Young Joseph Rago versus the blogosphere.
Nice gentle smackdown.
Jenny Hatch

“I PROPOSE A NAME for the intellectual cyberspace we bloggers occupy: the Blogosphere. Simple enough; the root word is logos, from the Greek meaning, variously: In pre-Socratic philosophy, the principle governing the cosmos, the source of this principle, or human reasoning about the cosmos; Among the Sophists, the topics of rational argument or the arguments themselves.”

William Quick
Thanks Bill!
Jenny Hatch
Mommy Blogger

I just read this post on Pajamas Media…
“Roger Simon details the saga of the Edelman PR firm, which has admitted to creating “flogs”—fake weblogs, that is—to promote companies like Walmart.”
After reading a couple of the links, articles, and comments from that post I thought it might be good to explain why I plug Wal Mart every chance I get here on my own blog.
First and foremost, I am trying to send a message to the PC police in our society that I will not be bullied into shopping or not shopping at a certain store based on “Progressive” values.
Funny Story:
I use a cleaning lady every once in a while when my asthma is acting up. She is a Boulderite, really nice gal, but after being here to help with dusting a time or two it came out when I was watching Fox News one day to check on things in Iraq, (my brother was serving in Iraq that year and I watched the news constantly to hear what was up), that I was a rabid conservative and she was a liberal, or Progressive, as she refers to herself. She has all the talking points memorized for her various arguments and we have had some fun debates and conversations.
I flat out told her that if she was in my house and I was paying her money that she was absolutely not allowed to bash President Bush in my home, but that I supported her right to bash him all she wanted out of my house.
She has been pretty good about that, but one day it was so cute when she confessed to me, all guilty and sheepish, that she shopped at Wal Mart every once in a while. I just about lost it laughing when she made her Confession. I promised that I was not going to judge her for her choice of shopping location, and that I shopped at Wal Mart at least once a week and sometimes twice a week. She looked me in the eye, and then said “all that stuff is just so dang cheap!”.
I agree.
If I had the cash, I would shop for all of our families groceries at Vitamin Cottage and purchase everything Organic. Or I would go to Boulder to shop at Whole Foods, or Wild Oats, or even our local Grocery store, King Soopers, where most organic foods can be purchased for reasonable prices.
But we have a large family, and depending on the week, even with me cooking a huge portion of our daily fare from scratch, I still go to wal mart once a week to purchase the foods to make my kids lunches, and to get certain types of cheeses, and I love their salsa. I buy bread products like tortillas, corn chips, and hoagie buns. Or I go to Sam’s Club to bulk purchase toilet paper, or ziploc bags, or garbage bags, or olive oil, or honey, or peanut butter.
Fact is, feeding a family is expensive. And Wal Mart saves us a boatload of cash.
I can go fill up a cart with groceries, get a coloring book for Ben, a pair of jeans for Andy and some socks for Shelly and come out of the store having laid out only $200 bucks.
It makes my husband happy every time I come home from shopping and show him the Wal Mart receipts, instead of showing up with three or four bags from the health food store, and trying to hide the receipt because I just spent another three hundred dollars and did not have much to show for it.
It is a balancing act, trying to budget, purchase what I feel is the best food for my family, yet not go overboard with the organic thing.
Sometimes I just can’t afford to purchase everything organic, and it is sometimes difficult to find the cash to even get the extras that make our food storage of beans and grains more fun to eat.
Wal Mart has never paid me a dime for the mentions on my Blog. I don’t accept advertisers right now, and I won’t be bullied into shopping at some PC store like Target because of someone else’s values. (I do shop at Target occasionally if it is where I want to shop – not knocking them) but I won’t be shamed into shopping at any store.
Full and true confessions, I get a peverse delight doing anything that liberals abhore, which is why I can’t wait to purchase our first SUV and use it to drive to Wal Mart, stopping for fries at MacDonalds and dressing my kids in their Nike Shoes.
I believe in Free Market Capitalism.
I say let the market rule.
If Wal Mart has been guilty of bad choices regarding blogosphere useage, they will learn…fast.
The internet has a way of quickly sifting out the fakers….
And if at any time I change my values regarding internet advertising on my Blog, my readers will be the first to know.
And, I will NEVER let an advertiser tell me what I can and cannot say on my blog.
Let Freedom RING!
Jenny Hatch

I continue to get emails from people who would like to “edit” me. One lady said she would be very embarrassed to be me because if she wrote as badly as I do, she would not dream of putting her work on the internet, as it would just be so presumptuous. Another dissed me as being incongruent in my personal life and promoting freedom for others, when I behave as a dictator in family life. I’m not quite sure what she meant, but all I could gather is that my writing made her angry.
Some emails are from good friends just sending along a friendly FYI – hey did you know you mispelled this word? Or, what do you know, you got this link wrong….or perhaps you missed this, and would prefer to say it another way?
I don’t really mind those types of emails, I know these people love me and just want me to put my best foot forward.
Others send along more snarky toned emails letting me know that I used bad grammer, or hacked up an idea with bad wording etc…
What I would like to explain and have understood by you my readers are the conditions under which I write. Not to excuse myself for a lack of excellence in writing. More to let you know that I am doing my best, and for now, that has to be enough.
I generally write under the most intense of conditions. Children running through my home, dog barking, phone ringing. Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines…no, not for blogging, but to keep my life working well. Have to get Shelly to work by noon, pick up Allison by four, and Jeff to the chiropractor at five. Supper on the table at 5:30 so the kids can be out the door by 6:00.
Get to bed early, so I can wake up early…but never seem to fall asleep before eleven because somebody in the house needs me. I go all day long….laundry, dishes, cooking, shopping, disciplining, teaching, encouraging, and helping.
I know other writers are able to do all this and more and still take the time to do a grammatical check or spell check. I don’t. I figure if I spell it natural or naturale, you still get the meaning of what I am trying to say.
I am not a writer. I don’t have an editor, proofreader, assistant, or secretary. I don’t get a check every two weeks, and I don’t have any advertisers on my sites. Over the years I have enjoyed writing letters to the editor on a variety of topics, and I wrote my books because I had something to say, and now I blog because I like to share the good things in my life, hopefully to help someone have an easier time as a mother, but also because I love to share what I have learned from 18 years of mothering.

As I said, I am not a writer, I am simply a mother who happens to write. So, as I make excuses for my style of writing which tends to be somewhat stream of conciousness and not very well put together, just know….the dog is barking, Ben is asking for a peanut butter sandwich, a friend just called inviting me to go to the park, Jeff is teasing somebody, the girls are arguing with me about chores, and Andy just ate the last cookie (piece of bread, apple, chip, cracker…that kid is always hungry) and everyone is mad at him.

Andy on the rocks at Table Mesa Trail in Boulder
This is my day to day life. I am a blogger, and I know my writing would never be copy for a major newspaper, but for now, this is what I have to offer.
Jenny Hatch

Jenny as a child with my mom