About

Hi.

Welcome to my blog – The Woo Woo Teacup Journal.

When I decided to start a new blog, I wanted a new name. (My old blog is over at Blogger. It’s Filter & Splice and represents over a year’s worth of work. I’m quite fond of it and won’t delete it. Google will have to wrest it out of my cold, dead hands, although, Google being Google, the company can zap it any time it wants and there isn’t thing one I can do about it. Except that I’ve made a paper copy for my personal archives, so there.)

The aside aside, I wanted a new name that said something about me. I enjoy writing with elements of the mysterious forces of life, be they scientific explanations or emotional explanations for the unexplained. Life is about mystery and I think Life likes it that way. Just as we solve one dilemma scientifically, another slithers out from the atomic ooze and we’re puzzling away at it. I like to call mysteries that present themselves to us and make us shiver the “woo woo” experiences of life. Thus, the Woo Woo part of the name.

The Teacup part was a happy accident. While trying to come up with a name, I happened to clean my glass cabinet containing various personal tchotchkes. Inside the cabinet are four decorative teacups that were handed down to me by my mother’s side of the family. They have various floral designs, which I love, and I’m a tea-drinker (don’t touch coffee), so they have a great deal of meaning for me. Thus, the Teacup part of the name.

The word Journal seemed to cap the whole thing off nicely, plus, I’m a writer, so it’s fitting.

The other thing I like about the new title is that there are lots of round letters in it. As an artist, I produce whimsical, curvilinear pieces – swirls and circles being more attractive to me than geometrics. Not that I don’t like geometrics, it’s just that this isn’t what comes out of my soul when I create. I can’t really explain it. It just is.

Dear me, I haven’t properly introduced myself! Not so much as a handshake and I launch right into my philosophy of life practically. My name is Mary Warner and I live in Minnesota. I have a darling and loving family, which consists of a wonderful husband, three brilliant and charming children and three furry children, who we tend to refer to as cats, but have observed they are every bit as individual as our human children. (One, Miss Stinky, has just come to sit on my keyboard, which is her favorite place to pester me.)

I am a writer and an artist and a Museum Manager*, so that makes me a historian, too. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in weaving and enjoy all sorts of fiber arts (sewing, knitting, crocheting, weaving, beading, etc.), as well as drawing. Through my work, I’ve co-written one book with my co-workers and written another with a guy who’s been dead since 1908. I’ve written many essays, of both a personal and a historical nature, and had a couple of articles published in a museum-related magazine. I’m currently working on a book that is a series of linked short stories, which I call the Greenville series. When it’s finished, you’ll be the first to know. [May 10, 2009: “Greenville: Where Longing Meets Loss” is finished and available through my Cafe Press store. Link in the sidebar.]

I have a variety of other interests, but one of the most dear to my heart is music – even though I’m not a musician. (Major bummer, believe me.) I listen to a lot of different kinds of music, but am not an aficionado and can’t tell you the technical aspects of a piece. I listen to what I like and have a tendency to listen ad nauseum in finitum. My current obsession, in case you don’t already know from reading Filter & Splice, is the Dave Matthews Band. [May 10, 2009: Since writing this, I’ve also added Nine Inch Nails to my list of musical interests.]

Is this enough for an About page? I hope so.

Please feel free to visit often and leave comments. Having a blog makes me very conscious of you, my readers, and while this may get a little personal at times, I hope that what I say will connect with you on a broader level.

Take care,

Mary Warner

[*Addendum: October 29, 2009 – The views expressed on the Woo Woo Teacup Journal are mine alone, not those of my employer, the Morrison County Historical Society. I take full and sole responsibility for what I’ve written here. I’ll even take credit for my work, if you insist.  🙂 ]

[*Addendum: December 10, 2009 – According to the FTC’s Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (all 81 pages of it), bloggers need to disclose whether they have received anything (money, products, etc.) for endorsing specific products. Because I periodically discuss various consumer products and books on the Woo Woo Teacup Journal, I thought I’d address this right here, right now so the FTC doesn’t get its undies in a bunch. I have never received remuneration (money, products, etc.) for the products and books I talk about here. If ever, in some distant future far, far away, I do receive remuneration for discussing a particular product, I’ll let you know. As I am really crappy at monetizing anything (unlike this dude), I can’t actually picture that happening. You never know, though. Maybe one day hippos will fly to the ruby-filled basket at the foot of the Giant Peruvian Flute Hat Tree.]