BLOG POSTS

It’s been sometime since there was a post on Sparrow Chat. As reported in the previous missive, priorities have lain elsewhere due to the season, and frankly there’s not been much on the news or political scene to wet one’s interest and inspire composition.

Nevertheless, that Sparrow Chat must remain an ongoing project was brought home by the ‘Noblesse Oblige’ award presented to the blog by my good blogging pal, WiseWebWoman, though it’s fair to suspect, as this one involves some work, that it was at least as much a prod to duty as any meritorious decoration.

It comes with strings attached:

1. Create a Post with a mention and link to the person who presented the Noblesse Oblige Award.
2. The Award Conditions must be displayed at the Post.
3. Write a short article about what the Blog has thus far achieved – preferably citing one or more older posts to support.
4. The Blogger must present the Noblesse Oblige Award in concurrence with the Award conditions.
5. Blogger must display the Award at any location at the Blog.

The first two rules have thus been simply dealt with, but as to the blog’s purpose and achievements, they are a little more difficult to define.

When Sparrow Chat hatched back in 2003, it had little idea of purpose. Anyone and everyone was beginning to blog in those days and the technology was novel and interesting. ‘Blogger’ was the emerging platform, and template tinkering sufficiently exciting as to bind one to the computer for hours at a time – usually attempting to put right some ignominious cock-up that had shoved one’s blog title down below the footer, or left the latest post hanging in the ether somewhere between Rangoon and Nor-Nor-West Bohemia.

There was some unfocused notion it might become a writer’s blog. Of course, rarely does anything turn out as expected – at least in Sparrow Chat world – and before long the subject matter veered evermore towards the political scene, ably assisted by George W Bush and his band of inept political comedians.

A measure of achievement is also the gauge of success. Some bloggers apportion their accomplishments by visitor levels or comment numbers. Were this to be the yardstick for Sparrow Chat, then its greatest success would be with a subject bearing little relation to either politics or news.

On January 27th 2008, an article appeared on the blog, entitled, “Smart Car – But No Smart Gas Mileage”. It was around the time gasoline shot to three dollars or more a gallon. As with so much that ends up in Sparrow Chat, the inspiration for the post came from a NBC Nightly News infomercial (thinly disguised as a news story) for the lately introduced ‘Smart’ car from Europe. It’s appalling gas mileage figures, when compared to its European counterpart, was the subject behind the article.

Rather surprisingly, the title landed it in the top five leaders of Google’s search engine for anyone entering “smart car” or “smart gas mileage”. At that economically difficult period, it turned out to be a popular search. Sparrow Chat’s visitor stats shot from a modest three hundred or so a week, to nearer a thousand. Over the course of time, the main article and its four updates accrued sixty-seven comments, some of them quite lengthy.

They do still arrive, though the flow has now subsided to no more than an occasional drip. The last one was only a week or so ago. Sparrow Chat can be proud of the part it played in helping destroy the sales figures of that appalling engineering disaster, the American Smart car.

One cannot, however, measure success by a single triumph. Sparrow Chat is much more than that. Over the last six years it has been how I, R J Adams, have chosen to speak to the world, or at least, the small fraction of it sufficiently interested to keep reading.

There have been factual posts and opinions, but with all that’s been written the focus has been on honesty and accuracy. Sometimes, it’s caused contention; occasionally, pain. The subject matter has not always been to everyone’s liking, but the aim of everything ever written on Sparrow Chat has been to make people think.

Therein lies the measure of its success, or otherwise.

This “Noblesse Oblige” trophy –

– is, apparently, awarded for the following:

1. The Blogger manifests exemplary attitude, respecting the nuances that pervade amongst different cultures and beliefs.
2. The Blog contents inspire; strive to encourage and offer solutions.
3. There is a clear purpose to the Blog; one that fosters a better understanding of Social, Political, Economic, Arts, Culture and Sciences and Beliefs.
4. The Blog is refreshing and creative.
5. The Blogger promotes friendship and positive thinking.

One would like to think Sparrow Chat has aimed to achieve all of the above, even if it has, on occasions, fallen short.

As to the future, blogs rise and fall dependent on the whims of their creators. Since Sparrow Chat first took wing, many have risen to prominence only to fade into obscurity for a variety of reasons; some as mundane as boredom, or changing interests; others due to ill-health, or sadly, death.

For now, there is no intention to clip this Sparrow’s wings. Life does constantly change and evolve, though, so it’s likely the frequency of posting will rise and fall in tune with the rhythms of the planet, and its effects on the writer.

Now, in keeping with the rules of “Noblesse Oblige”, it behooves me to choose three recipients (there’s no number in the rules, but ‘three’ seems to be a popular figure) on whom to bestow this grand, pixellated, medal.

It’s not an easy choice, but out of many good blogs I’ve chosen:

• “How This Old Brit Sees It …” exposes the bad guys using more than a hint of adrenalizing alliteration.
  

• “Learning Curve on the Ecliptic” fulfills all the requirements for this award. No knowledge of astrology is necessary to enjoy the fine articles posted by “Twilight” (though I do skip through the star charts!).
  

• Finally, “The Nevin Politology” is a relatively new blog written by Nevin, a Turkish woman now living in the United States. Thoroughly recommended!

And now, all that remains is to find space for this magnificent trophy in Sparrow Chat’s sidebar.

Ummmm……the right side, I think……

Filed under: Worse than the Oscars

I apologize for the lightness of the posting of late, but this is the time of year in Central Illinois when, within in a few weeks, one has to undertake all those jobs that those who are fortunate and inhabit a ‘normal’ climate can spread over a whole summer of outdoor activity.

Already we’ve touched eighty degrees Fahrenheit on a couple of days. It won’t be long before that becomes the norm, and then the nineties will takeover, making eighty seem almost cool by comparison.

On a Mediterranean beach such temperatures can be welcome. After all, the sea is beckoning for a cool-off if the sand begins to burn. Central Illinois has more the feel of an overdone Turkish bath, than the Mistral-stroked dry heat of a Spanish resort. Around here, by mid-June the only creatures who find it tolerable outdoors are vicious mosquitoes and the occasional bad-tempered wasp.

Meanwhile, we’re forced to languish in stale, recycled, air conditioning, and long for winter.

As a consequence, I’ve been busy tidying the ‘yard’, as Americans call the patch of cultivated land around their homes that everyone else in the world refers to as a garden.

If there’s one positive aspect to the climate, it’s that everything grows at breakneck speed – especially the things you don’t want sprouting in your backyard. Five large trees have already bitten the dust this year – at least we’ll have firewood for winter – and I now spend as much on weedkiller as was once spent on summer bedding seeds back in Britain.

The weedkiller’s just to keep them in check for a while. It’s useless planting summer bedders. Once the temperature hits ninety, any work in the garden becomes impossible. The first summer in Illinois was spent watching from our air-conditioned prison as my beautiful marigolds and dahlias, grown so enthusiastically from seed, were rapidly swallowed up by a cocktail of prickly lettuce, pigweed, docks, and a host of other virulent botanical outlaws as yet unidentified.

Even the trees have had to modify their behavior. In temperate climes, fruiting and seeding takes place in early autumn – hence, “a time of mellow fruitfulness”. The summer is for growth. In Illinois, seeds appear almost before the first leaves. It’s as though the trees are desperate to do their work before the arrival of that pore-clogging, energy-sapping, humidity.

Too hot and humid through the day; too full of dangerous, biting, creatures in the early morning and evening, I soon learned ‘keeping the yard tidy’ was a chore to be rapidly completed between late April and the end of May – always assuming the violent storms, so regularly a part of Illinois spring times, allow one access to the outdoors.

Hence the recent dearth of posts.

Filed under: Frustrations

Jon Stewart of the Daily Show recently battled verbally with Cliff May over the question of whether America’s use of waterboarding, and other interrogation techniques defined as torture under the Geneva Conventions, could or could not be excused as acceptable, given the terrorist threat to America.

Resulting from that exchange, Stewart last night apologized on the show for calling US President Harry Truman a war criminal.^[1]

It’s impossible to know the pressures exerted on Stewart to force this retraction, but one can guess they were great. Stewart was wrong to apologize.

Can any one person unleash a destructive force so great it destroys two great cities and much of the surrounding area, inflicts unimaginable suffering on the population of those cities, sow the seeds of death and destruction that continue to devastate those who lived through it, and their children, and their children’s children still born mutilated, still dying from horrible radiation diseases sixty or more years after the event – can any one person responsible for such an atrocity escape the label of ‘war criminal’?

Harry Truman did.

So did Winston Churchill after his part in sanctioning the fire-bombing of Dresden and other German cities, in the greatest act of unnecessary revenge against an innocent people that has ever been unleashed by a military power.

Both were war criminals. That neither stood trial is due solely to the fact they were the victors.

Victors never stand trial for their crimes. Only the losers are punished.

The victors are no less guilty for that.

Jon Stewart was right to label Truman a war criminal. He was wrong to apologize for doing so.

^{[1] The Daily Show Website}

Filed under: Off the hook