musings from a middle-aged broad

And i guess not a lot else would have happened. i don’t recall ever making a huge fuss about her birthday, turning 40 (i’d have been 5) or 50 (me, 15). Today, she’d be 86 (me, 51, tho that’ll change in a couple of months). If you’re reading this, take note that i was my mom’s oldest of three children. Back in the day.


Betty Fish was a stitch. She had great sayings for her kids. “Kiss my feet” was an all-around slam. “People in jail are wantin’ out” was the response to “i want….”. 


She was the only one of four children in her Gordonsville, Tenn., family to graduate from high school, then she went to Nashville to attend business school. She was working as a keypunch operator at General Shoe Co. when she met my dad and eventually married him. i was born, someone had to go to work, so they moved back to my dad’s family farm in Iowa. It was colder there, for sure.


Mom was a great reader, a liberal in the Al Gore mold (his family is from the same county she’s from) and a feminist, encouraging me to work and get a career. i know from the clothes she kept and the pictures i’ve seen that she always looked lovely and dressed wonderfully in her working days. 


i owe my mother more than i can say here. i know i disappointed her in some ways, marrying at 20 (tho she later saw the good in this), dressing like a slob most of the time. But i think she liked following my journalism career and adventures (except for maybe the motorcycles). 


Mom died too young, at 73, in 1997, of cancer. Every day, i wish she were still here.

This should be a big week (and maybe month) for new reading/watching technology.

At least two new e-readers will be announced to compete with Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes and Noble’s Nook and Sony’s Reader at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. 

Plastic Logic is introducing the long-awaited Que. The Skiff will be sold (and wired) by Sprint with content cooperation from Hearst Corp. Both are billed as larger and sleeker than the other e-readers, with touchscreens.


Meanwhile, Apple plans an announcement later this month that many believe will be a new tablet computer that will include a touchscreen and video. As David Carr mentions in his New York Times column today, Microsoft and HTC also appear to be developing tablets. But Freescale apparently will get there first this week with its $200 tablet device.

Ironically, back in the early and mid-90s, the late newspaper company Knight-Ridder funded a Boulder laboratory that predicted the tablet and its use for news (check out the vid above! priceless!). The technology just wasn’t there at the time.


Now, the technology is beyond what Knight-Ridder imagined – millions interact with friends known and unknown via facebook, twitter, etc. We post and view videos on everything from guitar instruction to humor on youtube. The ability of consumers to create their own product now competes with newsrooms, which once experienced a bit of a content monopoly. The music moguls, too, suffered when Apple’s iPod and iTunes took over.


David Bennahum tweeted yesterday that the new technology may threaten television most of all. He makes a great point, as does Bono in his Sunday Times op-ed, where he questions whether consumers will be willing to continue paying for video content as it becomes more easily downloadable.

Meanwhile, advertising remains a question in the world of media. Warren Berger posits that the era of advertising is ending in his great book on design, Glimmer. Instead, businesses are looking for ways to interact with consumers, instead of simply broadcast one-way messages to them.



What does all this mean for content and content producers? 


One of my questions as a journalist and one interesting in politics is this: Who will provide content that brings community together instead of polarizing different sides, that answers difficult, complex questions, that points out potentially unpopular concepts/ideas? 


Other questions: Are consumers willing to settle for mediocre content as long as it’s free? Will creators be willing to produce quality content for free or for goodwill offerings?



As always, i don’t have answers. Just questions i’m mulling.

And, by extension, i tried to kill my graduate students and myself at a Thursday night party. 

That bowl in the middle is this squash dip that i loved when i visited a friend’s knitting night last month. So i thought i’d make it and test it out on the 17 students in my fall newsgathering class. i laughed when my friend sent me the Martha Stewart link. 

It was the first time i’d ever cooked squash (go ahead, laugh), and that seems healthy enough. The chipotle chilis add a great kick. But then there’s the 10 tablespoons of butter, the 8 ounces of cream cheese, the 2 cups of sour cream (i only used 1 cup and it was lite). This isn’t the first time i’ve cooked with Martha – her mac and cheese is also great tasting, but potentially heart stopping.

That morning’s New York Times inspired my other new party dish (past students know i always test out a couple of new things on them):  Chex Mix, the new contest winning Buffalo mix to be specific. This was not the greatest success, but it was OK. Guess i need more Chex Mix practice, and that’s entirely possible since i have all these leftover ingredients.


There was some healthy food: Indian peanut butter dip and salmon mousse from a Jane Brody book. Plenty of veggies (they ate them all!). The prosciutto rolls in the foreground, well, maybe not so healthy. There’s also chocolate fudge (with marshmallows adding to the richness) and chocolate truffle cookies – and strawberries!


And i’m still munching on that leftover squash dip. The recipe makes way too much.

So i thought i would quantify the text messaging during a week of vacation with a particular nephew. As you can see, there’s a theme here. i used Wordle, and the asparagus color theme seemed apropos (tho i can never get these kids to actually eat asparagus, even tho i emphasize the green pee). i find this hilarious. Keep in mind, half these texts are from me to him.

It’s cold here.

And yesterday, a young student (OK, they’re all young!!) mentioned that her winter clothes are all in storage and the only jacket she had was a jeans jacket. She’d gotten it out to wear to an ’80s party.

Meanwhile, i too am wearing a jeans jacket. From the ’80s. Started out with a button that read, “Thought i’d be dead by the time i was 30, but things didn’t work out.” Lost that one and replaced it with “Middle-Aged and Proud of it.”

Probably should replace that one at this point. Thinking something like “Grannies for Health Care Reform!”