4. Olyghostbusters (via McCleary’s Morty), which seems to have stopped posting and is focussed on SPSCC’s Lady in White. They’re carrying both the pro and con arguments.
Its good they’re being fair, but, their busting is certainly too journalistic for me. Proton packs please.
The best of which is obviously the comment from Cathie Butler at the city, disavowing any connection with this awesomeness:
Although the person in this video says he is from the City of Olympia, this is not a City produced video and the individual is not representing the city or the city’s Waste Resources utility.
Berd embeds another Your Daily Hour with Me episode that features him. Just worth pointing out that YDHWM is one of the best things to watch in Olympia, especially their Occupy Olympia content.
One of the best local blogs to come along in awhile is Olympia Views. I’m not sure if the blogger is trying to hide their identity, but I if not I haven’t been able to find out who is writing it.
This is a story that — at least in Thurston County — should not wait until the election season heats up next fall. Part of McKenna’s platform is governmental reform. The candidate is fairly vague on what that means, but at the very least one can anticipate that an entire generation of managers who have gotten comfortable working for a succession of Democratic governors may worry about finding themselves out of a job.
You also have to love a blogger that puts so much thought picking up my thread on a new library in Olympia.
On the other hand, its sad to see local blogging great Jim Anderson of decrobilia bow out. In addition to decrobilia, Jim also wrote the great 5/17 blog, probably the best education blog I’ve ever read.
There are a few other newish blogs worth mentioning:OlyEats and Purehunger (a local food blogs that are actually updated every so often) and Bibliosnack (a local librarian vlogs and blogs book reviews).
After awhile of the Olympian shrinking and Olyblog be-bopping along after a couple of pretty good years, there are a few things worth noting about people writing about Olympia.
1. Everyday Olympia is back. More centered now just Mathias, it is back at least. I’m sad all of the old content is disappeared, but at least the site is moving forward.
2. I’ve pointed it out before, but Olympia Power and Light is on the internets. Yeah, this is important. I wish now they’d do a podcast. That would be cool, Matt Green and Meta Hogan talking every two weeks about Olympia and the most recent issue.
UPDATE: I didn’t notice that Matt Green is co-hosting Joe Ford’s KAOS show, which I suppose is a sort of podcast, minus Meta. It helps if they keep on posting the mp3s too.
3. Now, the important pieces: Thurston Talk is here. Its actually been around for awhile, but now they’re actually hiring a writer to write about Olympia. When was the last time we heard of someone being hired to write about Olympia. Big deal.
4. Olympia NewsNW shows how varied this entire local writing about Olympia scene can be. Based on news in context (I’m still not really sure what that means other than it being pretty cool what they’re doing), I’m hoping they start doing stuff on a regular basis.
This hilarious ONN report reminded me of a dead local online civilisation, the once vaunted (by me)Olyforums:
So, what happened to Olyforums?
The folks that I understand to have been the main moderators over there, S6, Christie, Rummy, and Just Plain Onry (I can spell that one out) haven’t signed on to their forums since late last summer. The drop off in posting seemed to occur in late spring, but the dead rot didn’t seem to really set in until September.
Anyway, what happened over there? Here are some possibilities:
1. Summer is a hard time to blog. Lots of sunshine, lots of travelling, people just get bored with it and sometimes it just drops away. And, sometimes everyone drops away at the same time.
2. Twitter and FB done killed it. I noticed a trend the year that my attention was being sucked up by my other social media accounts and I had less energy to blog. I am a lot less active at Olyblog and the blogging I have been doing has been over here. I can expect that other users at OF have experienced the same thing and just don’t have time to put up with a forum where they can hear from people they don’t particularly like. Moderating is a headache too, as we’ve learned.
3. Just a bit too caustic to live? Since the beginning, Olyforums was supposed to a be a place where everyone could hate on each other without being afraid of being banned. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t moderation, but the invention of invisible in you’re just browsing subforums (The Basement and the War Zone) was supposed to give more freedom to people who just wanted to yell at each other online.
Maybe a bit of history is needed. My understanding is that the founder of Olyforum, S6, started it up in reaction to moderation policies at another local blog, Olyblog. The core idea was that Olyforum would be friendlier place for conservatives who chafed at the apparent liberal bent of moderation policies at Olyblog.
Anyway, what could have happened is that when you found an online forum based on the core principal that everyone is allowed to be a shit head to each other, eventually, people get tired of going to a place full of shit heads. Rather than asking people to better their discourse, the place eventually falls apart.
I think this late thread in the deep dungeon of Olyforum points to that. In the thread which is housed in the War Zone subforum, apparently a really weird and threatening PM from one member to another causes the messaged member to drop out of the forum. Apparently, a lot of people were experiencing that.
For at least the last eight years or so, in various forms, I’ve blogged pretty regularly. There have been times I’ve closed old blogs, stopped blogging at other people’s blogs and consolidated posts on this blog. Anyway, there have also been times I haven’t blogged for awhile, but since about January of this year, my blogging here has been stalling (and for the past few weeks) grinding to a halt.
Some reasons for that include the obvious attention suck that Facebook and Twitter have become. But, there has also been the time I’ve spent thinking about the entire isthmus debate here in Olympia, and the stress I’ve felt of various groups of people I respect falling on different sides of the issue. While I respect everyone’s opinion, it has become a issue I have a hard time getting a hold of the issue, and I have gotten tired of the debate and the sides those got chosen up.
Either way, I’m going to make a concerted effort to keep on blogging. I realize that the above was a horrible reason why I have held off blogging, but here I am.
Via email, from Bonnie (Jacobs?) (important parts in bold):
WHO ARE CITIZENS FOR RESPONSIVE LOCAL GOVERNMENT? Citizens for Responsive Local Government, CRLG, formed after the Council’s isthmus rezone vote, and after various public records requests revealed what Councilmember Kingsbury and some others were doing on their laptops during Council meetings. CRLG’s endorsement committee included a variety of politically engaged and concerned people from around town, including four people who have been active with Friends of the Waterfront (Bob Jacobs, Emily Ray, Thad Curtz and Walt Jorgensen). Also included was Janet Blanding, a reporter who has been covering the Isthmus issues for Works in Progress, the local progressive monthly that’s distributed from sidewalk boxes downtown.
CRLG spent four months asking people about possible good candidates, talking to a large number of people about20whether they’d be willing to run, interviewing a much smaller group of people who were willing to consider running, and eventually deciding to endorse three candidates –
Karen Veldheer (who is running for the open seat) Stephen Buxbaum (who is running against Jeff Kingsbury) Jeannine Roe (who is running against Joan Machlis)
CRLG will make a public announcement about its three endorsements soon. Our next email will include more information on their endorsement process, the candidates they’ve endorsed, and what you can do to help elect some new members of the council this fall.
An email that gets forwarded around is a public announcement, FYI.
UPDATE (like literally moments later): No sooner did I write this that he’s up with two new posts. His old archive is still gone though. See below to find that.
Last week, Rich Nafziger (local blogger and senate dem chief of staff at the Big-Greek-Building) wrote a funny blog about the governor (“Hoover Award” Ha!). He first took the post down and then his entire blog. As of right now, if you go to his blog, it will be empty of posts.
Nafziger would have a much better blog if he didn’t pull it down so often. He’s done this before, a couple of times at least. Once (as I remember it) soon after the Olympia School Board began to become interesting and then when he left the school board for his current job.
I shared all of the recent posts from his blog that reached my feed reader, so if you go to my shared items, you can scroll around and find all of them. Aside from the Hoover piece, the rest of his blog is pretty smart and harmless. I’d actually love for more people like Nafziger to take the time and seriously maintain a blog the way he had.
It is sad that he feels the need to pull back from blogging so often. I am going to take the liberty of having saved his posts on my shared items
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