Sometimes it's hard to write a blogpost. This is one of those times. Longtime readers may recall a FB friend of mine, Kathy Shaidle. Kathy is one of the writers who helped start the blog revolution back in the wild west days of the mid and late 2000s, before Zuckerberg and Dorsey destroyed the free internet. Robert Stacy McCain has a pretty good and succinct writeup. From the beginning she'd been kind enough to reply to my emails. Once I started publishing, I bought some advertising on her blog. She plugged my books and even interviewed me a time or two. Kathy made blogosphere fun.
Time passed, as it does, and over time Kathy moved her online presence to FB, where we became friends and even chit-chatted on occasion. A lot of the way she sees and thinks about culture influences the way I see and think about culture.
Well Kathy has been battling ovarian cancer for over a year and she is losing. Soon she'll go into hospice. Kathy's husband, Arnie, is a blogger himself and hosting a fundraiser. I encourage those who can to give something as she and Arnie will need it now, and after. I did.
Thankfully I've been able to tell Kathy how much I've appreciated her help, inspiration and friendship over the last (more than a) decade. And I'm particularly grateful I got to tell her the one thing she once said, an off the cuff remark that helped gut me through one bizarre, mystifying and horrible spring, 'Kathy says anti-depressants work.'
And that's not such a downer, is it?
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