The long way home

I’ve upgraded Listics to WordPress 2.8. I’ve dabbled with Opera Unite. I’ve spent plenty of time on twitter, and… yes, Facebook too. Truth be told, I’ve also played too many games of Spider Solitaire.

I’ve bookmarked dozens of links to information on a panoply of web publishing tools–weapons, as some would have it, in the war between pixels and print. From social networking to search engine optimization, from the politics of pillage and plunder (from New York and Detroit to South Kivu) to this week’s twentieth anniversary of the death of I.F. Stone–my attention has dissolved in the kaleidoscopic refraction of all things imaginable to write about.

Last winter I was humbled by a brief stint writing posts for peanuts at a start-up blog that was being packaged for resale to some web media company–this in the days before the big web media companies contracted and began to sizzle like salted banana slugs on hot pavement. During that time I had a couple of reminders of my own mortality including a back injury and a heart attack. The heart attack left me somewhat subdued. I simply couldn’t find the energy to write about health care and aging, right wing militias, extremist violence, disparities in justice administration, war crimes tribunals or any of the other topics that get the adrenalin pumping and the blood of righteous indignation flowing in my somewhat obstructed arteries.

At a certain age we understand that there won’t be time for everything and there aren’t a lot of do-overs left for us. Health fails. Death ensues. The question, “How’s all that social networking working out for you?” deserves an answer. I’d like this blog to be my answer. There’s not enough time to waste it on Facebook.

And, as the woman says:

yawn internet yawn i’m building a shed

…only in my case it’s not really a shed, I have sheds-a-plenty. No, in my case it’s a vegetable garden, of which more later.