A True Blogger is Born

Many magazines have been delivered to my mailbox in the last ten years -- hundreds have been read, stacked, boxed and then finally discarded when it's time to move to a new home. In the last eight years (and six moves), my Martha Stewart Living collection has always spared a trip to the recycling bin. In fact, in our home office, I have one shelf reserved for the back issues and each of their white spines reflects the perfect decorative and craft world I aspire to be a part of.

My fondness for the Martha Stewart aesthetic is partly why I'm very proud to have her blog hosted on TypePad.

Today, however, the pride I felt was not because of our association with the Martha Stewart brand of aesthetic perfection, but about our association with Martha Stewart, the blogger.

The post that inspired this pride? Sadly, it was about the passing of her precious Chow, Paw Paw. So much talk about blogging is about blogs with a capital "B," the blogs that are supposed to act as change-the-world media. When the punch line to many a joke about blogging happens to involve a reference to a dog or cat, it's hard to appreciate the impact a post like Martha's could make.

As someone who has written about losing a pet, I know how difficult sharing this sort of news can be. The tribute to Paw Paw's last day was, as a friend put it, "the sort of post that they wanted to write when their own dog passed away." My friends and fellow bloggers who read the Paw Paw post were touched by Martha's candid reflection on the animal that meant so much to her. A few of my friends were even moved to tears.

But the best part about Martha's post was its simplicity. It was a real blog post, not something manufactured for a glossy magazine. It was a chronology of Paw Paw's last day. The captions, as written by Paw Paw, were brief and so not about perfection and good things, but about a good life.

"I went out for one last pee" is a phrase I never imagined would be penned by Stewart's hand, but there it was.

And because this was a blog conversation, we were able to read the comments from well-wishers and see how her post affected them.

So, thank you, Martha Stewart, for demonstrating how a media mogul and household name can use blogging to show such a different side of a person, as well as take the best of media and personal communication and make it completely heartfelt

To Paw Paw, here's to a good life!