I’ve noticed something unusual in my blog traffic the last month or so: I’ve been getting a lot of http://images.google.com referrals. Unlike the Google-search links I used to get where certain word-searches brought readers, these are driven by photos.

Ok, I’ve posted quite a few photos here in the last 2+ years, so that image searches shouldn’t be too unusual — except there appears to be a certain pattern to the images being viewed: they’re either people who want to view the “Loch Ness Monster Truck” evidence photo from last May…or people who want to see a picture of the Mall Diva in a prom dress.

It’s hard to keep a thorough list since my Sitemeter account only registers the last 100 visits, but as of 15 minutes ago 77 of the last 100 visitors to this blog had come from image searches; 18 of these were Loch Ness Monster Truck driven and 16 were led to see a photo of the Diva and her cousin in their formal gowns. Another half-dozen or so wanted to see the photo of the bruise on MD’s knee from last fall’s Paintball outing. That’s actually a significant decrease for that particular photo; one month recently my Powerblogs tracking tool showed more than 800 referrals to that image from a website in Taiwan!

Are there not enough lovely things to look at on the internet that people have to come looking for an oversized tire in a loch, a couple of well-dressed girls or a close-up of a naked, discolored knee? Are there that many fetishists out there living in their mom’s garage, surfing the internet so they can ogle and drool over a photo: “Ooooh, it’s a B.F. Goodrich!”

I know I should be glad for the traffic, but frankly it’s beginning to creep me out.

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Leo at Pscymeistr’s Ice Palace bestowed upon me a Thinking Blogger award last week, and since I’ve been so busy thinking and working (and only lightly blogging) I haven’t had a chance to acknowledge his kind honor or carry on the meme by naming five other bloggers who’s work makes me think. I think, therefore, it’s high time to say “thanks” and “aw, shucks” to Leo. Your blog also makes me think — and usually my thoughts are “Amen!” You are both passionate and prolific and those are admirable qualities in a blogger.

Naming five other bloggers that make me think is kind of hard, not because there aren’t worthy ones out there, but because so many of my favorite thinking blogs such as Port McClellan, Portia Rediscovered and Surly’s Soap Box have all shut down recently. Like shark’s teeth, however, when some wear out there are others ready to move up — and they’re just as sharp. I have a comparatively short blogroll but everyone on it is well worth reading and have moved me on a regular basis with their wit, analysis or writing skill. In particular, though, I will point out five that are especially thoughtful or thought-provoking.

1. Jay Reding. I first stumbled onto Jay’s blog shortly after I began blogging. If I had read him before then I may have been totally discouraged in my own abilities and never started. Jay provides articulate but concise analysis of the political and legal (funny how much those two intertwine) news of the day. I kind of miss the often intriguing Point/Counterpoint of his Comments section (and participated a few times) now that he’s all but eliminated it, but like bugs to a zapper on a summer night, he was attracting too many insects driven by mindless instinct rather than intellect. Good move, Jay. That kind of thing can be amusing and even satisfying for a little while, but there are far too many other interesting things to do on a summer night than fry insects’ brains.
2. Over at the Wide Awake Cafe, it’s usually time to wake up and smell the coffee as proprietor Laura Lee Donoho serves up a stimulating blog. Her background in a military family and as an officer’s wife brings a certain clarity and perspective, while her artistic skills and sensibility add cream and sugar. It’s a great place to sit a spell and enjoy the genteel southern charm — but sometimes the crockery does fly!
3. Fireworks are usually on the agenda over at Amy Ridenour’s National Center Blog. Crisp and to the point, Amy and her contributors hold forth on politics, global warming, the free market, individual liberty and personal responsibility. This site is a great source for blogging ideas and useful facts when you’re feeling a little stale. Currently I’m appreciating the excerpts Amy is putting up from the National Center for Public Policy Research’s book, Shattered Dreams: One Hundred Stories of Government Abuse.
4. Uncorrelated is a blog I discovered a few months ago and keeps me coming back to read Mick, Mark and Dave’s take on national and international news and events — often from stories you’re not seeing in the MSM. Their blog was about the only reliable source for details of the Trolley Square shooting in Salt Lake City last February (where an armed citizen an off-duty policeman, stopped a maniac who had already killed six people and was gunning for more). The guys have an ambitious and wide-ranging Categories list in the left sidebar that also makes for interesting browsing.
5. Half a World Away. As much as I like staying informed and reading good, witty analysis, my greatest joy in the blogosphere is coming across great writers, regardless of what they’re writing about. Peter Kelley toiled for a number of years in high-powered business but has recently experienced a huge shift in his life, moving his young family to Amsterdam where he gets to share their discoveries and his own eye for detail and description with readers. This blog really makes me think … about how much I wish I could have the experiences Peter is having!

One thing I’ve just realized about each of the blogs I’ve listed is that they’re not really the kind of blogs given to memes such as this. If they want to participate, however, the rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think; 2. Link to The Thinking Blog so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme; 3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ graphic!

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I’ve noted before that blogging can be the modern equivalent of the classical diarist or “journal-ist”. That’s not to say that everyone is a Montaigne or Gracian, but it is a rich tradition. I note today that it is the birthday of William Wordsworth. The blurb I was reading about him indicated that he had been an enthusiastic writer in favor of the French Revolution, even though that was an unpopular position in his time. Becoming disillusioned with politics, he turned his writing toward other, more prosaic, topics. As the Writer’s Almanac notes, between 1797 and 1807:

At the time, most poets were writing poetry about broad topics of history and religion and philosophy. Wordsworth wrote about ordinary things and private thoughts, the view from a bridge, daffodils. Critics thought he was wasting his time on uninteresting subjects. But by the time he had reached middle age, he became a cult sensation and his collections of poetry became best-sellers.

I read a lot of blogs for awhile before I started my own and saw that there was a good representation of those writing on philosophy and religion and “modern history”, i.e., politics. There was also a good smattering of those who wrote about ordinary things and private thoughts.

I liked all kinds, and have dabbled in each form here. I think I’d be bored if I tried to confine myself to one niche or another. The thing is, when I’m writing out my philosophical commentaries on politics or the news I frequently think I should be doing more observational posts. But when I’m writing the more personal stuff I feel as if I should be writing about the news of the day. Why is that?

Anyway, I’m just throwing that out as a random observation. I suppose the main thing for me, no matter what I write about, is just that I write.

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Another of my “Night Lights” blogs has pulled the plug as Port McClellan has gone dark after two years and two months. I never realized that the Port was senior to my own blog by only a month, but I enjoyed the excellent commentary, clarity and insights. Given these gifts, my presumption and hope is that the blogger, Michael Brandon McClellan, has merely found bigger fish to fry and has turned his considerable talents toward something more remunerative or life-advancing.

Michael and I were “introduced” by another blog on my roll, Portia Rediscovered, that has also been dormant but has promised to return from hiatus in the near future. Also on hiatus now is LaShawn Barber’s Corner, and Suburban Blight is as good as gone (new babies are hard on blogging), while The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns are still crazy, but a lot less frequent.

And so it goes, old friends move on, new friends arrive. There has been some darn fine writing and/or analyses lately over at Scottish Right and Uncorrelated and I’ve linked Away With Words so much lately that if I do it again I’ll probably be accused of stalking (you can feel free to sneak over there). The Llama Butchers are as prolific as ever, even if exclamation marks sometimes outnumber the words in a few posts. I’ve also become enchanted with the adventures of the ex-pat Kelleys, marvelously chronicled over at Half a World Away. There’s a book in there, trying to come out.

The way things go in the blogosphere you should get over and enjoy these blogs while you can.

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Regular visitors here know that reading a well-turned phrase has an endorphin-like affect on me. I have recently come across a blog that threatens to send me into a blissful stupor of chocolate-factory proportions. That blog is Away With Words and I couldn’t wait to add it to my “Night Lights” blogroll.

The blogger is Nancy Friedman, and she describes herself as “…chief wordworker of Wordworking, a name developer, corporate copywriter, and recovering journalist. She swims in San Francisco Bay and bakes in her Oakland, California, kitchen.”

The blog focuses on “names, brands, writing, and the quirks of the English language” and is a witty and aesthetic take on our culture and the joys (and tears) of the English language (think “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” with an American sense of humor.) In addition to the breezy posts, Away With Words has the most distracting blogroll I’ve ever come across. Check it out!

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“And though nobody should read me, have I wasted time in entertaining myself so many idle hours in so pleasing and useful thoughts? In moulding this figure upon myself, I have been so often constrained to temper and compose myself in a right posture, that the copy is truly taken, and has in some sort formed itself; painting myself for others, I represent myself in a better colouring than my own natural complexion. I have no more made my book than my book has made me: ’tis a book consubstantial with the author, of a peculiar design, a parcel of my life, and whose business is not designed for others, as that of all other books is.”



— Michel de Montaigne

Today’s Writer’s Almanac reports the birthday of Michel de Montaigne, the literary creator of relatively short, written personal observations that he called “essays”:

It’s the birthday of the great essayist Michel de Montaigne, born in Périgueux, France (1533). His father was a wealthy landowner. Montaigne went off to college and became a lawyer, but his father died when Montaigne was 38 years old. And so he retired to the family estate and took over managing the property. And it was there that he began to write. He wrote short pieces on various topics, and he called them “essays,” because the French word “essai” means attempt.



He lived at a time when religious civil wars were breaking out all over the country — Protestants and Catholics killing each other. The Black Plague was ravaging the peasants in his neighborhood; he once saw men digging their own graves and then lying down to die in them. Still, while he occasionally wrote about big subjects like hatred and death, he also wrote about the most ordinary things, like his gardening or the way radishes affected his digestion. He wrote about sadness, idleness, liars, fear, smell, prayer, cannibals, and thumbs, among other things.



Michel de Montaigne wrote, “The most certain sign of wisdom is cheerfulness.”

Many modern bloggers follow the same model, offering personal observations on faith, politics (modern cannibalism) and people digging their own graves, mixed with gardening tips and cat-blogging, which de Montaigne also invented: “When I play with my cat, who knows whether she isn’t amusing herself with me more than I am with her?”

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“Write without pay until somebody offers to pay you.
If nobody offers within three years, sawing wood
is what you were intended for.”

— Mark Twain

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There were a lot of things I didn’t know about blogging when I started out two years ago today. I didn’t know how long I could keep it up, what I would write about, what my “voice” would be, if anyone would ever come by to read this and, if so, if they’d ever come back.



Today, I still don’t know how long I’ll keep this up or what I’m going to write about next week. I do know that people come here, and in gradually increasing numbers — but I’m not sure what topic or style explains the attraction. As to my voice, Craig Westover told me at my first trip to Keegan’s that it takes a little while to find it; two years in and most of the time I still feel as if I’m just clearing my throat, careening from topic to topic with apparent (to me) randomness. I read somewhere that if you want to grow your readership you have to find a niche and pound it. I don’t know, sounds kind of boring to me.



Not that I don’t want readers, mind you. I know some bloggers make it a point of fierce pride that they don’t care how many readers they get, or they stopped looking at the Site Meter ages ago. Not me. There’s not much in the way of compensation for running a blog, and the number of daily unique visitors is one of the easiest ways to get a little affirmation in order to keep the juices flowing. I blog mainly to keep the writing gears lubricated and because I’ve come to enjoy the daily hunt for a topic and the puzzle-solving aspect of fashioning a post from an idea that has occurred to me or from an issue that stimulates me. I’ve made it a point of discipline to try to average at least a post a day here and frankly there are days that I wouldn’t even try to rise to the challenge except I hate the thought of someone making a point of coming here and there not being something new to read.



Some days I’ll try to go for a laugh; other days I’ll take a more serious approach (and I hope you can tell the difference). Other days I just stand back and let the Mall Diva or Tiger Lilly do their thing, and they’ve brought their own following, based on the increase in traffic since they started (to boost traffic, add young women — who knew?).



Anyway, I’m going to keep blogging for now, and checking the Site Meter a couple of times a day. Comments and links are even more “affirming” than traffic, but this isn’t the type of blog that seems to attract a lot of either, unless one of the girls is posting. Oh well, at least it’s not holding me back from my daily routine!



I know I see certain locations and ISPs over and over, so I’ll tell you what: if you’re a regular reader but one who has seldom or never commented here, and you want to offer a Blogiversary present, please leave a comment below. It doesn’t have to be fancy or effusive, but let me know you’re out there, and maybe say how you found this blog in the first place and/or what topic or expectation brings you back. Come on, I put hundreds of words a day here, you can at least spare me a dozen! (Ooops, sorry, didn’t mean to sound like MPR in the middle of pledge week there).

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One of the unexpected benefits of blogging is the people my family and I have met that we otherwise might never have known if I hadn’t started this blog (at my wife’s urging) nearly two years ago. I’m not just talking about electronic contact, but actually getting to meet and socialize with new friends. One of the first people I met was Leo Pusateri.

Actually, our first meeting was less than memorable. Leo and I both started our blogs within a week of each other, and shortly thereafter we each made our first pilgrimmage to Keegan’s. Each of us was introduced to the other bloggers there for the weekly trivia game and in the course of this to each other, but with all the new names, faces and aliases I couldn’t quite place Leo the day after. Nevertheless he became the first-ever commenter to one of my posts and we became regular commenters on each other’s blogs and frequent e-mailers. We didn’t get to see each other all that much since he lives in St. Cloud, but we hooked up a few times and even got a round of golf in this summer.

Anyway, Leo announced this week that he’s pulling the plug on Psycmeistr’s Ice Palace, and the reason is flip-side of that blogging relationship coin. You see, blogging itself exists in the ether commonly referred to as “the blogosphere”. As such there’s a certain unreality to it as the things you read and the things you write – while a good measure of a man or a woman – aren’t typically connected to a face and sometimes we lose that sense that there are “real people” behind each post and comment. That’s why actually meeting the people behind your favorite sites is so satisfying. At the same time that relative anonymity encourages a certain amount of abuse and loss of perspective.

What I’ve always liked and admired about the Ice Palace is Leo’s passion and direct, no-sugar-coating way of expressing his thoughts and ideals; his bluntness was the perfect bucket of water dumped on the airy confections that pass for the cornerstones of liberal idealogy. Leo has been fearless in expressing his views and guileless in disclosing who he is, where he lives and what he does for a living. In addition to the Ice Palace he was a regular contributor to the Murtha Must Go blog. When we golfed this summer he told me about some of the comment trolls that had mobilized as a result of MMG and who were extending themselves beyond the rough and tumble of the blogosphere to engage in tangible intimidation and physical harassment against him. (This is an all-too-real drawback of blogging; I know one lady blogger who has had to contend with petty vandalism and a stalker, and Michael Brodkorb of Minnesota Democrats Exposed had his house egged last weekend. Last year an innocent person who was merely thought to be MDE had his house vandalized.)

One such troll, though I don’t know if he’s directly related to the MMG site, has become such a threat that police intervention is a possibility and, for the sake of his family and his sanity, Leo has decided to pull back from the circus invisible, at least for a time. While that may seem like letting the terrorist win, you also have to realize that there’s no cost-benefit analysis in the world that makes playing this out look like a good idea. Blogging, for all but a very few, is a hobby and an outlet; a way to do good and/or to do battle. But whether your on-screen persona is Don Corleone or Don Quixote, there’s just no percentage in “stepping outside.”

Trolls are one of the hazards of blogging and to be expected if you make a habit of stating your opinions and sticking to them. While some people want to debate (sometimes profanely), other trolls use the anonymity of the Web to get their jollies for (I imagine) the same reasons flashers hang out at the bus stop. (Hammerswing had a couple of these types plaguing his Comments section this summer, one of whom followed a Mall Diva comment back here to leave his filth. I had no qualms about nuking his butt – banning his ISP – at once.) It’s one thing to attack someone’s ideas and character on-line, and you can typically expect a robust defense in response; that’s the blogosphere. It’s something else to attack someone’s job, property or loved ones; that’s illegal.

All in all, the “good” folks you meet in blogging far, far outweigh the bad, even if one bad one skews the equation considerably. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, however, from life and from blogging it is that you can’t keep a good man down. We’ll see you somewhere down the road, Leo!

Update:

Other tips of the hat to Leo here, here and here.

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