You are here…welcome

The other day (which for me is anytime between yesterday and 2007) I got to thinking about this blog. “What should I write about?” I thought. “Who’s gonna blog?” I wondered. “What if no one blogs?” I worried. I want people, our people most of all, to love our blog. But, before you can really fall in love with something you have to get to know that thing, and before that you have to kinda like the idea of that thing in general and even before that, somehow, you have to be introduced to that thing. But what does that even mean in the context of a blog?

A few years back (for me that means anytime between last year and 2001) I went to a James Lasdun reading; he read from Landscape with Chainsaw: Poems. There was one poem in particular that caught my ear, “locals.” It’s about being a member of a local community, as you may have guessed. An excerpt to set the mood: “To be local was to know which team to support: the local team; where to drop in for a pint with mates: the local; best of all to feel free by birthright welcome anywhere; be everywhere a local …”

Before you fear putting fingers to keys, before you tell yourself you’re not gonna fall in love with this thing, that you’re not even going to like it in fact, before you put your foot down, let me say this: You are a member of this community, you are playing on the local team and, you are welcome.