Like the lyrics of that popular Johnny Cash song, Kevin Davis has lived everywhere -- as a child in Orlando, and later in Boston, Washington, D.C., Richmond and Louisville -- but his true passion is Durham.

As one of a growing number of Duke employee bloggers, Davis is helping to reinvigorate Durham civic life with his daily dispatches about downtown's renaissance, city politics, store openings and arts and entertainment.

"There's no other place in the country that my wife and I would want to live," says Davis, assistant director for technology support at Duke's Office of Information Technology.

Davis is one of about 20 bloggers who actively write about Durham neighborhood news. Material comes from city council agendas and meetings, reader tips and his own observations around town.

"There's so much going in this community that no one is talking about," he says. It's all enough to keep him supplied with material for multiple posts every day. His purpose is to spotlight less-covered stories about Durham and to freshen his own writing skills with "random acts of journalism." He has been amazed at how his blog has grown in readership -- now up to 10,000 unique visitors per month.

"I'm one lens on what's happening in town," Davis says.

Anton Zuiker, manager of internal communications for Duke Medicine, is one of the lead organizers of North Carolina's Science Blogging Conference. He and several other bloggers formed BlogTogether.org a few years ago to reach out to other bloggers in the region. So far, they've hosted meetups to discuss technical issues and content strategies for blogging, tutorial sessions and backyard parties, in addition to organizing the annual conference.

"Blogging is a great tool for anyone who wants to communicate. We've seen thousands of people in the Triangle, from all walks of life, use blogs to share their thoughts, experiences and activities and to reach out to communities both local and global," says Zuiker. "Durham is especially a great source of blogs these days, an engaging way to learn about this city's history and energetic resurgence."

Paul Dudenhefer, a writing tutor in Duke's economics department, agrees. One of the newest members of the Durham blog community, he brings an essayist's style to his musings on daily life.

An enthusiastic home cook, Dudenhefer takes readers along on local grocery shopping expeditions and trips to out-of-the-way barbecue restaurants, while bringing an unusual angle to every adventure.

Dudenhefer, managing editor of the Duke Press journal The History of Political Economy, says he started his blog with the intent of reviewing the everyday -- a parking lot, a grocery store's produce department, even the classical music selection at a local bookstore. And while he avoids rants, he did have some choice words for a local organic food store that underwhelmed him with its selection of peaches.

"It has been a lot of fun," he says of his three-month-old blog. "I think there's a lot of potential for this medium in covering events," he says, adding that he's found himself going to Durham events just to have something to write about.

A different angle on Durham life comes via Duke technology mentor Dorothy Black. Her year-old blog provides a window on exciting ways Durham teachers are using new media in the classroom.

As the coordinator of the Pepsico K-12 Technology Mentor Program, Black uses her blog to share stories from her work with teachers and students in schools supported by the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership.

"There are a lot of really cool things happening in the Durham public schools that people don't hear about," Black says. "My focus is to show off things that I learn that are really relevant to teachers."

Black typically quotes the teachers themselves, who she says give the most powerful sense of how technology is transforming the classroom. "Teachers are more articulate about how it affects their students than I can be," she says.

Lesley Looper started blogging to hold herself accountable while training for a 5K run and then found other things she wanted to share, from her experiences with the Rice Diet to favorite books and church outings in and around Durham.

She also recently began a second blog to document her quest to visit all 100 counties in North Carolina.

Looper, who supervises the processing of new books at Perkins Library, says this pet project may one day become a guidebook for short-drive destinations. She says readers are cheering her on and directing her to good "out-of-the-way" destinations.

Lenore Ramm's wide-ranging interests all come together in her blog, "Eclectic Glob of Tangential Verbosity."

Ramm works for the Center for Instructional Technology, whose mission is to encourage Duke faculty to use new technology in their teaching. She sets an almost daily example with her postings on eateries, recipes, books, movies and museums. She fills a void on the web with delicious descriptions and mouth-watering photographs of her restaurant outings, all snapped with her digital camera.

"I really want these restaurants to do well if they do a good job," she says.

To that end, she keeps a running list of her favorite restaurants, including some undiscovered hits.

Says Ramm, "It's a lot like scrapbooking but less messy since there's no glue involved."