Julie Pippert: Using My Words

Not too long ago, I was reading a New York Times article about why people unfriend other people on Facebook and it got me thinking about a lot of things, truly. What does Friend mean, anyway? (And when did it get to be a Proper Verb? When did Verbs get Proper, anyway?) Don't you Friend people you like, and thereby, de facto, accept as they are? Who are you to deem someone else uninteresting? Okay let's start at the end. From the article : "The rules of Internet friendship seem to differ in other ways from their earthbound equivalents. There is a bluntness to unfriending that would hardly fly in real life: “As soon as you have a baby, you become uninteresting,” noted one survey respondent." Really? You think maybe, possibly, it could be that it's a case of the other person hasn't become uninteresting but, in fact, developed a new life focus that is just worlds away from your own, and that doesn't make either of you bad...it just means you don't fit the...

After a stroke today, incomparable JFK speechwriter Ted Sorensen died . He was 82. Sorensen might be the most quoted speechwriter. He is certainly the man behind JFK's best lines. Sorensen, though, always attributed the famous lines -- such as "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country" -- to Kennedy. In an interview with the BBC about a decade ago, Ted Sorensen tried to explain why he and John F Kennedy got along. I think, in fact, it was his way of trying to explain why he always said JFK came up with the best lines, rather than taking the credit. It's something writers can understand, I think; in essence, to paraphrase, he said he channeled JFK when writing -- he knew him so well, knew what he'd want to say and simply formed the lines that he knew his friend would want. As someone who has ghostwritten and extensively "developmental edited" books, I know what he means. As someone who has written lines for politician...

In a time of white wicker, macrame, and ferns...when the pointed collars of polyester shirts brushed the tops of short-sleeved sweaters that bloused gracefully over flat fronted jeans with bottoms like bells...and the most popular Halloween costume included fluffy felt skirts with a black poodle applique and bobby sox... Sunday nights were devoted to the Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys Mystery Hour -- our one television program we got each day -- but Saturday mornings, those were reserved for Casey Kasem. His smooth, familiar voice announced the country's most popular songs each week, and I listened patiently through the countdown, measuring my favorites against what my fellow countrymen preferred. I adored the inside scoop about the rock stars, such as the story about the guitarist from Jefferson Starship who loved to skateboard. I thought of my own blue board, and felt a kinship. I also felt a kinship to listeners around the nation, as Casey sang out their radio station's call numb...

WARNING: This is NOT a family-friendly post, aka the warning I WISH I'd gotten yesterday before I walked in. Yesterday was a Holiday. I hope you heard the scare quotes around that. Yeah, when you are an adult here is how holidays work: you, same workload as always, kids WOO HOO NO SCHOOL FREEDOM. Do the equation. The result is the day I had yesterday. If math isn't your strong suit I'm pretty sure you can still add that up but just in case let's say the highlight of the afternoon included me dumping out the mismatched sock basket and telling the children to have at it, in a way very reminiscent of Miss Hannigan of Annie . Anyway luckily I've taught my kids that Chores are Fun! and they had a good time. Later, I cranked up the fun-o-meter on a bank errand by dropping in the Halloween store to check out costumes, and upped the ante on "Mom needs new running shoes" by tacking on a "Hey let's eat out at a restaurant!" My husband was able to join ...

The other day I listened to one of the most brilliant modern satirists, David Sedaris, talk about his new transition into fictional stories, where the main characters are animals ( David Sedaris, Anatomizing Us In 'Squirrel' Tales ). These aren't fables nor are they for children. They are instead modern Grimm's Fairy Tales of a sort -- although Sedaris claims they have no moral to them (I think they do, in fact -- any satire of a culture includes a lesson, if you think on it). Sedaris said: "Fables have morals, and not all of these do," he tells NPR's Steve Inskeep. "So I wound up calling it a bestiary, which is just a book in which animals do things that people do." In contrast to classic animal fables like Aesop's "The Tortoise and the Hare," there are few identifiably good characters in Sedaris' stories. "I don't think our world is as black and white now," says Sedaris, who consciously avoided Aesop and La Fonta...

Okay...how many times have I written about the Great Tooth Fairy Conundrum? Frankly, my husband and I sort of stink at Special and On the Ball. Someone once told me how they have stockpiles of Tooth Fairy prizes, at the ready, just in case. Someone else once said they have gold dollars that come from the Tooth Fairy. Another person has a special treasure chest for teeth. Our Tooth Fairy gets frantic texts messages, "OMG get off tollway NOW!! LOST TOOTH!! Must have WEBKIN, preference PINK and CUTE, nothing from OCEAN!!!!!!!!!!" Then said Tooth Fairy has Webkin in hand (do not EVEN ask how the Webkin precedent got set, suffice it to say...LESSON LEARNED!) and said Tooth Fairy and his ahem colleague, aka the Assistant Tooth Fairy, are tired from a long day of tooth business and tend to sort of collapse right around Tooth Fairy time. Then around 2 a.m. the Assistant Tooth Fairy tends to wake up in the middle of a heart attack, pokes the Tooth Fairy hard and hisses, "WE FORGO...

Every single one of you who stopped to post and discuss where you are in your career really, really moved me. There is so much I want for each of you...and I'm working on that. In the interim, if you can attend the conference or a networking group or jump into a Twitter chat within your field, I encourage that. Austin has some great entrepreneur groups and a wonderful conference that's pay-as-you-can and Houston has a number of women's business and networking groups above and beyond professional organizations. And...I entered everyone's name who wanted to win a ticket (some commenters opted out) into Random.org randomizer and the results were: List Randomizer There were 15 items in your list. Here they are in random order: christina 52 There were several Christinas so I had to assign numbers. I contacted this Christina who is able to attend the conference and is very excited! Congratulations, Christina, and thank you to everyone who commented. Check back--let's see ...

Right now, my career is going well. It has been a pretty good run but that's 95% nose to the grindstone and 5% luck. Or thereabouts. I do what I do and have what I have because I've made and seized opportunities, taken risks, sucked it up for a lot of years, and worked hard. When I moved to Texas five years ago I had to transition my career a bit. Not a huge demand for managing editors at major publishers here, unless you happen to be in educational publishing, which I wasn't (for good reason). So I had to parlay my skills into actual work, and it has been a five year journey. I hit a point of frustration not too long ago when I'd get some opportunities, but...without the concept of pay attached. For some reason, these people would schedule meetings with me and assume I'd do all this work and promotion for them just have content for my blog. What a joke. Like other bloggers, I do not lack for content on my blog. I lack for time to write up and publish all the conten...

There are celebrities . And what do they ever do for you? Entertain you, maybe. Prompt you to spend $8 on a 30 page magazine to read a 500 word article that suggests rather than reports something really pointless about someone you'll never, ever know and yet? Are relentlessly curious about. Get you to hesitate on Fox News which you never ever do because it is in the process of flip flashing between Tiger and Elin's faces and you are wondering, dear goodness, when did this become news and ohmygawd Frank DeFord is right, sports reporters forgot how to report golf without Tiger in it and tennis without Serena Williams in it and football without That Not So Very Next Door After All Guy Who Shall Never Get an SEO Hit From My Blog player. So all in all, what good have any celebrities done for you lately? I mean, other than force you into a conversation with your kids about a subject you hoped wouldn't come up for oh, say, the next 200 years. And then there are CELEBRITIES ...pe...

You know my motto: loved ones deserve the chance to miss one another. I think it's good to get to miss one another, I think it's good to get some space for a bit in between. I think it makes us see, from a better vantage point, how much we love each other, and how important we are to each other, day to day. I think it helps us strip back a layer of taking one another for granted. This summer, instead of it being my kids off and about on a busy schedule, it's been me off and about, and it has given my kids the chance to (a) miss me, (b) see how it is with dad primary parenting, and (c) discover they are capable of being quite competent when they need to be. (Bless my heart, I'm a little overfocused on details and slightly control freakish. Like a Girl Scout Gone Wild, a bit. Everything must be prepared, planned, organized, and completely thought through, every microdetail managed. I keep mental checklists, written checklists, and am a little hypercompetent in managing an...

While the rest of you. . . shine your fancy tickets to BlogHer, buy new cute yet comfy shoes, plot wardrobes with the intensity of a brigadier general, check the mailbox hourly for razzle dazzle cards, RSVP to parties that overlap, hack into databases to see who is going to be where and when, plan escape routes with trusted friends, bribe city officials for the official blueprints of the Hilton NYC, create elaborate index card systems of conference tracks and panels, study Facebook photos and bios like a sorority girl before rush, set up Google alerts for any blog or Web mention of BlogHer 10 (plus BlogHer 10+your name, just in case), hound insiders for secret appearance special guest names, and more. . . I am in complex and highly technical preparations myself to be the official BlogHer StalkHer. First, it's necessary that every StalkHer suit up in the appropriate outfit. I'm thinking this looks about right, minus, of course, the strong masculine jawline and five o'clock s...

Can you hear it? This cat could easily be channeling Hank Williams, Jr., "You'll cry and cry and try to sleep / But sleep won't come the whole night through / Your cheatin' heart will tell on you / When tears come down like falling rain / You'll toss around and call my name... " Last night I was being kept awake all night by my five year old, who again had a nightmare and needed to climb into bed with me. It's not her presence in the bed on its own, it's the way she kicks, hard, especially in the kidneys and rear end. My husband and I greet each other groaning every morning after she visits. We've started stacking pillows around her, between her and us, to get some protection. Neither of us are kickers, but we are still happy to blame each other's genetics for this child. Anyway, so you know how when it's 3 a.m. and you are laying in bed, too alert to sleep, too sleepy to get up and your mind starts running around crazy topics because your...

Grumpy and prickly: or are appearances deceiving ? It started with a tweet I read by an exasperated person who was in proximity with someone chatting on a cell phone. The crux of the comment was that nobody has any boundaries these days and that everyone has simply gotten so horribly rude. So...is it rude? Has rudeness truly increased? I've thought a lot about this lately. It occurred to me that perhaps we aren't ruder as a people -- perhaps we simply have a lot of evolution rapidly entering our society, and our mores haven't had a chance to catch up. More importantly, perhaps we have more overlapping cultural mores than ever. In other words, there are so very many people living in close proximity, crossing paths daily, and the truth is, we're so mobile now -- but of course, everywhere we go, we take ourselves (and our personal and cultural mores). That means that all these people we're bumping up against are not likely to be from our village, raised with our same r...