Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
The Return of MC Masala
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2011 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
From April 2005 to August 2007, I wrote a weekly column, "MC Masala," for several Bay Area newspapers in the Alameda/ANG Newspaper Group. Circulation: maybe 200,000?
Between now & then, I've made various uninspired attempts to get copies of the articles -- I had my drafts, of course, but I didn't have images of many of them as they'd been published on the page. for a while I entertained a vague idea of assembling such things for a clippings file. You know, so I could brandish it at big media gatekeepers and get another heighty soapbox.
But it's just too much bother to track down microfilm and whatnot from the other side of the continent. I eventually decided that I'd be satisfied with the texts of the published articles, which include corrections and improvements from my editors. If I want to court Big Media someday I have other ways to do it.
So I got advice from Ask MetaFilter, and then yesterday I sat in front of a New York Public Library computer with a USB drive for a little bit and went download-happy.
MC Masala Reposts. Not in chronological order, not guaranteed to be comprehensive, haven't decided on a posting rhythm yet, written by a woman substantially less mature than I am now. First up: that one about raisins, from 6 May 2007.
(P.S. Thanks especially to Brendan, Leonard, and James for pushing me on this!)
(P.P.S. I'm reposting the column under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike. Share it, remix it, translate it, podcast it, go on ahead.)
(P.P.P.S. Yes, I'm thinking about a print-on-demand paperback someday.)
Comments
Mel Chua
http://blog.melchua.com
24 Feb 2011, 10:37 a.m.
Awesome - I'm glad you did this! I think we started talking not too long before the time of that 6 May 2007 post, and I'm about the same age now as you were then... it's weird to look back on that and see the subtle changes in writing that happens as people grow older.
Looking forward to reading more.