Blogging meander

This morning I had to go into the city for a meeting with a client on an on-line information project, then to Ashfield for lunch. Tomorrow I go to Newcastle for a new state meeting, so I'm kind of time squeezed.

There is just so much wonderful stuff around to write about that time is an issue.

In Is the New England lion Finnish? I reported on follow up to my radio interview on ABC New England North West. A little later Max Ellis contacted me and then sent me a copy of his Dad's autobiography, A Pen in Politics, a book that I had wanted to get for some time.

I reported on my initial reactions to the book in a post on my personal blog, Meander, with a special focus on Ulrich Ellis.I read the book on the bus this morning, I read it wandering through the city streets to the office, I read it on the train to Ashfield and then waiting in the office foyer for my colleague, I finished it on the train back to Central. 

Part of the interest, of course, lies in my own knowledge of history and of Ulrich and the people he was writing about. These are not just names, but people who occupied a place for both good and evil in my own personal firmament. But it's still a good read.

  The book will force me to change some of my writing, for in spots I can see that I was just wrong.

In terms of my New general England history project, and as I mentioned in the Ellis post, I have shifted my focus for the moment to the social history of New England in the period 1950-2000. Social Change in New England 1950-2000 2: Don Aitkin's What was it all for? reports on a study that is both a local story, that of the Armidale High School Leaving Certificate Class of 1953, and a major piece of work on social change at national level.

I am the type of person who needs a degree of externally imposed deadlines to keep me focused. I therefore emailed colleagues at UNE offering to give a seminar paper on New England social history 1955-2000 in the School of Humanities Classics and History Seminar Series next year. If I give the paper, it will be co-badged with the History Futures Research Centre; I am an adjunct of the School and a member of the HFRC.

Miss Eagle liked my post Round the New England media 13 Nov 10. She wrote:

I just l-o-v-e-d this post. As a small town girl trapped in a big city (Melbourne) I loved this round up. My favourites were the Tweed Heads tourist road idea and the need for the scales at Byron. Please keep up this excellent work.

Now, I wonder if there could be imitators for a communal blog with round-ups (rounds-up?!) like this. But then perhaps the northern NSW coastal strip is a world of its own!

I tried to answer the second as best I could.

It's actually quite difficult to do both media and blog round-ups because of the time involved. They tend to slip for that reason. Still, I might aim to make them fortnightly on alternative weeks.

I am not sure who J Bar is beyond the fact that he has a photo blog, Sydney - City and Suburbs, that I sometimes follow. It was therefore nice to get a general positive comment attached to one story, Wollombi Corroboree 2010.

Over lunch at Ashfield, my colleague commented on just how much I wrote. There is a serious purpose to my writing, but I also write because it's fun!