All this Gawker business (i.e. Emily Gould's controversial cover story in the Times magazine about how-I-became-famous-by-blogging and how-it-fucked-up-my-head-and-my-relationships-and-my-life-and-made-even-more-famous; see www.nytimes.com); I couldn't get past the first 3000 (of 7000) words or so; my daughter woke up and needed pancakes. But it did make me think: Why blog? I started blogging a couple of years ago out of frustration with the refusal of the mainstream media to take up what seemed to me some really pressing, common sense questions about what happened on 9/11. I started blogging out of a kind of panic and fear about what was happening in the country politically, the illegitimate wars and torture and domestic spying, the crackdown on dissent—much of which has been justified by 9/11. I see my blog (but how I hate that word; it sounds like something rude your body does unexpectedly in a social situation) almost as a kind of prayer, a stoking of the fire of the collective consciousness, an engaging in an energy of concern. I don't know if anybody reads it; and I don't think it matters, really (although I'm grateful if you do), the energy is there, like a prayer. It seems a lot of people have been praying. In these past couple of years we've seen a sudden surge in freedom of expression, on the Internet and everywhere, anti-Bush activism, the media has re-discovered some balls (and then there's Obama); and I feel like this blog has allowed me to be a part of that (along with other things I try and do), like a little piece of coal in a great big engine of change. It's the thing I do that makes me feel, aw shucks, American. Blogging about the self is for younger people. Romantic love is what concerns them and how they define themselves. I was there once upon a time, back in the dinosaur days before there were blogs. And you know, and I say this without any criticism of Ms. Gould per se, but her story made me happy that I'm no longer 24. It's tough to be a young woman in this country, where sex sells and you're expected to give some up, in one way or another; and no one will ever really like you for having a brain too. It gets easier as you get older, saddlebags and all. If fame is what you want, it's easy enough to get... But why not shoot higher?