For Tommywonk…. Post 1850

Thursday, August 11, 2011…… Tommywonk,  posted his last post… number 1850.

His six years,  five months, nineteen days, … started out with this……

"Conceptualized Art" by Tommywonk.

That length of time, is a remarkable achievement.  One that took, I’m sure,  a big bite out of his life… as well as, offered us glimpses into the mechanizations that were constantly going on, in his…

(We always had a heads up when the Arden Fair was coming, as well as the Philadelphia Folk Festival…. )

Not to mention the giant collective gasp breathed by all of us, when a van didn’t see him bicycling across the exit ramp where 52 E crosses 141 S….

But last August when he hung his posts up for the last time, I a relative latecomer, had a little over 200 posts to go in order to catch up to him….

Today,  with this post, I have reached his milestone.

Since Tommy has passed on/off Delaware’s blog scene, we have lost the scientific approach he provided, in his writing style, his WDEL on-air conversations, and any testamony he gave live, if you were ever lucky enough to hear him….  As a group, those persisting in this local blogging enterprises,  tend to be more emotional spun than logically woven.  Tommy provided a balance for all of us to be compared, and tended to keep the whole blog-dom neighborhood on an even keel….

Tommywonk was invaluable in providing information about what could have been Delaware’s crowning achievement:  an offshore wind farm that would have dropped rural Delaware’s electrical rates below the floor.

When the flow of  information became monopolized by both Delmarva Power and the “Four Horsemen” who controlled the General Assembly during the power vacuum of the Minner adminstration,  Tommy dug, and provided an  outlet that could not be silenced, allowing beneficial factual  information to get out… and into the right hands.

Tommy style was one of “chuckling”  …  His sense of humor was mild but quick, and anyone who pompously had stuck out their neck to speak an energy- untruth, soon had the floor cut out from under him in such a way, the the audience or readers, were STILL chuckling everytime they saw that person in the flesh….  Instead of being forced to listen to screaming micro-brains who had no idea of what they were saying… Tommy’s readers were usually rolling on the floor, laughing hysterically, and those who were the brunt of his epistles, didn’t dare show their faces again in the General Assembly, …. for months…

Looking over Tommy’s works one can see its growth and development.  The early posts were fresh items about random events, that were apolitical in nature.  Sort of along the spirit of Mike’s Musing now…

Then a political bent began to surface and a community was formed…  The Colossus of Rhody, First State Politics, Pencader Days, carried the message from the right.  These blogs were at one time, run by real people.   You knew their heartaches, their musical tastes, their huge events taken place in their lives.  In the early days, there was a lot of junk…  which if not important in the grand scale of things today, was a hell of a lot more interesting….

Back then, if we found something that cracked us up, we shared it. We never had a second thought.   EMI’s copyright laws were not even considered back then.

In between the Dem’s and Repug’s,  we had the Delaware Libertarian, featuring Steve Newton &  Tyler Nixon, who used to roll us on the floor laughing.  And Tyler Nixon, way back when he ran as a Republican against McDowell in 06, had ALL the support of blogdom, both the right and left…  (no one liked McDowell….)  Mike’s  Down With Absolutes also fit in here within the political spectrum…

And then, we had Delaware Liberal, which in the beginning was run by one man, who still shows himself there (congratulations old man)…  But he had moments where he left blogging forever, to return, then leave again, and return…  So the Delaware Liberal of today, has gone through some metamorphisms….  Most of the little blogs melded into Delaware Liberal, before siphoning off again.  (Donviti comes to mind).  The old days featured daily contributions by the likes of Pandora, Cassandra, Liberal Geek, others, and Jason.  It was later that Deldem and El Som moved over bringing with them some serious analytical skills; more have joined since.  Also we had Dana’s Delaware Watch, and Nancy’s Delaware Way…. and from the south….  Mike’s Musing, from Lewes town…. .

Mike’s Musing gave us lots of pictures from his Flicker account.  In a way, Mike was a lot like Tommywonk.  Especially when it came to numbers..  We were often treated to pics of odometers at various point in his Prius’s history.

But the life that surged throught the old blog world was awesome.  On final General Assembly night, all the bloggers would descend on Legislative Hall, and Dave Burris and Dana Garrett would be seen working in cahoots…  It was a beautiful thing to witness, and was probably the single one thing that broke the ground and later eased FOIA’s entrance into the General Assembly.  If two bloggers on opposite extremes could collaborate with inside info from each caucus,  why was so much fuss being made to keep everything secret?    It took the passing of some old guards to finally clear the way for open government to surface in Delaware, but eventually, the old guard parted, and that did come about.

Today, all those blogs still standing all have a tone of a more serious nature.  They are less spontaneous and fun, primarily because they are a lot less personable.

But I would guess, that is to be expected over the course of a long haul….  At first the journey is fresh, but after enough time slips past,  one’s focus narrows to just getting to that destination…..

Tommy fought that to the end.  He never tunneled into the mountain.   His posts were always a breath of fresh air, of originality, of  true life in printed form…..

Alas, things are not the same without him….  He was the seed of many, many of my writings.

I hope he is doing well in his new life…..   Hmmm,  he must be getting up there by now… I wonder … if he still rides,  bicycles?