Local blogs?
I see that pb‘s updating and FAQing his ORblogs.com list of Oregon weblogs. I can see where he’d be interested in local blogs with local info, being new(ish) to Oregon, and after living all my life here, including five years of grade school and five years of college in Corvallis, where he lives, plus most of the rest of my life within forty miles of there, I ought to be able to tell him a thing or two, about coming home from the coast by going up the Siletz clear up through Valsetz when you have far too much time, about dozens of secret waterfalls and lakes and pocket valleys with old abandoned orchards, about speed traps and glass floats and mosquitos and trails laid out by sadists on mules, about avoiding Jeff Park and not missing the Eagle Cap, about Indian salmon and Indian summer and Indian paintbrush on the Iron Mountain trail.
But, I’m not sure I want to. I’m still in love with the idea of reading the thoughts of people in New Zealand and Australia, and being read by people in Norway. I’m not at all sure I want to go back to being just another web-footed, moss-backed redneck who happens to know how to type. There are plenty of lighthouses around here, but I’m not sure they are my lighthouses.
It all comes down to use, I think. As what I’ll term a ”civic blogger” here in Portland, ORblogs will inevitably help me find other local(ish) people blogging about Portland, other than those who I’ve found (or have found me) by happenstance.
But the last thing I’d want is to get trapped in some sort of incestuous blogging circle. I’ve done the folding-back-upon-itself Internet scene before. And I’ve also done the meta-blogging thing before. Neither of which appeals to me in the least.
But then, the point is, it’s up to me to not have my use of ORblog become either of those two traps.