Drudge makes Oak Park's "War on Veggies" go viral

I posted the following to unfunnybusiness on JournalFen, where it is awaiting moderation. It was adapted from Oak Park's "War on Veggies" goes viral on Crazy Eddie's Motie News. I'll be posting a different version on ontd_political on both Dreamwidth and LiveJournal shortly.

Here's a story I've been following on my blog since July 30th, when I posted Oak Park Woman plants vegetable garden; city objects. In it, I summarized the situation.

the Bass family of Oak Park lost their lawn when the sewer line running under their front yard was replaced. Instead of replacing it with a lawn, they replaced it with a vegetable garden. Their neighbors complained to the city and the city has cited them with a criminal violation of city ordinances. The Basses and the city have a court date on July 26th.
...
Mrs. Bass posted a more complete summary after I wrote (and she read) the above. Please read it.

( As someone familiar with the area, I'm not surprised this is happening in Oak Park. )

Beginning Friday, July 8th, the number of hits on that post began climbing dramatically. When I investigated how that happened, I found out that Drudge happened.

A couple of days ago, Matt Drudge placed a link to The Agitator's post on his front page with the headline "Woman faces 93 days in jail for planting garden in front yard..." Since then, the story has spread like wildfire. ( Here is a list of the media sources I've found covering this story with links to their articles. )

As for how Drudge was indirectly responsible, he drove traffic to The Agitator, which drove traffic Julie Bass's blog OakParkHateVeggies, where she has a link to my post. Even from three steps away, Drudge increased my readership. Behold the power of Drudge.

In case you're wondering what you can do about it, there is a petition. 4,400 people signed it by Friday, less than a week after it was put up.

Crazy Eddie's Motie News: Weekly Roundup for July 3rd through 9th, 2011

It was another busy week on Crazy Eddie's Motie News, as I posted eleven entries to this blog during a seven-day period again. In fact, it was so busy that I didn't get around to posting the weekly roundup until now, Sunday evening. Going on a field trip with my Geology classes all day Saturday and then going to a colleague's pool party Saturday night didn't help. As I've written before, I can't be all doom all the time. Good thing I was able to program my Saturday posts in advance.

As usual, I started off the week with part one of a four-part sustainability news linkspam, Sustainability news from Michigan's research universities for the week ending July 2, 2011. That series continued with part two, Sustainability news from midwestern research universities for the week ending July 2, 2011. As with last week's part three, I posted this week's part three, Sustainability news from national commercial sources for the week ending July 2, 2011, last. In fact, I didn't get around to doing it until Friday. Don't worry, that won't happen this week, for no other reason that I won't have that kind of part three this week. Like last week, there was a themed part four posted before part three, An update on The CoDominion planning for sustainability. I don't think they're will be one of those, either. If there is, it will be news from local sources, as I was having way too much fun last week doing other things on this blog to actually post about them.



Speaking of "having way too much fun last week doing other things on this blog," I got into the "swim" of this month's NaBloPoMo theme by posting about sustainability bloggers swimming against the flow. That series started last week with Woman in Oak Park swims against the stream, plus Nablopomo for July, but I didn't return to Julie Bass until the end of the week. Instead, I decided to have some fun with James Howard Kunstler first.

( Recap of the Swim entries I crossposted to Dreamwidth and LiveJournal behind the cut. )

That concludes last week on Crazy Eddie's Motie News. Stay tuned for more "swim" posts as well as the sustainability news linkspams.