Tag: Meta

I’m pleased to announce today the formation of the Port Writers Alliance.  This is a collective effort of Antemedius, DocuDharma, Firefly Dreaming, Ignoring Asia, The Dream Antilles, The Stars Hollow Gazette, Wild Wild Left, and writing in the rAw.

About The Name

A little to the left of starboard if you get the drift.  A harbor or anchorage.

About The Concept

There’s a lot of news and commentary that could be receiving more attention.

Rather than crosspost on a single central site what we’d like to encourage is crossreading and commenting.

We’ll be using two mechanisms to accomplish this-

• Firedog Lake style links to affiliated sites across the banner (props).  I’ve always admired the way Jane and her crew have been able to maximize excitement and can only hope to emulate it.

• Regular cross promotional digests of associated sites’ content.

How Does This Work?

Each site will decide for itself the content they want to feature and how often.  They’ll produce a digest and publish it on the affiliated sites.  It will be promoted by the host or not whenever, depending on the desires of the host site.

Authors must choose for themselves if they want to crosspost, though they should expect requests to do so.

The point is to increase visibility and impact.

Independence

Each site has it’s own vibe.  Formula One and Le Tour and if you ever think I’m talking about Politics you are sadly mistaken.

Content that is acceptable in some places is not in others and it is up to the host to decide.  All you free speech advocates can find a place to express yourselves I’m sure.  Port Writers Alliance sites enforce their own polices which are not uniform.

Success

The objective is that we’ll drive some traffic and raise some awareness.  I like to keep expectations realistic.

What you will see as a reader

Below each site’s Banner you’ll see some buttons that take you to the Front Page of each site.  Fairly frequently you’ll see a digest post from the individual sites that provide links to content they wish to highlight.  Sometimes it will have been crossposted but often not, so the pieces may be of special interest to you and you’ll want to click through and read them.  Even for crossposted pieces the reactions will be different.

If you wish to comment or contribute you’ll have to register independently at that site.  We just don’t have the technology Jane does at Firedog Lake.

If you are used to the pace of Daily Kos (and I don’t link just because I’m not sure about stability with the advent of dK 4.0) what you will find is that our blogs run quite a bit slower.  You can’t expect instant reactions or high volume responses.

On the other hand we’re attempting with this project to expose you to a wide range of diverse content so that there is plenty for you to read and explore.

I’m interested in your reactions to this initiative.  Please let me know below.

Today is the six month anniversary of The Stars Hollow Gazette and while it’s not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things we could be doing worse.  We have an impressive array of Twitter followers (Facebook?  Pfui!) and a fair number of visits and page hits (not as grand as some, but better than others) and a panoply of content I’d compare to anyone’s.

Mostly favorably.

Anyway, I’ve personally posted some pieces that didn’t revolt me in retrospect and some which may merit future revisiting just to flaunt in my face how wrong and misguided I’ve been.

I’d like to make that as easy as possible without a kick ass search engine like jotter’s and so, since I haven’t written meta in a while, I’d like to talk to you today about Tags.

It gets Geeky below the fold.

So. the frayed ends finally rip and tear. It finally becomes clearer: most Democratic politicians aren’t interested in being courageous. They are, however, interested in cash, campaigns, and power. They love to wordsmith and dazzle progressives with fabulous politicSpeak: yes, they do. More and better words delivered by more, but not necessarily better, Democrats.

Perhaps it is just plain decency that Democrats lack… the decency to stop playing both sides of issues. The decency to stop exploiting Republicans. Yes. You heard me. The Democrats have been the minority, the majority, with and without a sitting president and STILL the fucking Republicans are road blocks? It’s always the Republicans’s fault? No matter how it is sliced and diced, the Dems are always having their hands tied by some outside force.  I’m not buying it.

cross posted at writing in the rAw and Daily Kos

Crossposted at Daily Kos and Docudharma

How exhausting is blogging?  That’s the $64,000 question for some as following a discouraging election, they seek solace in drifting away or, even, posting a GBCW diary.  As a follow-up to this wonderful series — Welcome New Users — by LaughingPlanet and smileycreek, I add my voice addressing not just newbies on this (and other) blogs but, also, a bunch of oldies.

JekyllnHyde’s Tip #1: and take a look at your computer keyboard first!

Attentive readers will notice new buttons on the right labeled Daily Features.  It highlights the work of mishima, TheMomCat, and I.

It’s something of an experiment, I’d expect our readership to be using a scroll mouse or the keyboard or window buttons to scroll through all of our recent content, but perhaps you have a particular favorite and want to catch up.  If you find it useful, my grand concept for future development is to add a section highlighting our weekly regular contributions and move it all out of the way of our Twitter feed.

Now it gets more meta

If you examine my body of work you’ll know I’m a nut about scheduled blogging.  Not because I like being a nag, but because it’s a convenience to the reader.  When TheMomCat and I created this blog I resolved to myself that I’d just let things set themselves up organically.  What has developed is that we put up about 8 diaries between 6 am and 8 pm on the even hours.

Translator is a regular contributor, but not daily.  He usually submits his work after 8 pm on Fridays (Popular Culture) and Sundays (Pique the Geek), though he does post at other times.  mishima posts Random Japan on Saturdays at 4 pm.  TheMomCat posts Health and Fitness News Saturdays at 2 pm.  I post Monday Business Edition on… wait for it… Monday mornings and The Week In Review on Sunday mornings when I’m not distracted by Sports blogging.

Because you may think this blog is about politics, but it’s really about Formula One and Le Tour.

Our other contributors are more muse driven, and that’s ok.  What’s important to understand is we have an aggressive promotion policy to compliment our usual content.  If you have something you’d care to draw our attention to, please do.

Soapblox blogs can run 24/7/365.

Pete Seeger shares his Sunday routine and some interesting observation and thoughts on life, letters, food and God.

Mr. Seeger, who lives in Beacon Falls with his wife of 67 years, spends his Sundays writing letters and chopping wood around the house that he built, calling Sunday the busiest day of the week. He also spends time at the Beacon Sloop Club which he helped build by tricking people into volunteering: “I called it a pot-luck supper, and 30 people showed up,” he said. “Food is one of the great organizing tools.”

Haven’t we all done that from time to time to get our families to help around the house. Bribery with food as an incentive.

Mr. Seeger isn’t a regular church goer but finds God in the woods.

My family’s not churchgoers, but we use the word God quite often. One of my most recent songs has God in every verse. Every time I’m in the woods, I feel like I’m in church.

On food, he eats healthy keeping down intake of fats, salt and sugar, which probably accounts for his relative good health and longevity.

Sunday breakfast is “a pick up” sometimes cereal and fruit, left-overs from the “ice box” or an indulgence

AN OMELET I met the French wife of a lefty organizer in Canada. She said you start the omelet by putting butter in the pan to get it sizzling. You put in your eggs and whatever, and you immediately put the heat down and the cover on. You don’t wait for it to get cooked; you want it to be liquid in parts. You take it out and turn it over so the brown is on top, and you take it right away to the table so it doesn’t get overcooked. And if you have good cheese, it can be super.

Once a month, there’s a pot-luck supper at the Sloop Club. I usually like some salad, so I made a salad. I like lots of lettuce, myself, but I like lots of onions, too. I’ll put some tomatoes in it. Purslane, if it’s fresh, is quite nice in a salad. Likewise another weed that came over from England, lamb’s quarters. If it’s the right season of the year, that will go on a salad. No two salads are alike. I used to go in for romaine, but now I like better the red-top lettuce. It’s almost a religious thing. I used to cut up my lettuce, but my family said no, a good salad, you break up the lettuce with your fingernails. I go along with my family. I like lots of color. Red peppers and yellow peppers.

His instructions for cooking corn on the cob, a couple of ears in boiling water for two minutes and not let the water temperature drop, is a “trick” he just learned.

I found his use of a rolling pin to reduce the swelling in his legs a neat idea. I learn something new every day.

I have to use a rolling pin on my legs because they swell up now. I promised the doctor I’d use a rolling pin to roll on my upper leg to pull the blood back up. It’s not painful at all, but it’s a nuisance. I’m in better condition than most people my age. I think because we don’t eat so much fat or salt or sugar.

But of all the “Secrets” that this lefty, anti- war activist, environmentalist, folk singing elder statesman shared, the most important one was this:

It’s a very important thing to learn to talk to people you disagree with.

We don’t have to agree but we need to keep communicating.

Mitch McConnell on Sunday’s “Meet the Press’: “The President says he’s a Christian” I take him at his word”.

Stephen Colbert, last night’s “The Colbert Report”: O.K. Just like when Mitch McConnell says he’s not a Human-Turtle Hybrid, I take him at his word. And it’s not easy. I have a strong desire to feed this man lettuce and raw hamburger, but I take him at his word.

h/t tigerwater @ Dependable Renegade

My ex-sister-in-law (I have a few) with whom I’ve remained friends despite that she is a Republican, Yankee Fan, born again and again Christian (no offense intended to anyone here present but I am a card carrying Wiccan. It even says so on my dog tags), sends me these forwarded a zillion times e-mails. Mostly I disregard them and delete. Last night I don’t know what possessed me but I opened this one. Get your tissues, it is sweet.

My ex-sister-in-law who is a born again and again Christian, Up-State NY Republican and die hard devoted Yankees fan with whom, somehow, I’ve maintained a friendship, sent me this e-mail.

When you need to relax and just get away from it all…..May I suggest a day at the beach in CHINA ‘

More

I was asked that very question late last night. The answer is yes, very much so. We are a very “hard”, left leaning blog but willing to entertain many points of view. Just be prepared to defend whatever you write. We are democratic in that sense.

We like people like Glen Greenwald, Sirota, digby, Jane Hamsher, Atrios and even occasionally, Armando (BigTentDemocrat).

We support sites like Corrente, Feministing and Think Progress among others.

We encourage you to read the sites that are to the right of us like Open Left, Booman Tribune and Balloon Juice for perspective.

We support our friends’ blogs, too. Edger’s Antemedius, RiaD’s Firefly Dreaming and davidseth’s The Dream Antilles.

We will be up dating our blog roll to reflect not just the views of the site but to include others that though they may not fit our mission to move the Overton Window left but are well written and thought provoking.

We want to hear what you think in diaries and in comments. Don’t be shy because we know you’re not. Speak up, be heard. We want to hear you