{"id":3,"date":"2006-08-03T19:02:04","date_gmt":"2006-08-04T02:02:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/?p=3"},"modified":"2006-08-11T15:27:05","modified_gmt":"2006-08-11T22:27:05","slug":"getting-started-jump-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/?p=3","title":{"rendered":"Getting Started &#8211; Jump In!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hello Helena &#8211; and the rest of the world!  Welcome to a new blog site dedicated to sharing thoughts, ideas, and other specimens of literary brilliance about the goings on in and around Helena and Montana.<\/p>\n<p>By choice, if not default, most items found on this site will be of a political nature.  Mostly because I am of a political nature and those are the types of thoughts, comments, and ideas in which I usually like to indulge. <\/p>\n<p>Wow &#8211; having your own blog is like somebody died and made you Queen.  As a very wise woman once said, &#8220;It&#8217;s good to be Queen&#8221;  Got that right!<\/p>\n<p>So to explain the title of this site and my vision for how it will work&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>I am a lover of puns and all other such wordsmithing, so it was no accident that I would choose something that might be a bit of a double entendre.  I also love descriptive phrases and liberally pepper my speech and writing with them.  One of my mother&#8217;s favorite remarks when someone asked where she was going was, of course, &#8220;to hell in a handbasket&#8221; or  as I interpreted it as a child, &#8220;to Helena handbasket&#8221;.  I never knew quite where Mom was going &#8211; but she spent a lot of time there, so it had to be a fun place.  As I contemplated my concept for this site, I realized that I wanted it to be more than just me &#8211; I want this to become a shared experience &#8211; thus the &#8220;2&#8221;.  So consider &#8220;2 Helena Handbaskets&#8221; as a fun place to visit and share your thoughts and observations with friends.<\/p>\n<p>My Handbasket will be filled with whatever I want to put into it.  The other Handbasket is reserved for the thoughts and writings of everybody else who would like to contribute.  As the Chief Basket Case, I will have editorial control.  I&#8217;m hoping that the literary genius of writers like Erma Bombeck, Jean Kerr, Dave Barry, Art Buchwald, P. J. O&#8217;Rourke, Patrick J. McManus, and even Ann Coulter will inspire all of us to incorporate humor and style into the communication of our points of view on various topics.  That way &#8211; even if we can&#8217;t change anybody&#8217;s mind, we can at least provide a bit of entertainment for what I hope will be an ever-expanding audience.<\/p>\n<p>Although this site is formatted as a blog, I really would like it to become a dynamic collection of light essays on a variety of subjects.  I know there are many talented writers out there and this can be the forum you use to publish those literary gems.  From time to time, I might suggest a theme, but generally I will leave your handbasket for you to fill.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose there will have to be some rules, but I think I&#8217;ll wait to get into those details. <\/p>\n<p>Ok everybody, get out those laptops.<\/p>\n<p>Ready.  Set. Write!!!!!!!!<\/p>\n<p>P.S.  Rule 2: You may request that your submissions be published either with or without your name or, naturally, you may use a penname.  Tell me what you want.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hello Helena &#8211; and the rest of the world! Welcome to a new blog site dedicated to sharing thoughts, ideas, and other specimens of literary brilliance about the goings on in and around Helena and Montana. By choice, if not &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/?p=3\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Xq4i-3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":765,"href":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions\/765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/2helenahandbaskets.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}