Reality Check

Yesterday we went to my brother's house for the annual cookie baking ritual. My family has been chain-baking frosted Christmas sugar cookies for more than 50 years. We are well into our fourth generation of coming together to provide color and carbs for Christmas plates for family, friends and co-workers.

I asked my 15 year old niece to bring up The Happy Circumstance to share a piece with my mother. Mom liked in and asked, "Oh, you have a blog now?" in the same tone she would have asked about a new piece of furniture or the apperance of a dancing bear in the living room.

"Yes, I do."

"I do, too, Uncle Jim," Casie shared. And the conversation veered away from me with a gigantic whooshing sound.

Now I ask you. What is the point of having a blog except to say, "Hey, look at me?"

I know. I know. There are blogs for frogs, hogs and logs. I cruise some of the lists on Blogger and have found blogs that areonly about Scottish ruins, computer code, the death of the Internet and quilts. There are blogs about blogs and bloggers. One of my favorites, and my first daily read, is about community life here in town.

I shouldn't have been surprised that Casie beat me into the blogosphere. Harper's is saying that a new blog is created every second right now. In the time I've been plugging at this 350 people ahve staked a claim on our attention and bandwidth. Weblogs have become the Beanie Babies of 2005, everybody is in on the game and we collect them just as avidly. And, just like Beanies, you'll never get them all so you have to pick your subset.

My favorites are the political blogs, some of which you can see in my Reading List. I check out DailyKos and TPM every day, sometimes every couple of hours for a quick fix. I'll read The Madison Freedom Fighter or McBride's just for another POV.

I've put no links in here on purpose. Track them down as you wish, or not. You don't need to read what I read to validate either one of us. If you stumble onto this and like what you see, leave a comment or share a link. It's wide open and brand new here. But, there is one thing the dancing bear needs to say.

Hey, look at me!