Sludging Along

So, the first couple weeks of posting Sludgie have been interesting. It's a real challenge to maintain near daily reports on a blog like that, finding humor in sometimes depressing or dry sort of stuff. But the good news is that so far, the reaction has been really positive. I emailed my favorite website, the prominent and influential enviro mag Grist, hoping to get a blurb or mention, something to help increase my readership. Instead, they asked me to write for them. I'll be writing on their blog, Gristmill. It's not only exciting, but also rather validating, since I applied for a writing job there just last summer and was turned down.

But it's also adds to my already overbearing load of under or non-paying writing work. I'm still getting the hang of this kind of writing. Yesterday, I was writing a blurb on an article in Grist on the history of elitism in environmentalism, part of their terrific ongoing series "Poverty and the Environment". I was trying to come up with humorous references to being super-rich and upper-crust, and I stared at a blank page for over a half hour. Well, not completely blank - I had four words:

Pass the Grey Poupon.

Yes, that's all television and my middle class background seem to have taught me about the life of the fabulously wealthy - that they stop their Bentleys at intersections to pass mustard to one another.