Susan, Mary, Jane

Wow; a week has gone by already since I spent a long Saturday, from 8 am to 11pm, at the 2008 National Conference for Media Reform. Bill Moyers’ keynote address and subsequent ambush by one of Bill O’Reilly’s producer-cum-attack dogs got a lot of attention. Especially satisfying was seeing Moyers’ complete and unequivocal rout of the pathetic little git.

The Mississippifarian has already shared the story of my brief encounter with Duncan Black (ZOMG! Atrios!!1!) that afternoon, but really –

despite what you may be thinking, especially those of you who were also at Yearly Kos last year and may remember how I spent all my time going Oooh there’s Digby! Oooh there’s Mahabarb! Ooh there’s Sara Robinson! Ooh there’s Lindsay Beyerstein! Oooh there’s Miss Lauren!…etc etc ad infinitum

– when I go to events like the NCMR I really don’t spend ALL my time being Fangirl, breathlessly agog over every A-list blogger I happen to see. Really. I don’t. It’s equally exciting for me to see local friends and acquaintances, so many of whom have substantial bona fides in the blogosphere and other media.

Let’s see, there was (MnIndy, Power Liberal, my fellow WOMBster, and Violet Jane’s mom) Robin Marty; Chris Dykstra, Jason Barnett and Chuck Olsen of The UpTake; the fabulous John Forde of Mental Engineering; plus a bunch of others that your kindly but doddering old Auntie Tild can’t remember now.

Better than all of that, tho, the absolute best part of the conference for me was meeting some great, not your typical celebrity type people for the first time. 

Susan Morris, host and producer of What Would Your Mother Say? on KZSU 90.1 FM at Stanford University.
Susan and I stood next to each other in the line for Bill Moyers’ book signing. Since it was a line that went half way round the perimeter of the exhibit hall and out into the lobby, and since we were near the tail end of that line, we had over an hour to talk about our children, share mom stories (both about our own mothers and about being moms) and the differences of experience that come from being (like Susan) a mother of daughters, and (like me) a mother of sons.  As we finally  neared  Bill Moyers’ table (where at this point he’d been signing books for nearly two hours) she asked if I would consider recording a brief motherhood-related story or anecdote and sending it to her for one of the show’s regular segments.   Heck yeah.  Stories?  Like moms everywhere,  I got a million of ‘em.        

Mary C. Johns of We The People Media in Chicago.  Later in the day I was at the same lunch table with Mary, who represents We The People Media, a Chicago organization which provides journalism courses and training to low-income people, as well as maintaining a television news program (currently being  squeezed by big media) and a community newspaper, both online and print editions.  
Once again we ended up talking for more than an hour, but not about media reform; mainly about our shared experiences in managing chronic pain and chronic fatigue, and how difficult it can be especially when you choose to do it without  pharmaceuticals and other perception-altering substances.   We agreed that yoga, walking,  and meditation/prayer seems to be the winning trifecta,  along with remembering such pearls of wisdom as:

When you’re exhausted, don’t eat.  Food won’t give you renewed energy and alertness.   When you’re exhausted, sleep!  Got that?  Sleep, not food, dammit! 

Jane Xiu-Hong Jin of  Federation for a Democratic China came in from Seattle for the conference, and to keep travel expenses low was staying at a youth hostel in south Mpls with 5 other conference goers.  We met later in the afternoon when we were lucky enough to be the only inhabitants of Blogger Row (re-christened Netroots Row, which didn’t seem to clarify the concept.  People kept mistaking us for the check-in site for radio/video/podcast interviews,  probably because all the interviews were taking place on a stage directly behind us. 

Jane, or Jin (she used the names interchangeably) had just heard the news about the death of Ruby Chow,  Seattle’s legendary political and cultural activist and restaurateur.    For Jin, a survivor of the 1989 Tienanmen Square massacre, Ruby Chow was like a second mother,  a constant source of inspiration, a tireless supporter of Seattle area  Asian immigrants and restaurant service workers.    Jin burst into tears while telling me about the wise advice she got and the happy times she spent with the people she called Auntie Ruby and Uncle Ping.   For her  this was an intensely personal loss,  so much more than the passing of a longtime community leader.   

Amazing, isn’t it, how it sometimes happens (as it did with all three of these encounters) that strangers can meet,  talk, and after only an hour part company with hugs and exchanges of addresses and promises to keep in touch.   I felt so lucky and honored to have met and spent time with each of these women last Saturday.   Meeting them was far and away the best part of Fangirl Tild’s day.