Saturday, May 24, 2003

In Which Our Heroine Finally Sorts out Her Web Server
Well, I don't know what I did in the first place to make it all go wonky, but the website did go wonky. And while I was typing in blogs, they weren't publishing. The thing that amazed me was the amount of protest I got about it! I was very touched when both a reporter from the Boston Globe and a Literature Professor from MIT kept encouraging me to blog away. "Keep it going!" "Why isn't it updated? What is wrong with you?" they said (this being the Jason Blair age, I feel that I should state that these may not be direct quotes. But I have talked to these people, and they have said roughly these things, though they may have been udner the influence of various things. So now, by just simply relaunching the whole thing in a new format, I'm back on the information superhighway. Does anyone even call it that any more?

So just what have I been doing with my time of late? The first answer to that is that I have NOT been coaching my kiddies. Apparently, someone on the varsity and a varsity parent took objection to this website wherein I referred to someone as an "obnoxious lying child." I was suspended. I feel it worth noting that a) no comment was posted on this site with regard to any offence given, b) no e-mail was sent to me with regard to any offence given, c) no one other than the Head Coach (put between a rock and a hard place on this one) has bothered to send me a complaint, nor have I at any point been shown one still or even mention they were upset. I still got paid in full, so the only people who lost out were the kids. And, I hasten to stress this point, the unnamed child was in fact profoundly obnoxious, and a liar. Would I have taken the comment down had anyone asked? Yes. (Apart from the fact that the site went down, but it didn't matter as no one asked me.) No one did, no one has. And so on. Or, as one novice mother was known to exclaim "I think it stinks. And they never even bothered to tell us. The varsity complained, but you don't coach them. And our kids lost their beloved coach and no one bothered to tell us." Can I say that I love my kids, and their parents as well?

The good news for the kids is that through the ballyhoo, a parental connection has now had us profiled in the Globe, which should appear in Sunday's sports section, front page I hear with a photo. I was happy to talk to the reporter, but only on the condition that the story be about the kids and what a good group they are, going up against flipping, grounding, bad weather, etc, and it not be about the coaching situation. The reporter (who seems a very good egg, I must say, and who knows his rowing, being the proud father of a Berkley varsity lad) was happy to comply. And bought me a coffee and a muffin in the bargain.

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