When death comes for bloggers
It’s a daily voice, like a friend you talk to on the phone every day. The closest thing to this kind of writing prior to blogging was the daily columnist (when did those go out? or did they ever exist?).
You get to thinking a blogger is someone you know, and although the conversations are a mite one-sided, they’re not totally one-sided because many bloggers interact in the comments as well. And then there’s always email contact, which makes the blogger much more easily accessible than the olden-day columnist.
The writing voices of bloggers are highly idiosyncratic as well. It’s not newspaper reporting, after all, with its pretense of objectivity and impersonality. Also, there’s no middleman or editor. The blogger is all of that rolled into one.
Some bloggers are far more personal in their writing and disclosure than others. Gerard Vanderleun was that way, for example. I’m much more circumspect (remember that apple I hide behind). Then again, even what appears like openness is hardly full disclosure, and bloggers intentionally shape the personae they project. That’s why meeting a blogger in the real world usually causes some feeling of surprise, because the writer is not the person although the person is the writer.
So when a writer dies and that writing voice is stilled, it’s extra-noticeable for the readers. There’s often a pang very much like losing a good friend in real life, a friend with a major daily presence. The blogger has been churning out copy like a machine, usually every day and probably several times a day, often for years or decades. And then suddenly: silence. Utter utter silence.
It’s a very dramatic reminder that death is an abrupt and reluctant parting as far as our lives on earth go, and how powerless all of us are in its face.
[NOTE: For those of you who don’t know the story of why I’m writing about Gerard Vanderleun, please see this.]
Perfectly said.
A variation on this is when death (or some serious health issue) comes to regular commenters on blogs that you read often.
Many times they just disappear from the online world and unlike bloggers they may have no one to memorialize them they are just gone.
Interesting world this is.
Griffin:
Good point. I’ve discussed that somewhat in my annual posts on the anniversary of commenter FredHJr’s death. There are others who disappeared abruptly and I suspect they died, but I don’t know and probably will never know.
This is a small portion of something I said on Ricochet: Gerard VanderLeun was someone who I lived with vicariously through his daily blog and corresponded with in a very very limited fashion. His thoughtfulness and implausible humility, served as an inspiration in much of my life over the past decade or so. His poetry was prosaic in the best sense of the word but never Prozac in the worst sense.
It is a rare treat when someone you idolize encourages you in an insightful supportive way. I can only bow before his genius which was tempered by powerful, gentle wisdom. Our lives have become much less interesting with his passing.
neo,
One who I’m often reminded of in links you provide to earlier posts of yours is ‘parker’.
Griffin:
Yes, and Occam’s Beard.
Well said Neo. I have to admit that it really hit home. I used to read “Neptunus Lex”, a former Navy FA 18 pilot. Then he got killed in a plane crash. A great loss. He is missed.
I really miss the great Neptunus Lex, who was killed in a combat training accident.
Also, there are many bloggers who (as far as I know) are still living, but who quit for one reason or another…Erin O’Connor, for instance, or the deeply thoughtful Italian blogger Joy of Knitting, who was only active for a very short while.
Steven Den Beste, of course.
This happened to me a couple of years ago. A very small-time blogger who often dealt with the affairs of the Christian denomination I used to belong to got sick and died. There was a smallish group of people who posted there who were bereft. Some of them I knew of, and many were anonymous and I haven’t found them elsewhere. The blogger, a highly introverted person, didn’t post about his impending death, and I think that was sad.
And then, this past summer, my favorite cousin passed away. I’d been in touch with her weekly for over twenty years. Now, just gone. I keep writing, in my mind, my weekly email about my garden, the change of seasons, and the beauties of the world, and sending them to her mentally.
there have been some ten persons I knew online at my original blog of choice, who have passed over a dozen years, a whole host of characters, a musician who played with graham nash, a pilot with a whole panoply of stories, a naval officer and atty whose father’s diary were the basis for hornfischers solomon tales, all of these folk I never met but they are vivid to me as my neighbors,
Neo:
Thank you for your postings, and the updates on Gerard’s blog. I’ve been reading you both for years, with American Digest being one of the first places I go to every morning without fail. I was surprised when you revealed your relationship, despite there having been obvious clues over the years that other readers apparently picked up on. I will use the two-year window to re-read as much of his work as I can before it all becomes “digital dust.” I keep returning to his homepage and just shaking my head in disbelief.
There’s a twitter account I read daily who is apparently very near Gerard and is battling cancer as well. He’s remarked as to how rattled he was by Gerard’s decline and death. I’ve also noticed several other blogs I read regularly commenting on Gerard’s passing and it makes me wish there was some way to get everyone together somehow to actually meet in person, but I know that would most likely never happen.
Keep plugging away and I will keep reading and enjoying your work, along with everyone else out here. As some of the comments have mentioned, there have been bloggers over the years who have died or just stopped posting and you miss them, but Gerard’s absence will really be felt by many for a good, long while. Praying for Gerard’s everlasting soul, you, and his family.
Take care.
JCS
One blogger I miss died in January 2019 of a fast-moving form of ALS. I first knew Steve Krodman’s blog as Blog d’Elisson (encountered through his posts on Sisu); he changed its name to Lost in the Cheese Aisle, and then in the half-year before his death, to The Concentrated Mind– in which he shared his thoughts about his diagnosis and impending death. His formal obituary can be found as the top post at https://cheeseaisle.blogspot.com/
Scroll down for his daughters’ tribute to him, titled “Bye for Now”: Our father spent so many hours of his adulthood working in (his words) “the great corporate salt-mine,” but he had the spirit, mind, and gifts of an artist. When he discovered writing as an outlet, his passion took over. Things were never the same again. Suddenly – and finally! – a repository for all of his warped humor and twisted rants. Suddenly – and finally! – an audience for his schtick beyond his nuclear family. Over the years this creative outlet grew from a little hobby (rightly self-proclaimed as “exercises in time-wastage and self-aggrandizement”) into a fertile space for him to mould his rich internal life and tremendous stores of knowledge into beautiful and humorous pieces. We believe he got to know himself more greatly through writing this blog. . . . Esteemed Readers, thank you for being as entertained by our Dad as we always have been. Thank you for caring for him and for adding to the meaning of his life.
I expect Gerard and Steve are already swapping their favorite yarns.
“And somewhere between the time you arrive
and the time you go
May lie a reason why you were alive
But you’ll never know.” Jackson Browne – For a Dancer
Never?
There speaks a man who at that point in his life had dismissed the very possibility of an afterlife. I suspect and pray that the soul known in this life as Gerard Vanderleun, now knows exactly why and for what purpose he lived among us, his fellow travelers.
In my heart of hearts, this I know, death is a passage not an end.
Shrinkwrapped, Steven Den Beste, Dr. Sanity, and Neptunus Lexe used to be on my daily to read list. I miss them all. I think Shrinkwrapped and Dr. Dr. Sanity just quit blogging because it was too consuming of their time. But when a blogger’s voice goes silent, for whatever reason, it does leave a void.
IMO, blogging is one of the best things to have happened on the internet. You can pick and choose your bloggers and find people who have something to entertain you, educate you, or delight you.
I’m not well read in many areas of knowledge. My education has continued at my pace by reading and participating in blog discussions. And what a source of info and comradery the blogs have been during Covid.
I once thought I might do a blog, but after some time reading and commenting, I realized I don’t have that much to say. How the good bloggers manage to produce so much quality material is amazing to me.
They’ve enriched my life.
David Foster: I was a big fan of Erin O’Connor’s academic blog Critical Mass. You can still find her defunct faculty page at UPenn:
https://web.english.upenn.edu/~oconnor/
Another old link from the NAS site:
https://www.nas.org/blogs/article/favorite_books_erin_oconnor
She wrote about the rot in higher ed from the inside.
As I recall, she took a sabbatical from Penn to work at the Berkshire School–a prep school in western Massachusetts–but discovered that it was just as bad (woke) as higher ed and equally dishonest. So she and Maurice Black (her academic and possibly life partner) left academe entirely and joined The Moving Picture Institute. She wasn’t there long–maybe a year or two. Then she disappeared from the masthead. No idea what she’s doing now, or where. Ireland, maybe. A loss.
Griffin on January 30, 2023 at 4:56 pm said:
neo,
One who I’m often reminded of in links you provide to earlier posts of yours is ‘parker’.
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Yes, I’ve also wondered what happened to “parker.” He had a distinctive voice. “Parker” wrote a long, vivid comment about how hard-hit he was by his wife’s sudden death. Not long after that, he quit adding comments to Neo’s blog.
Not to be morbid, but Neo’s readers skew old, so we’re bound to disappear faster than the general population. I don’t want to guess who’ll be next, but I would like to know why Neo doesn’t attract more readers who are still young, or at least middle-aged. Anybody care to speculate? Is it just the nature of conservatism? Is it the short attention span of the Twitter generation? Do the young hate apples? Inquiring minds want to know.
Parker and Geoffrey had an amicible gentleman’s wager to settle back following the 2016 election, but I have no idea if anything came of that or if Geoffrey knows anything more of parker.
He has been missed since his beloved red haired spouse passed away.
I am reminded of this passage from Odes, (Carmina IX), by Horace:
Many brave men lived before Agamemnon;
But they are all bound, unknown
And unwept in the long night,
For there was no one to sing
Of them in sacred verse.
I’m using this as an epigraph for a nonfiction history I’m writing about a Bronze Age warlord who, with the support of the Mycenaeans, challenged the Hittite Empire for mastery of Western Anatolia.
What I remember about Parker were his posts about his and his wife’s courtship. And her death. And that he shot rifles in 7.92x57mm (8mm Mauser).
Hope he’s still around.
I think Neo’s readers tend to skew older because it’s a reflective blog. Almost elegiac. You have to have lived a bit to understand that. And it’s long form, which younger folks don’t have a lot of patience for. In general.
I still miss Norm of Normblog though we had some differences. He was a Marxist prof at Manchester U, I’m a big fan of Roger Scruton who also died recently. I once asked Norm if he’d read any Hayek, I got a curt ‘No’ as a reply!
Cornflour, I believe the blogging form itself appeals to mature minds, and blogging emerged more than twenty years ago. In the intervening years social media and mobile devices took over most age groups, the remnants who continued interest in blogging now skew older. Prominent early bloggers such as Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan are now in or entering their sixties. Younger bloggers have moved on to Twitter or Substack or corporate media.
Amongst all those who were blessed by our association with American Digest and Gerard, surely Neo had the most significant and personal connection, and our sense of loss must surely pale to hers. Neo, I know your sharing more than you would normally prefer must be difficult, but thank you, and God bless.
“And it’s long form, which younger folks don’t have a lot of patience for. In general.”
And there you have it. Even my daughters complain if my texts to them go over 3 sentences. I’ve heard similar comments from friends and relatives about their millennial and gen z kids.
I “stumbled” upon your blog 20 years ago, and I was instantly captured by your voice. I don’t participate often, but I hope you know how much many of us appreciate you. I grieve for your loss.
Hubert…I’m conected to Erin on LinkedIn. She defines herself as ‘a screenwriter, story consultant, and producer with strong expertise in story and creative development’ and she has a business called TheStoryIncubator.com.
David Foster: Aha. Thanks for the update. Glad to see she’s still active in the media business, even if she is not writing for the public anymore. Well, not directly.
Gerard’s death has thrown me for more of a loop than I would have expected. He was a larger-than-life figure in my life too and now he’s no longer alive.
I knew him, though not face-to-face, back at the Well, a computer bulletin board, later turned collective blog (well.org), which was an outgrowth of Stewart Brand’s “Whole Earth Catalog.” Gerard was the second host of the Well Poetry conference. I was the fifth. We fought together on the same poetry side a few times.
Gerard was one of the Big Dogs on the Well. He was everywhere and unstoppable. No one could match him for verbal fluency and confidence. His handle then was boswell. Everyone knew boswell and most knew to fear his tongue. Some grew to detest him.
Even before 9-11 and Gerard’s political changes, it was an unstable situation. Something happened in early 1998, while I was strapped into a Silicon Valley job, so I missed the specifics. There was a blow-up, later termed “l’affaire boswell” by one Well member. Gerard scribbled most of his Well writings, then retired from the venue for several years.
He resurfaced briefly as vanderleun, but it seemed more of an old habit, a touching base. 9-11 had already changed him and he had “American Digest” and a new life to cultivate.
I followed AD for a while. Long enough to click a Gerard link to neo-neocon and end up here. I didn’t stick with AD because Gerard was such an overpowering presence and I remembered how he could be cruel.
I’m all for not speaking ill of the dead. I do honor, respect and have affection for Gerard. But lord, the man could be a Terror!
I do believe he moderated over the years. I don’t see how he could have kept a relationship with neo otherwise. Nonetheless, his last words to me here, unaware of our relationship on the Well. in a discussion of Biden’s Afghan fiasco were:
Go pound sand.
I had stumped boswell. It was like a graduation present. I called him a “maroon” and that was it.
Rest in peace, Gerard. Bring back your voice and even more poetry next time around.
I believe Gerard now knows why he was alive.
He was a graceful gift to those fortunate and blessed enough to read him.
I don’t what to say. I am sorry for your loss.
I randomly discovered both of you several years ago, and read you both every day. I never recognized the connection. I should have. There is a kind of resonance in your writings.
I really liked his essays and poetry. Will anyone produce a print collection of his writings? Please do.
I was a fairly prolific, if minor, blogger in the early blog days (9/11 through maybe 2005). Gerard was a very occasional commenter and I had a place of honor in the “Northern Fleet” of Ed Morrissey’s old “Captain’s Quarters” alongside the old Powe Line, so I did have a small niche in the early ecosystem for a time.
Actively blogging wore on my soul over time though. At the end, I mostly maintained it because I knew it delighted my ailing sister…and then she died, and just like that it ended for me, outside of commenting various other places I have long haunted as lurker or smart-ass as the occasion called for.
But I did love Gerard’s unique, weirdly gentle (to me) style. His passing saddens me.
Oh…and as a divorcee given to occasional loneliness, there have been times when I would be sorely tempted to take a bite out of that apple.
“And it’s long form, which younger folks don’t have a lot of patience for. In general.”
That strikes me as a challenge. I’ve even read that the ‘young’ don’t like to see a period at the end of a line of text. They see that as “aggressive”.
I like to see ideas fully developed than read or hear scat. But popular culture is all what I’d call ‘scat’.
On Facebook (of which I’m a pretty light user) the other day, I said to someone that if he was interested he could read more of my political views on my blog, just click on the “Politics” tag. (He was accusing me of hiding them.) He snarked “Do people still have blogs?” Beyond all the valid reasons several of you have given for the decline of blogs, there’s the fashion factor. Blogs are not cool, at all.
Also beyond all those reasons are others explaining why Neo’s audience is older–really quite old on average, I suspect. Over 60 average? I wouldn’t be surprised. To wit, older people have seen, firsthand, the change in our country over the past 50+ years. Even as we acknowledge changes for the better, e.g. the end of racial segregation, we see that the things which have been lost, or rather destroyed, are probably more fundamental and important. It makes for a combination of sadness and anger.Younger people in general, even if they’re in political sympathy, just don’t get it in the same visceral way.
I plan for this to be the last year of my blog, btw. As we say in the software biz, I’m going to “sunset” it. I see my own sunset not so far off, and an even 20 years seems like a good place to stop. I never meant to do it for this long.
I agree with physicsguy. I am in my early 50s and the oldest of four by a decade. Most of my siblings don’t bother to read my emails nor listen to voicemail messages (can’t be bothered I guess). For me it is a means of communication which I put thought into to convey meaning for a discourse, seemingly a waste of my time. For them it is text or nothing. Sad. God help us.
Another blog that I found through Gerard was Flight Level 390, an aviation blog maintained by a pilot who called himself “Captain Dave.” The blog disappeared around 2012– note Gerard’s comment about it on the Pilots of America site:
November 30, 2012
Flight Level 390 and Captain Dave: Status
As so many others have asked me in comments or in email: “Off topic: Does anyone know what happened To Capt. Dave? Flight Level 390 has disappeared from the blogosphere. I miss him.”
Here’s what I know: I’ve been in a brief email exchange with Capt. Dave and he tells me that he may well be back in the future with Flight Level 390 but with another blogging platform.
When I know more, you’ll know too.
Full thread here: https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/community/threads/anyone-remember-the-fl390-blog.132282/
Sample of Captain Dave’s blogging style here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120112084715/http://flightlevel390.blogspot.com/
There was some speculation at the time that Captain Dave closed his blog on orders from the airline he worked for (he always referred to the corporate managers as “Mother”) on the grounds that he was too informal– for example, he would refer to starting up the number one engine as “Throw a match into Number One,” etc. And I can’t imagine that the suits enjoyed being personified as “Mother.”
Mac on January 30, 2023 at 11:46 pm said:
He snarked “Do people still have blogs?” Beyond all the valid reasons several of you have given for the decline of blogs, there’s the fashion factor. Blogs are not cool, at all.
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I know we’re getting a little off-topic, but I hope that no one will complain too loudly if I continue going astray.
Somewhere, I recently read someone saying that his first reaction to Substack was “big deal, they’ve reinvented the blog.” Gradually, he recognized that Substack was more than that. For my part, I think he was right about reinventing the blog, but I think that’s important. Substack is fashionable. Blogs are not. Young people read Substack, not blogs. Young people are creatures of fashion. Old people are inherently unfashionable. That’s not an attack on the young. It’s just a plain old fact.
So … blogging is unfashionable, so what? Beyond helping to explain why Neo’s readers skew old, it brings me back to a question that Neo raised a while ago: should she start writing for Substack? In the best of all possible worlds, I’d like to see her do both — keep writing the blog, but start a Substack.
The Substack site might attract a larger, younger group of readers. The problem is time and effort. I don’t see how one person can keep writing so much, to such a high standard. Writing even more would be a big ask. Maybe use the blog for shorter, daily news kind of pieces. Substack essays could then be more irregular, and longer, and more reflective or analytical or investigative or …
My two cents.
David Yeagley and Noel Sheppard.
David Yeagley was a half Comanche blogger I read regularly from about 2007 till his death in the early 2010s or so. He was fairly young, but came down with some illness and was gone, fairly quickly. Yeagley wrote a lot about culture, native Americans and immigration. He was opposed to open borders.
Noel Sheppard was not a blogger per se, but a writer for Newsbusters. He was also fairly young and came down with an illness and was rapidly gone.
I’m still wrapping my head around the two of you being so intimate that he was allowed to see you without your apple.
Jon baker–
David Yeagley died in 2014 at the age of 62; here is his obituary as posted on his Bad Eagle website: https://web.archive.org/web/20140410134335/http://www.badeagle.com/
David’s various books are listed in the sidebar.
I got to know David personally when we both had part-time jobs in the same university library. He was always friendly and easy to talk to, especially about matters of faith as well as Comanche history and culture. I learned a lot from him about music, too, and still miss him.
I suppose it says something about us geezers that 62 can be considered “fairly young.”
Thanks very much for that David Yeagley link.
As they say, “Multitudes”….
In Judaism mourners receive condolence calls for a week after a death. Readers may know that this is called “shiva” from the Hebrew word for “seven”.
One aspect of these condolence calls is that the visitor must wait for the mourner to begin speaking. I have attended several shivas where the mourners could not really bear the burden of conversation… Similarly, the traditional mourning foods are eggs and lentils – neither of which have a visible “mouth” or connection point. Death drags the mourner into limbo – and living friends can sometimes only sit with them, bearing silent messages of continued life.
I have also attended shivas where people ignored this rule, and the room became a reunion, or a group therapy session. These are natural reactions – but the mourner’s needs can be pushed aside.
For this reason I have not participated in your previous posts about Gerard’s passing. I don’t really have any special wisdom to impart.
I am here to read, share, and bear witness to your experience.
Neo, thank you for caring for, and loving, Gerard. Though Gerard is no longer physically with us, I would say a bit of his soul is within many of his readers and so he remains to inspire. God Bless.
I used to read Blazing Cat Fur regularly, and then just kind of stopped for a while, and went back, and was saddened to learn that Kathy Shaidle had died. I remember Neptunus Rex and his death also saddened me. I almost forgot about David Yeagley. I miss his writing; he was an amazing writer, and I always learned something… but the memories fade…
I still pray that some miracle will happen to bring back Mandy Nagy. She survived her stroke…
It is weird to think how these events affect us more than one would think: people we never actually meet, but have affected us more deeply than we really thought they would.
It is also true to an extent with Facebook: people I haven’t been in touch with since graduating from high school (and even then, we weren’t particularly close) die and It saddens me. (I think primarily because it is just more proof my youth is long gong…)
I regret not having “found” Gerard and the community that resulted from his blogging before this past week.
The posts, eulogies, music, poems shared by “his people” have been moving and reflective of many lives well lived; generously shared.
He undoubtedly was a special person to attract them to his flame.
I do hope the fellow who downloaded the entirety of his online writing is able to
post it, as reading it even after the fact seems well worth the time.
I am heartbroken over the passing of Mr. Vanderleun.
RIP
We will see you on the other side
Cornflour: I’ve had the same thoughts about Substack–that it’s a reinvention of the blog that’s managed to become fashionable. I thought for a bit of switching to it, but as I was already thinking of ending my blog I didn’t seriously consider it. It does differ, at least as it has developed, at least from what I’ve seen, from blogging in that writers seem to be more focused. I.e. they choose some fairly distinct area to write about and pretty much stick to it. Also more formal–fewer brief “hey look at this” posts, more of an orientation toward essays.
Anyway, I don’t think doing both would work that well, unless one wanted to do a completely different kind of writing in each. Rod Dreher does that, so maybe it works for him. I’m pretty sure his Substack gets way less traffic than his blog, though, if only because it requires payment. I would think that one would almost inevitably be lesser.
Very well stated, neo. You have a very good perception of what it looks like from the other side.
Two tangential comments:
John Nolte who was hired by a married couple who ran “Libertas” (a sort-of conservative blog about film making) got an offer from Andrew Breitbart to head up a new site Andrew was starting, Big Hollywood. I was a commenter at Libertas and out of the blue John e-mailed me and asked if I’d want to take over his old readership. I’d have to start a new blog, with a new name, since John did not own Libertas, but he would allow me to promote it on Libertas. I wasn’t interested in running a blog, but I knew this was a rare opportunity, so I reached out to two friends who agreed to join me and “Threedonia” was born.
This was maybe 2005(?). It became quite large and the daily task of “feeding the beast” as we called it was often daunting. After a few years I felt like I had written most of what I wanted to say and looked to get out of the daily grind. It was hard to do. I think my retirement took 3 tries. Then, about 2 years after I left hackers destroyed the site and its code and the current proprietors had no interest in trying to piece it back together. So, about ten years of my daily writing, thoughts, opinions, jokes… were lost. Some can still be found with the wayback machine, and I’ve grabbed a few my kids may be interested in.
I still wonder about many of our commenters. Like neo’s site, we had regulars and when the hack happened there really was no way to get in touch with most of them. I see a few pop up on other sites, but it is strange to lose a community like that, that one interacts with nearly daily. However, the obligation and sometimes emotional drain of posting every day, often multiple times a day, was a lot of work and 5 – 7 years was about all I cared to do. Kudos to neo for her fortitude and talent!
The second tangent. I was a daily reader of James Lileks’ “Bleat.” I’d read it each weekday while eating my lunch at my desk at the office. Coincidentally I have a daughter the same age as his daughter, Natalie. One day I realized I knew more about Natalie’s life than my own daughter’s (I didn’t typically spend 30 minutes asking my daughter questions about her day, each day). With that realization I decided to stop reading the Bleat and devote more time to getting to know my kids.
The virtual world has a lot of advantages, and relationships here can be real and important relationships. But this is also easier and one has to be careful to continue forays out into the real world, as neo and Gerard obviously did.
Well said.
Many of us still mourn the passing of Dr. Jerry Pournelle and the silence in Chaos Manor.
As for why your audience may be skewing older: Very few realize the need to seek wisdom while young. Once we’re older and find some, we stick. We seekers seem to have found some here. Always something worth pondering on this site. Thanks!
RIP Gerard, it’s good to see the respect on offer here, richly deserved.
I’ve never been a blogger and am very surprised to see how many bloggers and ex-bloggers are represented here in the comments; I don’t think I would have guessed it. But it makes sense, and it’s probably one of the reasons that Neo’s blog is so gratifying and entertaining. It’s not just because of shared or similar beliefs, it’s because people commenting here are very good at expressing themselves, which is preceded by actually thinking things through in classical fashion.
As someone else said, engagement from younger people to the written word is often disappointing. I remember my mom keeping dozens of old letters from her mom, her father, and other old letters from other family members. Some of them were university professors, which back then, meant they were people of letters. I remember keeping letters that were important, for years. Some, I still have – but it’s a lost habit in our culture.
RNR, thanks for mentioning Jerry Pournelle. I often find it hard to shed tears, but I certainly did at the news of his passing. Chaos Manor was a must read, and Jerry held something of a father-like image for me. He was of my parents’ generation and had such wisdom. I remember his Iron Law of Bureaucracy and how he often said “Despair is a sin”.
I was very upset when Mike Royko passed. I religiously read his columns – I even still have some words he created/recognized – downtodaendada and jeet. The column was about Chicago language.
In usage: You can go downtodaendada to the end of the block, but no further (told to a kid).
Jeet yet? Nah, d’jew?
~
I read Sarah Hoyt’s blog, Don Surber’s blog (he has gone to substack and I signed up for a paying membership immediately, and Bayou Ren. Man (Peter), plus a couple of Catholic priests. They are part of my daily reads and I feel very attached to them.
~~
I miss Parker’s wisdom. You could almost consider me a fan-girl since I would smile when I saw his name on the screen.
~~
I’m 56 so yes, I’m part of the older crowd. I follow my blogs using feedly, else I couldn’t keep up.
cthulhu @ 2:26 am,
I had just put a forkfull of dinner in my mouth when I read your comment. Very lucky I didn’t end up with a laptop screen full of potato!
Faith2014,
Mike Royko was a great journalist. Fearless.
The difference between blogs (at least the ones I read regularly, including this one) and Substack is that the blog format puts more emphasis on the commenters. The blog post is relatively short and stimulates lively and mostly intelligent comments, which are an important part of the appeal, and create something of a community. I’ve had correspondence and even meetups fellow commenters on other blogs. Substack columns are lengthy, and the comments add little (if I even bother with them), so there’s no community. I prefer the blog format for that reason, but maybe I’m a dinosaur.
cthulhu:
🙂
Gerard’s death has hit me hard for the reasons you mention. It’s hard to comprehend no more content from him in the future … but also an opportunity to reflect on how much I’ve gotten over the years from reading his site. And I’m just one of thousands. That’s a lot of “good vibes” he pushed out there, to a lot of people, for a long time.
Another blogger gone now that I interacted with frequently was Chaz (C.G.) Hill of Dustbury who passed in 2019. His site is gone to “digital dust”, I just checked. 2-3 updates a day for 20+ years … poof … :-/
Big kudos to you Neo for choosing “For a Dancer” as the music … such a great song, my favorite Jackson Browne song from my favorite album of his. Never gets old. He caught lightning in a bottle with that one.
How unique is this phenomenon to blogging? Many of us have people that we only know from a social media site who “disappear” and we worry about them. I suppose there is a difference with blogging communities in that some of them go back more than 20 years.
The closeness of blogging communities does support the legitimacy of “internet friends.” We do genuinely care about people we meet online.
FWIW, Neo, I’ve enjoyed your blog for many years and I sometimes worry that you will die and we won’t know what happened! I sincerely hope it’s a long time from now and that there will be advance warning.
shadow:
If I don’t post for more than a few days, and I haven’t given notice and explained why, you’d probably be correct to assume I’ve died. But I also have given one or two people the password of the blog, so hopefully they will let people know. At some point in the not-too-distant future I figure I should give them more formal instructions. Horrible thought, hard to contemplate.