Blogging: is the ride over for me?

Yes, these have been heady times, these past 8 months, but I'm just not feeling the blogging bug that much anymore. To be more precise, I'm not feeling the "great ideas" bug anymore. I think partly it has to do with a story I saw in the New York Times about a few blogs about stupid ideas. Needless to say, I wasn't in the article -- and that's not the point. It's just that the idea itself feels a little tired, and now that I'm actually thinking of trying to do something, superfluous.

Having said that, I thought I'd look around at some of these so-called invention blogs. The first one I found was, appropriately, NOT about inventions, but about women in small business. From there I clicked on something reminding me that March is national women's history month. Who knew?? Certainly not me, even though I just put "historian" as my profession in a recent political campaign form thingy I just filled out. (I gave to Kerry, okay? Leave me alone -- I'm depressed enough as it is. You can give to Kucinich if you want.) Wow. Those are some pretty crappy graphics they've got going over at the National Women's History Project. The only thing that's less than sickening is the women's equality day poster, which is in celebration of August 26th, the day women got the vote back in 1920. I'm a little tempted by the "March is Women's History Month" balloon 12 pack. My mom can make some pretty good balloon animals, and she'd probably appreciate the sentiment on these.

So back to the invention blogs. Actually, I'm getting bored with this search already, having realized that I'm mostly just going to find a bunch of random blogs that somehow have the word invention in it.

Hey, so, changing the subject, you know what's really depressing? My doctor, who is the first doctor I've ever felt less-than-patronized by, and who actually seems genuinely cool and all that (I've only seen her twice, but she impressed me) just told me she's getting LAID OFF! Can you believe that? In our lousy neighborhood, God knows there's plenty of people who need health care, but the stinking health care system won't let them get it -- they weren't getting enough people in the door at her clinic. Jobs with Justice just had an action day here about that -- today, as it happens. I thought it was tomorrow and planned on going -- that's what I get for not putting these things on my actual calendar. Anyway, I had a nice talk with my doctor about the lousy insurance system and she told me she's a member of some group of physicians for a single payer system ... turns out there are a couple of doctor's groups behind universal health care. Who knew? It was interesting getting a physician's perspective on the whole deal -- I mean, I'm sure she's for it because she believes that people deserve good health care, but it never occurred to me that some doctors could get screwed by this system, as well. This is the second time she's been laid off because the clinic she worked for had money issues. I'm betting that general practitioners practicing in working class neighborhoods like ours experience a lot more job insecurity than I thought.

Oh hey everyone -- speaking of cool health care providers, don't forget! March 10th, is National "love your Abortionist Provider" day of appreciation!!! this deserves linking again. Damn!! I haven't organized a thing and I don't see anything on the KBOO calendar -- I wonder if anything's happening in Portland?? What should we do to celebrate? Maybe I'll write a letter to the local paper. They probably won't print it, but who cares. What else could I do? I don't really know enough people here in Portland to get anything done. But I do know people who know things ...