It's time for me to have a blog of my own. This tribe.net blog has become a really useful tool for me...it gives me an easy outlet to test my ideas and hone my writing skills, and I am so glad that you can all read my words and give feedback and comments. I really admire tribe.net's interface, it is easy to use and elegant. Plus I really love to read your blogs, to have this ongoing window to your worlds. Helps me feel truly connected, to a community not of strangers but of friends.

But as tribe becomes less stable I realize that like all things, it too will pass...and I need to preserve my work here, for future fodder and publication in other media. Also, I want my words and images to reach a wider audience of folks who don't necessarily feel drawn to tribe.net. I think they could subscribe to my blog, and/or set up RSS feed to it.

So I'm working on cutting and pasting it all out of here for safekeeping, and am ready to launch an independent blog of my own. Any advice? I've been recommended to Wordpress because it is open-source, but there are so many other blog sites. Or I could set something up under my own domain, www.emeraldcity.bc.ca. What do you think?

Don't worry, btw, I'm not abandoning dear tribe.net -- it seems to have weathered a fierce storm of technical woe and now has only a few eccentric glitches. My intent would be to feed my new blog to Tribe, so I can still stay connected. Any thoughts on that, do any of you do that too?