So long, Skelly

One of the side benefits (maybe the only side benefit if you count the opportunity to mouth off at will as a direct benefit rather than a side one) I've discovered over the two and a half months I've been writing this blog has been the discovery of other legal bloggers or "blawgers" as they say (a term I haven't decided whether I like or hate). I check them out to see what is being/can be/should be done on a blawg. (And, of course, what shouldn't be.) I check them out for news, since there's much of interest that otherwise would slip below my radar. And I check them out for ideas to write about.

Every couple of days I find a few new ones, new to me, that is. Some I bookmark to revisit. Some I run from as quickly as possible.

But there really are the ones that stick.

From some of those I've absorbed things that I think will make me a better lawyer. From some I've taken things that remind me to be a better lawyer. From some I've taken a sort of kinship. It's always good to be reminded that you're not in this business - I'm speaking of criminal defense, but blogging, too - alone. (Though some I wish would quickly get out of criminal defense and go someplace where they might do less harm.)

I've become a pretty steady reader of a few and an occasional commentor on some of those and some others. The commenting isn't self-aggrandizement, I hope. It's a recognition that we're all in the same school. Besides, I'm a loudmouth, which is much of why I got into this in the first place, and if I think I have something to say, well, I'm gonna say it now. (Which is, by the way, the title of a great old Phil Ochs song which you can hear here.)

You can find some of the blawgs I'm reading in the blog links on the right side of the page down below the excessively long list of tags. I keep fiddling with that list, adding folks that I find consistently worth my time to read, deleting others as I realize they're out of the business or are losing my interest or never should have had my interest in the first place.

The struggle today is what to do about Arbitrary and Capricious, the blog of the PD who calls himself Skelly Wright. I've never met him, but I've been reading him every day, and going back and reading through his archives. He's a font of encouragement and news and passion and. OK, I'm blathering. It ain't Shakespeare, but it really is one of the best - and not just according to me. And as of late last night, it's on "hiatus." I've been reading it for a couple of months now. It's on my blog list, right at the top. Do I take it down now that it's over?

Not for a while, anyhow, I think.

Keep on keeping on, Skelly.