This is one of the things that I now struggle with as editor of the Newburyport Blog.

When I first started out, as I said in the earlier post, it was to give progressives a “voice” in what looked like would be a conservative mayoral term.

I was naïve. Ok, I admit it. Well, maybe even really, really naïve.

I thought that progressives would be basically good folks and it could be one big happy progressive, yippee family. (Well, you see what I mean about naïve.)

And what I’ve found is, of course, we all have our peccadilloes (such a revelation). And of course, progressives have theirs (and of course, this blogger has plenty of her own.)

And what I have found is that I may be very fond of people whose take on the issues concerning Newburyport, MA I might disagree on. Which is all fine and dandy, until it comes to voting time. Or for that matter, blogging time.

And then I find myself in this dilemma. How to I vote or blog on the progressives whose peccadilloes end up bothering me? Is it strictly, issues, issues, issues? Or is it issues with some kind of combination of human character?

Local politics is far more nuanced than I ever expected.

What started out as a black and white perspective, has now become a whole lot more grey. And since one of my favorite phrases is “go for the grey,” I imagine that I could be at ease with that, right?

But the shades for grey, when it comes to blogging, put me on yet another steep blogging learning curve.

However, uncertainty is Ok. And where I was quite certain I knew the direction the Newburyport Blog would take back in January 2006, I’m not certain at all where it would go in July 2007.

I anticipate wandering down this odd path, which I never expected could possibly exist, with curiosity and just a little apprehension. And I hope that the readers of the Newburyport blog would continue to join me in my blogging travelmania, and we might see where in the world this path might go.

Mary Eaton
Newburyport