SAST Wingees

Unsung Blogger of the WeeK #3

Terrance Heath is the featured blogger this week.  His  blog The Republic of T has been active since October 2003.  You can see that he is a passionate blogger from the number of interesting posts he generates. He covers politics, gay rights, current events and miscellany with an eye for the interesting ones. I have been following his blog for a few months now and I have learnt a lot from his posts. Here is a  short interview I conducted over email with Terrance: 1. What motivates you to keep blogging?
I guess what motivates me to keep blogging is the responses that I get from readers and from other bloggers. [You can see a recurring pattern here. Those of you that read and enjoy blogs, please take a moment to post comments. – Ed.] I’m more motivated on some days than on others. It depends on what’s happening in the world and in my life as to what I feel  like blogging about. It’s also turned out to be a great way of connecting with people. The response I’ve gotten since starting my blog was unexpected, but it’s been so positive that I find  myself wanting to continue each day. 2. How do you identify the ideas that you post? Is there any secrets you can share?
I read pretty widely. After September 11th, I stopped watching the television news — because I didn’t trust the information I was getting — and turned to international sources online for the stories that were missing from the mainstream news. I guess blogging was the next logical step. Now I get much of my information either online or from books that I come across and decide to read. I keep track of more than 200 blogs and news feeds and sift through the information I find there, sometimes digging a bit further if I have questions. The only secret I have for anyone is to read widely. There’s a lot of information out there, but much of it you have to go looking for. Major media outlets won’t go out of their way to bring it to you, and if you depend on them, there’s tons of information you just won’t get. 3.  What methods do you employ to overcome the “Blogger’s Block”? Hmmm. Usually, if I’m having “bloggers’ block” I dive back into reading and commenting on other blogs, sometimes following links randomly from the various blogrolls I come across. It usually doesn’t take long to find something I write about. Besides, I think it’s normal for anyone who writes to go through periods of “silence” as far as writing goes. I look at it like farming or agriculture. Sometimes ground has to lie fallow for a while before it will yield again. It’s the same with writing, for me, because writing also requires time to read and time to think if I’m going to write anything worthwhile for anyone to read. 

4. What are your Top 5 Unsung Blogs ? (please include only those that are not in any Top 100/500 lists). Unsung?  A Stitch in Time  is a good, well-written blog with a thoughtful libertarian bent, written by a lawyer. I discovered it when I found it among the referring links for my blog, and became a regular reader. I appreciate Negrophile  as a source of news relating to African Americans. Galois  is a well-written blog about same-sex marriage, though it hasn’t been updated much since June.

 5. What are your current book recommendations ? (1 or 2 is
sufficient). If you haven’t read them yet, I highly recommend “A People’s History of the United States of America” by Howard Zinn, and “The Culture of Make Believe” by Derrick Jensen. Both are incredibly eye opening books that will move you to think about the history and the future of our civilization.