Getting the Ax from Arianna Huffington

As the committed “the simple life 2.0″ reader that you are, you may know that I was (briefly) the parenting columnist for a hyperlocal news and entertainment site called City’s Best-DC, run by the Huffington Post Media Group (HPMG) — a new breed media organization formed by the acquisition of Huffington Post by AOL.

On March 23, HPMG emailed us freelancers at 2:38 am ET to give us 10 hours notice of a conference call to discuss the new organization. They thanked us — a bit nervously and zealously — for our wonderful contribution to City’s Best. They assured us that any changes coming down the pike were not for cost-saving reasons (they are looking to replace all freelancers with full time journalists), and not going to hit most of the city sub-sites like Washington DC for at least three months.

Alas, we freelancers received a succinct email at 3:13 am ET just two weeks later on April 6 from an AOL staffer whose title is “Content Compliance Program Director.” We were advised that, “Per the terms of your agreement with AOL, this note confirms the end of your engagement for content services effective Wednesday, April 6, 2011.” (See “Layoffs continue in the wake of the AOL-Huffington Post merger,” Editor’s Weblog, 4/8/11.)

OK, then.

I wish HPMG good luck and wisdom in navigating the tempestuous waters of media and journalism as we know it today. (I don’t mean that sarcastically.) Things are changing rapidly and seemingly without end in American media. Journalist friends are experiencing something close to a blood bath as writers are shed from their ranks. Media companies are trying every kind of business model as bottom lines continue to take a beating. HPMG are betting that moving back to a traditional news organization model where full time writers work out of an old school news room will help move them to the forefront of the media landscape.

Arianna, if you end up needing a good freelancer, you know where to find me!

Photo courtesy ~Brenda-Star~, Flickr

My Life As a Tiger Cub Mom

While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I was raised by a “tiger mom” — the kind made famous by Amy Chua’s Wall Street Journal article, “Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior” — I am a child of Asian (Korean) immigrant parents who raised me to achieve great academic heights, or at least as great as possible. After getting a master’s degree, I remember my dad saying he’d pay for me to go get a Ph.D. “To study what?” I asked. He shrugged — what I studied didn’t seem to matter so much as adding a few more letters after my name.

Click here to continue reading the full column on City’s Best. Thanks!

Photo courtesy of rajkumar1220, Flickr

Summer Camp and the Curse Of the Alpha Parent

Happy Springtime!

It’s been a looong time since last I posted. The blog is currently on hiatus while I focus more on my consulting work. So for now, I’ll post links to my new column on City’s Best – DC (part of the Huffington Post Media Group). There, I write on parenting issues with a Washington DC angle. Is there a parenting issue on which you’d like to dish or for which you need some local research? Let me know! I’m all ears.

Check out my first column, ”Summer Camp and the Curse Of the Alpha Parent,” and weigh in with your thoughts on the City’s Best site. Thanks!

wrested from sleep by an earthquake

But then, maybe I wasn’t — shaken from sleep by this morning’s earthquake in DC, that is.

Truth is, I’ve been waking up to heart-pounding stress dreams every day this week. I’m not sure why, but after I told my friend, Rima, she sent me this, sagely:

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
— Wendell Berry

I hope you find peace.

don’t pull a Janet Jackson

Remember “Nipplegate” – when Janet Jackson had a “wardrobe malfunction” at the 2006 Super Bowl halftime show? (I had no idea it went all the way to the Supreme Court. CBS is still currently battling a $550,000 fine levied by the FCC for the malfunction.)

no, that's not a nipple

I went to a networking dinner this week with a group of impressive Washingtonian working women. Being female, I noticed their garb: everyone (except me) in skirts or dresses, some pretty short. Too short. Yeah, short hems are completely au courant, but save it for non-work occasions. (OK, I’m an old fogey.)

But hey, haven’t we come to the point where women can go ahead and wear whatever they damn please, whenever they damn want? Theoretically, yes; but you can’t argue with the laws of physics. When you sit, short skirts ride up. Women with short hems can’t move much – they have to studiously keep their legs together and maintain postures that aren’t conducive to good blood flow. (Boy, do I sound like a grandma.) Devoting a portion of your brain to keeping wardrobe malfunctions at bay means you can’t devote your full brain capacity to things like winning that argument in court or landing that new business.

Writer Krista Bremer, a California born and bred American married to a Muslim man, wrote a thoughtful piece in O Magazine about her experience dealing with her young daughter’s foray into wearing a Muslim headscarf. She recounts a time when she observed another adolescent girl, wearing a string bikini, trying to play ping pong with a boy. “It was easy to see why she was getting demolished at this game: Her near-naked body was consuming her focus.”

And then there’s the law of attraction. No, men don’t think about sex every 7 seconds, but they (and women) probably have some sort of sexual thought with some frequency. While sex is an awfully good thing, it usually doesn’t mix well with work. (To be sure, having done time in big PR agency life, I realize that sex – at least the concept of it – can lead to more business…)

I can hear the groans of fashionistas everywhere. I remember rolling my eyes when my dad chided me for wearing a short skirt to work waaaaay back in my twenties. Had he made the point that a slightly longer hem would have been more comfortable for me, I might have rolled them only half way.

I’m not advocating a puritan habit. Just one that works for you.

Work it, baby!

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DID YOU KNOW? $1.6M was spent on thong underwear for tweens ages 7-12 in 2002.