Cathy Seipp’s world
I had heard that blogger Cathy Seipp had been illl and that the prognosis was poor, so this news shouldn’t have come as a surprise.
But it did. Someone so young and full of life shouldn’t be dying, we think, even though we know it happens far too frequently.
I didn’t know Cathy Seipp personally. I had met her so briefly at the PJ launch back in November of 2005 that we barely exchanged more than a “hello.” But there was no mistaking her syle, flair, wit, and penetrating intelligence, even in those few seconds.
And no one reading her articles or her blog could fail to notice that she had one of the most distinctive voices in journalism. Hard-hitting but never bombastic, with a tone that seemed casual and yet was extraordinarily clever, she made it clear she didn’t suffer fools gladly. And almost everything she wrote was laced with graceful humor.
She made it look easy. It’s not.
Cathy Seipp’s blog was (is) called “Cathy’s World.” Like most bloggers, she wrote about whatever she felt like writing about; that’s the special joy of a blog for a professional journalist like Cathy. As she said in her normblog profile back in Novermber of 2004:
For many years as a journalist who spent a lot of time interviewing people, I imagined writing a book or column called What About ME and MY Feelings?!?. But now that I have a blog, that’s handled.
Here are a few more quotes from the profile that might give you a small taste of the special flavor of Cathy’s wit and thought:
What philosophical thesis do you think it most important to disseminate? > That just because nice people believe something doesn’t mean it’s true….
If you could effect one major policy change in the governing of your country, what would it be? > More funding and support for the military. Those ‘Support Our Troops – Bring Them Home’ protest signs from the left don’t count as support. That’s like demonstrating outside a burning building, screaming at the firemen running in that for God’s sake they should turn around and run back out.
What would be your most important piece of advice about life? > I’ve always been a big believer in the importance of kicking your own ass. That is, forcing yourself to do what you don’t necessarily feel like doing at the time.
What do you consider the most important personal quality? > A certain large-mindedness, or generosity of spirit – because this encompasses not only extending yourself for others, but other qualities like courage, and having friends who disagree with you politically, and not constantly worrying about what other people think. …
What is your most treasured possession? > My house, which I bought when the LA real estate market bottomed out 10 years ago. I wouldn’t want a different house even if I had a zillion dollars – which, come to think of it, is practically what it’s worth now.
If you had to change your first name, what would you change it to? > Now that’s a sore subject, because when I was a teenager I really hated my boring name. I would doodle idiotic alternatives like Olwyn Sayre or Chelseureka Paprika in my school notebooks, and regularly pestered my mother to tell me other names she’d considered, but the only one she ever came up with was Nancy, which obviously is just as plain. How could she have been so unimaginative?! So then I’d ask about my younger sister, who got the slightly more exotic name of Michele. Didn’t she at least consider another name when she was pregnant that time? ‘Well, I always liked Nancy…’ Hopeless. I still don’t think Cathy is a particularly fine name, but by now I’m used to it.
There’s an ancient Talmudic saying that when anyone saves a single life it is as though he saves a world. The reverse seems true as well: that whenever anyone departs from this life, it is as though we lose a world.
And now, sadly and way too soon, we are about to lose the funny, wise, idiosyncratic, never-to-be-duplicated world of Cathy Seipp.
Please send your hopes and prayers to Cathy Seipp and her family and friends.
I can’t remember when I first started reading CW, but I must have come over from NRO. The comments area turned in to quite the gathering place. This last month or two it’s been so strange, hanging around for news, passing the time, arguing, wondering why Cathy doesn’t ban so-and-so…someone said it was like we were playing in her back yard and she didn’t mind.
I’ll miss her writing and her backyard too.
Unfortunately, I never encountered Cathy’s World until the last week.
The samples you posted of her wisdom, humor and grace are wonderful.
It is a shame to lose one so gifted when she had much to say and the ability to say it so well.
May God bless her family and lighten their burden of loss.
Thank you for this post.
I have read Cathy’s World for several years. I especially enjoyed when the daughter was younger, and Cathy would rail against the idiocies of the teachers and administrators at the daughter’s (Maia’s) school.
Maia would be 14, then 15, well read for one that age, much more politically conservative than Cathy, and much disgusted when her teachers said something silly and liberal in class. Maia would spout off in class. The teachers would respond with accusations against Maia. Maia would write long, teenaged girl angst filled posts about the incidents at her blog – Cecille Dubois. Cathy would mention it at Cathy’s World. Maia’s post at Cecille Dubois would receive 100 comments excoriating the teacher. Maia, emboldened, would spout off again in class; then Cathy and Maia would end up, again, seated across the desk from an exasperated, harried, not especially erudite principal, who could not for the life of him figure out why these two crazy females kept disrupting his harmony. Oh, it was GREAT ENTERTAINMENT, during my earliest days in the blogosphere. Once, Maia’s teacher accused Maia of being a racist. That was good for 220 comments in Maia’s blog before she went back to school the next day, eventually followed by the inevitable trip of Maia and Cathy back into the principal’s office. Cathy eventually moved Maia out of that private school, and back into public school for her last high school years.
nationalreview.comHere’s a Cathy NRO excerpt from Feb 2004:
My 14-year-old blogger daughter got Instalanched last week, after she wrote about how her English teacher had ridiculed her in front of the class for writing an un-p.c. paper. I’ve heard what happens when the mighty Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds links you but never seen it up close, and it really is amazing: From 100 hits a day (typical for a teenager’s blog) to 100 an hour, with links to dozens of other blogs and almost 200 posted comments from Edinburgh to Auckland.
[…]
Now that so many teens have blogs, concerns about doctrinaire teachers may be passé. Our sons and our daughters are beyond their control.
You can read the entire column here:
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/seipp200402120821.asp
She seems very wise, from the words you have quoted, Neo. It is sad to see such wisdom go from this world. Because in a sense, we need more people like her. But not even the mighty United States can stop death’s call.
Not yet anyways.
This is a wonderful tribute, neo, thank you. You have done a splendid job in articulating what was so inspiring about Cathy’s voice.
Now that I think of it, the bloggers I have come to read on a regular basis are all writers who provide something uplifting at least part of the time. You are of one of them!
Sad as it is to lose this lovely writer so early, I think she would appreciate the silver lining her death has brought: our recognition of the bonds that prose can create. The written word is a powerful thing, and it can be beautiful.
Thanks again for using your beautiful voice to remember Cathy’s.
And Carol, thank you for the image of Cathy’s backyard. I had that experience, too, but not the words for it. I think maybe that backyard will live on and on.