Readers and writers blog

There’s a disturbing pattern emerging as I search the Internet for well-written weblogs: Of the six sites I have until today considered worthy of posting on the blogroll at the right, five are written by people who do not write for a living.

Thank god, then, for Bernita Harris.

Now you wouldn’t think a guy like me, who could accurately be described as a skeptical old fart, would spend much time on a website devoted to “romantic suspense and magic realism.” Magic realism? Hmmm. But that’s good writing for you. And Bernita Harris’s writing hauled me in over my head.

I use the phrase ‘over my head’ advisedly. You know, I got the reference to T.S. Eliot in her Aug. 29, 2005, post entitled “These Are The Pearls That Were His Eyes,” but it took me the longest time to get the title of the blog itself — An Innocent A-Blog. Is an A-blog like an A-list? Or a B-movie? Then I said it out loud: Ah, Mark Twain, “Innocents Abroad.”

This weblog is crammed full of classic references, classic art — each post is accompanied by a print of a masterwork or a photo of a classic sculpture or just an appropriate photo by the author herself — and good writing on any number of subjects. As a published author of nonfiction and poetry, Harris often discusses writing, but she also discusses her garden, recycling, body parts, her house, motherhood, the weather, and sometimes she posts excerpts from The Minor Annals, which I assume to be one of her works of “magic realism.” It’s quite good.

There’s something else I’ve noticed in my burgeoning search: The writers whose weblogs I consider well-written all seem mature, whether by years or by attitude. Harris seems both. And while it may be a reflection of my own years, I am likely to pay more attention to a weblog that shows the author with attractive gray hair (see above).

Which is why I loved her recent remark about leprechauns: “Every time I see a set of those little green dancing men on websites, I have the urge to put my fist through the screen.”

That’s a great picture, a silverhaired lady punching out her monitor. Well, she admits to being “barely post-Luddite,” and I guess that describes me, too. I also owe her website’s Thinking Blogger icon for eventually leading me to another winner, Don To Earth, written by 93-year-old Don Crowdis, the subject of our previous post.

Like Crowdis, Harris is a Canadian, and that may explain more about her likability: I grew up in northern New Hampshire, not far from the Canadian border.

One more confession: Of my six blogrolled sites, five are written by men. Considering that my Internet search is turning up far more women writers than men, thus proving the conventional wisdom that women are more verbal than men, I guess it also proves that I have a predisposition for male writers.

On the other hand, it gives me more credibility about Bernita Harris. Read her in the latest addition to our blogroll, An Innocent A-Blog.

– Sid Leavitt