Before Twitter and Facebook there was a time when blogging was the hip thing to do. This period lasted just a few years, from 2004 into 2007. By the end of it I was doing community ed classes about blogging and that’s how you know a trend died. While blogging is still relevant, it’s now much more like, well, regular writing.
Anyway, back in this time I had this idea. Like now, I was then doing occasional guest producing and commentaries for KAXE radio. In addition to this fact, I grew up within and had some familiarity with the Sax/Zim peat bog, one of the continent’s great inland peat reserves just off northern Minnesota’s Iron Range.
Wouldn’t it be a great idea, I thought, to do a live show from the Sax/Zim bog and during that show use a live internet connection to update a blog? This “bog blog” would then be preserved as a wholly unique contribution to the art of letters, something both entertaining and scientific. It would also be an interesting counterbalance to the impersonal world of the internet. Instead of just blathering nonsense on our computer we would sharing the events and ambiance of a specific, unusual location for the whole world.
I actually contacted a sod farm along Highway 7 south of Zim about setting up a table and chairs and stringing a phone line out into the middle of their field for the above-mentioned purposes. In this conversation I explained everything: the existence of the internet, the nature of radio, the logistical needs of live blogging and the need for a clear phone line during the two-hour broadcast. I had her reeled in. This was going to work.
I don’t know exactly why the bog blog show never happened, only general truths. In truth, no one else on earth ever showed as much passion for the bog blog show as I did that summer of 2005. My first son was born that year, and something there must have weighed on my time management. I started this blog that year and began to form the ideas for my first book. “Bog Blog” and “Blog Bog” were both already claimed as domain names. Anyway, the excuses go on.
I write this because one of the blogs I read, 3quarksdaily, posted “Bog Blog” last night, a blog post about the characteristics of bogs. But did they do a live radio broadcast to go with this?
No. No they did not.
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