George's lending library

I've added a new widget to my blog: My Shelfari Bookshelf.

If you click on it, you'll see a few books that I've read and reviewed. I hereby offer to make each and every one of these -- and more to come -- available to anyone who'd like to read them. Lori has been telling me, rather persistently of late, that I'm accumulating too many books and I need to give some away.

I'd rather lend them to fellow bookworms, with the understanding that you're free to pass them on to other friends and family, as long as I get them back at some point.

I credit my fellow blogger, Nike B, with bringing Shelfari to my attention. I noticed a cool new feature on her Small Town Girl blog and realized it would be a good way to learn about other interesting books.

If any of you feel inspired to join in, that would be great. Let the book borrowing begin!

Aki's Instant Noodles

I was going to give this post a bland headline like "A cool new blog" but then I realized, what could be cooler than its actual name?

And so, R&R readers, allow me to introduce you to Aki Mori's cool new blog:
http://akisinstantnoodles.blogspot.com/

I met Aki last year after I published an op-ed piece he submitted to The Oregonian. He teaches in the Beaverton School District but in his author tagline, I noticed he had previously worked for the New Haven School District in California. Well, that's where I went to grade school in Union City, roughly 40 miles from San Francisco. We met for coffee several weeks later and have kept up a nice correspondence through e-mail and comments on Rough and Rede.

So now he's launched his own blog and in just a few days has already posted 17 items and collected four followers. If you spend just 10 minutes on Aki's blog, you'll see he's got a clever heading (referencing the blog's nutritional value), a breezy writing style, a great sense of humor, and an ability to keep his posts short and to the point -- the way blogging is meant to be.

Lately, I haven't come close to that standard -- three paragraphs or less, topped by one- or two-word headlines. And what is he writing about? Chinese wisdom from his mother-in-law...a Universal People Counting Device...and training his dog to pee in the sewer. Seriously.

Check him out -- and join me and Nike, who blogs at Small Town Girl (a cool site, too), as followers.

"Opinion and the blogosphere"

It's Sunday night and I'm winding down after teaching the weekend seminar at Portland State mentioned in the post below.

We covered a lot of ground in 20 hours spread over three days. I anticipated feeling stressed out during the class and exhausted by the end of it. Instead, I think I paced myself pretty well and came away energized and encouraged.

In a class that brought together beginners and experienced bloggers, we spent time reviewing and critiquing professional (mostly journalism) blogs and personal blogs, collectively amazed at the incredible variety of topics, web page designs and visuals. We discussed ethical issues, citizen journalists and where we get our news, information and analysis.

Thanks to two guest speakers -- my co-workers Susan Nielsen and Rick Attig -- we also spent time on writing tips and the concept of the "third place."

According to Wikipedia: The third place is a term used in the concept of community building to refer to social surroundings separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace. In his influential book The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg (in photo, above) argues that third places are important for civil society, democracy, civic engagement, and establishing feelings of a sense of place.

During the last hour of class, I had each student talk about what he or she learned. I was gratified to see we filled up an entire whiteboard with their list. Now I await the next steps: Office hours on Wednesday; a final exam that's due on Friday (create a blog or write an opinion piece); grades due a week from Tuesday.

I go back to work tomorrow with a renewed commitment to explore the blogosphere and apply it to my work. It's a whole separate universe out there.