J-LAND JOURNEYS, ENTRIES I CHERISH

Señor Scalzi's challenge for this weekend [Weekend Assignment #19: Tell us about an entry in someone else's AOL Journal or blog that really left an impression on you in the last year. Why does it stand out for you? Include a link to it within your entry (come back here and link to your entry in the comments)] is only a challenge because there are so many wonderful entries out there in J-land.  I doubt that I can limit myself to one.  But I will start with this one: Bateaux Parisiens, from Paul's journal Trickle of Semi-consciousness.  If you don't know this journal, check it out at once.  This guy is an English teacher, who writes elegantly and literately about all manner of things:  family,  travels, music, boats, fishing, life.  I'll be back with a few more journal entries from journals I love.

A little later:  another Boston buddy's journal, Ocean Simplicity, is always worth reading.  But these three entries, about the illness and death of her cat, Spike, deeply touched my heart.  They start here, and continue here and here.  And in the next two entries you'll find pictures of Spike himself.  I love these entries because I love my cats so much, still grieve over cats I've lost, and know my darling Molly is aging.  We love our animals with a fierce devoted love, as the Weekend Assignment of several weeks ago showed quite plainly.

The next journal is Cynthia's, Sorting the Pieces.  There is no way I could choose one entry from this one.  Almost everything she writes makes me think, ponder, ruminate, consider.  She is deeply spiritual, Christian yes, but in a wide-open truly loving way - what I consider to be the true path of Christianity.  She is already well-known in J-Land, but if you don't know her yet, go get acquainted.

This one is a photo journal, and an already-famous one, From Every Angle - but a place that I go for spiritual nourishment.  Kat sees the world with such a loving eye - nature is her constant subject, but she photographs everything, even abandoned quarry machinery, with such an eye to the beauty lurking there, that I absolutely cannot choose one entry.  I haven't had much time for visiting journals lately, and I need to go sooth my soul by a long dip in this one.

So, okay, this is ridiculous.  I could go on and on.  There are so many great journals on AOL, so many terrific blogs on the Internet.  John, this is like the Triathlon of weekend assignments.  I'm going to leave it at this, knowing that others will be listing the ones I haven't.  What an embarrassment of riches!