The Family Reality Blog

Atlanta poet, Tania Rochelle, runs a family blog. At first glance, it's clearly Tania's wickedly clever, jaundiced eye on her own life -- an interactive journal she keeps on-the-run as a mother, wife, daughter, writer, provider, observer, grocery shopper, teacher, supporter, recovered something, thinker, pet-lover, runner, worrier, you-name-it.

Then you come to realize that seemingly ALL of her numerous family members are joining in the blog reindeer games with their often contradictory and hilarious comments on every post she takes. Everyone from a grandmother, Mamoo, to a teenager daughter's latest boyfriend. You'll get to know them all if you're a regular to The Stone's Colossal Dream. Seemingly everyone she's responsible for, or who's responsible for her, or whom she knows intimately chimes in daily with their personal POV about Tania's World -- and exactly how they fit into the acknowledged zoo of it all.

Coming from a family that takes interest in, let alone something as ghastly as personal involvement in, one another's lives to disconnected heights of avoidance and contact akin to contagion units at the CDC, I marvel at Tania's blog's participatory, familial nature via new media.

With frequent visits, it's easy to find yourself feeling that you're a part of Tania's wacky suburban mayhem, where reflection and chatter and banter and argument and the spiritual and the mundane and seriousness and loopy camping trip behavior all reign and vie for more more more attention throughout any given day.

Tania's passed on her participatory, literate and literary tendencies to her oldest daughter, Sadie, who's now blogging from Costa Rica, where she's happily exploring the landscape, the populace, and herself.

Enjoy! It'll make you feel good, trust me.

Thinking Blogger Award

One of my absolute fave bloggers, Tania Rochelle, just tagged me with a Thinking Blogger Award! What Internets tomfoolery will they come up with next? How about Republicans for Hillary? I kid you not.

Thanks Tania. Coming from a real writer/poet like you, I am quite touched. Now I have to tag 5 other bloggers with my own Thinking Blogger Award. Send me your nominations. But they have to all be metro Atlanta, okay? I take care of my homies first.

Blogosphere's Strange Fruit

This is kinda strange and unexpectedly bizarre... to read Tania's account of how the piece of Emory grad school trash that broke-up her first marriage contacted her out of the blue, via her blog. Unbelievable.

Tania used to send me poems she wrote about the death spiral of that marriage for my now-defunct website, in the dot bomb days, WaySouth.com. (I miss that zine. It was so pretty; before websites were pretty.) You've never read anything so raw and seething and just plain soaked in pain and memory with odd spikes of hope as some of those poems. They're available in her book. I hope she won't mind me re-printing one here.


Why I Still Cry at Weddings
Tania Rochelle

I'd like to tell you it's because
I sense the priest is a pedophile,
or know the pianist beats
his wife because she stutters.
I want to say the church is too hot,
that the depiction of an angel
holding John the Baptist's head
like she's about to drop-kick it
scares me; that I'm whoozy
from the godawful heat
and the blood oozing from the lamb
in stained glass. I'd mention
bad dresses snatched from the backs
of closets, safe mauves, and pantyhose.
I could claim memories
of my own failed marriage, like tiny
glass shards in my fingertips, still hurt
when I press down, though I only
glimpse them in a certain light;
claim I've forgotten what it was like
to look at him the way
this bride is looking at this groom,
the way her father looks at her
mother, swept into the vortex
that is past and future all at once,
a shuffle of snapshots—first grade,
the goofy kid at the birthday party,
prom. But it's because her gown
says This is the ball,
and midnight is a long way off;
and because I'm in love again,
which is akin to believing
in my own immortality:
so much hope in one room.

While Rome Burns...

At least someone's had a good time. Tania & entire family went to Costa Rica. Scroll on down there at the SCD for a quick fun photo break from our ATL-based misery.

Poetry of Mayretta, Jawja. And Of Our Lives.

Forget juvenile blog rankings (I'm a C, but trust me, that's gonna change) and dipshit celebrity babble-crap. Tania Rochelle, terrific blogger mom and longtime dazzling poet from here in the metro Atlanta area, makes the United States' poet laureate's newspaper project this week.

Yes, Tania's that good. You go girl. You've earned it.

Blog Yourself A Better Life

Well, that's pushing it I admit. But a richer, more honest life maybe. Tania, again, blows me away, and makes me think and cry and laugh and leave way-honest comments and reach for more. From The Stone's Colossal Dream:

Finally--and I realize I've merely touched and not delved here--as the world gets smaller though technology, the Internet and television show us a lot of pain. We don't have the luxury of ignorance anymore. It keeps us more honest. It should compel us to at least some small action. (Voting maybe.) That's not a bad thing. But I see joy and youthful exuberance everywhere. I see imaginative people letting their hair down, accessing their inner child, acknowledging the wonder of this beautiful, flawed world.

Mind yourselves. Ask questions. Do what's right. Do what's fun. Take your small comfort from the past but revel in progress. Be a part of it.

Don't be so afraid.

Yeah. Tania's blog here.

Around The Bend

ADD ON: Rusty and Amber, co-creators of the Georgia Podcast Network, just won a Creative Loafing "Best of Atlanta" award. A million congratulations to you guys!! Air kisses all around. And lots of bubbly too, when we can share. (Can you sneak me in to the "Best Of" party?) Just goes to show that innovation, creativity, hard-ass work, long hours and self-belief/preservation always win out.

This is the entry where I'd apologize for yesterday's outburst over Amanda Congdon's un-inspired sellout. But since I'm not the least bit sorry, I'll move on.

In a sec... it's just that I had such high hopes for Ms. Amanda. She had this Mary Tyler Moore, kinda zany, kinda wacky, kinda cute and sweet, and always very bright and smart quality. Still does. But even a pro like Jeff Jarvis couldn't help being taken aback when he saw that hybrid car she was "tripping" about in. The camera told all.

Meanwhile, back at Rancho ATL, the state fair's going on, so I gotta go just to get Sas one of these, with a unicorn of course. See below.

Lordy, I'd say I'm pre-menopausal as I've been emotionally so all over the place this morning. But since I've got the Hemi version of a reproductive system, that's not the case. Must be just pure, natural moodiness. I've gone from laughing my ass off at Tania's and Jen's multi-media antics to crying, again, over one of TR's poems. She's just that good. I'm such a girl. Thank God.

This entry put together by Lee Ann Womack's: There's More Where That Came From.
When You Get To Me