I’ve decided that as frequently as I can I’d like to highlight a specific blog I love by talking about the blogger and linking to my favorite recent entries. It’s only fitting that I start with the single blog that was at the top of my link list when I launched nine years ago, and continues to be a daily read today:
Meg Pickard’s meish.org.
Meish wasn’t always Meish – it was once Not So Soft. In that capacity I consider it my parent blog, as I created my own specifically to ape what Meg was doing daily.
I’ve read Meg ever since, and she’s never stopped being compelling. She lives in London, was schooled as a sociologist, and spent time abroad conducting ethnographies. She presently works in some capacity for The Guardian.
Meg has a way – as all great bloggers do – of making the common seem very compelling. She also writes wonderful lists (frequently etymological in nature), takes clever and pretty photographs (even with an iPhone), and shares thoughts on social media.
And, as borne out by her original blog name (an Ani reference), Meg has wonderfully eclectic taste in music (and shares some of my OCD organizational qualities).
Some other recent highlights: she tracks the occurrence of “Flying Ant Day” with uncanny accuracy; she ruminates on the concept of time tourism (which I have discussed at length with Rabi); attempts to create a universal theory of measurement; dissects nationalist “visit us” campaigns; makes tables out of old maps; details past packing mishaps; and she bemoans a lack of adjectiveless sandwiches.
And that’s all just in the last year. Meish posts a few times a week, which makes it easy to follow in RSS; more voracious readers will want to subscribe to Meg’s many-times-daily tumblr.
Having met Rabi a long time ago, and Alison more recently, I’d say Meg is probably the blogger I’d most like to meet in real life.
I’m normally much nicer than I was then. Hopefully at some other time you can meet my less-ill representative, and I can meet your less-trying-not-to-catch-said-illness representative.