Ellington

Next Sunday, I'm going to try something new: a weekly series of sorts, tentatively called "Talking Head," where I'll go through my mailbag in public. Generally that's an invitation to identity theft, but hey, I'm a professional.

[UPDATE: The public has spoken. As of Sunday (10/23/05) at 2:50am, I have received exactly zero "Talking Head" emails. No biggie; it's a new blog, and these things take time to grow, but for now I'm deep-sixing the Talking Head idea. I might revive it later if there's a demand for it. I'm leaving the rest of this blog entry for posterity's sake, just in case anyone's wondering what I originally had in mind. -- TH]

So... If you have a difficult question you're trying to resolve, or disagree with something I've posted, then please feel free to send a question or comment to me at [email protected], and be sure to include the phrase "Talking Head" in the subject line (which should guarantee that the post won't get filtered into my spam folder by mistake). The rules:

Politics are okay, but I'd like to see some questions and opinions about fundamental things--like religion, ethics, the meaning of life, etc. Discussions about new Supreme Court rulings are usually more interesting to me, and will probably be more interesting to readers, than discussions about new Supreme Court nominees.
I reserve the right to edit for length, readability, etc.
No crisis situations, please. I'm not really qualified to offer that kind of advice. More lighthearted stuff (relationships, careers, etc.) is fair game provided that you promise to take my advice with a grain of salt.
On the other hand, no questions where the answers can be easily Googled up. And no really obscure, detail-oriented questions designed to make either of us look smart ("What did the winner of the 1985 Kentucky Derby eat immediately before every race?").
I haven't thought up a consistent policy on attributing questions; if you want to be identified a certain way or not at all, please be sure to mention that. Unless you request otherwise, I'll probably identify you by initials.
You don't need to be a registered JFP member to play--but if you're banned from the site and sending stuff just to get under somebody's skin, you should bear in mind that...
...I reserve the right to ignore any question or comment, for any reason or for no reason at all.
Genuinely hard questions and challenging arguments are especially welcome.
If something is especially well thought-out, I might include it in the Sunday blog even if I don't plan on responding to it.

And that's pretty much it. I look forward to seeing those emails!

Previous Comments

ID

103254

Comment

Hmmm. What do you folks think of this idea? I'm thinking if I don't hear something by Sunday, I'll deep-six this for now and talk about other stuff. One thing I do feel pretty strongly about is that I'm getting bored with blogging about Harriet Miers. Whether she's the next David Souter or just Antonin Scalia in drag (and how's that for an image?), I feel like I've pretty much said all I'm gonna say about it, unless something new develops. Stuff I want to talk more about: Race, gender, religion. The Israel-Palestine crisis. Love, family, friendships. Humor. Maybe vegetarianism, if I can figure out a way to spin it into something interesting. And it might not be a bad idea to blog once a week on my dissertation topic--Max Kadushin's philosophy of religion--just to draw a very unusual crowd of international Jewish textual philosophers into the JFP forums. (I can think of a few folks I know in the postcritical rabbinic hermeneutics community who would fit right in here, actually...) And one human interest angle that might be entertaining: My effort to work through Garcia Marquez' first novel in ten years...which will also probably be first book I ever read in Spanish. My Spanish is terrible, but I have a Spanish <--> English translator on my OS X dashboard. May as well put it to good use! I started learning Spanish with the idea in mind of reading Marquez in the original, and hey, stumbling through is just as good as reading. If I can make it through Memorias de Mis Putas Tristes, then the next logical step is El Amor en los Tiempos del Colera. I'll keep the English translations of both nearby, but will use them only as a last resort. Which means I'll have a reading speed of like 20 words per minute to start, but as I get accustomed to the process I'm sure it'll speed up. That's what I'm going for, anyway. On a slow day, I might even post poetry. You know, I've never written a chant royal. Cheers, TH

Author

Tom Head

Date

2005-10-22T00:24:21-06:00

ID

103255

Comment

Okay, I'm officially putting an end to the Talking Head idea for now due to lack of interest. Might resuscitate it later. Cheers, TH

Author

Tom Head

Date

2005-10-23T01:48:54-06:00

ID

103256

Comment

Tom, I've been so buried in work that I didn't really notice this thread. Sorry. No, give it up. I think it's a great idea. Just give it a bit of time. People will start participating. I know as someone who regularly starts newspapers and blogs that patience is a major virtue, and consistency. We're about to start a marketing campaign to push the individuals blogs in the paper as well, so people know they're on the site now. So your mailbag is bound to fill up. Besides, your blog is already on fire. Good work, friend. More blogs are on the way, BTW. ;-D Y'all rock.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2005-10-26T14:20:41-06:00

ID

103257

Comment

I think I might have made the whole Talking Head idea a little intimidating with all those caveats. But I've been scrambling so much with my own writing projects lately that I wasn't heartbroken when nobody responded. :P I love the idea of getting the blog written up in JFP! And thanks for the kind words about all those hits. I'm still baffled as to how I got 750+ hits on the Manly Mansfield entry, but I added my blog to my email sigfile the day before and posted a few listserv messages, so that might have something to do with it. I'll be sure to mention relevant blog entries whenever topics come up on my listservs. I also plan on talking to a few blogger-friends and getting myself added as a link... Onward and upward. I'd always planned for the Headblog and JFP to be a mutually beneficial thing--I get your hits, you get mine--and I think it definitely has that potential. Now if I can just get past this writing project so I can be sure to update it every day... Cheers, TH

Author

Tom Head

Date

2005-10-26T14:37:40-06:00

ID

103258

Comment

Clearly, you got linked somewhere. That happens and then the views shoot up. ;-) That's part of the marketing of the blogs -- get yourself linked all over. I'm using donnaladd.com again to point to mine; it used to be linked on lots of sites (it was an archive of all my Voice stories and so on), but then I let it go dark when we started the JFP. So I'm alerting folks that it's live again. You know how the blogosphere is: it's viral. So the traffic to the individual blogs will continue to grow exponentially, as our site overall has done. Just give it time. As Todd says, do what you do well ... and wait. It's good advice.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2005-10-26T14:42:13-06:00

ID

103259

Comment

Well, you guys are WAY ahead of me. For some reason I never even THOUGHT to link my regular blog to this. Definitely gotta do that!

Author

Lori G

Date

2005-10-26T15:20:38-06:00