Housekeeping and Other Thoughts

Here I am, again, enjoying on my back deck a few of the finer things in life; a good cigar, an Irish Whiskey and checking out my favorite Masonic Blogs. I have long been a fan of the aggregator King Solomons Lodge.  For a long time it was a daily destination of a mouse click (and still usually is) but as it has become more and more popular globally (which is quite a testament to Brother Jeff's foresight and vision) I feel as if I have to plod through a security point at J.F.K. just to see what my friends are up to, so, as of late I have used my own links (much slower but less hassle) to see what is being written about the Craft I love so well, by my cyber Brethren.

As I go down the list I recognise a few trends; centralization, "blog fatigue" (you heard the term here first), and extraction.

The first trend is coming about with powerful cyber-Masons like Brother Greg Stewart who seems to be absorbing Masonic Blogs like a "Sham-Wow". Some of my favorite blogs writers have decided to give up their independence and join Freemason Information and leave their unique identities behind. Recently I read a very interesting article about how bloggers are very much like the pamphleteers of the American Revolution and how the independent voices were slowly conglomerated, and I paraphrase here, into the New York Times (yuck!) and how Bloggers were a refreshing link to the independent thought of the past.

The second trend is blamable, (and perhaps the first also), on "Blog Fatigue". A blog, as engrossing at times as it is, is very hard work for no pay. When I started my blog and when it was in its "heyday" I tried to write at least two new posts a week, then it became one, and now I'm Lucky if I bang one out a month. Writing, like Dan Brown has shown us with the lengthy gap since his last book, is not an easy thing to do, and although we all have high hopes and big aspirations when we start a blog we soon find out we already wrote about most of the things we really cared about right off the bat and there are only so many Halcyon Lodge episodes a decade, so what is left; rants and updates and that gets tiresome after a while. Which leads to the last trend extraction.

There are too many dead blogs for my taste on my "Great Masonic Blogs" list! I know its hard,  but there were so many real quality bloggers/writers who have thrown in the towel that it hurts. My inbred Irish Catholic guilt and stubbornness stops me from deleting these links (and you know who you are) but my keen cyber reality begs me to remove them (I still just cant). I just hate seeing *&%%$@!#@blogspot.com has been removed, its like a grave stone of a friend, always there to remind you of the good past.

Anyways, its getting late see you at my next rant.

I'm starting to feel like Andy Rooney!