The Power of Links

I loved you, Aaron, and I still love you.

Your negro,
George

I have to admit that when I read George's entry about missing Aaron, author of Uppity-Negro.com, I thought to myself "What's up with all these links to blogs after their authors take breaks? What the heck does that mean? Bloggers are always taking breaks like web sites are constantly under construction. It's meaningless."

After making such a jerk judgement I clicked through to Jen Trance's Diary Land page (which I had never visited before) and realized Aaron wasn't taking a break, but was dead. I'm sad, even though I never met or even exchanged correspondence him. I did feel connected to him though, through randomWalks and through other friends of mine who were friends with him.

Jen's recent archives give us a hint of what was going through her head:

My friend is still missing, and really, it's more than likely no big deal, or at least I tell myself that every forty seconds. A grown man can go places and do things without consulting other people, and perhaps I am being a stereotypically nervous Jewish mama, and maybe I worry too much.

It's been days, though. Several days now. A police report has been filed, many ponderings have been pondered, theories have been fabricated, the friend in question has been psychoanalyzed, and people have freaked out in varying degrees.

It sort of makes me feel silly because sometimes when I don't update this page or answer my phone I get messages and comments like "OMG JEN RU DEAD" and "Oh shit, Girl's cheese done finally slipped offa her cracker", and "WTF JEN RU OK?". I always shake my head a little, but I know that people worry because admittedly I am not the most stable person, plus there's that whole brain disease thing.

Adriana often chides me for being a lazy reader, because "you don't fully experience a blog post unless you read all of the links," which I rarely do. Now I understand. George, thanks for the post.

In the continuation, I've collected a few references to Aaron and Uppity Negro from randomWalks.

"Not directly experiencing racism is, in fact, directly experiencing racism."

August 16, 2002.

And now, at the risk of being totally obsessive, I would like to say that Aaron seems to do an awesome job of including the voices of men and women in both his blog and his comments. I don't know how he does it...but his blog is one of the few male blogs that I feel totally comfortable commenting on and frequenting.

Sep. 16 2002 - Dru, on the question of making weblogs a comfortable space for women.

The Cherokee woman belongs to a group called United Native America. They want to replace Columbus Day with Native American Day.

October 15, 2002.

Although it might be a temporary revival, mr. hawkins is back posting at uppity-negro.com. I hope he figures out a way to keep posting.

April 29, 2003.

Comments

[adam]

Oh, no.

Thanks for posting this.

[David Jacobs]

One of Aaron's last posts was about the Deadline Broadcast, which I helped with (a little bit). His sister has posted a a brief note on the site, and you can get funeral information from her as well.

[David Jacobs]

In which Aaron threatens to volunteer for Alan Keyes: Mind you, I need a better talking point than, "Obama is too liberal for the people of our state, unlike the guy who's never lived here."