Blogging and googling

I started this blog at the peak of summer's heat and humidity pretty much against my better judgment, figuring it was a kind of private monologue, mostly to think out loud about a few issues that are of more than passing interest to me: regional and social variation and public debates about language in this country. I only told a handful of people about it, ensuring that it would generate few (or maybe no) readers.

Now, as the first thin crust of ice shows up on the shallowest of the local lakes, and to my utter surprise, a small but growing set of people seem to be reading regularly. And recently, some are starting to post comments. A couple of those are local folks, people I know (like Mrs. Verb -- hey, get me a cup of coffee, would'ya?). But now comments are coming in from people I would have never dreamed might visit this little blog: Rosina Lippi, author of maybe the best and most accessible book ever written about language and society in the US (just read it, you'll understand) and one of the founders of Sconnie Nation. The long comment from Barbara Wallraff fits here too -- I have my disagreements with how she thinks about language, but there's basically nothing like dialogue between such writers and those of us who work to understand how language works.

I woulda kept this modest abode tidier and brushed my hair if I'd known such folks were coming to visit. Surely a lot of this traffic is driven by googling ... there's virtually no other way these folks could know about the blog. Sheesh, maybe it's time to get my act together and think a little more about content and writing.