Kona Gallagher

Looking a little dazed and confused on his first day of school

In addition to all of the b5media drama, there have been a lot of other changes going on around here the past few weeks. Luke started a new job two weeks ago, I started a new day job one week ago, and Cooper started daycare. So basically, everyone’s schedules have drastically changed, and none of us has any idea which way is up at any given time.

The whole job thing happened really quickly, so it was very fortunate that I was able to find a daycare for Cooper that didn’t creep me out. I had toured a few places over the summer, and although they were nice (and in one case, very expensive), there was something that depressed me about each of them. Neither was a place I wanted to send my child all day.

Continue reading →

Back up your content and decide what you’re going to do after you get fired. Do this quickly, because make no mistake: you’re next. I’m not trying to sound ominous or over-dramatic, but I also thought this would have gone without saying. I found out last night, however, that I was wrong.

It turns out I’m still on the b5media mailing list, and there was an email that went out to bloggers last night to which current bloggers responded. It was about a small problem, but what really struck me is that there are at least a few bloggers who were concerned about this small problem. You guys, you have much bigger problems with which to be concerned.

Continue reading →

I’ve been getting this question a lot, so it makes sense to try to answer it in a central place. I no longer write for Medium Dreams, and in fact, the site no longer exists. None of this was my choice. Here’s how it went down:

- On February 16, I received an emailed form letter stating that my contract with b5media (who owns a large blog network that included Medium Dreams) had been terminated. There was no reason given for this, other than a vague “new direction for the company” excuse.
- In the letter, they tell me to email info@b5media.com if I have any questions. At this point, I’m thinking I’ve been fired, so yeah, I have questions. I’m a freelance writer, so if I get fired off of a job, it’s pretty important to find out why. That way, I can either not make the same mistakes again, or learn from the experience in ways that will help my other writing jobs. I email them, and I don’t hear back.
- I contact a b5 blogger with whom I’ve been working, to see if she has any insight into why I had been fired. She emails me back immediately, telling me that the entire entertainment channel (around 50 blogs) has been let go, including her.
- I go to Medium Dreams and find that I’ve been locked out of the site.
Continue reading →

Southwest Airlines has been at the front of my mind recently. My very last post, in fact, was about a Southwest flight to Florida I just took with my son. While it was a ridiculously stressful trip, the stress was mainly due to the fact that I had a newly-mobile child who was being forced to remain mostly immobile for about two and a half hours. In fact, I kept on saying that Southwest, with whom I had not flown in some time because they stopped having service in and out of the NYC area, was quickly becoming my favorite airline.

The past decade has been a rough one for air travel: prices have gone up, while service has gone down. The airlines are almost uniformly stripping us of amenities while simultaneously nickel and diming us for everything they can think of. Southwest, on the other hand, has been working on bucking the trend, offering free checked baggage and the ability to change your flight with very little stress. The trade-off, however, seems to be a high dose of public humiliation, given out seemingly at random.

Continue reading →

I’ve flown with Cooper several times. While we’ve had a few dicey situations, overall he’s pretty good on a plane. I know all the tricks in order to assure success: plenty of food, drink, toys and other distractions. However, when I unexpectedly had to go to Florida the other week alone with a now-walking Cooper, it was a whole new world.

Matt Logelin must be some sort of crazy voodoo magician, because holy Christ, traveling with a mobile child is an entirely new level of stress that I was wholly unprepared for. I mean, yes, I was logistically prepared, and I knew the fact that Cooper was busy cutting three molars may complicate matters, but what I didn’t expect? What I didn’t see coming? Was lining up for our flight and having Cooper running away from me. To the point where I couldn’t see him. In a busy international airport. And then I died.

Continue reading →