Published December 19, 2024 

A hard, frustrating, sad day got a little better when I saw the Morton Salt girl. I was not expecting to, so it soothed and comforted me.

How about some salty witch art? Or more traditional art?

I love them all.

Nothing lands quite like unexpectedly coming across the familiar look I associate with long ago.

Feeling salty. Sending love.

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The post I am not entirely sure why this is so comforting, but it is appeared first on CarlyJDubois.com.

Published December 18, 2024

Maybe I should look into product placement as a side hustle, huh?

On a whim, I put these Coca-Cola bottles in the window for overnight chilling. It’s just like being in Paris and putting a bottle of wine in the window to lower the temperature, except that I’m not in Paris and these aren’t wine bottles.

Otherwise, the same.

Product placement is a big deal. Nick Saban has always known this.

That’s all I’ve got today. It took every ounce of energy I had to go outside and take a picture of the bottles in the window.

Now I am resting, waiting for the call from the Coke people making me an offer for the advertisement. I know they need it.

If you appreciate what you find here and are feeling generous, you can check out the Tip Jar. Thank you for reading! Here’s a butterfly for you.

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The post How much is that soda in the window? appeared first on CarlyJDubois.com.

Published December 17, 2024

I might not be bringing sexy back, but when I couldn’t sleep last night I thought I might bring blogrolls back. It’s a way to freshen up my website with a throwback.

Remember blogrolls? I decided to add my version of one to the sidebar.

This video helped a lot.

In naming it, I really stuck with the throwback theme.

I wonder how many people will get the reference when they see it.

I’m not sure what I’ll do if I want to list more than six items, but I’ll worry about that later.

Now I think I’ll try again to sleep. You’d think I remember how, considering it’s almost all I’ve done since early November.

Sending love.

If you appreciate what you find here and are feeling generous, you can check out the Tip Jar. Thank you for reading! Here’s a butterfly for you.

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The post Coolest Thing I Learned Today: Making my own version of a blogroll appeared first on CarlyJDubois.com.

Published December 17, 2024

Lest you get the idea that I don’t know how to be a cranky old-timer about words and how they are used, I have a treat for you. You can decline the treat (but not if you keep reading).

What’s up with “declined comment”? I see this more and more all the time.

“A spokesman declined comment.”

Why not “declined to comment,” for Petra’s sake. Is that extra two-letter word so burdensome?

Declined comment? It’s not tea. It’s not dessert.

Don’t get me started on photo credits that say “courtesy” and not “courtesy of” before the photographer or contributor’s name.

Courtesy Bill Smith.

I decline to participate in such nonsense. I decline participate.

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The post When I read somewhere that ‘a spokesman declined comment,’ I think, ‘What? It’s not tea’ appeared first on CarlyJDubois.com.

Published December 16, 2024

My phone has counters. “Straight days of remote status” counts up from March 13, 2020, when the job I had scattered us to the four winds as the pandemic broke wide open. Its meaning goes beyond that, though. It’s how many days in a row I’ve mostly been alone in my tiny studio apartment: 1,737 days. I’m coming up on five years. Almost 75 percent of the time I’ve been openly transgender has been spent in virtual isolation. That’s because I’m vulnerable in more than one way. The world is less safe for me all the time.

I stopped drinking alcohol in September 2020 (1,548 days) because it was interfering with overall health related to my transition. TypoBot is a thing at work that flags a typo or an error we’ve missed and lets the whole company see on Slack. I’m proud of this streak (213 days), although it’s a tad skewed because I haven’t worked since Nov. 3.

Everybody is going through something. If it makes your life better to gleefully point out a typo you’re not paid to point out, please don’t object when I don’t join in. I’ve had enough of that world for a thousand lifetimes.

A version of this post appears on LinkedIn.

If you appreciate what you find here and are feeling generous, you can check out the Tip Jar. Thank you for reading! Here’s a butterfly for you.

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The post You can’t go wrong when you edit from a place of love and empathy appeared first on CarlyJDubois.com.

Published December 15, 2024

Yesterday, all my troubles did not seem so far away.

I woke up to a story in the local paper about the possibility the building I live in might have to go away for a major bistate project, which would leave me looking for a place to live.

This is one of the last “affordable” places in the city. The monthly rent I pay is $750 less than fair market value for a similar apartment. Where would I go? I have looked all over Oregon and Washington, and the options are depressing.

I ordered a modest grocery delivery, and as I was closing the door, the shopper asked if she could scan one of the products for a record of the transaction. When I began to reopen the door, the lock fell to the floor, leaving a big hole where it used to be.

This is the fourth time since I moved in here in 2018. Right now, I can’t lock my door if I leave. I’ve decided not to leave.

Meanwhile, my leave from work has hit a snag as I wait for approval. The other stuff, the assault on trans rights and on all of the load-bearing supports holding together the country, that hasn’t gone away. My depression, my nightmares, my full-body tremors, twitches, missteps, pain and more, that hasn’t gone away.

Sleep is the best thing I’ve got going right now.

My sleeping area doesn’t look like this right now. You don’t want to see what my sleeping area looks like right now.

Sending love.

If you appreciate what you find here and are feeling generous, you can check out the Tip Jar. Thank you for reading! Here’s a butterfly for you.

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The post No wonder sleep is better than being awake these days appeared first on CarlyJDubois.com.

Published December 13, 2024

Heavy-handed editing strikes me as joyless. Who would want to embody the worst stereotypes and misconceptions about what editors do? Who would want to take the enjoyment out of communicating?

We have the wonderful gift of language to use to make a better world. Why close off so much of it to writers and other editors?

I think many of the people who prefer to work that way have never had more inclusive, loving, liberating, conscious editing and writing modeled for them. That’s why I’m so grateful to know and follow the best editors out there who continue to teach me so much. They will make the world a better place. In fact, they already are. I can say this after more than a decade of being inspired by them.

As a newspaper consultant said decades ago, sometimes you have to leave the dullards (and the wannabe grammar scolds) in the dust. My squad and I agree.

A version of this post appears on LinkedIn.

If you appreciate what you find here and are feeling generous, you can check out the Tip Jar. Thank you for reading! Here’s a butterfly for you.

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The post I have many thoughts about heavy-handed editing, especially that it feels so dreary appeared first on CarlyJDubois.com.

Published December 13, 2024

Hours after my dad died 44 years ago, we went to the church and the funeral home to make arrangements. The drive to and from was maybe the most surreal experience I’d ever had.

People were going about their business as if everything was normal. Walking. Talking. Driving. Laughing.

It reminded me of the Skeeter Davis song “The End of the World” for reasons other than the song’s heartbreaking romantic context.

Why does the sun go on shining?

Why does the sea rush to shore?

Don’t they know …

Why do the birds go on singing?

Why do the stars glow above?

Don’t they know …

I couldn’t understand how life could just … go on.

For the past five weeks, as I’ve tried to peel myself off the floor and function, there’s a similar feeling. People are just going about their business. Don’t they know what the election will mean for me and people like me? Don’t they care?

Yesterday crushed me a little bit more

The list of people who allegedly care about me who haven’t bothered to check on me in the wake of the election is longer than I ever imagined it would be. I suppose they don’t know what to say. Or is it possible they haven’t been paying attention and don’t know what’s going to happen to us?

The other list, of people who immediately checked on me, will stay with me for the rest of my life.

As I told my therapist Tuesday, I wonder how many people who call themselves allies voted against protecting us. Later, I went for a short walk in the afternoon sun. I’ve been hiding here in the dark for so long that it took my eyes a few hours to settle down when I got home.

It’s scary to be out in the world increasingly having to wonder who loathes your existence.

I’m still not sure people understand what’s been happening and what will happen, and I blame most of that on the news media from left to right, but my heart knows. It’s breaking still, a remarkable thing in that I didn’t think there was anything left of it to break.

Yesterday reduced me to the tears of an ugly cry. I don’t see good outcomes ahead. Not just for me, but for so many vulnerable, marginalized people.

We can’t have candles where I live, but I dug up photos and videos and had a version of a funeral to mourn what I thought the end of my life would be like after beginning my transition in 2017. Other people seem more hopeful, but I don’t see whatever it is that fuels their hope.

Oh, there’s good news

As I was writing this, I received an email telling me my credit score had gone up 40 points.

Yay?

Such absurd news, as if that means anything.

I’m expecting a tiny purple Christmas tree today or tomorrow, plus a string of battery-powered white lights. I’ll put them between my kitchen and coffee and tea nook, both newly made over with lilac and lavender and purple accents.

I don’t know why I told you that. Maybe to end this on a less gloomy note. The holiday season is upon us.

Yay?

If you appreciate what you find here and are feeling generous, you can check out the Tip Jar. Thank you for reading. Here’s a purple butterfly for you.

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Photo of candles by Smileus via Shutterstock.

The post Finding tear-soaked pieces of myself on the floor, broken and scattered, with light so scarce appeared first on CarlyJDubois.com.

Published December 10, 2024

If you don’t know who Nikki Giovanni is, find time to learn about her. “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project” is a good place to start.

I want to share with you what she said about trans kids in this January story in the Oxford American.

I love that, and I love this from the same story:

Do you ever get worried that you’ll run out of words? 

“No. Why would we run out of words? We keep inventing words, don’t we? We keep creating words. We keep discovering new things, and in discovering something new we have to discover new words for it. Why would we run out of words?”

And, gosh, she gave us “Allowables.”

Then there’s the conversation below, especially this part.

“You come home and I catch hell because I love you. I get the least of you. I get the very minimum. Fake it with me. Is that too much of a Black woman to ask of a Black man?”

Wow.

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The post Nikki Giovanni died yesterday. Here’s what she once said about trans kids appeared first on CarlyJDubois.com.

Published December 10, 2024

Sometimes all I can do is shake my head when I try to figure out where some “rules” come from. Here’s one I’ve heard off and on for about 25 years, and it represents an editing philosophy that’s so heavy-handed, I can’t imagine having to follow it for an entire career.

The rule says a game isn’t tied, the score of a game is tied. It says you don’t tie a game, you tie the score of a game. It’s not a game-tying home run or goal, it’s a score-tying home run or goal.

I’m not making that up. But somebody at some time did, and people in insistent circles follow it religiously. Nobody talks like that, though. And barely anybody writes it that way. And yet …

On a recent sleepless night, I rediscovered some research I did for a project I haven’t been able to complete. A good bit of it came from the 1980 Olympic hockey game between the USA and the USSR.

Fit to be tied

The Soviet Union led 1-0 when Buzz Schneider scored for the United States against goaltender Vladislav Tretiak. Play-by-play announcer Al Michaels called it this way for ABC.

“That’s the type of goal you don’t expect somebody like Tretiak to give up, and the United States ties the game at 14:03 in the period.”

Mark Johnson barely beat the clock to erase another one-goal deficit at the end of that period, and Michaels described it like this.

“Right now the clock shows nothing, but it was stopped at 1 when we looked up as the goal was scored. Right now it shows nothing as the period apparently has come to an end, but the United States has tied the game.”

In the 2004 movie “Miracle,” Michaels re-created his call this way: “This game is tied at 2.”

Here comes another one

Michaels had this to say when Johnson scored to even things up again later in the game.

“So the Americans, just as the penalty had expired, to Krutov, score to tie the game, and finally, this building comes to life.”

In the movie, Michaels’ call was: “Mark Johnson ties the game at 3.”

(That’s the scoreboard used in the movie. The recording I have of the ABC broadcast doesn’t show the scoreboard or put the score onscreen. Thank goodness for Michaels.)

Anyway, “this game is tied” outnumbers “the score is tied” about eleventy billion to three, by my estimate after many years of watching sports.

When I re-watched Game 6 of the 1986 World Series for an October post, I thought to take a look at the Major League Baseball rules. This caught my eye.

If the game is tied after both teams have made 27 outs each, the game will go to extra innings.

This is the language of the sports world. It’s bizarre to me that editors think we can’t just roll with it. A game can’t be tied? We’re not doing physics problems here. It’s the vernacular of the world we cover, the register, if you will, of the world I’ve covered since 1983. People have been writing and saying “this game is tied” and “game-tying” since long before that.

If you search for “score-tying” as a modifier, you’ll end up finding “game-tying” as a modifier again and again and again.

When I have to stay on the right side of the law, I edit either to say “tying home run” or “tying goal.” But a little piece of me dies every time I remember this “rule.”

Wait, there’s more

Some people in newspapers don’t want you to write “a 3-3 tie” or “tied 3-3.” They insist on “tied at 3.” Whatever. We are overthinking all of this. I’d love to hear the rationale for these “rules.” All I’ve ever been told was, “A game can’t be tied! Only a score can be tied!”

Weird, because a series can be tied. A person can hit a game-winning home run or a series-tying RBI single. But a game-tying hit is somehow impossible?

All of this is fundamentally in opposition to how I see our role as editors. Being so heavy-handed strikes me as a joyless way to go through life. We should not serve language; language is there to serve us.

I am so tired. This Carly is tired.

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