Welcome to the Vermont Blogosphere

And now, as promised, I will share my latest list of Vermont-based blogs. Thanks, everybody, for sending me links. Sorry I've been so slackerly about posting them. My vacation has made me lazy. Please excuse.

Blog.DanYork.com is by — you guessed it! — a guy named Dan York. He moved here recently from Ottawa Ontario. He writes about, "Thoughts on 'new media', PR, blogs, security, VoIP, Linux, PGP/GnuPG, more..." Also, Dan is interested in podcasting. He writes in an email that he's interested in getting together with other local pod people. He's responsible for Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast. 

Wind Energy Sucks is a parody, I think. I'm not sure what it is, exactly, but somebody sent me this link, and I think it's funny. Says their subhead: "Wind energy kills. Wind energy devalues. Wind energy blinks red at night. Wind energy is fallic. And above all else, wind energy hates our freedom."

The Lamberson's Big Trip! A blog by Paul Lamberson, a guy who used to work at Recycle North. He and his family jumped in an RV and are touring the country. Not sure if/when they're coming back, but their blog looks neat.

Burlington Coalition for Community Schools This is an activist site for Burlington citizens to organize around education issues. If you're interested in saving Barnes Elementary, this is your blog.

Everybody Falls Montpelier-based "Gravity" describes herself and her blog: "Just your average everyday she-gamer. Challenged by all sorts of games and friendly to a fault. Expect discussion and review of music, anime and games of all sorts as well as rambling stories about people you don't know." Or, because this is Vermont, there may be stories about people you do know.

Musings from Vermont A site by a Vermont librarian named Jerry Carbone. His profile says he's a baseball aficianado. He spent the last month writing about a fascinating trip to China.

Teen Blog@Brooks Not sure if I'm going to add this to my blogroll, but I thought I should mention it. It's a blog for teens run by the Brooks Library in Brattleboro. I know of one other library in Vermont experimenting with blogs, the Dorothy Alling Memorial Library, in Williston. They've got a blog called Teens@DAML, but their tech administer apparently left, and they've been searching for a new blogger for a couple months now, looks like.

Burlington Currency Project Their subhead is: "In each other we trust." Their profile:  "This blog is written by the organizers of Burlington Bread. Our contributors include:  Amy: full time staff member of the Burlington Currency Project,Graduate Student at the University of Vermont. Laura: former Chair of the Board, uber-volunteer, Bread Member, and violinist." Show me the $.

Dorset Farms Neighborhood Too busy to chat over the fence with your neighbors? Read about nearby rare gull sightings and real estate prices on your neighbor's blog. There's nothing fancy about this site, but I love it. It's an easy, painless way of accumulating social capital. Course, it only works if everybody reads it...

Stowe Reporter Ski Racing Blog By Marina Knight. Says the subhead: "The Stowe Reporter is going to the Olympics! In preparation for the excitement we want to provide our readers with news from the races leading up to the Torino Games in Feb." Well somebody had to do it, and who better than Stowe's weekly paper? The Reporter has a little work to do before they win any awards for web coverage — their site has some typos, and the design and layout could be cleaner — but this is a good start. I'm looking forward to seeing how this evolves. FYI — they're using blogger.

Montreal Now This is the third staff blog at the Barre-Montpelier Times Argus, and it's written by Arts Editor Jim Lowe. I love the way the TA experiments with interactive features, but I'm disappointed that he hasn't posted since December 7th. And I continue to be disappointed with the design of their blogs — the type is small, and the layout is kinda boring. What is it with newspapers and website design? I don't think there's a single newspaper in Vermont whose website design I really like, including Seven Days, although I think I like ours best. I understand that this design problem stems from the fact that we have to have these complex software programs to handle our content, and those programs aren't always pretty, or easy to use. It just gets frustrating sometimes. Am I the only one frustrated? I bet I'm not.

Owen Mulligan, formerly of Owen's Opinion, has moved his blog to this site.

I apologize if I left anybody off. Let me know if I did. And hey, if you want your blogs on one of these lists, send me the link. Be forewarned — I probably won't add it if it looks like it's been abandoned.