Dear Friends, What Are We Telling Each Other?

Clear day view

Dusty day view

[Those photographs above have nothing to do with my topics today.]

How do you understand fiction? As truth or make-believe?

Jane Austen’s first four works of fiction were all epistolary novels, fiction presented as a series of letters between characters. One of the four was First Impressions, a precursor to Pride and Prejudice, and the later, iconic version of the Bennett girls’ story, while going beyond a collection of imagined letters, still relies on fictional correspondence (40 letters given in whole or quoted from in part) to advance the story at several pivotal junctures. 

 

Recall, for instance, that the character of Mr. Collins is introduced, before he appears in person, by the first letter he writes to Mr. Bennett, a letter Mr. Bennet reads to his family at the breakfast table. Darcy’s explanation of his reasons for separating Bingley from Jane, as well as his own family’s history with Mr. Wickham form the longest letter in the novel. And Jane’s letters to Elizabeth about Lydia also function as would expository dialogue in a stage play, recounting events that neither sister witnessed personally.

 

The Postmistress, by Sarah Blake, is not an epistolary novel. It is neither composed of letters, nor are letters the main subject. The book is, as any novel must be, about life as experienced by the characters on its pages. Written correspondence, though, does play an important part in those life experiences at that time. Reliance on the post is crucial in The Postmistress, as letters were still the most important and common means of communication for people separated by long distances during World War II, the period of the novel. Moreover, as the title indicates (though she is called postmaster in the text, and that is eventually explained), one of the principal characters is Iris James, the government employee in charge of the U.S. mail in the small seacoast village of Franklin, Massachusetts. Iris takes seriously her responsibility to maintain an orderly post office. 

 

…The broad wooden sorting table was cleared for the morning’s mail. If there was a place on earth in which God walked, it was the workroom of any post office in the United States of America. Here was the thick chaos of humanity rendered into order. Here was a box for each and every family in the town. Letters, bills, newspapers, catalogs, packages might be sent forth from anywhere in the world, shipped and steamed across water and land, withstanding winds and time, to journey ever forward toward this single, small, and well-marked destination. Here was no Babel. Here, the tangled lines of people’s lives unknotted, and the separate tones of voices set down upon a page were let to breach the distance. Hand over hand the thoughts were passed. And hers was the hand at the end.

 

-      Sarah Blake, The Postmistress

 

What lines to thrill the hearts of those who still write and send handwritten letters! There have been many novels in which a postmaster (or postmistress) appears, but has there been one before Sarah Blake’s novel to make that character and her work so essential to the story?

Excellent service here in Willcox, Arizona!

There are other characters, of course. There is the doctor’s young pregnant wife, who comes daily to the post office at 4 p.m. looking for that day’s letter from her husband, and there is the doctor himself, who after losing a patient has left his wife behind in Franklin to offer his services in London during the Blitz. There is the postmistress’s lover. And of course there is Frankie Bard, reporter, who, when she sees the doctor she has just met killed in a London street, rescues from the street the last letter he wrote to his wife. Soon after that, Frankie lands a long-desired assignment and is sent to travel Europe by train to “get the story” on refugees from Hitler’s Germany. After seeing one of the refugees, a young Jewish man whose voice she had recorded less than an hour before, shot to death before her eyes, however, she begins to think that recording voices is more important than any story she can shape.

 

“Maybe people talking, just being there, alive for the minutes you can hear them, is the only way to tell something true about what’s happening over here. Maybe that’s the story,” she finished, “because there’s no way to put a frame around this one, no plot.”

 

I began writing this post before finishing the novel, having read by then about two-thirds of it and, pausing to write about what I had read so far, I was struck by the difference between the living voices preserved on tape and the thoughts of the letter-writers preserved on paper and how and why the author foregrounds both in her story. Did she find the recordings of voices truer than the letters? It seems to me that the letters – No! Yes! We have Iris’s thoughts on this in my first quoted passage above! The letters do not contain stories shaped by someone else for an international radio broadcast: no, each letter contains a single voice, one person speaking to another, “voices set down upon a page … to breach the distance.” In that, the recordings (individuals telling their stories to Frankie, face to face) and the letters are alike. But in both cases the voices and thoughts shared are preserved, so that the one-on-one intimacy can be experienced by later listeners and readers.

 

Next morning.

 

My mother always used to call them “the wee hours,” those dark hours between midnight and first light. That’s when I woke and finished reading The Postmistress, and this morning I have a few vague thoughts on truth and story-shaping -- because of course the author has shaped a story, bringing together characters that coincidence would have been challenged to unite in real life – but I want to change direction here and leave the novel and World War II to bring attention to the United States Postal Service today. 

 

Have you been following the story on proposals for banking through our nation’s post offices? Here it is. If you are not old enough to remember the Sixties, postal banking may be a new idea to you, but it is not a new idea for the USPS, and it flourished until Lyndon Johnson abolished it in 1966 to "streamline" the USPS. (How much influence did the banking industry have on this presidential decision? One cannot help but wonder.) Now, with branch banks closing across the country and only online banking available to many Americans – and only to those who have easy, daily, affordable access to the Internet – the old idea is being revived. Bankers are against it, but bankers shouldn’t decide everything in American lives. Here is some of the history of postal banking. Read about it, please, and think about it. 

In Willcox again

If you have read my blog much in the past, you may know that I have always been a big supporter of the United States Postal Service. (If interested, see more here.) For me, it is not a nice option but an absolute necessity of life, personal and civic. We have one of the safest and most efficient and economical government postal services in the world. Not only are bankers against it, but the whole “government-is-bad” crowd would rather see privatization of everything. How about you? Would you trust a payday lender over your local post office? 

 

Thanks for reading today! – And now go write and mail a letter!!!

 

Wrapping, Unwrapping, and Wrapping Up the Old Year

Good morning! Last dawn of 2019!

In the days preceding Christmas, my writing desk displayed a row of colorful gift bags for local Arizona friends and neighbors. “Would you like me to find a box you could put those in,” the Artist asked, “so you wouldn’t be so crowded?” I thanked him but declined the offer. “I like to look at them,” I told him. For me, those colorful bags went some distance toward making up for the lack of the fragrant Fraser or balsam fir I would have had back in northern Michigan.

Outgoing gifts, only partially reflected in memorabilia-crowded mirror

Incoming gifts -- and ours to open!

Over on my bookshelf was a substitute “tree,” a shorter, less elaborate mesquite branch than the one I found and used last year, but something, at least, on which to hang Moravian folded paper stars and other ornaments from sisters and friends. I also cleared the remaining top of the bookcase of other items to make room for gift bags from sisters and friends. In that way, my book and writing corner served, for a little while, as our Christmas corner. 

lighting my corner of the darkness

Because I don’t know about you, but when the short, dark days of December roll around, I “need a little Christmas,” and I’m completely sympathetic to Jo March’s complaint that “Christmas [wouldn’t] be Christmas without any presents!” Poor as those “little women” felt, yet they managed to scrounge up gift surprises for each other and for their mother, and in my frugal life it means a lot to me to be able to do the same. 

Still in Michigan, and starting way back in summertime, I had great fun thinking up and making and buying little things and making a happy collection of items for the bags I would later assemble. But I’m lucky. I have sisters! The Artist thinks my gift bags are a “girl thing,” and maybe they are. I do know that my sisters and I have a wonderful time finding and buying things for each other. “Oh, Bettie will love this,” Deborah will say to me as we stand together in her friend’s gift shop, and I agree. “You’re right. That’s perfect for her!”

Gifts on any occasion need not be expensive or elaborate or enormous to say “I love you” to recipients. It is indeed the thought that counts. But giving tangible body to the thought counts, too, I find. For instance, my sisters and I typically give each other cute socks, tee shirts, books, holiday ornaments, and kitchen items, and whenever I put on a shirt or pair of socks from a sister, or pick up a book or admire an ornament or use something in my kitchen that a sister gave me, I think of that sister, and she is right there with me. The gift keeps on giving!

New shirt from a sister!

New socks from a sister!

New apron from a sister!

more new, heavenly soft shirts

Sometimes, surprisingly people other than the givers are with me, too, through gifts I receive. Such is the case with a book one sister sent me this year, a book of poetry by the cousin-in-law of a friend of the Artist’s and mine. I have yet to meet Cele Bona, but her poems are powerful, and her name and relationship to our late friend Al Bona, himself a friend we also admired for his poetic gifts, brings Al to mind, though he has been gone for years.

Years! They pass so quickly! Some years I send Christmas cards, other years New Year’s cards, and sometimes no cards at all. But the truth is that I enjoy buying bright postage stamps and taking stacks of cards to the post office almost as much as I enjoy going in with gift packages to mail. I often think of a friend who hated going to the post office (and now there are ways to avoid the p.o. altogether), but whether I’m at home in Northport, Michigan, or in Willcox, Arizona, the post office is almost always a delightful stop for me. I love the way the United States Postal Service connects us all, and when I go to the p.o. I feel that connection, a little the way I feel it when I go to my precinct voting place in northern Michigan (where I’m happy to say we use paper ballots!). We’re all in this together, these places say to me. We may be far apart in the moment, but these places, these rituals, these bits of paper and other stuff provide us with tangible links to each other.

A friend back home collects our mail and sends it on to us.

[Reminder: Gifts can be wrapped in brightly colored recyclable tissue or reusable cloth. Paper envelopes that hold cards can be recycled, and the cards themselves can be repurposed. Besides, it’s only once a year!] 

But just as I never tell anyone, friend or bookstore customer, “You have to read this book!” -- I only make suggestions or offer ideas -- so I do not intend to guilt-trip anyone into buying or giving Christmas presents. Whether or not one celebrates this holiday or any other, giving presents in the U.S. is, like so many other decisions in this freedom-loving country, an individual choice. Neither am I going to go all religious here (wouldn’t that be inappropriate?!) and dwell on the Infant as God’s gift or the gifts the wise men brought to the Infant, because the truth is that for centuries even Christians did not celebrate Christmas or exchange gifts. Is Dickens responsible for kicking off the holiday we all know today as “traditional”? Who knows, and what does it matter? Philosopher I may be, but there are some things I don’t want to argue about, and Christmas is one of them. 

And just as I will not guilt-trip anyone into giving gifts, neither do I intend to let anyone guilt-trip me into abstaining from gift-giving. I love that part of Christmas! I love looking for, thinking about, finding, selecting, buying, making, planning, wrapping and giving gifts for Christmas! It is a big part of my holiday joy. No colorfully wrapped packages? How sad! Maybe someday I will be an old lady in a nursing home, hunched up in a rocking chair and unable to indulge myself in what is, for me, a very modest seasonal orgy, but until then I’m not giving it up! 

For now, though, all the wrapped gifts have been unwrapped to exclamations of delight, bright bags and tissue are put away for another year, socks and tee shirts tucked into drawers, and soon it will be time to take down the ornaments and stow those in cupboards and closets, time to unplug and remove lights from the cabin windows. — But no, maybe I’ll leave those lights up a while longer. They are such tiny lights, such brave little lights, after all, and we do need our courage and indications of each other’s loving presence as we go into another new year, don’t we? So with that in mind, here is my wish for family and friends and everyone in the world, known to me or unknown: 

Amid the challenges and struggles that another year will certainly bring, may we find also hours and days of joy and gratitude and love, and may we return again and again to a calm center of peace. 

Happy new year, one and all!

Good Weather -- for Reading and Writing

My Sunday bread-baking got shifted from Sunday to Monday this week. Reading and baking bread work well together, as do reading and writing letters, or reading and doing laundry. All are good, productive indoor winter activities.

But Sarah and I do get out a few times a day, too, of course!

Our intrepid Ulysses Reading Circle will meet next week to discuss Sarah Orne Jewett’s The Country of the Pointed Firs, so I re-read and have been thinking about that book lately and also re-reading Willa Cather’s essay on Jewett’s work. Still making slow progress through The Tale of Genji. And I’m also still thinking about M.F.K. Fisher, as glimpsed through the collection of her letters I read.

In her books about France and about food, the author is MFKF, professional writer but also, as one learns from the letters, self-created persona. MFKF is solitary, mysterious, somewhat fey, definitely haunting. When she hurries around a corner, you think perhaps she vanishes.

I met MFKF for the first time in Map of Another Town and was spellbound. I’d never met anyone like her. Having now met Mary Frances the letter-writer, I realize the distance between the person and the persona, as well as how much closer I feel to the letter-writer. Mary Frances loved letters writing and receiving them. She loved getting to know her correspondents better through letters, keeping in touch with old friends, and exploring what was going on in her own head. For her, sitting down to write a letter was a self-indulgent escape from the hard work of “real” writing. In one letter (and I can’t find it again in the book) she writes that she is a letter-writer the way some people are alcoholics or “Benzedrine-boys.”

(Many times – and I’ll put my personal responses in parentheses so as not to seem presumptuous, as if I'm putting myself in the same league with MFKF -- I have the same feeling. Self-indulgent! I find it then very strange when anyone thanks me for a letter. It was not a selfless sacrifice! Almost always so much the opposite that I sometimes worry, in fact, about imposing letters on people, since those not addicted to writing letters themselves may feel irksomely called upon reciprocate. I don’t see it that way. I don’t consider that anyone “owes” me a letter in return. Just for the record.) 

Another time she writes,

I can think and feel and write better when I am invisible. I become clearer to myself... sounds foolish but you’ll understand. Here [at home] I play too many parts, often because I enjoy them or find them challenging. When I am in France I am more truly real to myself....

This passage, I think, was not meant to contrast the writing of letters to being with people face to face. It was, note, “in France” that she felt “more truly real” to herself, and as I interpret that, she felt, when far from home, more simply herself. Living abroad, she was not required to face anyone as daughter or sister or long-time neighbor, as professor or employee. The relationships she formed while in Dijon and later in Aix-en-Provence were limited by circumstances. Her landlady and the waiters who recognized her were not her close friends; they knew little of her other than what they saw. And out of that solitude Mary Frances was able to construct the MFKF persona and to work and to be, unhindered.

(In our last winter’s high desert isolation, though David and I were together, I felt very free of multiple roles and social expectations. With David and Sarah I can be completely myself -- lose myself in writing or reading or wandering aimlessly outdoors or exploring roads by car with the two of them. And no one else knew me in the ghost town or the nearby cow town. I could disappoint no one, and no one could disappoint me. Simply being there, taking in our surroundings, which felt delightfully foreign, as fully as possible, with all senses, learning as much as I could about a strange, new part of the world – all that was “work” I assigned myself. I felt very “clear” and lighter than air.)

Mary Frances the letter-writer was confident and frank. Asked to read someone’s book, even the book of a friend, she delivered her opinions bluntly. She was equally honest in her response if a friend confided in her about a mood or a personal dilemma. To her, friendship required honesty, and any relationship that honesty would destroy was no friendship in the first place.

(I cannot be otherwise than honest in giving my opinion of a piece of writing or an idea. My frankness equals Fisher’s in those restricted domains and is usually, though not always, received without resentment. On other topics, I’ll more often listen without giving an opinion, and I am unlikely to chide a friend for bad moods (even if frequent) or what look from the outside like self-inflicted personal difficulties. That is to say, I am a reader and writer and editor and philosopher to the marrow of my bones but do not take it upon myself to act as a psychiatrist. I am not criticizing Fisher for telling her friends how she honestly saw them. She was able to carry it off and perhaps to help. I have not that gift. Everything having to do with another’s heart seems complicated to me, and I am more likely to second-guess, over and over, my interpretations of others’ complex motivations and ever-present inner struggles. Also, I certainly do not welcome a friend’s “psychologizing” me! But this is a deep and mysterious realm....)

Fisher’s side (we do not have in the book letters written to her) of her correspondence with family and friends begins, in A Life in Letters: Correspondence 1929-1991, when she was living in Dijon with her first husband. The last in the volume is two sentences long and was written to the same friend who received one of the earliest in the collection. It is so short and such a perfect close for the volume that I will quote it in full:

Transcendental is the word. I don’t believe in all this stuff about grief because I think we grieve forever, but that goes for love too, fortunately for us all.

Some women I know were talking the other morning about how “no one” writes letters “any more,” and the thought made me sad. I think of the closeness developed with several friends through the writing of long letters to each other (after more superficial acquaintance) when they went to live in far-off places and we could not meet in person for months or years. When they returned, we had become true friends, and those friendships continue to this day.

The very slowness of handwriting a letter, along with the tactile component, brings intimacy to the process. The necessary wait for a letter to arrive allows anticipation to build. Finally, there is the delight of taking the envelope in hand at last, with that dear, familiar handwriting. A letter from my friend!

While I truly delight in e-mails from a handful of friends (and I’m sure people receive at least some phone texts with delight, though I do not text so do not know from firsthand experience), how can instant electronic match the miraculous sensation of opening a letter and beginning to read it, picturing one’s friend writing the words several days before, and now, days later, feeling that friend’s mind in communion with one’s own? My own letter-writing, as I say, feels self-indulgent, and yet I am grateful for personal letters others write me. Reading a letter, I am thankful that my friend set aside time to share her or his life and thoughts with me.

Friendship, after all, like marriage, takes time. There are no shortcuts to long relationships.

On the heels of the sad conversation about “no one” writing letters “any more,” I went straight to the post office to buy stamps. That was Saturday. Now today, Tuesday the 26^th of January, Leelanau Township bows under a heavy, wet snow. School is closed. Roads are bad. It’s a good day to write letters. And maybe somewhere, far from my isolated farmhouse, a friend is writing a letter to me....

Miscellany: Poetry in the Mail, Workshop Offering, and Back to the Movies

Mystery Poet Strikes Again – and Again!

When the post office started cracking down on mail addressed incorrectly, I feared I would never again receive a missive from the mystery poet. After all, he (I’m guessing at the gender) always used the street address of the bookstore, rather than the post office box number, and he never uses a return address, so it the mail did not get delivered to me, how would he even know? Well, somehow he figured it out. And I’m guessing he’s a regular reader of “Books in Northport,” too, or how would he have known to send mail in the winter using an old Gadsden Purchase stamp? The friend picking up our mail in Northport got that one to me in southern Arizona. Nice surprise! The second arrived in late May.

These two poems are similar in length and subject matter. Here they are:

Thank you, mystery poet.

Will My Workshop Be a “Go”?

In graduate philosophy classes, we students ran into one philosopher after another who claimed to be going back, for a fresh starting point, to self-evident truths, and we often commented to each other that it wasn’t always evident what was self-evident. This observation extends beyond philosophy. What’s “obvious" to one person isn’t necessarily obvious to another, so when it comes to being “clueless,” about whatever the topic may be, we who are clueless haven’t a clue that we are so. And it’s a cinch that every single one of us has some area of cluelessness. (What’s mine? You tell me!)

Most recently I’ve been mulling over, yet again, the business of self-publishing. It’s so “easy” to do these days. That is, it’s easy to pay someone to print and bind your words and sentences and paragraphs into a book. Then what? My message is this: Self-publishing is publishing. Publishing is a business. The decision to self-publish is a decision to go into business. Are you ready?

Because the decision is not one to make lightly or impulsively or without information, I developed a hands-on, practical workshop, which will be offered for the first time on June 10 through Continuing Education at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City. “Is Self-Publishing for You? A Bookseller’s Perspective,” EECO 341, will bring to those who enroll my 20 years of practical experience in the form of short written exercises, class discussion, and Q&A. The workshop will meet for one evening only, from 6 to 9 p.m. – That’s if (and only if) enough people sign up.

The need exists. I have seen it again and again. Tell your friends.

Back to Willcox Once More

I found my little brochure with the map of the historic downtown, so now I can tell you the name of the street at the beginning of the car-train sequence in “Red Rock West.” It’s Stewart Street. Nicholas Cage is driving east (west is at the top of the map) on Stewart Street, and we see his car at the intersection of Stewart Street and Railroad Avenue. He goes straight, toward the tracks. A train is speeding toward the intersection from the south (right end of the map). Cage swerves at the last minute, and his car runs along parallel to the tracks, at last overtaking the train and jumping the tracks in front of the train where Maley Street crosses the tracks. Look quickly at this point of the movie sequence, and you’ll see the sign for the feed store. That’s Maid-Rite Feeds, Willcox, Arizona. Yep, we were there.

If I Could Choose (One of These Two Worlds)

Yesterday, Friday morning, we went to Northport early and loaded the truck up yet again with boxes of books from storage to donate to Goodwill. (Gotta shrink that footprint! Clear the way for workmen and new tenants!) David had other errands in Traverse City, too, so before noon he left on his appointed rounds. Bruce was on the job by 11 o’clock, and I went out then, on foot around Northport, to post and distribute announcements for my bookstore’s first author event of the season, which we will be holding across the street at Brew North and of which you will hear much more very soon. (Hint: She walked another thousand miles!) The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and it was a lovely day to be out and about in my little village, quiet this week with the school on spring break.

When I got back to Dog Ears, there was my new French correspondent, Ed, in town for the holiday weekend. Ed is studying French through Alliance Française and had written to me in French to practice his new language skills. But what was this? He had brought me a beautiful bouquet of bright tulips and an Easter basket containing, besides chocolate eggs and bunnies, a dozen fresh farm eggs from his own chickens! Does the CEO of the online behemoth book-and-everything-else-seller get Easter baskets from his customers, baskets topped with beautiful pale green* eggs? I seriously doubt it! (*Ed’s chickens are Ameraucana, A North American breed developed from the South American Auraucana.)

Next my friend Ellen arrived to take me to lunch, and she also brought bright, beautiful tulips! (We were celebrating my birthday a few days early.) Luckily, although shelf and table space is at a premium during these days of transition, I’d cleared away most of the temporary bookstore chaos earlier in the morning, so it was possible to find room for two vases of flowers.

While Ellen and I were at lunch, Bruce greeted customers and sold books, basking in the sunny front window, with Sarah relaxing in a nearby chair. Everyone was happy. That was Friday in a real bookstore.

In the virtual book world on the same day, life was not as bright and cheerful. The big news there was that the aforementioned online behemoth has swallowed up booklovers’ favorite social network! How could this be? Reaction ranged from somewhat suspicious speculation to sheer outrage.

“Will you write about it on your blog?” David asked. I told him I’d mention it and put in a couple of links but that I had no plans to discuss the buy-out at length or in depth, nor to offer my own opinions or speculations or predictions. There will be more than enough tweeting and twittering and shouting and quacking without my little voice added to (and lost in) the din.

I have my own little book world, and it’s very personal. In July I will be celebrating 20 years of Up North bookselling, face to face with my customers. My way of bookselling is old-fashioned. It is not innovative, and I am not on the “cutting edge.” On the other hand, my dog goes to work with me, people bring me flowers and eggs and chocolate, and I don’t think anyone actually hates me. After all, it’s not part of my business to put other booksellers out of business.

To sum up, as friends in New South Wales might put it, “Change places with that big CEO? Not for quids! Fair dinkum!”

It's Time to Let Pictures Do More Work (Mystery Poet Included)

Fifth mystery poet offering to Dog Ears Books

Since I've been excessively wordy lately, it seems only kind to give my small, loyal readership a little break for the weekend. Here, then, is a post with lots of pictures, leading off with the latest bit of mail from our mystery poet in Metro Detroit. 

As always, the variety of stamps is a lovely treat. The poem inside is the briefest yet and quite sad --

-- fittingly, since it is a mourning dove doing the singing.

A Japanese poet would appreciate this offering, don't you think? And that gives me the segue to my next group of pictures, showing a beautiful, beautiful book. 

KATSURA: A PRINCELY RETREAT. Photographs by Takeshi Nishikawa and text by Akira Naito. Translation by Charles S. Terry. Tokyo, New York & San Francisco: Kodansha International Ltd., 1977, 1st edition hardcover with photograph dust jacket in elegant slipcase (Japan; architecture; history) 

The text author, professor of architecture Akira Naito, writes of the images in this book,

Takeshi Nishikawa spent nearly five years taking the photographs reproduced here. Visiting Katsura countless times, in all seasons and climes, he has created a realistic visual record of what he saw, making no effort to play up features that might coincide with some pet theory or creed. Of necessity, he became familiar with the ordinary qualities of the palace, but at the same time he looked beyond these to the brilliantly imaginative touches that set Katsura apart from other architectural monuments. His Katsura is not one that can be seen in one or two visits, but rather a total Katsura, as it might be understood by one who lived there year in and year out.

In addition to beautiful photographs and informative text, detailing the complicated history of the palace and how its development relates to the aesthetic standards of the day, the book also contains 23 architectural drawings, based on the author’s own surveys.

Opening the cover and turning the pages of Katsura: A Princely Retreat is like opening the door to a magical world of incomparable beauty and peace. 

The photographs are large enough that 

one becomes instantly enthralled and quickly lost, transported to another time and place and way of life.

I am torn between the simple, spacious interiors and the green gardens outdoors, kissed by rain and mist.

Ah, the magic of books, of poetry, of art, and of post offices and bookstores! Oh, okay, yes, the blogosphere, too!