An Overlooked Birthday

Dec. 1st, Junkyardblog turned five. That makes it one of the longest-running conservative blogs out there, I expect. Here's JYBlogger emeritus Bryan Preston's first entry, if you're curious. It started out with some great news: the Texas Longhorns lost.

Bryan has of course gone on to bigger and better things, and he graciously offered to let me vent my spleen here since Hot Air started up. I had started reading here in about 2004 and realized that this was a little different than a lot of the right-leaning blogs out there; it was one that advanced a genuinely conservative philosophy--one that understood the importance of religion in keeping the country strong--and not just the prevailing techno-libertarian outlook that is more the norm. There are religious blogs, and there are political blogs, but this one had a nice blend of both.

Bryan's investigative work into issues like the Hurricane Katrina bus screwup and into the Mohammed cartoons--to name a few of the recent ones--were also important and carried into forums beyond this one. Bryan, along with Chris Regan who was around here in those days, began writing for both National Review Online and Tech Central Station as well. This site's never even been nominated for a weblog award, and the traffic has never been overwhelming, but nonetheless Bryan took Junkyard Blog onto blogrolls and RSS feeds far and wide. A lot of big bloggers and, judging by my sitemeter, media figures check us out now and then and (kindly) link us up.

Blogs are easy to start up, and easy to abandon. With most of them, that's no great loss. But some of them become more than blogs and become instituions. I don't mean that in a grand pretentious way, like the New York Times thinks of itself as an Important Institution, but rather in a decidedly lower-case way. An institution can be something as simple as a rule, or a custom, or a habit, like a five o'clock beer with your buddies, or a favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurant with an amiable clientele, or birthday parties (even when you forget them). Those are institutions, and they make the world tolerable, and they're valuable to have around.

But if no one decides institutions are worth preserving, they die out. So, despite not having the time (who does?) and despite working in a conservative-unfriendly industry in a blue state (okay, in part because of that) I jumped at the chance to keep this one going a little longer.

I don't know what the blogosphere or the world will look like in five more years, but here's hoping JYB is still going strong then. Thanks to Bryan for letting me help out here, and thanks to all those who link here, who comment, or who just come by and read what I put out.

--

One more thing: it's silly for anyone to go into blogging thinking that writing a few words online is going to change anything or make a difference about the way the world works. But now and then, some cool stuff happens. I mentioned Bryan's blogging about Hurricane Katrina. He was the one who put two and two together and compared Google satellite pictures of flooded out yellow school buses with New Orleans' stated evacuation procedures, and realized how badly the City of New Orleans failed its citizens.

These things have a way of diffusing out into popular culture. Here's a weird little twist on that: Bryan's scoop ended up in a Ray Stevens song. You know Ray Stevens, the guy who sings "Gitarzan" and "It's Me Again Margaret"? Yeah, check this out:

They had a whole bunch of school busses ready to go
But they never cranked 'em up 'cause the mayor said "no"
Said they weren't good enough for folks to ride on
Then he told 'em all to walk to the Super Dome