No News Is Normal for Chess

In contrast to How I Spent My Summer Vacation, I did *not* spend my vacation reading chess news. Being cut off from the Web just about guarantees that chess news will be slim to nonexistent. I did indulge myself by buying a real newspaper (the International Herald Tribune) to read real news -- the BP environmental disaster, the crisis in Kyrgyzstan, the World Cup, that sort of thing -- while sitting beside the swimming pool and taking in the morning sun. One day I saw a column by Dylan Loeb McClain, 11 Tournaments Over 2 Weeks Create a Competitive Logjam I think it was, but I succumbed to vacation laziness and didn't even bother clipping it to play through the game later.

Now that I'm back in the non-vacation world, catching up on the usual chess news sources and the chess blogs, one item I haven't seen mentioned is All Entries Received for the Chess Journalist Awards 2010 (CJA). Since he's the only entry, Dan Heisman looks like a shoo-in for 'Chess Journalist of the Year'. As for blogs, there is one entry in the humor category and three in best blog. My money is on Michael Goeller's Kenilworthian, but he won in a recent year and the judges might give the award to someone else. The awards are usually announced around mid-August.