Tag End

If there is a better teller of America’s story than Dan Barry of The New York Times, I can’t imagine who it might be. He writes a column called This Land, traveling the country to tell its stories. Today it is a story of being sold out, a family who has sold Pontiacs since they first began in 1926. They talk about betrayal by GM. There will be no more Pontiacs to sell.

I’ve Twittered, I’ve Facebooked, I suppose I might as well Blog. I got together with Dave Thomas, a physicist who knows his way around a computer and we got the thing off the ground. I just now noticed that in my hurry to post something — anything — grammar took a dive (an apostrophe in the wild, floating around where it should not be). “Oh, well,” as my longtime friend, the late Tony Hillerman might say.

Speaking of Tony, the name of the blog — Tag End — is shamelessly stolen from him. He wrote once that the Sandia Mountains were the “tag end” of the Rockies. For some reason the phrase stuck in my head over the years. So Tag End it is.

Actually, I began experimenting with it some time ago, but I was working at the Journal then and didn’t feel too comfortable going off the reservation. Now, after working there for about 31 years and writing a column for 28 of them, I am “retired,” whatever that might mean and I no longer have a reservation to go off of.

What will the blog be? I’m not sure. That remains to be seen. A commentary here and there, I suppose. A few links to stories and essays that catch my eye. I’m forever sending these things to friends, so I might as well post them here and be done with it.

I’m still working on the basic nuts and bolts of the blog and much learning needs to be done. So you can expect many mistakes. I am, after all, something of a newbie.

Suggestions (without flames if possible) would be most welcome. If you have links to blogs you think I need to check out, send them. The blog roll is in its infancy.

All right, enough of the noodling around. I think I’ll start clicking on Blogger tabs and see what happens.

In The New York Times, an old story — bigotry — comes with a new twist — swine flu. I am always at a loss when it comes to bigotry’s ability to change with the times.

Hello, World!!

Here is a link to my friend John’s blog. Since I am in the habit of blaming him for all things that go wrong with my foray’s into cyberspace, I thought the least I could do is start off this blog by linking to John’s excellent science blog. (He’s the veteran science writer at the Albuquerque Journal.)