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January 21, 2007

A surfin' we will go, a surfin' we will go...

One of the interesting things about being associated with this blog and with being a compulsive hit counter watcher has been the slow but steady trickle of hits coming to PK from folks surfing through Carla's Progressive Women Bloggers Ring.

Not being vaginally endowed, or self-identifying as a Progressive, I've never had the time or the inclination to personally surf through the (currently) 397 member sites in her Web Ring. But as I say, I do like to watch our hit counter here to see where our traffic is coming from. And so it is that my native curiosity has led me to follow the odd hit back to a member blog of her Ring. And the one that I found this morning has impressed me.

In general terms I've long been pretty open and relaxed, not to mention curious, about human sexuality (how can one improve one's own skills without being curious and open to new ideas?). That trait led me some months back to follow a hit back to Feminism Without Clothes - the blog of a young woman who is both an interesting and provocative writer and who also intersperses her posts with nude pictures of herself from her vocation as a nude model.

So this morning when I was looking through PK's hits I saw a visit from the URL: http://www.padandpanty.blogspot.com/

My first thought was, "oh... how kinky. This could be interesting." It also seemed a self-evident hit from another of Carla's sister Progressive Woman Bloggers. So I clicked on the link to check it out.

Not exactly on par with Feminism Without Clothes. Which is to say that my initial assumption proved incorrect - no kink. But I was curious about the URL because I'm familiar enough with Blogger and BlogSpot to know that a person creating a new blog has complete control over what to name it and, except for the obligitory proprietary suffix, complete control over what the URL will be. So I looked around and read some of the posts by Working Girl, the nom de plume of the apparently sole author of this blog which is actually named Mostly True Stories.

It turns out that Working Girl is apparently a student in Nursing School and appears to be specializing in obstetrics. She writes quite frankly about all kinds of things revolving mostly, but not exclusively, around obstetrics. Things like Trimming the Hedges which is largely on the topic of the trimming (or lack thereof) of a pregnant woman's pubic hair and what the Nurses who take care of her might think of her style.

What really struck me though, and served as the impetus for me to write this post (which really is out of character for me here at PK) is that Working Girl is a truly gifted story teller. Most of the posts there, written more dryly, would have quickly bored me and I would have moved on to something more interesting elsewhere. But this woman writes in a very engaging manner which just sucks you into the post as if reading an interesting story. It's a gift that I recognize from my own father. Not everyone tells a good story (whether fact or fiction). In fact, few people seem to possess the natural ability to tell a story in a manner which keeps the audience riveted, almost regardless of the content of the story. Working Girl, like my own father, clearly has this gift.

For example, she has a post up from a week ago called Code Brown which is about poop in an obstetric setting. Now scat just is NOT something that interests me at all. So my first thought upon seeing this particular post was, "ewwwww... gross!" But the next thing I knew I was reading the last sentence of the post! I thought, "damn! She's pretty good. Few writers could have sucked me into reading something like this." But not only did she manage to hook me but I found it entertaining to read! I even identified with it in my own way, having had limited experience with being all doped up post-surgery. LOL I even paused to wonder if I'd inadvertantly made life unpleasant for the professional nursing staff who took care of me after my back surgery a decade ago.

So at any rate... for those of you PK readers who enjoy reading a really well-crafted post by a truly capable writer, regardless of what is being written about, go check out Mostly True Stories. I still don't know how she came to choose such an interesting and provocative URL. But I suppose that's just more incentive to follow her writing and perhaps she'll eventually reveal the connection.

Enjoy!

Posted by Kevin at January 21, 2007 01:15 PM