That's right: I have posted something 2500 times on this blog. The first was back on January 6, 2012, and I titled it (stolen from a chapter title from Dickens' novel David Copperfield) "I Am Born." Sounds a wee bit pretentious now, as I think about it. (Link to that first post.)
As I've said here before in these 100th anniversary posts, I thought, when I started, that I would be writing a lot more about education than I have. After all, I spent about forty-five years in classrooms--most of it in a middle school but also in a college-prep school, colleges.
But I retired from public school in January 1997, from prep-school teaching in June 2011. So my little boat of informed opinion is drifting farther and farther away from the mainland. In other words, I don't really know what I'm talking about. Oh, every now and then I find some education issue to post about--but more and more rarely.
Instead, I find myself squarely in two venues: the present, the past. I talk about things I'm reading, things I'm thinking about, things I've been doing. Or I shift to the past tense and sort of do the same thing: write about things I've read, things I've thought about, things I've done.
You've probably noticed that I don't post much about politics. It's mostly pointless. Readers aren't going to change their minds about political issues because of what I've written, and all such writing does, I've sadly discovered, is alienate people I care about. So ... let the young and the restless (another title I'm stealing, this time from that soap opera) carry on with the political debates.
Besides, I'm older now. And I remember (to my shame, actually) that when my father was my age (75), I summarily dismissed his political opinions. What could that old guy know? (That old guy who grew up in the Great Depression, served in both theaters in WW II, was recalled to active duty during the Korean War--though he did not go overseas--etc.?) So, I realize that my time in the bright sun of political contention has passed.
I do believe that the country is sailing right now down a river of fire, and I hope everyone comes ashore and puts the damn thing out. Together. I have a son and two grandsons who have lives to live ...
Another custom I exercise on these 100th-anniversary posts is to check the number of "hits" on the site. I don't really care about the number; I'm writing for myself, mostly (to clarify my own thinking), and for my family. A very personal posterity.
[PAUSE WHILE I LOOK AT THE DATA.]
558,939 total hits/2500 posts = 223.5756 hits/post
Not terrible, not awesome. Surprising, actually, that there are 223 people out there every day (plus a part of another person) who visit the site each day. Kind of humbling.
Anyway, I'm going to keep at it. I no longer worry if I don't post something every day. Something moves me, I write; something doesn't, I don't.
Sensible, eh?
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