I miss old blogs I used to read years ago, that disappeared for various reasons years ago.
I don't mean the big news sites, like ThinkProgress, that ended because they couldn't make it as businesses. (but take a look at thinkprogress.org, frozen forever in September 2019, pre covid, pre Biden).
I also don't mean the political forums like MyDD that were so important for us back in the dark days of the Bush era.
I'm thinking of the personal blogs where one man's or one woman's devotion to thinking and writing about life or politics or career brought me back again and again. But they ended. Motivations changed or lives ended or reasons we'll never know.
I'm thinking of two in particular
TheNewBlog (thenewsblog.net) of Steve Gilliard which ended with his death in 2007. Somehow reading Steve's writings always made me confident in the future, confident that the worst encroachments of barbarism in our country could be beaten back. It got worse than you would have believed, Steve, but we're making our way out, finally.
and Invisible Adjunct (invisibleadjunct.com) written by the site's pseudonymous Invisible Adjunct until 2004, that showed me so many things about our society and academia, and how talent and dedication can be wasted. I hope IA fared well after leaving academia and this method of communication.
In each of these blogs the person showing through the writing was bright and kind, intelligent and thoughtful, in a way that I would have liked to be able to be.
Forgive the short diary. It's just a response to an attack of nostalgia.