Buttermilk & Molasses

Whither the Weblogs?

It's funny. Now that I'm unemployed and preparing to start my own business, I have less time to focus on my four weblogs than I did when I was working full-time -- and I didn't even post during working hours. Factor in a lively seven-month-old baby in the house, and the onset of the holidays, and it all starts to make sense. There aren't enough hours in the day, let alone days in the week.

A recent WIRED post by Valleywag's Paul Boutin made me temporarily reconsider my intentions of refocusing some time and energy on Buttermilk & Molasses, Garden of Words, North Richmond News and Noesis.

Writing a weblog today isn't the bright idea it was four years ago. The blogosphere, once a freshwater oasis of folksy self-expression and clever thought, has been flooded by a tsunami of paid bilge. Cut-rate journalists and underground marketing campaigns now drown out the authentic voices of amateur wordsmiths. It's almost impossible to get noticed, except by hecklers. And why bother? The time it takes to craft sharp, witty blog prose is better spent expressing yourself on Flickr, Facebook, or Twitter.

If you quit now, you're in good company. Notorious chatterbox Jason Calacanis made millions from his Weblogs network. But he flat-out retired his own blog in July. "Blogging is simply too big, too impersonal, and lacks the intimacy that drew me to it," he wrote in his final post.

But then I thought about my own observations from more than seven years of publishing in the land of weblogs, and know there is a different formula to chase than the one embraced by the national digerati.

Each of my weblogs serves a distinct role -- for me as a writer and publisher, and for the readers who visit them. When I retain focus on what makes each of them distinct, traffic soars -- two of my sites regularly see daily page views of close to 1,000. And when I lose focus and allow the sites to become cluttered with too much esoterica, they suffer.

So, what's this different formula of which I speak?

It's called knowing your passion, knowing your audience and marrying the two.

While Buttermilk & Molasses began it's run early in 2002 as a repository for anything I found of interest on the Internet, it took root as a passionate booster for the intentional construction and strengthening of community in the Richmond region. It took the tragic murders of the Harvey family in 2006, and the initially muddled launch of Richmond's new Downtown Master Plan process in 2007, to demonstrate for me what happens when my voice finds its readers.

The other factor in the formula has to do with geography. Or it does with two of my sites.

The inability or lack of desire on the part of Richmond's local media -- print, radio and television -- to either go hyperlocal or go deep and long in their coverage of the region creates a huge opening for sites like North Richmond News or the popular Church Hill People's News to own community news and information by delivering street-level details for readers within a specific local area, and for sites like Buttermilk & Molasses or the804.com to own depth with almost daily reporting on specific issues.

Fortunately for my wife and young daughter, my business plan does not factor in a revenue stream from weblogging. But I will be revamping each of my sites over the coming months, and refocusing my voice and attention to continue the fun work of building community through information, connection and technology.

The Great Unraveling: Peter Schiff Called It in 2007

The disease, economist Peter Schiff said in 2007, is that consumers are consuming far beyond their capacity. The cure, he continued, is that consumers will stop consuming. When the bubble bursts, a huge amount of "phony wealth" will evaporate. It will happen quickly, he said, and it will last years, not quarters.

Schiff, of course, was a year ahead of events. Boing Boing has posted a video compendium of Schiff speaking his doom-and-gloom shtick -- and being mocked by the same experts who have helped drag us into this mess.

You can read more of Schiff's current prognostications at his Euro Pacific Capital website. It's not cheery stuff, at least if you're looking at the short term:

...any money that the world lends to America to finance more consumption will never be repaid. We will simply blow through it, and be back, hat in hand, begging for more. As we painfully learned in the housing bust, lending people money that they cannot pay back makes no sense. This applies equally to foreign central banks lending to America as it does to commercial banks lending to homeowners.

So for the same reasons that Washington should not bail out General Motors, the world should not bailout America. Like GM, our economy is in desperate need of a restructuring. Spending must be replaced with savings, and consumption with production. The service sector must shrink and manufacturing must expand to fill the void. The dollar must fall, wages in America must be brought down to a competitive level, and hopefully government spending and burdensome regulation can be reduced.

This transformation will not be fun, but it is necessary. Our standard of living must decline to reflect years of reckless consumption and the disintegration of our industrial base. Only by swallowing this tough medicine now will our sick economy ever recover. By accepting a lower standard of living today, we will eventually be rewarded with a higher one tomorrow.

The Great Unraveling: Black Swan Author Is Pessimistic

If you haven't read The Black Swan, go check it out from the library now. Author Nasim Nichols Taleb writes that while our brains are wired to make sense of the world through narrative, we tend to assume there is much more order in our lives than actually exists.

When we look at events like the current economic unraveling, Taleb suggests, our tendency is toward comparison -- it's as bad or worse or not nearly as bad as the Great Depression, for instance. We do that to create a false sense of reassurance that things will naturally get better.

Taleb seems to argue -- in this 10 minute segment with financial reporter Paul Solman posted at Boing Boing -- that our attempts to simplify the current crisis only serve to increase the instability.

"The banking system, the way we have it, is a monstrous giant built on feet of clay. And if that topples, we're gone. Never in the history of the world have we faced so much complexity combined with so much incompetence in understanding its properties," he said.

"Let me tell you why it's not like before," he continues. "Look at what's happening. The world's getting so fragile that a small shortage of oil, small, can lead to the price going from $25 to $150 a barrel. A small excess demand in agricultural product can lead to an explosion in price. We live in a world that is way too complicated for our traditional economic structure. It's not as resilient as it used to be, we don't have slack. It's over optimized."

Taleb and his mentor Benoit Mandelbrot see the very real possibility of brutal change on the horizon.

"I wake up every morning, actually I don't wake up every morning now. I start to wake up at night the past couple of weeks, hoping that I'm wrong," Taleb says. "I think that we may be experiencing something that is vastly worse than we think it is."

Lemen's Loving Retort to Uncertainty

Have I mentioned in 2008 just how awesome that Jen Lemen happens to be? Like the recent image she uploaded at Flickr to remind me that getting on the right path is the hard part; after that, the rest of the journey sort of takes care of itself.

And, yes, I did happen to mention Jen's awesome self earlier this year.

Perfection Only Takes 20 Years

Over the Rhine, the hyper-productive team of Linford Detweiler and Karin Bergquist (who are finally getting hitched, it seems), is celebrating 20 years.

In case you were wondering how wonderful Over the Rhine really is, let Paste Magazine's "10 Best Musical Husband and Wife Duos" make the case for you.

Quietly crafting one of the best oeuvres in all of American music, the Ohioans at the heart of Over the Rhine have been together as a band since 1989 and as husband and wife since 1996. If you've never heard OtR, stop what you're doing and listen to these two songs, the first because it's timely, the second because it's amazing.

For your listening pleasure, here's the second:

Hey Richmond: Focus, Damn It!

The demurely hip Carrie Brownstein -- most recently of NPR's Monitor Mix weblog but more interestingly of Portland's grunge noisemakers, Sleater-Kinney -- has a very clear message to the Richmond region. Sort of.

It's all about the brand.

It isn't. All about the brand, I mean. But it doesn't hurt. The brand, I mean.

Take Seattle. Brownstein recently did.

On Oct. 29, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels took the stage at the Paramount Theatre and announced "the formation of [a] city music commission and [a] collective 12-year strategy to solidify Seattle as a home to music business, musicians and live music."

The plan includes building a broader infrastructure to make Seattle friendly for business-related ventures, while aiming for a higher retention rate of musicians themselves, ostensibly alleviating the need for artists to relocate to larger music markets such as Los Angeles, Nashville or New York City. Furthermore, the plan aims to engender the city's residents with a sense that music and Seattle are one in the same -- beginning with more comprehensive music programs in schools. Seattle will not only be about music; it will be music.

What should Richmond be about? What should Richmond be?

Pete Humes Is a Soul-Sucking Bastard

To know Pete Humes is to love him -- especially when he posts a lengthy guide on being unemployed a week after I join the bathrobe clad zombies hanging at the Virginia Employment Commission. Punk.

Today I’m writing to provide comfort in your time of need. As you read, please imagine me comforting you with a warm woolen blanket and a mug of chamomile tea. If it helps the imagining process, you may also picture me as Mr. Andy Griffith. I smell of pipe tobacco and molasses. Soft rock classics are playing on the stereo. What I’m wearing is not important.

Okay, it’s corduroy pants and a fisherman sweater.

Right now you’re angry. Or hurt. Or confused. And that’s all perfectly natural. Losing your job is one of the most stressful and painful things that we can experience in our lifetime. But as bad as it is, keep in mind that it could be worse. You could be a deer. One of the most stressful and painful things that a deer can experience is getting hit by a car and bleeding to death. The other stressful and painful things are: getting shot and watching your babies be eaten alive by bears.

See what I mean about how things could be worse?

Meet the New Chesterfield County

Remember when Chesterfield County was seen as the evil fortress with high walls and an utter disregard for the needs of the greater Richmond region? Michael Paul Williams introduces us to the new Chesterfield. It goes by the familiar name of Henrico County:

Once upon a time, Chesterfield County made an accommodating whipping boy for local media. We chronicled the county's growing pains and its at-times absurd isolationism, typified by a former supervisor who expressed terror at the idea of going to The Diamond for a ballgame.

Chesterfield officials were keenly aware they were losing the public-relations battle with its more sophisticated, north-of-the-river cousin, Henrico. And they didn't like it.

But a funny thing happened while we were falling in love with our own narrative. Chesterfield grew into the most populous locale in the region and became more diverse and urbane.

Henrico hardly stood pat, as Short Pump's sheen demonstrates. But even as it became more diverse, its entrenched leadership grew stodgier and grumpier.

Star Trek Unspooled

The release of Star Trek XXVII next year may become one of the more highly anticipated fan moments of 2009 -- at least a certain subset of people who wander around hotels in light blue poly shirts and Vulcan ears. The Star Trek franchise has been retooled by director-of-the-moment J.J. Abrams, and his plan is to take moviegoers back to the Star Trek Academy days before the first mission of the USS Enterprise.

SciFi Wire hung out with the cool kids recently and watched 20 minutes of footage from the film. And then they went and critiqued it all with a healthy dose of spoilers.

The New Old Belle & Sebastian

It's a bit hard to believe that the Scottish musical conglomeration known as Belle & Sebastian have been gazing at their assorted shoes for more than 12 years, but gazing they have -- even as they put out great pop music. Now they're back with The BBC Sessions, which gathers together 14 tracks from 1996 to 2001 and throws them together with a 12-song live performance from late 2001.

Paste Magazine gives you 15 very good reasons to put a copy in my stocking this year, including:

• The band sounded different back in the day, more shambling and more precious than they do now. Their recent confidence becomes them. But there was something charming about the early days.

• The fast, surprisingly rocking instrumental outro to “Lazy Line Painter Jane,” (abbreviated here to “Lazy Jane”).

• Isobel Campbell. The belle of the Belles left the band after their rocky fourth album Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like A Peasant, and—despite her one-note range—it’s great to hear her back in the mix.

• The swaggering opening riff of “The Boys Are Back In Town.” Then the shriek of real fan ecstasy—an un-ironic musical gesture of pure rock fun, and a primal response from the band’s supposedly sheepish fans.