Milestones

Not terribly important ones, I suppose, but still something I'll note in passing.

First, Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of this blog. My first post was on the morning of November 13. At the time I said

I was finally moved to start a blog (after thinking about it for a while without ever getting around to it) by a recent phone conversation with a friend, in which the morass in Iraq came up. As such conversations do, this one then veered off in several related directions at once, all revolving around a core of our mutual distaste for George Bush. After a few minutes, my friend sighed and said there was no point getting all worked up about it.

"Yes, there is," I replied. "The truth is, my hope is nearly gone. My anger is the only thing that keeps me going."

So now I have an outlet to express that anger, to discuss what I'm angry about, why I'm angry, and, in my calmer moments, to try to rediscover that hope and offer a different vision of what we as a people, a nation, a culture, might do, might be, might become. (And, of course, I also need to wonder if this will become just navel-gazing, an exercise that makes me feel better without actually accomplishing anything. I suppose that having started this, I now also have to try to make sure at least some people see it. Bummer.) ...

I do promise to try to make this worth reading and to be coherent even if inconsistent at times. (Was it Shaw who said "I'll only be consistent when I'm dead?")

Thanks for reading.

That last sentiment in particular is one I want to repeat.

The other milestone was that at about 7:55 this morning, I got my 10,000^th visitor. I know that makes me a small-timer in the blogging world, but still it's one of those events, one of those nice round numbers, of which we like to make note.

(Actually, I probably passed 10,000 a few weeks ago, since I didn't install a counter until I'd been doing this about nearly two months, but what the heck. Seeing the counter go to five figures brought a certain amount of pleasure.)