November 30, 2005

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  Who are your favorite “Islanders”? Have you met any new and exciting folks on the Island? Share with us your impressions of your new friends and readers.

  
  

   

  
  

  
  

  
  
  
  
  

  This is my Topic Entry for Topic Post 2.00 on the Internet Island Blogring.

  
  

  I read lots of blogs. I repeat that a lot, I know, but I say it frequently to prove that it isn’t difficult to read a lot of “lives” when that is all one reads. I stopped reading books when I started internetting. In fact, I can read a lot of classic fiction and literature on the internet.

  
  

  I first got involved with reading websites when I created my own in 1999. I didn’t know you could get instant comments on a blog, like on Xanga, until I joined the Xanga service on Memorial Day 2004. I made it a point to do two things with my blog, which combined about a half a dozen blogs I had been writing, or attempting to write, on the blogger service. First, my blog would always be interesting. I would not post each and every day, but would construct my posts like magazine articles with photos, art, and “articles” , regular features, and borrow lots from my already existing website, which I doubt that many people visited. Second, I would write letters to the bloggers. Instead of “comments” which sometimes are quite short and somewhat anonymous, I would begin my Xanga career spending more time on people’s blogs than they were probalby used to, and I would try to gain a better perspective for the person I was reading. It took a while, but in a short time I knew quite a few Xangans, and have never stopped my “style ” of blogging or commenting. I think it is somewhat amazing that I don’t “forget everybody” but always try to put a “name” to a “face” as it were, so that I can instantly remember “who” I’m talking to on the internet.
  Upon creating the blogring Internet Island, I have already written more than once that I was (and still am) overwhelmed by the response I got in terms of membership. On my poetry group on Yahoo, I had 47 members, but only 10 or 15 were “active” at any given time. I had to give up running that group because it took three hours of my time out of almost every day. I made it a point, as the owner of the poetry group, to critique each and every poem as if I were turning in a school paper. The group members appreciated this attention to detail. I try to do the same thing while blogging. And so far, I am still able to keep up with almost everyone, (at least those who regularly comment on my blog) and I frequently go through my sub list and now the blogring list to “find” people I might have “forgot” or who have not visited my blog in a while.

  
  

  This topic post was not meant to be a “popularity contest” by any means. I simply wanted to talk about a few bloggers I met “on the Island” who I might or might not have known about, but never really read their blogs until they joined Internet Island. I might make this one of my regular “feature articles” too, but let me tell you it did take some time to create this entry.
  Herewith, some of my favorite “Islanders”. Not all of them. I still have to “meet” some Islanders, so I don’t know if they’ll be “favorites” too.

  
  

  This is only a post about “new” sites I found because of the Internet Island blogring. I began the blogring by inviting the people to whom I subscribed which is about 80 some sites. A lot of those sites are “favorite” sites too.

  
  

  Charlie (xkisstherailsx)
  http://www.xanga.com/xkisstherailx
  First Blog Entry: Saturday, February 26, 2005 Comments: 5
  

  
  

  “What do you see? A white adolescent male? A foster kid? A skater? A cutter? A stoner? A survivor?”

  
  

  With these words, Charlie takes us on a somewhat bizarre trip through a youth that none of us have probably ever experienced, and if we have, then we seldom talk about it. Charlie does. Charlie is a fifteen year old  who writes way beyond his years. His life is painful sometimes, but his journaling is honest and heart breakingly real, and Charlie’s blog is one I read completely, like a novel one Sunday afternoon soon after he joined the Island. First, I won’t lie, I read some of the comments from other young people on his first Island topic entry, and it seemed somewhat interesting to me that somebody so young would join the Island blogring. I try to appeal to a broad readership with my own blog, and am not a stranger to being read by young people, but I didn’t expect anyone in Charlies’ age bracket to join Internet Island. I am so glad he did.
  Charlie is candidly naked in his blogging style, and it is very hard to believe I am reading words from a fifteen year old. He has problems, like all other teens, but his are much more difficult to stomach. He’s possibly the bravest soul I’ve met yet on the Xanga service.
  From his very first post: 2/26/05
  “He’s in my bedroom and he’s sitting on my bed and I can feel his hand stroking me through the blanket. He’s touched me before but never like this. I feel confused and embarrassed and maybe a little scared. I try not to move. His friends are in the room and they’re talking drunk weird. Dad gives me a glass of something and tells me to finish it all. Dad’s got his —- out and the blanket is where my feet are. He’s touching himself and he’s touching me. He’s doing it fast and angry and he’s hurting me. He tells me to lie on my stomach. Dad’s friend says I’m small but dad says it’s okay. I’m 10 1/2 years old. What he’s given me to drink isn’t enough. I’m so scared I wet the bed. I can feel something inside me and I know I’m gonna die. They tell me to shush. Dad’s friend says I’m a good boy. I lie in bed for a long time …”
  You won’t read too many blogs like Charlie’s and he is reaching out with his blog to “grownups”. He has a good reason not to trust grownups, so his efforts are laudable and amazing.
  He is one of my favorite Islanders.

  
  

  Nancy (Nance1)
  “Nancy’s Ramblings”
  http://www.xanga.com/Nance1
  First Blog Entry: Wednesday, September 25, 2002 Comments: 2

  
  

  I believe I first saw the “Nance1″ blog “profile” on a comment on other blogs I read. I probably didn’t pay that much attention. I believe I visited but I didn’t really read. At first glance, Nancy’s site “looks” very much like the “average blog”, in other words, with the template intact as Xanga designed it, with very little HTML geegaws or peripheral eye catchers. No media plays on the Nance1 site. Here is a person I have only “met” since belonging to the Internet Island. Since I am an incredibly anal intensive person, I first was attracted to the index. Nancy says “I spent some time indexing my blogs” and you can tell. Very few bloggers on the service index. It is a time consuming process, and you can’t “copy/paste” the “links” in your custom module. An index allows a new visitor, or a frequent visitor who might not be able to get around all that often because they read lots of blogs (like moi) a means by which they can pick and choose then entries they want to read. When you’ve been blogging as long as Nancy has, you almost need to have an index. It is also noted that none of Nancy’s photos, even in the early entries, show up as “photo not found”. The complete blog is intact.
  Here are just some of the examples of why I love to read Nancy’s blog, “Nancy’s Ramblings”.
  10/06/02
  “I am feeling very philosophical today, which may not be a good thing. I have been pondering how people touch our lives in good or in hurtful ways. I am a believer in the fact that some people are meant to come together and interact at certain points. Those interactions may be positive, or they may be very injurious, but they are going to happen.”
  01/29/03
  “I think about the interconnectedness of people. I believe strongly in that. I think we are joined to the people in our lives in ways we cannot detect or hope to understand. I believe that if we are where we should be, we interact with others for our mutual good. If we are not where we should be, we can do a lot of harm. I wonder if I am where I should be?”
  Here is a great thinker in the quise of a middle aged wife and mother from Minnesota.
  She is one of my favorite Islanders.

  
  

  Miriam (climenhaga)
  http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=climenhaga
  First Blog Entry: Sunday, July 25, 2004 No Comments

  
  

  “I’m interested in so much that I think it’s really impossible to put it into this little box.”

  
  

  I don’t know why certain blogs stick out for me. I think it is possibly a result of the “personality” who writes the blog to eventually come through in the writing. Miriam is a wife, a mother, and an artist, who has what I call a “stream of consciousness” style of writing. Lots of “text blocks’ with no paragraphs and lots of ellipses. She’s got the cutest profile pic I’ve ever seen. I wandered back into Miriam’s “internet life” through her blog, and I gain a sense of someone with a sense of humor and a deep seated love of humanity. Sometimes she might get a little hornswaggled, but she writes about it with panache and humor. Another blogger who rarely has a misfired “article” in her ouevre.
  11/17/05
  “Like I said, I have a lot of stuff swirling around in my head and it’s hard to put it down….some good, some bad.  Enough that ifn’s I should write it down, I should probably separate it into different posts so as not to confuse myself any further.  I know I tend to go on and on and not stay w/ one through line.  But, that’s just kind of what I’m like too.  Maybe that’s why my house is always a mess.”
  I always get a smile from Miriam.
  She is one of my favorite Islanders.

  
  

  Dario (italian culture)
  http://www.xanga.com/italian_culture
  First Blog Entry: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 (comments disabled)

  
  

  Dario has not written that many blog entries, and a lot of his entries consist of his drawings, so he does not have a vast body of work like some blogs. There is a big gap in his blogging, and his last entry was for Socrates Cafe a few weeks ago, so he doesn’t offer a constant barrage of his musings, or daily life, or show us photographs of his home. Since he lives in Italy, and not in America, I find his blog infinitely interesting. (And he does have photos on his website) I was easily able to “read him like a book” in a short amount of time. I wish he blogged more, but he does have another blog and his website is accessible from his blog. I was first attracted to his work on Socrates Cafe and asked him to join the Island if I remember correctly (senior moments sometimes, forgive me). He participated in the first topic post. He put down beautifully a “heckler” who commented with profanity on one of his entries in 2004.
  9/07/04
  “About polite language: i am not offended by rude talking, but, as you already pointed out in your comment, i am not American, and my mothertongue is not English, that’s why i have hard time with strict slang, and it’s frustrating to work on a dictionary to look for a useless colorful expression. My English is not so good to use the same language and anyway content is more interesting to me than swearwords.”
  
  Dario is one of those guys who say they don’t communicate very well in another language, and then blow you away with their erudition and eloquence.
  He is one of my favorite Islanders.
  

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  The images used in this entry are from the websites/blogs or the featured individuals. I used one of my own photos of Catalina for the background for Charlie’s image. The drawings are his, and the poem is his words. The photo of Nancy and her husband is from her website, and the photo of Lake Superior is her own work. I did straighten the photo of the lake a bit. Miriam’s “profile pic” is one of my very favorites, and the background for this image is her own painting, “Woman”.  Both the drawings in Dario’s image are his own work, and I have composited one over the other. These are two separate works. All images are copyright © the creators, and no attempt is made to violate copyright laws. I did not receive permission to use these images, so permission is pending until the creators see their images on my blog. MFN
  

  • 1:39 am
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