JNS Blog Puts Out The Call For New Guest Authors, Foresees A Day When Content On This Blog May Be MOSTLY Guest Authors...

They are sirens, can you hear them signing a song? John and Alex's summer road
trip, 2013, blog post by John Hoff

In the not-too-distant future, I hope to be very successful and very busy. But since February 21, 2008, this blog has been my contribution, my gift (wanted or unwanted) my contribution to the struggle for Northside neighborhood revitalization...a struggle toward what I have dubbed "Urban Utopia."

What is Urban Utopia? I have defined it as the moment when the most pressing issues Northsiders have to be concerned about is whether artisanal cheese sold at the local gourmet food store was produced overseas with child labor, gasp, THE HORROR. 

When it comes to Northside (NoMi) neighborhood revitalization, I would like to think this blog, to a degree, has helped to...

...DEFINE the struggle for Northside neighborhood revitalization. 

But clearly, there are times when I get BUSY. There was a long period of time in Afghanistan, for example. Other times, it seems like I have all the time in the world to blog, like when I was trucking and I'd be stuck somewhere for the weekend with nothing to do but blog, do pushups and watch HBO as the sun sets on the rainy blacktop of the parking lot of some random hotel off an interstate highway exit. 

But neighborhood issues don't happen according to my schedule. 

This blog has had many a guest author in its history. Well, I think it's time to put out the call again. To put out the call VERY HARD and maybe even say, "I'll try to exercise some control, but I may be in the position of having to let things run themselves, sometimes."

When this blog post auto-publishes Sunday morning, I plan to be in church; contemplating the mysteries of whether baptism is properly for "the remission of sins" or if other mainline Protestant denominations may define it differently, and working my way through the first Chapter of Genesis, perhaps, where I am starting again once again. 

I have not hung up the blogging badge. I might NEVER hang it up. But I am looking, VERY HARD, for more guest authors who can do even HALF as well as Jordan North, Camden Canary, or the Hawthorne Hawkman when he was a guest author, before he went and did his own bloggy thing, and he does it well.

So here it is. If you haven't already seen it, here is the call I put out on North Vent and (oh, maybe) one other North Minneapolis Facebook forum that isn't so public. Well, by the time this publishes, maybe TWO...
------------

Who wants to be a guest author on the Johnny Northside blog? Instead of constantly griping about the impermanent and difficult-to-search, poorly archived nature of neighborhood Facebook forums versus the more permanent and easily searchable blogosphere, I've decided to DO SOMETHING about my issue.

I'm very pleased and amazed by the recent contributions of guest author Jordan North. I'm looking for MORE guest authors. Want to take your North Minneapolis issues to a different level, or at least a different place, than Facebook forums? Or maybe not a DIFFERENT place; why not write [t]here and write somewhere else, too? At least TWICE the impact for your issues! Want to pander to the search engines? Access 3,000 page views on a slow day, 5,000 on a better day, 21,000 when page views go THROUGH THE ROOF? Do you want the fun, excitement, and just a little bit of a thrill of DANGER of being part of THE ADVENTURES OF JOHNNY NORTHSIDE? Well, here's what you have to do! 

First of all, DO NOT be somebody who has hugged the thugs too much, knocked over my bowl of Cheerios, reveled in your inability to write in decent English, etc. You know who you are. You'll notice this invite ain't going out to the denizens of "NUT TALK." I'm just saying. So that's part one. Nobody who is on the "wrong side" of my issues is going to be a guest author on my blog, but my viewpoint is big enough to embrace views contrary to my own in minor ways; I may say preserve House X, another says demolish House X, there's plenty of room to disagree and still, in the aggregate, be on the same side and part of positive neighborhood revitalization versus "hold this place and keep it a slum at all costs for me and mine are incapable of living within the norms of polite society."

Secondly, well, I mentioned SOME ability to write. So there's that.

Thirdly, well, you can have a pen name, sure, but be prepared to have your identity outed at some point and then to have TOTAL STALKER FREAKS upset with you. Doesn't matter. What you write stays up. What goes up stays up and doesn't go down, no matter how alliances shift or people get nervous because, my word, somebody DISAGREES.

Fourth, there's little stylistic stuff. I reserve the right to tell you how to improve, how to add "page breaks," to clean up English a bit, to go and add a helpful link. In short, to be the owner and editor of the blog. On a good day, I am the best English teacher you ever had. On a bad day, I am a grammar Nazi viciously pointing out the difference between "looser" and "loser" in such a way you'll be scarred for life and NEVER forget. I mean well, but I am still capable of acting like your alcoholic father coming home and pouring five drinks after a tough day of teaching the unteachable.

IF you're up for the mission, like guest author Jordan North ("Jordan leads the way") then hit up my email at hoffjohnw@gmail.com. You will need a blogspot profile which will require an email account, preferably gmail.