C'mon, Bill - you know you're loving that SKB folded.
Now that blogs and the language they create has been hollowed-out by the Usual Suspects, the Lobbyists and Professional Politicians, many average American voices get silenced or marginalized. Blogs of a personal nature or of their political opinions get people fired from jobs. I always thought SKB offered insight separate from Publishers and Editors and Lobbyists, and was more grassroots. There aren't many of those out there. To be able to maintain the expensive technology, the time to create and write, to podcast or whatever takes money and time and is often just an exercise of the affluent (or in my case the recently unemployed!). A great American tradition of anonymous expressions of speech -- political or not -- has been weeded out just as it is sprouting. The media frenzy over the President's nomination is a good example of how the Internet is overwhelmed by professional political staffers on all sides.
I know this is skewing away from SKBs demise, but I also know how much the Powers That Be didn't care for so much unfettered speech.
I hope he does return if only to get the non-sanitized version of Knox politics. But the fires they stoke to chase outsiders away is fiercesome hot. Who wouldn't have better things to do?

I think you're spot on target, Bill. Perhaps his message sould read, "Game Over...Till I Get Some Love." Very Sullivanesque.

Don't get too comfortable.

Well said Joe P.

If by 'powers that be you' mean Metropulse...hardly an establishment paper.

i bet he'll pop up in another incarnation...one that's once again anonymous...he calls it quits suspiciously soon after we find out his identity...

He's added some text now:

So long, and thanks for all the fish!
For those of you who are wondering, yes, this blog and this website are no more.

It was fun,but lately it has become too much like work and not so much fun. Contrary to wild speculation around the internets, that's pretty much all there is to it. It's a personal decision, and that's all.

Thanks to everyone for reading and for your participation over the years. With that, I bid you adieu.

No, by "Powers That Be" i did not mean MetroPulse.
Development in downtown Knox, as in most other cities, is in the hands of an odd alliance of business and government who use tax money for speculation. nothing new, really. but in the South, North, East and West, if you are not part of the Insiders Club, you are viewed as a danger and a threat.
Did SKB rattle cages? Probably, though i wonder, "why do those folks live in cages??"
I hold a very unpopular view that dissent is necessary in a free society.
And thanks Bill, for allowing the post here.
As a good friend once wrote me -- you can divide the world into two groups, those that divide the world in two groups and those that don't.

Will miss SKB, but I understand. Every time I think about resurrecting my Web site, which had some blog characteristics, I splash cold water onto my face, and the urge passes.

No matter how popular one's site, Web writing does get to be tedious and feels like a waste of valuable time after a while, particularly without dollar signs swinging like carrots above the computer screen.

SKB may get a second wind. It's common. From time to time, we all have to take some time off and reinvent ourselves.

I believe losing his psuedo-anonymity quenched some of SKB's fire. While I disagree with many of his views, the exchange of ideas is important (although he deleted several of my comments that contained no vulgarity or crude language). Hopefully he will return in some incarnation or another.

I've read several comments like that by different posters and bloggers -- that SKB deleted comments without apparent good reason. He seems to be a quirky guy, but readers of blogs seem to have a high tolerance for quirkiness.

For people like me who are "conservative" on some issues and "liberal" (truly conservative or libertarian) on others, it's good to see a passionate variety in the arcade of ideas, so I hope SKB will decide to play again, though some time out for reflection is probably in order, given recent events.