I keep a blogroll. It seems de rigueur. The link is up there, under the masthead. 174 people have been curious enough to click it so far this year.
My favorite blogs are written by everyday people living their lives. I love finding someone else of little notoriety who has something to say and keeps at it. None of us are ever going to become rich or famous because of our blogs. Indeed, we toil in relative obscurity, buoyed and encouraged by people who leave a comment.
I want to share a few blogs from my roll that amuse me, move me, or make me think. I hope you’ll add them to your list, too.
The Trephine is stunningly well written and personal. Blogger Jennifer wrote recently about her experience growing up poor and about coaching roller derby, but her best post this year is “Just don’t call me a tramp. It confuses my mother.” In a bid for a simpler life she sold almost all of her stuff, stopping only when everything she owned fit into her car. She then drove that car across the country, learning along the way that having so little to care for and worry about made it incredibly hard to run from herself.
My friend and Michigan Road partner-in-crime Kurt writes Hoosier Happenings. A lifelong Hoosier like me, he writes about his Indiana experience, including his family, his historic preservation work, local politics, and the birds he spies from the porch of his 1840s farmhouse. He recently restored the chicken coop on his property, making it the finest chicken coop in all of Indiana (and probably most of Michigan, Illinois, and Ohio too). He wrote about it in le’ coupe re doux.
Tori at the ramblings is remarkably prolific, finding humor in the least likely corners of motherhood. The best thing she’s written all year is it takes two & it used to take only one, a love letter to her two-year-old son.
My friend and colleague Scott writes only occasionally in his blog, Ashes of Our Fathers. But when he does post, stand back, it’s potent stuff. I admire his “I don’t know everything, but here’s what I have learned and therefore think” approach to society, politics, and God. My favorite of his recent posts is The Meaning of Life, in which he quotes Monty Python but also seriously considers the meaning of meaning itself.
Todd Pack’s Messy Desk is what the Germans would call allerlei – a little of this, a little of that. But Todd never fails to entertain. I’ve never been a country music fan, but even I had to appreciate the genre when he wrote Little Jimmy Dickens is beloved about a nonagenarian Grand Ole Opry star.
Finally, I follow several old-camera blogs, but my favorite is Mike’s Photography and Vintage Cameras. I am always impressed with the fine results he gets from even the lowliest old camera, which just proves that good images are much more about the photographer than the camera. Recently he got stunning images from a simple Ansco Panda camera from the 1950s. He shared them in El Día De Los Muertos.
My blogroll includes many more blogs worthy of your time and attention. Be the 175th to check it out!
