So I was thinking about changing the style of this blog, I have been reading the biography of Charles Schulz and was struck about how horrible it was to have his mother die at an early age and at such a crucial time in his life. As the biographer points out Charles was a real 'Mama's boy' and also suffered from a real disconnect with his parents. He really had nothing in common with them, and he didn't really know them, who they were, why they did what they did or didn't do. And I was thinking how this was very different from my own experience.
This disconnect was partly due to a cultural change, parents back then were very much apart from their children, not the way they are expected to be now. The famous song Cat's in the Cradle really shows that difference, while it tries to make a point to people to be a part of their children's lives, in a way that signalled how much our culture had changed. My mother, grandmother Lolly, likes to point out how her own parents were not involved in her life the same way parents are now or even how much she was involved in mine.
But in a lot of ways I was blessed by spectacularly open parents. And not just open and honest, but also willing to tell us why they were doing things. At least as far as they understood them. While I try to be open with you kids and hope to continue to be, I thought a good way to accomplish this would be this blog. Up till now this blog has been mostly a journal type of style, with some moderate attempts at scholarly entries and thought. One of my biggest struggles is with consistency and how to reconcile the scattershot focus of entries. Just today I began with an entry about Tammy's marriage and what it meant, and followed that up with an entry commenting on family dinners. And the next entry might be focused on the presidential election. It has to be a little confusing, heck it confuses me sometimes.
But on my lunch time walk I thought of a stylistic method that would allow me to excuse my widely varied focus, and bring things together. My plan, moving forward, is to write each post as if it were a letter to you kids. As a way of bringing together why these things might interest me, what they mean to me and to them. This will also excuse the family snippets as being somewhat historic for you. One of the cool aspects of doing this in a blog, is, unlike a handwritten or typed letter from the past, I can hyper link items. Which will give you a trail of sorts to all of the varying things I refer to in the letters.
These are the things to do to change the style:
- Change the Title Header: from MikesWorld to Letters to my children
- Remove some of the links
- Create a template: 'Dear James, Daniel and Emily' to appear as default.
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