Well, I finally got around to making my own contribution to DJ!'s birthday blog-fest.
First I want to thank all the bloggers who responded to the call-out for blog posts:
Part 1 by Catelli.
Part 2 by TrappedInAWhirlpool.
Part 3 by deBeauxOs.
Part 4 by Mandos.
Part 5 by Alison.
And Part 6 by pale.
Among them, they hit all the points that I would make about blogging. The people, fun, camaraderie, feminism, politics, dissent, and breaking stories.
Mandos, an internet senior citizen compared to the rest of us, takes us back to the dark days of the internet as a boyo-only space. Pale recounts the fun of our push-back against it, partly in the form of the F-Word Awards.
Trapped, Alison, and deBeauxOs muse about the seriousness with which we took blogging. And the political angles we explored that were not being addressed by the mainstream media.
Catelli reminisces about the people and important discussions in the blogosphere.
Like Alison, I loved it and miss it.
Those were the days of the "hat tip" (h/t). It was a Very Bad Form to fail to credit the source of an idea, a link, whatever. As Trapped says, credibility was our only coin.
I miss the collaboration, the planned blog-bursts and the plotting behind them. The passing-along of links and stories to bloggers who had a particular interest in a subject.
I miss all of the very smart -- yet ordinary -- people I met, who, from all over the country and world, were thinking very smart thoughts and sharing them on their blogs.
In particular, I miss Dave of The Galloping Beaver and JJ of The Unrepentant Old Hippie.
Dave was an ex-military man with insights into world events that were completely new to me. (I hear he's doing fine. Hi, Dave!)
JJ was a hoot and I considered her a pal. She was scathing but gracious. I learned a lot about how a good blogger conducts herself in the comments. She replied to all of them. She also helped the TechnoDolts (deBeauxOs and me) set this blog up. (So did Mandos.) JJ flopped the cat-bread picture up there for us.
She blogged on politics, abortion and right-wing nutjobs. Speaking of the latter, she had her own dedicated pray-er. Every Monday night, apparently, she was the target of a prayer assault from a blogger she called TubeSock.
Like most of us, she'd get fed up with blogging. She quit for a while. Then came back for a bit. Then disappeared. Her blog is still up.
I miss her and hope she's well.
So, it's been fun. We're going to leave this blog up and may return to it. I do to scoop old links.
Finally, I want to thank the other bloggers who responded positively to my call-out but who, for whatever reason, didn't hit my loose deadline of "end of the month." If any of you still want to play, email me and I'll publish your thoughts here with the others.
