Reunions

Don't know what I was thinking when I held up the giveaway and determined that new T-shirt would fit on this old body. 

I can't even blame the disconnect on alcohol. My drink of choice at The Temple News reunion had been a diet soda. A lot of us were drinking sodas. 

Maybe it was the adrenalin from reconnecting with my newsroom buddies. The weekend visit to the campus and Temple-Army football game was more than a flashback. It was quantum leap back for a lot of us who have raised our own college students. Some of the AARP card carrying Temple News crew had children raising children. 

The reminiscing about putting our all important (at the time) college paper to bed four nights a week got our juices flowing. We were once the infantry of the Fourth Estate. Very few of us assembled last month were still in the newspaper business, but we still had great affection for it. 

And those of us from the 70s were sad to see very little of our work on exhibit, during the party, with the selected archives of the school newspaper's storied history.

Hey, stuff happened during our watch. Nixon resigned, the Vietnam War ended, tuition  increased, Gene Banks picked Duke over Temple and the city's Big Five basketball programs. Philadelphia newspapers went on strike, and for three days The Temple News changed our on-campus focus to provide the entire city with a printed local paper. 

We romanticized about punch cards, cropping wheels and pica poles. The slide rules of our time. 

The kids mingling with us were more interested in careers as social media specialists, than bringing down the university administration in a three-part reporting series for a newspaper. 

Some of them could not wrap their heads around one of the round table speakers -- a Hall of Fame professional beat writer for more than 30 years and a News alum -- not owning a cellphone. 

Apple computers graced the tabletops of their work spaces as we toured the Newsroom earlier in that day. Editors are now being paid for getting the paper out and reporters are being paid for stories per published bylines. And the paper only comes out once a week. Today's News reporters stream news live by tweeting to their followers between deadlines and post editions on line. 

When most of us worked at The Temple News back in the mid 70s we practically lived there. If you didn't have work-study money, you worked for free. Most of us commuted to our urban campus from the suburbs. No way, after rush hour, could you take the subway safely. At least you would never tell your parents if you did.

We cooked out of the blue box mac n cheese dinners and soup to sustain ourselves, drinking the worst coffee for days while editing the paper late at night. We started our days before class -- some of us remember going to class -- with coffee and breakfast off food trucks ( a fixture on campus even before they universally became trendy and fashionable), while reviewing the morning's edition and thinking about the next one. 

At the reunion we talked about now dead professors and  colleagues. We vowed to make other staffers come to the next gathering and to make sure our work was represented next time in the archive display. 

Funny, most of us had time-faded, hard copies of our editions buried somewhere at home. 

I bet I am not the only one who will exhume the yellowed copies this winter. 

In the meantime, I am going to hand wash my Temple News t-shirt in cold water and get back into shape to wear it more comfortably. I am going to Link-in with former staffers -- including that cub reporter I sent out to wrestle a bear for a soft sports feature, who is now the editor-in-chief of a famous tabloid.
I vow to stay in touch and follow the careers of current staffers. Especially the kind media specialists who handed me their Temple News business cards and attempted to teach me a trick or two on Twitter.
And I am going to continue blogging.  And maybe some of them will join me on my new writing adventure. 

Higher education: A blog is a blog, is a blog ... unless it is a book deal

Wednesday I put my professional look on and journeyed into the city to find out more about blogging.
I am trying to make this the most interesting of experiences for my readers (400-plus and counting), while furthering my dream of helping to pay off student loans for our offspring who have gone the private college route.
I rode the train, bumped into working people and law school students I know. Getting up so early to go into the loop on our limited Metra line reminded me of how much I want to continue working from home. My heart goes out to the people who commute to and from every day. Especially those who have their set seats on the train, who give the stink eye to random people disturbing their space and the peace.
Don't even get me started on the "quiet car" experience.
Two hours before my first seminar on "Mommy Blogging Your Way to Success," I enjoyed people watching and a breakfast at my favorite Lavazza coffee shop on Ohio Street. I had returned to the scene of a prior almost crime. A few years back a young thug attempted to sweet talk and scam me there. Stay tuned and I shall blog that story in the future.

Fueled by an excellent grande cappuccino, with perfect artistic swirls in its steamy foamed hat and the last almond croissant, I later ambled up Michigan Avenue to the Chicago Tribune Tower for a day of seminars to improve my proficiency in blogging. The Tribune was a host site to many Social Media Week/Chicago events this week. It was my first time around the revolving doors of the historic building.
Seventeen years ago I planned on continuing my newspaper career there after we moved to the Midwest from Orlando. I had no idea how far the loop was from my suburban zip code and prioritized raising a family over writing and editing. Surrounded by young editorial and advertising people carrying coffee and bicycle helmets I checked in and then found my way to the elevator bank. Off to a great start, while being distracted by a life I used to know, I got off on the wrong floor. Acting cool, calm and collected, I waited for another elevator to take me to the basement. Did you know there is a workout facility in the Tribune Building?
One of 90 mommy bloggers to sign up for Wednesday's event, I took a seat and waited for the other 89 to show up. Okay, I was a little bit eager, a little bit early.
As the rest of the bloggers drifted in (more than half of the registered lot and only two men) and the panel of experienced women got comfortable, I noticed I was on the empty-nest side of the pool instead of the Pampers/pre-school assemblage. After looking around the room I also noticed I am going to have to get much cooler eyeglass frames to be competitive with this group.
It's amazing what you can learn in an hour. I have notes to prove it.
Reoccurring themes, while the panelists snacked on Dove chocolates, were:

• You don't get rich from blogging.
• You should blog because you have a passion for writing. 
• Write less but more often.
• Book deals and speaking engagements are where the money is, if there is any money to be made off the blogosphere.
• Girl Scout cookies have already gone on sale.

I am more than up for the challenge. 

The afternoon's session which required another trip through the revolving doors and finding a different conference room was about reviving your blog. I figured by attending "TribU: Save My Blog," I would master a "prevent defense" for my losing interest in blogging. The event was overflowing with bloggers and with a lot of information I had been seeking.

Twitter vs. Facebook. Facebook page vs. Facebook fan page. Adding widgets and whatchamacallits.
Reoccurring themes at this session, besides not serving coffee, were:

• You don't get rich from blogging.
• You should blog because you have a passion for writing. 
• You are not writing "War and Peace" or even worrying about good writing.
• Don't get hung up in the posting queue -- send, send, send.

I can't promise to follow through on all of these suggestions. The journalist in me still worries about some of these suggestions. I may not have all the answers but I now have a new network of people to help me get this blog out there.

Now I must stop writing and try to figure out how to move one address book into another so I can let you know we are up and running.

Tweeting is not for everybody #really

I have 11 people following me on Twitter. Nine are total strangers.
It is pretty scary that there are strangers in my life. I've been warning my children about stranger danger on the Internet for years.
It is also pretty scary that I keep sending this blog out there and that only 11 people are following me.
I am the mom who has never had a Facebook page. Yes, I am the one.
I don't really want anyone I knew in elementary school, who has not found me in the past 40-plus years, to look me up now.
When I was living in the Tampa Bay area during the 80s -- and the Philadelphia Eagles were in a Super Bowl -- a handful of those people were looking for couch surfing reservations and even tickets to the game.
I broke it to them gently -- the Outdoors Writer, who also had to cover high school football, for the local newspaper, did not get a handful of tickets to help pay her tiny one-bedroom apartment's rent.
I wasn't even going to THAT game.
Back to Facebook.
The blogging and IT gurus I have spoken to have told me that in order for this blog to get a following, it has to have a Facebook and a Twitter account. Twitter is something else I have avoided, although I hope to get in on the IPO if my Fidelity broker can make it so.

My IT Gal and I have been trying to set up a Facebook that won't disclose my real identity. We've been distracted between shopping, pedicures, an out-of-town wedding, etc., and hope to get back to that project in a day or two.
She did get a Twitter account up and running after the fourth blog was published. She Tweeted the first few messages out there to show me how it works. Now I've signed up for two seminars on the subject this week in the city.
My Twitter account journeys out there to infinity and beyond under this moniker: @musingsmom58.
That's me, Mama K.
We even found an adorable cartoon illustration to tie it in with the Musings From The Laundry Room theme (the name of this blog just in case you have not made the connection) I have going here that a few people have become loyal readers of. Two are in my Google+ circles. This is something else I didn't know I had.
In the old days you got instant gratification by publishing a story or column by your editor no longer snarling about your deadlines. You could sometimes see the papers being delivered on you drive home to your tiny one-bedroom apartment. That also meant you had stayed out too long after literally putting the paper to bed.
Back then your feedback wasn't by Tweet or blog comment. It might have been a wake-up call by the father of the high school football player you criticized in the morning paper after his big-time-college-prospect son dropped the-game-winning pass, or the excessive pickup horn blaring outside your window because you didn't mention the  name of the guy who caught the biggest tarpon of the week in your Sunday column. I kid you not.
Since setting up the Twitter account I have become obsessed with checking it to see if anyone is following me. Crap, I only have seven followers now. Where did they go?
I spent a couple of hours connecting with comedy favorites, foodies, organizations, the Obamas ... . I keep hoping that someone I have reached out to will reach out and Tweet me.
Just logged on and saw that Oprah has recommended I add a few connections. Now I am going to wake up my IT Gal and get her to remind me what my password is, so I can add a few more people to my Tweets.
There's no #stopping me now.