What Makes a Good Blog?

via Merlin Mann, who I hope doesn't think I'm ripping him off, and if he does, I'm sure will something snarky about me on Twitter (just kidding, Merlin)...

***

1. Good blogs have a voice. Who wrote this? What is their name? What can I figure out about who they are that they have never overtly told me? What’s their personality like and what do they have to contribute — even when it’s “just” curation. What tics and foibles fascinate make me about this blog and the person who makes it? Most importantly: what obsesses this person?
   
   
2. Good blogs reflect focused obsessions. People start real blogs because they think about something a lot. Maybe even five things. But, their brain so overflows with curiosity about a family of topics that they can’t stop reading and writing about it. They make and consume smart forebrain porn. So: where do this person’s obsessions take them?
   
   
3. Good blogs are the product of “Attention times Interest.” A blog shows me where someone’s attention tends to go. Then, on some level, they encourage me to follow the evolution of their interest through a day or a year. There’s a story here. Ethical “via” links make it easy for me to follow their specific trail of attention, then join them for a walk made out of words.
   
   
4. Good blog posts are made of paragraphs. Blog posts are written, not defecated. They show some level of craft, thinking, and continuity beyond the word count mandated by the Owner of Your Plantation. If a blog has fixed limits on post minimums and maximums? It’s not a blog: it’s a website that hires writers. Which is fine. But, it’s not really a blog.
   
   
5. Good “non-post” blogs have style and curation. Some of the best blogs use unusual formats, employ only photos and video, or utilize the list format to artistic effect. I regret there are not more blogs that see format as the container for creativity — rather than an excuse to write less or link without context more.
   
   
6. Good blogs are weird. Blogs make fart noises and occasionally vex readers with the degree to which the blogger’s obsession will inevitably diverge from the reader’s. If this isn’t happening every few weeks, the blogger is either bored, half-assing, or taking new medication.
   
   
7. Good blogs make you want to start your own blog. At some point, everyone wants to kill the Buddha and make their own obsessions the focus. This is good. It means you care.
   
   
8. Good blogs try. I’ve come to believe that creative life in the first-world comes down to those who try just a little bit harder. Then, there’s the other 98%. They’re still eating the free continental breakfast over at FriendFeed. A good blog is written by a blogger who thinks longer, works harder, and obsesses more. Ultimately, a good blogger tries. That’s why “good” is getting rare.
   
   
9. Good blogs know when to break their own rules. Duh. I made a list, didn’t I? Yes. I did. Big fan.

***

Although I've never taken the time to articulate my thoughts on the subject, Merlin pretty well captures what I attempt to do when I "blog," more so at Dreamtime than here. But I do try to have so small measure of craft even with fhb, which I consider more a public diary than anything else.

And it's why I keep fhb going, although my focus is obviously on Dreamtime these days. And when I think about it, most of the blogs I still read, and podcasts I still listen to, follow Merlin's list of what gets my attention - and why.

The Ultimate iPhone Application

And for $999, you too can tell the world, "I am Rich." Actually, you can't right now, as the humorless Apple has removed the app.

Stupidest design of a home page ever?

You decide.

"...and I'll whisper, 'No.'"

The new WATCHMEN trailer, the best evidence to date that the movie will cleave closely to the graphic novel. I like the word "cleave" as no matter which definition you use, I'm right.

Some fanboy impressions, in no particular order...

1. Osterman in the intrinsic field vault. His body dissolving parallels the panel in WATCHMEN IV, Page 8.
   
   
2. Archie the Owl Ship emerging from the Hudson: WATCHMEN X, Page 11.
   
   
3. Random scenes of the Silk Spectre and Nite Owl. The Comedian tossed out his window. Ozymandias in front of his world video monitoring station.
   
   
4. Dr. Manhattan. This appears to be a scene from Manhattan's origin, when he was still learning how to rebuild his body, possibly replicating WATCHMEN IV, Page 9.
   
   
5. Archie descending through flames, possibly to the Sing-Sing riot. Rorschach improvising a flamethrower (WATCHMEN V. Page 26).
   
   
6. The Silk Spectre. Dr. Manhattan x 3 in that infamous scene where Laurie cries out:, "Jon, be one person again!" (WATCHMEN II. Pages 4-5).
   
   
7. Nite Owl in a very Batman-like pose. The Comedian's funeral. The Comedian in Vietnam. The Vigilante riots. (various from WATCHMEN II) Voice-over, "God help us all." The last is probably a reference to the quote in WATCHMEN IV, "God exists, and he's American." A chilling prospect, when you think about it.
   
   
8. Manhattan appears after successfully reconstructing himself. (WATCHMEN IV, Page 10). Note the full frontal nudity. Manhattan and Laurie kiss (WATCHMEN IV, Page 18). The Comedian smashing a wall, possibly after discovering the secret that would lead to his death, Rorschach throwing someone (Moloch?) against a wall. Ozymandias fighting off an assassin (WATCHMEN V, Pages 14-15).. Nite Owl screaming and Manhattan incinerating a Vietnamese (the two unrelated, The latter from WATCHMEN IV, Page 20).
   
   
9. More vigalante riot footage, this obviously parralleling WATCHMEN II, Page 16.The Rorschach voiceover is a variation of the statement in Rorscach's journal entry which opens the WATCHMEN series, which reads in part: "The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up against their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'Save us!'... and I'll look down and whisper, 'no'."
   
   
10. The Martian clock tower.
    

Dreamtime Trucks Along With Episode 56

Time for a Dreamtime plug, which I haven't done in a bit. We're up to Episode 56 and about 3,000 regular listeners, as far as I can tell, which ain't bad for an amateur podcast.

It's Summertime, the living is easy, and our July Twenty-Ought-Eight show is all about solar rays and happiness, direct from the sun and fun capital of the world, Merrimack, NH.

Featuring Eric Burdon and the Animals from the Summer of Love, Mickey & Sylvia, (with a sidelong look at Dave "Baby" Cortez and The Rocky Fellers), Bob Denver (in-between gigs as Maynard G. Krebs and Gilligan), thoughts on the Man Who Walked on Water, our favorite Disney girl, Annette and her seldom-seen belly-button, a visit to the racetrack, and winding up with a hip-hop version of Cruel Summer. Plus Dreamtime favorite Summer movies, and a few jingles thrown into the mix.

Episode 56 - Ho Daddy! The Summer Surf and Turf special

The Miami Beach audience is the greatest in the woild - Jackie Gleason

Life's Too Short for High Cholesterol

A new issue of my favorite web comic is out.

Forget Kindle - I Wanna Readius!

Well, maybe.  The thing about the Interwebs is that bird in the bush always seems more attractive than the one in the hand - not that I have a Kindle in hand, just that I would like one.



Well, maybe.  The NY Times had an article on an interesting new "mobile device" this past Sunday, the Readius, billed as the first pocket eReader. Like the Kindle, you'll be able to read books, subscribe to newspapers, read email, and receive other content - such as podcasts amd mp3s - on the Readius.  Unlike the Kindle, the Readius uses a flexible display, one that can be literally unfurled from the pocket-sized device.



Fueled by way too many science fiction novels over the years, I've had this vision where someday I'll have this thing that looks like a sheet of blank paper, newspaper of magazine-sized, that I'll simply tap, and voila - I have the front page of the Times, or the Globe, or Wired. Or anything I want to read.  That vision has probably been best illustrated in a throwaway scene from the movie Minority Report, as described in this 2005 article from The Washington Post:

In the scene we're interested in, a Metro passenger is reading a USA Today. It LOOKS like a USA Today in that it's a full-page newspaper (called a "broadsheet") but instead of a handful of papers, it's a paper-thin video screen, thin enough to fold up and put under your arm. Instead of static photos and text, it's constantly changing text, video and perhaps sound. Think of it as a combination paper, television and Internet, presumably wirelessly connected to a futuristic Wi-Fi, perhaps the next generation of the new Wi-Max super hotspots that are rolling out and cover several square miles instead of several square feet.

We're getting closer to that vision all the time. As Andy Ihnatko notes in his review of the Kindle (warning: Ihnatko's site always takes a tremendously long time to load every time I visit it, I dunno why), the world-changing thing about the Kindle isn't that it's a very cool eBook reading device, which from all reports it is. But the ultimately cool cool thing about the Kindle is that it's a very good - and since its Internet connectivity is subsidized by Amazon, very free - portal to the Web.

"At its core, the Kindle is a light, compact device that (metaphorically) contains the Wikipedia in its entirety; the complete text of every RSS-enabled site that you care to follow through Google Reader or Bloglines…as well as tens of thousands of commercial titles" - Andy Ihnatko

That's what the Readius could become.  Well (all together now), maybe.  Someday.  we'll see.  For the moment, the Readius is an announced but not-shipping product, first to be released in Europe for an unknown price, and scheduled for U.S. rollout sometime in 2009.  Again, price unknown, although the Readius CEO notes in the Times that it will be priced higher than the Kindle - currently at $345 U.S. And it's unlikely that the Readius will have a free Internet connection either.



But we're getting there.  First the Kindle.  Next the Readius.  Someday - maybe someday soon, the Minority Report "broadsheet."



Below, a video of the Readius (somewhat) in action:

Me & My FlashMic

As I've mentioned before, I recently got back from a gig in Vegas where I acted as producer and general ringmaster for a "live" podcast series from a business conference.

It's something I've wanted to try for awhile, and we were able to sell the clients on the idea that it'd be as close to live as we could make it without streaming - which I wasn't willing to tackle as a first attempt - and that we'd keep it to a guerrilla effort - fast, cheap, and if not out-of-control, at least not needing much oversight from our clients.

We did get about as live as you would want, posting most of the dozen shows we produced a few hours after recording, more than acceptable everyone agreed, given that we weren't doing breaking news. If necessary we could probably had the stories on the Web an hour after recording - the biggest bottleneck I ran into was the so-called high-speed internet connection offered by the hotel, which was neither high-speed nor provided much of an internet connection.

I eventually ended up posting most of our podcasts around 3 a.m. each morning, the only time I could seemingly get a consistent and relatively fast connection. In the hotel's defense, it did waive the $10 a day charge after I complained, but I still noted that a venue billing itself as a high-end business conference resort - which The Palazzo is in most respects - really needs to upgrade its internet connectivity for customers even if they have to charge more.

Because it was a guerrilla effort, there were only three of us: a reporter/industry analyst who did the bulk of the interviews; our client contact, who helped with all the necessary executive arranging/scheduling/handling; and lil ol' me, who outside of being the producer, also acted as engineer.

Most of the business podcasts I produce are phone interviews or roundtable discussions, most conducted through a traditional landline conference call, sometimes through Skype, recorded, edited, posted by me right here from the kitchen table. Since we were doing in-person, live interviews from the Vegas conference, I needed some sort of mobile recording equipment. All I was sure of was that based on experience I wanted as little gear as possible. The more gear, the more to haul around, the more to lose or break.

After some research, and discussion with fellow podcasters, I hit upon the HHB FlashMic, pictured above, and one of the coolest pieces of technology I've run into in quite awhile. It's nice when something not only lives up to your expectations but exceeds them. Resembling a wireless microphone, the FlashMic is an all-in-one recording studio. It runs on two AA batteries. It has a built-in 1GB flash drive. It has a professional-grade microphone - think broadcast or NPR-quality. One button to turn it on. One button to record. Plug it into Mac or PC with a USB cable and drag-and-drop your files over.

That's it. The FlashMic worked like a dream. Our reporter/analyst would do an executive interview and hand the FlashMic to me when finished. I'd download the .WAV file (the FlashMic can also save/transfer as an mp3) to my laptop, add our stock bumpers and do some minor editing in the freeware sound editing program, Audacity, and save it out as an mp3 for later uploading to the Web.

All done. You can listen to some examples if you check out the link above.Our client liked the FlashMic so much that she took it to the show floor for some "man-in-the-street" interviews, which I dutifully added on to our podcast series. Even the execs we interviewed dug the FlashMic, one noting that he had just come from another podcast interview which was an Old School mobile studio set-up... a room filled with mikes, soundboards, cables and equipment. The exec. thought he had walked into the wrong room when all he saw in our set-up was no set-up at all. Me, my laptop, our reporter and the FlashMic.

The price for the FlashMic can be off-putting. Street price ranges from $999 to $1200 (I got it for the lesser price through Amazon). But the equipment is a perfect example of the ol' "you get what you pay for" maxim. Would I recommend the FlashMic to the hobbyist podcaster? Probably not unless the hobbyist has money to burn. Can you put together a good, professional mobile recording platform for less than $999? Sure. My alternative - a digital recorder and a high-end mobile mike - would have run around $600-700 total, and if you're on a budget, you could pull together something for significantly less than those figures.

But for around $300 more I got what I wanted, quality, ease-of-use, and convenience. If you're doing podcasts as a business and if you want to be able to just wander around and capture interviews, ambiance, and sound for podcasts with a touch of a button you couldn't do better than the FlashMic.

Probably the best testimonial is that the other two members of my erstwhile Vegas team - client and reporter - have ended up buying FlashMics for their own projects.

Technical glitches

Blogger is in the midst of a major upgrade, meaning that things work, sometimes work, don't work, or stop working. Among the "sometimes working" is my access to Blogger itself and formatting stuff such as paragraphs and HTML links... that's just the stuff I've discovered so far. So, if my posts look a little funky during this period, that's probably why.

The Lady Vanishes

I've been following with interest - and with the certain fascination you have viewing the aftermath of a particularly messy accident - the ongoing story of Boing Boing's "unpublishing" of blogger/columnist Violet Blue. The 411 for those not familiar with the story...

1. Blue, a self-styled "sex educator," is a fairly well-known Web celebrity. Like most Web celebrities, Blue is also a tireless self-promoter, and has been publicized several times on the pop culture site, Boing Boing.
   
2. According to Boing Boing, the group's columnists* decided to remove all past postings concerning Blue from their site "a year ago." They did so without announcement and without notice from the Web at large, until Blue and several of her friends began posting about her disappearance from Boing Boing in late June 2008.
   
3. Boing Boing eventually responded on July 1st. Noting that yes they indeed had "unpublished" Blue (their term, without any apparent sense of irony); that it was a private matter between Boing Boing - either individually or collectively - and Blue; and that it was their blog to do with as they wanted.

End of story, or so BB hoped. This being the InterWebs, it, of course, wasn't, and close to 900 comments - including one of mine - have currently been added to in support of, or critical against, or used as a foundation to argue their own agenda, on the Boing Boing statement.

Boing Boing hasn't helped their case any by making several serious errors in the ongoing story. One of the Boingers - one who in fact had been a close friend of Blue's - implied that she was akin to a "piece of shit" that needed to be removed from the Boing Boing virtual household (the comment was later edited to remove the analogy). The BB moderator, while criticizing Blue and her supporters for lying, made several factual errors herself, including claiming that Blue had never written for Boing Boing - even though there is incontrovertible evidence that she did. And Boing Boing refuses to clarify the reason why they "unpublished" Blue, while ominously hinting that Blue "behaved in a way that made us reconsider whether we wanted to lend her any credibility or associate with her," and that they had no wish to embarrass her.

So enough of the reporting and on to opinion. Like every blogger, I've had to deal with the differences in writing on-line vs. Old School. Back in the day, you couldn't "unpublish," you couldn't edit after publishing. Once out there in print, you owned the words. Me, I deal with the issue of how to correct something I've written while giving notice that it is a correction by strike-through or an UPDATE notice. The only time I change a post without notice is to fix a typo. I've never taken down a post, and hope I never have to consider doing so. I've occasionally left posts in draft for several days - even weeks - and sometimes deleted them without posting. That's what the "Draft" button is for.


fhb doesn't provide the multitude of links of a Boing Boing, of course. I occasionally change my Blog Roll to reflect what I happen to be reading at the time. Blogs disappear - sometimes they reappear. At least one blog fell off my blog roll because I found I didn't like the blogger's writing and attitude anymore. But even with that, I couldn't see going through my blog and purging all references to that blog, of which there are still several, as distasteful as I found some of the blogger's later posts.

"Unpublishing," outside of being a nightmarish term, is a bad idea, imo. You shouldn't have the ability to rewrite history, no matter what the reason. Boing Boing, of all blogs, should know that. As many commentators have said the "Violet Blue thing" would be the natural meat of a Boinger like Cory Doctorow, if it had happened on some other site. Doctorow, by the way, is notable by his absence from the ongoing debate.

So, speculation, which Boing Boing has also made fair game, in my opinion, by their coy references to whatever Blue did to trigger the "unpublishing." Blue herself claims not to know. There is speculation - especially with all the references Boing Boing has made to "embarrassment" and given Blue's avocation - that it may indeed be a personal matter. The Web consensus seems to be that Blue's attempt to trademark the "Violet Blue" name (apparently her legal name, but not the one she was born with), and her 2007 suit against a porn actress also using the same name triggered Boing Boing's group decision, Great Critics of Copyright that they are.

Who knows? As in most of these stories, the cover-up - or in this case the "unpublishing" - has become a bigger story than the original.

*UPDATE:: In an interview with the LA Times, Boing Boing columnist Xeni Jardin (the one who had later made the "piece of shit" analogy) noted she had unilaterally removed the posts/references to Violet Blue, also noting again that her reasons were a prinate matter between her and Blue.

Podcasts to Go: No Waiting

I usually try to keep the business self-promotion to a dull roar, I have other places for that.

But every now and then, I produce something I'm pretty proud of. Here's some samples.

I Gotta Get My Fred and Wilma

Joe Cock-air at Woodstock with a subtitled "Little Help from My Friends." Try it. You'll like it.

Las Vegas: In Search of a Tuna Sandwich

I spent the past week in Las Vegas - preparing for and then producing a "live" podcast series from a business seminar is one of the things that's kept the fhb blogging light over the past several weeks. All-in-all things went pretty well. The usual expected glitches. But we recorded over a dozen podcasts averaging 15 minutes each over the space of three days, and got most of them posted within a few hours after recording.

It's been a little under a decade since the last time I was in Vegas. I was on a business trip - working a trade show - that time too. In fact while I've been to Las Vegas a half-dozen times or so, I've been there only once on a pleasure trip, and that was 16 years ago with Peggy. We had a good time - stayed at the Mirage, saw the white tigers, did a show at the Aladdin, gambled a bit, ate at what at the time was one of the few seafood places in the town, the Tillerman off the main strip; and spent some good time away from the city too, traveling to both Hoover Dam and a Nevada ghost town, as well as ending up in the middle of a cattle drive... but that's another story.

Vegas, as nearly everyone there will tell you repeatedly, has changed. Vegas has always changed. I'd expect that if I went back tomorrow the town would have changed. I more or less missed the Rat Pack ring-a-ding-ding era of the Vegas most people my age still think of when imagining Vegas - the Sinatra/Mob/Gambling/Comping/Big Acts/Mid-America on vacation Las Vegas - only knowing it by hearsay when my father would bring back a story or autograph from one of his layovers there.

When Peg and I went in the early `90s, Vegas was on the downside of that era, still heavily into the cheap buffet, scantily-clad showgirls, and now promoting small but inexpensive rooms in gaudy hotels that all had some shtick to differentiate them from the others ... exploding volcanoes, pirate battles, knights in armor. And the casino was king. Most of the floorspace at the Mirage and other hotels was given over to gambling.

Things, as I said, have changed again, at least where I was staying, which was at the Palazzo, part of the Venetian casino-resort complex. Both Palazzo and Venetian place a heavier emphasis on resort rather than casino, and many people seemed to be in the small casino areas only because they had to pass through them to reach shops, restaurants, spa, or business conference. As one of my traveling companions remarked sardonically, the powers at Vegas are in a constant search for new ways of extracting money from visitors. Not into gambling? No problem. Most of the floor space is devoted to either upper-scale shops or upper-scale celebrity chef restaurants. The shows are Broadway-style - the Palazzo was featuring Jersey Boys and the comedian Wayne Brady.

And one thing in Vegas that hasn't changed over the years is the emphasis on excess: Supra omnibus in rebus is the Las Vegas motto. Are the Palazzo rooms - all suites - beautiful? Yes, so beautiful that I felt a little embarrassed staying there - I kept expecting to find a family of four camped out in my closet. And the high-def LCD panels in living room and bedroom are nice, but do I really need one in the bathroom too?

Is the breakfast room service great? Yep, if you're okay with $30+ for a bagel, fruit, and coffee. But you can't say that the Palazzo short-changes you on helpings. The plate of fruit I got was on a platter, and I was still noshing on it into lunch. I made the mistake one morning of ordering one of my travel favorites - lox - and got what appeared to be half a smoked salmon that could have easily fed that family of four camped in my suite's closet.

Lunch and dinner in the hotel were the same - You weren't going to get away for less than $30 bucks for lunch anywhere in the Palazzo, and there was no such thing as a simple sandwich. By Thursday I was desperate for a plain tuna sandwich - no capers, special vermont smoked cheese, black olives, tuna nicoise of a sandwich, but just a good ol' tuna sandwich - and had to go up the street to Caesars and the Carney Deli to find one... and it still cost me $10 bucks.

Diner was - in a phrase - over the top. I took a client out to the Venetian's Aquaknox, which I highly recommend, but I also highly recommend deep pockets if you go there, too. On the one hand, I haven't had so many people waiting on me since Mexico - I think we had something like six separate servers - and the meal was excellent. I had possibly the best ahi tuna I've ever eaten. But you pay for what you get, especially in Vegas, and the tab was well North of $200.

And after awhile it all seems frighteningly normal to spend money that way. By the end of the trip my spending $30 for a cigar and $24 for two drinks while enjoying the cigar seemed, I dunno, okay.

Hey, spending more on ceegars and booze than I would normally spend on a meal?

It's Vegas, baby.

.

Where the Bals Go, the Hoi Polloi Soon Follow

Roberta say we're "so leading edge she can't stand it" as she forwarded this article.

A few weeks after our Hawk Walk, the New York Times published an article on the British School of Falconry in their Executive Pursuits section (which made me laugh out loud, as I'm about as far away from pursuing pursuits that your average executive would pursue as is possible).

Fwiw, I think my article is better, if for no other reason than I avoided quoting Yeats, which the Times writer actually does twice.

I WADED into the pitiless mid-May sun with a falconer and one of her favorite birds of prey. The grassy meadow in front of the British School of Falconry at the Equinox resort in Manchester Village, Vt., bloomed with yellow dandelions.

My instructor, Dawn Kelly, carried a brown-feathered Harris hawk named Elmer on her leather-gloved left fist. I recalled the opening lines of “The Second Coming” by Yeats.

The article features Dawn Kelly and the hawk, "Elmer," both of whom we met. Dawn was inordinately proud of another hawk, the unfortunately but appropriately named "Miss Piggy," who had succeeded in killing a turkey about five times her size earlier in the year

Full article here.

"Peggy, I say, oh, Peggy. We're going to have somewhere else to Summer.
Manchester will be simply overrun with tourists."

Cheers! Tears!! I’m here!

I'm still super-conflicted about Twitter, not least because its reliability is so flaky that it's often unusable. I've also taken to "unfollowing" (a nice 1984ish term), more people than I'm adding of late... mostly people who drown the system in minute-to-minute minutia. The latest was someone who was giving a blow-by-blow account of the DNC decision on the Michigan and Florida votes. He was apparently there and, I guess if you wanted a real-time account of the meeting it was fascinating... but not to me. Twitter really needs some sort of real-time filter/ranking system, so that tweets important to you at the time rise to the top.

In any case, one Twitterer I am following is the Mars Phoenix lander, which actually does exemplify how Twitter can be put to good use. We haven't gotten so far out that a spacecraft has taken to posting Tweets in its spare time. Instead, Veronica McGregor, the news services manager at JPL, had the great idea to create a Twitter account for Mars Phoenix, and lots of people like following it, over 12,750 to date. The full story behind Mars Phoenix's Twitter account can be found here.

Hodags Forever

Once a a Wisconsin hodag, always a hodag. Even though we didn't do the Ultimate Championships this year, Ace Reporter Roberta had a special feed direct from Boulder, and gave us regular updates over the weekend.

It probably couldn't be said better than Chris Spittal on the UPA site...

"Head of an ox, feet of a bear, back of a dinosaur, and tail of an alligator, the Wisconsin Hodags were the better team in the 2008 Open UPA Championship Sunday, and their superiority was apparent from start to finish."

Wisconsin took it all with a 15-9 win over arch-rival, Florida. I suspect that many were the blue-eyed Hodag tattoos later that evening.

And here's a highlight reel direct from the Hodags site:

How Bad Are Things in the Newspaper Biz?

So bad that someone - with no irony - has created a site called Praying for Papers. Its self-described mission:

"This is a troubling time in the newspaper business. Every day we hear stories from papers that are laying off employees and struggling to stay afloat.

Our idea at Praying for Papers is to encourage anyone who is touched by this shift in our industry to include it each day in their prayer life..."

The Boston Globe continues to devolve into just another paper with another group of columnist layoffs, including the aptly named Royal Ford, whose last column was at the end of April. Ford was replaced by a generic column from cars.com. I suspect that something like the Kindle will become part of the surviving papers' business model in the future. How they'll make money remains to be seen, but certainly the dead tree distribution can be replaced by something more cost-efficient.

Walks With Hawks

If you know me you know that I've had a propensity for ah, "enthusiasms," since I was a kid. Those could be anything from racing MG-TDs to bee-keeping, to rocketry to time travel to sailplaning.

Whatever it was, it was usually triggered by a book I had just read and wildly impractical for a 12-year-old to take up. Not that that ever stopped me. I'd simply head for the 1964 version of the Web - back in those days we called them "libraries" - and haunt the reference sections until I had absorbed everything I could find on the subject. If I couldn't actually do whatever had caught my attention, I could sure learn everything I could about it, on the off-chance that I might eventually get a hands-on opportunity . Thus, I can still provide such useful tidbits of information as that M.G. stands for "Morris Garages," that you corner a sports car by cutting through the apex of the curve; that "laser" is an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation; that royal jelly is fed exclusively to bee larvae in order to create queens, and that the leather strap used to tether hunting birds is called a "jess." More about that last in a bit.

It's not a bad quirk for a writer to have, as I've learned over the years, although it's occasionally wearing on Peggy who has to listen for weeks - sometimes months - at a time as I take up yet another subject. On the other hand, my long-suffering wife does listen to my babbling and even occasionally acts upon it.

This all takes us up to Manchester, Vermont, where Peggy and I spent last weekend on a postponed anniversary trip. On an earlier trip to Manchester, we had come across a tiny sign in front of a nondescript building that read "The British School of Falconry." Now, I'm totally wild about raptors. It was one of those enthusiasms I mentioned, where I spent several months as a kid wanting nothing so much as to take up falconry and immersed myself in jesses, goshawks, bells, merlins, hoods, peregrines and gloves. Many years after that enthusiasm had all but been forgotten I had spent one of the best summers of my life watching two red tail hawks raise a family of three from just-barely-flying to full-fledged hunters. I made Peggy laugh out loud that summer as I only half-kiddingly presented my gloved arm to the oblivious hawks on the off-chance that one might glide down to me.

Looking for something different for us to do on our 24th, Peggy had looked into getting us a room at The Equinox, a ritzy Manchester resort which is way out of our league except on special occasions. The Equinox has a co-op deal with the group behind the British School of Falconry and Peg was able to get us a package deal that included an introductory handling and flying lesson with a Harris's Hawk as well as a "Hawk Walk" where I was able to fly our hawk along a trail at the Robert Todd Lincoln estate, Hildene.

As it turned out, The Equinox was undergoing major construction, and we decided to take a pass on staying there, instead booking a room at The Wilburton Inn, a delightfully funky place in the off-season run by two true eccentrics who are also wonderful hosts. The Wilburton is highly recommended. And we still did the falconry thing at The Equinox package price.

At 2:00 on Saturday we were with our trainer, Rob, who brought me through the basics of handling my hawk, Sprint, as Peggy acted as observer and photographer. The 45-minute walk-through ranged from holding (left, gloved arm, jess held between thumb and fingers); walking with (hawk needs to face into the wind or will bait [i.e. flap around in an unseeming manner], often backwards and/or sideways; raptor psychology (essentially, smallest possible effort for largest possible reward); training of raptors (essentially, hunger = interest. A satisfied raptor is interested in nothing except standing on the nearest perch); why we were using hawks instead of falcons (Falcons work wide open spaces, gliding around and then swooping on prey. Hawks are more suited to New England woods, able to maneuver around trees and brush and able to take a heavy beating when necessary); and how to cast and retrieve your hawk.

We were with another couple - the woman acting as handler and the man as observer - and we exchanged our hawks for another pair and set off to Hildene and our hawk walk. All our hawks were Harris's, chosen because they tolerate humans much better than most raptors, and interestingly, who like to hunt in teams. Most raptors will attack each other rather than work together. Trained Harris's tend to treat both dogs and humans as members of their hunting pack - "we're the hired help" Rob called it - expecting us to flush out the game for them.

I have many memories I treasure: landing a seaplane for the first time; hiking the Grand Canyon; Caneel Bay in the Virgin Islands; Niagara Falls. I added a new memory last Saturday, a surrealistic walk through the woods, two free-flying hawks pacing our group, gliding from tree to tree, occasionally swooping into the brush after unseen game; flying to our gloves if given the opportunity to see if they could convince Rob to provide some free meat. I was flying a hawk named Wallace, the other handler-in-training, Maya, had a hawk named Skye. At the end of the walk, I held up my arm for Skye who, at the last moment, dipped under it, soared a few inches off the ground, and then rose up to gracefully perch on Maya's glove.

It was one of the most beautiful things I think I've ever seen.

Peggy's photo album of the training and walk can be found here, although most of the remaining shots are just me with a goofy grin and a hawk perched on my arm.

The "once-in-a-lifetime" phrase is an overworked term that writers learn to avoid. But I came as close to a once-in-a-lifetime experience as I'm likely to have, thanks to Peggy. If I regret one thing, it's that she didn't get to try too, as the rules say one handler and one observer per couple.

But if I have my way, we'll be doing it again. Soon.

Think Gas is Expensive?

Well, yes it is. Peggy and I spent $110 on the weekend to fill up the Murano and Mini. (The Mini, btw, which requires premium, broke $40 for the first time in my fill-up history). But, everything is relative. Be glad your car doesn't run on Pepto-Bismol.

Here's a meme currently making the email rounds...

Gas.............................................$3.60 per gallon
Diet Snapple 16 oz $1.29 ....... $10.32 per gallon

Lipton Ice Tea 16 oz $1.19 ....... $9.52 per gallon

Gatorade 20 oz $1.59 ............. $10.17 per gallon

Ocean Spray 16 oz $1.25 ........ $10.00 per gallon

Brake Fluid 12 oz $3.15 .......... $33.60 per gallon

Vick's Nyquil 6 oz $8.35 ....... $178.13 per gallon

Pepto Bismol 4 oz $3.85 ........ $123.20 per gallon

Whiteout 7 oz $1.39 ................ $25.42 per gallon

Scope 1.5 oz $0.99 ..................$84.48 per gallon
Evian Water 9 oz $1.49…….... $21.95 per gallon
Printer ink ………………...... $5,200.00 per gallon

I'm 81 Percent French in Bed

Or so says the Are You British in Bed? quiz, today's productivity-buster.