Category Archives: Home & Family

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Right now, someone is particularly angry at me for not communicating through the means she prefers. She wrote me an email saying that she wants letters on paper and will read email but thinks blogs are impersonal and not worth her time.

So, why write blogs?

• I work two jobs (for TechWomen and Huawei), each of which is interesting and worthwhile
• I love a distractingly wonderful husband, two remarkable kids in college, two dogs, a cat, and two birds, each of whom would like and deserves more of my attention
• Our daughter is getting married in six weeks, with over a hundred guests
• I am working with my brothers to advise and support two interesting parents (both over 80) whose health is failing
• I am on several volunteer Boards and I teach a group of twenty adorable kids three hours a week in an after-school program, all of whom have justified expectations of my time and nurturing
• I have plants that expected better when they came into my garden, and weeds that are much happier than they should be
• I have a stack of well-written and highly-recommended books that leak guilt at me when I look in their direction

I am over-committed and over-scheduled doing work I love and do well.  When my daughter went to college, she made a wise decision. She could either try to keep in touch with her large circle of friends and relations individually, and do nothing else. Or, she could blog and hope that her admirers would follow her news in a less-direct but more complete way.

“Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.”
Sir Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626)

When I don’t blog, I find that I drop out of touch and actually spend more time communicating to worse effect. I love writing and taking pictures and I think sharing what I see with my readers benefits both. I am frequently contacted by interesting people who ask to use one of my pictures or want to continue a discussion started on my blog.  For example, I was on the local TV news last week because of my blog entries last year about FEMA.  I have included recent pictures of strange local cars and old metal signs for you today – just for fun! Publishing here makes me consider more deeply and starts many of my conversations with my family and friends in the middle of current experience, instead of spending half of each meeting catching each other up.

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Images Copyright 2011 by Katy Dickinson