featuring Favorite Web Personalities #10 and #11: Margaret and Helen

Too many posts, too little time…

I have been a bit bogged down with the technical side of blogging these days, plus seasonal stuff, plus my inlaws are staying at my house - so I thought it was a stroke of luck when I came across these two ladies which now put me ahead of schedule for next week. Now maybe I’ll have some time to finish one of the zillion posts I have sitting in my ‘drafts’ pile!

Platform: Wordpress blog ‘Margaret and Helen‘

Who They Are:

Helen Philpot is an 82 year old grandmother who shares a blog with her best friend Margaret Schmechtman, who she met in college almost 60 years ago. Helen’s grandson Matthew also plays a role (he started the blog for them and helps them out with admin stuff by the looks of it).

Best Quote Online:

“Some friendships last a lifetime. We just seem to be living a hell of a long time.”

5 Reasons Why I Chose Them:

1. It looks like they are pretty popular (their blog has had 1,303,680 hits) but, true to my manifesto, I’m not going to hold that against them and I’m featuring them anyways. I found them when I was looking at a list of the most popular blogs on wordpress so that I could see what themes they were using and what features they had on their home pages. At a time when I was extremely frustrated by my lack of knowledge about all things blog-like (css, themes, widgets, upgrading to 2.7, etc) it was inspirational to find to eighty year old grandmamas who were blogging. Yay for them!

2. They sound authentic. There seems to be some question about whether they are real or not but their voices sound authentic to me, who ever they are.

3. Funny, funny - I can’t help it, my favorites of the week tend towards comedy not tragedy. Maybe I’ll keep my eyes open for a serious personality for January… Here’s an excerpt from one of their posts (click on the quote to read the whole thing):

…each morning when I wake up there is a brief moment until I realize that I still need my glasses to see the clock before realizing I must still be in this old body of mine… Then I turn and put a mirror under Harold’s nose to determine if I still need to put on my make-up and do my hair.

4. Their blunt common sense is refreshing- and they swear, or at least Helen does.

5. They have tshirts.