What I’m Blogging

I first read this book during the 2004 Presidential Election in the United States. At the time there was a lot of talk about Democrats fleeing to the the Dominion where it would be a “nicer” version of America. It opened my eyes, and any American thinking about life in the snowy north might give it a read too and discover the differences.

Adams, Michael. 2003. Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values. Penguin Books. ISBN 0143014234.

What I liked about this book: I think the things that I liked most about this book were the humour (it’s pretty funny) and the hope for the future that it inspired. Too often we are bombarded by the media about how Canada is becoming more and more like the United States. This book shows, rather sharply, that this is not the case. It also has good background information on the historical differences between our two nations; “Life, Liberty and Happiness” as opposed to “Peace, Order and Good Government”. Very entertaining.

What I disliked about this book: While it was informative, and funny, there were times when it read like a sociology textbook. I suppose that is to be expected when covering a topic like sociology, but there were sections in it where I found myself mumbling “blah blah blah” and then fell promptly asleep. But I struggled through and it was worth the read.

Available at Amazon Canada and US

My blog is worth $7,248.23.
How much is your blog worth?

There are those who claim that blogging is just a waste of time , effort and of no value. “Take my wife…” as Henny Youngman used to say. Well over at Business Opportunities Weblog an effort has been made to quantify just how much filthy lucre money a blog is worth. They should know, they are in the making money from a blog kind of space. Now don’t get me wrong, I like filthy lucre money as much as the next guy. Heck, I even bought a lottery ticket in the Ontario 649 mad dash for forty million of the little darlings [incidentally I did not win]. For the most part I like to think of blogging for blogging sake. Sure I put up links for Google Ads and I have links to Amazon for books and stuff, but to date I think I’ve made a grand total of $10 in the last 3 years. Don’t worry, I won’t be spending it all in one place.

Nope blogging for me is definitely not a exercise in money making. It’s more of an exercise in hearing myself type. But now I have an arbitrary number of value to assign to what I’m doing.

“I’ll be up to bed soon honey, I’m just increasing my virtual net blog worth….”

It’s the birthday of Dylan Thomas born in Swansea, Wales (1914). The name Dylan was an extremely rare name at the time of his birth. His father found the name in a collection of old Welsh folk tales. Today, Dylan is one of the top 20 most popular names for boys in the United States.

…he had an extraordinarily deep, sonorous reading voice…

Thomas kept a notebook for his poems as a teenager, and he continued to borrow lines and even whole poems from that notebook for his entire career. Almost every poem he wrote as an adult had an early version in that original notebook, written when he was 18 years old.

He made his name among general readers with the poems he wrote about the bombing raids on London During World War II, including “Ceremony After a Fire Raid,” “Among Those Killed in the Dawn Raid Was a Man Aged a Hundred” and “A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London.”

Once he’d become famous, he spent most of his time going on reading tours, especially in the United States, where he could make the money he needed to support his family. He had an extraordinarily deep, sonorous reading voice, and people came in droves to listen to him read his own poetry as well as the poetry of others. In the last eight years of his life, Thomas wrote only eight poems. He died on his last reading tour of the United States in 1953.

From the Writer’s Almanac by Garrison Keillor
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Further poetic reading available at Amazon Canada, US and UK