Well, we have all heard a lot of talk about web 2.0 being the “social web”. And blogs are so web 2.0. Well, I don’t know about that, and I am certainly the most social being that has ever walked the planet in human form. But I figure one thing about blogs is that they can be used to knit up a community. And, well, even if I don’t feel it, I suppose I am part of a community.

If my experience in long-term sobriety teaches me anything (over and over again), there is not much I can accomplish alone. In fact, alone, mostly I am a complete mess.

Why am I going on about this?

This blog has broken new ground. In recogniti0n of - no, in celebration of - my status as a social being, I have started putting links up on this site. Well, OK, you can consider my del.icio.us cloud tag links of a sort, but …

And, the set of categories came out of an ephinany of sorts. You see, I have been thinking about links for a while. And, there is a lot to link to, a lot to show off, a lot that deserves to be seen. And, how to sort it all out, and keep it succinct?

The other day at work, slogging through another day of data slice and dice on auto pilot, wondering how much longer I could survive this job with the “i don’t give a shit” mantra going loud and strong, I got a little desperate. You see, I really can’t afford, at this exact moment, to just get up, go out for lunch, and never come back.

What is it, I thought, that I could do with a pasion? Where does the compass point that will show me a way out of this rut. For I am hungry for work that satisifies, work that simply needs to be done.

I picked up a pen and four words penned themselves with bold strokes. A simple calender, two lines of rough financial scaffolding. I have a plan.

And the headings for the links list you see in the far sidebar was born.

Happy Surfing.

Fifteen days to the hamburger summit. More or less. If we count the dog days of June here as sort of a ‘run-up.’

This weekend the ‘Ex’ and I shipped the kids to far away places, sorted by gender, with her taking the girl to camp for eight weeks and me putting the boy on a plane to dig in Italy for a month.

This week either I said ‘No’ or they said ‘No’ to five attempts at a change of c arrear … kinda like five lottery tickets that wound up crumpled on the floor of the car with the empty wrappers and coffee cups.

So all that stuff that took up June is over, and here it is, all those things I say that keep me from writing … gone.

Though my daughter swears that a month without kids is gonna result in a father with a new girlfriend, I am not so sure. I can’t see that the kids are an impediment in that arena. More that the last couple of years since the last divorce have run more in the direction of ‘crank and recluse’ than down any kind of lover’s lane.

But, I do say those darling kids keep me from writing, and now we will find out if that particular threadbare excuse has any weight to it.

And, I am apparently stuck with the ‘day job’. I am not going to be instantly transformed, merging passion with work, vocation and avocation twining as I ‘following my bliss’, getting paid to write. Or save the world. So, I get to do this ‘on the side’ like all the other poor schmucks trying to make a go of it.

“Moonlight in Vermont,” they say, “or starve.”

Appropriate, really, as I am writing this on the porch of the Bennington Motor Inn, with the full moon just come up over the ridge. Peaceful summer night on the road …

And I want to show my face among bloggers again. So, … time to start writing again. Fifteen days to the summit, fifteen posts? Cool breeze running tonight. After the heat down in NYC, lets anything seem possible.

Went to the blogger meet-up Saturday. Good to put some faces to the blogs I’ve been reading. I didn’t have my camera, nor am I good with names, nor the whole social thing … which may explain why I am writing this rather than being say, a prize winning photo journalist, or even moderately popular. But Stan Cyendom put together a nice write-up with pictures.

The company was interesting, the coffee was good and the wifi was ‘buck in the basket’, one of my favorite funding mechanisms. I would have liked to stay longer, but the kids were getting restless. I left wondering when then next one would be … but not where …

Because Monday, headed to Waterbury, I found the perfect site for our next meetup. The Williston Rest area on I89 (southbound). I stopped at the Williston (southbound). This place is amazing. Beautiful high ceilings, plenty of light, airy. Very nice architecturally. Plenty of free parking, as they say.

And, the coffee! Green mountain coffee roasters … buck in the basket! Not to mention, the wifi is free.

Thanks to the state of Vermont for this wonderful oasis. I am sure I am not the only one who might take a break from the Burlington rat race, the scramble for high speed access, and head out to Williston for an alternative hipster wifi coffeehouse scene.

What do you think, guys?

Well, gonna give typepad a try. Thinking of moving my main blog from radio land to moveable type, and somehow I wound up here. Maybe a scrappy little reading and writing blog. Know I’ve got the fever when I’m listening to Prairie Home Companion, eating rice and beans as I type, first meal of the day, dark and where’d the day go?

This weblog is now hosted at www.nohomepress.com. Follow the ‘Blog’ Link. Link is now www.nohomerpress.com/salient - ed.

And breaking the promise not to fill the web with all those self-referential, self-absorbed notes detailing inane obsessive tinkering with geek stuff