I’m Not Chicken Anymore
There are many, many reasons that I love living in North Dakota.
I love the clean air. I love the people. I love the fresh produce that I can buy so easily at the farmer’s markets. I love the education my children are receiving. I love that my sons are on a first name basis with our Lieutenant Governor. I love the wide open spaces.
Do you know what else I love about North Dakota? We have some of the best bloggers and social media experts in the world! I kid you not. Some days it feels like, distancewise, we live on the moon here. But, according to the Twitterverse, we are only 140 characters apart at any time.
North Dakota boasts an active blogging community, where bloggers actually get together, share ideas, knowledge and encouragement. We help each other rather than compete against each other. It is just the North Dakota way. Do we all agree with each other all of the time? Probably not. Do we all share the same religious and social and political ideologies? Nope. And yet, we can all communicate respectfully and still “like” each other at the end of the day.
So, this brings me to one of my bloggy friends, Katie. Katie and I met through Twitter. (@KatPinke) I found her because she uses hash tags better than I do, so her #NorthDakota posts were hard to miss. And then, because she lives, breathes and loves agriculture, she taught me to appreciate all that these amber waves in North Dakota have to offer. We love to sit and chat about family, and balance, and social media. We almost never discuss politics or religion, which is kind of funny, considering that I am married to a pastor and she works for the State of North Dakota! I guess you could say, in the words of my friend Joy, we have been Switzerland.
Switzerland is a nice place, very neutral, but it is really not where either of us belong.
We are women. We have voices. We may reside in the minority of the blogosphere, but as we discussed today, amidst my children clamoring for lunch, we are no longer silent.
Katie just attended #BlogHer12, in New York City. She shared a room with Aimee Whetstine of EveryDay Epistle. Right before BlogHer, Amy had a post syndicated on BlogHer (yay, right?). That is totally great, except the blogosphere got ugly. Super ugly. Apparently my sweet hubby saw the post before I did, jumped into the fray (he had Aimee’s back) and saw the ugly side of blog censorship as the editors at Blogher deleted several of his comments.(note:this weekend is the first time I had ever heard of Aimee, though now, I look forward to hopefully someday meeting and chatting with her in person, I think we’d totally get along!)
But, Aimee is a strong woman, with a firm backbone and will not succumb to bullies!
What this all brings me to is that, if this is to be truly MY space, my blog, it needs to contain MY opinions. Even if those opinions are not shared by all of my readers, or my fellow bloggers, or even, sometimes, my family.
I’ve had my opinionated outlets for a while, you can see how I feel about breastfeeding and natural birth at NaturallyBorn. Want to see what I think about faith? Check out Holy Cross, But this blog, this space, is going to be more me than ever before. because if I can’t be ME here, then I can’t be ME anywhere.
Care to join me? Let’s go!
I’ve heard you all along, but if the voice is to be more pronouncted then, hoorey!
Pam, thanks for the call out to my blog and words of encouragement from both you and your husband. The comments on BlogHer began to get rowdy the second day after my post was published there. After two days of attempting to dialogue with readers, I finally had to bow out (I had to pack for the BlogHer conference among other things!).
Another blogging friend of mine advised me that if I bowed out to stay out. That’s exactly what I did. I haven’t read comments since BlogHer’s community manager deleted some of the creepier ones that came up at the end of that second day. I had no idea your husband’s comments were deleted too! This is the first I’ve heard of it. I find this troubling as I cannot imagine what he might have written that they found unacceptable.
This episode has lead me to craft community guidelines for my site that I’ll roll out later this week. It’s also inspired me to treasure The First Amendment more than I thought possible. We must speak, even if our words our counter-cultural. We must encourage civil discourse. When it’s lost, we’ll all be in trouble regardless of which side of the issues you’re on.
Twitter: everydayepistle
I just woke my husband to tell him about this blog post. It was the best encouragement for me tonight, Pam. Today was one of those short, divine conversations. I also am going to be bolder, not necessarily louder but NOT a Switzerland! Thank you for visiting today. Thank you for being a mentor, friend and mom hero to me. (Anyone who brings 5 kids to the farmers market should win an award!) You do it all with humor, wit and grace. I look forward to reading more of what you share here.
Twitter: katpinke
Love it! I have about given up on Twitter and blogging for work because I cannot seem to manage time and understand how to do it all. I love that you have people that have helped you and how you are helping others. What a great friend you are to those you mentioned!
Twitter: wildtreetoyou
It is therapy for me! (and I really am working on a certain recipe post!) I need to get better with my to do lists!
Twitter: dakotapam
My personal blog is therapy but then I don’t worry about editing that one. I just haven’t gotten in the groove of things for my wildtree one! Looking forward to reading your recipe post!
Twitter: wildtreetoyou
At BlogHer, we are dedicated to showcasing the stories, opinions, beliefs and experiences of all women and from time to time, the discussions and debates can move beyond the civil discourse that is embraced at BlogHer.com.
As the community manager at BlogHer.com, I can also tell you that we work very hard to be fair and to hold everyone in the community to the standards laid out in our community guidelines.
While we believe in civil discourse, we do draw the line at personal attacks and name calling — and that’s one I, or someone on my team, steps in to delete comments.
If your husband was a participant within the discussion held in the comments of Aimee’s post and would like to discuss the moderation with me, please ask him to drop me a note: denise@blogher.com.
And my own personal two cents about this post of yours — please DO be honest on your blog! It’s only be reading the words of others and making connections with each other that we can grow, as individuals and as community members.
Whether all readers will agree with your beliefs is not what’s important — that you take the time to share them is what is important.
Thank you for your reply Denise. I do understand how hard it is to be a community manager. I have had to moderate some pretty heated discussions over at NaturallyBorn and I can be sure that feelings were hurt on both sides of the arguments. I can assure you that my husband was not name calling, as that is not his bent, and he is well aware that his online reputation is no different than his “in person” reputation. As you can understand, he was not willing to continue in a conversation in which some of his comments were removed and he backed out completely.
And yes, being honest and being me on my blog is imperative. Sometimes, though, it is, admittedly, a little scary. But I’m a pretty strong person, and I have pretty thick skin.
Thank you for stopping by and sharing your experience, and trust me, I do know where you are coming from.
Twitter: dakotapam
I really wish you’d encourage him to send me an email — I think there’s some confusion that I can clear up but I need his help to do that.