As a side note to this whole blogging thing, which is new to me, I have
come to realize a couple things -- well, actually I figured them out a
while ago, back when I decided to apply for the Creative Work Fund
Grant. I realized that I’m a lot of things:
A decent father,
A thought-provoking artist,
A reputable beekeeper,
An avid mountain biker,
An engaging instructor (in my field);
I can even knit and have sewn a couple quilts.
There is one thing, however, that I certainly am NOT, and that is a
literary giant. Sure, I can come up with a witty sentence here and
there, and maybe even a rhyme or two. But really, for the most part, I
suck when it comes to the written word.
No, I’m serious. If all you folks out there in Bloggerland could only see me as I type, you’d be LingOL. I’m worse then hunt and peck, if that's possible.
Remember "Welcome Back Kotter," that show from the late '70s-early '80s? That’s me: a modern-day Sweathog. I'm like the Vinnie Barbarino of bees. That said, I possess two things that Vinnie didn’t: spell check on my computer and friends who are far more comfortable with pen to paper than I am.
I have decided that the only way to get myself out of this sticky sitch is to hire the first-ever (to my knowledge) bee blog scribe. Here's how it works: Each quarter, I will ask one person to proof my blog before I post it. I say "proof" instead of "edit," because this is not so much for content than it is to catch errors in grammar and words that fall through the spell check cracks.
The thing is, I don’t want this person to be a text-checking chimp whose sole purpose is to massage the blog, but rather someone who will also have some input. This person will be someone who can add to the blog, has some experience in things related to the blog, and most important, will make me look like the male version of Sue Monk Kidd. Okay, so I haven't read her books, but I did listen to the audio book version of The Secret Life of Bees on my drive to Los Angles once.
So without further ado, I introduce to you Bethany Chamberlain, the summer 2008 bee blog scribe. A brief thumbnail sketch of how I met Bethany: Her niece, Sarah Domke, contacted me for permission to use some images of mine she had seen in a museum show. Sarah and her partners have an amazing local food zine called Secret Eating Society, and they wanted to feature some of my bee imagery in the current issue, for which Bethany wrote the accompanying honeybee article. Bethany also took a beekeeping class I teach at Nimbus Arts, in St. Helena. I really enjoyed her spin on the whole bee dilemma and somehow knew we would work together later. Bethany has a firm understanding of beekeeping, has bees of her own, and I like her style. The perfect person to kick off this new collaborative bee blog experience.
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