The Ramble at Fourteen

 

by Pa Rock

Tired Old Typist

Fourteen years ago this very evening - on November 4th, 2007 - I sat down at the computer and decided that I was going to learn how to blog.  I found blogger.com - along with an easy set of instructions - and essentially taught myself the fine art of blogging in a matter of minutes, and I have been pounding them out ever since.  This piece is the 5,274th entry into that blogging effort that has continued unabated over the ensuing years.

On that fateful evening fourteen years ago I was living in a nice apartment in Goodyear, Arizona - right at the major intersection of McDowell and Litchfield.  I had been in Arizona less than two months and was lonely and bored.  It seemed like the ideal time to develop and pursue a new hobby.

Back on this date in 2007 George W. Bush was still in the White House and about to enter the last year of his eight-year catastrophic presidency.  The Republicans had several candidates that they were considering to replace him, but the Democrats were largely focused on two:  former First Lady and current New York senator, Hillary Clinton, and the young and dynamic first-term senator from Illinois, Barack Obama.  I had a horse in that race.

I used my new social media outlet to promote my favored candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.  The first blog entry in Pa Rock's Ramble was a short piece entitled "Obama '08!"  Exactly one year to the day after the blog entry was posted, Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States. And during that pivotal year in American politics, I was blogging every day - often about the presidential race!

But I also used the blog to write about my grandchildren, adventures in travel, and anything that just happened to come to my attention - especially things that pissed me off!  I published some of my old college papers, stories that I had written, all manner of poems, book reviews, and old newspaper columns from a brief career in journalism.  For several years I even sponsored an annual "Dead Pool," anything to inspire readership and make me feel as though my efforts were entertaining, uplifting, or educating a few bored souls.  This past year I expanded the content to include biographical sketches of several of my ancestors.

Over the years I have blogged from Arizona, Missouri, California, Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky North Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Texas, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and Oregon - and possibly a few other states as well.  I have also blogged internationally, from Okinawa, mainland Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Guam, Cuba, and several other islands in the Caribbean.

I am not altogether sure of what I have created here with the Ramble.  It has a lot of mass with tentacles going off in many directions.  The blog has functioned as a personal history, a social history, a news source, an editorial page, a travelogue, and even as a scrapbook.  The tone of The Ramble has ranged from conversational to confrontational, and its impact has run the gambit from therapeutic to triggering.

Banging out a posting for Pa Rock's Ramble every day has taken its toll on this tired old typist, and I suspect that fourteen more years will be about all that I can handle!