Well, the erstwhile binary elves of Netroots Nation in Second Life have kicked it into overdrive to make sure that Netroots Island, home of most of the venues for the in-world component of Netroots Nation, is properly gussied up for the impending festivities.

And I'm here to report that their efforts have paid off, in spades.  The place looks absolutely fantastic.

They don't have Lower Foldistan in Second Life...yet.  So let's go there together now....

A nonpartisan (and, at least theoretically, apolitical) event, by request.

My essay in Tuesday night's Top Comments:  Little Katrinas was a brief sketch of Shannon County, South Dakota, which is part of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, home of the Oglala Lakota Nation.  To recap:  Shannon County is frequently the poorest county in the nation, and is currently the second poorest, and is still in many ways recovering from the impact of a 1999 series of tornadoes.

I also mentioned Loneman School in Oglala, where Nikki Pipe On Head estimates as many as half of their students qualify as homeless due to the dilapidated state of their homes.

In that diary and comments, I hinted at the topic for tonight, the efforts of one group of South Dakotans (and friends from around the country) to make a difference for Loneman School:  the simple, but ever-worthwhile book drive.

Below the fold there's more, just like it says on the tin.

We're so accustomed to brief frenzies of wall-to-wall national media coverage of all of the little Katrinas that happen around us from year to year--tornadoes, flash floods, bridge collapses, all the usual suspects--that we forget to notice, I think, whether we're told, later on, what ever became of all those miniature 9th Wards in small towns and forgotten rural corners.

Places like Shannon County, South Dakota.

More on this, and nifty things said today by Kossacks, in the Land Below the Fold.

As recently as yesterday, I was still casting around for the right topic to write about tonight for TC.  I had already explored my most recent online obsession, Second Life, in TC last week, and my follow-up to va dare's excellent TC diary on Appalachian racism wasn't quite whipped into shape for prime time yet.

Then last night I read GoogleBonhoeffer's An Obama Congregation Near You, and was inspired to continue that thoughtful conversation here, by briefly telling the story of my experience over the last 11 years as a member of a small-town UCC congregation.

If you're not in the mood for a bit of relatively innocuous church talk, jump further down and partake in the Top Commenty goodness; if you're game, follow me on down below the fold.

How strange that my first diary here turns out to be a Top Comments diary, given the amount of writing I've been doing here in recent weeks.  But I was fortunate enough to strike up conversations with the delightful TC crew in va dare's brilliant TC essay on Racism in Appalachia and other places, and was thrilled at the invitation.

Of course, they've had a devil of a time getting emails to me about mentoring me through the process the first time, because I've taken a short unplanned break from dKos by immersing myself in Second Life.  Anyone who's a SL regular will tell you about their first week or so being a rather obsessive and sleep-deprived time.

Follow me into Lower Foldistan for more.