Happy Oglo Day! or, Blog Day Obsesrved

09 October 2007
You may have noticed that I advertised Blog Day but didn't actually celebrate it. (Or you may have not noticed since regular readers have probably given up on me by this point.) Yet, in an attempt to correct the oversight, I'm observing Blog Day today. I've decided to rename it "Oglo Day" since 09/10 looks more like "oglo" than "blog," but in case that's too confusing we can just call it Blog Day Observed. And after all, given the relatively low blog activity of late, who needs an excuse for some blog linking!

Fortune Cookie Chronicles recently related a search for peanut butter in London. I suspect that the book version will be pretty exciting, after all who could not like a "live-action blog" companion to a book about the Americanness of Chinese food! (And why am I studying ethnomusicology when I could study food?!) Thanks to Hubert (who hasn't updated his blog for a very long time) for the link. Oh, peanut butter happens to be of note for NvB since The Adventure of the Peanut Butter Cookies started it all.

Oleg Klimov's travel and photo blog from Kamchatka and Sakhalin Island, consistently features wonderful and beautiful photos. It helps to read cyrillic, but the photos are captivating with or without the text. There's music of the guitar and military varieties as well as great views of the fishing culture, ocean boats, and it looks like swimming may be as cold as Lake Superior, too! I found the blog from Veronica's link at Global Voices, which partially translated some of the text. The blog may be over, but it's still worth a look.

Dr. Sean's Diary has political commentary on east and central Europe. I haven't really read through much, but it looks good if you want a critical view of politics in the region.

Lee Bidgood is a fellow ethnomusicologist studying bluegrass in Bohemia and living in Prague. He's blogging at Front Porch / Praha.

Another ethnomusicologist, Wayne Marshall, blogs at Wayne and Wax. His site, which I found recently, has obviously been more active of late and is worth a closer look as well.

I don't want to push non-independent blogs too much, but there are also now a few blogs at Transitions Online. I haven't been keeping up much, but Romantic, which posts about Romani culture in Europe (check out the Slovenian poet Lojza Podobnik), is interesting, as is Puzzle, which focuses on culture in central and eastern Europe.

Of course, Joe, Brian, and Karla are still out there, too. And I think I may have neglected ever to highlight a link to Petr Boruvka at The Czech Daily Word, still keeping the blogosphere abreast of events in Brno. (Somebody's got to do it, after all!)

In my academic life of late, I've been trying to figure out how to initiate a scholarly discussion of blogging among ethnomusicological fieldworkers. I was going to link to a few other fieldwork blogs, but I'm not sure how public the writers intend to be. There is, of course, no privacy on the internet, but one does try to maintain integrity.

BTW: As per Blog Day guidelines, one is supposed to email the authors you link to, but I'm afraid I might miss that part. Anyway, please don't be offended. Bobek* the gnome respectfully salutes you!


Previously at NvB: Blog Day 2006
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* Not Bob-Bob or Robert.

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Ahoj!

04 October 2007
Just when you thought I'd fallen off the face of central Europea....

I'm co-hosting a radio program of East European music on Thursdays, from 9-10 p.m. (EST). For Brno and others east, that's 3-4 a.m. (Sorry!) The program is a rotating lineup of rock, ska, folklore, traditional, field recordings, and the like. Anything related to the region is fair game. And if I get my act together, there may even be a few special guests. To listen, you can stream live from WCBN's Web site. Or, if you're close enough to tune in, direct your radio to 88.3 FM.

And after all the hype, I missed Blog Day. But I'll try to get something together still.


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