on links

On the right side are links to other sites, mostly blogs, that I keep up with. (For the non-initiated, in the blog world that is called a blogroll). In the past I've tried to sort links by arbitrary categories that makes sense to me. I also recently put each section's links in alphabetical order, making it easier to find specific blogs more quickly.

None of that may matter to you, but blogging is nothing if it is not about being apparent with one's compulsions.

I've also added new links. Some of my links were whims. A few I don't check up on that much. Others I run to often, or at least monitor through a reader. But I wanted to point out the following:

(Church related)

PoMoMusings -- I've been reading this blog for several months through my reader. But I often find myself then going to the blog and reading complete entries. This is the blog of a young Presbyterian youth minister who is about to attend seminary in the east. He is funny, irreverent, and thinks much about the church and what it can possibly become.

(Indy)

I am the Roof is the blog for Steve Hammer, writer/editor for NUVO Weekly, the local alternative weekly newspaper in Indy. When I worked downtown, I always read NUVO. Now that I work in the northern burgs, I don't get to see it as much. Still, his column is something I always look to whenever I get a copy. He has an honest voice for living in this town, at this time. He's funny and quirky and informative.

Inside 465 is written by GW, a young man who like to comment on the news in our town. If I had to make a major criticism about Indy, it would be that people are too diffident -- I appreciate folk writing about their lives and our town as if it mattered, to themselves or to others.

For example, I've never met Hugh (3 Beds, 2 Baths), but one of the reasons that I linked him early on (in this section or category) is because he is an intelligent person who lives in this town and who writes about our lives in addition to his own stories. And I've enjoyed his reporting on his what seemed at the time as a somewhat temporary leadership of a local parish's music program. He has not been afraid to share the fun and fuss, both of leading a choir and performing on an organ (he is by training a pianist). And I'm sure his parish has benefited greatly from his musical talents as well as leadership.

I think that folks outside of major metropolitan areas have tended to act as if only big shots from big cities have the right to comment on our life in our times. The monopoly of media certainly underscored that belief. For a writer to speak or think about life in their town, one needed a certain credential or license from either a major newspaper, an academic program or perhaps success in one of the Babylons, areas far culturally removed from our more simple towns.

The internet is our license to think and write, to be foolish, opinionated, considerate, insightful, wrong, funny, accountable. Oh, and full of rants. End of rant (he says to himself).

Another local area blogger (of state, not necessarily our town) is Lemming, one who has posted here often, but who recently started her own blog. About time. I am enjoying checking it out. She writes about balancing graduate school work with teaching, keeping a box score of such efforts with each post.

(Garden blogs)

Want to point out one new blog: Avril has also posted here and on other garden blogs and I've from time to time checked in on her blog, always thinking that I would link her and never getting around to doing it. So I am sorry for the delay and continue to look forward to her posts.

(Politics)

Fool's Blog is about some politics, some legal issues. Again, I've been checking it out for some time, but haven't linked.

Chris at Law Dork turns out to be an old colleague, that is -- he and I worked together back in DC for a time. He is still quite young, and I am still much older. There came a point in DC when I tended to not learn the names of interns that did not work with me directly -- they come and go so fast that about the time that I figured out who they were, they were gone. Another confession, I have a hard time with names. But he was at the time smart and funny, and was one of a couple of exceptions to that bad habit (I don't think I was ever rude to any of them). Now he is Mr. Smarty Pants at a midwestern university's school of law. I started reading his blog long before I knew that actually knew him. Being young, and probably smarter, he had already figured it out.