The structures of logic may map the structures of the world, but the propositions of logic themselves say nothing at all about the world. They are mere tautologies. They say only that A is A.

  -- William Barrett

I seem to be acquiring a fan base and new links from doing this. It wasn't my intention: just a way of keeping up on what my friends were blogging and helping them see what other people who they might not have taken the time to read might be up to.

This "roundup" remains a look at those whose blogs exist off the main-traveled roads of blog punditry, what might be called the "small press bloggers" who craft their blogs for a purpose quite different from personal fame as a pundit. As John Gardner said, the reason why writers write is for Glory. It's as good a reason as any I know and far be it from me to deny it to those who are listed here.

You'll find many types here, some of whom find themselves on the opposite side of the fence from me from time to time, but who remain friends. And here, too, you will find new friends, souls from around the world who have found something in these pages that makes them want to keep coming back.

I see this blog as my personal reflections and ideas. So it has been since June 22, 2002 when I wrote my first entry over at blogger.com. Originally, I had intended to make this a collection of conversations from IRC channels. It has become something quite different.

Happy Blogiversary to me -- almost.

Politics

• Jeanne asks: "Which came first? The evil or the incompetence?"
• Jack mused about radioactive judicial candidates

  One of the little noted side effects of the Iraq war is that the Administration's eagerness to remove legal constraints from its interrogation of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay may well have torpedoed the chances of a number of Administration lawyers to become federal judges or Justices on the Supreme Court.

• Randy was shocked by a massacre at a Columbian cocaine ranch.
• Rob caught Bush trying to mimic Reagan by using the word "optimist" in everything "from his negative campaign ads to a Rose Garden press conference with with Afghan leader Karzai."
• Jeremy serves up some scary environmental news.
• Mileah has a new bumper sticker.
• Someone didn't like Theodore's bumper sticker.
• Andrew caught Bush saying nice things about the Clintons.
• LQ compared Clinton Haters and Bush Bashers for perversity, meanness, and psychopathology and gave the award to the Clinton Haters:

  After I wrote a couple of columns about Ronald Reagan in which I failed to advocate placing Reagan's visage on Mount Rushmore, the dime or the $20 dollar bill, I heard from conservatives who maintained this was just another example of my anti-Republican bias.

• Sally joined the protest against giving Fahrenheit 9/11 an R Rating.

Culture

• Seraph reflected on appreciation of poetry:

  The more poetry I read, truthfully, the less poetry I really “hate.” It’s something, I guess, about being able to see, in most crafted work, some interest affect/effect or purpose. Of course, conversely, the less poetry really knocks me off my feet.

• Brian couldn't get "Georgy Girl" out of his head:

  For me, the appeal of the song is in part it's peppy melody, but mostly the voice of the group's lead singer, Judith Durham (especially the way her accent is so present in her singing voice). Apparently, everybody else feels this way too, since the group was not terribly successful before she joined them, and when she struck out on her own for a solo career a couple of years after "Georgy Girl" they faded right back into obscurity.

• Roger took a swipe at Kevin Drum's depiction of wonkery as the new wankery.
• Denise will be participating in an online roundtable of lawyers.
• Debora remembered path-clearing comic book creator Kate Worley. Godsexboyfriend posted his own obituary.
• Lauren wondered

  How do you know I am a real person? And even more interestingly, how do you confirm that I'm not an elaborate fiction project?

Religion

• Irene pondered whether the existence of "cells" in her church constituted a form of mind control.
• Vic commented on the recent Pledge of Allegiance decision:

  Have any of you ever been part of a clique? How about NOT part of a clique but one of those is shunned by the clique. To pray in public is to be part of the clique, excluding from your group, anyone who does not believe in a Christian god. In a country that was created on the basis of religious tolerance, to exclude those who do not believe as you do in a setting that is not religious is just plain mean.

• Kimber mused over an official apology from the Vatican for the Inquisition:

  Why I as a witch remember and revere the Burning Times isn't so much for those who died as for why they died. And how they died. They didn't die for their own faith and beliefs, they died because of someone else's. They were inconveniences, weeds in the perfect lawn of humanity being groomed by Rome. Convert or die. Or in most cases convert AND die.

• Kynn pointed to a coterie of Fundamentalists who showed up to Reagan's funeral to announce that he was in hell:

  Let's make sure everyone is aware that these "anti-Ronald Reagan groups" are not liberals, not Democrats, not gays. They're hate-filled right-wing extremist Christians who hate everyone.

Personal

• Jenny remembered her grandmother through the posting of a photo and an obituary.
• Maria got overenthusiastic about rowing:

  when the little competition started that first day on the erg machines, I should have said: “I over-trained on Saturday and I have a slight pain in my hip, so I think I will skip it. “ Instead, wanting to save face and loathing to come in lat, I went all out ...

• M. Luminous detailed her vacation plans.
• Bittersweet is getting a raise!
• Tracy wants out of Cincinatti:

  We could go anywhere. The opportunity for nurses is such that I could put out my resume online and by the end of the day, offers would be pouring in...offers with sign-on bonuses and moving expenses! But where does one go when one is so lost in the first place? Do you strike out in any direction and head off? Doesn't that make you more lost? Or do you sit still and wait for things to find you? Isn't being still the only way to be found?

• Elkit enumerates the reasons why she is looking forward to summer.
• Frances visited the house he just moved out of:

  It was most peculiar walking up the steps and then looking out the window at the courtyard, which is beautiful and green and new and so much nicer than our current courtyard.

• Kimber compared approaches to loose teeth:

  My dad was the official tooth puller when we were little. Once he decided that it was loose enough, he would tie a string around it and yank it out. John seems to think it would be better to just let it fall out on its own. I worry that if it falls out in his sleep, he will choke on it, but John doesn't think that should be a concern.

• MIchael signed up with Metroblogging.
• Jill wrote a letter to God:

  Perhaps I have not been clear with you about my deep and intense dislike of heat and humidity. Perhaps the thirty or forty other times I have posted about it here on this blog were not seen by you, given how busy you are reading the popular weblogs.

• Chari is thinking of changing her domain name.
• Kathryn reports

  Elizabeth is big into sentences today, sentences like That's mine! and I broke it! and I want more noodles! and I go outside! and I want it! Most of her sentences end in exclamation points.

• Kate celebrated the appearance of the season's first crop circle.
• Mary Lou underwent the "chemical version" of the treadmill test.
• Coup de Vent found her senses jarred in Verona.
• Bill went on a trip to Cincinatti (home of the goddess with the foul mouth, Crazy Tracy) and reflected on how he has matured:

  There was a time when I would have screamed, "Goddammit, I forgot my fucking tie!!!!" and thrown something that was in easy reach; but I'm older and wiser and do not swear like a sailor anymore or scream and carry on, so I calmly yelled to Stacey, who was getting out of the shower, "Goddammit, I forgot my fucking tie!!"

• John bemoaned how his favorite supermarket inflicted remodeling on its customers.
• Pam bought herself a bike.
• Robert experienced the Jelly Donut of Nothingness:

  There in that new culture, amidst a full spectrum of unrecognized indigenous cravings, you carry around your old cravings unawares, that eat away at your virtual vitals for decades, like termites at the finest woods, until one day as in my case some majestic tree topples in the jungle of your passions and lets in some light-- I know the metaphor has gone wild but that's the nature of craving-- and you realize for example, with startling intensity, that you haven't had a genuine jelly donut in 50 years...

• Gray Bird unfolded her umbrella for a rain of contractors.
• Nancy suffered from an extended blackout. Her journal entries are almost poetry:

  I ran to the office to turn off the power there, but was in time to hear four big popping sounds: the UPS, two power strips, one light bulb.
  Switched off the generator, tried to phone the repairman.
  The electronic phone system has a UPS connected to it - that wasn't working. There's also a backup telephone on the old system, which gets activated when there's no power - that wasn't working.
  By the time the city-power came back, the generator office was closed.
  Guests were coming.

• Aurora watched the ocean:

  The sea was active that day. A number of yards behind him further out, a dolphin arced a few feet above the churning, bubbling surface, playing with a friend among the foam.

• Rachel Ann saw the bright side of a darkness:

  The lights are situated every house (duplexs) on my side of the street. Too much light, if you ask me. It blinded the sky, and I couldn't see the stars. Then, we had a problem; I still don't know what it was but for quite a bit of time here on the yishuv (settlement), the lights on my end of the street weren't functioning. You could see the stars.

• Sally adjusted to the realities of sculpting class.

Photos

• Theodore: Rainy Day Cat
• Bill: Potatoes
• Zhaf: The Office Plants

Poetry

• Stephen: A Sinner's Prayer
• Greg: Cold-blooded Observation
• Michael: Random Acts of Poetry
• Daniel: The Chicken Man Sermon

Missing Bloggers

• Tamara
• Raven
• Mayamaya
• Tammy
• Yule

Petitions & Appeals

• Join People of Faith in Apologizing for Iraq Abuses
• Stop Censorship of Fahrenheit 9/11
• Stop yet another Flag Desecration Amendment
• California: Healthy Schools Campaign

Recent Reading

Buying books through these links does put a little money in my pocket. Thank you!
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
• The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule by Michael Shermer
• Wheelock's Latin, 6e and Workbook for Wheelock's Latin, 3rd Edition, Revised

Web Links

• Games We Play (online exhibit)
• Society for Art of the Imagination
• When zombies take over, how long until the electricity fails?
• The Meaning of Liff
• Veep-O-Matic
• Comic Cats
• Want to Pretend that you are Deployed?

What is important about a lightbulb is not the filament or the glass but the light which these bulbs are to render; and what is important about each of us is not the body and its nerves but the consciousness that shines through them.

  -- Joseph Campbell