M'lady's M'Log or Bama Blog Aug 13

August 13, 2007

Our oldest son, the IT expert, says I can't call it a blog if I'm not really posting to a Web log site. He has a point. 'Blog' is supposed to be short for 'Web log.' Especially as I'm supposed to be about the business of printing accurate information, he says I should be more careful about the terms I use. I concede.

However, I hesitated at the thought of actually creating a blog. It seems somewhat pretentious. It requires, I think, an extra click (extra work) for someone to actually go and read it. I much prefer sending an email containing my cheery, newsy letter that people can just read or delete without having to click on the link to my blog.

The advantage to a blog is that people can read each other's responses...which, of course, presumes there will be responses and that people will be moved to comment upon them. But I did receive some nice replies to my previous emails and I think others would have enjoyed reading them. Most of them, anyway.

So I'm compromising. I've decided to call it a m'log, as in e-mail log. M'lady's m'log, if you will. Just remember that when this term finally makes it into Webster's, you saw it here first!

And I've created a blog. If you really want to read my past postings and see a picture or two (when I figure out how to post them), you can go to justwritetouch.blogspot.com and read all about it. And if you go there, you can also vote as to which format you prefer. But then the results are going to be skewed because only people who bother to go to the blog and bother to vote will be counted. Ah, statistics.

There. My conscience is clear.

Tomorrow is my last day as an intern. I'm finishing up an article about students in Calhoun County schools who speak little or no English. Can you believe Alabama has had a 336 percent increase in such students in the last decade? Probably true for most of the South, but for the U.S. as a whole the increase is about 65 percent. In the same time period, Alabama's total enrollment only increased 1.5 percent.

Wednesday I officially become a Knight Foundation Fellow. They wine us and dine us on Thursday—a bus tour of Calhoun County and a BBQ at the Star—and Friday—orientation in Tuscaloosa. We have meetings on Monday and Tuesday, and classes begin on Wednesday, August 22.

It has been 100 degrees or hotter the last few days. No rain. Just hot, hot, hot.

Those of you wanting to learn more about Anniston might want to read Dennis Love's My City Was Gone: One American town's toxic secret, its angry band of locals, and a $700 million day in court. As a narrative writer, he's quite good. Just be aware that Love provides little or no documentation and that some of those angry locals are angry at him because of what he didn't say and because of how he (mis)represented the town.

You'll also learn some local history and that I wasn't kidding in my last posting about a possible but, we're told, “unlikely event” making my life expectancy about three minutes. Mine and everyone else's here. But all America, indeed, all regardless of nationality who have bought into the philosophy that more is better and that science is the answer, is and are responsible. Why should any of us avoid such places while others live under this pall? Ultimately, why should I be afraid? “If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord.” Romans 14:7

In any case, this is where I am. This is where I'll be, God willing, for the next year. Let the classes begin!