An August Personage

I liked to read books as a kid, but I didn't like school. I was dutiful, I studied, I did what I was supposed to do and got the grades. But I preferred horseback riding, building forts and wading barefoot in the river--things there wasn't time or weather for during the Illinois school year.

Even now, years out of school, for me, August signals the end of fun, the beginning of work.

This year August also signals the end of The Sky is Big in Pasadena. Ben Wideman began his blog in September of 2007 and "Can8ian Ben" has been chronicling Pasadena life ever since. He's a long distance cyclist, a lover of food, baseball and beer, a husband and father, a seminary student and soon-to-be-pastor, and that rare man who can hear all ideas with an open mind.

This month Ben says goodbye to his adopted home with daily tributes to Pasadena in the form of two lists: the things he'll miss (a long list) and the things he won't (shorter). The list of Pasadenans who will miss Ben is longer than a baseball field, longer than Ben can ride a bike in a whole day, longer than the distance between here and Harleysville, Pennsylvania--and I'm on it.

Theme Day: Numbers

The City Daily Photo blog family has a theme day the first of each month. May's theme is numbers.

The man in the background of this photo stands at the top of the freeway offramp at Lake Avenue. He's holding a handmade sign that says "Homeless Vet. Hungry. Please help." If I had a sign it might say, "Our dependency on fossil fuels is choking our economy." But that's not very original. I stole it from this article.

Click here to view thumbnails for all 181 blogs participating in this month's theme day. Go on, click on one you've never visited before! Have an adventure! I'm going to click on a bunch of them, and after that I'm going to go buy a bike.