[Home]RunningDiscussionMay2003

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Greetings, all. Now that we've moved in....where to unload all these cardboard boxes? Allan, should we begin to look at 'things to do' in each of the three categories your have set up above and where should we go with more general thoughts (like this) that don't belong in any of those categories? Is THIS an appropriate 'front page' where we can direct others to ongoing threads in the Three Categories (which will increase in number over time, I suppose)?

Just poking a stick at this wiki creature. Seems friendly enough. Allan, move this rambling somewhere else if it is more appropriate. Fred here, signing off, even though I think it might attach my ident to this post when I'm done, maybe?


Meant to ask... what were folks experience with Carnival? Any visitors? Far as I can tell, just three to Fragments from COV. Ah well. Just shows that our kind of focus is out of focus for many, and we truly need a place of our own. Of some kind. Hmmm.

I am thinking about and hearing from some who I think would be interested in participating with our community. We need to be compiling a list, thinking of ways to solicit participation from the people we know, who know people, etc. Right? Anyone? Anyone? Kinda lonely here. FF


Hi everyone. I did have a little blip up in visitors - 10 by my count coming from the COV listing. But it seems to have been over the lpast two days, and the traffic is stopping now. I'll try to keep track. And I'm interested to know other people's experiences too. Allan, thanks very much for setting tis up. I'm totally new to wikis but willing to give it a good try, seems like a much better way for us to communicate than by group e-mails. Beth


Hi, Alison here. One problem I see already with this is that we're used to seeing most recent entry on the TOP of the page, and here I am lurking like a king snake under my bicycle wheel.

I personally really like the Blogs Against War format. I'm not sure what would be the most appropriate way to host it but I'm definitely the less technically-adept person in this household.

We've had a few hits from COV--feels odd to have been hosted under such a politically alien blog. One way, Fred, to snag people who work on place is to peek at http://brainoff.com/geoblog/ and randomly click on promising-looking posts--I found one this evening by a woman in Berkeley who's an Asian poet who does seem concerned with place, though it's definitely not the primary focus of her blog. And like that.

Over and out.


I'll look into ways to set up a BlogAggregator. One idea is to use the [Topic Exchange] site for the infrastructure and snarf up the content to mirror on our own portal. -- Allan


Yow! Activity on the page here! Yep, I knew there would be Running Discussion type page to hash things out, and happy to discover it is active today! Allan, thanks for getting this up and the Aggregator approach seems hopeful. I'm open to Topic Exchange as a starting place. Maybe we'd want to do a week of 'test run' there to get a feel for it, to be able to explain its use to potential contributors, before opening it up for a wider base of submissions.

Beth, I think to my mind you have come closest to a 'definition' of what we mean about 'place'. We will need some clear understanding of the breadth of the term to include posters from across the spectrum of space and focus, but enough boundaries to the niche that we stay more or less directed toward our purpose of including posts 'of and about place'. Such a definition might be included in the Aggregator's banner or at least in an "about place" link prominently displayed near the top of the sidebar. Also, if we are going to use ECOTONE (and I'm not inextricably married to the term if anyone has other suggestions)... it will need a succinct definition relevant to our use of it, and I can work on that.

TGIF, y'all.


Morning, Fred, hope you're not still feeling lonely. Great suggestion that you be the editor of the Ecotone definition--care to set up a file for that?

I too love Beth's description. I wonder whether we can expand it to include those who write about primarily urban place, like, say, Central Park. Or not Central Park but, I don't know, the main square in Lisbon, which is not really about our relationship with ecology but still definitely about our relationship with place. I still think Ecotone is a good title, though, since the bulk of material will probably be non-urban.

Beth, would you be willing to be the "editor" of the place description? I'm not sure I want to go in and muss with your prose... how do others feel about this? -- Alison


Hi everybody, glad to find so many of you here this morning! Yes, Alison, I'm happy to work on our description and try to incorporate everyone's suggestions to make it more inclusive. I'm inundated with family through Sunday afternoon so I won't be much help this weekend, but I'll be checking here and will be back in the swing on Monday. I LIKE this format for our discussion. Beth


Whew! I thought I'd be the only one who couldn't figure out how to make a new entry. Then I read the directions. This is very cool--thank you Allan. I'll have much more time next week (on vacation) to bring my full self to our discussions.

I missed the original reference to "blogs against war", but I really like the idea. I'd be more interested in calling it "peace blogs" or something that isn't "against" but "for". I worry that the momentum for peace is only strong when rising up against a particular action, putting Bush in charge of not only the forces for war, but also the forces for peace. I'd like to promote peace as a movement that exists outside of all that. Blake said that "Peace is a constant re-creation at the edges of conflict." That does imply that peace needs "not peace" to exist, but I like the idea of it generating it's own momentum and goals.

BTW, I had a total of nine visits from COV, probably one of them from myself checking the link. It was a bit disconcerting being in the company of so many war bloggers. No matter what we find ourselves doing, I think it would be great to continue posting to COV just so we keep our peaceful, placeful approach to life in front of people. Balance, ya know :-)

I guess as we get going with whatever direction we initiate in terms of place blogging, we will begin to attract others who are interested. Meanwhile, following links from places like Wood's Lot and other blogs in that sphere might yield up some like-minded folks, if we want to go seeking them out.

Fred, I like your ideas about our description being broad enough to cover place no matter where it's found. I also like having a "topic of the week" that invites posts from anybody who'd like to contribute. --Lisa


Lisa: great to have you join us! See the format of [Blogs Against War]. I agree about the "for peace" rather than "against war" part and that we can some how nurture that process in our little place-corner of blogdom.

I'd like to encourage anyone who finds a possible place-blogger to invite them to think about this and place a link to their blog in the BloggersOfPlace section... --Alison


Fred here...

Yes, I'll work on Ecotone. Yes, Beth thanks for working on the broader definition of 'place'. Yes, let's consider another Carnival submission. This week will be at Deans World. You should get an email soon if you submitted last week. It has been lonely among the warbloggers so I am so happy for company!

I have added to PlaceBloggingDescription? (not sure I got this name right) and hope you can help me/us firm up our description within our group so we can better tell others what we are doing here! A separate definition is the more succinct one that Beth is working on... the 'front page' "about" for the eventual site. Update: I've added a [post to Fragments] that includes my early list of topics that are place related. Recruiting some readership help, bringing others into the process, theoretically. We'll see. Participation on weekends is typically low, low.

One thing that might get more attention and also unite us as a group in COV would be to throw out a topic of common interest and also wider interest, all write about it (in the way Lisa and I 'duoblogged' a few weeks ago), then post to Carnival. Maybe not this week, but next? Any other ideas re COV or another 'mini-project'?


Hi all. I've taken the liberty of contacting two people whose blogs involve place in a major way -- Robert Bradley from Pure Land Mountain and Coup de Vent from London and the North -- party because being a sort of international hybrid myself I'd like to include voices from outside North America but also because Coup de Vent is really good about the urban-rural place dichotomy. I don't know if they'll respond. Will let you know.

A question: do we let these people know about the wiki right away so they can snoop? Or do we see if they're interested first? I opted for the second because I wanted to check in with everyone first...

Thanks, Alison


I will set up a "Place and Landscape" channel over at [Topic Exchange]. Does anyone object if I populate it initially with excerpts from the posts submitted to COV and the duoblog posts? It would be nice to some starting content in it. --Allan


I've exchanged some emails over the months with Robert in Japan and he, I believe, is on both 'lists' of blogs from place. Seems right on. Allan, good idea to have some content so there won't be an echo in our new space. Ali, I agree, maybe wait a bit for us to gain a bit more comfort with wiki and TopicExchange? before bringing too many more voices in. But just a bit longer, perhaps.

Thanks, Allan, for the contribution of your technical expertise, and of course, your time. I think we're heading in a good way and already I'm feeling less isolated in this little corner of the world, like maybe there really are a few more not-a-pundits out there after all! -- Fred


Morning, Allan and all. I'm wondering how the topic exchange and other aggregators will work towards our purposes (which remain to be fleshed out in any collective sort of way 'on paper'). I am liking the 'branching' open-ended, multidimensional structure that is possible in the wiki. And I like a typical weblog because it allows posts of any length, as well as the posting of images.

Won't these two options be lost in an aggregator that only allows X characters in a 'snippet' and then immediately sends people away from our site? How will an aggregator facilitate interaction other than 'read this', 'go here'? Can a wiki be linked to the aggregator, or a weblog... vehicles for more expansive expressing and dialogue? Which of these should be primary and which secondary? Just chewing on this, and wondering what your thoughts are, group. --Fred


Hi everybody, Beth here. Whew. Our family just left - 20 people - after this weekend's memorial gathering for my mother-in-law. I'm beat but happy with how everything went, and now I'm glad to be back in this conversation.

Regarding different potential directions for our "group" - I'm still leaning toward a central place sort of like Rebecca's Pocket that perhaps has a weekly "best of", and listings for many place bloggers, arranged (if appropriate) by category or location. My e-friend Nancy who writes Under The Fire Star from Chennai, India, is interested in our efforts but has been politely staying on the sidelines. She says she's decided maybe she is a "city" blogger and should be joining efforts with like people - but I think that would be a shame. Perhaps we should develop a list of potential categories for our listings, and then ask people to self-select into one or more categories that best fit (nancy, for example, might be both "city" and "international" (Fred, I'm with you in thinking international blogs definitely should be included.)

I think part of the problem developing traffic is that we're too easily pigeon-holed -- a typical problem here in Vermont. Everybody assumes you're about cows and white steeples and fall colors. "Place blogging" is assumed, I think, to be rural and kind of retrograde - even scolding and rejecting of technology and "progress". If we want to be taken seriously as writers, thinkers, observers and recorders of place, I think that seriousness and attention are what need to be emphasized. Personally, I'd like to read someplace, "Some of the best writing and most innovative thinking on the web is being done by people who call themselves 'place bloggers'".

It's really fairly radical what we're doing - I think so anyway - we are taking rather old-fashioned ideas about "relationship to place" and translating those forward into a world dominated by technology that allows us, for the first time in the history of the world, to be anywhere. We need to somehow get across that we are grappling with this and its effect on us as human beings, but that it's not about rejecting or criticising the future, but rather about examining a new paradigm and embracing the best of it to create new kinds of place, while sharing all that's wonderful about the natural world wherever we find ourselves -- because we ourselves find this grounding, interesting, and meaningful.

I didn't quite mean to write all that - but does anyone want to pick it apart? Maybe we can come up with something broader and more coherent than we've had thus far.

Fred, how is the COV thing going to work - will we continue to have our own "section" indefinitely? ---Beth

ps After the above I wrote some "potential categories" on the "PortalIdeas" page, and seeing them makes me think maybe we want to say "we're all of these", but that we don't want to put ourselves in such small boxes. We could do something like say, "place bloggers write about...(list all the categories)" and then simply list our sites by geographic location, including a brief thumbnail description by each author if they wish. I don't know. I'm obviously unsure about this part but think it's important. --B.


Beth: I think you are really on to something with your "fairly radical" paragraph. I want to think about this some more.

Maybe it's because I live in a place that is simply NOT spectacular, where it's easy to overlook the overlookable (we were just out looking for grasshopper sparrows in some vernal pools, which may look to some just like weird depressions in a cow pasture, but which host entire ecosystems) that I want to encourage more and different people who write about "place" (even if they're not sure that's what they are doing) to join us. Please encourage your friend Nancy in India to consider posting occasionally--I just looked at her blog and it seems to fit very well. I have just added "London and the North" to our BloggersOfPlace section and would like the group's permission to invite Gail, aka Coup de Vent, to join our discussion here, since she has expressed an interest in doing that. -- Alison (forgot to sign my name earlier, sorry...)


Thanks Alison. I think when you say, "even if they're not sure that's what they are doing" that's a very important consideration. Selfishly, when we started I was thinking, "oh, that's good, I'll meet people and learn some stuff and maybe get more traffic to my own blog." But if we think bigger and think about what we could *offer* in terms of a place for THINKING about "place" in all its manifestations -- and be driven by *that* -- it just gets more exciting. Do you or any of the other discussion members do any teaching? I wonder what we can learn from other people who are searching and asking questions about place and their relationship to it. --Beth

(BTW, it would be really helpful as we get to know one another if people could be sure to identify themselves in their posts here.)


Fred again.... Whew! Lots of catching up on the discussion. Beth, I too like the Rebecca's Pocket idea (really just a simple weblog) with a weekly "Best of" and wonder if we can have an associated wiki for more open-ended discussion like this, although I see how that could get pretty scattered unless there were some restrictions or rules to who posts where and when. But the combination of the two forms (weblog and wiki) seems to meet a variety of needs, focused and general.

Re international blogging, I just got an email from TravelerTrish?, a gal my age who, with another female, just hiked across France (just the latest in a long string of world-wandering). She feels that what she writes about on her travels presents a mindfulness of self in place, and I think she could defend her position; so our topic may be even wider than we have thought.

We do run the risk of being misunderstood, as tree-huggers or Thoreauvian sissies or pith-helmeted bellybutton gazers, and more helpful discussion like this I think is the order of the day. It is interesting, btw, to Google "Place blogging" or "blogs about place". There are very few hits, and of the one's with our meaning, they are all ours, many related to last weeks COV. This is a very new term and we may be able, really, to define it for the first time. Radical, yes, in that nothing has been done to promote this niche, one that I believe could allow the enthusiastic participation of a lot of thoughtful bloggers who, like myself, feel marginalized by the strident tone of the pervasive warblogs and its relatives. We want to emphasize much more what we are moving toward, however, than what we are moving away from, I think you'll agree.

Beth, I think within what you have said are a dozen topics that would be suitable for a group blog. At some point (soon) it might be helpful to throw an issue on the table, all write a short 'essay' about it, collect them, read each others, respond with comments. This would bear several fruits. More on that later.

Re COV, the special banner and grouping I suppose was a one-time thing, because I just happen to know Susanna well enough to ask her to do that. If I knew that we had maybe 5-6 posts coming his way, I would ask Dean Esmay, this weeks host, to consider doing the same thing. But it may be late for that. Even so, if some place-compatible topics are at least becoming more frequent at COV, I think this will be good for our purposes, so consider getting something in ASAP! (Dean's Place, btw, is at least as high-ranking and visited as Susanna's, so COV will have good visibility this week). Enuff for now. --Fred


Hi, Alison here... Fred, I think travellers actually have a really good perspective on place (if not very profound) because EVERYTHING is new. The graphic design, the architecture, the plants, everything, and they see with fresh eyes that are the kinds of eyes I'm trying to use when looking at a familiar place again. If they're observant, they're well qualified to write about place.


Beth and everybody: I think it's really important not to confine 'blogs about place' to being mostly about nature. Blogs that write strongly about urban place certainly qualify, and seem just as unheralded in the blogosphere as our rural nature-oriented ones do. Snooping around on the [Eatonweb Portal], I found examples ranging from a psychogeography of Portland, Or., to blogs about the Boston subway system and the London Underground. That's good place-oriented stuff!

I don't think of this so much as 'radical' as being 'leading-edge'. As the blogosphere expands, people are going to want to find other things to talk about than just politics and technology, and weblogs as a means of expression will start to be used by regionally-minded individuals and groups. In California there are a zillion watershed-and-the-like oriented groups (e.g. Friends of the Navarro River), most of whom by now have their own web pages,so many that it would be a major job to try to catalog these, but few if any keep something resembling a weblog. Weblog-consciousness hasn't hit these folks yet. But it will, in time.

Lots of architectural models to ponder for the portal! It definitely should have a wiki component -- I too like the way wikis can grow in multidimensional ways. BTW I created a "Place and Landscape" topic exchange channel: for more details see BlogAggregator.

-- Allan


I've worked a bit on the Ecotone definition. Please modify as necessary over at PlaceBloggingDescription.

Allan, I first read your last post as saying that we SHOULD confine our topic to 'just nature'. At some point, I would have agreed with that (even tho I know it's not what you said). But my understanding of 'place' is becoming broader, and showing opportunity to give voice to a wider spectrum of disenfranchised bloggers who have not been heard above the din of opinion. It occured to me in half-sleep this early morning, that the vast majority of widely read blogs are political WHYblogs. We are delving into WHEREblogs. Our 'leading edge' may find some fertile ground previously untapped. Fun to think so.

I posted to [Topic Exchange] this morning, just in the way of a test. Are we wanting to make this public yet? Ever?

Addendum Mon 1015 EDT Wondering: Is anybody a member of "the Well"? Rebecca Blood mentioned in a recent email (maybe I forwarded to the group) that she had done an extensive interview (I think) at The Well where she extoled 'modern-day Thoreaus' and Beth, your wanting to hear "Some of the best writing and most innovative thinking on the web is being done by people who call themselves 'place bloggers'"... made me remember that perhaps Rebecca has come close to doing this. She is certainly very supportive. Anyway, I'd like to see what she said in her interview, but the Well seems to want me to pay for membership to read. And along these lines, RBlood had asked to be kept abreast of developments, and I was wondering about telling her about the wiki. What do you think, folks? She could be a great ally in our endeavors. -- Fred

Her interview is located [here]. --Allan


Just made a new category, BooksOnPlace, which Beth found even before I was done editing.... Everyone, please add books, poetry, etc., the categories can be expanded by whoever feels the need to do so.

Fred: by all means ask Rebecca to check into the wiki. She may, among other things, have ideas about how to set this up we haven't even dreamed of! -- Alison


Dear all,

I read the entire interview at the Well last night--phew. It's a really interesting discussion but requires some stamina! Rebecca does mention "bloggers of place" as being outside the traditional politics / technology clusters... she calls us modern-day Thoreauvians, which some of us may aspire to be, but not all. Still, she thought we (I imagine she's primarily referring to Fred and Lisa's duoblog) were doing really interesting things.

I have added all the blogs suggested in BloggersOfPlace to the running list. Please add sites if you come across them. Should we just add everyone in both Chris's and Rebecca's blogroll? For instance, I think [Viviculture] is a spectacular blog and I love what they're doing but I don't see them as primarily bloggers of place, more like, actually, modern-day Thoreauvians. (Rebecca did point to them as being a superb example of "blog as meditation.") If the folks at *Viviculture,* however, think they blog about place, I would love to have them join us, particularly for the micro-perspective. I guess I vote for inclusivity at this point. Our cluster is very small. Thoughts? -- Alison


Good morning everybody. Alison, I'm with you, let's make it very inclusive. People will either self-prune later or we'll re-organize in some way; let's not worry abotu it now but try for something broad. I also read Rebecca's discussion, although I'm not positive I read all of it. (I'm not a member either.) Very interesting. She would be a great ally, so I'd love it if Fred would contact her again and tell her what's up, tell her about this wiki. --Beth


I have just emailed all those on Chris Corrigans and Rebecca Blood's "Place" bloggers list with ThisEmailInvitation to participate. Darn, what I didn't include was a suggestion that each of them think about others who might fit this classification (at least in some of their postings) but I guess we can ask for help in 'advertizing' at some future point. -- Fred


I've moved discussion of categories of blogs of place from PortalIdeas to PlaceBlogCategories. --Allan


Allan, thanks for your housekeeping. We are a disorderly crew! Yes, Fred, that was me posting a list of potential topics (and learning how to start a new page!)

Is there any way we can encourage others, especially from the initial core group, to join the discussion we're having here? It would be good to have input from Lisa and Chris, for example. I guess Kurt is away this week. Maybe someone with a longer relationship than mine could e-mail them personally? I will write to Kurt this weekend. Also, did anyone send anything to COV this week? --Beth


Hi folks, Chris here. Late to the game becasue of some other committments (birdwatching for example...lots of warblers about), but I have been reading and thinking. I've added some more thoughts on the definition of place blogging at the PlaceBloggingDescription page, and I've set up a place for collective blogging at the BiWeeklyTopics page. Also at the PotentialTopicsForCollectiveBlogging page I have posted my thoughts on blogs and wikis working together.

For your own information On Bowen right now we have at least five people who are blogging, to various degrees, about our lives here. One resource we have available to us here is a fantastic GeoLibrary? (located at http://www.bowenisland.info) which allows us to link stories from our blogs onto maps of the land itself. I am in the process of transferring a large portion of links and stories from my blog to that library to be a permanent record of my observations of Bowen Island sorted topographically instead of by date. Cool, eh?

Anyway, sorry I was so long getting to the show. I'm off to see if I can catch the northern lights tonight. [Mid-latitude auroral warnings] have been posted! Don't miss the show!

-- Chris


Lisa here. Hello everybody, I thought this week would give me lots of free time for ruminating and writing, but so far only one post and that I cribbed from other writing I was doing. I've only got a moment or two, but I have some general thoughts and wanted to stick my beak back into the conversational waters. I'm really loving the work that's going on in terms of self-reflection on this thing we call place blogging. I feel a strong inclination to leave our definition as loose, as inclusive, as possible. I'd prefer to draw a context rather than a conclusion. I just began to blog in August last year, but really only in earnest this year. Much of the writing I've done there hasn't fit my original idea of what I'd be doing, and I'm still finding my way. I plan to keep following the threads that pull me: those that follow long-standing interests, new loves and discoveries, and those danglers I just can't ignore.

Not everything I write about will be/is about place, or about "Inverness". But what holds it all together, perhaps, is that it is all informed by place, by my connection to place, my embodiment in place, and as Chris so beautifully put it, in "placing the whole kit and kaboodle in the context of a world culture".

Does this post fit better in PlaceBloggingDescription? I'll add it there as well.

In answer to somebody's question about who posted to COV last week, I did. Just submitted an old piece that was "placeful" with the idea of keeping place in the face. ---Lisa


hi everyone, rebecca blood here. I added a site for consideration on the "BloggersOfPlace" page.

I'm not sure what you're up to here (or have I just missed it?) have you decided what form this endeavor will take? you can do everything from publish a once-a-month ezine to just linking to each other. you can make a site that aggregates all of your posts in one place, or make an aggregator where you would post what you feel are your best entries.

fwiw, I vote for starting a project and then letting others who identify with what you're doing join in.

in any case, I think you need to think about what a collaborative project should do that you can't do with your individual blogs and by linking to each other. what do you hope to accomplish?


I'd like to call everybody's attention to a piece in Orion, via Wood s lot: Seeing Shadows Words Against Empire from Winter in the Kingdom, by Douglas Haynes http://www.oriononline.org/pages/oo/sidebars/front/index_front.html --Beth


Great link, Beth. Orion is right on. Hadn't planned to, but ended up posting [on the Haynes Article] this morning. I think Rebecca's linkage between place and patriotism is... shall we say... loaded with the emotion of current events and the hijacking of language, and a bit too hot to handle at least early on, as Alison suggested. It is certainly worth exploring, and I've already been thinking in a different way about this, so thanks, Rebecca, and Beth for being catalysts here. -- Fred


rebecca blood (hereafter rcb): well, I was, quite honestly, thinking of the fourth of july as only the loosest association for the exploration of the larger idea of place and nationality or place and patriotism, wherever one might be. this may be a particularly contentious time to even approach such a topic, though, I can see that. perhaps this is why people always think I'm so political. :)


My thoughts for the role of the wiki have definitely expanded over the week-and-a-half that we've been doing this. I very much like Chris's characterization at PotentialTopicsForCollectiveBlogging that blogs and wikis act as horizontal and vertical complements to each other, where wikis allow people to explore topics in depth and build up their interrelationships over an extended period of discussion and thought. I would very much like to see the wiki grow to be a general forum for discussing place and placelessness, one's relationship to landscape, what is meant by a SenseOfPlace?, and so on, rather than being an adjunct to the writing we do on our blogs. Architecturally I think the two poles for our writings should be our own individual blogs and the wiki, rather than having the community discussion take place in a collaborative weblog (examples of which abound, but I'll just point to http://www.kuro5hin.org/ as one). (If we ended up with three places for our discussions -- our own blogs, a collaborative weblog at the portal, and then the wiki, I think that would just lead to dilution and confusion). And as Lisa suggests, we shouldn't fret about loose boundaries, either in defining our own blogs or defining what content is relevant for the wiki.

Here's a list of elements that might make for a home page for the portal:

--Allan


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