Creek Running North

Why wait until November? The blog world has been an unpleasant place the past few weeks, and I think it’s time some of us started picking out a few blogs we like and linking to them, and saying why. I’ll go first. Here are some of the bloggers for which I’m grateful, with an emphasis on those who as far as I can tell don’t get way more traffic than I do.

Wampum: Do you read Wampum when it’s the Koufax off-season? You ought to. MBW and EBW and Dwight are one of the best blog teams around, with wide-ranging expertise including but not limited to Native issues, disability, and global realpolitick from a progressive POV. (EBW’s also been known to wield a deft cluestick outside Wampum from time to time.) The Koufices, of course, are a stunningly generous effort: the Wampum crew spend more money on the awards each year than they take in in donations (though you can always help them defray those expenses by picking one of the donation methods linked in their upper left corner.) I’ve rarely seen a community-building effort to equal the Koufax Awards, and Wampum deserves our gratitude for putting the things on each year. And this week, what I’m most grateful for is the Wampum crew’s work to promote the idea of bringing the National Guard back home without waiting around for the Bush administration to do so.

Ilyka Damen: I’m pretty sure my first interaction with Ilyka was of a hostile nature. I don’t remember what it was about. She used to support the war in Iraq, so it might have been that. So many blog pissing matches, so little time. Hard to keep track, you know? But Ilyka did something that happens vanishingly rarely in the political blog world: she paid attention, listened to arguments, weighed the outcome of events, and she changed her mind. This week, I am inordinately grateful for anyone who can display that level of intellectual flexibility. She brings me hope that there really might be some other future than rampant polarization, and that there might be people on the current “other side” who are repulsed by racism and sexism. Also, it’s hard not to appreciate someone who posts something like this.

Kevin Andre Elliott: Another one who’s not afraid of considering and reconsidering. Kevin can make pointed critical commentary with the best of them, but you never get the sense that he’s neglecting the humanity of the person he’s criticising. He’s also a better writer than I am. Which I hate, of course. But what can I do? I am fatalistic about such things. Kevin’s blog Slant Truth is about equal parts poetry, politics, and the metapolitics of alliances real or idealized. And he’s a dog person. Almost reason enough to go back to the Finger Lakes for a visit.

Zuky: I’m just getting to know Kai’s writing after he dropped a note here. Strong opinions without rancor, a heightened aesthetic sense, and more optimism than I think I’ve seen in any one person for years. I’ll probably have more to say the more I read his stuff. Until then: read his stuff.

More to come in the next day or so. Feel free to steal this idea for your own blog. The positivity can only help these days.