What lurks in hiding for us there? Nothing good, and that is the general feeling one gets from the ripples and small currents in the wide ocean of the blogosphere. I’ve been paddling in that ocean since … 2002, when I gave up on Slate as an original aggregator news site shortly after 9-11, because the communities which gathered in the various comments sections just got too angry and irrational for words. Something let me to Instapundit, and through his links to the original incarnation of Sgt. Stryker’s Daily Brief. I became a contributor when the original Stryker appealed for other contributors and have been paddling away at the margins of the digital information ocean ever since. Back in the pre-internet day, I had subscriptions to all kinds of magazines. As a military public relations professional, I reasoned that I should know when and from which direction the next political-military-social sh*t-storm would arrive. Tracking blogs and digital media serves the same purpose for me that print media once did.
Sgt. Mom
Chicagoboyz Like Wildlife in the Garden
Jiggery Pokery, Whackadoodle Wokery
My daughter and I have a local writer friend who teaches at the elementary school level a local quasi-magnet type school which advertises itself as offering a challenging college prep curriculum, and she is discouraged beyond words over how difficult it is to interest the pupils, especially the boys in her class in reading. Of course, given the run of books generated of late by mainstream establishment publishing, aimed at the YA and young readers and then approved by schoolteachers and librarians … most of them seem to be a grim wallow in social or familial dysfunction, misery, gloom, and despair … plus of late, lashings of sexual confusion as well of the latter, it seems the more explicit, the better.
Civility
In the aftermath of large crowds chanting “Lets Go, Brandon” or the ruder, cruder variant, certain prog media figures are reacting by ostentatiously clutching their pearls and demanding civility. In response to such demands, many of us who have paid attention over the years are pointing out that the civility ship has long sailed … in fact, circumnavigated the world, crashed into the homeport dock, burned to the waterline, and sank in a gusher of steam.
Everything Isn’t Awful
We took a break on Saturday almost the first seriously cool autumn day after the Daughter Unit finished prepping at her real estate broker’s office for a property showing on Sunday afternoon. She was home by afternoon, and that was when I told her that the Catholic parish beyond the green belt behind our house was having their fall festival. All morning, I had listened to the sounds of a live band or music on the public address system, and I could look out the kitchen window and see the pavilions set up in the parking lot, and the crowds of people moving from booth to booth. St. H—‘s has staged their yearly event regularly, and we have checked it out frequently: many of our close neighbors attend services there regularly. To our amusement when we heard about this as well as the amusement of that friend who reported it to us, the parish priest there once preached a sermon on the topic of adapting to new circumstances and specifically mentioned our rooster, Larry Bird, whose crowing the priest could hear across the green belt.