MomAgain@40 review: We are never alone — Poetry of a Hobo Mama

I'm so thankful for this review from MomAgain@40 of Poetry of a Hobo Mama:

I am really enjoying the honest look into motherhood. […]

I love her honesty as well as her excursions with attachment- and natural parenting style.

The poetry is a raw and honest account of pregnancy, miscarriage, birth, babies and motherhood. […]

I am copying one of the poems. One of the most poignant life-altering changes that new parents have to cope with. "Mothers are never alone" But is also a reminder to me that mothers also share the same journey, and in that we are never alone!

Read the full review and the poem over at MomAgain@40.

Loose vs. lose

The copy editor is in.
I'm presenting occasional posts on the use of English,
not to be pedantic but just for the fun of language.

If your gate is loose, you might lose your dog.
Ah, the two-Oed monster. It's so tempting for internet commenters everywhere to write loose no matter which word they mean. It must just be fun to type those double Os.

"Loose" is pronounced with a short S sound, the kind that sounds like a hiss. As in "sound" and "hiss," in fact.

"Lose" is pronounced with the Z sound that S can make, as in the second S in "sounds."

Once you can remember how each is pronounced, you probably can figure out which one you want at a given moment. "Loose" is usually an adjective or adverb, describing something that's unfixed or unbound. (It can also be used as a verb, meaning "to set loose.") To "lose" is always a verb, meaning to forsake or misplace something.

Book review: The Help — Reassuring white people

Once again, I bring you: review for a book (and movie) no one's talking about anymore! Whee! Good thing I'm not a newspaper.

The Help, by Kathryn Stockett, has been recommended to me by no fewer than a dozen people in real life and untold multitudes online. So why, when I first heard about even the premise, did I feel so uneasy and so sure I wouldn't like it?

Let's unpack it a little. The Help is written by a white woman about black women. It's written by someone who was a girl in the 1960s about people who were adults during that time. It's written by someone in the middle/upper class about people in the working class. And not just about, but it's seeking to tell their stories — these people whose lives she is so far from experiencing.

And that gets a little meta, because Skeeter in the book is exactly the same thing: white, upper-middle class, young, telling the stories of maids.

I'm a writer of fiction. I don't at all believe you have to "write what you know" in some narrowly defined sense of not being able to write from a different person's point of view or tell a story set in a different time period. Where I think it crosses the line into potential racial offensiveness is when the perspective that's taken is one that has historically (and currently) been silenced and ignored. In other words, let me just say it outright: Where does a white lady get off thinking she can speak for black women?

Now, I'm writing this review from the point of view of being a white woman myself, so I poked around to see if any African-American women liked The Help. Funny enough: I found many eloquent voices decrying it. There's a clue right there.

I feel a little silly being another white woman talking about a white woman talking about black women, but I'll go with it. I'll say upfront that this review is addressed to my fellow white people, whether you're as clueless as I often am or not — though, naturally, I invite any people of color to read along and tell me what you think (about the book or my review) or point me to other resources, if you'd be so kind. And it's not meant to be condemning of white people, or to say that you shouldn't have liked The Help if you did. It's to talk about these issues, because I think too often as white people (blinded by privilege), we don't see the racist aspects of books like this.

So let's unpack this a little further. The characters in the book are types, not people. The black characters, particularly Aibileen, fit the mammy/magic Negro/noble savage stereotypes that have been offending people for years. I don't use those terms to suggest that I regularly use that language or enjoy doing so; that's kind of my point. They're offensive stereotypes, even though they're "good." This is a nonthreatening kind of black person, who exists to help white people accomplish what they want.

The white characters, with the exception of Skeeter, are mean bigots. On the surface, you'd think that having most of the white people be evil is not racist, in much the same way that you'd think having most of the black people be good is nonracist, but we just discussed why that's not so. Here's the problem with having the white people be bad-white-person stereotypes. We all look for someone to identify with in fiction, so it has to be someone. A white person reading the book thinks, "Wow, I'm not as mean as those other white people. That means I must be Skeeter." Then the next step is to assume that, if you lived in the 1960s, you would so totally be the type of white person who helps out black people.

But, statistically speaking, that's bologna. Because most white people in the 1960s were not in fact monsters and yet did not help out black people. So chances are, if you're white and were an adult in the 1960s, you would not have done anything to further the civil rights movement beyond, at most, cheering it on from a distance. In your head. But probably you wouldn't have gone even that far.

How to schedule a post in Blogger {updated}

Dionna of Code Name: Mama and I are writing a few blogging tutorials of particular use for our Carnival of Natural Parenting participants. This one will help in scheduling your article to post on Carnival day!

This is an updated version for the new Blogger interface. If you're still using the old Blogger interface, visit this post instead.

Here's a little tutorial on how to schedule a post in Blogger (Blogspot) for a specific time and day.

This is useful if you want a post to go live at a certain time but will not be available to hit the publish button yourself (such as if you want your Carnival post to go live just after midnight but you'll be asleep by then).

It can also help your blog maintain a businesslike image if you schedule all or certain important posts to go live at a predictable time each day or week (such as a giveaway linky that readers can count on to show up at 9:00 a.m. each Thursday, for example).

(Note to my Carnival friends: You do not have to schedule your post; it's just a how-to in case you want to for your own convenience.)

How to find (or change) your permalink in Blogger {updated}

Dionna of Code Name: Mama and I are writing a few blogging tutorials of particular use for our Carnival of Natural Parenting participants. This one will help in determining your post URL in advance!

This is an updated post for the new Blogger interface. If you're still using the old Blogger interface, go to this post instead.

Here's a little tutorial on how to determine your post's permalink in Blogger (Blogspot) before you've published a post. This is useful if you want to figure out ahead of time what your URL will be once you've published. You can also choose your own custom permalink if you wish.

Find your predetermined URL

Blogger has finally made this easy for us — yea! Here's how you find your permalink in the new interface:

Click any picture to embiggen.

In any post, go to your Post Settings in the right sidebar. (If it's not already expanded, which is the default, click to expand it.)

Click on Permalink.

You'll see that Automatic URL is the default selection. If you're happy with that, simply copy and paste the URL that appears there to give to anyone who needs your permalink ahead of time (such as in a blog carnival).

Note: If you're planning a post for the future, the month (or year, if applicable) will change to whenever it's published. Therefore, if you're scheduling a post that will take place in a future month, be sure to fill in the correct month (and year) when copying/pasting the URL. You can schedule your post first before copying/pasting to make sure the permalink will be correct.

And that's all — you're done! You don't need to read on unless you want to.

Create a custom URL

If you want to be fancier and craft your own URL, you can now do so!

This can be very beneficial for SEO. (Just saying that phrase made me feel like a spammer.) You can include the keywords that search engines would look for, or make the URL memorable to you, or even include a funny joke within it. (I won't judge.)

How to schedule a post on your Facebook page

You can now schedule posts on your Facebook fan page (for a blog or company) or your personal Facebook page right in the native interface — no external application needed. This is helpful for several reasons:

1. Posts that are natively entered into Facebook get more pageviews in the new Facebook news feed sorting. In contrast, if you have an RSS feed automated through Networked Blogs, for instance, chances are few people will see that post.
2. Building traffic on your Facebook page requires frequent posting of links, status updates, photos, and questions — but it can be nearly impossible to do this consistently all day, every day. Plus, it helps to spread out your updates evenly throughout the day. Scheduling allows you to put in scheduling work when you have the time (whether that's daily or weekly or however it works for you), and then have links and updates unfold throughout the day.
3. Unlike with external applications, Facebook's scheduling feature functions just like a normal status update: You can tag other pages, enter links, select thumbnails, etc. The only downside is so far you can't schedule a "share."
4. The scheduling feature could be a little less odd, but overall, it's easy to operate. Read on for how!

Thanks to Momma Jorje for this tip! She's the scheduling queen.


Click any image to embiggen.

First you have to set a starting date for your page, if you haven't already. From your Admin Panel at the top of your Facebook page, click Edit Page and then in the dropdown menu, select Update Info.

(You can see I do a lot with this Facebook page.)

Under Basic Information, add a Start Date and Start Type. Save your changes.

Now you're ready to schedule!
Enter the information, link, picture, etc., you want to schedule. Have it look exactly as you want it to post. In the lower lefthand corner, click the clock icon.

Movie review: Failure to Launch — High on animal attacks, low on romance

Continuing in my fine tradition of reviewing things no one cares about anymore, I bring you: Failure to Launch, the romantic comedy starring Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker, neither of whom I can stand.

Oh, dear, I meant to be more circumspect and just say something like "I have trouble connecting to those actors," but the truth came out. I'm sure they're lovely people. I just don't like watching them. There you are.

So why was I? Because Sam signed us up for a preview of Amazon Prime, and I was determined to explore the instant video options available. I really want to watch Downton Abbey, but for my purposes that day, I needed something that could run comfortably in the background.

I'm glad I didn't give Failure to Launch any more attention than it deserved.