recommendations

The speaker this afternoon for the Y's Friday Forum Lecture Series was Nick Burbules who maintains Progressive Blog Digest, and spoke about the ways that the blogosphere fosters citizen journalism and the networking of political activists within a new public space. In incredibly nerdy fashion, I get really excited about the possibilities for blogging. One of the points that Mr. Burbules made was that the radically democratic ethos of sharing and community in the blogosphere necessarily engenders the collection and compilation of local, national, and international news in ways that can make patterns more visible. (i.e. The revelation via the blogosphere's synthesis of local news reports from various states that strange things were happening in United States Attorneys' offices.)

Anyway, he inspired me to (a) run, not walk to the nearest computer to update this thang, and (b) be sure to link to some more of the cool things that I've been checking out lately. Like Andrew's important September 11th post.

Also, I've been reading Paul Monette's Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir. Sooooo incredibly moving. I knew I was in for it in the first few pages when he first introduces Roger, his partner who eventually dies of AIDS, with

"How do I speak of the person who was my life's best reason? The most completely unpretentious man I ever met, modest and decent to such a degree that he seemed to release what was most real in everyone he knew. It was always a relief to be with Roger, not to have to play any games at all. By a safe mile he was the least flashy of all our bright circle of friends, but he spoke about books and the wide world he had journeyed with huge conviction and a hunger to know everything."

Last night, slumped in the armchair in my bedroom, I sobbed as I read the final pages. I looked up this picture of Paul and Roger, which for some reason made the whole story even more real for me.

Paul comes off, in his prose, as a slightly arrogant guy with a disdain for the middlebrow and sort of an odd obsession with all things ancient Greek, but he clearly loves Roger deeply, and the story is as beautiful as it is tragic.

...Now I have to spend the weekend creating a website about the book for use in a high school classroom.