Back in the days of the FAX machine, I used to write a poem and occasionally publish it, via FAX, in an edition of say four to six. I’d send it out unbidden to a handful of my friends, which seems a perfect fit because it honestly did no harm. The same kind of outreach is done these days, very obviously, by the blogging impulse that seems to have attached itself to some of us. Fact is only some of us have anything interesting to say and that happens only some of the time, so maybe the blog IS the perfect 21st century format.
At best this blog will let me process information about the subjects that interest me, that is (right now) birds, particularly black ones, the death by cat predation of songbirds, also the disappearance of the American newspaper. I plan to organize my thoughts by blog posting on the subjects of Brevity (or how to say the most in the fewest words possible), Carry the Nine (which is a social experiment that I’m interested in organizing so I get to participate in it) and Ant Noise, the Real Way We Get the News.
I’m going to try to post more often and to make my posts shorter and see how that works, more like a Status Update on Facebook but limited (at the moment) to the topics described.
I just read ” pocket history of sex “. I thought the first half was as good as anything I’ve read in a very long time. The second half while pretty good did not measure up. There were too many wild tangents that sometimes I had trouble following. All in all though its a very good book.
One question. What ever became of your brother Geo.
Yours, Steve, is without doubt the majority opinion in that the second half of the book is just FULL of these “wild tangents,” as you put it but, see? I’m the kind of writer, also person, who just LOVES the wild tangent, in that I actually don’t know what I’m going to think until I go ahead and allow myself to think it, and that first half of the book’s probably ABOUT what happened and the second’s ABOUT what I think about what happened and that kind of thing isn’t everybody’s cuppa tea, but oh well….? thanks for your comment, tho, and particularly from buying my book and actually reading it as I’m a little ashamed that it is just SO LONG and you should have seen it before my editor got ahold of it…..
Hey are you related to me? My last name used to be VanDenburgh and I was born in Gary, Indiana 57 years ago. I seem to recall being related to a Jane VanDenburgh. I stumbled on your blog and loved it.
Almost certainly we are related, are your people related to the CB Vandenburghs in Illinois or to the Senator? we are all descended from those two same (drunken) brothers who got THROWN OUT of the Netherlands and came to a little hillock a little north of Troy, NY, in 1644….and everybody spells the name all whichway. It was my great grandfather Burton who decided on the all-one-word, no caps, of our little tribe out here in California….