Tag Archives: Journalism

CATCHING UP: A NUMBERS GAME

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Posted by in Transitions

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My first blog post in a gabillion years

Dear Readers and Friends,

Remember me? You’d be forgiven if you don’t—it’s been a while. But much has happened in my life since we last met, and with your permission I’d like to catch you up with a quick by-the-numbers review.

Since my last post of December 24, 2014…

Number of months passed:

Fifty-five.

Number of freelance articles published in print:

Somewhere between fifteen and twenty. I’ve been writing articles for my hometown newspaper, The Chronicle-Telegram of Elyria, Ohio. More on that in a moment.

Number of wedding anniversaries celebrated with the Midlife Second Husband:

Four with one more coming up next month. (August 14, if you’d like to send a card.)

Number of grandchildren born:

Three. My son and his wife presented us with a beautiful grandson in 2015. A lovely granddaughter arrived two years later. And last October, my stepson and his wife had their first child, an adorable boy who looks just like my husband did as a baby.

Number of surgeries:

Two. One challenging and whopping big one and one slightly more pedestrian. I’ll spare you the details on the former (although I will tell you that thoracic surgery is not for the faint of heart). The latter was arthroscopic surgery of the knee. Those you at midlife or beyond can relate, I’m sure.

Number of moves:

One. We downsized from our large 1928 French Norman Revival in a westside, lakeside suburb of Cleveland and returned to Lorain County, where I was born and raised. We bought a sweet home in Avon that’s all on one level and has a gorgeous backyard. See?

Number of trips taken:

Two. We traveled to Sanibel Island in 2016 and in 2018 we drove to South Carolina, visiting Charleston and Kiawah Island.

Number of hurricanes experienced and evacuations survived as a result:

One. We were booted off the island in South Carolina by Hurricane Florence and had to make our way north. We made the best of it and visited friends in our old neighborhood in Richmond, Virginia.

Number of writing awards won:

Two. In 2018 and in 2019, I was honored with third and second place, respectively, in the “Best in Ohio Freelance Writer” category under the auspices of the All Ohio Excellence in Journalism awards, which are administered by the Press Club of Cleveland.

Number of fractures:

Zero. Hooray and knock on wood.

Now there is one more number I should share with you, and it’s pretty significant.

Number of books written:

One. One book, friends, picked up by a bona fide publisher. It’s not the book I originally set out to write, but it seems as though it’s the book I needed to write. Looking Back at Elyria: A Midwest City at Midcentury, is forthcoming from The History Press, an imprint of Arcadia Publishing, this November.

Looking Back combines elements of journalism, historical research, and memoir, and I think it captures a time when a typical American city was poised on the bridge between innocence and experience. Based on many of the articles that I’ve written for The Chronicle-Telegram, including an ongoing feature series called “Look Back, Elyria,” the book is a love letter to my hometown.

Which brings me to why I’m writing you now, after all this time.

I expect that this blog, as found on this WordPress site, will be going away in the months to come. I am at work archiving my favorite posts on my new site, www.marcirich.com.

If you would like to stay connected with me, please click on the link to that site and send me a note via the Contact tab at the top navigation bar. If you send me your current email address, I will add you to the distribution list for updates concerning my book and other writing news and pursuits. I have two other books in the works, actually. And who knows? Maybe someone will want to publish a book called The Midlife Second Wife. This way you’ll get in on the ground floor.

Thank you for being along for the ride from the beginning, way back in 2011 when I started this blog in Richmond, Virginia, and through all points in between. It’s been an amazing ride. But then life usually is, isn’t it?

Don’t forget: www.marcirich.com. Send me a note with your email address, and you won’t miss a thing.

Love,
Marci

BlogHer ’12: What I Saw at the Revolution

06 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by in Special Events, The Writing Life, What's the Buzz?

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The BlogHer logo on the floor of the Hilton in New York City, site of the BlogHer conference.

—UPDATED Aug. 15, 2012 to include links to video coverage of President Obama’s address and interviews with Martha Stewart and Katie Couric.

After six hours spent rumbling along the Amtrak rails and three days of total, intense, and heightened immersion in all things related to blogging and social media (Emphasis on social. Emphasis on media.), I’m back home in Richmond, Virginia. I’ve just attended my first BlogHer conference, and I’d like to share with you glimpses from what can only be called a revolution.

Since this was my first conference, I have no precedents with which to compare. But an informal poll, taken over brunch with a fellow blogger and friend (Hi Nancy at Dating Dementia!) suggests that this conference in New York City, held August 2-4, 2012, was unlike any of its antecedents.

Using their credit cards, three journalists and media experts—Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort Page, and Jory Des Jardins—launched BlogHer in 2005. These women—bright, motivated, and prescient—were early adopters of social media. They recognized that blogging was not a momentary dot-com fad, but something profound and paradigm-changing. And they wondered where all the women bloggers were.

Boy, did they find them. (And a few men, too. BlogHer is nothing if not inclusive.) More than 5,000 bloggers attended BlogHer ’12.

At the closing keynote address of this eighth and most successful conference, Stone and Camahort Page reported that over the last three years, BlogHer paid out $17 million to writers. This is just one benchmark achievement—there are others—indicating that BlogHer is fulfilling its mission: to create opportunities for women in social media to pursue exposure, education, community, and economic empowerment.

A wonderful essay by Darryle Pollack in the Huffington Post explains how BlogHer got to be such a player. Here’s one of her insights:

In a world where the Kardashians are the gold standard of success, for me, BlogHer represents a kernel of reality, a source of inspiration and an island of sanity where people are appreciated not for what they look like or what they have, but for who they are. Sometimes that feels like a rare thing.

As Darryle notes in her essay, Martha Stewart and Katie Couric understand this, too. Both media icons attended our conference, engaging in lively and informative keynote conversations; Camahort Page interviewed Martha Stewart, and Stone spoke with Katie Couric.

You can experience some of the revolution yourself by visiting BlogHer’s Virtual Conference site. Here’s a glimpse from my perspective:

  • A live video address by President Barack Obama, acknowledging the importance of all women in our society. (BlogHer extended an invitation to Governor Mitt Romney, but he declined, although a member of his campaign staff participated in one of the sessions, as did an Obama staffer.)
  • The aforementioned keynote conversations featuring Martha Stewart and Katie Couric.(If you click on their names you’ll see videos of their interviews.)
  • An extraordinary display of talent as 15 bloggers read their winning posts at the Voice of the Year Keynote awards. There was hilarity from the humor category, heartbreak from the heart category, and keen insights from the op-ed, parenting, and identity categories. (Full disclosure: BlogHer honored 110 bloggers as winners of the VOTY awards. I’m proud to be one of them.)
  • Women from across the globe, making their voices heard in their own countries, were drawn to attend BlogHer. I met Ludmilla Rossi of Brazil, creative director of MKT Virtual Interactive Marketing. She came to discover ideas and find ways to encourage and inspire older women from her country, underrepresented in the blogging community, to share their voices.
  • Information. Information. Information.
  • New skills and tools.
  • New friends and contacts.
  • The BlogHer hashtag, #blogher12, trending on Twitter.

  • And finally, most importantly, inspiration and a tremendous sense of pride. It’s an honor to be associated with such a dynamic, influential, and game-changing organization.

To everyone who worked so tirelessly to make this conference happen—and to Lisa, Elisa, and Jory—thank you for the revolution.

Where in the World is the Midlife Second Wife?

21 Saturday Apr 2012

Posted by in The Writing Life, Transitions

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MorgueFile Photo (Credit: Reto Stöckli, NASA Earth Observatory --NASA Goddard Space Flight Center)

What do bloggers do when they’re not blogging? Do they travel to Antarctica, where Internet connections are spotty? (I’m assuming this is the case. I’ve never been to Antarctica.) Do they assume new identities and start life anew with a clean blackboard slate in the analog world? Do they suffer from blog withdrawal?

In my case, the last statement is true. But there’s a good reason I haven’t been posting.

I’ve been on assignment for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. As a special correspondent for the paper (which is a nice way of saying that I’m a freelancer and therefore not on staff drawing a reliable salary), I’m working on a high-profile feature article. It’s kept me pretty busy, what with research, preparation, and an hour-long interview with my subject last Saturday. I’m now keeping my head down and my fingers on the keyboard, writing and writing. And writing. I expect the article to come out sometime in May, and I’ll post a link on the blog once it’s been published.

In the meantime, I see we’ve now surpassed 18,000 visitors to the Midlife Second Wife. Thanks for reading, y’all!

Finally, a word about something different you might have noticed about the site. There are a couple of banner ads now appearing on the Midlife Second Wife, and here’s why: My blog is part of an exclusive group approved by WordPress to help beta test their new WordAds program. I hope you don’t find the ads too distracting. In fact, I hope you’ll click on them, because if I understand the idea behind AdChoices correctly, this allows you to have a say in the kind of ads you want to see on the web through interest-based advertising.

In the interest of full disclosure (and revealing my self-interest), I earn a little something each time a visitor clicks on an ad on my site. It might not fund a trip to Antarctica, but it could go a long way to helping me fund this blog. And pay the Internet bill.

I’ll be back soon with new articles, new recipes, and—as promised—a link to my article when it comes out. In the meantime, enjoy beautiful weather, wherever you are.

Love,
The Midlife Second Wife

Of Journalism and Cherry Blossoms

24 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by in Indulgences, The Cultured Life, The Writing Life

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A flowering cherry tree, with the Washington Monument in the background.

Our move to Virginia in 2010 situated us less than two hours from Washington, DC. John and I could visit the city one day each month for the rest of our lives (we plan to live until we’re 100 or so) and still never experience all there is to see in this fascinating metropolis. I have been to Washington exactly four times, including yesterday, and—for the first time in my life—I saw the cherry blossoms in bloom.

We spent the day in the Newseum—an extraordinary pilgrimage that I highly recommend, especially if you find the history of print, broadcast, and digital journalism as fascinating as John and I do. As we walked through the exhibits, I thought that although mine is a small life, and my contributions to the published word have been modest, I’m proud of being a writer.

When I began night school back in the 1970s, right after Watergate, I declared journalism as my initial major—All the President’s Men, the book and the film, were influential factors in my decision. I felt a kinship with so much of what I saw yesterday: actual sections of the Berlin Wall; a recreation of Tim Russert’s NBC bureau office;  the 9/11 Gallery, with front pages from around the world chronicling the day’s tragic events; a sobering memorial to journalists who lost their lives in the line of duty. Journalists play such a crucial role in our society—it’s said that they write the first page of history—and sadly, quite often, they place their own lives in peril to do so.

After we left the Newseum, we took the Metro back to Union Station, where we’d parked our car. Before heading home on the highway, we detoured toward the Tidal Basin, which is where you can see the magnificent cherry trees—gifts from Japan to the United States in the early 20th century. An American journalist had a hand in that, too—Eliza Scidmore, who was the first female board member of the National Geographic Society.

The National Cherry Blossom Festival is going on now through April 27. If you find yourself in our nation’s capital, I hope you’ll have a chance to appreciate at least one beautiful bloom. And a chance to visit the Newseum, too.