Why the name “Kalilily Time”? Kalilily is pronounced like calla lily, which is my favorite flower.
Kali is for the Hindu Goddess Kali. Lily is for Adam’s original wife, Lilith — both formidable female archetypes.
I began this blog in 2001, when I started a ten-year stint as my mother’s live-in caregiver as she began slipping into dementia. The time I spent writing on my blog and reading others was my alone time. As a personal blog, it is pretty much a chronicle of my life, interspersed with essays on whatever topics strike my interest at the time and some of my poetry.
I began when blogging was new, and I was fortunate to become part of a blogging community that included some of the most respected individuals in the fields of technology and communication. As a result, I was invited to attend the first blogging conference held at Harvard. While they all went on to write books and make even bigger names for themselves, I simply continued to blog.
Early on, I was quoted in several newspaper feature articles about women bloggers, and I was one of the oldest female bloggers at the time. When Jeneane Sessum had the idea of a “Blogsisters” site, she invited me to moderate it with her.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2003-07-30-0307300044-story.html
https://womensenews.org/2004/08/women-go-blogging-and-find-freedom-speech/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121259672013845371
I continue blogging because it is the one way available to me to feel that I have some meaning a world in which I am too much invisible. In my younger days, I marched in Washington for Roe vs Wade; I marched to end the war in Guatemala. I marched locally for peace. As time went on and I couldn’t march, I made pink Pussy Hats for those who were marching against Trump.
Now, on occasion, I pick an issue to support by blogging. But mostly I blog because it’s the one place I can be honest with myself and the world. It is my identity. It is my legacy.