Writing blogs

Check out the following blogs:

ETO 22, The Dead Man in Yossarian's Tent
Old Tybee Ranger
Dot Common Sense

The first blog is my son's. A new blog, it offers humor pieces he has written based on his military experience, including his deployment to Iraq.

A sample:
“Sir, I was wondering what funding source you would like me to use in order to pay for all these projects,” he asked.
“The funding sources have all been cut off,” he quickly replied. “I told you, no money as a weapons system. You really need to take notes, LT.”
“Roger, sir, that’s why I was asking. If we have no way of paying these people, then I guess I’m not sure why we are starting these projects.” Lieutenant Ox was attempting to use reason, but Major Schmeis had long since built up an immunity to that nonsense.
“Because nonlethal is the main effort, LT. We do nonlethal, or people die. Is that what you want, LT? For people to die? People are dying every day, LT, and if we don’t do nonlethal, people are going to continue to die. You do love America, don’t you?” He asked.
“I do love America, sir.” LT Ox loved America so much that he volunteered to leave it for 15 months at a time to not do projects in Abu Dahbu. It was about a good a place as any to not do projects, when one thought about it. Why, just now, some of his friends were not doing projects in Afghanistan, others were not doing them in the Philippines, and he was sure that even now, there was some super-secret special forces in Iran or Pakistan right now, not doing projects in some small village, attempting to win the hearts and minds.

The second blog is my brother-in-law's. He's been at it for some time, writing daily on a host of topics from music to science to history to politics. He includes lots of links and visuals. He and my sister, along with another couple, are retracing Lewis and Clark's Voyage of Discovery, and he is blogging daily on his observations.

A sample:
"Today was our first day in western Iowa and under a brilliant sun. We expected to see thousands of acres of corn and soybeans. We also knew the impact of bio fuel development caused farmers to increase their acreage in these crops over the last few years. How does one measure that increase? For those confined to the highways, it is the brilliant reflections of the sun off what must be thousands of new grain storage bins on farms both big and small. The new corrugated steel bins contrast sharply with their older, drab gray neighbors. With a bit of elevation and the correct sun angle, they glitter like gems set in a quilt of tan, green and yellow spreading to the horizon."

The third blogger is an Illinois reader who has decided, after a lifetime of thinking about it, to start writing.

A sample:
"It probably is now apparent that I know very little about Writing, having written nothing more original than Technical Reports for the past twenty five years or so, but I think I'm willing to learn, from experts in the field, those who earn their living on the keyboard, and with the agility of their mind.
"But therein lies the trick. I've said before that I have probably read Thousands of books in my life, so far, and usually add from two or three to six or seven, weekly, depending on the weather and my attention span. I do not regret for one moment reading anything, but I think one danger that I will have to learn to avoid, or at least manage, is letting any one writer influence me in my writing."