Monday, September 06, 2004

My colleague is about to become a millionaire and it was my idea!

Ann of Althouse blog fame has posted (here) that she will now accept donations to her blog, given how much time and effort she devotes on a daily (hourly?) basis to the project. She notes that in the last several days her readership has been higher than high and perhaps some would now like to show financial appreciation for her work (example of a sacrifice made: toting her computer to a dinner party last Thursday, to loyally continue her simul-blogging of the convention). Imagine, if one tenth of the current 250,000 gave even a dollar, she’d be able to upgrade her little VW to a sporty car with one more letter thrown in (BMW).

Here’s the thing: I got her started. Really. She admits this. Without my words of encouragement, she may still be sketching faces during Law School faculty meetings rather than blogging for bucks. I think it is not unreasonable to remind her of various ways people have been compensated in the past for jumpstarting a business venture. Maybe 10% of the first million and after that it’s all hers? Fair, isn’t it?

The question may arise if you should dole out a buck to Althouse rather than to a political campaign of your choice this year (the Democrats are the needy ones, so let’s even it out a little, shall we?). There is something to be said for supporting our champ of pundits, the self-proclaimed moderate and shrine to the entrepreneurial spirit of success who even as I type is launching a patriotic campaign to make “Closer to Free” the Wisconsin state rock song.

If you’re a Republican and you slip her the greenback, it wont make you or break you and it wont make or break the Republican campaign either. I am certain you’ve written that with ten zeros after it in the last month alone. If you are a Democrat, you MUST support her so that she understands that you are reading her as well and that your hard-earned pennies are being handed over to ensure that she pays equal attention to your electoral needs.

I say go right ahead then: write the checks and include a note stating that at least part of the donation is to be targeted to the one who poured the concrete onto the Althouse foundation.

P.S. “Ocean” remains free. Donations honoring its content can be made to any number of worthy places. Just as an example, lately I have become fascinated with the Save the Goat Campaign. I’m full of ideas.

What are you, a New Yorker? A Virginian? What?

Last night, during a congenial after-dinner chat, I reiterated my idea (from an earlier post here) that perhaps the way you choose the place with which you identify is by looking to where you had your first serious crush. Mine, having been a wallop of a crush, was definitely in Warsaw and so even though I lived an equally large number of years in NY, I still consider myself more of a Varsovian and not really a New Yorker. Several points were made in response to this and I am posting them here because they offer us a chance to look critically at our younger years:

* Most report having strong crushes at very young ages and they view this as a poor marker of identification with a community. It was suggested that the better phrase may be “had a serious crush and could act upon it in a significant way.” But what does that mean? Kissing? Hair-pulling? Hand-holding? Or are we talking about an out and out act of physical errrr… embrace?

* One person said that even though he moved early on from NY to Virginia, his parents were such New Yorkers to the core (hey, New Yorkers always see themselves as “to the core”) that it was without a doubt a family identity that got passed on to the kids.

* Another said that if you lived your entire childhood years in one community then EVERYONE who came in later (moved there and joined the school in fourth grade, for example) was an outsider. They may CALL themselves a Yonkers dude, but they WEREN’T perceived as such by TRUE Yonkers-types.

* To which someone added that they are ashamed of themselves for the treatment they bestowed on true outsiders. This person, whom I would regard as pretty high on the kindness continuum, admitted to circulating a petition to “get [newcomers] X & Y out of the school NOW!” She reports being relieved to note during a recent high school reunion that this did not appear to leave any permanent scars on either X nor Y who, it seems, are among the more successful of the lot [yeah, sure, after years of therapy…].

* And then everyone tripped over each other in their recollections of real "formative years" behaviors: the unintentional (and admissions were made of intentional as well) hurts bestowed upon other classmates, all arising out of bending to “peer pressure.” It was said that if you cannot recall a single incident of (not necessarily deliberate) unkindness perpetrated by you during your school years then you are not being honest with yourself.

So am I a Varsovian because it is there that I offered no protest or defense of poor Fela during the birthday party prank of looking for bugs to put in her hair? Is the true place of affinity that, where you made a menace of yourself? Somehow I like my “fell in love with someone” dimension better.