I now am on Substack. I did it on accident. One day I was roaming around the web, checking out sites, and suddenly I had my own Substack. You can reach it here.
I'm new on Substack but have been blogging on Blogger for 20-plus years. I say 20-plus because I registered with Blogger in January 2001 but didn't see a reason to use it until 2005 and then regularly in 2006. I was Wyoming's designated blogger at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. I was politically active in person and online in those days. I lobbied John Dean (Howard's bro) to be Wyoming's pick in his search for a liberal political blogger from every state. It wasn't a hard choice as there were so few bloggers of the liberal stripe, so few bloggers of any stripe, that the pick in Wyoming was pretty easy. I knew a great prog-blogger in Wheatland, about 50 miles north of Cheyenne, and in the university town of Laramie; heavenly Jackson had a few. You can read my blogs from what now seems like The Good Ol' Days if you search August 2008 on my site.
And now, Substack. I like the name. It has sort of an undersea feel. I like the term blog, too. It comes from weblog as in a log written on the worldwide web. My first contacts with fellow bloggers turned up a lot of young people writing about their high school and college hijinks. I was long past interested in hijinks. When I returned the the blog in 2005, the political wars were in full flight and I joined in. Was it fun. And hairy at times. Many of my fellow bloggers in the West were of the Rush Limbaugh stripe, fans of the late Breitbart whom I met when he tried to crash Netroots National in Minneapolis in 2011. On my blog sidebar, I once listed the blogs I followed, many of them in the West. It would be instructional to look at that old list.
My blogging was only interrupted by ennui and two brushes with death -- a Widowmaker heart attack in 2013 and an almost toxic septicemia in 2024. The heart attack was the worst. A terrible surprise that caused me to not read a book for almost an entire year. I had never been an invalid before. All that rehab. People treated me differently, as if I now was made of glass and could shatter at any moment. But that was more than 13 years ago and I'm still here.
Many of my prog-blogger colleagues have given it up. I haven't checked out my favorite rabble-rouser site Daily Kos for many moons. I just did and it's still kicking ass and its home page is stylin'. Have to get there more often. I clicked on a link to the Saturday Morning Garden Blogging group and spent too long reading about the tomato harvest and swooning over tomato photos. Let me repeat some tomato varieties listed by correspondent VerdantC: Gourmandia, Sweet Apertif, Heartbreaker Vita, Ochre Heart, Pink Stella. SMGB goes back to 2011. I stole the title for my blog that same year, back when I was a blogging gardener. Something so sensual about tomato blogging. I miss it, both the selection and growing and harvesting and blogging.
I have photos of me and my wife Christine posing on the summit of Trail Ridge Road around that time. I am wearing a Daily Kos T-shirt. I once was a correspondent. Those were the days. I can still log in. The guidelines for submissions have changed. It's more formal. I may just have to get back on board.
Does Daily Kos have a Substack? It does not. It maintains its own platform on WordPress. Sometimes you see Daily Kos blogs reposted on Substack. I will look for them.
P.S.: Just found that the next Netroots Nation conference will be in Denver, July 8-10, 2027. I may have to return.
