Welcome to “eine festschrift fur j’accuse”. You’ll be getting a post an hour from now on. We begin with the ladies. And it’s not a causal coincidence that we start with Ms Maltagirl – the lady who can claim to be Malta’s longest running blogger tracing her blog beginnings waaaay back in 2001. J’accuse has fond memories of her interventions in the Blogosfera MMV (as I like to call it). Most of all we appreciated her “Karnival tal-Bloggijiet” complete with prizes and nominations. Especially when we won. Thank you Maltagirl… here goes.
When Jacques invited me to participate in his Festschrift, I was honoured.
Right until I realised that the point of a Festschrift is to honour one person, and the idea of a person inviting others to honour himself seems rather presumptuous.
However, in typical J’Accuse style, he managed to pull off something that, attempted by anyone else, would seem like a self-important stunt. Coming from Jacques, though, it inspires a roll of the eyes, a chuckle, and enough motivation to give up two a few several hours of scarce leisure time in order to write this post.
In its heyday, back in 2005/6, the Maltese Blogosfera featured some very interesting people. It was the first time most of us had ever had the opportunity to say something and have it published, unedited, in a place where anyone could read it, and it was exhilarating to be able to write whatever you wanted.
Some people wrote about their passions, for example the linguist who used multiple languages, including Maltese, in the same poem. Some, like myself, used blogging to tell stories about everyday life, like the time I was at a church dinner and found out I had just eaten nuts I’m allergic to, and shouted a rude word in front of half the congregation. Others, like Jacques, were a little more highbrow and blogged their political opinions and commented on current affairs.
Jacques was an integral part of our little community of Maltese bloggers, and so highly was he esteemed that in the 2nd Annual Maltese Blog Awards in 2006, he was nominated in the “Pundit” catagory, and indeed won it.
One of best the memories that I have about Jacques and his early blogging career was the discussion that raged up and down the Maltese blogosphere after he coined the term “wankellectual“, and I have to say that I loved this new word because it is a remarkably succinct and satisfying way of describing… that sort of a person.
Jacques’ opinions, yes, were always strong. He was never wishy-washy about issues.
His saving grace was that, even while being offensive, and expressing the above-mentioned strong opinions that you did not necessarily agree with, he was never condescending and was not shy of poking fun at himself.
The fact that he did not hesitate to apply the term “wankellectual” to himself meant that even his detractors would at least listen to what he had to say.
As a female engineering student, and later engineer, I was mostly interested in musical theatre lessons, going out with my boyfriend (who I then married), enjoying books, films and plays, and blogging the mishaps that seemed to befall me with regularity.
Thanks to Jacques, though, and other Maltese bloggers such as Fausto Majistral, for the first time in my life I was reading insightful pieces about politics. For the first time, politics was more than obnoxious people shouting loudly at each other on television or pontificating in the press.
Politics started to be *interesting*.
So I definitely owe that to Jacques, and his engaging style kept me reading long after I would have otherwise lost interest in the topic.
To conclude, I would like to share with you some classic Jacques from way back when.
The best way to do this would be to point you to one of the Karnival tal-Bloggijiet posts that I initiated back in June of 2005, and which ran for thirteen editions before dying a natural death a year later.
The premise behind the Karnival is that any and all Maltese bloggers (a loose phrase that includes all bloggers connected to Malta in any way) were invited to submit links to their own blogs in order to showcase their writing. This was a great way for us to discover blogs that we may not have previously known about, and read interesting posts that we might have otherwise missed.
The Karnival was quite successful while it lasted, and I personally enjoyed it enormously because we invariably wound up with an incredibly eclectic mix of topics. Mundane, sublime, insightful, offensive, the Maltese bloggers blogged it all.
At first I thought to submit the 4th edition of the Karnival for Jacques’ Festschrift, because it featured him twice, in English and Maltese, plus a bonus submission by Gakbu Sfigho, one of my favourite bloggers.
However I then realised that the 9th edition features Jacques no less than seven, count them, seven times, plus there’s still one from Gakbu, AND one of Jacques’ posts in this Karnival even references the origins of that fateful term, “wankellectual“.
Sadly, many of the blogs that were featured in the Karnival have since been deleted or closed, but some of the links still work.
So here you go, a slice of Maltese blogging history, first served up for you in March 2006, just before J’Accuse turned one year old.
Id-Disa’ Karnival tal-Bloggijiet
Congratulations Jacques, on seven years of blogging – may there be many more.
Best regards,
Maltagirl.
