Justin is back
Justin Hall is probably the inventor of weblog as we know it. He started his quirky, candid Links from Underground in 1994, from a dorm room in Willets Hall at Swarthmore. (I spent two years in Willets at a much earlier date. Ted Nelson invented 'hypertext' in Wharton, though naturally he moved to Mary Lyons as an upper-classman).
Justin is now in Japan, and after a few lean years his Web journal is really hitting its stride. Hall has become newly reflective, he's grown considerably as a writer, and his disarming (and alarming) frankness is now tempered by the ability to see himself as an outsider.
Yesterday nearby Yuzawa was lit up with bright lights and fireworks above the artfully crafted houses and dogs made of snow. It was a rural Japanese festival to honor the snow gods.