As part of blogging for the DeStefano blog, I’ve been building up my list of Connecticut based Blogs in Bloglines. One site I’ve been watching is The New Haven Independent.

Today, I read Gina Coggio’s latest posting. Please, go out and read it. She is a teacher who has students writing vignettes about their lives. One started off, “My father chose the drug life over his children… He was a crack head whether I wanted to believe it or not and as the days went by I seen more in him. He’d begin to take things that belonged to us to get money for what they call a habit, but I call it evil. It took the loving sweet man out of my father and turned him into a wild fiend… Every time I saw him I seen death. His pale white face, crusty lips, ragged clothes and his body sank in. He was a skeleton.”

It made me stop and think. It sort of puts all the issues of political campaigns and webpage formatting into perspective. I hope that Gina’s students continue to find their voices, perhaps even have a blog, and more people hear what they have to say.

Later in the day, I was looking at expanding my list of Connecticut blogs. I went to Xanga and started looking for sites in Stamford. Just about all of the Xanga users are under 18. A lot of them are the age of the students writing for Gina. I started reading through some of the entries. What are people in Xanga writing about? “boyss, shopping, cheering for football team!!”, “what are you WEARING tomorrow sice we dont have to wear uniforms !?”, “iming, going shopping,” “me and sammy were cracking up..thinking about how Bob originated, in which he killed peter with a rubber hammer in the process. LMAO.” ” Isaiah came on the bus again so the bus was also ok played ass tag and Tony wuz funn. So board rite now. Goin to dadz a lil l8r. I am reelie reelie bored some one call me!”

Yesterday, I wrote a blog entry about Mayor DeStefano’s effort to bring universal access to an affordable wireless network in New Haven. Will it help Gina’s students find a voice and a better life? Will it result in new Xanga users stressing about their next trip to Abercrombie and Fitch? Will it help bridge a digital divide which seems to be great than just whether or not someone has Internet access?