Rather than post three or so articles of interest from the past week, today I’m posting the link to the Jon Swift Memorial Roundup 2014 and let you see what some of the best bloggers out there chose for their best posts of the year.

Welcome to a tradition started by the late Jon Swift/Al Weisel, who left behind some excellent satire, but was also a nice guy and a strong supporter of small blogs. As Lance Mannion put it in 2010:

Our late and much missed comrade in blogging, journalist and writer Al Weisel, revered and admired across the bandwidth as the “reasonable conservative” blogger Modest Jon Swift, was a champion of the lesser known and little known bloggers working tirelessly in the shadows . . .One of his projects was a year-end Blogger Round Up. Al/Jon asked bloggers far and wide, famous and in- and not at all, to submit a link to their favorite post of the past twelve months and then he sorted, compiled, blurbed, hyperlinked and posted them on his popular blog. His round-ups presented readers with a huge banquet table of links to work many of has had missed the first time around and brought those bloggers traffic and, more important, new readers they wouldn’t have otherwise enjoyed.

It may not have been the most heroic endeavor, but it was kind and generous and a lot of us owe our continued presence in the blogging biz to Al.

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As in Jon/Al’s 2008 roundup, submissions are listed roughly in the order they were received. As he wrote in that post:

I’m sure you’ll be interested in seeing what your favorite bloggers think were their best posts of the year, but be sure to also visit some blogs you’ve never read before and leave a nice comment if you like what you see or, if you must, a polite demurral if you do not.

There are many fine examples of good writing to be found in the Roundup by bloggers you will recognize, and many you will not.  I encourage you to browse through the selections.  You will find my entry in there as well.

Doonesbury — No joke.