Riverbend - or: Thinking about people you don't know

The thought occured to me while I was updating my links - regular readers (Are there any? Leave a hello if so, would you? I've changed commenting settings so that can be done now.) may have noticed that from just two links on the left is has grown to a longer list - that the world wide web has changed a lot of things, among others, information flow - for better, in my opinion, with greater freedom of information - but also how we think of people:

I don't know anybody personally in Iraq, or even anyone from there, to the best of my knowledge, but I have been concerned most of the summer that Riverbend has rarely blogged and wondered if she was okay. I'd never venture to bother her personally through email she can probably do without, but, maybe because I am a woman myself, I have been wondering how her life had changed . . .

In any case, it's good to see she's back, and I hope she'll be writing more again.