The other day, whilst reading Rosie O’Donnell’s free verse r blog, I was wondering what it was that drove the semi-famous to blog. Evidence indicates that I’ll soon be able to answer this question from personal experience:

1. LiP Magazine will be publishing an interview I conducted with Muslim/heretic punk/Sufi/whatever Michael Muhammad Knight in its upcoming “Sacred Cows” issue. Knight is the author the novel The Taqwacores, and is a frequent contributor to the Muslim WakeUp! progressive Muslim Website. This will be my first publication. Not counting a Christmas story run in the Potsdam Courier-Observer from the fifth grade.
2. My old agroecology proff Scott Chaskey has recently published a book entitled This Common Ground: Seasons on an Organic Farm, in which he apparently quotes a paper of mine from the days when I took his class and worked out on Quail Hill Farm in Amagansett, Long Island. Chaskey asked for my permission indirectly months ago, and I granted it without even asking what he was going to print. I still have no idea. Need to get my hands on that book.
3. On Tuesday, Prof. Dustin Wax’s One Man’s Opinion made mention of an article I wrote some weeks ago concerning Pope John Paul II and cultural relativism. That’s the first (non-self-)reference to this blog that I’ve yet come across.

   Fame is, as one might expect, grand, but there was one central aspect of Dustin’s post that threw me off. He wrote:

   The B-Log incorporates my comment into a long and throughtful meditation on the meaning of relativism, which I have no important disagreements with. But as regards the Pope, the post references and tacitly endorses the message conveyed by Brendan O’Neill’s article on the Pope[.]

   Just to set the record straight (for it does matter so), it was never my intention to endorse O’Neill’s article. I cited it (parenthetically) simply as an example of an interesting response to the JPII-causes-HIV argument that I was hearing everywhere following the Pope’s passing. I can’t support either Dustin’s or O’Neill’s view.

This entry was posted on Thursday, 19 May 2005 at 21:25 and is filed under Blogosphere, News Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.