Cary Tennis Leaves Salon: Now it gets interesting

C

Dear Friends,

I have left Salon.com after 14 years. My unique advice column, which ran on Salon.com as Since You Asked from October 17, 2001 to Sept. 30, 2013, just shy of 12 years, will now run on my own site, carytennis.com. For now, it doesn’t have a new name. I am open to suggestions. Once I get started (letters are already coming in) it will run weekly but if I find a way to make it self-supporting I will run it more frequently. Please send letters to advice@carytennis.comβ€”and tell your friends! The more people who get involved the more likely we’ll be able to keep the column running for the long haul. It turns out that giving advice is a hard habit to break.

And … now that I am free of that welcome but all-consuming daily task, I turn with renewed energy to spreading the Amherst Writers and Artists workshop method around the world, and writing, speaking, participating in conferences, playing music and enjoying life.

Since I no longer work at Salon my old ctennis@salon.com email address no longer works. If you have sent email to me recently and it bounced back, that is why. Please email me personally at cary@carytennis.com, and email questions about workshops, getaways, retreats and other matters of business to info@carytennis.com.

I will be in Baltimore this weekend, Oct. 12 and 13, leading Amherst Writers and Artists workshops from 9 am to noon on Saturday and Sunday at the Idylwylde Hall, 6301 Sherwood Road. I hope to see many of my Baltimore and D.C. friends there. See more here.

That’s all for now. I will be posting more regularly now on our own site, and am looking forward to having a more robust personal engagement with you, my many friends, fans, fellow writers, workshop leaders and family.

Now it gets interesting.

β€”Cary T.

10 comments

  • I guess I found about pretty late about your leaving Salon.com, just now – with the new year already 1/12th gone!
    I didn’t visit that site for any other reason but to read your columns. (Sometimes, especially a few years ago before the color scheme and layout of the site became so much clunkier and hard on the eyes, I’d stay around and read some of their other articles for half an hour, but they wouldn’t have drawn me there on their own.)
    What I would do is visit you there about 3 or 4 times a year, when a certain feeling came over me, and read all your columns from the interim in one fell swoop.
    I used to make comments below your articles until they changed the comments system a few years ago and somehow I wasn’t able to register the new way and couldn’t even *see* Salon’s reader comments underneath articles on my web browser anymore. I think it was due to my antivirus software, computer privacy set-up, or something. Or maybe they were charging for it and I didn’t want to pay – I forget.
    It’s great that they list your new web address and direct your readers here. That’s nice of them. I’m also glad to see that you are able to post old columns here, so it’s good you have part-ownership of your past articles.
    Several years ago, I was annoyed by something you wrote (which I am occasionally) and I went in search of more information about you and found a personal website of yours (I guess it is this one) and on the main landing page there was a photo of you and your wife, maybe a black and white photo, and maybe your dogs, on a sofa, and I thought, “I so like the aura of his wife that I now think that he is ‘okay’ again.” πŸ™‚ I didn’t do much else on the site at the time – just seeing the photo was enough. So off I went, and thought about other things for another 3 or 4 months before needing my next big dose of your advice (generally it was a through-the-wee-hours-on-a-sleepless-night kind of jag when I’d get in my advice-columnist mood). Those times, I would also go read Bel Mooney on the Daily Mail site in the UK, whose readers and advice are usually, figuratively, though also, I suppose, literally, half a world apart from yours, though loosely fall into one of the other circles on the Venn diagram of my life.
    I enjoyed reading many of the questions sent in to you because so many echoed my own life/thoughts/fears. Sometimes I thought it would have been great to have a way to contact some of those people in real life. I was really flustered a couple of times, after I stopped being able to leave comments on Salon, because I had things I wanted to say to the letter-writers, having been in similar predicaments myself. (The most recent of those was the American woman who had moved to Sweden and was going through culture shock.) Granted, a few times it seemed as if the questions were homework assignments for one of your creative writing courses — πŸ˜€ — but mostly they seemed authentic. πŸ˜‰
    I am regretting that I’ve put in a pretend email address in my 3 comments boxes here tonight (just a privacy thing I usually do with any blog), because maybe I want to be a real person here.
    It’s such a positive thing that you are vigorously moving forward in this way after your previous engagement came to an end. You have much to be proud of, and much left to do.
    Yes, yes, yes, Cary Tennis, sometimes you’ve touched my heart and I’ve cried. Sometimes I’ve thought, “Oh gosh, no”. Always I’ve admired your down-to-earth floaty-in-the-clouds combo. You are earnest and fallible, well-meaning and caring, with a certain magnetism on-the-page.
    Thank you.
    Best wishes to you and your wife.

  • I’d wondered what happened at Salon; as for other commenters, your columns were always my main draw to their site. You had been sounding stressed and on-edge this last year – no worries, not terribly obvious, but clear to this long-time reader. Your compassion always came through. Glad to hear you’ll have more time now.

    Also glad to have found you, finally! I kept waiting for “Since You Asked…” or your byline to come up, finally scoured the site today, ended up having to do a web search. Salon seems to be diving for the “fast journalism” trend; sad to see it. On the other hand it does leave even more room for those of us who know that humanity and exploration of our depths takes time.

    Wisdom Well? (What?! I like Jung and post-Jungian thought. Also like the I Ching. Wisdom Well has a nice mix of moderately tacky alliteration and yet is also a nod to our shared humanity, and how much of it remains hidden. Which can be both refreshing and risky.)

  • Hey, Cary,
    I’m glad to hear you are going to continue your good work in another venue. You add good karma to the world, and I resonate with your dogma as well.

    Please keep at it! I look forward to developments!

    Anne

    • Seconding the name!

      I am sorry to hear you got fired, but glad to see you’re still doing a column!

  • Cary,
    I have been reading your column regularly since I was about 21 years old (I’m pushing the other side of 30 now). It was the only reason I ever went to salon.com; I have no need to ever visit that website again in the future. I am so pleased that you are still out there, writing beautiful advice for lurkers like me to enjoy. I wish you all the best with your future endeavours, whatever they may be, and will continue to visit this site with keen interest.

  • Hi Cary and Norma,
    Often in reading through your responses I have noted a book that you have suggested or referenced. I can’t really say “noted” because I never really stopped reading long enough to actually write down said book. So, perhaps you could make a tab on this new ans adventurous website that lists books that you consider valuable or at least worth a look through. I’m pleased that my lost has been found by having done some sleuthing and will eventually “like” you on FB so that I can more easily share you with my friends.
    Sincerely,
    Jamin

  • I just sent an advice request to Salon, but rescinded it when I found out that you had been fired, since I don’t trust anyone else to answer this delicate and unusual predicament that I find myself in. (I also gave Salon a good piece of my mind, since you were always the main draw there as far as I was concerned.) i can’t wait for your new column, Cary! You are the best!
    Much love and laughter to you and yours.

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