As Shaun Mullen reported here, all of us here at The Moderate Voice and political junkies anywhere who surfed the Internet are now minus one of the fascinating bloggers of all time — one who was often under the radar and preferred it to be that way.
“Prairie Weather,” who had her own blog, had been one of the most beloved and read contributors to TMV and it was clear her posts carried on Google News, Twitter, etc had garnered her a big following. There is a story about how I “found” her, invited her to post and met her in Texas — and the wonderful, vibrant, enormously thoughtful woman who I met. Who never wanted her name or even her gender (although she would sometimes refer to it) used. So I won’t reveal it here. But here is the story:
I surf the Internet a lot and during the days when blogs were in their glory, I’d spend hours surfing the web to see if I could find someone who wrote things that didn’t sound like the typical right/left Democratic/Republican talking points, because many blogs offer posts that sound like someone is vomiting up their favorite left/right blogger, columnist, or (more often) parroting talk show or cable show hosts. And there was Prairie Weather!
Falling into a sexist perspective, I assumed this was a man in his 40s or 30s. The writing style was punchy, witty, often blunt and extremely thoughtful. The the writer often had a twist ending comment or zinger. This person even had a unique style for attributing quotes. I emailed the person asking if I could use a post as a guest voice post. Back came an email with a woman’s name saying, go ahead. I loved the post and others did too and we discussed her being a coblogger. Yes, she replied, only the name Prairie Weather must be used and her identity cannot be revealed. She lived on a ranch and also was involved in two other websites. In fact, she wrote, just go to the blog and take whatever I want from her site when I want it. I promised her it’d usually only be one, to ensure TMV was not swallowing her site.
She loved it and became a personality in the comments section as well. And then came 2013.
I was doing a special tour of schools in my non-writing incarnation for a company and was going to be in Texas. So I emailed her about meeting her. We met at a barbecue. And we talked for two hours.
I was met by a stately, dignified, witty and intelligent woman in her mid-70s who again stressed how she liked to remain anonymous and let people guess her age and gender. She also didn’t want anyone living near her to know her identity. She talked her love of living alone, how she was an artist in Europe for many years, then bought a ranch. I’m also someone who treasures my privacy when not writing or performing, and enjoys solitude (but prefers it with cats near me). After we talked politics and about the way solitude gives you time to recover, ponder, and enjoy the moment she told me:
“Joe: You’re one of the few people I could actually live with!!”
This was a special individual, with a special soul that matched her intellect and utter nobility.
She rattled off all of the writers on The Moderate Voice who she had grown to admire and love, even though she didn’t meet them. And then we parted. But we’d stay in touch by email and she’d occasionally out of the blue email me a comment on a political development.
In his new post on his own jewel of a blog Kiko’s House today, Shaun Mullen summarizes who she was so perfectly:
Prairie Weather insisted on anonymity when she wrote, hence the nom de plummage, which I always thought was a wonderfully visceral representation of who she was: A women who had traveled the world, taught at great universities and was an accomplished painter, but cherished living alone on the plains of Central Texas about midway between Austin and San Antonio.
With unashamedly progressive views, Prairie Weather never pulled her punches when writing about the issues that concerned her. These included the dumbing down of American democracy, disintegration of traditional conservative values, the Supreme Court, women’s issues, Texas politics and the coming of Donald Trump.
And yes, you can still read her body of work at her blog HERE.
But one of the other sites she did, another labor of love, was The Scribe which was a part of her website, yet really separate where she ran long sections of articles, NPR transcripts etc.
She told me at one point when we met how she had been an artist but that she loved writing. “They always told me when I was growing up that I was good at writing.”
She was sooooooooo right. But she was also a thinker, an artist and a teacher.
It’s what you call “a life well spent,” right up to the last. She will be missed — and everyone was lucky to have interacted with her, on the Internet, in person or in the classroom.
photo credit: Laboratorium Solaris: Holidays 🙂 via photopin (license)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.