The most epically interesting #blog post ever that you can't afford to miss

Have you read the most interesting blog post ever? This blog post is SO full of #win. Maybe the world's greatest blog post, written by a woman who knows.  This brilliant young woman in backwoods TN is about to shut things down. You do NOT want to miss this epic blog post. You will not believe what this woman in Tennessee just did.

Here are just 3 reasons why you do not want to miss this:

1. A woman in Tennessee says the internet ISN'T making us stupid.

2. The same woman in Tennessee who said the internet isn't making us stupid has something else to say.

3. A certain woman in Tennessee believes that The Internet Really Believes that we are all stupid.

Do you believe what this woman in Tennessee just said? She said WE are smarter than the internet believes. What that means might make you spazz. This freckled, frugal woman in Tennessee just might make you think twice about internet content. I hope I'd be as courageous as this woman who thinks WE ARE THE SMARTEST creatures ever.

Ever think about whether snails ever cry? Forget it. Listen to this woman in her thirties. To the Internet Who Curates Its Content: this woman thinks You're Dumb.

Here are a few things to remember if you ever run into this woman in Tennessee who thinks Internet Curation is Lame:

1. Internet curation isn't All Wrong. It's just the part about Headline Marketing.

2. Headline Marketing? Never heard of it? This woman in Tennessee says, You can't afford NOT to!

3. That woman in Tennessee is Plain Tired of Headline Marketing.

4. Headlines don't always have to use numbers and superlatives, says a woman in Tennessee!

5. Tennessee Internet Woman says sometimes stories need no qualification.

6. Caffeinating the headlines doesn't make for a better story!!!!!! says a woman in Tennessee.

That woman might have gotten a little TOO real for the internet. That is ONE story you will NOT see on the 6 o'clock news. Woman in Tennessee: 'I know I have homicidal feelings toward Headline Marketing.'

But that's not all she says.  She says she thinks this content curation is still evolving. Did you catch that? A Bible-thumping woman in Tennessee believes in evolution! Wait, was the prior headline just an #epic fail? Ever wondered what does evolution have to do with internet curation? A woman in Tennessee is ready to Get Real about headline marketing evolution. And she won't go away. In 10 years, we'll be glad that woman in Tennessee spoke up about that one thing that mattered.

Whatever it was.

Totes magotes share this on every social media interface you have or you will die like everyone who didn't forward the e-mail chains with the punctuation marks that formed the shape of a robot in 1998.

Strange pilgrimage

A couple of weeks ago, our scooter had died its ninth death and we were back to being a one-car family so we all dropped Loverpants off at work. I didn't have a plan and with a full day ahead in the company of two children who would gladly hook their veins up to the Netflix drip for hours, I needed to take them somewhere. Loverpants' office is south of where we live, so we just sort of kept driving south. I ran one of those desperate ambiguous searches on the GPS, and every local attraction we had covered, thoroughly, with ample proof from the gift shops.

Up popped "Depot Railroad Museum," a mere 30 mile drive in Stevenson, Alabama. Because, unknown town in the deep South that celebrates a heritage of the railways?  That might be really fun, or scary, but no way could it be boring.

We got off the exit in Stevenson and I can't explain the questions I was trying to reconcile while my children went uncharacteristically quiet in the backseat. When abject poverty is thrust in front of you, you might do what I do which is be absolutely overcome with curiosity and denial.  When I come across places in America that have not only been forgotten but battered and left behind like an old dog, I am as interested in the story here as I am wanting to wish it away, wanting to refuse to believe that people in my own country, people who are my neighbors to the south are pushed this far to the margins. We are not talking just the occasional busted sofa on the porch but whole roofs collapsed and trailer park after poorly tended trailer park with signs that children, maybe even many children, live there.

I search myself. Like the simple explanation for all of this is tucked away inside of me and I can look at the boarded up windows of businesses and not only understand it, but explain it away. Just as I did when my mom drove us to St. Augustine's hunger center once a month and we served the same people month after months for years, oftentimes people wearing the same clothes, and the same long, tired faces. My childhood assessment had this poverty thing all boiled down, tied up neat with a bow. The world, this city, this church just needed more food and more jobs helps and more people who cared, and maybe a few more mops to scrub all the dirt from the floors. Nevermind the systemic forces of addiction, recidivism, violence and abuse that cycle through generations and plow plow plow through communities whose voices are muffled, whose housing is redeveloped, whose very existence is terribly inconvenient to someone like me, someone who wants so badly to reduce this down to something of an aphorism so that it doesn't make me feel so dang uncomfortable.

***

I want to teach my children that uncomfortable is rarely a negative, and so often it is the only feeling that prompts real and sustainable change.

***

The railroad museum in Stevenson, Alabama was hilarious and beautiful and impossible to capture. It resides right next to train tracks and a historic hotel (now function hall) that rattle and shake as the train passes by.

Stevenson, Alabama shook me up, too. The Main Street is a wide boulevard whereby one could shoot a canon in the middle of the day and not fear for hitting anyone or anything, save for the occasional delivery truck to the lone furniture store. Up and down the side streets are decrepit houses, rusted out trucks parked on lawns. I want to know more and I want to unknow what I already knew.

Our trip to Alabama was the last day before school began for Baby Girl. I had hoped to have done something significant that would sparkle in her memory like a well-crafted scrapbook page. Instead, we took a tour of what was effectively the dusty high school yearbook of Stevenson High School, class of 1919.

Then I thought, I really hope my kids remember this day, and not necessarily in a good way ("Wow, Mom was such a nutter! She took us on the craziest field trips!") or bad way ("Wow. Mom was such a nutter. She took us on the craziest field trips.") I just want them to remember that they had fun and ate junk food with their mom when they were little, but also that they explored and asked questions and did the unexpected, but not the insignificant.

***

Over the weekend Baby Girl said, "I really want to go back to that place in Alabama where we explored. We should go back and see that train museum sometime."

Obama 2012

My name is Kendra.I live in the belt buckle of the Bible Belt. I am an evangelical Christian mother of two. I am voting to reelect President Obama on November 6, 2012.

*** This is not a post about my reasons for voting on the Democratic ticket. This is about my cherished freedom as a woman to exercise my voting right. This is about my love of a country where my second generation parents have succeeded and my immigrant in-laws came to operate their own business while still observing sabbath. This is about my excitement as a campaign volunteer.

Today I phonebanked for the Obama campaign. It was inspiring. There were just a few volunteers at Tennessee headquarters. I used my Google Voice phone to call battleground state voters and I had some pleasant exchanges with my fellow Americans--many of whom were not planning to vote for Obama.

The other night I watched the DNC Convention from the same place. There were black faces, white faces, old, young, middle-aged. There were students and professors and professionals and nurse anesthetists :) We whooped and clapped and some people invoked the name of Divinity in response to the high notes of speeches delivered live from Charlotte, NC.

My experience as a volunteer for a highly divisive campaign has been heartwarming. It has reflected the best of what I believe a two-party system can achieve on its best days. I was inspired to think warmly today about a country that I already love. Sometimes I don't like America, but I will always love this great nation.

Whomever you are planning to support in this election, I hope you are registered to vote and will get involved in the campaign. I expect you will not regret it!

*** And she did not just caption that "Call Me, Maybe."