So, put another year in the books.

Since this is a not-quite-yet-abandoned personal blog that’s sometimes also about politics, that requires some sort of personal statement, right?

Damned if I know what that is, except blogging has kind of jumped the shark, hasn’t it?

I had thought the blogging impulse would come back this year, but instead … it was a lot more interesting spending time with actual people (social instead of media?). Grilling (with neighbors and friends). Wine (with neighbors and friends). Travel (50,000 paid miles, another 12k of reward travel, and aiming for roughly the same in 2012). Face-to-face interaction of all sorts. And my nose in the Kindle more (but in the woods much less, which is not so good). And yeah, a bit of social media (okay, probably too much time on twitter) and some home improvement. There’s your 2011. With plenty of (parentheticals)! Woo! (By the way, Parentheticals wouldn’t be a bad blog/tumblr name, wonder if it’s taken?)

Here’s wishing a Happy and Fulfilling 2012 to the folks who may still be following the little blog. I won’t promise there will be lots of blog posts in 2012, but maybe we’ll have the chance to grab a beer or sip some wine or share a campfire or… well, you get the idea. Hope to see ya around!

Hello all,

The blog has been “back” in terms of the slightly updated appearance and totally new WordPress backend* for a few days now. But I wanted the top post to remain a tribute to my mom through 2010.

To be completely honest, I haven’t been that motivated to post anything to the personal blog until recently anyway. Of course, my mom loved the stuff here (probably the personal and travel stuff a lot more than the political), and losing that audience really kind of sapped the motivation (and the heart, and, well, you know) for quite a while.

Quite a lot has happened since 11 July 2010, some of it documented on twitter/facebook/flickr/diigo/elsewhere. I don’t intend to rehash it (it’s 2011 now, onward!), but there have been some really good times — travel, friends, family, wine, Kindle (!), grilling, backyard, etc — mixed in with those moments of just aching that my favorite reader will no longer be eagerly checking out my little pixel patterns almost as quickly as I could arrange them. Life’s oscillations, hmm?

Anyway, Happy 2011 everyone. I think it’s going to be a really great year.

* We went through a short period on the Expression Engine blog platform. And then they went and revamped everything and introduced an expensive, screwy pricing structure that makes NO SENSE to me (ultimately designed to make the thing exclusively a commercial tool instead of one for hobbysts, I guess). So I gave in and went with WordPress. Old entries and comments have been imported from Expression Engine and Nucleus, mostly successfully it seems.

Louise Whited passed away on Sunday, July 11 2010 at Jane Phillips Medical Center in Bartlesville, Oklahoma.

Louise was born in Pawhuska, Oklahoma on May 28, 1943 to Joe Smith and Mary Katherine “Mitzi” Smith.

As a young woman, Louise enjoyed exploring new places, and spent time working in both Denver and the Grand Canyon areas. She later returned to Pawhuska, where she worked for some years at the Manhattan Cafe and Duncan Hotel restaurant. She married her husband of 42 years, Frank Whited, on March 20, 1968 in Honolulu, Hawaii. After a short time in Orange, Texas, they returned to Pawhuska, where she devoted herself to family. In recent years, she worked as an Avon representative and also was active on the internet.

Louise is survived by her husband Frank, son Kevin and his wife Callie, sister Sabra Trochta, brother Charles R. “Chuck” Smith, and numerous nephews and nieces. She was preceded in passing by sister Sandra Jackson and brother Joe “Brownie” Smith. She was a devoted daughter, wife, mother, sister, aunt, and friend.

Funeral services will be held Thursday, July 15 at 10 AM in the McCartney’s Johnson Funeral Home chapel. Longtime family friend Rev. Lottie Adams Ozbun will officiate. Interment will be in the Pawhuska City Cemetery.

Photo of the gas cap from our Ford Fusion rental (a below average compact class car) in Alaska:

I’m thinking Ford might like that one back about now.

Oh yeah, I have this blog going again…. I better put something up before BigBro yells at me.

• The Dangers and Difficulties of 'Bottom Kill' (Philip Bethge, Spiegel)
• McChrystal Told the Truth (Rowan Scarborough, Human Events)
• Afghan mission impossible (George Will, Boston Herald)
• Obama's Greek tragedy (Victor Davis Hanson, RCP)
• Politico Opens the Kimono. And then Pretends it Never Happened (Jay Rosen, Press Think) Chron.com does that post-publication editing all the time. It’s pathetic. And let’s not EVEN get started on journos who get so close to their sources they forget how to be journos.
• The true story of American soccer (Dave Eggers, Slate)
  

  The beauty of soccer for very young people is that, to create a simulacrum of the game, it requires very little skill. There is no other sport that can bear such incompetence. With soccer, 22 kids can be running around, most of them aimlessly, or picking weeds by the sidelines, or crying for no apparent reason, and yet the game can have the general appearance of an actual soccer match. If there are three or four coordinated kids among the 22 flailing bodies, there will actually be dribbling, a few legal throw-ins, and a couple of times when the ball stretches the back of the net. It will be soccer, more or less.

• Free furnace for man who lost arm in boiler accident (AP) Umm… I guess he won’t get cold while he contemplates his missing arm?
• Nigeria: Attackers Drive Nail Into Politician's Head (AllAfrica.com) Screw term limits. The Nigerians may have a better idea.
• Aegean Airlines Joins Star Alliance June 30th (View from the Wing) Eventually, we’re going to be able to put together a very nice reward ticket all the way through to a Greek island. And Aegean is nice to fly (esp compared to Olympic, although they are in the process of merging).
• Sarah Palin: Libs Hate Her Because She's Beautiful, Not Like That Michelle Obama (Hair Balls) It’s so sad to see a one-time professional journalist reduced to this.
• The downside to unelected officials (Off the Kuff)
  

  I don’t know anything about the particulars of this case, but that’s not important.

  If that were important, there would be a severe reduction in the blockquote blogging! LOL

• Strange things the dailies say (Perry vs World)
• Kasra feeds the imagination, vividly (Alison Cook, Houston Chronicle) It’s a cool place, and even within walking distance (this would surely shock the Smart Growth Inner Loop Booster types!)

… to all you dads out there!

We’re headed back to Houston later today after spending the weekend with my dad (who’s busy cooking us breakfast, ‘cos some dads just don’t take a holiday no matter what the greeting card industry decrees).

• Gulf War Three (Mark Steyn, NRO)
  

  Barack Obama was supposed to be the best, the very best, and yet he is always, reliably, consistently mediocre. His speech on oil was no better or worse than his speech on race. Yet the Obammyboppers who once squealed with delight are weary of last year’s boy band. At the end of the big Oval Office address, Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews, and the rest of the MSNBC gang jeered the president. For a bewildered Obama, it must have felt like his Ceausescu balcony moment. Had they caught up with him in the White House parking lot, they’d have put him up against the wall and clubbed him to a pulp with Matthews’s no longer tingling leg.

• He was hired to be Obama, not to lead the country (Brothers Judd)
• Obama's Answer To Spill Comes Up Short (Charles Krauthammer, IBD)
• Stop the Barges! Stop the Barges! Where are the lifevests? (The Fat Guy)
• Internet 'Kill Switch' Would Give President Power To Shut Down Web (Bianca Bosker, HuffPo) For work, I pay attention to countries that may be at risk of coups when state radio/tv go dead or start to play patriotic tunes. I never expected a US Congressman ever seriously to consider giving a US President the power similarly to control an element of state media.
• Your Government At Work (Sallie James, Cato) The folks who want government to run all aspects of the lives of its “subjects” can never really explain how that can work when we have so many examples of government idiocy. Luckily, on the few occasions Americans have given those folks control of all three branches of government, they’ve made such a mess of things that it doesn’t happen again for decades. To that end, see the next two links.
• Dereliction of Duty (Stephen Hayes, Weekly Standard)
• Prepare Yourselves For Speaker Boehner (William Galston, TNR) That’s so alarmist. Don’t we know from LibDem partybloggers that this is all a figment of Rasmussen’s imagination? LOL
• Mitch Daniels, genial Jeremiah (Michael Gerson, RCP)
• TCU's pipeline to Houston leads to first Omaha trip (Sam Khan, Houston Chronicle)
  Todd Whitting was on Rayner Noble’s staff when UH was among the best, and was not as UH sunk below mediocrity. He should get a call from Mack Rhoades to be the next head coach at UH.
• Katharine Shilcutt Will Be the Next Food Critic at the Houston Press (Eating Our Words) An inspired choice. Very good mesh.
• Cereal killers (Trent Seibert)
• 36 Hours in Bordeaux (Seth Sherwood, NY Times) I should probably stop screwing around on the web as much as I do, and spend that time learning French/Greek (to help with fully enjoying trips).