Monday, July 14, 2008

Two and Two

Woo hooo. This is my first official post to NEPA Blogs. You can find my official blog here (Warning: it is not always rated "G"). I would like to thank Gort and DB Echo for making me a contributor -- Thanks guys!

Two Upcoming Events/Two New Links:
  • Inspired by the Susquehanna - The theme of this year’s competition promotes the power of artistic expression to enhanceawareness and stewardship of the Susquehanna River Watershed. Work does not have to depict the river. Artist must be a resident of PA, NY or MD. Original work must have been created within the past three (3) years. A maximum of three pieces may be submitted and there is a $20 entry fee for each piece of work.
    Work will be accepted in three categories:
  1. Painting: Oil, acrylic, watercolors, or mixed media, painted ona two-dimensional surface.
  2. Photography: Black & white or color (digital or film) photography.
  3. Works on Paper: Prints, drawings, pastels or mixed media on paper.
Selection Juror: ROB EVANS
Rob Evans, artist and curator of the Visions of the Susquehanna exhibition and a Wyoming Valley native, has work displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery, among many others. His work is also repreented in many private collections.
http://www.robevansart.net/

The exhibition will be presented at the Luzerne County Courthouse, which celebrates its centennial in 2009. There will be a gala opening reception on October 10th, and the exhibition will run through October 7th. Submissions must be postmarked no later than August 20th.
A total of $1,100 in awards will be presented in each of the three categories, as well as Best of Show.

Complete instructions and a form which must be submitted by all participating artists are available in the Call for Artists (PDF 548k). The Call for Artists may also be obtained by calling the Cultural Council at 570-408-4439. Please leave your name and complete address.
For additional information, email cclcarts@gmail.com

**The Cultural Council of Luzerne County has been added to the sidebar as well.



  • Upcoming NEPA Power! Outages Are you a young professional looking to network with other professionals from the region? Then Power! Outages are for you. POWER! (Professionals Organized and Working to Enrich the Region), a progressive thinking professionals network designed to enrich the surrounding region, was created in response to the continual loss of youth in the Northeastern Pennsylvania region. To find out additional information about becoming a member of Power!, please visit http://www.nepapower.com/

***NEPA Power has been added to the sidebar.

4:07 PM Edit: Apparently I don't have the proper access to add links to the sidebar/blogroll. I'll send DB an IM and have him add these, until then, please use the links in the above blog post. Thanks!

Saturday, July 12, 2008

More, more, more

I finally sat down and added all - well, most - of the blogs Gort and I have been collecting since the last sidebar update and added them to the sidebar! I also removed dead - which I defined as "not functioning," not simply "not updating" - and cybersquatted blogs to a section at the bottom of the sidebar called "City of the Dead."

Some blogs I didn't add because they appear to have gone dead since Gort or I first mentioned them in a post. One blog, which appears to have been updated quite recently, I didn't add because every time I went there, I was inundated with pop-ups (blocked, of course) to the point that I had to Ctrl-Alt-Delete my way out. This isn't the only blog that hit me with pop-ups, but it's the only one that has affected me so strongly. Maybe I can get a message to the blogger and we can see if there's anything they can do to fix this.

(If I missed your blog and forgot to add it to the sidebar, please let me know.)

I just ran through the Sitemeter to see how people are getting to the site, and I followed a few of their searches back to look for any NEPA Blogs I've managed to miss. Here are a few:

NEPA Miners Football & Entertainment
One for the NEPA Sports Blogs section.

The Borys Blog
From the Scranton Times-Tribune site.
From the first entry: Don't expect a lot of overt opinion or taking sides here. The ground rules remain the same as for the stories I write for the newspapers. Fairness, accuracy, objectivity as much as possible. But there could be a little more of what journalists call, "Fair comment."

Northeastern PA Mortgages Blog by John Topa
I'm always a little uneasy about linking blogs like this. This link does not in any way imply endorsement, any more than links to any of the other blogs on this site imply endorsement of their content. Still, it's written by someone from NEPA, so it fits the NEPA Blogs criteria.

Northeastern PA Sports from Pennlive.com
Well, it hasn't been updated since October 29, 2007, but still... Another one for the Sports section.

JasonGaylord.com
A personal network of sites by an application developer from NEPA. Includes a blog.

PA on the Go Weblog
A weblog connected to the PA on the Go website, which is linked in the Sites About NEPA section.

GayNEPA.com
The old site NEPA Rainbow Alliance blog appears to be dead, but this one is very much alive.


Phew. Now I have to add all of these to the sidebar. If anybody has any others, please let us know!

Thursday, July 10, 2008

5 new sites

Stop the Supply Sider Insanity

NEPAExpat

Livermore, CA, United States

One of out of many people forced to leave Northeastern PA due to the nature of local officials incapable or unwilling to make the area a viable economic center once again


The Duped Scholar

or How I Stopped Attending Classes and Began the Great Job Search.

This blog highlights my freelance work in print publications as well as my published and unpublished creative work. Below you can find links to my other blogs as well as websites of interest and websites of friends.


Tax and Small Business Forum

This forum serves as a place for people to get information on business and taxes. Readers can find articles written on various business topics and can ask questions if they need business or tax advice

That's How I See It

A young progressive's take on the issues, politics, and other musings.

Local Values

"Local Values" is a blog that focuses primarily on Pennsylvania politics and public policy. The blog will evaluate and comment on topical events using the principles of: federalism, fiscal conservatism, judicial restraint, and the protection of individual liberties and freedoms.

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Linking and Running

From the comments for the previous post:

Shawn said...
Very comprehensive collection of blogs guys. I've added you as a link on our network. Enjoy!


The network Shawn referred to is called Postranger.com. Like NEPA Blogs, it's a link site, designed to increase connectivity on the Internet, among other things - see the introductory post for details. Shawn was originally from Northeastern Pennsylvania, but now is based just to our south in the Lehigh Valley. He gives NEPA Blogs a shout-out here.


Michelle from mhryvnak.net/blog had the best time in her age group in the annual Bernie's Walk in Wilkes-Barre on July 4th. She sent a link to NEPARunner.com, "Promoting Running primarily in the Wyoming Valley and surrounding areas."

If you know of any sites that we should be linking to on NEPA Blogs, please leave a comment or send an e-mail!

Monday, July 07, 2008

Northeast Pennsylvania Center for Independent Living

Northeast Pennsylvania Center for Independent Living
http://nepacil.blogspot.com/


"We want people with disabilities to advocate and socialize toward their independence. Past disability leaders have made great progress on the road to equality by breaking down barriers. We need you to continue what they started. This blog is a step in that direction. We are here to help. Together, we can, and do, make a difference."

From the introductory post by Dan Loftus, Executive Director:

Even a turtle gets nowhere until it sticks its neck out! That's what we're doing with this first ever youth disability blog designed especially for you. We've held consumer advisory meetings, done consumer satisfaction surveys and provide periodic anecdotal information about what it's like to be a person with a disability and the issues we face. Yet, we've never done the 'free form' of blog, or web log. This forum will give you the opportunity to chronicle your views on a variety of subjects which should be disability related. We also ask that you keep it free of profanity and any words or thoughts implying hate. Remember, we don't hate people, we simply hate some of their behavior. And THAT can be changed. We hope that some change is what comes out of this. If you don't want the 'public' to see your commentary but want to share it with me you can reach me directly at dloftus@nepacil.org. So, welcome and remember: together, we can, and do, make a difference.

- Dan Loftus, Executive Director

You can also check out the NEPACIL website at http://www.nepacil.org.

Dining in and around Northeastern Pennsylvania

Dining in and around Northeastern Pennsylvania
http://nepadining.blogspot.com/

A brand new blog, by Michael D. Grier:

We provide you with candid reviews and opinions from our personal dining experiences in and around Northeastern Pennsylvania (sometimes we expand coverage during our travels)... we provide this as a service in order to provide you an alternate view to the dining scene in Scranton / Wilkes Barre. We are born and raised NEPA, and, after eleven years of dining (and working) in North America, Europe, and Asia, we have returned to NEPA to find a dining scene significantly improved from the mid-1990's. Let us be your guide...

Sunday, July 06, 2008

Call for pictures and blogs

I was experimenting with seasonal themes for the pictures on NEPA Blogs for a while, but after Winter hung around for nearly two-thirds of a year I decided to take Michelle's suggestion and go with a four-seasons theme - which means I'm going to use pictures from all different times of the year, and try to have at least one for each season if I can help it.

Which really isn't the case with the pictures I have up right now; three of the four that were taken by me were taken within a two week span in October 2005. I'll go through my archives for pictures that feel representative of Northeastern Pennsylvania. If anyone has any pictures that they would like to share, I'll be happy to post them in the sidebar, header, and footer of the site.

And if anyone knows of any sites that should be linked by NEPA Blogs, please let me know! Sadly, the latest addition didn't last very long...