Welcome, welcome, welcome. Bienvenidos! This is a blog welcome mat. Welcome to a wonderful, corner of the Leftblogosfero that you might not have encountered before. Especially if you are leaving the Orange Giant and looking for a new place to hang out. And, of course, welcome to the Writers Port Alliance!
If, like me, you miss the free-for-all (one with some basic, human rules of respect and decency for others) of the old group blogs, and if you’re looking for a new “home” for your pajama clad (or unclad or formally attired) self, you’ve found the right place for joining once again in the unrestrained, unsegmented joy of reading and writing in the Leftblogosfero.
A blog free-for-all. That’s what I was looking for when I originally came here. The fun of a crowd of participants. The excitement of learning others’ views. A free-for-all. A “place” where everyone and everything got mixed together and you could pick and choose at your leisure. It’s a noun (a phrase?) I haven’t used in decades. In fact, it’s been so long, that I wanted to check its connotation:
Definition of FREE-FOR-ALL:
a competition, dispute, or fight open to all comers and usually with no rules : brawl; also : a chaotic situation resembling a free-for-all especially in lacking rules or structure (the press conference deteriorated into a free-for-all) …
Synonyms: affray (chiefly British), broil, donnybrook, fracas, fray, free-for-all, melee (also mêlée), rough-and-tumble, row, ruckus, ruction
Antonyms: order, orderliness
Ooops. Free-for-all. Well, so maybe it was the wrong word after all. I don’t think of this blog as a fight or a donnybrook. Truth be told, donnybrook is one of those words I know, but it isn’t in my primary vocabulary. And when it comes to my brothers and sisters in the typing class, we all know and dread what can happen when the basic rules of human decency are breached. So it’s not about creating chaos, or biting off other combatants’ ears, it’s about freedom and excitement that group blogging is so very good at.
There are eight blogs in the Writers Port Alliance. You can find their links at the top of the page. Two of these (The Dream Antilles and Ignoring Asia) are solo acts; the others, group blogs with varying points of view and characteristics. They are much smaller than the mega-blog, which means that they are slower to gather comments, and that essays are available for longer before they are disappeared and pushed off the page. Items printed in one space might fit in all or some or none of the others, and the members and writers cross-post freely.
Welcome! As a favorite band says, “Just poke around.”
originated at The Dream Antilles
