The Jon Swift Memorial Roundup 2010

Just when we were beginning to get used to a blogosphere without Steve Gilliard in it (and how much fun would it have been to read his thoughts on Haley Barbour's fond remembrance of the White Citizens Councils), we lost another irreplaceable voice this year in the persona of Jon Swift, the nom de plume of critic and all-around wordsmith Al Weisel, who left us at the terrifyingly young age of 46.

One of our good blogbuddies, Batocchio of Vagabond Scholar, kindly offered to take up the mantle of one of Swift/Weisel's most generous outreaches -- his annual Blog Posts of the Year (by the bloggers themselves) feature.

I can't introduce this tradition any better than Batocchio does, so I won't:

The much missed Jon Swift/Al Weisel left behind some excellent satire, but was also a nice guy and a strong supporter of small blogs. Blogroll Amnesty Day (co-founded with skippy) is a celebration of small blogs that's still going strong, and coming up again the first weekend in February. Jon/Al also put together a roundup of the best blogs posts of the year, selected by the participating bloggers themselves. (Here's the 2007 and 2008 editions.) I wanted to revive that tradition, both as a tribute to Jon/Al and because it was something special in its own right.

If you're not familiar with Al Weisel's work as Jon Swift, his site features a "best of" list in the left column (scroll down). His journalism site is here. Meanwhile, Tom Watson and skippy compiled most of the many memorial posts written for him.

So make a cup of cocoa, put a few cookies on a place and go read. Enjoy.