The Yin and Yang of blogging

We enjoy reading all kinds of blog posts, but two of them stand out this morning. First up, Lee Walton's "Shrimp and Grits" commentary over at Charleston Watch, which smacks around The Post and Courier for its recent editorial in support of CARTA:

When I read, “…the system needs extra help for the next few years to pay off a debt incurred through no fault of its own” in the Palter & Chatter’s April 17th editorial, my first thoughts were of an old rock and roll tune, “What kind ‘a fool do ya think I am – do ya think I am now.” The condescending editor who authored this offending chatter is no better than a profiteering bartender serving another drink to a staggering alcoholic. The Palter & Chatter’s editorial staff is blatantly facilitating incompetent behavior by CARTA’s Director and Board and would have us believe that CARTA’s continuous mismanagement, shameless waste of tax revenues, empty buses, routes-to-nowhere and out-and-out bungling of everything they seem to touch is not CARTA’s fault, but someone else’s.

Well, whose fault is it? Who is that rascally someone they want to blame?

For our second example, we trot over to Shadow of Diogenes, where we are offered this bit of whimsy:

Haiku #042206 (Poem)
Sat in Unitarian
Church on black back pew alone
Watching Lutherans

There's something bracing about lively civic discourse, and it's a true relief to find it taking place online. At the same time, thank goodness for the little surprises. If I had to choose between one or the other, I'd take both.

BLOGGER SLOW-DOWN? Hey, anybody else having problems with blogger this morning? Sites with Blogspot domains have been slow and dicey, and while I was helping a Blogger.com user over the phone around lunchtime, his connection just flat timed out. If you know the skinny, pass it on. In the meantime, some of our local blogs were so slow to load that I just gave up. If you wrote something brilliant and I didn't catch it because of server problems, drop me an e-mail...

ELSEWHERE: Walter shows off his first big fish ... and Alison's sunburn (at Baxter Sez). Ouch. He's got another piece, too, in which he notices Lowcountry Blogs and offers up his opinions on The Crosstown. Keep 'em coming, Big Guy...

Also noticing us this morning was the print version of Good Morning Lowcountry (available wherever fine Charleston daily newspapers are sold and reachable via Charleston.net or the GMLc blog).

At nothing but bonfires, our hostess confesses to pulling a muscle whilst flipping her hair, then shows off her new prize possession: a toothbrush marked with the name of her dentist: Dr. Assey. I will skip the requisite jokes.

Agricola updates the look of his blog (nice) and starts a conversation about President Bush's instincts for diplomacy: "When trouble comes, President Bush has the mettle to deal with the situation in exactly the right way.  Forget mangled phrases and confusing syntax, our President has what it takes."

Old Controller's soft spot for animals leads to difficulties (and, for the record, I've been referring to the writer of this blog as "he," when it's now clear to me that the proper pronoun is "she." Apologies)... Charlotte at Flipside shows us Red Boots... It's also picture time at Kittens on the Keyboard and Cavaliers and Roundheads, where the theme seems to be felines of various sizes...

Heather (Moncks Corner Moments) is in love with strawberries... The continuing saga of Champ's e-collar experiment comes to a sudden end at Notoriously Nice... The Mustang rolls into a sea island controversy... Mark at Burris Blog talks about the ups and downs of his kind of business and gives a peek at the big High Point furniture show.

Joan is all over the place -- literally. She's up in the new Roper tower taking pictures of the view. She's taking pictures of everyone's favorite Crosstown church. She's talking Catholics and condoms. She's got a Walk This Way T-shirt, for crying out loud. But check out the Trolley Girl photo. Yowsa. This one brought out Joan's fans. As creme-brulee remarks in comments, "looks like all that walking has paid off!"

Nate and Di try their hands at a video version of their show. The Windows Media file checks in at a hefty 32 MBs, so we haven't viewed it yet, but it promises a tour of Front Butt Studios. And who could pass on that?

UPLIFTER and "THE DIGITAL DIVIDE": Lisa at "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness," takes a serious look at the concept of The Digital Divide in light of Saturday's Uplifter meeting in Charleston (Kudu Coffee, 1-5 p.m.). My post announcing the meeting didn't make use of the term, but in the press release I placed there as a downloadable file, Digital Divide is right in the lead.

In my reply to Lisa, I confessed that I used the Digital Divide angle in the press release because I was "trying to activate a frame of reference." In other words, I wrote a press release that was intended to hook a media decision-maker into reading the second graph. And to do that, you have to connect immediately. I've been in the journalism business for 16 years, and I can tell you from experience that you don't read past the headline on most of them.

Trying to boil something as broad as the Uplifter philosophy down to something that can connect with the average over-taxed assigning editor is no easy trick, and I settled on the Digital Divide angle because everyone can connect to the idea of volunteers helping solve a specific problem. In retrospect, I wish I had not. Apparently there's this globalization side to the Digital Divide concept, and whoa Nelly, I don't want to get into any of that.

That said, I don't know that I need to do much more media anyway. The meeting got a nice mention in GMLc this morning, there might be another advancer this week, and it's being discussed local blogs and boards, which is as it should be. What's really left for me now is to get more fliers up and make some phone calls. As Dave Slusher might say, it's not so much about getting the biggest audience, but about finding the right audience.

All in all, an interesting new experience for me. My first time on the other side of the press release.

Comments

[Joan]

Everyone needs a back up career plan. Trolley Girl may be mine :).

[Heather]

I had some trouble with Blogger yesterday, as well. It was down last night for some maintenence, so hopefully that will fix the problem. If not, I'll be looking for a new home.

[Daniel]

Blogger gets a lot of criticism, but given the number of sites they're hosting and the relative adaptability of the system, it's kind of amazing that it runs at all.

[moncler vest]

Thanks, I'm going to have nightmares tonight.