Saturday, April 12, 2008

Snowy Crocus & Blogging

Snow has returned.......isn't that special!! The crocuses appear not to mind, though.

This one below sort of resembles a wind turbine, with three blades. My son is an electrical engineer; during college he had an internship one summer near Boulder, Colorado, and worked with wind turbines. Some of us visited him and were treated to a tour up inside a turbine nacell........read about it here.

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If you haven't visited the Sugar Creek Farm blog yet, please click and take a gander over there. You will see very, very real, nitty-gritty farm photos, and read about authentic farm experiences.


Before I ever started a blog, I would sit down and Google phrases like: "farm wife blog", "dairy blog", "farm woman blog".........and would find practically nothing. I guess I was searching incorrectly, for lately I've run into many real farm blogs that have been online for several years.


I didn't even know what a "blog" was until maybe 2-1/2 years ago.......a family in our community was dealing with their child having cancer, and I heard people mention that the mother was keeping a daily "blog" about their experiences. I wondered what that was, then saw their blog's Web address printed somewhere, and surfed there to look it over. That's how I found out about blogs and blogging.


Here's a paragraph about blogging from an opinion article in the May 2008 First Things magazine.......the article is entitled "A Commonplace Book" and was written by Alan Jacobs:


"It is curious that the history of the weblog, insofar as it can be fully understood, mirrors that of the commonplace book. The term weblog seems to have been coined by a ...... man named Jorn Barger, and for him it is simply a log of interesting stories he discovers on the Web. It consists of links with brief discriptions, nothing more. But of course what most of us think of when we use the word blog is a kind of online journal or diary; and that is indeed the path the weblog or blog has, generally speaking, followed. What was once a log of things other people said on the Web is now a log of my own life, which I make available to readers, and which may (but need not) contain links and references. So when we speak of blogs we don't mean what Jorn Barger does; we mean-----well, something like what Jonathan Swift recommended to his young poet friend: 'a record of what occurs remarkable in every day's reading [or viewing or iPod-listening] or conversation.' "


I found the above to be interesting since I had never before heard of how blogging got its start. Probably, Googling the word "blogging" might have given me the answer.


I think blogging is a fine thing to pursue. The time spent doing it can't be any more wasted than time sitting zombie-like in front of the TV. Doing that holds little interest for me........I rarely feel the need to be entertained, although I enjoy watching a movie now and then. Its probably naive, but I want to feel as if what I'm doing has some sort of purpose, and TV watching rarely fills that bill. Choosing to watch an old movie probably doesn't serve any purpose, either, so obviously, I'm pretty much full of baloney with what I'm writing in this paragraph.

Blogging gives me the opportunity to "get off the farm" and visit other locales. In real life, we hardly ever go anywhere. Dairy farming is like that.......you are stuck at home tending to livestock everyday. I'm not complaining......just stating the facts, folks, and explaining why I blog. Like you really wanted to know that.....eh??!!!

Enjoy your Saturday!!





4 comments:

sugarcreekfarm said...

Thanks for the shout out :) Finally we seem to be on a weather upswing, eh? Looks like we'll finally have dd's first track meet Tuesday - good thing, because it's their one and only home meet!

Jeannelle said...

See, I've never even heard that term...."shout out".

Yes, the forecast is sounding much better for the next few days. Its about time.

Good luck to your trackster!

Laughing Orca Ranch said...

Your crocus's are beautiful...just waiting to bloom fully out.

The green parts of our ours are up, but no buds yet.

I agree about the blogging. I really enjoy visiting people and places all over the country, without having to leave my house. And then to keep up on a weekly with these same places and people, by visiting their blogs again and again, is just a huge bonus.

I'll be back to visit yours again, too.

Jeannelle said...

Thanks, Twinville, for stopping by again. Yes, I would say blogging is giving me a whole new perspective on the world.