About blogging: A bouquet of blogs

One of the delightful things about reading other peoples’ blogs is discovering the blogs that they’re reading. The very idea that WordPress, my home sweet home, is supporting millions of blogs and blogposts daily* by people from all over the world would be daunting if it weren’t for the fact that bloggers have a knack for seeking out like-minded friends. I feel like a bee flying from flower to flower, sipping a bouquet of nectars.

Jan’s Sushi Bar is the latest midlifer site to kindly include my humble offering in a list of her new-found favorites, and I have happily reciprocated. (Thanks!) Blogs are as individual as their creators’ fingerprints, and I enjoy the visual and literary feast that is always available out there, day and night.

But I am tired of being at the mercy of the available blog designs. HTML for Dummies, anyone? If you have any experience on breaking out of the box design-wise, or could direct me to some instructional sites, I’d love to hear from you. Right now, I only know enough HTML to make me dangerous!

Keep on bloggin’!

*Is is just me, or do the most popular blogsites on the WordPress list always seem to be about soccer?

Adventures at Midlife: ‘Sex and the City’

ByJane, the Godmother of MidLifeBloggers, whacked tapped me gently with her magic wand, and I am called to do her bidding. Says she, of the film debut of Sex and the City: The Movie, “I keep coming across all these comments about how Carrie’s in her ’40s and Samantha’s in her ’50s — and I’m thinking, is 40 the new 20, 50 the new 30, and 60 the new 40?” From a midlife perspective, she challenged me, what’s up with this film?

Let me start out by declaring that I have not seen the entire television opus, and I have not yet seen the movie. (I’m still in London for another week or two, and I’m planning a Girls Night Out with my friends when I get home, complete with feather boas, little black dresses and ridiculous shoes.) But I’ve read enough reviews and discussions and seen enough trailers of the film that I am willing to take a stab at it.

For me, from the very beginning, SATC has been a complete fairy tale.

Your Girl in London: The American primaries

I just returned from three days in Stratford and Oxford to find that the American political landscape had significantly shifted. (Funny, I didn’t see any headlines about it in the English countryside.) Most of the Brits I’ve talked to have certainly heard of Hillary (and more so her husband) but they’re not sure who this Obama character is. “I’m not sure, either,” I tell them. “But I expect we’ll find out.”

As I cruised the Web, I found myself nodding at what media blogger Nancy Nall said in her summary of the campaign:

I’m thinking what happened to Hillary is what happens to people who live in a human cocoon, surrounded by ass-kissers and pillow-plumpers who either a) spend all their time covering their own; or b) telling you what you want to hear.

But I was especially interested — and saddened — by NYTimes columnist Judith Warner’s commentary juxtaposing Hillary’s decline with the ascendancy of “Sex and the City”:

Your Girl in London: A case of rape

The Washington Post has a disturbing story on an aspect of British life that I wasn’t aware of: “According to government statistics, only 5.7 percent of rapes officially recorded by police in England and Wales end in a conviction.”

Solicitor General Vera Baird, who oversees criminal prosecutions in England, estimated that [only] 10 to 20 percent of rapes are brought to authorities’ attention. According to government figures, 14,000 cases a year are reported and 19 out of 20 defendants walk free…

Thousands of victims each year once chose not to go to police because of shame, women’s advocates say. Now, the advocates say, the bigger reason is that rape victims feel the system is stacked against them.

Why the low conviction rate? Surveys commissioned by the police forces found a “‘culture of skepticism’ in the justice system when it came to rape cases, and recommended shifting the focus from seeking reasons not to believe the accuser to gathering evidence to support the charge.” (For a U.S. comparison, see this Wall Street Journal response.)

Blogging: It does a body good

Some genius has come up with a novel thesis: blogging may make you feel better. No kidding. According to Jessica Wapner, writing in Scientific American Online:

Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery.

I haven’t had any surgery lately, but I do know I like putting my thoughts down on paper. I had a shrink once who called it “yellow pad therapy” in honor of the legal pads her patients used to try to pull their lives and thoughts together. I filled up a few yellow pads myself.*