Why does anyone read blogs?
So why does anyone read authors’ blogs, anyway? Writers spend hour after hour honing their published texts, searching for the exquisite word, the finely turned phrase, the well-coiled paragraph, and yet apparently a segment of the reading public chooses to read their blogs, their before-and-afterthoughts, which they throw down on the paper without regard, like children spilling paint. Maybe that’s all a blog is, a catalogue of writers’ detritus, for embryonic and discarded and mutant thoughts, at best a collection of shards.
Well, I’ll give it a shot. I’m not yet sure to what extent this blog will be environmental, political, literary, or none of the above, (possibly even nothing at all!), but for awhile I’ll consider whether there’s any life in my scraps.
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Margarita Duggan says:
To catch a glimpse...
Hi Jacques,
I love the idea that I may catch a glimpse of a thought, a moment written down without the "honing" and "searching". I must say you are off to a great start. I wonder what the beautiful scene behind your picture is and find myself wishing all of our waters were that clear, and that there was no need for 5 gallon plastic bags especially to be used for filling up with tar dumplings at our local beaches today.
Margarita Duggan,
redroom.com
Jacques Leslie says:
Alaska's Inside Passage
The photograph of me was taken last September on a tugboat plying Southerneastern Alaska's spectacular Inside Passage, between Juneau and Petersburg. I found the place deeply moving, a kind of Lost World that in all its abundance and beauty stands for all of the natural world that has been sacrificed farther south. I've been in at least 40 countries, and I've never seen a place so beautiful. The water on the day the picture was taken was a glacial green, indicative of a (rapidly receding) glacier nearby and the many icebergs we were constantly dodging.
It happens that I arrived for my trip in Alaska just after having written a piece that describes how salmon enrich the basin they swim in, how even half a salmon carcass that a bear might leave behind on the shore deposits in the riverine soil nutrients the salmon has brought from the ocean, which in turn make possible the growth of grasses and other plants that provide shade for the next generation of juvenile salmon. I wrote all this without having seen it, and then in Alaska, I found myself standing at the mouth of a stream that seethed with many thousands of salmon that had gathered there to begin their upstream journey. I looked down at my feet and saw, a few inches away, a partially eaten salmon carcass left there by a bear, and was stunned to find such vivid confirmation.
I'm plotting to return to Alaska this spring on a reporting expedition.
Huntington W. Sharp says:
For the quality
While the blog format allows for a lot of unedited ramblings, I think even the ramblings have a better chance of being worth reading when they come from someone who writes for a living.
I find it fascinating as well to see those "before-and-afterthoughts," and think about the ideas that were discarded or distilled as the author arrived at the finished product.
I look forward to reading your blog, and second Margarita's question: where's was that lovely photo taken?
Huntington Sharp, Red Room