Left Coast Cowboys

I usually try to keep things light around here. Hilarious farming misadventures, terriers, and, of course, loads of coyote poo. I purposely try to restrain myself from getting too political. Because those who know me know that you can get me on political subjects and sometimes it’s questionable if you can get me off them. I toyed with the idea of segregating those rants and posts to a separate blog. But I think the point where you get a third blog is when you stop living and are only blogging. So indulge me this once while I tackle the serious side of my BlogHer experience. I think I inadvertently stumbled over a big sea change coming. Or maybe I’m the last person in America to sense it and you can tell me I’m hopelessly behind the curve. It’s okay. I’ve been told that before.

Through accidental circumstances, I thought I was going to a blogging conference oriented toward women and I ended up doing a high dive into the deep end of the racial relations pool. It was an eye-opening, forehead slapping, heart-breaking, but ultimately uplifting experience.

So I was feeling Dr. Gates pain. Who's to say he didn't question the police in exactly the same way I used to? And even if he did raise his voice and was rude, well did I miss the point where "rudeness in your own home" became an arrestable offense?

The first big jolt was the Professor Gates arrest and controversy. That struck a big chord with me, not initially because of any racial aspect, but because I have a history of challenging the police in exactly the way Professor Gates did. A long time ago in a career path far away, I was a TV anchor woman. Routinely after the late night newscast, I would be stopped by the police or state troopers. I was well aware that the police needed “probable cause” to stop me from my right to travel freely. Although justifying probable cause is pretty easy and is completely stacked in the police officer’s favor. But that thin little tissue of protection demands that they not stop me unless:

*I or my car matched the description of a known criminal they were pursuing.

*I had a vehicular violation — even something as minor as a broken tail light.

*I was breaking traffic laws — even something as nebulous as “driving erratically” which is a broad catchall and completely up to the say-so of the officer.

*They had established a roadblock or checkpoint and were stopping all cars or every third car or some such convention that made sure one group, person, ethnicity etc. wasn’t unduly targeted.

Not that I want to hinder the police from doing their jobs. But I do think this small, small requirement is the difference between a police force that serves and protects and a police state where the police do what they bloody well please and the populace is at their mercy.

But the answer to my question, “Officer, may I ask why you are stopping me?” was almost always a variation on: “Well, I wondered what you were doing out so late on the road.”

This would propel me into my “With all due respect Officer, if I don’t insist on this protection, it all just starts to erode away” speech. Mostly I was polite, but more than once, when I felt I was being dismissed, I did ask for the officer’s name and badge number. But usually, it didn’t get to that point, as the trooper saw a small blonde woman or recognized me, waved and let me go. At no time did I even entertain the possibility that my little “My American Rights” act would get me cuffed, arrested, dragged to the police station, and jailed. Talking to African American bloggers about this, I found that scary possibility was always foremost in their minds when an officer stops them — especially if they are in the car with a Black man.

Several African American women nodded sadly when I mentioned the "Sonia Sotomayor Poker Face", that Zen calm in the face of racism and disrespect. They agreed they wear that face a lot. It's a hard facade to keep up. Can you blame Gates for dropping it after a long flight from China, a bronchial infection and being confronted in his own home? He was off his game. But should the punshment for that be arrest and humiliation?

And speaking of African American bloggers, why did there suddenly seem to be so many of them at BlogHer? Was this just the year African Americans decided to start blogging? Or had I just been oblivious to the diversity in past years and the Gates issue had made me more aware? You never learn things unless you ask questions, even the stupid ones. So when I found myself at a large table of African American women, I did. At least the group I was with surprised me with the length of time they’d been blogging, their passion for it and their knowledge of New Media (all far beyond mine). Yet I hadn’t been hearing voices like this during the whole Gates debate.

“If you’ve been out there all this time, ” I asked, “Why haven’t I seen you at BlogHer? And why haven’t I heard your voices?”

“Honey”, one gal answered, “Just because you haven’t heard us, doesn’t mean we haven’t been talking.”

Turns out many of those voices have been turned inward to their own communities. Now, partly as a result of Obama’s election, but maybe more as the result of many factors, this was the year this group of bloggers decided to turn those voices outward.

That effort is going to get a big boost if BlogHer presenter Kathie Orenstein has anything to say about it. She moderated one of the first sessions called “Owning Your Expertise”, but her agenda was right up front. And it wasn’t necessarily to help you blog better. As the founder of The Op-Ed Project, she’s on a mission to widen the public debate. Starting from the shocking fact that nearly 85% of the voices in the op-ed pages of mainstream papers are those of East Coast college educated White Males, she’s trying to get more women and more diversity in front of editors. The biggest hurdle is that these groups don’t speak up thinking they don’t have enough credentials and letters behind their names to justify it. But she led us through exercises to encourage us to look at experiences we have and expertise we’ve gained to give us the courage to put our ideas forward. And she told us that the push has to come from us. Not sitting back and waiting for an editor to call, but submitting, submitting, submitting until someone publishes. It was electrifying. Luckily many of those African American women I spoke to were at the session and they’re ready to be heard.

The next night I had dinner with an African American fellow Mount Holyoke alumna. She also is working with The Op-Ed Project and was a former editor at the Chicago Tribune. The evening brought even more insight on different sides of many issues. But also to the fact that when we start to engage, we’re going to make mistakes and rub each other wrong sometimes. If we can keep our humor and just talk about it, we’ll get through it. Case in point, throughout our conversation, I was using the term Black. I find African American a mouthful and I once heard Whoopi Goldberg say she doesn’t mind being called Black. Whoopi adds that she didn’t even mind when she was a Negro as long as respect was in the mix. But at one point Cassandra quietly said, “Well, actually I think of myself as Brown.” So, here I’m not meaning to be offensive, but a term that is innocuous to me may have been irritating to her. What word did that Cambridge cop use that was meaningless to him, but highly offensive to Gates? What word or tone did Gates use that meant one thing to him but perhaps inflamed town-gown divides in the eyes of the cops? And what would have happened if Gates or the cop had been able to correct each other as politely as Cassandra did me? In our interaction, I think it ended with “no harm, no foul”. But then again, we were talking and listening, not posturing.

Comedian Patton Oswalt had a goofy solution to bridging the racial divide. But what the hell? It relied on outreach and talking, so maybe it could work?

My final AHA! Moment came on the plane ride back. I sat beside a fascinating, articulate and very accomplished African American woman who is an executive at one of the world’s largest and most diversified companies. They’re into everything from robotics to media. This is a woman who’s not only reached the top of the corporate food chain, but does things like flying planes for recreation. Yet despite her demeanor and her accomplishments, she told some hair-raising tales about business meetings overseas where she was called “Foxy Brown” and subjected to similar disrespect.

And as I did with Cassandra, I put my foot in it with her. Although, the result wasn’t an arrest but another gentle correction.

I’d just caught about 15 minutes of CNN’s Black in America series back at the hotel, a segment that focused on an innovative locally organized program that took kids from the projects who were being failed by the educational system and brought them into a summer of community work in Africa. I thought it was inspirational because an African American educator had conceived it and was spearheading it and it seemed like it was a “think outside the box” approach. The executive visibly recoiled when I mentioned it. She said she and her friends were appalled by the TV special to the point of elevated blood pressure.

“All African Americans are NOT living in the projects. We’re everywhere and at every level. We’re doctors, lawyers, business people. Yet the series only focused on African Americans at the bottom.” Whoa. Head turning moment for me. Suddenly I saw it from her perspective. A series called Black in America, one would infer, is going to cover the totality of the African American experience today. Yet, still the same old stories and focus.

I’m not sure if I have an answer to all of this except engage and listen. The comedian Patton Oswalt tells a story about how he became increasingly concerned that his son not have the kind of isolated suburban childhood he had, but be exposed to different people and perspectives. He thought it would be important for his son to have Black friends or acquaintances, but found, to his dismay, that it just isn’t easy to accomplish. Even when we are in similar social strata, we seem not to mix very freely. He said he finally was reduced to walking up to African American families on the playground and saying, “I really want my son and myself to have African American acquaintances. Can we come over and play with you?”

Goofy yes, and maybe it raised some eyebrows and even some hackles. But it’s some kind of start.

Now seems so much the time to reach across that divide and start talking. At the very least, I think we can seek out (and demand from the media) voices we don’t always hear. They are all around us.

As my African American BlogHer acquaintance says:

“Just because you haven’t heard us, doesn’t mean we haven’t been talking.”

Made it back from Chicago and BlogHer and can barely remember my own name, let alone pull together a blog post. So here are some bits and pieces of wisdom or foolishness. You decide which is which.

Interesting Fact: Flickr can be used as a child behavior modification tool

Waiting for my flight in an overcrowded, hot and muggy O’Hare I sat behind a woman with three overtired, overwrought, whining kids. The mother was reaching the medical condition that I believe psychiatric professionals term “Losing One’s Shit.” At the point where she stepped away from the kids and said, “You have to not touch me and not talk to me for the next two minutes”, I knew I had to spring into action. Since my laptop was open and I had Flickr in a window, I quickly typed in the tag “terrier” into the “search my photostream” option. Up came all 2000 or so of the pictures I’ve taken of my dogs Lucy and Oscar. “Hey kids, want to see pictures of puppies?” Kids rapt. Crisis averted. Another mom saved. Hint: this works best with terriers.

Interesting BlogHer Fact #1

Georgia Getz of the great site, I Am Bossy, is thin as a whippet. But just as funny in person as she is electronically.

Interesting BlogHer Fact #2

Keynote Speaker Donna Byrd, publisher of The Root, showed grace, calm and what I’m calling “The Sotomayor Poker Face” when asked about last week’s events with her fellow Root editor, Professor Henry Gates. Can someone send Sonia and Donna to Vegas, ’cause those gals could clean up in high stakes poker.

Random Thought

Chicago is an amazing city, especially if you walk it. And don’t keep staring up at the tall buildings like I did. It makes you look like a rube from farm country. Plus you miss all the interesting architectural and decorative details on the door arches, gates and gratings.

Wishful Thinking

Can one recharge one’s brain with an iPhone charger?

Internet Expectations Exploded

Checked my visitor stats to find they are through the roof. Hundreds and hundreds more visitors than usual. Thought it was my fabulous wrap up of the BlogHer Conference. Nope, someone Stumbled my tribute last month to Farrah Fawcett. That’s okay, she deserves another look.

The BlogHer ‘09 Conference has been so jam-packed I’ve barely been able to Twitter, let alone blog. But before we get started, let me first reassure you that it hasn’t been because I was one of the tiara and boa wearing girls passing out drunk in the lobby after way too many cocktails.

I met up with a fellow Mount Holyoke College alum last night who is a former Chicago Tribune editor. We were at a downtown Italian sidewalk cafe having just maybe one glass of Chianti too many and solving All World Problems. Although we must have bumped into each other in college, we really became acquainted on Facebook recently. It was astonishing to discover that Cassandra is the smartest person in the world. Why? Because she and I both have the same answers to All World Problems. Over Lake Huron whitefish and fava beans, we tackled racism in America, the education crisis, the media shakeout between print and web-based sources, journalistic ethics, Obama’s cabinet picks, the financial crisis and so much more. We shut that cafe down and by 12:30 were back at the Hotel still needing to finish formulating the solution for health care. So we stopped for a nightcap at the hotel bar. That’s when the tiara and boa wearing BlogHer party girls came screaming in. It’s a shame. The Riot Grrrrrrls were so loud and distracting, we never did put the final touches on the Healthcare Solution. Obama will be so disappointed. Blame it on BlogHer.

This is as close to Tina Brown as I could get.

I was hiding behind the giant Ragu vegetable sculpture at the time.

Not to say that I’m an old grump who begrudges Gen Y the chance to turn BlogHer into one big Cosmo party. The way BlogHer is evolving, it seems you can have the kind of conference you want. They really upped the tech quotient with lots of intimate, hands-on sessions on special coding topics such as SEO, hacks, CMS, etc. Although there seem to be ever more Mommy Bloggers, you can avoid those sessions if you aren’t interested. In fact, the BlogHer organizers did a great job of really tracking things out, so you could mostly stick to your interests. They further tracked things by offering Birds of a Feather lunches so Travel Bloggers had a table, LGBT Bloggers had their table, Political Bloggers had their table.

At the surprisingly good meals, you could take the Cannoli. (I left it.)

I took three churros. Wanna make something of it?

The problem is: I didn’t fit at any table. Where was the table for the bloggers who cover things like composting, winemaking, and terriers with occasional forays into political rants, pictures of coyote poo and musings on crap British TV programs. Worse yet (at least as far as me getting a seat at the Kewl Table), blogging seems to have grown up. Everyone was networking like mad, looking to monetize, aggregate and leverage. When the inevitable question was asked: “What do you blog about?” their eyes were glazing over before I could even get past “Well, it’s like Green Acres”. Clearly I was not A CONTACT. You could see the mental “NEXT”. Amazing that just last year, it seemed there were only two kinds of blogs, the Mommy Blogger or the wild and crazy category-defying conglomerate of opinion and rants (and the more disparate the better). Now everyone is focusing down, building a platform, seeking to own a niche market. I was a lot more popular last year.

Where was the BlogHer track for bloggers who write about wine-making and terrier-wrangling? And coyote poo and eccentric British husbands and friends. And political rants and vampires and roadtrips.

Now I realize I should have worked on the Elevator Pitch instead of just laughing about it. This was really punched home when I found myself forced to participate in a role-playing exercise  in my first session. Before I could say, “I came to sit quietly in the back of the room”, I was paired off with twelve other bloggers to “own my expertise”. And I had to go first. I hate going first. It always makes you look like the dumb one.

Moderator: Quick finish this sentence: I’m an expert in [blank] because I have [blank] credentials and [add validating facts].

Me: I am an expert in hilarious clueless city to country transitions because three years ago I started a biodynamic winery and farm and I’ve made and learned from every mistake that can be made along the way. As a consequence, I now have a huge Albanian readership and I’m the number one result when you Google “horse cowboy sex”.

***Crickets****

Stony faces.

Clearly, I was wasting valuable space and time for people who were there to MONETIZE, AGGREGATE AND LEVERAGE.

Wait? Was I just complaining about the Party Hardy Crowd and now I’m griping about the bloggers who were too focused? There’s just no pleasing some people. I decided to just drop back, lose the agenda and wander around seeing what looked interesting. That seemed to work, and once again, I have to say that the information you get out of BlogHer is well worth the price of admission.

Is there another blogger out there who posts as many pictures of coyote poo? Talk about "owning your niche".

But enough about my BlogHer experience. You really came here to see if I realized my BlogHer goal of becoming BFFs with Tina Brown and The Pioneer Woman. Tina Brown, not so much. I saw her in the lobby having a very animated conversation but got all shy and bashful. The best I could do was hide behind the giant Ragu Vegetable Sculpture and take a quick point and shoot picture. But her keynote discussion with Ilene Chaiken of The L Word and Donna Byrd of The Root was fascinating, provacative and crisply British. (When asked how she resists oversaturating The Daily Beast with celebrity pictures and news, even though such things raise stats, she replied: “It’s often the boys on the staff who want more celeb pictures. We girls just have to get very cross with them and get politics back on priority.”) Anyone older than me who feels comfortable calling herself a “girl” and can talk about an editorial decision as “being cross”, well, Tina, all is forgiven.

Now to The Pioneer Woman. Remember that redhead I saw get off the elevator the first day. It must have been her because she seems to be staying on my floor. Imagine my surprise, as I rushed to the elevator from my room after a midmorning break, and The Pioneer Woman comes up behind me to get on as well.

So of course I said: ”Are you The Pioneer Woman?”

She said, “I’m supposed to be.”

It was clear she hadn’t gotten the memo or had just skipped that blog post where I explained that we are just like Twins except I didn’t marry a cowboy and run over one of my dogs like she did.

I said: “I have a blog like yours. Sort of a Green Acres thing about clueless city people trying to become farmer/ranchers. Except our livestock are terriers. And it’s not really a ranch. It’s a vineyard.”

Now I have to note that Pioneer Woman isn’t the folksy cowboy boot wearing Western gal you might think. She’s soft-spoken and polite and sort of surprisingly Supermodel willowy. And she was very good at hiding what must have been alarm at being stuck in an elevator car with someone who might be a crazed stalker. One with terriers.

So she very sweetly said: “Oh, what’s your blog?”

That’s when I shamelessly pressed one of my cards into her hand.

And I can talk about this encounter because I’m sure she’s never going to show up here. In fact, at this point, she’s probably trying to find out how to block my IP address from all subsections of her site. And alerting the police in her neck of Oklahoma to be on the alert if a woman who looks like she might be a San Franciscan shows up with terriers.

But it could have all been so different. If I’d only worked on that Elevator Pitch like the BlogHer people told me I should. And if I’d brought up my impressive Albanian readership. And the top Google Search thing.

You know, I bet if I’d told her Donny Osmond liked this post so much he put it on the home page of his fansite, she would have been really impressed.

Okay, we in San Francisco think we are one of the leading metro centers in America. After all, by most counts, we are the fourth largest metropolitan area in the country. I’m still willing to fight anyone who says we don’t have one of the best art/music/opera/culture epicenters in the U.S. But today was a crash course in learning that a “Metropolitan Area” is not the same thing as a Big City. San Francisco is a small (although lovely) town surrounded by a “Metropolitan Area”. Chicago is a Big City. Biiiiig Biiig City. Until very recently, when a former mayor who shall not be named got in bed with big contractors, San Francisco had a building height limit of something around 8 stories. Now we have a few high rises, but they are so obvious, everyone tells direction by pointing to a tower and saying, “Walk toward that tower.”

Silly me, I thought I could navigate that way in Chicago. After all, I’m staying at the Chicago Sheraton and Towers. So I could walk all around the town and find my way back just by scanning the horizon for the tower. (Which, if it were like San Francisco, would have the name helpfully emblazoned on the top.) Guess what? All the buildings are towers. You can’t even see my tower between all the other towers. I know this because I walked for miles and miles down admittedly beautiful Chicago avenues. I walked down Madison. I went through something called the Jewelry District. I walked through what I’m convinced was the setting for the movie Saint Elmo’s Fire (Demi Moore and Rob Lowe were long gone). I landed in a really interesting place called Millennium Park. At which point I discovered that most Chicagoans are very, very friendly and anxious to give you directions. Except they don’t have a clue where anything is. Luckily I met a security guard with an iPhone who found out I had somehow strayed 5 miles from my hotel. (Which was amazing as the restaurant I went to was only a mile from the hotel.) At that point, hailing a cab was the better part of valour. But I certainly got my money’s worth out of Chicago tonight. Even as I confronted the fact that I thought I was a San Francisco hipster and I’m just a kid from the sticks.

The iPhone can do a lot. But it can't capture Chicago lightning storms from the back of the airport shuttle.

Okay, let me backtrack. So far — just hours into this junket — I already felt as if I were having a real Chicago experience. I landed in O’Hare, just in time for the scariest thunder/lightning/hail storm the Midwest could produce. I can’t decide what was more disconcerting. The ferocity of the storm or the fact that this was precipitation in summer. Nope, don’t have that in Sonoma. My camera was in the airport shuttle’s trunk, so I was reduced to trying to snap shots of lightning with my iPhone. And I seem to have brought the wrong connectors. So what’s taken into the iPhone, stays in the iPhone for this trip.

Met with an old college friend who is now so important and so mysterious, she will henceforth be referred to as Greta Garbo.

So let’s step way back. One of the best things about this Blogher Conference is that it’s not going to be all about Blogging. First thing scheduled was meeting with a good friend from college (who was Maid of Honor at my wedding). We’d dropped out of each other’s lives for awhile so it was good to be back in touch. Especially since she is a good friend to have. I’m keeping her identity under wraps because, well I’m not exactly sure what she does, but I’m pretty sure that if she goes on vacation or sneezes or gets a cold and has to take NyQuil, Corporate America comes to a shocking standstill. So for the sake of this blog (and our floundering economy), let’s just call her Greta Garbo. Well, Greta had some hair-raising tales to tell of her recent years. Again, no details, but I’m writing the “ripped from  today’s headlines” Law & Order script the story deserves. But on a lighter note, she’d easily fit into the clothes we used to share in college. And those clothes would be all hers. (Because I can’t fit in them anymore.) She also had the wisdom to take me to a proper steakhouse with aged beef. It was the kind of place Frank Sinatra would have patronized. I should have had the Martini. But I figured after little sleep, the dehydration of flight, etc. that might be a bad move. Turns out it was wise to forgo the Martini given that I would be wandering the streets of this toddlin’ town for hours afterwards.

It’s almost a shame to plunge into all that blogging stuff tomorrow after this introduction. I think I’d rather be walking the streets of Chicago. But I did have an exciting celebrity moment. As I ran into the elevator with five minutes to shower, change and get a cab to the restaurant, a long-haired redhead got out. I’m convinced it was The Pioneer Woman. If I’d had even a few more minutes, I would have reminded her that we are Twin Ranching Sisters With Absolutely Nothing In Common. And we are supposed to discover we are BFFs this weekend.

Well, there’s always time at the session she’s moderating.

Just a few more interesting things about Chicago:

1. All the cabbies seem to be from West Africa.

2. They all think Obama is in town.

3. One told me he was staying at the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers.

4. I’m pretty sure he was NOT invited to BlogHer ‘09. (Maybe Michelle was.)

Two more pictures of Left Coast Cowboys’ BlogHer Experience: The Lost Hours:

Millennium Park was the coolest thing I've seen since the Olympic Village in Beijing.

And then there were the parts of the City that looked like something out of 19th Century Paris.

I’m starting to get flooded with emails from Blogher offering helpful tips for getting the most out of the Conference. Then I got the one that urged me: “Don’t forget your Elevator Pitch!” Elevator Pitch? For those of you who might not know, this is a succinct pitch (in this case a description of your blog) that can be blurted out between two floors on the elevator.

What is this Hollywood and I’ve got to “pitch” to a roomful of bored executives? The classic Hollywood pitch, at least in legend, is the one used to pitch the movie Twins: “Schwarzenegger. Devito. Twins.” The more typical Hollywood pitch tries to shoehorn a project into the same mold as a wildly successful previous project: “Think Pretty Woman meets Transformers by way of Schindler’s List.” (Now THAT would be some movie!)

Hey, I used to run an Ad Agency. I know from pitches. I just didn’t expect, when I left the Corporate Rat Race to transition to farming, that I’d ever have to do one again. And aren’t we talking about a bunch of bloggers here? I mean people like me who are doing this for fun. Do we really need to “pitch” ourselves to each other? Or maybe I’m missing something and Hollywood agents will be swarming the Conference and the blogger with the snappiest pitch gets the movie deal.

So Hollywood Agents! Here's the deal. I perfect my pitch. You put together a package that has Drew Barrymore playing me.

So on the off-chance that this is my chance to have Drew Barrymore play me, I figure I better pull together a pitch. In actuality, I thought I had one. Maybe two. See up at the top of my masthead: A Yank. A Brit. Two Terriers. A Vineyard. And a Dream. Or how about the subhead: You know Green Acres? It’s like that. But I somehow suspect that’s not what Blogher is looking for. It doesn’t really say what this blog is. For the good reason that I’m not really sure what this blog is. As I mused in yesterday’s post, I’m the Blogger Who Defies Description. Which means I don’t fit into any of the popular (read “monetizable”) categories. Definitely not a Mommy Blogger. Certainly not a Tech Blog. Some politics, photography and humor, but not fitting comfortably in any of those categories.

So help me out here folks. What should my pitch be? Here I’ll get things started:

“Just like Pioneer Woman. But without the homeschooling,  the religion, the cooking and the cowboy husband. Or the readership.”

“Not even remotely like Dooce.”

“Coyote poo. Terriers. Fear and Loathing in Wine Country.”

“Goin’ Country on a ranch just like Bush’s. No livestock but terriers.”

“One part winemaking. Two parts terriers. A sprinkling of political rants. Topped by lots of stuff about my eclectic interests.”

“Not an easy blog to put in a category. But Donny Osmond reprinted my post on the front page of his fan site. Doesn’t that count for something?”

“Periodically making fun of Brits online since late 2007. With extra stuff about wine making and terriers.”

“The Number One Blog in Albania”*

“Okay, even my mother doesn’t read my blog. But some people like it. A few.”

“If you Google ‘cowboy horse sex’, you get this blog.” **

See. I clearly need help. Best elevator pitch gets something. Maybe a bottle of Two Terriers Lavender Oil. At some point when I get my act together and order the bottles.

*I’m basing this claim on my stat counter. After I post, traffic must come to a standstill in downtown Tirana as everyone runs to the nearest Internet cafe to read Left Coast Cowboys. And I challenge anyone to dispute this claim or produce a larger Albanian readership.

**Seriously! Try it.