Some thoughts on blogging, continued

I leave in about an hour to drive to the Portland airport--and then fly to my conference in San Francisco--but I couldn't head out of town without checking my blog, and boy am I glad that I did! Thanks to Kim, Hillary r, Alan C, Just rambling, Emily, Hope, Tavosmom, and Rosa G for a great conversation about blogging. This conversation alone seems to me to be a clear indication of how valuable blogging can be.

I look forward to checking out the reportsfromconsumers.com website when I get back (thanksk just-rambling!). I just speed read the article by Daniel Drezner and found it quite fascinating--and also helpful for my research. I'll also follow up on it when I get back.

In the meantime, thanks to all for such a stimulating conversation.

On a more personal note, last Sunday my husband I planted two forsythias in my mother's memory. I grew up in Ohio, and my mother lived there just about all of her life. Since she had twelve children, mom didn't have a lot of time to pay attention to flowers and nature--but every spring she would exclaim over the forsythias when they bloomed. (They're the first sign of spring after a long and dreary Ohio winter.)

It will take a long time for me to deal with my mother's death. Friends who have lost parents tell me that in an important way you never get over this loss. But planting the forsythias helped. After we planted them Greg read the Mary Oliver poem "In Blackwater Woods." It's a very beautiful poem about nature, life, and death. I would love to be able to paste it into this post, but the university web software doesn't have an edit (copy and paste) function.

Don't get me started on that.

If you're not familiar with the poem, you can read it simply by googling "In Blackwater Woods" Mary Oliver. Several different versions will appear.

Hmmm. I wonder what it is about blogging that somehow makes it feel natural to go from a somewhat academic discussion of blogging to a personal comment about a parent's death.

Take care, everyone.