Back in the early days of the Internet those of us involved in putting some of the first sites on the World Wide Web foolishly thought it might improve the quality of communication and discourse in society.

Instead, the ‘Net is, in many ways, a cesspool that reflects the worst of our culture.

This story by Ellen Nakashima in today’s Washington Post caught my eye:

A female freelance writer who blogged about the pornography industry was threatened with rape. A single mother who blogged about “the daily ins and outs of being a mom” was threatened by a cyber-stalker who claimed that she beat her son and that he had her under surveillance. Kathy Sierra, who won a large following by blogging about designing software that makes people happy, became a target of anonymous online attacks that included photos of her with a noose around her neck and a muzzle over her mouth.

As women gain visibility in the blogosphere, they are targets of sexual harassment and threats. Men are harassed too, and lack of civility is an abiding problem on the Web. But women, who make up about half the online community, are singled out in more starkly sexually threatening terms — a trend that was first evident in chat rooms in the early 1990s and is now moving to the blogosphere, experts and bloggers said.

A 2006 University of Maryland study on chat rooms found that female participants received 25 times as many sexually explicit and malicious messages as males. A 2005 study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that the proportion of Internet users who took part in chats and discussion groups plunged from 28 percent in 2000 to 17 percent in 2005, entirely because of the exodus of women. The study attributed the trend to “sensitivity to worrisome behavior in chat rooms.”

Joan Walsh, editor in chief of the online magazine Salon, said that since the letters section of her site was automated a year and a half ago, “it’s been hard to ignore that the criticisms of women writers are much more brutal and vicious than those about men.”

Arianna Huffington, whose Huffington Post site is among the most prominent of blogs founded by women, said anonymity online has allowed “a lot of those dark prejudices towards women to surface.” Her site takes a “zero tolerance” policy toward abusive and excessively foul language, and employs moderators “24/7″ to filter the comments, she said.

Sierra, whose recent case has attracted international attention, has suspended blogging. Other women have censored themselves, turned to private forums or closed comments on blogs. Many use gender-neutral pseudonyms. Some just gut it out. But the effect of repeated harassment, bloggers and experts interviewed said, is to make women reluctant to participate online — undercutting the promise of the Internet as an egalitarian forum.

The venom aimed at women is just part of the coarseness that threatens the ‘Net. An ongoing debate among web publishers questions the value of ‘Net-based commentary, especially when it comes to comments posted to news sites and web blogs.

Friday night in Floyd. Always a special night.

Normally, I tour the restaurants and music venues along Locust Street with a camera. Not this night. I left the cameras at home and went to hear the music.

Started at Oddfellas Cantina where Bernie Coveney, Chris Luster and restaurant owner Rod Neukirch entertained a full house of diners. I poured a cup of coffee and sat on an available bench to listen to the music.

A week later and Virginia Tech is still a national story. Lots of press — some good, lots exploitive — but Neely Tucker of The Washington Post nails the story of what life and the future holds for Blacksburg:

Big cities, big places, they don’t worry like this. Shooting sprees, mass death — they don’t become linked in the national consciousness to their moment of suffering.

Small towns, little-known places, they often do. It’s not fair, but it’s still the way it is.

Columbine, Waco, Oklahoma City, even Pearl Harbor.

Tragedy tends to stick. John Rowan, proprietor, Rendezvous Tattoos, Main Street, Blacksburg, America:

"This is the last place in the world where you’d expect something like this to happen, and here we set a record for it, the worst shooting in the country."

You want to know surreal? The University of Miami baseball team came to play a series against Virginia Tech on campus this weekend.

It was the first regular campus event since 32 students were shot to death by a fellow classmate.

The Hurricanes were planning to bring an extra cop to Blacksburg so they’d feel safe.

Read the above sentence again.

This is a joke, right? A town of 40,000, more than half of them college students, a rural pocket of off-the-interstate America, a town with zero murders in the previous year, a place where the crime report for the year reads 22 burglaries, seven sex offenses, six weapons violations, 194 liquor law violations — and Miami thinks this place is rough?

Set through a two-day jury trial in Floyd County Circuit Court, a sexual molestation that ended with a not-guilty verdict in the evening hours of Thursday.

My old bones can’t take that many hours on the hardwood benches of the Floyd County Courthouse.

Another jury trial set for this week (Monday and Tuesday) involving the bitter and often petty feud that that marks life in Park Ridge, Floyd County’s only gated community.

Welcome to the new home of Blue Ridge Muse, now powered by WordPress and firmly settled in on a new server.

I’ve been planning the move for some time now but finally had a chance to get it completed this weekend.

Still have some housekeeping to do so please bear with me.

But we’re open for business.