It’s been quite a few months since we’ve trawled the murky waters of the local blogosphere looking for new local voices.
From Brenda M. Simmons' Samurai Pen blog.
I only gotten three hrs of sleep and still I don’t feel the least bit groggy. Its’ funny how your brain has a tendency to stay up when you don’t want to.
Then we have Rev. Rickert – A Lutheran in SC, one of the most self-explanatory blogs out there. The good Reverend recently took the time to explain who he is and what he does.
As the members of Lamb of God Lutheran know, I’m now the Assistant Circuit Counselor of Circuit 18 in the Southeastern District of the LCMS. To help me fulfill these responsibilities I have received a copy of the Circuit Counselor’s Manuel. As you would expect, it has a great deal of practical information about my responsibilities. The introduction, however, is a great little piece blending history and theology in relation to this office. As every Circuit in the LCMS has a Circuit Counselor, and therefore every church in the LCMS has a Circuit Counselor, I thought I’d share the introduction from the manual with everyone who might stumble across this blog.
Written by minister Randall Cummings, Healthy, Fit and Fifty is another one of those blogs with a title that doesn’t really leave you with a lot of questions. Healthy. Fit. Fifty. What’s to misunderstand? (Cummings actually has two active blogs, the other being his religious blog Contexts.) Here’s a recent snippet from Healthy, Fit and Fifty …
I returned from a long trip to my parents’ house to help take care of my father who had had knee replacement surgery. The combined trips added up to over 24 hours on the road. And some of that was some really late hour driving.
I was glad I could be there for my folks, but what a number I did on myself. My parents can have sweets around the house and just ignore them. If I know there’s candy around, I catch myself going back again and again. It’s like I can’t leave it alone. Additionally I don’t cook anything like my mother cooks. When I’m preparing meals the nutrition index is way up and the unwanteds (highly processed food, breads, and fried foods) are way down. It can be exactly the opposite there.
Tony Ivey’s Midlife Rider blog explains that “You’re never too old to have a good day on a bike,” also leaving little gray area if you’re curious as to what the blog is about. Here’s the intro to a recent post about continuing motorcycle education.
I guess the next logical step after buying your first bike in about 30 years was to want to learn how to work on it yourself. I checked out the local community college for a Motorcycle Mechanics Course, no luck. The closest school was in Orlando, Florida. I work a fulltime job and helping to raise a family so there is no chance of enrolling there so the next best thing I could find was a free online Motorcycle Repair Course. A guy by the name of Dan offers a free course which can be found at www.dansmc.com. I have decided to follow along step by step and see just how much old Dan can teach this old dog.
Next we have The Wonderful Happenings of Justin and Casie, written by Casie Parrott. The blog is neatly explained as “A Georiga Bulldog fell in love with a Carolina Gamecock and asked her to marry him! This is their story…” In other words, this is a personal blog about a couple in love. While these sorts of blogs tend to have a short lifespan in my experience (how much can one really say on a regular basis about being in love?) they sometimes morph into personal or mommyblogs, meaning we can all get in on the ground floor here. So onto the blogroll it goes.
With Halloween approaching, sharing the story of Saudade only seems appropriate! … Since Justin grew pumpkins this year, he decided to bring two of them for me! We concluded that it would be best for us to carve one and leave the other one for decoration! Last year we had the hardest time trying to decide on a face, so I suggested that we come up with a name first and design a face that matches it.
I immediately thought of the name Saudade. Saudade is a Portugese word that describes the feeling of “the love that remains” after someone is gone. In Portugese, ‘Tenho Saudades Tuas,’ translated as ‘I have saudades for you’ means ‘I miss you!’ Since Justin will be in Brazil on Halloween, I will have saudades for him, so the name seemed fitting.
Next we have Thoughts for Today, the first of our new Sparkle City Blogs to be a little obscure in title and intention. The blog’s description says it’s “a journal of my thoughts and activities,” but a quick read reveals it’s mostly about the personal religious faith of blogger “NancyK,” with a few non-religious topics occasionally filtering in. One recent post explains why I can never find a good place to sit when I’m at the bookstore.
Sometimes I think I want to take a break from everything…work, church, grandchildren, life in general. Sometimes I think it is because I have not been getting enough time for me. Not me is a selfish way but me in a just sit and read a book way. Me in a do what I want to do – or do nothing at all – way and not feel that I should be doing something.
… Getting in this mood does make me begin to think seriously about retiring. My fear is that I might become a hermit if I didn’t HAVE to get up and get dressed and get out of the house. Or I might get one of those comfy chairs at Barnes & Noble and put my name on it and read…a lot.
One of the more interesting local blogs to surface recently is Note To Self by blogger (and Gamestop manager) Joshua West. It’s written in this kind of half-poem format, which is atypical for the local blog scene. It’s actually kind of hard to tell if these are actual poems or actual blog entries. Here’s a recent example.
wait
maybe this place isn’t everything
maybe we don’t need anything concrete
you say to hold on to little securities
and hope that the world won’t carry me away.
These blogs represent roughly half of the newly discovered local blogs the most recent search unearthed. To check out more local blogs, visit the Spark’s sister project, SparkleCityBlogs.com.
Steve Shanafelt
