When I have time, I read a variety of web sites and blogs, each for a different reason. Two of my favorite non-blog sites these days seem to reflect the yin and the yang of my personality, each grounding me on either end of the spectrum of my passions and interests.
If you check in here frequently, you must have noticed that I post poems that Jim Culleny sends out daily in emails. While Jim’s site, No Utopia, started out as a blog, it has been transformed into an “Op Ed” type site that is a great place, not only to pick up tidbits of news and notions that work well as fodder for further blog postings but also to read insightful, creatively written, and painfully pointed commentary, sometimes his own and sometimes what he quotes from other sources.
This from Jim’s take on the new Hessians:

Now, thanks to the recurring cycles of time and history, the ways of politics, and the surly nature of god, I’m blessed with 1st-hand knowledge of what Miss Altenhaus was trying to tell me. The Hessians were hired guns –German mercenaries employed by the British to defeat the Americans. But the scent I was getting off the Hessians had to do with the “hired gun” part. Ok, ok, Miss Altenhause, I get it. Today we call our Hessians, Blackwater –an apt identity if ever their was one.

And on evolution

Why is it more scandalous to take the position that we evolved through natural selection than that we got here via incestous relationships among Adam’s and Eve’s offspring?

Beats me.

And this as he quotes Andrew Sullivan on Hillary Clinton:

The conservative Washington Establishment is swooning for Hillary for a reason. The reason is an accommodation with what they see as the next source of power (surprise!); and the desire to see George W. Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq legitimated and extended by a Democratic president (genuine surprise). Hillary is Bush’s ticket to posterity. On Iraq, she will be his legacy. They are not that dissimilar after all: both come from royal families, who have divvied up the White House for the past couple of decades. They may oppose one another; but they respect each other as equals in the neo-monarchy that is the current presidency.

In addition, Jim occasionally offers the wisdoms of “Roshi Bob,” an illusive man-of-the-moment, described by Jim here.
So, that’s the yang of it.
As for the yin, wisewoman writer and elderbogger Marian Van Eyk McCain has a site that calls to the heart of women old enough to know. On her site, you will find:

A meeting place for women of age, maturity and wisdom.
A source of inspiration for women in – or about to enter – their ‘Third Age’
A node in a vast, international network of wise women, spanning the globe
A forum for discussion – a place to voice your thoughts on aging and “sage-ing”
An advertisement for the simple life – a rediscovery of the sacred in the ordinary
An oasis on the spiritual journey
Marian also has a personal weblog that gives us glimpses into her day to day life.
What I really like most, however, is the Elderwoman Newsletter, “an e-zine for 21st century elderwomen committed to radical aliveness.”

RADICAL

ALIVENESS

Ain’t that just the yin/yang of it!