SD Blogosphere Inflation -- English Teachers Beam

While Dakota War College notes the apparent fading of coordinated political "blog storms" in South Dakota, SD Watch notes the apparent expansion of the South Dakota Blogosphere well beyond the political snowball fights engaged in by the Madville Times and its usual reading list. SD Watch highlights just a few: we have blogs about cycling in Sioux Falls (perhaps a candidate for a brewing blog storm with Biking Brady in Vermillion), Deadwood (the town and the show), VFW happenings, Mrs. South Dakota, kayaking on South Dakota's lakes the prairie, woodcarving, recovering from alcoholism... whew! We could read all year and still not keep up with everything our neighbors are writing about online.

The Lake County blogosphere is similarly busy. My small list of neighbors online only scratches the surface: there is a sprawling network of Lake County moms posting pictures of their kids; journaling about farm work, shopping, and sports; and just having fun shooting the breeze with each other. It's like interactive scrapbooking! (I'd link you to a few, but when I tried that last spring, they all ran for cover, convinced Internet stalkers would track them down and steal their kids. No kidnappings reported yet in Lake County... but I'm not taking any chances.)

This burgeoning literary output brings a satisfied smile to this recovering English teacher's face. And I'm not the only English teacher figuring out that learning to blog might be a valuable part of English education. No, kids, blogging won't make you a lot of money (unless you're Matt Paulson), but being able to express oneself publicly apparently scratches an itch for all sorts of South Dakotans, not just us political or artsy-fartsy types. Blogging doesn't mean you have to change the world, though I love my wife and our man Joe Bartmann for trying (read the Rethink Rural Housing Manifesto -- it's huge!). Writing is healthy exercise, jogging for the brain. It satisfies our desire to leave our mark on the trail (think of blogging as electronic inuksuit) and connect with other people.