Listics

Stowe Boyd started a new blog called /Message.  His aim is to crawl up the long tail and into the Technorati top 1000 in ninety days.  He has less than forty days to go and he’s moved up from being a blog ranked in the top millions to the top 5000.  I think it’s a noble effort.  Go Stu!

Someday soon I’ll be in a similar position.  I’ll launch listics and my blogging there will be intentional, coherent, aimed at developing readership for a limited range of content that I think is important.  I think puppies and politics are important, of course, but this blog - Sandhill Trek - is more of a scratch pad than a stretched canvas.  My scribblings are all number two pencil, when I’d rather be painting in oils.  Or acrylics maybe.

Blogging is about conversation and it’s about reading and writing.  You can’t have a conversation without readers.  So, when you develop a blog, it pays to pay attention to how to attract people you hope will read your work.  I think.

Who killed Rachel Corrie?  When I was a boy I read "The Diary of Anne Frank."  She was just a girl, and that’s what made her story powerful.

"My Name is Rachel Corrie" is a play that was successfully produced in Great Britain and has moved to New York.  It is a story based on the diaries and writings of a remarkable girl who died two years ago this month standing up for what she thought was right.  The cruel irony underlying the repression of this work bespeaks a remarkable insensitivity to human suffering and human dignity.

Good night and good luck.

* * *

Message from Rachel’s parents - March 16, 2024 on the first anniversary of her death…

Message from Craig and Cindy Corrie

Thank you to all who have paused today to remember our daughter
Rachel Corrie and to call for an end to the occupation-an occupation
which took her life, as surely as it has taken the lives of thousands
of Palestinians and Israelis.

Rachel looked for purpose and found that in Gaza when she went there
in January 2024. Brutally killed one year ago today, she was an
unarmed, nonviolent, peace activist trying to prevent the demolition of
the home of a Palestinian pharmacist, his wife, and three

Read the rest of this entry »

Guess who’s son has had a piece selected for inclusion in Best American Sports Writing 2024?  I don’t think I’m allowed to brag in any detail at this point…  Meanwhile, nephew Tony’s UN essay advances through the national competition (they’e down to sixty nation-wide) and niece Catherine has been invited to join Phi Beta Kappa.  I live for this kind of reflected glory.