A good blog is (not so) hard to find

I think the best posts from the class were ones that included interesting, personal opinions about a topic as well as specific details from the writer’s life.  The reason we read blogs is to try and learn something about each other and what we are writing about—generalizations aren’t exactly the best vehicle for exposing ourselves to new ideas and opinions.  This concept of generalizing also applies to the photos we choose to post—there’s nothing more depressing than a post full of iStock photos found on Google that vaguely resemble something you mentioned in a post. Matt’s blog was one of the blogs that included a lot of interesting images that, though weren’t taken by him, are sort of weird and funny, like in his Wife on a Lease post and his “Free” Blog Post.

Photos like this...

Or this

Honesty and opinion are also some of the main components of the well-written blogs, which help combat this habit of generalization. I remember Cellik’s first open post, and the way he was so honest about what was going on in his life. He talked about how he didn’t feel like the University of Michigan was where he was meant to be, and it was refreshing to begin to get to know him and what he was going through in this post. This honesty continued throughout his blog, too, and we were able to see his thoughts and feelings towards the university of Michigan evolve: in his post about growth, he expanded on his first post and shared more about how he was exploring his options outside of U of M, and then in his 18^th post about how he was seriously considering moving to Texas next year.

Interesting posts also were written with a specific voice that really allowed us to hear the writer’s thoughts as we read. It’s often easier to write with this voice in the open posts, yet more difficult to express this same opinion and use of language when the topic seems more academic. However, the posts that managed show this same degree of opinion and style of writing in the more outlined topics were some of the most interesting. Lita’s writing does this especially well, particularly through her literary blog review where she really adds her own opinion about blogging, and not just if she thought a blog was good or bad.

A woman I saw on the street

You could still tell her frame was small, even though she wore a long, heavy woolen coat. She was about five feet and five inches, and had short, white, hair that looked like the cotton you pull from the head of a q-tip. Upon that hair was a knitted hat, probably acrylic wool. It was a reddish-orange color and was knitted with the moss stitch, so that little baubles of yarn covered the entire surface. And, there was a scarf made from matching yarn tied around her neck so that it hung down the front of her chest. Both were slightly pilled, well worn. Her coat was heavy, and fell at the middle of her skinny calves. She had varicose veins that crawled up her legs and that were buried beneath her white socks that only rose past her ankles, so that a slice of her papery skin was exposed to the cold air. On her feet were white, New Balance tennis shoes that were fairly clean, and looked slightly out of place next to her long black coat. The woman walked with haste uphill, shoulders broad, head bowed, eyes pinched, against the wind. In her right arm swung a new, brown leather briefcase.

She loved the cold.

The First eighteen years of her life were spent in hot, stuffy rooms, where she was ignored by her parents.

It wasn’t her sister’s fault, though. She couldn’t help the seizures, the muscle tightness, the drooling.

But her parents’ obliviousness to their youngest daughter was as suffocating as the 78 degrees and the humming of the humidifiers that was necessary to keep her sister alive.

She died, anyway.

But that was 44 years ago. Since then, she has yearned for the cold. 42 years ago, in a big city in northern Canada where the temperatures never rose above 54 degrees, she found a job as a receptionist in a family planning facility. In that same town she met her husband, and they were married the following January. Then in March, 41 years ago, as they drove through Bismarck, North, Dakota, their identical twins were conceived in their car with the broken heater, the leather seats cracked from the cold, windows coated with frost. The following December in Wisconsin brought ice, snow, and two sons.

While she still was warm to her sons, her husband, the women she met at her the family planning clinic she supervised, her two poodles and calico cat, her relationship with her parents held a thick, solid sheet of ice. The last time she visited them in Texas was 24 years ago, when her dad had his hip replaced. The last time they visited was at her sons’ high school graduation 23 years ago.  

A Eulogy

As I write, there is waxy propolis coating my back molars that my spit can’t penetrate. Perhaps, it will stay there forever.

From the time they arrived in April, I knew those 700 workers and drones (and a queen!) would do great things. They were champs, nursing the hive until it grew to 40,000, pollinating our hydrangeas and basswood trees. No varroa mite or Monsanto monster could stop them.

They were the best hive a naïve little beekeeper could ask for.  

They spoke with each other and they listened, they were protective (William and I have sting marks to prove), and they were good teachers, and good friends.

Through their propolis, their honey, their wax, their pollen, they formed a seal between my brother and me.

They made my neighbor’s crabapple tree blossom.

Their July honey was near white and tasted like lemons. September’s was amber and grassy, earthy.

And even though I gagged at the white pulpy larvae when we cleaned the trays, deep down I loved those baby bees.

Perhaps we took too much.

Perhaps we smoked too much.

Perhaps we touched, removed, examined, hive-tooled, tray-checked, honey-harvested too much.

Perhaps they were destined to collapse, from the time the bee farmer up in Hackensack, Minnesota fertilized their mother.

Seven months is not so long, but it was long enough for awareness, relationships, understanding to form,

for late summer afternoons sweating beneath white cotton armor, for touching tacky wood and tiny furry thoraxes, for forever smelling like smoke and unsticking hair full of honey, for comb caught between teeth, for forging friendships with hive tools and wax.

My 40,000 friends, you cultivated so much more than the environment.  

To read or not to read

The Literary saloon is a sad, cold bowl of oatmeal.

Is that too harsh?

First off, it looks like it was made back in 1999 (which it very well might have been). It’s clunky, reminiscent of the class websites you made back in third grade when you did that one dinosaur project. Plus, I’m pretty sure that some of the graphics were created using Kid Pix.

I heart digital puppets

I think it also may have been created using this computer.

It’s run by Austrian born Michael Orthofer, who founded his main website The Complete Review in 1999 (was I right or was I right??) and then this complementary blog two years later. He’s written lots of reviews and literary criticism and, based on the lengthy list of publications and interview links, seems to know what he’s talking about when it comes to literature (he tweets, too?) It’s organized by day instead of posts, listing all the entries for the day under the same heading, which is a little confusing. The content he covers ranges from general events going on in the literary world (Translator William Weaver passed away; who won the Prize for literature), some commentary on others’ writing about issues in the literary world (“ Judging pseudonymous (and other) work”), and then some promotional posts for newly published books. But really, nothing quite that interesting.

He mainly writes to inform, but since there’s not too much opinion, there’s nothing really to keep the reader reading. The writing style is matter-of-fact, list-y, and lacks voice. Usually blogs that are uninterestingly written might make amends by posting some cool instagrams or at least having a nicely designed home page. But this blog really lacks some major aesthetic appeal. We users of the Internet have short attention spans, and are not going to stop and try and read each titles and paragraph to try and find information that appeals to us. WE NEED PHOTOS! PLEEEEZE.

Despite his dearth of web design skills, Mr. Orthofer seems like a well-rounded man, sculpting snow and inline skating in his free time.

But then there’s Relunctant Habits.

This blog has a nice mix of writing and audio, all reviewing books, discussing music and movies, and talking with different authors. As you scroll down, posts vary from interviews, commentaries on society, covering pretty much everything (“We examine why Kachka is a terrible journalist and little more than a middle-aged man digging through dirty laundry;” George Zimmerman’s verdict; “the serpentine history of candy”). And they even manage a little humor! It’s written by a number of people, and actually includes some good photos, too. The only problem is a visual one: the website is designed so the photo of each post takes up nearly the entire computer screen so you can’t really look at the beginning of multiple posts at the same time, aggravating my inner claustrophobe slightly.

this is me reading your blog. please help.

But, this issue is minor compared to all the opinions, humor, and voice Reluctant Habits provides not just on books and authors, but also current events in the world as well.