Tuesday, July 03, 2007

I Hardly Knew You

From Susie Madrak of Suburban Guerrilla, I discovered that Jim Capozzola of The Rittenhouse Review died. This news, like that of Steve Gilliard of The News Blog is sad news. For many years before I began my own blog, I read TRR, as well as Suburban Guerrilla, Eschaton and Talking Points Memo, among others, on a daily basis, to get the liberal view of what was happening in the world of politics (you know, the "reality has a liberal bias" view of the news). They helped inform me of issues that the media wasn't addressing.

Although I did not know him, in certain ways, I felt that I did. Jim managed to combine his political views with a blend of the personal along with his amusing observations of life in and around Philly. He was also an excellent writer, which made reading his blog a pleasure. I knew about his bulldog Mildred, his problems with his love life (or lack thereof) and his job situation. I read about his family and his various moves around Center City. In the last year or so, his blogging was sporadic and then it stopped altogether in March.

It's somewhat inexplicable to explain how the knowledge of the death of a total stranger can in fact evoke feelings of grief or sadness. I know that a lot of people expressed those sentiments upon the death of Steve Gilliard. My "real" friend Susan and I were just discussing the concept of developing relationships in the blog world. I know many bloggers have met and developed friendships (as well as a few feuds). I have corresponded with a few bloggers of late, but I am not usually interactive in the blogosphere. Until very recently, I haven't commented on other blogs -- even those that I've read daily for many years.

In part, it's because of my personality. I am reserved and circumspect by nature. For example, my outgoing husband and I can go to a party together and at the end of the evening, he's talked to everyone there, while I've had conversations with a handful of people. Even more so, however, it's because of my decision to maintain a degree of anonymity.

I keep an anonymous persona because many of my business relationships and clients are conservative and I certainly can't have my blog impact my work. Of course, some of my clients know that I'm liberal, but we don't often discuss politics. Also, the law is a funny business, and I don't want my political views to distract from my representation of my clients in any way. A client surely doesn't need opposing counsel to be more difficult when negotiating a transaction because they strongly object to the views of their attorney. Based upon my experience of personalities of lawyers, I'm sure that it could happen.

Of course, anyone who knows me who reads my blog could fairly easily figure out who I am. Which is why only a few close friends (and the LLWL* of course) even know that I have a blog.

So the on-line world is this ethereal mix of relationships with others -- in many cases in word only. Yet, because we are real, feeling individuals behind the words, some sense of interrelationship can occur.

And so it was with Jim Capozzola. RIP.

(LLWL = Lady Lawyers Who Lunch, a/k/a my officemates)

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