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It’s graduation season, so I’ll offer my annual tip to folks attending a ceremony this year.
As graduates proceed across the stage, watch the shoes.
Trust me on this one.
Prompted by a new recipe; I asked folks on Twitter and Mastodon this week if a lasagna is a casserole.
The verdict was polarized: about half said “absolutely,” and half said “hell no.” There was no in-between.
Apparently, we’re even polarized on what constitutes a casserole. I did not expect that.
Although I haven’t read her stuff in years, I was saddened to hear about Heather Hamilton Armstrong, better known in the blogosphere as Dooce. She was a breakout star of the genre in the early 2000s, showing the world what was possible as a blogger simply by doing it.
She helped define what blogs were. She was one of the names that every nascent blogger knew. Her name even became a verb: to be “dooced” was to be fired for blogging, as she had been. That actually raised her profile, and for a while, she was one of the best-known bloggers in what was then an emergent field.
Looking back, the ones who defined the genre for me were all women: Dooce, Wonkette (Ana Marie Cox), and “Bitch, Ph.D.” (Tedra Osell). They used a nascent form to offer perspectives that hadn’t been heard much in the established media to that point. I saw them as taking the zine movement of the ’90s to scale. They shared the DIY spirit. Zines had offered alternative perspectives, but distribution was a problem. (Anyone remember Factsheet Five? Good times …) Blogging solved the distribution problem and opened up new possibilities for quick feedback and interaction. Armstrong, Cox and Osell rose to rapid prominence by using the possibilities of the new form to offer their contributions to the discourse. All three brought distinct voices and insights from their personal lives into public discussion of public issues, and did so engagingly and often humorously. They built online communities in ways that hadn’t previously been possible.
Dooce was an innovator who showed what could be done. She was also a damned good writer. One blogger to another, I tip my cap.
