Savvy Women

For a person to blog well, she needs, of course, to have some writing skills. That’s fairly obvious. She also needs to be observant and receptive. She needs to have her eyes and ears and mind open and be ready to receive once THE IDEA presents itself.

I was reminded of these things this week as I readied myself to write the blog you’re about to read. Let me explain…

Several days ago, on the evening of December twenty-first to be more precise, I attended a “Winter Solstice” party that was organized by John, a colleague at AUC. The social gathering was to be held outside, in a large garden area behind a building that is owned by the university. Before joining the group in the backyard, I needed to drop my backpack off at John’s place, so I climbed two flights of stairs and then saw, much to my delight, that his young son had decorated the door leading into the flat with several paper snowflakes, the sort we’ve all made with a pair of scissors and folded paper. Standing there and looking at all those wonderful creations, the thought suddenly hit me: I could write this week’s blog about snowflakes!

A couple of days later, I discovered SnowCrystals.com, a site put together by Professor Kenneth Libbrecht who does research for the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology. As you’ll see below, a part of what he does at CIT involves the use of all sorts of high-tech gizmos to take pictures of individual snowflakes. He allows embedding of these images, so I’ve given you a sample of what’s available at his site.

                

Not to be outdone by Mother Nature, Les Barker makes an adult version of what I saw on John’s door the other evening. A thumbnail gallery of some of his work can be found here. Happy viewing!

Troy Headrick
The American University in Cairo
Maadi, Cairo, Egypt
contact@savvy-women-magazine.com

I want to use a lot of video in my blogs. When I’m reading blogs myself (and that’s pretty often), I really enjoy those that are multimedia. That may at least partly be true because I don’t have a TV at home (and haven’t owned one of the contraptions now for about seven years) which means that viewing such vids, on ye ole world wide web, is like my one and only television substitute.

With all that in mind, I want to share my favorite video site with you. It’s called Fora.TV. One of the things I really like about this particular webpage–other than the fabulous videos available there–is the voiceover that says (in a wonderful British accent) “Fora.TV, the world is thinking” whenever a person clicks the play button of any of its offerings.

If asked to provide a pithy description of Fora.TV, I’d call it “YouTube with a brain.” Have a look and you’ll see what I mean.

(By the way, the site has tons of high-quality videos about love and sex and politics and men and war and peace and food and children and women and you name it.)

While I was preparing this piece, I ran across a short, 28-minute talk by Lisa Lillien, bestselling author, founder of the wildly popular Hungry-girl.com site, and self-described “food obsessed” individual. The video is mostly a Q/A session at one of Lillien’s recent book signings in the lovely and talented Denver, Colorado. To be completely honest with you, I’d never heard of Lillien before viewing this, but I found her to be interesting and funny. In fact, bits and pieces of her brief, preliminary talk feel just like stand-up comedy.

I’d also recommend this video as well from the Fora.TV site. It’s a talk by two writers who’ve recently published a book that’s premised on the argument that men are exactly like chimpanzees.

OK, raise your hands if you’re surprised by such a claim.

By my count, not many hands went up.

Troy Headrick
The American University in Cairo
Maadi, Cairo, Egypt
contact@savvy-women-magazine.com

Hi, my name is Troy Headrick. I’m the new blogger at Savvy Women’s Magazine. By the way, have you noticed yet? I’m not a woman.

That’s right, I’m XY and not XX. (I’m talking chromosomes here.) I raise this point about my chromosomes, about my “maleness,” because I’m blogging for a women’s magazine. As one who has written for magazines whose primary audience is women, I’m very aware (sometimes painfully aware) that the vast majority of those who write for such publications are women. That’s right. It’s almost always women writing for and about other women in women’s magazines. If you think I’m overstating the case, I challenge you to go online and look at such publications. Look at who’s writing the articles. It’s almost always XX.

That might be a good thing? What do men know about women, anyway, right?

Or that might be a bad thing? I’m just wondering, at what point does women only reading the thoughts of other women become something akin to groupthink?

Here’s an idea. Perhaps women’s magazines should include a category of articles called “What Men Think about Women” and then have only men write those? What do you think? It sounds like a fabulous idea to me. (I wonder if I can patent it???)

The more I think about this, though, the more confused I become. Perhaps men have no right to write about women? Or maybe women don’t want to hear from non-women in their magazines? Perhaps women hear enough of men’s voices when they listen to their grandfathers, fathers, husbands, boyfriends, brothers, sons, uncles, and nephews? Maybe women are up to here (I’m indicating my chin) hearing men pontificate?

I’ll wrap this first one up by telling you a little bit about me (in case you’re interested). I’m 47 years old. I’m a writer. I’m an artist. I’m a world traveler. I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the mid-90s. I am an academician. I teach writing classes at the American University in Cairo. I love women (enough to have married two of them, but not at the same time!). I have lived in the Middle East for ten years. I’m originally from Texas. I have taught “women’s studies” classes in the past. I currently teach a composition class that has “gender” as its main theme. I have also taught classes on happiness and creativity and heroes and philosophy.

My goal is to make this a fun and interactive and thought-provoking blog about women, women’s lives, women’s loves and hates, women’s concerns, women’s issues, etc. Sometimes, though, I might write about these subjects from a decidedly male point of view. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, though.

Anyway, I hope you’ll participate. (Note: Post something in the “comments” section or send me an email!)

More in about a week…