A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO MY READERS

Although this blog was officially launched several years ago, I only began blogging regularly in June of this year. In reviewing those eight months of posts, I was struck by two things: First, how much I have written. This is not a big-time blog with editors and unpaid interns and all. It is just me, typing away with two fingers and then correcting my endless typos.. A lot of words have gone up on the screen and whirled away into cyberspace in that time. Second, the large numbers of people who have contributed to the blog over the months.

First of all, there were my two guest bloggers, Ann Davis and Barbara O'Brien [each of whose posts, in my feckless senile way, was introduced as "my very first guest blog." Sorry about that, Ann.]

Here is the list, as complete as I could make it in my quick review, of all the folks who have posted comments.

Far and away the two busiest commentators have been Ann, of guest post fame, and NotHobbes, from Scotland [with whom I had a spirited debate about who should be considered Scotland's most famous son or daughter.]

Then there were Rodrigo from Brazil, Jennifer, Ajrosa [these last two are actually former students from my Afro-American Studies days], Matthew, IKant [an intriguing handle -- my Massachusetts license plate was IKant], RVincent63 [a classmate of Jennifer and Ajrosa, who helped me set up the blog], David, Todd, ElPutoAlpha, from Spain, Avril, Matias Penengo, Jamie, Bev, Experiment, from Canada, Rob, Eoin [pronounced "Owen," he tells me], Dan., Robert, EggsMaladict from Australia [a wonderful handle, that], Kius from Spain, Gene Callahan, Maciek from Poland, Mlange, adavisa, and, of course, the bizarre Chinese language comments that turned out to be some sort of advertisement for chat rooms or dating services or porn sites [the automatic translation program that I found on line was a little ambiguous].

And all of this does not include the people who chose to send me a direct email rather than post a comment on the blog.

When I began, at the suggestion of my older son, Patrick, my younger son, Tobias warned me that a blog was a lot of work, and he was right. But Patrick's suggestion has turned out to be a good one indeed. It has been enormously rewarding for me to discover the ways in which I could reach out not only to people whom I know but also to people whom I do not know, but who have paid me the great compliment of taking the time to react to my posts.

Thank you to all of you -- those who comment, and those who simply read the blog and move on. I shall try to keep things going in the coming year. Those who know me, especially from my classroom efforts, have every reason to expect that I will never run out of things to say.

And now, a Happy New Year to all.