A carnival of comments

Brian Downey writes, "Email is no way to respond to a blog post. Please enable comments."

Well then, here we are. A post that contains within itself a comments feature. A virtual comments feature inside the post itself. A win-win for all.

Brian points out that a certain history carnival mentioned here does indeed have exactly one link to an ACW blog, Civil War Women. Sorry, Maggie.

He further notes that carnival listings are a function of reader participation:

Carnivals are accumulated from posts submitted by excited readers or (more frequently) the bloggers themselves promoting their own work. Although the host of the Carnival may seek other recent MilHist posts on his/her own, most only use the ones submitted. That may well be the case in the latest instance on Armchair General.

The answer to the lack of CW representation--if that is a problem--is for more CW bloggers and readers to nominate posts to the Carnival host.

I think we Civil War blogreaders and writers are an insular bunch. It's hardly surprising that a carnival would pass us by.

The deeper matter is whether the "carnival" is a failed, boring blog activity held over from the old days (like tagging other bloggers) out of some misguided sentimentality. This may be a good way to find blogs you are interested at the first visit. After that? It becomes a writing exercise in which the host has to connect disparate nominations in a single thread of narrative and the reader must be satisfied with the entertainment value of the host's tying together of odds and ends.

Perhaps I'm too jaded, but hold your carnival once per year. That should be enough.

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Richard Williams writes, about Stanford's John Hennessy associating D.K. Goodwin with risk taking,

I'd like to ask Mr. Hennessy if he considers plagiarism an "intellectual risk"?

The cute aspect to this story is that with Doris's agency booking over $40,000 per speech, Hennessy must have felt he could save Stanford some bucks by delivering her standard Lincoln talk himself (paraphrased, and with attribution).

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Well there we go, two comments, anyway. Not much of a carnival of comments but it should hold us for awhile.