I put this in the comments section of my survey, but figured it should be posted here too.

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Hi! I visit Salon for news and informed commentary - I count on you for a broad spectrum of information that's not readily available to me. I've subscribed to Salon for years because your coverage and insight are better than the dreck on my television and in my local papers. You respect my intelligence and my schedule.

I do not subscribe to Salon for personal blogs, pictures, or podcasts. I miss the spit and polish of the Letters to the Editor page - I understand that it takes a lot of manpower hours to trudge through all of those letters....but really....that editing helped tighten the focus of the sight and its readership. If I wanted a "real-time soapbox", there are other places that I can head to. You know, like, Table Talk.

Sure, Salon is a great community - but the thing about the internet is that relevance is one of the highest priorities with service. Personal blogs? Videos and columns? Everyone gets published no matter how good or how topical? Salon can't be everything to everyone. I want Salon to stay Salon, not MySpace with a side column for headlines. Snobbish? Yes. I have no problem admitting it. I want my content from Salon intelligent (even when irreverent), well-researched, and fierce. I do not want a typo-ridden lame article to foster the "internet experience". I want more for Salon that all that. I expect more.

Salon, for me, has been a voice. A place for articles that mass media forgets and commentary that politicians want you to forget. Savvy reviews of movies and books (not interviews with authors claiming to be reviews) that spark community interest But that voice is -not- a cacophony of personal readers and their stuff.

The Salon voice that made me subscribe used to say to get the heck off your computer and be in the world. Go see that independent movie. Go vote in the local election. Find time to volunteer at that community center. Find that book and call that artist, and thank them for being around. Think deeply about what's going on. Why aren't you furious (or laughing or stupified) and doing something about it? Stop being complacent and looking at photos of people's ugly dogs and their videos of their daughter's prom! That's what I've always felt Salon's been saying. Maybe not about the ugly dog thing, but...

Thanks. Just because most of the country is dumb doesn't mean you should be too. Don't lower your standards. That's what I basically want to say.

I live in Seattle, so I can definitely back you up on a few things for the listening audience.

As you know, Seattle is a very young city - things are really different. At its worst and most stereotypical around here, Seattle women are divided into two categories-young poseur chicks with streaked hair that drink coffee like alcohol, and old "I earned this grey hair!" crones with frizzy cuts that wear linen in the winter. It is a hard and lonely place to have an identity when you aren't in one of those groups. But at its best, Seattle is a place where young women knit and old women go kitesurfing. We're also obsessed with being REI/Eddie Bauer/Lands End healthy (someone asked why you said that, I knew immediately, it's not a body/beauty/feminist image thing--she lives in Seattle!

Don't get me wrong. I love this town inside and out, but dating, I'll grant you, is rough. Seattle is more age-phobic/centric than any other city I've lived in, which is strange, considering the liberal fruitiness of some of the communities (I live in one of the fruitier). I think the issue may be less of your actual dating age, and more of being categorized as a dating age range - a number, a non-entity, a thing without being. Suddenly, people only see you as 35 and up, 23 and younger, or "expired". Suddenly, you've lost what makes you -you-. And god forbid you get some guy whose only turn-on is "old women"....and the age is younger than you.

My grandmother told me once - It's not scary to be your own age. It's scary to not be the age you once were.

People will tell you, holy cow, look at Susan Sarandon, Tina Turner, Catherine Denueve, but they can just pipe down, because those women aren't you. But society puts up these fighter types as sexy and admirable. Why can't women (and men) just get old and not wear purple and be done with it? We aren't going to become more honest and beautiful and crotchedy and wise and saggy because we're X years old. We're going to do it because we're human. Some teenagers are more obnoxious than any grumpy old man could ever be. It's what happens, regardless of our age. And someday, I have faith, a fine gentlemen will have no problem being human with you. Until then, you should move to my neighborhood. We need more crazy aunt/uncle people around.

My grandmother also told me that the only people that can call you old are children. And anyone else, in that old country way, "is just teasing the devil."