House Keeping

Dear Friends,

In my most cordial way, I commend me to you.

I would like to point out a few new items on A Draught of Vintage, and I would like to speak about the direction in which I am going to be taking the blog and how the blog has been used up to this point.

You may have perhaps noticed a few new items on the blog recently. The most obvious is the background and Masthead image. I have put up a small blurb about them at the bottom of the blog, and I encourage y'all to take a look at that for more information.

You may also have noticed that this blog has been nominated for the "Bloggers Choice Awards" both for 'Best Blog about Stuff' and 'Best Blog Design.' If you are so inclined, you may vote for this blog; however, it is not important to me whether or not you do - I just thought it might be something fun to do. If you want to vote, simply click on the badge saying what the nomination is. This will link you to the BCA website on which you may sign up and vote.

Finally, I would like to highlight a link to The Saint Nicholas Guild, which is in the "Worthier Blogs" section. The Saint Nicholas Guild is a group of St. Gregory's Academy Alumni who work together to secure both the good of the alumni and the Alma Mater from which they came. If you are interested in donating money to St. Gregory's Academy, you may use this link to do so. I must say, this year St. Greg's has experienced (more than any other year) a financial crisis. They were forced to raise tuition, which has threatened a few boys with the prospect of not being able to return to finish up their senior year. All the money goes to deserving students to offset tuition costs for deserving families. If you can spare a few bucks, I'm sure that the school would greatly appreciate it, and they will also pray for you (I remember that we prayed daily for our benefactors at St. Greg's).

Now I would like to speak to the direction in which I would like to take this blog. Up to now A Draught of Vintage hasn't had any real concrete identity. I am interested in creating something of a purpose within an identity. I have not yet conceived completely what that will be like, but I am going to begin to forge that over the next few weeks. I do know that I want to keep a number of things which have been done well.

Which brings me to my final point. What has been contributed? I am, more than anyone to be held accountable for this. I have a tendency to post a lot of goofy things: part of that is my personality, but I am at this time going to say that I want to strive to post more rigorous, intellectual, interesting, broader-reaching things. I do not want to stamp out our personal idiosyncratic dialogue amongst ourselves, but rather to elevate the conversation. I must commend a few that have done that already.

The first to come to my mind is Mr. Horan, who has posted humorous, thoughtful, and interesting pieces.

Mr. Kane has also contributed a number of thought provoking and intellectually rigorous posts.

Mr. Mahan's recent contribution of photos from Morocco were absolutely the kind of thing that I would like to see more of.

There are many more that could be named for their excellence, but you get the idea. The reason behind my intention to elevate the conversation and take it in a different direction is twofold: one, that I have been reflecting on Facebook a lot and I wish to distinguish this as a place different from Facebook; second, by elevating the conversation we can strive to be less idle and more fruitful in speech and in the quality of what we share, which is what Plato asks for in the Meno when he exhorts Meno to be keen on the search for knowledge--knowledge of the way that reality is. Furthermore, in my reflection on the nature of Facebook I decided that while Facebook is not inherently evil, it seeks to create the illusion of meaningful and true relationships, although it is through an artificial medium (I believe, however that the Facebook and Myspace culture does not actually build lasting or true friendships--perhaps at best it allows those friendships already in place to persist). Therefore, A Draught of Vintage, seeks to recognize that it is, by nature, an artificial medium through which correspondence may be had between pre-existing true friends. By elevating the conversation and understanding that this blog is merely a tool for communication, I believe that we can still have meaningful interaction (as in letter writing), and moreover, that our friendship may be preserved, and indeed strengthened.

Farewell, my comrades,

Peter Bloch