The coolest lunchroom (updated)

So...Kathy at Cold Climate Gardening and I were chatting off-blog about the vagaries of Verbena bonariensis week before last...then Don at Hands in the Dirt blogged about his overabundant Brazilian verbena the very next week (and I really should pick his brain about his secret, because too much tall verbena is a problem I would like to have!). Then, I needed to find out the name of a new-to-me plant, and within hours Douglas at A Gardener's Notebook was there with the answer. And then, the next day, feeling all warm and fuzzy about the world of blogging, I read this from a post (well worth reading in its entirety, by the way) by Mark Liberman at Language Log:

One of the things that I like about weblogs is that they add a new dimension to the virtual conversation that began when people started keeping a record, in cultural memory and then in shared texts, of their otherwise-ephemeral observations. Without the blogging medium, Bill and Chris and Naomi might have mentioned some of this stuff in a letter or a lunchtime conversation, but I never would have heard about it, and neither would you. And just as I can butt in with my own observation, so can you.

With millions of weblogs out there -- "3,547,057 weblogs watched", says Technorati -- no one is going to be even a passive part of all of these conversational strands at once. However, we each get to pick where to sit in the Global Lunchroom, and if we're bored or annoyed with the conversation at our virtual table, we can always assemble a new one. It's not a substitute for face-to-face interaction, or even for one-to-one exchanges by phone or mail, but it enriches one's life all the same.

I'm quite taken with the lunchroom metaphor, especially since the discussion that inspired his post involves the unexpected intersection of two blogs that I read frequently, but think of as being at very different tables in the lunchroom. The "Naomi" referred to above is the blogger at Baraita, which I frequent as I eavesdrop on the "Religion" table, and I always want to be within earshot of the Language Log folks (at the "Language" table, of course) whenever there's a fight about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. So—pull up a chair, set a spell...and y'all come back now, y'hear?

Update, August 23, 2004: See what I mean? Thank you, Don.

Comments

[Don]

Chan -- thanks for the link. By my adding a title later, the permalink address changed. It is now:

http://handsindirt.blogspot.com/2004/08/garden-talk.html

And I like sitting at your table, too.

[Chan S.]

Permalink updated. Thanks, Don!

[Kathy]

I have had the same feeling about garden bloggers. And fortunately there aren't so many that one can't keep up. But it always makes me a little sad when someone stops showing up in the lunchroom. Some of the earliest garden blogs I started reading no longer seem to be active, and I can only hope that they're "good" busy and not "bad" busy, that they've gone on to something else more interesting or important, and not, say, recuperating in a hospital with none of their online friends the wiser.

[Chan S.]

Yes...the connections in the "lunchroom" aren't just intellectual, they have a special personal dimension as well. Those connections grow and die back and (one hopes) grow back again, just like a garden (...and now I'm getting all verklempt!).