregation sites apart from sploggers. The key differences in my view are:

• Reputable aggregator sites ONLY POST SHORT EXCERPTS; sploggers post excerpts of any length and/or full posts, often including photos, from the blogs they scrape.

• Reputable aggegator sites ALWAYS ATTRIBUTE COPIED CONTENT TO THE ORIGINAL AUTHOR; sploggers may not attribute the content, or may deliberately give the content a false attribution.

• Reputable aggregator sites LINK BACK TO THE ORIGINAL SOURCE WITH PROMINENT, EASILY FOUND LINKS; sploggers may not.

• Reputable aggregator sites PROVIDE CLEAR BENEFITS TO BLOGGERS AND BLOG READERS; splog sites may not.

• Reputable aggregator sites DO NOT PRETEND TO BE SOMETHING THEY ARE NOT, while pretending to be something they are not is, in fact, the very essence of what sploggers do.

• Reputable aggregator sites DO NOT MISLEAD USERS into believing that the scraped content they present is produced by the aggregator site, or in any way affiliated with the aggregator site; they make it absolutely clear that the aggregator is meant to serve as a portal to the original content; splogger sites intentionally leave the relationship between the original authors and the site presenting the content unclear.

• Reputable aggregator sites ALLOW BLOGGERS TO OPT-OUT, AND MAKE OPTING OUT A SIMPLE EFFORT; sploggers do not.

But, what about sites that meet some of the "reputable aggregator site" criteria listed above, but not others?

BlogNetNews.com/stlouismo is one such site.

Recently debuted, BlogNetNews St. Louis is one of the latest in a series of BlogNetNews sites run by journalist , newspaper opinion page editor, and former Bush administration speechwriter Dave Mastio.

BlogNetNews St. Louis scrapes feeds from blogs and aggregates them on a single page. Like a reputable aggregator site, BNN only posts excerpts, not full posts.

However, BNN also scrapes and posts photos from blog posts. Not just thumbnails, but nearly-full-sized photos. And BNN hotlinks to those photos, which means that every time a photo is viewed on BNN, bandwidth is being used on the original blogger's website. This may not be a big deal for people hosting their photos on really big sites like Blogger or Flickr; however, if a blogger is hosting his or her blog on his or her own server, hotlinking can be a fairly serious issue. Hotlinking photos is widely considered to be bad internet manners.

BNN does link back to the original sites that it takes content from. But the links on the site are somewhat confusing.

For example, BNN has a blogroll running down the right side of the page. The blogroll is titled "BNN Blogs." It lists all the blogs that are featured on the BNN St. Louis site. But if you click on one of those links, the link takes you, not to the original blog by the original author, but to another page within BNN.

Which brings me to the next way in which BNN St. Louis strikes me as being little too much like a splog: through misleading layout and language, BNN St. Louis, in my opinion, will mislead users into thinking that the bloggers listed in the blogroll are affiliated with the BNN site.

BNN is not organized like a directory.

Take a look again at Alltop. Look at the way the blogs are broken down into categories. Look at the way the clean, simple layout focuses on the links to the blogs themselves, and nothing more. Look at the way the excerpts there don't appear unless you mouse over a link that takes you directly to the original blogger's site.

Now, take a look again at BlogHer. Remember, BlogHer is a community-based blog network. It was founded by women bloggers, for women bloggers, to address issues concerning women bloggers. Participation in the BlogHer network is entirely voluntary. Decisions at BlogHer regarding advertising content on the site are made only after examining the collective input of the entire community.

Look at the Journals page on CafeMom. Now, CafeMom did not start as any sort of grassroots organizing effort. It's a top-down community building effort, funded by a marketing company. But participation in the CafeMom community is, again, entirely voluntary. CafeMom does not scrape bloggers' posts for content. The journal authors at CafeMom are choosing to host their journals there on the CafeMom site.

And look again at BNN. From a visual standpoint, which type of site does BNN resemble more closely? A directory-style aggregator, like Alltop? Or an opt-in, voluntary community building site like BlogHer or CafeMom?

I'd vote for the latter. BNN is organized, not like a typical directory, or a blog search engine. Not even like a typical web-based feed reader. BNN is visually organized like a community-based blog network. And it's there in the name, too. BLOG (news) NETWORK.

But BNN is not a blog network. The bloggers on the "BNN Blogroll," by and large, did not choose to be involved. The blogs on the site were picked by Mastio. The bloggers did not volunteer.

How do I know this? Why, I emailed him to ask about it! And this is what he said:

I build each of our sites by hand, looking at each blog myself and gathering all the publicly available email addresses that I can find for the authors. Upon launch and sometimes before launch, I email all of those people with an explanation of what we are doing, how it works and what we hope they will get out of it.

Now, that doesn't sound so bad, does it? I mean, he is taking the content without permission, and he is presenting it in a sort of misleading fashion that implies that the bloggers whose content is on the site are somehow involved. But after he takes the content, he does at least email the bloggers he took content from to let them know he did it, right? That's what he said he does, in the email he wrote me.

But I must say, I found that response to be a bit suspicious.

Because the thing is, I know a lot of St. Louis bloggers. And not just casually, over the internet. I have, in fact, met many St. Louis bloggers in person. And I would consider more than a few of them to be friends.

But in fact, NONE of these friends of mine had mentioned to me that their work was being featured by BNN St. Louis. Which was a bit curious to me, given that the local blogging community has been all atwitter about BNN ever since Kurt Greenbaum posted about it on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Virtual St. Louis Blog.

(And not just because a headline on the Post-Dispatch website misspelled the word "bane." I know, I know. Everyone makes typos now and then, including and especially me. But this typo's been driving me nuts every time I link to it. Because bane is one of my Favorite. Words. EVER.)

So, I emailed several of my friends who were listed on the BNN site to ask them whether they had even been notified that their content was being used on the site. All of the people I emailed list contact emails on their blogs in easy-to-find spots. So, if Mastio had really been "gathering all the publicly available email addresses" he could find in order to contact the authors featured on the BNN site, then these bloggers should have been contacted, no?

As it turned out, most of them had not been contacted. Most of them, in fact, had no idea that BNN was scraping and reposting their blog content until they were informed of that fact by my email.

And most of them shared my opinion that the format of the site was confusing and misleading, making them look like they were affiliated with some sort of network that they actually had nothing to do with.

A "network" bearing, incidentally, enormous banner ads on every page:





Now I've done some research, and I came to discover that this is certainly not the first time BlogNetNews has met with some controversy.

Bloggers in some other cities where BNN operates have complained that they feel the BNN ranking system is unfair. When one blogger in Virginia who felt the BNN site was treating him unfairly asked to have his content removed, Mastio refused, citing fair use, and the frustrated blogger decided to shut down his RSS feed to prevent Mastio from continuing to scrape his site.

When a different blogger in Iowa asked Mastio to stop using his content because he felt that BNN's business model was exploitative, BNN responded by mocking the blogger over email and continuing to post the blogger's content.

When a blogger in Georgia asked to have his content removed from a BNN site there because he felt his girlfriend's blog had been unfairly excluded from the BNN site, Mastio again refused to remove the blogger's content, and mocked the blogger in the comments section of the blogger's own blog, saying: "When we didn’t cave, Rusty came up with the picture and launched his widdle cyber tantrum."

Does this sound like the operator of a reputable blog aggregator to you?

Because it sure doesn't sound to me like Dave Mastio has that much respect for the bloggers whose original work powers his site.

If Mastio's BNN venture isn't actually about promoting blogs or bloggers' interests, what is it about?

Could it be about drawing traffic to those banner ads I mentioned?

Or could it be about drawing traffic to those banner ads, AND drawing traffic away from blogs, to the newspaper websites Mastio has a history of partnering with? Propping up the struggling dead tree media outlets with fresh, popular blog content, for free?

I don't know. I'm not Dave Mastio.

But if I were Dave Mastio, I would think very, very carefully about trying to be nicer to the authors whose work I wanted to use.

The Fine Line Between Aggregation and Splogging: Part Three

Blog Aggregating Websites

Pretty much since the dawn of blogging, there have been attempts made, by bloggers themselves and by readers of blogs, to organize and network the blogging community in ways that make it easier for bloggers to find other like-minded bloggers, and easier for blog readers to find blogs about subjects that suit their interests.

The blogroll is, of course, one of the earliest adopted and most commonly used tools for that purpose. Bloggers make a list (or sometimes multiple lists, organized by region or topic) of links to other bloggers that they themselves like to read. Blog readers often use these lists to find other bloggers whose work they might enjoy.

Blogrolls have the added advantage of boosting backlink ratings for the blogs they list. Backlinks are links to a site from another location, and search sites like Google use backlinks as one indicator of a site's popularity. A high number of backlinks may positively influence a website's search ranking, especially if those links themselves are coming from a highly influential site.

In addition to the blogroll, another organizational/networking tool that has arisen organically within the blogging community is the blog network. Originally, blog networks were started voluntarily by groups of bloggers, usually bloggers who had similar interests or wrote about similar topics, who decided to band together and create a site together, a site dedicated to a particular region, topic, or cause.

BlogHer is one example of such a network, which focuses on women bloggers. Started by bloggers, for bloggers, as a place to promote discussion about women's issues among bloggers, BlogHer has grown to include an ad network and a successful national blogging conference series. Participation in the BlogHer network is entirely voluntary. Members can choose whether or not to contribute original content to BlogHer's blogs and message boards, and they can choose whether or not to link to their own original blogs in their BlogHer profiles.

Crazy Hip Blog Mamas is another blog network started by bloggers for bloggers. As the name suggests, it focuses on Mommyblogs, and again, participation is entirely voluntary. CHBM hosts blog carnivals, where all members are invited (but not required) to write posts on their own blogs covering the same topic, and members are encouraged to vote in weekly contests that nominate a "Member of the Week."

Sites like BlogHer and CHBM provide members with opportunities to discover and network with like-minded fellow bloggers, and help blog readers find collections of similarly themed blogs. Such community-based sites often also make a profit for their founders, from ad revenue; the large, sophisticated audiences they draw are a prime target for many major advertisers. However, since participation in networks like BlogHer and CHBM is entirely voluntary, and since members of community-based sites like these are usually given a good deal of say in any major marketing decisions, this is not generally seen by members as a conflict of interest. In fact, ad revenue often allows community-based blog networks to offer even more services to their members, generally benefiting the community.

Alongside the community-based blog network, two other popular methods of organizing blogs have emerged: the blog search engine, and the blog aggregator website.

Blog search engines are just what they sound like: search engines that specifically search only blogs. Google now has its own blog search engine. Icerocket is another blog search engine. Both find search results by searching through blog web feeds. If your blog doesn't broadcast a web feed, it won't get picked up by these engines.

Blog aggregator websites are a little more difficult to describe, in part because there are so many different varieties of websites that aggregate blog content. Some blog aggregators are basically blog directories that offer links to blogs organized by topic or category, and also provide some of the features of a software-based feed reader by notifying users when a listed blog updates.

For example, there's Technorati, which combines its own blog search engine and a well-organized link directory with a front page showing a constantly-updated display of brief excerpts of blog feeds from some of the internet's most popular blogs, right alongside excerpts from news articles. Technorati also allows site users to create personalized user accounts, where blog readers can set up their own customized pages to track their favorite blogs using web feeds, just as one can using a software-based feed reader, and blog owners can declare ownership of their own blog profile if they find it listed in the Technorati directory.

Technorati also rates blogs for what it calls "authority." This rating, similar in ways to Google's PageRank, is based on backlinks from other websites.

And then there's the recently launched Alltop aggregator of blogs and news stories, a Guy Kawasaki effort that is described on own Alltop's own About page thusly:

You can think of an Alltop site as a “dashboard,” “table of contents,” or even a “digital magazine rack” of the Internet. To be clear, Alltop sites are starting points — they are not destinations per se. The bottom line is that we are trying to enhance your online reading by both displaying stories from the sites that you’re already visiting and helping you discover sites that you didn’t know existed.

Alltop does not use an objective popularity-based rating system to decide which blogs to list. Rather, as far as I can tell, it seems to pretty much just list those blogs that Alltop's founders like, plus any popular blogs that are either highly recommended by Alltop users, or specifically request to be included.

Like Technorati, Alltop also uses web feeds to provide up-to-the-minute updates for the blogs it lists in its directory. Alltop shows post titles for the last five posts from each blog; when a user mouses over one of the titles, a brief excerpt from the post is shown. However, Alltop is a much simpler site than Technorati; it does not allow for custom web-based feedreading pages like Technorati does. Nor does it have a search engine function.

The Fine Line Between Aggregation and Splogging

Okay, let's pause for a moment here. Reading that section just above about blog aggregating websites, did you notice something?

Blog aggregating websites like Technorati and Alltop scrape bloggers' web feeds for content, and post that original content to their own sites, just like many sploggers do.

But, before David Sifry and Guy Kawasaki start sending me hate mail for trashing their sites on my blog, let me just say this right now: I believe that most blog aggregation sites should NOT be lumped in indiscriminately with the sploggers.

Most blog aggregation sites have an entirely different intent, serve an entirely different purpose, and treat scraped content differently than sites run by sploggers.

Many blog aggregator sites, like Alltop and Technorati, provide valuable services to both blog readers and bloggers. Blog aggregating websites can help blog readers find new blogs that may interest them by organizing blogs by region or topic. They can help bloggers by exposing bloggers' work to a wider audience, and also by providing valuable backlinks to the blogs featured on the site. The benefits of blog aggregating websites are, in many ways similar to the benefits of feed readers and community-based networks, in that they bring more readers to blogs by making it easier for blog readers to find, read, and manage blog content.

And sites like Technorati and Alltop treat the content they scrape very differently than the way sploggers do. Unlike many splog sites, they post excerpts only, and not full posts. Unlike many splog sites, which show content without attribution, or even in some cases deliberately, falsely attribute stolen work to a different author, all excerpted content on Technorati and Alltop is credited, and prominent links are provided to lead users directly back to the original site.

Both Alltop and Technorati are organized in such a way as to make it absolutely clear to users that the sites are intended to be used as portals to the original content they feature. They are explicitly designed to help readers find new content, and help bloggers find new readers. The sites LOOK like directories. And they WORK like directories. They are not pretending to be anything other than what they are.

And, importantly, both Alltop and Technorati allow bloggers to opt out of being featured on their sites, and post clear instructions on how to do so. (See links in previous sentence if you're interested.)

It is nevertheless undeniably true that blog aggregators' business is built on the original work of bloggers. Any and all sites that aggregate blog content without the original authors' express permission must walk a fine line, in my view, between helping bloggers, and exploiting them.

And some do sites cross that line.