Authors and Ideas Other Than Me And My Own

On Friday, September 26th, York school's senior English students (myself included) took a wonderfully traditional field trip to the Authors and Ideas Festival at Carmel's Sunset Center. The show that they put on for us was meant to expose us to new ideas and stimulate our creative sides. The big name on the list of the speakers was Sandra Day O'Connor, who was the first female justice to server on the Supreme Court, and I was looking forward to hearing firsthand what sort of decisions Supreme Court justices are faced with in the course of their duties.

Unfortunately, the interview of O'Connor was focused around her life prior to the Supreme Court, and her struggle with the sexism of others that initially held her back in her practice of law. Compelling and inspiring though it was, I learned nothing from the interview that I could not have found on Wikipedia. O'Connor's narrative was utterly devoid of any mention of her actions from her time as a Supreme Court justice, which was her distinguishing characteristic. I personally felt cheated to have someone who was in as unique a position as the first female Supreme Court justice speak only about how hard it was to have the media closely scrutinizing her every decision, yet never say a word about what those decisions were.

Aside from the anticlimactic letdown of O'Connor's interview, the first three speakers were surprisingly funny and insightful. I was honestly expecting most of the presentations to be condescending tirades about the importance of our vote (of which there was a little bit), yet the author, motivational speaker, and astronomer (respectively) managed to keep their audience entertained and interested. The major change that I would have made to the show would be to have these speakers conclude the show, leaving the audience with a better final impression of the event than that of O'Connor's sub-par interview.

On Blogging

The assignment: create a "blog" about something that interests you (or nothing in particular, if that is the direction in which your interests take you) and update your "blog" on a semi-regular basis with posts about this topic.
The problem: I have personally never been able to take blogs seriously. The first and most insurmountable barrier for me has always been the name; "blog" seems to me to be a brilliant onomatopoeia, invoking the image of a suppressed author opening some concealed facial cavity to reveal loosely formed and loosely restrained thoughts that subsequently spill fourth onto the Internet with the same sense of anonymous invincibility that is the cause of road rage and prank calls.
My second problem with "bloggers" is that in many cases, the ability to distribute their material on the Internet seems to have given these individuals the idea that someone is reading along on an iBook in a coffee shop somewhere, nodding sagely in agreement with the blogger's opinion while sipping from an iced chai (I'm certain I'll get to my hatred of coffee shops, iBooks, and iced chais in a later post). The reality of the situation is that, with the exception of a precious few bright, funny, or overly vulgar individuals, the majority of all bloggers end up as the world-wide-web's equivalent of a blind man on a soap box mistaking the hurried footfalls of passing pedestrians for the applause of eager listeners.
My final (and currently most relevant) issue with blogs lies grounded in the fact that using a blog to whine about those who use a blog to whine makes me something of a hypocrite; however, this cannot be avoided, and if I must come off as a hypocrite in order for my divine opinion to induce sage nodding of the head in my undoubtedly large coffee shop audience, then such sacrifices must be made.
...I suppose I'll give blogs a chance.