Thursday, January 5, 2006

Post #364

blogging this past year has been good for me. was it good for you? some posts are easy. some are a challenge. the whole thing is very interesting. i have written more than i have in the last thirty years all together. i have always seen myself as a print junkie. i read voraciously. i certainly have opinions. i think i have held up my end of conversations with informed and intelligent friends. it is, however, a different thing entirely to commit thoughts to print, or what passes for print on a blog. conversation rolls on. ya think it. ya say it. looking at my words on the glowing screen is sometimes embarrassing. did i say that? it reads strangely. or worse, stupidly. i do have the advantage of a very good editor/proofreader in my beloved RD. she has saved my sorry ass more than once from thoughtless commentary. so the good for me is doing it. thinking and writing. and pictures. even describing such a mundane thing as moving a building.

the best rewards though are the people we have met online. your kind and informative and funny comments are very much appreciated. i have learned a bit about myself, and some about topics i have researched for posts, but that learning is a drop in the bucket of stuff i have learned from other people's blogs and from comments on ours. botany, archeology, physics, medicine, public health, birds, insects, politics (of every kind), poetry, killer prose, every aspect of personal relations, depression, daily life and wildlife in every corner of the world, tragedy, triumph.........all offered to me (well, technically, to everyone) freely to read, muse upon, and comment upon if i wish. thank you all for doing your part in my continuing education project.

when we started this i had no idea that anyone beyond two or three friends and relatives would ever see it.

my thanks to the inventors of the internet, and to al gore for the actual work he actually did to move it along.


I'm not even sure I can remember the impetus to start a blog. We had been reading blogs for six months. Eschaton, Pandagon, and Kos helped us endure the 2004 election cycle. We thought we had a voice. We thought we'd be more political than we've turned out to be. I had no idea that the natural world would pull us as much as it does. Birds, sunrises and sunsets, coyotes hunting the fields call to us in a way that Bush's sneering swaggering bravado or Cheney's sepulchral specter just don't. If Bush or Cheney had yellow eyes and magnificent wings, swooped through our yard like hungry hawks, or jumped our fence in search of food I might find them more interesting. Our leaders are merely common thieves doing the work of their masters. My eyes are drawn to those creatures who are masters of their own fate -- even if they are just scratching their behinds outside of our fence, while they dream of the cherry tree in summer.

That you like these same things have made this year's adventure absolutely worthwhile. Hopefully we'll have another year's worth of inspiration to post at this url. It's been great fun, challenging and goofy. Just like we like our life to be. Thanks everyone.

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