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January/February 2009: Blog Cabin |
Blog Cabin
Online in the Blue Line
By Mary Thill
Let's be honest. Most blogs give blogs a bad name, rambling on and on about nothing. Some personal Web sites maintained by North Country residents are no exception. Witness actual entries from actual blogs by Adirondackers who feel compelled to share the minutiae and musings of daily life: "How I got my tattoo, and why it's way better than yours." "Last night I made a batch of yogurt from scratch." And this observation about the Little Supermarket, in Wilmington: "They have a wide variety of Beef Jerky that would impress any Jerky fan."
This stuff might someday fill the gaps in social history but for now it just makes you wonder where people find the time to write it. And why.
But there are eddies of online thought that are worth a click. The following sites are, for the most part, concise, well written and up to date. They might inform your own views on life in the Adirondacks, whether you are a news junkie, a summer visitor, a trail rat or just nosy.
The blog often cited as a "must-check" by well-read Adirondackers is www.adirondackalmanack.com. The site's author scans regional news outlets and other blogs, posting new links and comments regularly. The host is an able historian who digs up context to breaking stories that daily news reporters can't or just don't. Adirondackalmanack's postings occasionally have a progressive voice but the emphasis is on timely and entertaining information.
Not exactly a blog but worth bookmarking is www.adirondacktrailhead.com. Like adirondackalmanack, this site aggregates local news sources and blogs, but it is strictly a list of links. Adirondacktrailhead also sifts through the video- and photo-sharing sites YouTube and Flickr, posting the newest regional additions. The site is an offshoot of the eclectic www.adirondackbasecamp.com, and mousing over some of the links will reveal editorial comments ranging in tone from knifey to right-leaning to funny.
But the Adirondack Park is a place to escape the distractions of 24-hour information and get back to nature, right? One educator puts a foot in both worlds. At www.adknaturalist.blogspot.com, a writer who goes by NatureGirl keeps a journal of what's blooming, buzzing and prowling around Newcomb and North Creek. Her delight in discovering cancerroot, a rare ghostly plant, in a meadow and a wood turtle laying eggs by the Hudson River makes you want to run outside to see what you can see.
NatureGirl also tends www.adkgardening.blogspot.com. Her joys and frustrations are comfortingly familiar to those who also till the soil here. She offers tips (where not to plant squash), recipes (what to do with all those tomatoes) and brings a scientist's curiosity to the garden, tracking the identity and source of fungi that attack her plants.
The most common genre of personal Adirondack blogs is city-person-adjusts-to-mountain-life. A lot of these start strong and then abruptly stop, leaving you to wonder if city person adjusted, returned to city or fell off cliff. An engrossing blog in this vein is www.citymousecountryhouse.blogspot.com. An honest and sometimes cranky New Yorker ponders what to build in place of the tear-down house he bought somewhere on Route 86. This is no lakeside millionaire; City Mouse has about $20,000 to spend and is contemplating building a cordwood cabin complete with chickens and goats. But the mouse is no hippie either; favorite foods are beef stew and chicken fingers, we are told. As plans progress and stall, the mouse discovers local history, hardware stores, blueberry patches and contractors who never call back. He grows alternately annoyed/enthralled with the whole Adirondack adventure, and somehow that's entertainment.
Another personal blog details the life of an 18-year-old student, figure- and speed-skater living in Lake Placid. The mood of www.lakeplacidskater.blogspot.com is set with exclamation points, pink type, a pink background and photographs the author took with her pink cell phone. Her point of view is guileless and inspiringly nice. She's a do-gooder who volunteers for all kinds of events, providing a vicarious sense of life in the Olympic village beyond the rink.
At www.adkfamilytime.blogspot.com you get insights into what it's like to be a mother raising two young children in the woods, but the writer mainly aims to help readers entertain and educate their own kids. She provides summaries of short hikes, museum visits, creek dips and other family activities, complete with directions and contact information.
Most people don't have the will to keep blogs (or the time to read them), but they have bits of information to add to the online discussion of all things Adirondack. Forums are the stone soup of the Internet, and adkforum.com is the most comprehensive. Discourse varies from lean-to etiquette to which Adirondack books to read to what canoe to buy, to whatever you decide to post next.
Blog On
North Country Public Radio's Web site is home to several blogs, most notably Brain Clouds (www.dalehobson.org), thoughtful noodling by "old hippie" and NCPR Webmaster Dale Hobson. Two SUNY–Cortland professors comment on park policy and natural history at www.wildernessandwaterslides.blogspot.com. See www.thenervousbreakdown.com/author/jdwhite/ for one woman's take on being single in Saranac Lake, writing, mountain biking and digging her dog. Random news nuggets in the southeast Adirondacks and Capital District are at www.northcountrygazette.org. There's www.writog.blogspot.com, the project of a Plattsburgh citizen journalist. www.Alongtheausable.blogspot.com has a Jay-based woman's quirky entries about roadside decor, local dining, even the bear scat in her mudroom. At www.adirondacklifestyle.blogspot.com a Lake Placid woman revels in her surroundings. The closest to a true Web journal—mostly entries about a six-year-old son—is www.adirondackdiary.blogspot.com. The western park, with area news and issues, is represented at www.adirondackcitizen.com, based near Old Forge.
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