Weblog Return

Sometimes -- I have done it several times myself -- weblog writers will let their sites sit as if abandoned for long periods. The several whom I have seen doing this never announce that it will be their intention to do so. Maybe they didn't anticipate at all that this would happen, and so, for whatever reason, a day passes without a post, and then another and another and soon it's weeks, months, and then even a year or more.

Still -- at least inside the only weblog system that I know anything about, the free Blogger one -- nothing at all happens to the site. It just sits there like a house suddenly vacated, except that it never deteriorates and the contents just sit intact, never stolen or vandalized and with not a speck of dust to be seen anywhere, waiting patiently for the missing proprietor to return. And if the site has had any viewership at all, there will be at least one or two contemporaries who will stop by once every two weeks or so to see if the occupants have at last returned.

For a long time there've been two sites on my scope like that, Baghdad Burning, the property of someone named Riverbend, and inanis et vacua, the product of someone named James. Baghdad has been frozen in place since last October and it is still in that somewhat ominous state. But just recently new posts started appearing on inanis, after a hiatus of nearly a year, and I was glad to see that, just as people like Andante, Steve Bates, and Guy Andrew have welcomed me back after one of my absences, as I would do in regard to them, should some unfortunate circumstance make them drop out for a while.

Riverbend, due to being in Iraq and now, when last heard from, in Syria, has had several long absences, and when she returns I know she won't hesitate to tell us what has happened, even if she is otherwise notably close-mouthed about who she is.

James -- an even more tight-lipped individual, backed up by the appearance of his site, which is so spartan that it's a wonder that he even has a blogroll, a brief one -- didn't say one word about what he had been up to, though, since he has an academic air about him, it's easy to speculate that he's been on a sabbatical of some kind.

His edge is as sharp as ever, and yesterday he left for us not one but two interesting takes that, however, like all his stuff, call for some extra study, unless you are a lot swifter than I am. One was prompted by B. Obama's "blue collar" remark and the other was on the outlook for future empires.