Five Good Blogs To Start September

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I really recommend an August recess.

Congress does it, the whole country of France does it, and this year Deliberations tried it.

I can now confirm: August — especially in Wisconsin when the heavy rains of June are only now drying and the chill of October looms — is no time to do any work that can honestly be called optional. Milwaukee's August means State Fair, and Irish Fest (the world's largest Irish music festival is right here), and my birthday, and Harley-Davidson's 105th anniversary party last weekend. (Motorcycles were everywhere. Everywhere.) It just didn't seem right to slog at a blog.

But it's September now, with all its backpacks and crossing guards and bulb catalogs, and I'm back to the keyboard. I thought reentry might be challenging, but luckily, Colin Samuels of Infamy or Praise chose today to tag me with a the perfect meme, thought up by Blawg Review's mysterious Ed. I'm supposed to post five links to five great blogs that are not law blogs.

Well heck, for the last month, I've been a specialist in not-law-blogging, and thus in not-law-blogs. Here are five easy favorites:

• I shouldn't get to count Presentation Zen, since it's so squarely on topic for anyone who presents and persuades, but it's not a law blog, and I don't get enough chances to recommend it.
• Like Ed., I read Zen Habits; I can't be reminded too often of simple life truths like those. (And it hardly bothers me at all that our blogs started almost simultaneously and now Leo is a full-time blogger with a gabazillion subscribers. He's better at it, after all.)
• Dick Cavett's blog at the New York Times should be declared a national treasure.
• Mark Bittman's food blog Bitten, also at the NYT, makes it hard to see why an August recess should have to end.
• I've said this often, but I love the drawings Elizabeth Perry posts each day at woolgathering, and the life they let me glimpse.

Now, whom to tag? Scott Greenfield, of course — anything that might make him lose count of how often I post. And David Giacalone, Mark Bennett, Jon Katz, and Karl Keys, because I should be reading more of what they're reading.