Left Coast Cowboys

The grapes are ripening at Two Terrier Vineyards, but I’m afraid to post while hundreds of hits are still coming in aimed at the three hotly debated posts I wrote raising some points and criticisms about BlogHer and women’s blogging in general.

While the emails and clicks are still coming through in such volume, I hate to turn the discussion to grapes and terriers and composting. So I’ll post a few pix, let you know things are going great and stand back.

Meanwhile, to get up to speed on the thread, check out the first post that started it all: Confessions of a BlogHer Dropout. The debate continued here. And continues here on the Rules of Blogging Engagement.

BlogHer ’08 is a week over, but it goes on for many of us who were given a lot of food for thought at the conference. Here at this blog, my critique of one of the panel discussions that I found disappointing has sparked great debate and tripled my traffic. (Okay now there are nine people reading.) Here’s the first post on the subject and here is the second. They’ll give you the thread, and the comments, especially, will give you
lots to chew on.

At one point, Evany Thomas, who was on the panel I criticized, bravely weighed in with explanations and a very generous and professional offer to answer any questions I thought weren’t covered.

But the discussion has gone far beyond that panel (which in the scheme of things was only disappointing when judged by the high standards of the rest of the conference). Now, thanks to some very articulate readers who have posted comments or emailed me, the topic evolved to “What do bloggers owe their audiences?” and “Can bloggers, who are putting the most intimate details of their lives out there, complain that people are judging them?”

The debate was sparked by my observation that many so-called “A-List Bloggers” and bloggers who identified themselves as having a high readership are sending up a collective moan that “People think they know me. People are judging me. People are posting mean and critical comments about me.”

Again, we are far beyond that original Conference panel, who did NOT voice these comments, although many in the audience did.

Is a personal blog business or something else? What are the rules?

We’re still at odds over this question. And much of the debate centers on whether your blog is a professional space governed by the need for professional behavior. Professional behavior such as not getting all weepy if someone doesn’t like the “persona” you put out there.

My contention is that a blog that invites readership with personal revelations in return for reward for the blogger (monetization, increased professional opportunities, fame or just an ego boost) IS a business, whether you want to call it that or not. And if your “customers” want to complain or comment about your “product” (which may be you or the “you” you put out there), they have that right.

However, Evany says she sees a separation or at least more grey area between a personal blog and something that can be termed a business.

People who write about their lives online are not quite the same thing as reporters or even actors because bloggers are writing about themselves, not covering news or playing a role. Of course we do so voluntarily, so for that reason, we give up our right to complain. But still, when we lose that clear line between “work” and “me,” there is a new level of difficulty to the art of how to negotiate criticism. 

Evany also has no problem saying she’ll act “unprofessionally” on her blog and in relation to her blog if that is defined as being upfront and honest about her desire to be liked. (See her comments on my second post.) I’m starting to see her point.

If I may interpret, I think she’s saying “Why can’t we make our part of the Internet a kinder place? Why should we blindly follow the old business rules?”

And there is a part of the blogisphere where different rules seem to apply. For instance, blogs where people gather to share sensitive and emotionally-charged information about topics such as cancer, autism, children with disabilities, weight issues.

Even if such blogs are heavily monetized, they are healing spaces where you should tread lightly and respond only to further the discussion in a positive or helpful way.

Sadly, some people don’t, just as some people are incredibly rude in real life. Unfortunately, the anonymity of the web seems to encourage the worst in the worst of people.

Stephanie Klein shared a horrifying story related by a woman who attended BlogHer’s forum on children with disabilities. In response to her shared stories on her blog about a child with autism, one troll flamed:

“Why don’t you drink more mercury so you can give birth to another vegetable?”

Obviously, people like this should be expunged from the Internet. And have a fork stuck in their mousing hands. And their laptops thrown under a bus.

What’s allowable for responding to a personal site that is more along the lines of “A Day in the Life”?

Evany, judging from her engaging site, owes her popularity to projecting herself as “The Bestest Girlfriend Ever”. I would assume if you didn’t want her as a best friend — whether in life or CyberSpace — you would just not visit her site.

But people who can’t stand certain blogging personalities do seem to keep haunting their sites or critiquing them on other sites – almost to the point of obsession. This apparently happens a lot to Heather Armstrong AKA Dooce and she’s one of the biggest moaners about “being judged”, “being treated like a character” and “people say mean things about me.” (Here’s just one example.) I suspect many fellow moaners, especially among those who would like to duplicate her success, are adding their moaning in a “monkey see, monkey do” kind of way.

Can We Say New Media, New Rules?

While it’s tempting to want Evany’s desire for a kinder, gentler Internet, and certainly this seems to be a desire shared by many bloggers I met at BlogHer, a nagging bit of history keeps haunting me.

Back during the Dot.Com bubble, my design firm was making a lot of money trying to help start-ups with too much venture funding brand themselves. I can’t count the number of times I sat down with a 24-year-old Grand High Poo-Bah of Whatever (who just six months ago had been a Starbuck’s barista) and struggled to get a straight story on their targeted market, their product’s benefits and draws for that market and their marketing strategy. I was often airily waved away with “Oh, we don’t need to bother with that stuff. This is the Internet. It’s all different now.” Cue the Dot.Com Bust.

Seems, even with new technology, people buy for roughly the same reasons the Sumarians did: They need it. They want it. Or they’ve been convinced they SHOULD need or want it.

So even though blogging is a relatively new form, can we expect human nature to be any different? Based on your actions, words and even appearance, some people will like you, some people will hate you. And various people have more or fewer inhibitions about telling you.

Add to this mix, a medium that invites intimacy among total strangers and is it surprising that readers you don’t know may weigh in and make personal remarks: “God, are you going to wear THAT? Have you gained weight? What you said was stupid.”

In her insightful comments, M of M’s Blog, pointed out that, even in this grey area, there’s a product and a buyer. And the “product” is the blogger or the persona she puts out there. Michele thinks there’s no room for hurt feelings in this mix and most comments, within reason, are fair game:

…if readers positively relating to and bonding with bloggers based on their blog content is considered acceptable and even encouraged, but readers who dislike or misinterpret that same persona based on the exact same content are complained about and seen as inappropriate.

Many blogs are successful precisely because readers relate to the persona of the writer and feel they “know” him/her. Why should the reception to interpretation of the blogger persona be a problem only when the audience perceives the writer in a way the writer does not wish to be recognized?

Interesting point. And she further states, this is just one more area where, sadly, we can’t have our cake (the fame, the monetization) and eat it too. (We’ve got to accept there will be consequences to being public.)

When you put yourself out there. You become a brand. Own it.

It’s not often I quote the wisdom of Super Models, but I always admired Cindy Crawford’s clear-eyed assessment of her “product”. She always tells new staff members: “You work for Cindy Crawford. I work for Cindy Crawford. Cindy Crawford is NOT me. Cindy Crawford is the brand.”

I would posit that any blogger who puts themselves out on-line is not only “a character” (despite Dooce’s assertion that she isn’t). You are also a brand. You can take control of that brand or you can sit and whine that someone doesn’t like you or is misrepresenting you.

Angelina Jolie, in the face of constant tabloid press, has done the former brilliantly. She’s reinvented herself as a humanitarian and now rises gracefully above the noise and scum of the tabloids. I’ve rarely heard her dignify any rumor with an answer as she keeps herself focused on the presentation of herself she wants to make.

Now how many of us think of her and immediately conjure the blood amulet wearing, the Lebian experimentation, the brother kissing, and the Billy Bob Thornton weirdness?

We as bloggers have a secret weapon Angelina doesn’t. We can just delete negative comments or block trolls from our site. It doesn’t stop comments on other sites, but we can always ignore those and keep the discussion on our site where we want it to be. Why get bogged down? No matter what was said about her, if Evany just kept being Evany on-line, she’d still attract her core audience. (And again, I’m using Evany as an example. She evidenced only an upbeat, engaging sense of wonder and gratefulness at the audience that showed up at her conference panel and on her blog.)

We also have another advantage. The people who hate us, yet still show up on our sites or put our names out there are just adding to our traffic. And our monetization potential. So to Dooce and her fellow “they say mean things about me” moaners I would say: whether they love you or hate you, as long as they show up and keep your name out there, they’re keeping you in Ikea furniture. How’s that for Instant Kharma?

Have these burning questions been answered? Decidedly NOT.

I’ve answered nothing here. But I think we’ve uncovered a hot topic that needs to be debated more. I’d love to see a BlogHer ’09 panel covering this. They’d never get some of us out of the room or make us shut up. But I’m betting it would be really interesting.

Let’s suggest it to Jory Des Jardins, Lisa Stone and the other fearless BlogHer leaders.

Remember, on the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog.

I left BlogHer ‘08 early, based in part on my disappointment with Day Two. But it seems BlogHer doesn’t want to leave me. I outlined my disappointment especially with the session I attended that included a panel of well-known bloggers (often called A-List Bloggers) in Saturday’s post.

To summarize, I was disappointed on two counts: the panel and the audience. On the panel side, the moderator seemed unprepared and seemingly had no agenda and direction for the panel discussion. Admittedly, I was judging her by a high standard. At every other session I attended, the moderator or leader was ready, in control and went the extra mile, including having a companion web post outlining the session and loaded with tons of helpful links. In every case, other moderators deftly negotiated that most dangerous of conference session pitfalls: making sure the panel and the questions from the audience didn’t send things off-track. Since the moderator, Maggie Mason, runs three amazingly organized and categorized shopping websites (Mighty Goods, Mighty Junior and Might Haus), I was expecting no less from her. Alas, it was not to be and the panel never really coalesced into a discussion but wandered aimlessly. Then Maggie jumped into audience questions and really allowed things to get disorganized.

But I blame the audience as well. In every session and at every break, I was amazed at the whip-smart women I met. They were focussed, interested and on-point in their questions. Granted, we’d all come to this session for a little bit of “star-gazing”, but I was disappointed in how the audience turned their questions into impromptu confessionals and vapid Fangrrrl giggling. I noted that I thought I was “back in high school watching the kids who wanted desperately to be ‘in’ hanging on every word the cheerleaders and popular girls burbled in the school lobby.”

After posting about my experience and receiving several comments agreeing with me, who should show up but one, then another of the panelists! The first commenting panelist completely got the wrong end of the mouse and thought I was criticizing HER by assuming her she “came from a place of cooler-than-thou”. She then talked about how nervous she had been appearing in front of people who “may already have judgments” about her. She pointed out that other A-List bloggers had posted about how nervous they were at BlogHer and how “high school yucky” they felt.

I hate to read into someone’s typed words. It’s impossible, without facial expressions, to really gauge the inflection. (Check the comments on my post to read them in full and draw your own conclusions.) But I detected a little bit of “You’re mean to criticize me. You may read my blog, but you don’t really KNOW me as a person.” Which seemed to be a theme among the top bloggers at BlogHer and certainly is a theme I’m hearing repeated over and over when these bloggers are interviewed.

“Everyone thinks they know me and can say anything to me,” has become the moan of so many bloggers. Dooce, who has become ubiquitous on TV interview shows recently, has taken this to great heights on air and in her blog. In fact, at one point during the session, she stood up when it was pointed out she was in the room and said, “I just want everyone to see I’m NOT a character.” Her closing keynote, along with Stephanie Klein, was advertised as addressing points like “What if people think you are a character?”

Well, I’ve got news for Dooce and other “A-List” bloggers: You ARE characters. You are as much a character on your blog as anyone who writes an autobiography. You make yourself a little funnier, you make your life a little more colorful. You project yourself as a character for the consumption of an audience. Anyone who has a public persona is by default a bit of a fictional character. Poor Rita Hayworth used to say, “My problem is men want to go to bed with Rita Hayworth, but they wake up with me.”

That’s where you bloggers have an advantage over Rita or Angelina Jolie or other celebs who have only limited control over their images. You have nearly TOTAL control. When you put out so much of that private life into the blogisphere, of course we think we know you. Most of us don’t know as much about our best friends’ or even siblings’ sex lives, bathroom habits, pharmaceutical needs etc. as you’ve shared with us.

I’m ranting because this is something I know about. At one point, I was a reporter, then an anchor woman for a TV station on the fringes of the Boston market. Which made me a local celebrity of an excruciatingly minor kind. However, this was way before the Internet and YouTube and reality shows made everyone famous for 15 minutes. Only movie and TV stars got regularly recognized on the streets. It was disconcerting when I did.

I’ll never forget what one veteran newsman said to a colleague of mine who was complaining that “Everyone wants a piece of me. Everyone thinks they know me because I’m on TV.”

He basically gave her the Ann Landers equivalent of a Kwitcherbeefin’ smack down.

He said, “Of course people think they own a bit of you. They do. You come into their homes once a weeknight at intimate times like dinner and when they are in bed. And you are making your career and your salary on the back of delivering their eyeballs to advertisers. You don’t have to be anyone’s best friend, but you do need to be respectful of the dynamic here.”

I really took that advice to heart. I didn’t let people monopolize me or be scary stalkers, but I did react graciously when people accosted me in the supermarket to say, “I liked/didn’t like that story” or even more personal comments like, “Gee you look better on TV” or “Your old hairstyle was really much more flattering. Why did you cut it?” I certainly didn’t whine that they didn’t know the “real” me and they were being mean to me. I gleaned whatever was valuable, dropped the rest and moved on quickly.

It works the same way with bloggers.

If you aren’t receiving ad revenue now, you are probably gunning for it. Or at the very least you are enjoying the ego boost of a large readership. If you truly wanted to be personal and private, you’d be writing in a journal or posting to a password-protected site that only your friends and family could access.

I know so many women bloggers want “our” Internet to be a kinder, more nurturing place. But I’m getting more than a little annoyed with this attitude that anyone who isn’t “Love Bombing” you (as the Moonies say) is a nasty, flaming troll.

I’m truly sorry to have hurt anyone’s feelings. But my comments were all focussed on the professional. I didn’t make snarky comments about hair, weight or appearance. I commented on a product I’d paid for with time and money that didn’t appear to live up to its potential. Having done my share of public speaking and attended my share of conferences, I’ve got a pretty good idea what went wrong. Have we all developed such tender feelings that we crumble even in the face of professional criticism?

It’s been a while since I was in the thick of Corporate America, but I did notice one sad sex-based trait that I always thought held some women back. It has been theorized and, to some extent proven, by psychologists that women are subtly raised differently than boys. I pray hard that this is changing. But some will tell you that girls are often encouraged to please, to make sure people LIKE them. One thing I always admired about a lot of successful male executives is that they seemed to have developed the ability to separate constructive criticism of their work habits, performance, results, etc. from fear that they are not liked. That allows them to evaluate the criticism for its validity and make a more dispassionate decision how or if to incorporate it. And still feel confident that they are the great guy everyone wants to go to ballgame with. (Or in the new Millenium, to a metrosexual salon or wine bar.)

The Internet is still a new frontier. It’s possible that women, at least in the realm of blogging, will come to dominate a good section of the monetized part of it. If so, we need to toughen up and forget high school. Let’s steer clear of desperate Sally Field “You like me, you really like me” thinking.

Okay, let the flaming begin. I’m tough enough to take it. [in still small voice] I think.

Note: The great “flying puppies” picture that Lucy is looking at is from the Flickr Stream of an exceptional photographer named PJ Taylor. See the photo big here. Then visit her website. Admire her work. Give her lots of money to take pictures of your event.

Okay, BlogHer recaps and reflections all done now. Time to get back to stuff. And my favorite stuff these days is Green. But Easy Green. Like the Amazing Penguin Water Carbonator. Seriously, this is the most incredible gadget I’ve bought since. . .oh, the iPod. Except that everyone and his brother has an iPod, maybe two, and the iPod doesn’t have the added advantage of making you feel virtuous and Greener-Than-Thou. I’m serious, this gadget may be the single most valuable thing you can do for the environment. At least, that you can do in less than 15 minutes. Let me explain.

It started with a blurb I read on Ideal Bite, the punchy, snarky daily email newsletter that gives fun, easy tips for green living. (Subscribe immediately if you don’t get it.) The Biters urged me to buy only local bottled water, if I just couldn’t stomach tap, as shipping Pellegrino from Italy or Perrier from France to San Francisco burned more carbon than Dick Cheney could in a month of Sundays. One of their suggestions was to carbonate your own water. And they offered a link to The Amazing Penguin. Having transferred my susceptibility for late night infomercials (yes, I own Ginsu knives) to email offers, I immediately clicked and read. The money-back guarantee hooked me, as it always does, and within weeks I was a new Penguin owner.

This thing really lives up to the advertising. In fact it exceeds it. First of all, it not only carbonates water with a touch to the Penguin’s beak, but it lets you CALIBRATE the extent of carbonation so you can approximate your favorite type of sparkling water. Secondly, it comes with two great carafes with resealable tops, so you can carbonate and store your water. Third, it’s a blast. While people, during our Pub evenings, used to gather in amazement over Andy’s array of single malts, now everyone wants to work the Penguin. And did I mention it also comes with loads of flavor packs so you can make your own Coke, Fanta Orange and Cherry Cola? (In the interest of full disclosure, I find these disgusting. But I’m not a soda person.)

Best of all, with every carbonating blast of the Penguin, you feel more and more virtuous as you calculate the rapidly shrinking size of your carbon footprint. Not only are we lightening the loads of all those trawlers shipping over Pellegrino, but we’re reducing truckloads of sparkling water-bearing long haul trucks bringing them to our local Whole Foods. Not to mention the energy we’ve offset for the recycling truck and plant that would have had to process the empty bottles! Green and fun. What could be better? I’m now nursing a three carafe habit and we’re starting to give them as Christmas and shower gifts.

Go ahead. Get a Penguin now. It’s clean and green and, as you can see from the above picture, it’s conveniently smaller than your average terrier. And penguins are really cool now. Can you imagine how kids will love “penguin water”?

I few months ago, I posted about a mature Coastal Live Oak that was growing smack in the middle of what will be our house at Two Terrier Vineyards. We needed to get the grading done and it quickly became clear there was no way to save it. We even investigated the hippie route of trying to see if we could design the house around it. It just wasn’t going to work.

So we had it moved down the hill to the barn. Louise Leff, who is helping with our planting, even sited the tree in the exact orientation toward the sun and the prevailing winds that it enjoyed before. Then we hoped for the best with no thought that the best wouldn’t be the logical outcome.

Here’s the tree just days after we moved it back in early April.

Within a month, things started looking dire. The tree’s leaves turned brown, the sap began to weep from the trunk and a weird army of hornets started to attack it.

Then just as quickly, the “wounds” seemed to heal. The wasps left. And, as of Sunday, the tree was really sprouting out new growth (see top picture.)

By June, the tree was completely brown and all the leaves looked dead.

Then today, we got an email from Louise who had brought an arborist out to examine the tree. He says it has Live Oak Bark Beetle also known as Pseudopityophthorus pubipennis. It’s a native beetle that lives in creek areas and quickly finds any Oak trees that are in distress. The arborist said it is extremely common in transplanted Oaks. He’s even seen it on trees that have been raised in nurseries and planted from large containers. What’s scaring me is its relation to the dreaded Sudden Oak Death syndrome that has been killing off California’s oaks. From what I’ve been able to understand, the Oak Bark Beetle isn’t the cause, but it swoops in when an oak is weakened by the disease.

Here are the wasps attacking the tree earlier in the year. But they disappeared and we thought the tree was in the clear.

The verdict: there is no chance the tree will survive. We have the choice of watching it die, or removing it. Couple that with the Alder trees that were planted down by the pond. They have Flat Headed Borers, which are also common predatory pests when a tree is drought stressed.
The cure for these beetles is a very toxic spray. Which, of course, we aren’t going to do since we are trying to be completely organic at Two Terrier Vineyards.

It feels like a real setback when we’ve tried so hard to plant only drought-tolerant natives in appropriate places and treat them organically. I guess even when you have the best of intentions, it’s tough fooling with Mother Nature.