A Penguin in the Orchard

Worldwide

I noted in Penguin Shell a few weeks ago that I’m considering reviving a blogging project I started a few years ago. Unfortunately, most of the project is lost in the cyber-void, though one of the participants, Man From Matunga managed to save and repost his entries on his own site. Alas, a Google search didn’t even reveal a cached version of the site.

Anyway, the World Year Project went something like this. 14 authors from around the world, posting an entry a week in tandem with another. We split the authors up in pairs based on a tradition of unrest within their own countries. In other words, each day saw a pair of entries written by an author from a country with realitively little conflict and an author from a country with a stronger history of conflict. We were fortunate, for example, to have among the contributors Fiona Veitch. She formerly wrote the journal “Smithereens” and called Belfast, Northern Ireland her home. Peace came to Ireland during the run of World Year, and we all got the inside details - a human face on a world event.

Where possible, the writers kept away from politics, though I never set a strict guideline in that regard. We were in agreement that the best political statements we could make were the ones that were built into the pairings of authors. Day to day stories of life from around the world, at the individual level, really seemed to tell the true story of politics; its impact on the people.

I’ve regretted for the past few years letting the project slip away before it had run its full-year course. We didn’t use technology well. Each entry was sent to me for editing and posting by hand each and every day. I was, as well, in the midst of my first great dot-com crash and burn. I was working insane hours trying to help keep a hopeless cause alive. And when I found myself not working at all - the result of the company’s ultimate demise - I dropped into a brief period of anger and resentment at the technology that, I felt, had left me high and dry. I didn’t spend much time on the ‘net or at the computer for a period that lasted well beyond the death knell of World Year.

Now, with the technology available for blogging, I can see no reason not to revive the project and let it create or fill its own niche in the scope of global human communication. Movable Type allows for multiple blogs, meaning I’d never have to cut and paste an entry. And the worldwide community is so much bigger. [At the time of World Year, there were roughly 2000 “online journals.” The last look at meaningful stats showed 40,000 plus active today.] And the global political climate is so much more charged than it was. The idealist in me (which is, really, all there is to me) is screaming again that such a site could make a difference.

Tell me what you think. Are you a blogger who’s interested in participating? What would the format be - the old or something new? Does a project like this even have any meaning when so many other means of expression exist and exist quite easily for so many?

Just rolling it around, here and looking for some thoughts … maybe even volunteers.