Soon after I began posting here at Daily Kos, I discovered Turn Maine Blue, a progressive blog that focused on my home state of Maine. I quickly became a regular, and as the owner lived out of state, he asked me to take over as the editor of the site, with complete management control.
Well almost — I’m not a tech guy, so I didn’t understand the inner workings of the blog. So when it was overwhelmed for reports of the Maine caucuses between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, I had no idea what to do.
On a Friday afternoon in July of 2009, the owner — without any warning — pulled the plug on TMB. It so happened that this was just before the first — and only — conference call that President Obama had with left wing bloggers. I was invited to be on that call, and spent the weekend creating what is now Dirigo Blue. It has basically been dormant for several years. After several months of trying to purchase the Turn Maine Blue domain from the owner, I left the idea fade and simply forgot about it.
Today, by pure chance, I happened to look up Turn Maine Blue and was surprised and discovered that someone else has recreated it. It does not look at all like the original, of course, and has text that can charitably be described as not written by a native English speaker:
<blockquote>In simple words, before acting, we first hear what everyone in the scene has to say. Just listening to one or two famous or influencing individuals simply does not result in unbiased tackling.</blockquote>
Here is the link to the new version of the old blog. I have no idea why anyone would make such an effort, since I am hardly influential in Maine politics let alone nationally. But there it is.
Here is the last known image of the original blog — I have to admit it’s odd to look at it after all these years: