Day 21: January 21st

It occurs to me that I can start blogging before I even perceive of the picture of the day.  Wow.  Who knew?  See, I'm 46 years old and the idea of blogging instead of good old fashioned writing seems a little bit loosey goosey to me.  Seems newfangled and suspicious and maybe even lawless.  Seems like if anyone could pick up blogging without some teacher or publisher saying your writing and/or thinking skills are good enough to do it, well then...well then any damn thing might be possible.  That can't be right, can it?

There are arguments on both sides - blogging "they" say has contributed to a bunch of fluff and crap and unsubstantiated claims from people who may even have nefarious  motives.  "They" also say that blogging means that everyone has power to put their thoughts out there - to contribute to a universal dialogue.  I never believed in "them."  I always thought there was just "we."  That being the case, I come up on the side of the latter opinion.  I'm sure there is a bunch of junk out there, but in that flotsam and jetsam of thoughts, ideas, opinions, and beliefs, there are many that matter.  Even if it's just the idea that when glommed all together, we feel the same way about things, then in my opinion, value has emerged from that which was previously unobservable.  At least now we have the ability to gather a diversity of ideas in an easy human-readable format.  We don't have to wait two years for the results of a Gallup survey to see what people think.  We don't need a government report or anyone to break it all down for us.  We can simply skim the blogs and sift the flotsam and the jetsam for ourselves!

I believe blogging is tremendously powerful.  Even if no one ever reads what I've written, the idea that I have no fear in posting it marks progress.  The idea that my pictures and ideas are added in perpetuity to the human document of record is astounding.  Think about what it would have been like if Anne Frank could have blogged.  I don't know if it would have changed things in her reality, but I suspect it could impact future Anne Franks and both current and future realities.

Now onto today's picture:

This is the view from my front door.  It looks like the whole street is about to slide right off the world.  We live on a hill, that means all our horizons are tragically skewed.