Ridenbaugh Press

Amoment here to draw a little attention to the book just added on the right-hand column of this page: Outlaw Tales of Idaho, written by your scribe and published by the Globe-Pequot Press. The precise date of “publication” isn’t entirely clear, but the actual sample books have arrived by UPS and the book is up on the G-P site as well as on Amazon.com.

It consists of stories about some of the dirty deeds (mostly though not entirely non-political) in Idaho history, up to about Prohibition. The stories were fun to put together - a variety of topics ranging from death in the wilderness by bushwhacker, to a Civil War-era political argument that got way out of hand, to the state’s foremost mass murderer (of the kind known as black widows). The good people at the Idaho Historical Society, and others who had worked there or frequented the place, were greatly helpful in collecting data and pictures.

So, it’ll be over there on the right-hand column for a while to come. Just in case you were wondering.

Posting here has been a little slow the last week - it’ll pick up shortly - largely because it came from some distance, in place and in mind. Simply, Ridenbaugh Press spent the last week-plus in Costa Rica.

We’ll not get here in any long report about it - the subject of this site is the Pacific Northwest, where the ocean water in this season is too cold for swimming or wading (it was in the 80s down there). Here, we’ll note a couple of things. One is that a report on what we saw down there has been posted (and more pictures will be coming soon).

And note that those recent posts on Northwest politics and related matters over the last week or so (from departure on March 4 until return to Portland this morning) were researched and written in a small hillside city in Central America. The world really is getting smaller.

This blog gets quoted elsewhere with some regularity, but we’ve not seen much specific analysis of who gets quoted where. (Other than more general tools like BlogNetNews, where we happen to rank Number 1 on this week’s Idaho influence survey.)

What follows is partly a bit of horn-blowing but also commentary on the regional blogosphere.

The Idaho Statesman at Boise runs a feature called Other Voices, edited by Editorial Page Editor Kevin Richert, which sometimes includes comments from emails sent to the paper but usually comments from the area’s blogosphere. Boise conservative blogger Adam Graham decided to count the numbers of recent quotes in Other Voices, and came up with this list:

1) Randy Stapilus-15 [Ridenbaugh Press]
2) Adam Graham-9
3) Betsy Russell-8 [Spokesman-Review]
3) Bryan Fischer-8
5) Red State Rebels-7
5) Mountain Goat Report-7
7) Idablue-5
[8] Huckleberries Online 4
[8] Fort Boise-4
[8] Dennis Mansfield-4
11) Joel Kennedy-2
11) Clayton Cramer-2

His speculation on why the numbers ran as they did: “My theory is that it comes down to a basic lack of conservative voices. To have an interesting round up of other opinion, conservative voices are needed, or otherwise it’s just one side and no real debate. Thus, while I’ve been quoted more often, Richert has keep things pretty much even by quoting quite a few liberal bloggers.”

Richert’s view is similar: “He has it pretty much right. My goal with Other Voices is to serve up a diverse discussion on the issues, in real time. I’m trying to present a good mix. Especially since both Graham and Fischer frequently criticize Statesman editorials or my ID Quicktakes posts; my top priority is to give our critics prominent play, in print and online. And there’s another reason you see a lot of Graham and Fischer in the Other Voices feature. Frankly, there aren’t many conservative bloggers around these parts. I can pick and choose from a larger pool of liberal/Democrat bloggers, so I do.”

Our sense is that the situation is similar in Washington and Oregon: Liberal blogs simply outnumber conservative blogs, and we find ourselves revisiting the conservative blogs probably a little more often in consequence.

Drawing your attention to our latest page, “At the churches,” a list of major churches around the Pacific Northwest - primarily those called megachurches.

The idea is not that they’re politically active (though some do have roles that relate to politics in various ways). More, the idea is that these churches are major contributors of ideas in our society, developers of world views that in turn come to influence voting patterns and political activity, even if only very indirectly. We’ve been quietly watching activity in this area for a while; in the weeks and months to come, you’ll see somewhat more posts here on this subject. Consider this page an opening of marking of territory of interest.

Everyone else seems to be checking out, or posting, the blog ratings generated by Mingle2, which generates movie-style ratings for blog sites, based on the language found in them. So here’s how we rate as of this morning:

Mingle² - Free Online Dating

Same as some newspaper blogs, though we’d imagine quite a few of the more intense Northwest political blogs would rate an R. (Has the Stranger’s Slog tried this yet? Might blow the Mingle2 circuits.)

We should note that a few days ago when we first tried out the rating system, we emerged with a PG.

In the last few months we’ve seen a spike in comment spam, and finally hit a point where manual management of it was becoming a pain. So we tweaked the system a bit and yesterday added a new spam-killer to the architecture.

It appears to be working correctly, killing out the junk while letting through the genuine stuff. But let us know if you try commenting and nothing shows up. The spam-killer does not seem especially over-eager, but it may need some adjustment as time goes on so that it doesn’t harvest the good stuff along with the bad. (You can mail on this, or whatever, to stapilus[at]ridenbaugh.com.)

Tonight once again, our regular Wednesday chat is on for 6 pm Pacific, 7 pm Mountain, accessible off this page. (Scroll down to the right to the “nickname” box, enter your name, click the button, and you’re in.) It lasts about an hour; feel free to jump in or out any time.

So far we’ve had enjoyable discussions with an eclectic group of people. Greg Smith, a co-founder, should be back on board this evening. Along with, well, who knows who.

Tonight once again, our regular Wednesday chat is on for 6 pm Pacific, 7 pm Mountain, accessible off this page. (Scroll down to the right to the “nickname” box, enter your name, click the button, and you’re in.) It lasts about an hour; feel free to jump in or out any time.

So far we’ve had enjoyable discussions with an eclectic group of people. Greg Smith, a co-founder, should be back on board this evening. Along with, well, who knows who.

One of those schedule conflicts deals has arisen . . . with the result that our regular Wednesday night chat is off this week. We’ll return for another next Wednesday.

Meanwhile, of course, posts continue . . .

Tonight once again, our regular Wednesday chat is on for 6 pm Pacific, 7 pm Mountain, accessible off this page. (Scroll down to the right to the “nickname” box, enter your name, click the button, and you’re in.) It lasts about an hour; feel free to jump in or out any time.

So far we’ve had enjoyable discussions with an eclectic group of people. Greg Smith, a co-founder, should be back on board this evening. Along with, well, who knows who.

Our weekly reminder, that our regular Wednesday chat is on for tonight at 6 pm Pacific, 7 pm Mountain, accessible off this page. (Scroll down to the right to the “nickname” box, enter your name, click the button, and you’re in.) It lasts about an hour; feel free to jump in or out any time.

So far we’ve had enjoyable discussions with an eclectic group of people. Greg Smith, a co-founder, should be back on board this evening. Along with, well, who knows who.

Our weekly reminder, that our regular Wednesday chat is on for tonight at 6 pm Pacific, 7 pm Mountain, accessible off this page. (Scroll down to the right to the “nickname” box, enter your name, click the button, and you’re in.) It lasts about an hour; feel free to jump in or out any time.

So far we’ve had enjoyable discussions with an eclectic group of people. Greg Smith, a co-founder, should be back on board this evening. Along with, well, who knows who.

Another quick reminder that our weekly Wednesday chat, our third, is on for tonight at 6 pm Pacific, 7 pm Mountain, accessible off this page. (Scroll down to the right to the “nickname” box, enter your name, click the button, and you’re in.) It lasts about an hour; feel free to jump in or out any time.

The last two were enjoyable discussions. Greg Smith, a co-founder, was under the the weather and had to miss the last one, but he should be back tonight. Along with, well, who knows who. We draw some eclectic chatters.

Our regular Wednesday night chat is off for tonight; travel and schedule conflicts are likely to keep the hosts from available keyboards at the appropriate house, so we figure we’ll hold off until next week.

Plans are afoot to bring a special guest aboard then. Stay tuned.

Just a quick reminder that our weekly Wednesday chat, our third, is on for tonight at 6 pm Pacific, 7 pm Mountain, accessible off this page. (Scroll down to the right to the “nickname” box, enter your name, click the button, and you’re in.) It lasts about an hour; feel free to jump in or out any time.

The last two were enjoyable discussions. Greg Smith, a co-founder, was under the the weather and had to miss the last one, but he should be back tonight. Along with, well, who knows who.

Our second weekly Wednesday chat is on for tonight at 6 pm Pacific, 7 pm Mountain, accessible off this page. (Scroll down to the right to the “nickname” box, enter your name, click the button, and you’re in.) It lasts about an hour, give or take.

We had a good discussion on a range of topics last week, so we’re off to a good start.

One more reminder about something new here: Chats, tentatively dubbed “Wednesday Wanderings,” with your scribe and a co-host, Idaho pollster Greg Smith. All are welcome to join in. The time is 6 p.m. Pacific, 7 p.m. Mountain time. Topics Northwestern will be fair game.

To send, come to this page and then look down the right-hand column to a box asking you to fill in a nickname. You can use your real name (preferred) or something else (allowed). Click on “enter chat,” and you’re on. Type your comments in the box at the bottom of the page.

Starting Wednesday, we’re starting something new here: Chats, with a co-host, Idaho pollster Greg Smith. All are welcome to join in. The time is 6 p.m. Pacific, 7 p.m. Mountain time. We’re dubbing it “Wednesday Wanderings” . . . for now, at least.

Our planned topic of the week will be legislative, but it’s not limited to that - anything related to the Northwest will be fair game.

To send, come to this page and then look down the right-hand column to a box asking you to fill in a nickname. You can use your real name (preferred) or something else (allowed). Click on “enter chat,” and you’re on. Type your comments in the box at the bottom of the page.

We plan to make this a weekly event - same time, same url - and look for ways to improve on it as we go. Suggestions are welcome.

By way of notation, for any interested . . . ‘Twas almost exactly a year ago when this side moved from pure HTML to database (those older posts remain accessible through archives); we were loathe to let go hands-on site manufacture, but the demands of the modern web made it necessary, and WordPress software has been a worthy handler.

The features it made possible (common and ordinary among many web sites these days) probably contributed to this site’s growth: Our average daily visits have more than tripled in the past year, and we don’t seem to be levelling off. Total visits during that time stand at 314,388.

Thanks for stopping by. You’re in growing company.

Aquickie here to note that one of our posts below - on the potential of rural populism, in the context of the Washington 5th district congressional race - went national today. It was “front-paged” at the national Daily Kos political site, by one of the editors there (nom de web, mcjoan). Drawing there a variety of interesting comments.
Stop by and see what the take is there - distinctive from, but adding to, the take here.