Letter from the Editor.

As writers and artists, we often find ourselves tangled in a veil of observation, inadvertently separating ourselves from experiencing the moment we are living as we reframe it in our heads, toying with ways we will translate it. Over time, we may discover a semi-permanent fog settling in between us and our lives. It is a challenge for artists. Agreed.

We have a new challenge for you.

Go outside. Is it still humid and cloying? Are you finally catching and clinging to briefly brisk days? When was the last time you threw your head back, rolled your shoulders loosely behind you, and took a deep breath?

Do it today. And take some little people with you. And, yes, a camera. You are an artist, after all, and our challenge is for you to find the place between joyfully refreshing experience and storytelling.

Story Bleed Magazine is partnering with our sponsor GoGo squeeZ in celebration of World Wide Day of Play this Saturday, September 24. We invite you to join us for a blogging carnival sharing nostalgic stories of play and how you play with your children today (or better yet, this Saturday!). GoGo squeeZ is a squeezable applesauce on-the-go company devoted to making it easier for kids & families to be a little healthier and happier. In keeping with GoGo sqeeZ’s philosphy, we are going to keep our challenge uncomplicated and largely unstructured:

#GoGoDayOfPlay Challenge:

In celebration of World Wide Day of Play, GoGo squeeZ is asking our community to join the GoGo Gang by uploading a photo of your kids at play. When the GoGo Gang is 100,000 members strong, GoGo squeeZ will team up with Action for Healthy Kids to renovate a play space in an under-served community. We want you to help us make these these playground renovations a reality!

Story Bleed invites you to support this effort and join our carnival via one or more of the following:

Definitely:

• • join the GoGo Gang by Liking GoGo squeeZ on Facebook and upload a photo of your kids at play
  (this is key to meeting our playground goals!)

• • share a link to your nostalgic story of play and photo posted on your blog
  (be sure to link back to our #GoGoDayOfPlay writing challenge/ blog carnival!)
• • share a link to a photo posted on Instagram or your favorite photo app (TwitPic, yfrog, Mobypicture, etc) and shared on twitter with the hashtag #GoGoDayOfPlay
  (the actual link you share will be to the specific tweet)

I plan to take an Instagram photo, hashtag it with #GoGoDayOfPlay, and then write a quick blurb on my personal blog about our stories of play featuring my Instagram photo. And I’ll probably add both links to the carnival. Because that? That is the circular creative world we live in!

{by Megan Boley from MegaGood}

The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.  ~Ralph W. Sockman

• • •

“All this grass and and he does this” by Megan Boley from MegaGood |  @MeganBoley
shared via Instagram

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

{by Alison from aPearantly sew}

Childhood is measured out by sounds and smells and sights,
before the dark hour of reason grows. ~John Betjeman, Summoned by Bells

• • •

“Protective” by Alison from aPearantly sew | shop aPearantly sew | @AliLittle28
shared via Instagram

• • •

“Clink” by Kathleen from Sugar and Spice | @ksugarandspice | shared by ksugarandspice on Instagr.am

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

{Originally published on The Bloggess}
first appeared on Blog Nosh Magazine on September 28, 2008

Yesterday someone asked me how to deal with trolls and haters. I have no damn idea.

Trolls are just like you and me. Only shittier. Or more honest. Or likely to murder gypsies. Fuck, I don’t know. I’m not a mind reader. I don’t know the motivation of everyone reading your blog but what I do know is that in real life you come across assholes and weirdos and someone out there is selling computers to these people. People like the guy who left me this comment:

“I was right, you aren’t that hot. Damn.”

I didn’t mind that some stranger thought I was un-hot but what was disconcerting was that in the photo the guy was referring to? I was seven. And totally hot.

Or that comment I got on my I-invented-a-scooter/flame-thrower/cookie-warmer post which simply said:

“Your retarded.”

Welcome to Blog Nosh Magazine’s first special-event carnival, as we share stories of hope this holiday season in support of the Tide Loads of Hope program, a mobile laundromat offering laundry services to families affected by disasters.

Tide Loads of Hope is a traveling breath of fresh air and a sigh of relief for families nationwide suffering from natural disasters such as hurricanes, wildfires, and floods. In times of crisis, Tide has learned that it is the little things that help us maintain what can sometimes feel like our last threads to normalcy. Little things like clean clothes. With this in mind, the Tide Loads of Hope truck is returning to New Orleans this holiday season in order to offer some holiday hope and free laundry services for families still struggling.

We’re celebrating Tide’s efforts in three big ways:

1. We’ve dedicated the whole magazine to Tide Loads of Hope for the Holidays by commissioning some of the most amazing bloggers to write about the importance of hope at the holidays. Their work is brilliant and inspiring. I know you’ll be heartened to read each gorgeous post on our front page.

2. We’re inviting you to lend your own voice to this uprising of hope. Join the blog carnival by sharing your own stories of hope, and enter your own post link in the blog carnival below. Three posts will be selected from carnival participants in the linky to be featured on Blog Nosh Magazine, too. We can’t wait to read your contributions!

3. We’re going to New Orleans to talk with Katrina survivors to tell them about your hopeful messages. We want you to join our live two day event in New Orleans, Sunday and Monday, December 13 and 14, as Blog Nosh founder and editor-in-chief Megan Jordan from Velveteen Mind (whose personal story of natural disaster recovery inspired this partnership), Mishelle Lane from Secret Agent Mama, and Deb Rox from Deb on the Rocks tweet stories of resilience from laundry recipients and volunteers on the ground.

Follow along on twitter via #loadsofhope and be sure to follow @TideLoadsofHope. More importantly, engage with us and tweet back your own messages of hope, helping us show the residents of the Gulf Coast that their voices are still heard and their stories still remembered. The Loads of Hope truck just completed a stop in Atlanta, GA, and will be on their way to Louisville, KY, so help us spread the word and reach out to families in need of a break.

When you join the carnival with your messages of hope, be sure to invite your own readers to participate in this online event by linking to the chocolate-covered center of the carnival here at Blog Nosh Magazine. You are invited to grab any of the Tide Loads of Hope graphics you see here, including the tee shirt badge below (linked to http://tideloadsofhope.com), as all proceeds from sales of Tide Vintage Tees support the truck and keep it on the road, ready to help when disaster strikes nationwide.

Blog carnival hosted by Blog Nosh Magazine, sponsored by Tide Loads of Hope.

As the year draws to a close, we are doing some shuffling of the buffet table here at Blog Nosh Magazine. The new year always brings a fresh crop of new bloggers and new blogs, not to mention new incarnations of old blogs from old bloggers. With that in mind, we are gearing up to launch the remainder of our current channels (Military, Travel and Expats, etc.) and introduce a few new sub-channels, such as an Unemployment section to our Business channel.

Interested in becoming a Channel Editor? Have some ideas for new channels or sub-channels? Start brainstorming and drop your ideas into the comments or email us with your interest. Some of our old editors will be leaving, so all channels will have room available for fresh voices and approaches. It will take a bit for us to get to all of the applications (not to mention follow-up with previous applications on-hold), so bear with us.

Speaking of having the patience of a fine aged wine, we are revamping our submissions process. If you have submitted a post to us in the last couple of months, know that we are working to streamline our review process (your submission is one of hundreds we receive each month) and haven’t forgotten you.

All of these efforts are made possible by the support we receive from writers, editors, and our sponsors. Please take a moment to check out one of our featured sponsors this month, Lamaze International and Mother’s Advocate and their Six Healthy Birth Practices videos (one of which is featured in NoshTube) and print materials. The Six Healthy Birth Practices are:

• • Let labor begin on its own
  • Walk, move around and change positions throughout labor
  • Bring a friend, loved one, or doula for continuous support
  • Avoid interventions that are not medically necessary
  • Avoid giving birth on your back and follow your body’s urges to push
  • Keep mother and baby together – it’s best for the mother, the baby, and breastfeeding

Lamaze isn’t the breathing techniques that are so often associated with it any more. You can see what their birth practices look like when lived out loud in both my own birth plan and then in my birth post. At least, my very best efforts at integrating those birth practices, as I am far from your ideal Lamaze example.

Of course, every birth is different, just as every mother is different, so in our ever-irreverent spirit here at Blog Nosh Magazine, we are revisiting one of our favorite Birth & Adoption posts by Baby on Bored. What makes our community so delicious is our diversity of voices, so be sure to check out ways to have a healthy, safe, and natural birth with Lamaze International and Mother’s Advocate and then get your laugh on with the cheeky humor of Stefanie Wilder-Taylor’s Preggo Land.

Nosh on!

Nosh Notes from the Editor by Founder/ Editor-in-Chief Megan Jordan of Velveteen Mind.

{Originally published on Moosh in Indy}

Moosh- your dad is up in bed snoring and moaning like a severely wounded walrus. Today is Father’s Day and I just wanted to let you know, as someone who’s lived with your dad for seven years that the teasing and relentless obnoxiousness will likely never stop. It’s how he shows us that he loves us.

Seriously.

Your shrieks of horror and protest must be music to your dad’s ears or else he wouldn’t insist on pissing you off so often. He never had a brother. We have to forgive him for this. Guy just doesn’t know how to be surrounded by wimmin all the time. It’s made him a little crazy. Good news? Any brothers that you may have will pale in comparison to what your faddah dishes out.

There is a moment in your birth video where he reaches out and touches you really REALLY quick while the nurses are cleaning you off. He didn’t want to get in trouble. You can hear the nurses say “It’s okay dad, she’s yours, you can touch her all you want.” Later when he told me that he got to be the first! to! touch! you! was the first time I ever saw him weakened with the power a little girl holds over her daddy. He hasn’t recovered since. You are his world.

In another hour he will get up and start teasing us. And poking us. And annoying us. This is how boys show they like you. From kindergarten to high school to marriage. The more they pick on you the more smitten they are.

I think it would be impossible for daddy to be any more smitten with us.

We’re lucky ladies.

Happy Father’s Day dude.

The funny thing about blogging is that life sometimes gets in the way. Blogging is supposed to be about our lives, though, right? So if we don’t get out there and live them, our blogs will be serpents eating their own tails: seemingly interesting at first, then very monotonous and repetitive.

Just as life can sometimes distract you from getting things done, our solutions are often monotonous stop-gaps. Nothing memorable and hardly worth the effort. Which reminds us… Father’s Day is this Sunday! Did you forget to get Dad that amazing gift? No problem, we have you covered and with sprinkles on top.

Blog Nosh Magazine is proud to present our favorite solution to those last-minute Father’s Day gift panics in the form of what we love best: MAGAZINES!

If the dads in your life are anything like the dads in mine, they enjoy splashy pictures, punchy stories, and gorgeous women. That’s putting it politely. I gave my husband a subscription to Men’s Health one year and he thanked me every month, no fail. The best part? I absolutely loved Men’s Health and just about beat him to it each time it arrived. I’d like to say that peeking into the mind of men made me a better wife, but I think it might have just made me more tolerant and patient because, wow, it’s all pretty much about desire for men. Desire to improve, desire to build a better life, and desire for, well, we are talking about our men.

In honor of Father’s Day, Blog Nosh Magazine is giving away a prize pack courtesy of MagsDirect.com that includes subscriptions to the daddy of all magazines: Sports Illustrated, GQ, and (my favorite) Men’s Health. All you have to do to win is be a US resident and either tweet about the giveaway using the keyword “@blognoshmag” or leave a comment below. The winner will be announced Saturday morning, June 20, 2009.

Update: The winner is @flesworthy! Her tweet about the giveaway was randomly selected from all of the tweets and comments. Follow her on twitter and check out her blog: flesworthy. Thanks for entering!

Sold on the idea of giving Dad a magazine subscription? Seriously, my husband asks for me to renew his subscriptions every year in lieu of another tie or coffee mug. Check out MagsDirect.com for cheap magazines and you’ll absolutely thrill him with your thoughtfulness.

Plus, you can do it Sunday morning if you forget poor ole dad.

{Originally published on Pensieve}

She will haunt me, this I know.

“I am happy,” she says, and she means it. Even if she did not speak those words, her countenance belies this simple truth: She is happy.

Kiran invited us to her home today, a 4′ x 6′ shoebox in the heart of Kolkata’s slums, blocks away from the glow and lure of proverbial red lights and painted women. Girls, actually, some even younger than Kiran. Simple math tells me 175 of her houses could fit into mine.

She is the only Compassion International sponsored child we visited this week who didn’t have a parent home with her.