So, call me a self-promoter, but you read the subtitle to this blog so you know what you're getting into... I am now taking the opportunity to promote PGPlus, our new innovative premium content web site. The Guardian of London has even written about us!!! And I shamelessly sent out this email to friends, which I will now post here:

If you're bemoaning the slow demise of the print newspaper, and of all that excellent journalism that seems to be vanishing, here's a way you can help! The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has come up with a ground-breaking new initiative that we hope will create something of a new business model for ALL newspapers. We learned from the NYTimes failure of "Times Select" -- when they made people pay for all their favorite columnists and writers. It was a flop. We are NOT going to take away ANYTHING that people already get online now at www.post-gazette.com... for free. Rather, we have a new initiative being unveiled on Tuesday that we hope will make money for the paper. It's called PGPlus, and for the low, low price of $3 a month you get access to all sorts of NEW online "extras" -- but original content nonetheless.

It's a way to address the fact that we have millions of unique users who pay nothing for our first-rate journalism provided online.

And hey, that's okay... except that even journalists need to eat!

We have lots of talent in this newsroom, lots of professional journalism experience, that we can offer in this new format. Most of PGPlus, frankly, is aimed at Pittsburgh's huge sports audiences who cannot get enough of the Steelers, Penguins, Penn State and Pitt football or basketball -- or even the miserable Pirates.But there will be other things in the mix besides sports.

I will be hosting a ten minute weekly webcast (with guests!) called "Mackenzie Carpenter's Omnivore," loosely modeled on Tina Brown and her "Daily Beast," where I talk about whatever suits my fancy -- in politics, culture, books, gossip, lifestyle and try to interview smart, funny people about these issues without being too stuffy.

One recent show noted, for example, that the New Yorker's online "Book Bench" blogged about and linked to my story a few weeks ago on the lively independent publishing scene in Pittsburgh -- prompting an online fight in their comments section about the merits/demerits of Pittsburgh! In THE NEW YORKER!!!!

PG Plus will also have book critics, movie critics, food writers, photographers, cartoonists all offering their own content too. Again, for $3 a month, you can help us invent a new business model that's rich in content, fun AND will help save newspapers and ... DEMOCRACY!!! :)

To learn more, go to www.post-gazette.com and click on PG Plus...

Just finished a week of following Netroots Nation and its counter-conference, Right Online. These bloggers are so interesting... and I got to see Bill Clinton wag his finger at a heckler while frantically racing to file a story on deadline, because, of course, he was late late late to address the liberal bloggers...
I did manage to play blogger tourist and shoot this pic of Daily Kos himself, Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, taking a break (he's slouching on a clear plastic chair). He was pretty much the first to do political blogging on a wide scale... Daily Kos is the biggest community website in the world. He was very nice. And so was Austin James, a very young blogger for the American Majority, a conservative group.

Sublime summer weather

It's July 18th and the air is fresh and cool... it could be Maine, it could be Oregon... but it's Pittsburgh, and it's the best sleeping weather you could imagine... no air-conditioning unit in the window yet, and it's July 18.
The hydrangeas have been outstanding... as you can see from this photo taken on my rather lame BlackBerry camera. That's the tent my daughter Leslie pitched in our backyard as soon we returned home from our New England trip... she just couldn't bring herself to sleep in her own bed, I guess. She and daughter Annie were a delight all throughout the trip... here they are outside the Plaza Hotel in New York... where we stumbled upon Mariah Carey preening for the papparazzi. Inspired, I told my girls to preen for me:










They were pretty amazed, but, hey, anything can happen in Manhattan... and here they are on a friend's Vermont porch, preparing to go inspect the bullfrogs in her pond...










And, to top it all off, here's a photo from another front porch I really like ... far far from Vermont, but just as beautiful!

If there is a heaven it must be early June

Every day, I walk outside and think, the the garden cannot become any more beautiful. Then, it defies me and becomes more beautiful.





How is this possible? I do not have a particularly grand garden... my house, while atmospheric in its late 19th-C.-farmhouse-ness...
is a tad shabby around the edges (although the dining room looked awfully nice the other evening for my annual strawberry shortcake fest... I baked up a whole lot of the richest shortcakes and dumped them on the table, and voila! Abundance....)


I honestly believe, though, I live in a palace -- at least I do when it's early June. I told a friend that one evening not long ago, I came home from a hard day at work, stepped out the back door, and glimpsed this sight... all the while inhaling the sharp, sweet fragrance of honeysuckle. I felt I was the richest woman in the world, although technically I am far from that:

Here's a fabulous article about Mary Chapin that I had to share...

Lovely, lovely May

It's the month of May, the month when we gardeners go out of our minds with delirium. Just when I'm thinking NOTHING is more beautiful than the marble pink of magnolia soulangeana blossoms against a stormy gray April sky, May presents herself with lilacs, daphne, and glossy green, lime green, lettuce green, velvet green green green green... if we're lucky, we get some soft spring days before summer's fiercer heat... but Pittsburgh's Mays are generally chilly and rainy. So we shall see.

This year's cherry tree bloom was a bit anemic, which worries me, so I'm posting a photo of last year's bloom, which was spectacular... right outside my window...












Back in the real world, I was in Washington, DC, last week, reporting on how the city has changed or not changed in the first 100 days of Obama. You can read about it here.


Better yet, check out my video version of the story at http://www.post-gazette.com/multimedia/?videoid=101823

Dreaming of magnolias

Pittsburgh's magnolias are nowhere near close to bloom... but I am already starting to fantasize... maybe three weeks from now? Here is one magnolia whose buds I captured for posterity a year ago... it's on the way to work... I nearly drove off the road when I saw it. Please ignore the yewball right beside it. I would like to hurl a Molotov cocktail at these horrible foundation plantings... they're magnets for bugs and mice and peeing dogs... and ugly to boot. But oh, those magnolias!!!!