Mama facebooks

In the past, Mama and I spent our days together pleasantly, watching Law & Order (the original is the best) or Maigret, Perry Mason or Inspector Morse DVDs, reading, walking outdoors, or just puttering around the house.

Ah, for the good old days.

In fact, my dear friend Lucy was the inadvertant cause of the demise of our long lovely days together. Lucy's Mama, Melinda, invited mine to be her facebook friend. Many had previously invited Mama; she steadfastly refused to reply. Until Melinda's invitation. And such is Mama's respect for Melinda, that she was unable to resist returning a resounding Yes.

Now Mama is facebook addicted. She turned facebook into a verb [i.e. facebooking, facebooked...]

She has spent hours creating her profile, joining groups, contacting long lost friends, opening photo albums. Granted, as far as the last is concerned, mine was the first album and has, as I recall, the greatest number of pictures. Her albums include those dedicated to: family, former graduate students, colleague-friends, other friends, my friends, Grady at Oxford 2004, Grady at Oxford 2005, etc. If the list isn't yet endless, there's every indication that her collection of albums will continue to grow at an alarming rate. She proceeds more gingerly with groups; but one established group had no wall entries (wall! what?) nor any pictures until Mama joined.

Furthermore, as a result of Mama's direct and indirect instigation, many more friends have accepted invitations and they in turn are connecting with their long lost friends. Even Papa has (reluctantly) succumbed. Even, Grandpere!

I seem to have been relegated to 2nd class status. I watch from my computer room bed (one of my 3 beds in our home) and wait, hoping for some slight recognition, even a mere glimmer of remembrance.

I find it ironic that Mama is reading an Agatha Christie novel just now that centers around a dead character: Rosemary, for remembrance.

Loyal fans and friends, please send your special messages across time & space in your hopes that Mama's sanity and my pleasurable days will return soon. [you may notice how plaintive I look in the photo above.

Mama Writes

Like me, Mama is a writer. She has published articles in academic journals such as Journal of Communication Inquiry, Critical Studies in Media Communication & Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly to name only 3. Those papers report on research findings & draw in particular on the theoretical frameworks of British cultural studies, (post-) structuralism and the knowledge-power nexus that Foucault wrote about so eloquently. She also owes a special debt to Roland Barthes.

Page proofs for a paper to be published in Qualitative Inquiry have been corrected & returned to the editor. This works marks a departure in style although her concerns remain the same. She considers this a performance piece; the late Spaulding Gray was an inspiration.

I'd like to pay a special tribute to Mama by previewing her work for you, my loyal readers/friends. Please read the abstract below.

“Peering Through the Crack
& Good-Bye to All That:
30 years of TV, Telephones,
Sports, Drugs, Etc.”


Elli Lester Roushanzamir
University of Georgia—Athens

Social relationships are enacted and remembered through interpersonal relationships and replayed through the media as the author uses a defining personal
experience, that of her son’s drug addiction, to rethink, analyze, and resituate
herself in the world. The result draws attention to the messy juxtaposition of
social structures and policies with personal loss, grief, anger, and episodes of
joy and courage. Crack, whether drug, fissure, gibe, highlights remembered
fragments which allow the author to tell her stories in ways other than those
originally considered. As those personal stories are interwoven with public
moments such as school desegregation and changes in telecommunications
and popular culture, a social commentary is offered that defamiliarizes the
familiar, evokes rather than represents, and therefore offers the reader entry
into the narrative, the cultural critique.

Keywords: autoethnography; substance abuse; crack cocaine; popular
culture; mass media

Summer Travels: Part 1

I have heard murmurings.

Whispering, Mama et Papa, mention such as: holiday, driving somewhere perhaps to Highlands, NC (where, they say, it's 20-degrees cooler), staying at a Bed & reakfast, driving their 1992 Toyota Corolla (Mama keep saying: "it's the best car in the world"), etc. etc.

The plans, which initially seemed to include me, took a turn for the worse when I overheard the euphemism Bed & Biscuit Suites. We all know what that means: they're going to board me! Me!!!

I've included a picture of Pawtropolis' suite.


To quote their from marketing pamphlet:

"Suites are complete with rugs, a full-size toddler bed and, of course, a flat-screen TV built into the wall. All suites have large windows for seeing what is going on. The suites provide a quieter environment. This is perfect for the ultimate spoiled pooch for the a dog that is very nervous or easily stressed. We are proud to offer a wide variety of movies such as; "Lady and the Tramp", "Air Bud", "The Fox and the Hound", "101 Dalmatians" and much more. Each Bed & Biscuit guest is brought to the outside potty yard four times throughout the day. Food and the potty breaks are included in the price as well as a Kong toy in their room."

Note the language: "very nervous or easily stressed," "toddler bed,"food and potty."

I am hoping that these discussions are merely the ravings of Mama et Papa, their odd response to the unbearable heat we've all been enduring.

In any case, loyal readers, I shall keep you posted.