I have slowly been putting up the writings and the art of my grandfather Griff at a web site I call Griff's Story. It covers his experiences as a Navy combat artist during WWII Jeneane Sessum, at Allied, found it and made a connection that I hadn't — Griff was a blogger! Well, maybe a pre-blogger.

Real pre-blog bloggers

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So, if we allow for early journaling as voice to fit into the genesis of blogging, then I say Griff was more our blog grandpa than Emerson and the likes of his abrasively-introspective man-heroes of American literature.

Blogging is bottom up. Blogging is the sound of the quieter voices wired with mega amps of power.

Blogging is a Navy combat artist painting and writing from a World War II destroyer ship in 1941.

[...]An artist and I think a gifted story teller born in 1890, Griff's chronicle of the war in pictures and words are moving, compelling, and something I've just begun to explore. I'm so jazzed by what I hear and see:

October 23rd, 1941

A black night. The dim shapes of the officers with their binoculars peering through the small round ports of the wheel house. Men with head-phones. The dark loom of the watch on the bridge wings. All hands at their stations, competent, alert. "She is up and down, Sir." The slight throb of the powerful engines, and we lean gray wolves steal stealthily out in single file to the secret meeting with the oncoming almost helpless flock. The black loom of the hills of Newfoundland diminish into the obscurity of the night. "Secure anchors for sea." And with the first roll of the northern ocean, we feel that sensitive, live movement known only to men who have been in "Tin Cans", the Navy's nickname for destroyers.

That, my friends, is a voice I'd put on my blogroll any day of the week.

That is a blogger armed with simply a paint brush and a pen. And voice.
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The entry Jeneane used was from Griff's book North Atlantic Patrol, which was based on a log he kept during his journey. His second book, Victory at Midway, does not have the log format but still has that voice. It's the last part of the site, where he travels around the world in 1944. that is his unedited reports to the Navy that are in a condensed log format. These entries are amazing. I could go on and on, but I won't. Check it out.