About

Some Old Guy, when he’s in his native costume, is Phil Sheehan.

I adopted SOG several years ago, while canvassing door-to-door for an environmental group. Most members of the canvassing team were in their twenties, and a few their thirties, all decades behind me. It often happened, especially in good weather, that when I rang a doorbell, the door was answered by a child, who looked at me in obvious bewilderment, then turned to the adults in the house and hollered, “There’s some old guy at the door.” Really. I could count on it. At least once a night, four nights a week. I began to like it, to look forward to it, and I carried it with me when I left.

As Phil Sheehan, or, occasionally, as SOG, I’ve had several websites and blogs — still have a couple, this being one. Generally, the blog business — unless it truly is a business — is what the old-timers (of whom I’m one) would call a mug’s game. Nothing much in it for the creative spirit, the open mind, and the active soul.

Understand: by “the blog business,” I mean the pattern of I-post-something, after which comes you-comment-in-response, after which come two or three or five hundred other people with their comments on the original, on earlier comments, and on anything which comes into their (apparently) pointy little heads. That’s the blog business, the fomenting of shameless crowd hysteria on the Internet.

We need another word for the simple and straightforward practice that I’m aiming for, which you can observe on other web locations to which I’ve provided links. At each of those, an intelligent and informed person — or a group of such people — offer comments on arts, politics, or whatever. Replies are welcome, but they are monitored, or they are confined to e-mail format.

Perhaps we could call them Web Ruminations, shortened to Brums.

I know. Dumb idea. Got a better one? E-mail me. Or leave a comment. Just don’t start a food fight.