I've often daydreamed about what it would have felt like to gaze out across the wind-swept seas of grass that my forebears saw when they first arrived by covered wagon to Minnesota in 1860. I do not know for certain what time of year it was when they arrived in Minnesota but, since they were making their way here to find land to farm, I've always assumed they arrived in early spring, in time to plant a first crop during Minnesota's short growing season.

If they did arrive in spring, they would have, while camping out on April nights, likely marveled at the luminous orange glow of a distant prairie fire, and perhaps worried some about how fast, and in what direction, the spring winds were driving that fire. They would have heard the howl of gray wolves on moonlit nights.

In the daytime they may have seen small herds of bison or elk, and perhaps bands of Dakota Indians that had not yet made their way to the recently-created reservations along the Minnesota River Valley. They would have seen the tepees of small Indian camps along creeks and rivers.

But mostly, wherever they stood, they would have seen mile-after-mile of grasslands stretching away across the horizon -- and they might have viewed that prairiescape as emptiness, as a sort of a blank canvas upon which they and thousands of others of farmers were about to paint the brush strokes of their small farms. By summer’s end, that prairie landscape would have been a blazing with color, and some species of grasses would have grown taller than people, so tall that a person walking through it could become, as in an undifferentiated forest, hopelessly lost.

That was a minor problem though in the face of blizzards, sub-zero temperatures, wild fires, insect invasions, diseases, and the growing animosity between settlers and maltreated, displaced Dakota Indians. The odds of survival, much less success, were stacked against my pioneer forebears.

And yet, with luck and bone-numbing hard work, they persevered, and eventually succeeded in doing their small part toward turning into reality Thomas Jefferson's grand democratic vision of creating a nation of farmers who each owned a piece of land from which they could make a modest living.

Someone once wrote that what our pioneer forebears dreamed, we live, and what they lived, we now dream. That dream has been especially vivid of late, ever since one evneing in early Novmeber, while driving home from work on Intersyate 90, out on the prairies a hundred miles west of Rochester, I got a call on my cell phone about a non-profit job a long-time neighbor of mine thought I should interview for. RNeighbors was starting an on-line community journalism project called RVoices, and would I be interested in finding out more about it?

The job would involve developing a website in an effort to create something called a "civic blogosphere" in Rochester, and the powerful, complex and interactive software that the website runs on was called "Civic Space." When I first laid eyes on Civic Space, it suddenly struck me on the screen as a vast, empty, somewhat terrifying yet incredibly promising place. And those vast empty civic spaces were Rochester’s as yet mostly un-created, un-settled, and un-pioneered civic blogosphere.

My grandparent’s sold our family’s farm back in 1969, a couple months before I was born, and 36 years later, the American landscape is light years away from Jefferson’s ideal of every arable forty acres being occupied by the frame-house, barn and silo of a small family farm.

But doesn’t this new national web-scape of bloggers and blog-sites, citizen journalists and civic journalism sites, have the power and potential to reinvigorate that democratic ideal in this new century? I think it does – right here in Rochester.

RVoices is a civic web-scape where anyone who wants their voice to be heard, can (respectfully) raise it. RVoices is a space that we all hold and share in common, where citizens and civic leaders can meet for conversation, exchange ideas, opinions, or whatever happens to be on their minds. It's a place where conversations that began in the grocery store or on the street can continue after people part ways; where neighbors and neighborhood associations can discuss current issues, and keep each other informed about meetings and events. It's a place of events, polls, forums, photos, stories, discussions and - perhaps best of all - voices! Rochester voices - authentic voices - our voices - RVoices Weblogs!

So, in a very real sense, even though I cannot look out on the same landscape that my forebears once did, and witness first-hand what they once saw, I am convinced that I when I look into my computer screen each morning, I feel as they once felt – at times awestruck, fearful, terrified, overwhelmed by the many tasks at hand, but also giddy over the possibilities of this endless new landscape, bristling with excitement over the enormous potential of RVoices.

Everyone who decides to contribute to this site is, in a very real sense, a modern-day pioneer setting out to stake her claim, and discover his home, in Rochester’s civic blogosphere.
It’s my hope that you will find not just one but rather many places to call home within RVoices. This civic space is limitless, and even as it becomes more crowded, there will always be room for everyone.

A hundred fifty years ago Rochester area pioneers helped each other raise barns; today’s local pioneers are Raising RVoices!