Anita Rowland, matriarch of Seattle bloggers, wife and fantastic human being lost her fight with cancer yesterday. Anita was writing about her life and posting it on the web before there was a word for that kind of thing, and her real-world blogger meetups fostered a strong sense of community in an electronic medium that can be cold and isolating without friendly face-to-face contact. She'll be missed by many, as can be seen at her......

Today Seattle votes on two measures of vastly divergent importance. 1) Seattlest vs. Anita Rowland in MetBlogs' "Blarch Badness" Blog poll. Anita, a long-time writer in the local web/tech world, organizes weekly blog meetups in the city and on the Eastside, and she's kept her blog up during treatment for cancer. As MetBlogs points out, we get paid (not royally, but the point stands) while Anita entertains you and has singlehandedly created a blog community......

Seattlest hasn't made it to a Seattle Weblogger Meetup yet - in fact we just missed the latest one last Wednesday. However, we love the weblogger community and have fun checking out the details of what happens when online characters hang out in real life. We signed up for the March meetup and will hopefully be able to attend next time to meet more Seattle bloggers. Anita Rowland has been running the Seattle Weblogger Meetup......