Say It Ain't So, Sponge!

Whenever I checked my Bloglines feeds, Minvolved was the first place I looked. This morning, I may have clicked in for the last time:

We have always done blogging as a hobby. Each morning, we get up at 5:00, blog until the kids get up and then call it a day on the internets. We have always been pretty aware of the fact that we’re a made-up sponge so we try not to take ourselves too seriously.

That being said, there have always been one or two lines in the sand that, if crossed, would cause us to quit blogging. One of them has just been crossed. We won’t go into detail, but when the sponge family gets brought into the mix by an email or two, we’re done. We have plenty of other ways to get our kicks out and this is no longer one of them.

There were a lot of reasons Minvolved was a worthy blog, and more reasons to expect it to get even better. Creator Sponge brought an interesting mix of perspectives to his progressive political views: Veteran, family man, Okie immigrant, music and poster art lover, comedian and watchdog. He was also broadly read, prolific and generous, capable of a pithy shot one time and well-documented extended critique the next.

Now, we see his principles and discipline at play in the decision to suspend what he calls a hobby, but what looked to this reader more like a calling.

Minvolved had recently sharpened its focus to Minnesota and launched a new publishing platform and format. It had reined in some of Sponge's previous acerbity without losing its backbone. It was more than another progressive voice, it was becoming a community resource.

His decision is totally his business and we should leave it be, but what happens to Minvolved concerns all of us. If we just wave good-bye, we'll have lost more than a blog.