“You know……in this life. What can I say,” says Katie Hellmuth, publisher and creator of A Little Beacon Blog, about the change in direction A Little Beacon Blog is taking, again.

When A Little Beacon Blog started covering global news, some in Beacon weren’t having it. “Weren’t” is the key word here, because while some protested at their keyboards, clicked their Unsubscribe buttons, and returned to vomit in Comments, they have largely settled down and stayed at A Little Beacon Blog, refreshing their Browsers, Instagrams and Facebooks to check for the latest post. Some do so in secret, under new online aliases. They are there.

So let’s talk about it. ALBB interviews Katie Hellmuth about her decision to incorporate global news into A Little Beacon Blog, beginning with Palestine.

ALBB: How did people react when you first started covering Palestine?

That depends on which “people” you are referring to. I’ve learned, or, I’ve really felt for the second time, that there are different communities within one community. As a white lady, when I tend to say “we,” I suppose I mean “we, this group of white people.” And with my coverage of Palestine, I’ve entered into this different community from where I came. I love it. So embracing and warm.

But to your question, the original “we” from whence I came generally was/is upset. I remember when I changed my logo for ALBB, and my mother was upset. The logo started off as something like a patchwork quilt of letters. Inspired by those blocks of cement that were down at the entrance of the train station. Those cement blocks were all painted/crafted by different artists.

Eventually, I wanted something more uniform, and I loved the sidewalk chalk signs of businesses on Main Street. So I changed my logo to be mainly black. My mom was a little sad about it. She missed the “cute” look. But she eventually came around. I even tried begging the local firm Rabe & Co. do design my logo. I did a “mockup” of the direction I wanted it, showed it to them, and Ken Rabe, the lead designer, looked at it, and said: “It’s done. This is your logo. You don’t need us.”

BTW: Those cement blocks are gone now. They were on private property of a friend of then Councilperson George Mansfield, who donated the empty lot to the art project. The property owner was finally ready to develop it. You can imagine how upset people were when the blocks disappeared, and the land under them dug up. Some people. Other people were really looking forward to living there! So close to the train station in brand new townhouses.

ALBB: But isn’t it called “A Little Beacon Blog?” Why would you go outside the boarders of Beacon?

“When I wrote the post on Target, this one lady unsubscribed right away. Saying she couldn’t believe A Little Beacon Blog would write about such a damning thing as a big box store like Target. Meanwhile, she probably had several receipts from Target swimming around in her purse.”

— Katie Hellmuth

Fair. You know…when I experimented stretching the limits here at this tiny blog, I started with All Sport. I knew I needed to get advertisers outside of Beacon or I would never survive (got to earn the money from the publication! even though I came to learn that All Sport notoriously doesn’t pay for advertising, they do “trade” with editors and give them a free gym membership and maybe a few free weeks of camp if you negotiate hard, which I agreed to for about a year, and then I pulled out because banks don’t look at free gym memberships and free summer camp when you try to get a mortgage). So I did a positive blog post about All Sport, and this one guy commented something negative about it being outside of Beacon. That the blog dare to blog about anything outside the borders.

That’s when I realized that some people really do live in this Beacon bubble. And while they do drive outside of the borders, and that guy probably was a member of a gym somewhere outside of Beacon and probably did not pay for classes or membership at the local boutique fitness brands here in Beacon, he still felt like slinging a punch at me/the blog.

As for Big Box stores, some people couldn’t handle that either. One time Target dropped a bunch of new organizational bins. You’re just not going to find that many organizing bins on Main Street. So I did a round-up of them. Oooooh! This one lady unsubscribed right away. Saying she couldn’t believe A Little Beacon Blog would write about such a damning thing as a big box store like Target. Meanwhile, she probably had several receipts from Target swimming around in her purse.

ALBB: But why go global? Why bring politics into this?

Right. So that’s another thing that I learned, in the…14 years I’ve been producing this blog. ALBB is as old as my first child. I started it because I couldn’t keep track of all of these fliers telling me what was going on. Somebody asked me: “Are you going to the Easter Egg Hunt?” and I was like “What Easter Egg Hunt?” Not that I really wanted to go. But that I didn’t know about it bothered me.

Years later, I got a reader request to do a shopping guide on where else to buy Easter Egg stuff on Main Street other than Target (see!! the readers really do go to Target!). This other lady had gone to Target, and then basically ODed on everything she bought and threw away her plastic Easter Eggs. I mean…I don’t know why Easter is celebrated with plastic eggs and candy anyway. I did a shopping guide for that year, but no other years because I had other things to blog about.

ALBB: But why global. Why politics. Answer the question.

“My pro-genocide stalker also strongly wants Beacon! I have 1 or 2 stalkers now. Both of them - or they are the same person - want me to remove Beacon from this blog title, I think because being pro-Palestine is branding they don’t want for Beacon.

But why wouldn’t Beacon want to be Pro-Palestine! That’s like…why would you want to be Pro-Psychopathic Killer? Which has made me very frightened, to be honest with you. ”

— Katie Hellmuth

Sorry. Global. Another thing I’ve learned is that people are very selective with their “politics.” If you write about something they don’t like, they say: “Don’t write about politics. Keep this free of politics.” But they really only say that when I write about racial things. Otherwise, they say “thank you for the election coverage.”

Speaking of racism in Beacon. When I identify a skin color in a story, some people also write in and say “Why does skin color matter? You are creating hostility!”

So you can imagine how they felt when I began blogging about Palestine, Islamaphobia, Islamaracism, anti-Arab behavior, revelations of how often Arabs are called “terrorists” in the world and in Beacon, etc. Some people in Beacon were/are beside themselves. It’s like the secret is being revealed that Arabs are not terrorists and they don’t know what to do with themselves. This isolated, mean narrative that they have let shape their lives and justify their behavior is being shattered.

Global. So, as we know, things that happen in the world shape and touch our little lives here in our communities. If things are going to happen here locally - like a School Board debate, or a vote by a Congressman, or a protest - we need to know why and where it’s coming from.

ALBB: But “Politics”…That’s So Boring

I know. And I’m very selective about it. And I also don’t have a lot of time. So ALBB is (probably) not going to become the source for the roundup of interviews of everyone running during an election. I just don’t have the time to produce an interview series like that. Plus, I get allergic to speeches of talking points. I don’t like ALBB to be a place of press releases where very long, puffy quotes of sugar plum fairies get published to make a politician look good. Sugar coats. Glossy, hardened, sugar glaze. Tastes good. But causes cavities.

ALBB: Isn’t this CNN’s job? To report on these global issues?

Yes. Yes it is. And one of ALBB’s hawkish readers asked that very question. I told him that if CNN was doing their job, ALBB wouldn’t have to take up the slack. CNN and the rest of them are feeding us mis-information, and I’ve had enough. I was a teenager during the Iraq war, and it never felt right to me. Now I know why. I’m upset about that. I’m in the media business. So I’m going to use the skills I have to not let that happen again. Even though it is happening again.

ALBB: How have your readers felt about this?

They are not all the same readers. I’d say that some of the traditional, hard core readers who tend to lean white, have not been so happy. They want Beacon coverage only. They are a little jealous of all of the attention ALBB has been giving Palestine.

My pro-genocide stalker also strongly wants Beacon! I have 1 or 2 stalkers now. Both of them - or they are the same person - want me to remove Beacon from this blog title, I think because being pro-Palestine is branding they don’t want for Beacon.

But why wouldn’t Beacon want to be Pro-Palestine! That’s like…why would you want to be Pro-Psychopathic Killer? Which has made me very frightened, to be honest with you. These readers have also shown their true colors. Correction. Their true colors have always been on view. I have simply accepted their true colors, and become completely OK with rejecting them.

For the readers who are Pro-Palestine, which means anti-oppression, anti-occupation, anti-our-USA-federal-and-state-governments-being-a-bank-for-funding-murder (um…isn’t that traditionally called terrorism?) these readers are “refreshed” with the global, Palestinian content. They are happy to see and read it. They feel relief and a sense of hope.