Wandering in a forest of blogs

I didn't always get blogging. Sure, there were, and are, quirky and creative writers, blogging on anything from existentialist cubism to the sex life of golf balls - or if not, as Googling these "subjects" indicates, surely there soon will be.

But my early exposures to the web-log, as the phenomenon started its cyber-life, were, I imagine, a bit like strolling the seedier streets of Amsterdam, where old tarts in front windows pin fading hopes of feeding their families (or habits) on dim lighting, desperation and mind-bending substances.

The earliest bloggers tossed what they presumably saw as thoughts into the vast web world like messages in bottles, desperate someone, anyone, would notice them and perhaps even engage in e-intercourse. Feeding off the likes of Bridget Jones, and Sue Townsend's diarist Adrian Mole, the personal blog became the Whine Generation's vehicle to 15 megabytes of fame.

No matter if they thought syntax was a form of GST paid by "working girls" and punctuation what pimps do to penny-pinching punters, or how sad and insignificant their lives or blinkered their vision, suddenly everyone was a writer, with Something Very Important to share.

How things change. Blogging has evolved as a vital, immediate, way of sharing news, views and information. The problem is that the junk-to-gems ratio is huge. Politicians, PR spinners, corporate phonies and other wastes-of-cyberspace have been blogging away for years, bless them. An accurate number of bloggers is anyone's guess but it's probably in the hundreds of millions - it's a crowded e-world out there.

My own acceptance of the blog as a viable use of the "new" media came early last year when I stumbled on the work of one Dan Baum. He spent half a year in New Orleans, and something about his daily journal in the on-line New Yorker resonated. Rather than seeking sensational "news" angles or digging up dirt as the post-Katrina recovery phase ground on, he reflected on ordinary folk doing what they had to, day-by-day.

He posted audio and video clips of buskers and musos, pics of architecture and people, menus from back-street crab shacks and wrote matter-of-factly but sympathetically about those who were struggling to mend shattered lives and about those who weren't.

In short, it seemed a fine example of how the medium could be used to convey, not just the words but also the feeling, spirit and flavour, of a neighbourhood. Since then, I've kept an eye on our own community's bloggers. Here is a rundown on a few.

Kate Kennedy writes with passion, primarily about her home patch of Motueka. Her former blogsite recently expired after a year, but she recently launched www.motuekanewsonline.co.nz for anyone keen to keep an ear on the ground in Motueka and unable to bend quite far enough to do so.

In Nelson, weaver Meg Nakagawa and her husband Ben have been blogging for around two years with a site that enthusiastically promotes their new region. I estimate today's photo (of boats and birds at Port Nelson) is the 696th they have posted on their Nelson Daily Photo site (www.nelsondailyphoto.com).

Mail cartoonist Mike Moreu (www.stuff.- co.nz/nelsonmail/blogs/toonedin) blogs on his work within the wider perspective of his family, philosophy and history. Mike's a multi-talented guy with great instincts.

Another local blogger whose work I enjoy is singer-songwriter Kath Bee (she of the Nancies fame), but, as it's often of a more personal nature, I won't include the link. Here's one, though to her children's blog (www.kathbeeforkids.blogspot.com).

Nelson Mail columnist Karl du Fresne recently took what he describes as a headlong plunge into the blogosphere on www.karldufresne.blogspot.com and always delivers an elegant and coherent argument, while blogging is now a common feature on all mainstream media websites.

An attraction of the medium is that it allows columnists to toss their pearls of wisdom into the public arena at whim, without regard for traditional publishing deadlines and other constraints, and also offers instant feedback (for better or worse). As a reader, I've enjoyed e-conversations with Baum (www.knoxandbaum.com), London-based South African gothic writer Natasha Mostert (nmostert.suddenlaunch3.com) and a number of other writers and bloggers and, well, it all helps to bring the world closer and it's fun! In closing, here are some random thoughts I'd have put on my own blog this past week, if I had one:

Tony Veitch deserves all the stick he's getting, times two. But more scandalous is the State's actions that led to, and followed, Hope woman Debbie Ashton's tragic death in December 2006. It's astonishing the inquiry into the "switchbacks" fatality recommends an IT strategy to ensure branches of the justice system communicate. How long have we had computers? What justification can the Government have for holding up the report for seven months? And what's with the police-state mentality surrounding the secret witness scheme? We have every right to general details about how it operates, how many are on the scheme and what it costs. How many other Jonathon Barclays are being protected in places like Nelson at our expense? And boy, do I feel for the Ashtons in their loss.

If TVNZ discarded Judy Bailey over a couple of wrinkles, how can it justify covering for its now disgraced sports-newsreader? I don't buy the "poor Veitchy" argument. So he doesn't fit the wife-basher "profile"; ie, he's not brown, and he's rich. That only illustrates the point: that domestic violence is not the domain of one class, or one race. He's not the only Kiwi with two "jobs" - and that $400k income could have bought him plenty of help in dealing with his "stress".

My nominee for hero of the month: Kurt Rasley. He clambered on to a slippery two-storey Brittania Heights roof during Friday's torrential downpour and hauled to safety a man clinging to the gutter and on the verge of letting go. How we respond in a crisis is telling. Mr Rasley's performance on Friday was outstanding.

I'm cool on the new location for the performing arts-conference centre, but I guess it's better than seeing it revert to a car yard. The original vision of a civic-community-visitor precinct built around the lower Maitai was better ... but the bonus with the reworked plan is that it cuts costs by bringing in the Talleys (gulp). Hopefully the community will now swing in behind it provided the design is appropriate and ratepayer burden reasonable.

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