Superior Scribblers Unite!

As mentioned yesterday, Sylvia From Over The Hill recently named me as a Superior Scribbler. Superior Scribbledom comes with rules, and here they are:

1. Name five other Superior Scribblers to receive this award.
   
2. Link to the author and name of the blog that gave you the award.
   
3. Display the award on your blog with this LINK which explains the award.
   
4. Click on the award at the bottom of the link and add your name to the bottom of the list.
   
5. Post the rules.
   

When you read about the "blogosphere," it's generally in the context of its political impact and the resentment of the MSM that bloggers have greater influence than they do. What you rarely hear about is the blogosphere's effectiveness as a social network. Facebook is easy: By posting a picture and a brief profile, you're inundated almost immediately by past friends and acquaintances. Blogging is different: You command an audience by virtue of what you write about and how well you write. Blogging affords the power of  staying current with old friends and making new ones. 

Since nothing in the rules says I can't do otherwise lest the sun burn out, I'm  naming five people who write about their everyday lives in such a way that they have either deepened our long-time friendship or helped build a new one. In no particular order:

• Cafe Nita Lou writes especially well about the challenges that come when your child goes away to school and a new life. But she also keeps her perspective and examines the world around her -- starting with her household with a laudable (and humorous) self-deprecation.
• The Lakewood Daily Snap has become one of my favorite blogs. Often, it's as a simple as a picture (of the sort that isy worth a minimum of a thousand words) with a caption; as the photos and captions accrue, you find yourself a fellow neighbor in this Cleveland suburb.
• Owing to a mutual appreciation of the film Holiday Inn, Scrumpy's Baker was my first blog connection and I believe that I left the first comment ever on her blog. A fine writer with a pointed wit, she pulls you in to the quotidian dilemmas of career, marriage, relatives, and staying fit in such a way that anyone can identify with her and cheer her on.
• Over at Robert Frost's Banjo, Robert Hayes writes eclectically about music, cookng, and poetry. He's a Superior Scribbler because of his Thoreauvian accounts of life in rural Idaho after years in the San Francisco Bay Area. Like Blake, he sees the world in a grain of sand.
• The demise of a local chain store inspired Red Apple Elegy, which has become a sort of layman's guide to urban design as seen through the malls, parking lots, and produce stands of the Newport Hills area of the Seattle suburb of Bellevue. Entries like this prove her point that "if you find something ugly you're just not looking closely enough..."

To keep track of conservative-in-moderate's clothing Dave Reichert, put the Reichert Report on your blog roll. Reichert is apparently so embarrassed by his vote against the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act that it gets no mention on his official web site...

The United Countries of Baseball (click to enlarge):

4804 Dauphine Street, Holy Cross neighborhood, New Orleans...

Carnival parades, Slidell style!...

Bruce Springsteen kicked ass and took names during yesterday's halftime show at the Super Bowl, but it's getting harder and harder to find a good word about his new album. Don;t count the Boss out, though: The one other time he made an artistic misstep (the simultaneous release of Human Touch and Lucky Town), he followed up with one of his best: The masterful Ghost of Tom Joad. For anyone who missed it or wants to see it again, here's the halftime show:

Part 2:

Weekly Address: "My...recovery plan will launch the most sweeping effort to modernize and upgrade school buildings that this country has ever seen"

Here's another kind of program that deserves support: The Colton Kitchen Project in New Orleans.

It incorporates cooking, storytelling, and eating around the table with family – all things that should be the cornerstones of our lives, but don’t happen enough. While other H.S. programs are focused on vocational training, "Family Meal" focuses on basic cooking skills and family time.

In his inimitable way, Stupid and Contagious writes a spot-on appreciation of Leonard Cohen's "Hallejujah."

Starting with the shrimp and alligator sausage cheesecake, Nita Lou learns to expect the unexpected in New Orleans...