I’d like to thank the voters in the 2009 Best of the Valley Readers’ Poll for voting my defunct, deflated, detached, just plain de-a-d blog Paradise City Best Local Blog.  It’s really nice of you all.  Thank you.

However I am but one person distilling one experience of one perspective in this great big Valley of ours.  We all walk around this beautiful side of paradise every day having singular experiences and I want to use this opportunity of unprecedented advocacy-journalism media attention to do some advocacy for those capturing the goings and comings of Valley life better than I.

First there’s the man who’s been blogging for longer than the term itself existed, Tom Devine.  I make that distinction not as a snarky comment on age but as a tip of the hat to his lengthy tradition of consistently wonderful musings on his experience of the world around him from space to UMass to Beacon Hill.

Then there’s Gazette writer Mary Carey with her AboutAmherst.  I love her candid reflections and confessions.  Just today I learned that she used to be a department store Easter Bunny.

Another regular stop for me is Jennifer Myszkowski’s blog.  Again, she’s someone who’s been detailing the antics of her life on and off stage for a long, long time.  Lately, as she’s been pursuing stand-up comedy more steadily, it’s been exciting to read about her discoveries within the craft.  And it’s just nice to catch up with someone you love but never see.

Jim Neill’s Life in the NohoDome is a must-read.  That man has more in his head than most and the way he puts it all, really ALL, down on the virtual page is pure elegance.  Plus the photos of his walkabouts downtown are one-part painterly and one-part story.

Daryl Lafleur’s Northampton Redoubt on the Advocate’s site definitely deserves a shout-out.  I can’t think of a more detailed writer of what’s happening around City Hall.  Daryl goes through meeting minutes with a steel flea comb and I mean that in a good way.

There are dozens and dozens and dozens more people writing up the world as they see it and I think it’s all awesome.

KelseyFlynn.com is a babe in Blog Wooods compared to them all so the blogroll down on the right of this page is just getting started.  Please shoot me an E-mail if I don’t have yours and I’ll gladly slap it down there along with the rest of them.

When it comes down to it, all I got here on kf.com are stories.  No analysis, no punditry, just the distillate of this life of mine after it works its way through the still that’s my brain.  And by the looks of that last sentence, you’ll find no poetry here either.  That’s why Tommy Twilite’s site is good to have on hand.