a community without ken

It is tempting to call the blogging community a granfalloon.

You know the word. One of Kurt Vonnegut's cleverly-invented words for a group of people who affect a shared identity or purpose, but whose mutual association is meaningless. Princeton class of 1956, for example.

But the group of writers who periodically post their thoughts on blog pages are not a granfalloon. In a real sense, they are a community.

I had no idea blogs existed until I started researching the possibility of immigrating to another country for retirement. Once I settled on Mexico, I discovered about ten writers who regularly provided their readers with practical tips on living in the land of Octavio Paz. Early on, I had set my hopes on living in Pátzcuaro.

On the Road to Pátzcuaro became one of my favorites. The author, Ken Kushnir (or "Tancho" as we readers knew him), owned a house on a sizable piece of property just outside of Pátzcuaro. And, as the title says, it was on the same road as a house that interested me.

Ken grew up in San Francisco. He regaled us with his tales of a far more innocent time in Babylon-on-the-Bay. Trips to record stores. The helpful owner of an electronic supply store who taught him the intricacies of communication. And his eventual leap into television news and the owner of a radio communication business.

It is funny how some tales affect us for the rest of our lives. I recall him telling me that whenever he drove somewhere unfamiliar, he would scan the hills to spot communication towers and he would then use his in-bred skill to locate its sister tower. I now find myself doing the same thing -- without the in-bred skill, of course.

I never did buy that house on the road to Pátzcuaro. But I have driven into the mountains periodically to visit with fellow bloggers in Michoacán. Todd and Shannon. Jennifer. Felipe. Don Cuevas. Even though we tried to set up meetings, Ken and I never were able to make our schedules match.

And, now, we never will. Ken had not posted on his blog for over a year. I knew in writing to him that he had other concerns. We all stop blogging for a lot of reasons.

Then the email came. It was not a surprise. Jennifer informed me he had died earlier in the month.

Blogs are funny things. When I started reading them around 2007, they were new and interesting. But, like everything else in life, they change.

With the exception of a handful, the blogs I read now did not exist ten years ago. Some writers get bored. Some die. Some simply move on. Others switch to other social media. Since I have started posting my essays on Facebook, almost all of the comments are posted there. It has changed the tenor of the comments discussion.

Even with all of those changes, Ken kept regaling us with stories of his youth and tales of running a forested ranch in the hills above Pátzcuaro. I will miss him. We will miss him.

Because we are a community.