Ozark Blog
I've just started a new blog for Northwest Arkansas issues: Ozark Blog.
Of course, I need a new blog like I need a hole in the head. I'm already spread myself thin on writing commitments that I'm not doing justice to, and now I've got another thing to do a half-assed job at.
Sigh. Oh, well....
Of course, I need a new blog like I need a hole in the head. I'm already spread myself thin on writing commitments that I'm not doing justice to, and now I've got another thing to do a half-assed job at.
Sigh. Oh, well....
posted by Kevin Carson | 9:30 PM
6 Comments:
We do appreciate it though.
BTW what business are you in, Kevin? Just curious - you do seem to find a lot of time to write thoughtfully. I used to find a lot of time to blog when I worked for a gov't contractor.
I work as a hospital orderly. I also do some seasonal labor with a lawn-mowing business.
Your contractor setup sounds pretty sweet. It's amazing how much good writing has been done by people with an opportunity to sneak it into their "day job"--Herman Melville, for example. Or Einstein working in the Swiss patent office.
Well, I used to do that work, now I'm in the private sector with a hell of a more progressive company whose values are much more in line with mine. Working there was a mistake in some ways, but it got my foot in the software industry door. There was so much down time work for the gov't that, on the one hand, it jumpstarted my blog, but on the other hand, it could be boring as hell. And I don't think I could ever admit my politics fully.
Hospital work is interesting: I have several friends in nursing school right now, and there's no end to the stories they tell. Particularly concerning what color and consistency of what substance shot out of whom from where. Heh.
So while I' being nosy: why Arkansas?
Great idea the Ozark blog. Regional blogging and web sites are one way to make contact. Have already left a comment on your new blog. I too work in a hospital, in housekeeping. I find it gives me time to think, since I can do the job without thinking. About to retire in 15 work days - Can't wait...
When I first came across this blog I was vaguely surprised that there was no up front biographical information, but I supposed that it could well be a personal privacy choice that should be respected. But that seemed less likely once I saw this post, so I did a Google search.
That search said pretty much what you just did, plus naming the town you lived in at the time of writing a paper. I don't know whether you want to flesh that out a bit, or provide more about Arkansas. Most of us only know of that in relation to the Clintons or (if well read) via "Gentlemen prefer blondes".
I do have a wider background knowledge than most people, but you shouldn't presume on that.
Jeremy,
I was born here. Otherwise, I can't imagine why ;)
Larry,
That's the sort of work I enjoy--something I can plan out at the beginning, and then do from beginning to end in peace, and think about other things while I'm doing it. I've done some of my best writing in my head while mowing a yard, or shoveling compost. From what I've seen, that's what the housekeepers' job is like at the hospital where I work, unless there are a lot of stat cleaning jobs because of heavy discharges and admissions, or somebody has projectile diarrhea, or something.
PML,
The most important thing about the Ozarks is how they differ from the rest of Arkansas. Central and South Arkansas (especially the "Delta" region of the southeast) remind me a lot of In the Heat of the Night (the original movie, with Rod Steiger). There's a lot of cotton farming and other large-scale cash cropping, and some guy who lives in a mansion on a hill owns half the land in the county.
Up here in the NW corner, on the other hand, are a bunch of hillbillies who don't like being pushed around (or at least didn't, until the Waltons and Tysons came along). The area is heavily Republican, mainly owing to its antipathy toward the Democratic slaveocracy in Little Rock in the period leading up to the War (you know which one). In that, we're a lot like West Virginia and eastern Tennessee.
Add, on top of that, a big migration of back-to-the-land hippies to Fayetteville and Eureka Springs in the '70s. Several blocks on either side of the Dickson St. business district is a neighborhood of aging hippies within walking distance of the organic restaurants, used bookstores, and head shops. They settled the area because of its atmosphere and low rents, although the local real estate and commercial interests are destroying both of those things by gentrifying the living shit out of the Dickson St. area. Fayetteville is polarized between one of Molotch's "growth machines," and the so-called hippie-progressive community.
Anyway, if you cross The Dollmaker with the Whole Earth Catalog, and throw in a little Flem Snopes on the Chamber of Commerce, you've pretty much got the picture.
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