Wonkosphere

I am absolutely exhausted and brain dead, having been up since 4:30 in the morning. Was it the full moon? The first day of school for DD#1? Stress about how to handle the coming weeks? The nanny who never came back from vacation? I don't know, but I did want to take a moment in between getting the kids to bed and before losing consciousness myself to link to an interesting site I stumbled upon earlier today called Wonkosphere. The site describes itself as "your listening post for the 2008 presidential election." It also has a nice blog. Genuinely non-partisan, they update every four hours with all kinds of info on all the Republican and Democratic candidates, from the so-called "first tier" establishment candidates (Obama, Giuliani, and Hillary) to those who have no chance whatsoever (John McCain) to those the mainstream media all but ignore (Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel), giving equal weight to all, although, of course, I found no reference to any third-party or independent candidates.

Light Blogging

There will be very light (if any) blogging for the rest of this week, as I have no child care until next Monday. In fact, my older daughter is here with me at work today sitting beside me in my office cubicle. I am a firm believer in my kids having as much unscheduled, unstructured free time as our work schedules will permit; the problem is that there are not a lot of other school-aged kids that are just "around" during the summer anymore. There is no good solution for working parents during the time in between the end of summer camp and the start of school, but at least she seems to be enjoying herself today making artwork for everyone's cubicle.

Let Us Now Praise Editors

I've never read an article before that so well explains just what the heck it is that an editor actually does. I've been asked this question many times over the years, but here is the quinessential response that sums up all aspects of this line of work. Gary Kamiya wrote this for Salon, and it made me proud to be among the ranks. In fact, reading this piece made my day. To quote the subhed: "They may be invisible and their art unsung. But in the age of blogging, editors are needed more than ever." Then there is this great quote: "Early in my editing career I was startled when, after we had finished an edit, a crusty, hard-bitten culture writer, a woman at least twice my age, told me, 'That was great -- better than sex!'"

http://www.salon.com/opinion/kamiya/2007/07/24/editing/

This is all new

There are so many reasons why I've finally decided to start blogging. In fact, I was so excited to begin that I haven't put my kids to bed yet. So on that note.....more later. This is fun.