The Courage of Our Blogging Convictions

It's been awhile since Crabby Old Lady was this riled up, so much so it has taken her a week to get her thoughts in order.

Last week, a post titled What Have You Stopped Doing in Your Old Age? caused a lot of response from readers with their own lists of gratefully-relinquished tasks and behavior that no longer seem necessary or were, perhaps, misguided in our youth.

Most women agree that high-heeled shoes are too painful now. (Crabby Old Lady continues to wonder, for herself, if they always hurt that much and she was more capable of ignoring it when she was younger.) Men seem glad to give up wearing ties and at least one has embraced a beard instead of shaving every day.

The lists were varied – from the minor (giving up ironing) to the profound (giving up guilt) with a whole lot in between. And Suzz of Suzzwords had Crabby laughing out loud:

“I gave up wearing shoes unless I’m leaving the house. Recently I pretty much gave up mopping the kitchen, causing me to rethink wearing shoes.”

Overall, everyone took to the topic with much good humor, and it made Crabby Old Lady's day reading all the responses…

…and then, AND THEN - Crabby received a private email from a reader attacking Time Goes By and commenters (some by specific reference to their lists making clear to Crabby who they are) for being negative about elders’ capabilities, comparing us to a relative who, says the writer, gave up caring in late life and accusing readers of using age as an excuse to “drop out” – whatever that means.

Crabby was dismayed on two counts: that this light-hearted post and the responses could be perceived as negative commentary on aging, and that the writer made these accusations in an email rather than publicly owning the words in the comments section.

One of the best and most important aspects of blogging, especially for elders, is the building of communities. We do this through commenting on one another’s blogs, finding commonalities and simpatico among ourselves and fodder for new thoughts and ideas in one another's blogs.

As if to prove that last point, Mage of Day Tripper was so inspired by this discussion that she expanded on it at her blog, as did Claude of Blogging in Paris who listed several that Crabby doesn't do anymore but had forgotten when she made her list. And Suzz took the idea in a whole new direction at her blog.

The best result of all this community building is that not infrequently, we make new friends, sometimes with ties that become as strong and unbreakable as with our in-person friends. This is possible through honesty and authenticity in our blogs and comments. In all this, disagreement is common, but in four years, Crabby has only one previous incidence of it being expressed privately instead of out in the open.

And that is what is so disturbing about this email. (Because writers retain legal copyright of their email and, in this case, the writer ignored Crabby's requests for permission to quote, she will need to paraphrase.)

In response to Crabby Old Lady's emailed dismay, the writer followed up by saying that remarking negatively on individual comments in public would be "too aggressive” for her. Ah, but attacking the individual commenters in a private email is not? It strikes Crabby as cowardly.

There followed a long and detailed dissertation on how Europeans (she is an ex-pat American living in Europe) wouldn’t be caught dead in public wearing Crocs or sweats or polyester pants suits as she has seen in the U.S., and how beautifully turned out Europeans are.

She singled out a couple of towns here in Maine for her scorn of their sartorial lapses. Having lived here more than a year now, Crabby can assure you she would feel the fool showing up at the supermarket in one of her beloved fur hats, now packed away on a high shelf awaiting a winter trip to Manhattan. Knits caps and earmuffs are the norm in this Rome.

The writer heaped further disdain on commenters who say they have forsaken books and movies, wondering what they do at night, but not having read the blog well enough to know that what they said was, they have given up buying books and use the library now.

There followed a litany of admiring references to European elders who hike and learn languages and have young friends, and to Americans who move to Europe for new experiences (implying that stay-at-home Americans are dullards in comparison) apparently on the assumption that wearing Crocs, and pants instead of skirts, and giving up makeup damage brain cells and stunt social initiative.

As appalled as Crabby is at the writer’s provincialism and tone of superiority, what bothers her more are the back-channel attacks on people who are part of the elderblogging community along with the apparent belief that Crabby would be a willing participant.

That is not tolerable. We speak our minds in public on our blogs and comments. Sometimes we disagree. We can make our points, defend them or not and in the end, everyone gains from differing perspectives even if, in the end, our minds are not changed. It is one of the things that builds communities around our blogs and makes blogging so immensely satisfying.

Here at Crabby Old Lady's place, back channel attacks on public commenters are not accepted. Have the courage of your convictions and say it out loud.

[At The Elder Storytelling Place today, Mort Reichek notes one of the changes that comes with the passage of time in The Sad Sight of Empty Tennis Courts.]