by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
Pa Rock's Ramble hits a milestone of sorts today with this posting, the 4,000th since this blogging effort began nearly eleven years ago. For the most part it has been a daily occurrence, with a few days being skipped early on before I set a goal of publishing something every day. Some days I even get carried away and do multiple postings, with an average of about 380 or more in a normal year.
The first blog posting in this effort was on November 7th, 2007. I had been living in Phoenix, Arizona, for a couple of months and was sitting around my apartment one evening feeling a bit lonely and bored - and decided to learn how to blog. I wrote the first entry that night, a piece promoting the candidacy of Barack Obama for President. Ironically, he was elected President exactly one year later.
One of my goals when I started writing The Ramble was to collect as many of my writing "scraps" that I could salvage and preserve them in the blog. Consequently, the archive of this effort contains a few short stories of mine as well as some tortured poetry that I hammered together, a couple of magazine articles, and my continuing collection of the adventures of "Rusty Pails" and his pals. I also used this space to preserve some family stories and memories, as well as to memorialize some of my lifetime friends. Sadly, since the election of Donald Trump, much of my focus in this writing endeavor seems to have slid into the muck of politics, and my continuing goal is go pull myself free of his slime. It's a struggle.
Probably the widest-read article that I wrote for The Ramble was a biographical sketch that I did on Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords about a year before the tragic shooting in Tucson. Living in Arizona at the time, I had an understandable admiration for any local politicians who displayed signs of intelligence and compassion, and Gabby Giffords was one who fit that bill. By the time of the Tucson shooting I was living abroad on Okinawa. After hearing about the shooting, I scrolled back to the column that I had written about Gabby, entitled simply "Gabrielle Giffords," and was shocked to see that over a thousand people had pulled it up that day in their rush to learn as much as possible about the wounded public servant.
I have also written a couple of pieces regarding convicted murderers that I knew personally when they were kids - Shannon Agofsky and Levi King - and those entries continue to draw in all types of responses from readers.
Pa Rock's Ramble has some international roots. Over the years I have crafted entries to the blog from several locations within the United States - including Arizona, Missouri, Florida, Indiana, Arkansas, Kansas, Oregon, California, New Mexico, Texas, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Alaska, and Hawaii - and from a raft of foreign countries including Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Korea, Canada, Cuba, and several smaller islands in the Caribbean. Sometimes it was hard to acquire a workable internet connection - and in Cuba it was next to impossible - but still I persisted. (In Cuba I finally had to resort to just blogging onto Word documents and then publishing those to the blog once I made my way back into the twenty-first century.)
While I fuss and grumble about the rigors of typing something of interest (at least to me) each day, overall it has been a positive experience. Pa Rock's Ramble may fall short of being great journalism, but for me it has often been damn fine therapy!
Thank you for the continuing feedback and encouragement over the years. When that stops I'll probably end this effort and go back to mowing full time!
Stay strong, America - Trump won't last forever!
Citizen Journalist
Pa Rock's Ramble hits a milestone of sorts today with this posting, the 4,000th since this blogging effort began nearly eleven years ago. For the most part it has been a daily occurrence, with a few days being skipped early on before I set a goal of publishing something every day. Some days I even get carried away and do multiple postings, with an average of about 380 or more in a normal year.
The first blog posting in this effort was on November 7th, 2007. I had been living in Phoenix, Arizona, for a couple of months and was sitting around my apartment one evening feeling a bit lonely and bored - and decided to learn how to blog. I wrote the first entry that night, a piece promoting the candidacy of Barack Obama for President. Ironically, he was elected President exactly one year later.
One of my goals when I started writing The Ramble was to collect as many of my writing "scraps" that I could salvage and preserve them in the blog. Consequently, the archive of this effort contains a few short stories of mine as well as some tortured poetry that I hammered together, a couple of magazine articles, and my continuing collection of the adventures of "Rusty Pails" and his pals. I also used this space to preserve some family stories and memories, as well as to memorialize some of my lifetime friends. Sadly, since the election of Donald Trump, much of my focus in this writing endeavor seems to have slid into the muck of politics, and my continuing goal is go pull myself free of his slime. It's a struggle.
Probably the widest-read article that I wrote for The Ramble was a biographical sketch that I did on Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords about a year before the tragic shooting in Tucson. Living in Arizona at the time, I had an understandable admiration for any local politicians who displayed signs of intelligence and compassion, and Gabby Giffords was one who fit that bill. By the time of the Tucson shooting I was living abroad on Okinawa. After hearing about the shooting, I scrolled back to the column that I had written about Gabby, entitled simply "Gabrielle Giffords," and was shocked to see that over a thousand people had pulled it up that day in their rush to learn as much as possible about the wounded public servant.
I have also written a couple of pieces regarding convicted murderers that I knew personally when they were kids - Shannon Agofsky and Levi King - and those entries continue to draw in all types of responses from readers.
Pa Rock's Ramble has some international roots. Over the years I have crafted entries to the blog from several locations within the United States - including Arizona, Missouri, Florida, Indiana, Arkansas, Kansas, Oregon, California, New Mexico, Texas, Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, Alaska, and Hawaii - and from a raft of foreign countries including Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Korea, Canada, Cuba, and several smaller islands in the Caribbean. Sometimes it was hard to acquire a workable internet connection - and in Cuba it was next to impossible - but still I persisted. (In Cuba I finally had to resort to just blogging onto Word documents and then publishing those to the blog once I made my way back into the twenty-first century.)
While I fuss and grumble about the rigors of typing something of interest (at least to me) each day, overall it has been a positive experience. Pa Rock's Ramble may fall short of being great journalism, but for me it has often been damn fine therapy!
Thank you for the continuing feedback and encouragement over the years. When that stops I'll probably end this effort and go back to mowing full time!
Stay strong, America - Trump won't last forever!
1 comment:
Pa Rock, your blog efforts remind me so much of mine, right down to the daily stories about beloved farm animals. We're about a year apart (I'm older). We share many of the same thoughts and love for using the language to tell a good story.
I've been at it since about 2004 and have probably missed about a week total of not posting.
A good friend reads the posts every single morning to catch my glitches, and she's the one who put me on to you. Apparently, you are the cousin of one of her friends.
Anywho, keep it up. It's a wonderful passion. Come and visit me at "Slight Detour."
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