Weekend of local rock volume 44
You can subtitle this one, “the Bands for Baby Ava benefit.”
At some unknown future point in another venue, I’m going to point out all the good the local musicians do for the community.
That spirit of giving was on display last week – a full month after Christmas – when a number of bands and assorted one-off impromptu groups gathered to help raise money for Ava DelRicco, a toddler who was seriously injured in a December auto accident just a piece up the road from the Pour House in Ocean City. Since then she’s been recovering at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.
So as the Pour House mascot looked on approvingly, we were treated to almost 10 solid hours of musical entertainment from the various bands and DJs Skip Dixxon and Bigler.
And the order of presentation was fairly interesting, as a couple of the bands already had other gigs planned for the day but felt in their heart they needed to come and participate.
So you had a more experienced group who would otherwise be one of the headliners leading off. Paul Lewis and Y-Not had an evening engagement across the Bay Bridge so they were the first band in this instance. They also made one of the more popular donations to the silent auction, which I will get to in due course.
They were one of the few bands who played some originals as well, which was a good touch considering many of the participants specialized in covers of various rock genres.
And by the way, the Sons of Patriots motorcycle club came in as a group right behind me as the event started – about a dozen or so to help fill the room nicely to start the show.
I think the next group has a collective mancrush on Sublime, since there were two of their covers I heard in their set.
Sunny Side Up began as half of the youthful group The Hooplas, which, as you may recall, made their debut at the 12 Bands of Christmas back in December. They picked up some vocal help for the latter part of their set.
The place was beginning to fill up quite nicely at this point, and it was heartwarming to see the community support.
That open mike feel to the event was a recurring theme. But I also learned an old musicians’ trick, thanks to Bryan Russo.
That guitar case isn’t carelessly laid on the floor. It’s by his foot with a microphone inside so when Russo taps his foot it becomes his bass drum. Very multitalented and smart.
Brian brought a bluesy feel to the event with his attire and his playlist, which also featured a number of originals. He also announced that he would donate a portion of the proceeds from the CDs he had for sale at the event to the cause.
He was the one-man band at the event. But we’re not quite done with Bryan yet.
As Russo was clearing out, Blake Haley made a request: to play a song. He wasn’t on the bill but wanted to make his presence known, too.
And since Bryan hadn’t completely packed up and left he helped Blake out with his song.
Next up was Easy Action, a group of classic rockers who reset the stage with a more traditional feel.
As I said above, it was an open mike night of sorts. So Witches Brew singer Susan Witchey stepped in to help Easy Action with vocals on a couple tracks.
Her band didn’t participate either, but she stayed most of the night to support the cause.
Then it was time to put the host to work playing his drum set.
Livin’ the Dream did their normal hard rock show, with the obligatory tribute to KISS as part of the set. And Susan helped out with a song or two on their set as well.
This picture is in there just because I like it.
I’d heard this lady’s name mentioned a number of times but last week was the first time I’d seen Lauren Glick play.
Her band dug back to the era of the late sixties and early seventies for most of their covers, with a country-tinged set.
But that’s what brought people to the dance floor.
After another one-song cameo by the Bob Blair Project (sadly, I have no photo of that) we next heard from Familiar Soul.
And they played some familiar songs that kept the party going, as the dance floor was filled during their set, too.
After Familiar Soul played, I saw an opportunity for a little calm before the storm.
This may be the only month out of the year you can take this shot at 7 p.m. on a Saturday night without a truckload of people in it.
I decided to do something a little different with the Phantom Limbs. Here’s each member of the trio separately.
In the frenetic manner that this trio plays their mosh pit of originals crafted from surf, punk, and rock, it was almost easier to get individual shots, although the group one came out okay as well.
Next up was the hard-rockin’ Dust n’ Bones, with a more modern rock playlist than most of their predecessors on stage.
The last three groups had more of an up-to-date playlist than the earlier groups. High Test came from across the bridge to play the show.
And the Prince George’s-based band probably made a lot of fans with an active show. I was sitting when I took this – the singer was standing on two chairs.
Closing out the show was Vivid Season. We know they bring the hard stuff.
But before they played, we had the conclusion of the silent auction. As I noted up top, Y-Not helped out with this PRS guitar and also donated several other items as a package.
Despite their playoff failure, Ravens items were in high demand, too.
Here’s a look at some of the other items up for bids. There were two other smaller tables, too.
You could even wear your support.
The really good news is that, between the $5 cover charge, the pair of 50-50 raffles, the silent auction table, the various other raffles they had, and straight cash donations, the event raised over $7,000 for the family.
Even better news is that there will be a “sequel” event on March 10, with a venue to be announced. With as many people as there were at the Pour House, they may need a bigger place.
Scott reveals support group
For most, the contest to represent the Maryland Republican Party nationally as National Committeewoman has no meaning and is just another example of the “inside baseball” of party politics. But those who are astute should see the parallels between this race and the power struggle within the Republican Party on a national level.
To review, last month current state National Committeewoman (and onetime MDGOP Chair) Joyce Lyons Terhes announced she would not seek another four-year term in the post. To date two contenders have announced their intention to seek election – former YRNF Chairwoman Nicolee Ambrose and former state party Chair Audrey Scott. Anyone who’s paid attention to this space has seen me rake Audrey Scott over the coals for her participation in a rally supporting an increase in the state’s gasoline tax and, secondarily, for locking up the Transportation Trust Fund to prevent it from being raided every time Martin O’Malley needs to balance his budget. (The latter I’m fine with, but not the gas tax increase. Correctly prioritize what we have first.)
Audrey Scott, though, has a lot of backers who don’t mind that misstep with six members of the MDGOP’s executive board, six of the 24 local county Chairs, 24 of 43 Delegates, and 5 of 12 Senators on a list of endorsers Audrey has on her Facebook site devoted to the race. On the other hand, Ambrose has fewer elected officials supporting her (only Delegates Donna Stifler and LeRoy Myers, Senator J.B. Jennings, and U.S. Senate candidate Dan Bongino have expressed their support for Ambrose) but far more “likes” on her campaign’s Facebook page (143 vs. 17 for Scott.) Perhaps that’s a generational thing, but in any case the votes which will count are coming at the party’s Spring Convention April 27-28 – over three months from now.
(This upcoming state convention will also feature the election of ten Delegates and ten Alternate Delegates to the Republican National Convention. I unsuccessfully ran for this in 2008 but will take a pass in 2012 since I have something far more important to attend to that month and money enough for just one trip. We also elect a National Committeeman but thus far I’m unaware of anyone who will challenge current officeholder Louis Pope.)
Movin’ on out
As I’ve said from time to time on this forum and others, Maryland is the first place (besides, to a limited extent, my college alma mater) where I lived by choice. And the main reasons I moved here, as opposed to other prospective places where I could have worked like Jacksonville, Las Vegas, or Phoenix, were the somewhat rural setting and the idea that this area had plenty of room for growth. Needless to say, when compared to those urban areas, Salisbury was by far the smallest location I considered.
There are serious economic handicaps about living here which have always existed more or less, but at the time of my arrival they were held somewhat in check by the state government in place in the fall of 2004. Sure, Bob Ehrlich was no doctrinaire conservative but most of his ideas for revenue enhancement were limited to increasing user fees, and Maryland participated fully in the national economic boom which was taking place during the Ehrlich era here. Unemployment for the state was just 4.4% when Ehrlich took office and 3.6% when he left – the rate never exceeded 4.6% during his tenure. Obviously things are different now, and Maryland reflects the national situation in that respect. Oddly enough, though, the other three places I was considering were among the hardest hit by the recession, so while Salisbury never quite reached that exhilarating height this fact made the low point easier to handle.
Who will fund the resistance? (updated)
As I mentioned last night, I added a few new websites to my sidebar links. One interesting add was a site called Zilla of the Resistance, which I had originally run across via a link from The Other McCain. But what sparked my interest again was a link to her from another Maryland-based site called The Vail Spot, which I also link to. Both Vail and Zilla have something in common which I’m sure they aren’t proud of, but has been an issue: the writers have had recent financial hardships, for various reasons, and both were assisted by the generosity of their reader base.
I’m certainly not going to be the first to bring up this point, but who knows? Maybe I can be the last.
Odds and ends number 41
Not that I necessarily keep track of these things, but this is my first look in 2012 at those items which are worth a paragraph or three, but not a full post. It helps me clean out my e-mail inbox.
I couldn’t figure out how to embed this “Made in America” video, but I found it interesting when I watched it. I’m generally in favor of free trade and against strict protectionism, but if the difference is as small as they claim then buying American is worth it. Perhaps the claim of using 5% more American products would create 220,000 jobs is a bit dubious, but I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt.
Our nation needs to take steps in regaining its onetime prominence as a leading manufacturer. But it’s interesting to note several of the companies prominently mentioned have at least one plant in a right-to-work state. I can’t ascertain whether these are all non-union shops, but chances are fairly good – given that only about 1/10 of the private-sector workforce is unionized – that these good, honest American jobs don’t come with the union label.
Not that Maryland is making any quick moves to join the ranks of Virginia and other right-to-work states – this year, HB91 hasn’t progressed beyond first reading. But the group New Day Maryland pointed out to me a couple other bills of interest in the General Assembly this term to keep an eye on, and I thought I’d pass along the word.
House Bill 23, the Dedicated State Funds Protection Act, would prohibit the fund-raiding Governor O’Malley is almost as well known for as his constant zeal to raise taxes. And House Bill 43 would allow appropriations bills to be subjected to the same referendum process as those bills not dealing with appropriations. (The last remaining legal straw opponents of the in-state tuition for illegal aliens referendum are grasping for is that the bill is an appropriations bill, although it’s not.)
Both these bills have a hearing scheduled for 2 p.m. on January 31. I presume written testimony is acceptable, too.
And the winner is…
Someone finally uncrowned Ridgely Griffith and afterthegoldrush.
Until late Sunday afternoon it looked like the music-based website would cruise to its third straight title in my Best Local Blog contest. But supporters of Delmarva Progressive dropped well over a half-thousand votes on the poll and enabled that site to snatch away the victory.
With a record 1,001 votes cast, the results came in as follows:
- Delmarva Progressive, 788 votes (78.7%)
- afterthegoldrush, 205 votes (20.5%)
- Chesapeake Journal, 8 votes (0.8%)
Chalk it up as a rare liberal victory about these parts. In fact, the 1,001 votes ended up as a figure just a few tallies higher than the total of all nine preceding rounds (six first-round battles and three semifinals.) It’s a definite surprise given the fact Delmarva Progressive only picked up 10 votes in its semifinal – but it is what it is.
So congratulations to the crew over there for winning the contest, and moreso thanks to all who voted.
Drawing the curtain on this year’s contest does allow me to share a couple other thoughts, though.
First of all, the other day I was speaking to a blogging friend of mine from another part of the state who commented on the lack of websites in her area, particularly in comparison to the number of websites in this region. Obviously many of us deal with politics here but there are a number of other interests represented as well – just look at the contenders I had as evidence. If I were to classify the eighteen websites I selected this year, seven deal mainly with local news, three cover politics, and three could be described as personal journals. There were also blogs which covered sports, local history, music, food, and a fairly miscellaneous site as well. And I’m sure I don’t link to every single local website – there may be another couple hundred out there I don’t know about or just don’t get updated frequently enough for me to link to.
As for the contest itself, I based the original concept on the Mobbies, which is a similar popularity contest among Maryland-based blogs conducted by the Baltimore Sun. For the first two years of the contest’s now-three year run this site was among those nominated in the political category. (The political category disappeared in 2011, swallowed up into the formerly-separated news category.) For a site based on the Eastern Shore, I thought I placed rather respectively when I competed.
In my opinion we have a thriving local blogosphere, but one where civility and useful information is on the endangered list. Maybe a local media outlet needs to step up to the plate and have a contest similar to the Mobbies but concentrating on the Delmarva area. It would be a way to reward worthy websites and encourage the general public to visit them, and perhaps it would be an incentive for others to clean up their act.
Like it or not, the blogosphere is here to stay, and it’s up to all of us to determine its direction. Needless to say, I had my own personal favorites among the eighteen I featured but I left it up to the voters to decide who moved on. There’s a logical next step which should be taken, though, and it should feature those sites Delmarva can be proud of.
Bait and switch
That Governor of ours, he is a slick one.
After hearing from Martin O’Malley for several months before the General Assembly session that we should have a increase in the gasoline tax, the flush tax, or a host of other tax and fee increases, Governor O’Malley instead chimed in his support for the second sales tax increase of his tenure. Certainly we’re no stranger to sales tax increases as the tax on alcohol went up 50 percent last summer, from 6 cents per dollar to 9 cents. It’s almost like he floated the other ideas as trial balloons in order to make the “added flexibility” of a sales tax more palatable.
“I think we should remember that no one in our state lost their house, lost their job, or lost a business because of an additional penny on the sales tax,” O’Malley whined in speaking with reporters. Maybe he should come to Salisbury and ask local business owners about the effects of the sales tax when compared to tax-free Delaware. His assertion may be technically correct, but certainly we’ve seen many lost opportunities with the differential between what we can charge and what can be charged in Delaware.
Pruning and polling
It’s spring cleaning a couple months early. Actually, we got outside to enjoy the nice weather and took down the tree and Christmas decorations.
You might notice I’ve taken down a few links. I have a (somewhat flexible) policy of linking to sites which are regularly updated, but after they go about three months without a post I delete the link. I figure it doesn’t do either of us good to link to what is essentially a dead site. But if you have a site you think I should link to, let me know and I’ll review it to see which category it will fit into. Who knows, maybe I’ll make up a few new ones while I’m at it.
The other update I wanted to add this afternoon was that I’ll begin the semifinal rounds of my Best Local Blog poll sometime this evening. I actually had a tie in one round so I decided to add two wildcards; those two were the highest second-place finishers. So the seeding for the semifinals is set:
- Delmar DustPan (367 votes, won round 4)
- Right Coast Conservative (143 votes, won round 1)
- Sussex County Angel (23 votes, won round 3)
- Delmarva Progressive (20 votes, won round 6)
- afterthegoldrush (15 votes, won round 2)
- A Chesapeake Journal (4 votes, tied for win in round 5)
- Random Thoughts of a Citymouse (4 votes, tied for win in round 5)
- The Other Salisbury News (162 votes, second in round 4)
- Delmarva Shorebirds Blog (66 votes, second in round 1)
So I have the matchups set to be as evenly seeded as possible; as I said they’ll commence later tonight or tomorrow. As it lays out one of these battles will feature a rematch of the opening round with a new opponent tossed in.
And this time it will be win or go home, as each of the three winners advances. So bloggers better round up their troops and make sure to enlist their support!
Wishes for a Merry Christmas 2011
As always, I will take Christmas Day off to spend with my loved ones which are around. So this will have to suffice until Monday.
It seems like this Christmas has been more muted than past renditions, but maybe that’s just me. Sure, the economy is in the tank and a lot of people aren’t working but there have been times where the stores I’ve worked have been busy – and times where it seemed more like an average day in July based on the number of people walking around the store. As always, though, everyone is looking for the deal.
(By the way, thanks to those who used my Amazon affiliation to purchase their items. It’ll make me enough for a little stocking stuffer for myself.)
I couldn’t tell you if my perception is reality or not since I don’t add up the sales totals. I suppose if I see a lot of “Going Out Of Business” signs in 2012 I’ll know there was a lot of coal left in retailer’s stockings. Lord knows we can’t burn it anymore so there’s got to be some use for it.
Of course, a turning away from the material at Christmastime – whether caused by economic doldrums or not – isn’t all bad. We still have family and the original reason we celebrated the holiday to begin with as items to fall back on. Besides, the stuff we buy is generally of a fleeting amusement – things which may eventually find their way to the back of the closet, break down, or otherwise fall from usefulness in a short time. But family is hopefully much more long-lasting.
As has been the case over the last several years, for your holiday listening pleasure I bring you my friends from Semiblind doing ‘O Holy Night’. (You may have to goose the file and start Windows Media Player to get it to play, but it’s worth it.)
Merry Christmas to all of my friends and readers.
The calm
Have you ever had the feeling that something is about to break, and the dread you feel is the fear of the unknown?
I suppose it’s more of an attitude I sense than anything, but people are seemingly more on edge now than at any other time I remember. Sure, the holidays are always a stressful time, but the advent of the Occupy movement has shown that there’s a fairly short fuse out there and one helluva powder keg not too far away.
Now don’t start believing I’m turning into one of those survivalists who will stockpile seventeen months’ worth of food and water, building the underground bunker to ride out the unrest sure to come. I don’t think it will get THAT bad, but something just doesn’t feel right about society today. It seems there are too many desperate people out there.
And maybe that’s because we as a society have forced the hand of some of those people.
Weekend of local rock volume 43
For the seventeenth time, Skip Dixon held his annual Christmastime tradition last weekend.
Okay, so it was only nine bands who show for the annual 12 Bands of Christmas event. Still, The Pour House in Ocean City was the place to be for local rock, as those nine local bands wailed through the night. And unlike previous events, there was a nifty prize to be had:
The reason the autographed Paul Reed Smith guitar was being raffled off (at $25 per chance) was to raise funds for Melanie Davis, a 9 year old Pittsville Elementary student who was hit by a car in October, with the family racking up over $150,000 in medical bills so far with her care. They also had a 50-50 drawing and passed the hat, collecting a few hundred dollars more. It’s amazing how many shows I go to which are like that – the local music community is always happy to lend a hand.
Before the hat was passed, though, we heard the Phantom Limbs and it was good.
As always, they entertained with their mashup of punk, surf, and jam music – so much so that they only played four lengthy originals in their set.
But the crowd was gathering while the Phantom Limbs jammed to see the next band play.
These guys had to play early or else the bar would be in trouble – none of them are over 18 yet. But The Hooplas showed talent some bands with much more seasoned players couldn’t match, and it will be interesting to see what happens as they mature in the local music scene. All I know is that these youngsters packed them in, apologizing for not knowing all that many cover songs. Fellas, I don’t mind a bit – keep doing those originals!
…was next. As opposed to The Hooplas, they did all cover songs but picked out a heavy set which included a reasonable version of ‘Master of Puppets’ that got me screaming out the lyrics. “Taste me you will see…more is all you need.”
Apparently this singer doesn’t always sing for them, and I can’t recall who he normally sings for. (I want to say Lime Green?) But Slackjaw played a couple songs as a three-piece, too.
Livin’ the Dream also played part of their classic hard rock set as a three-piece. They put the host to work back on the drum kit, as you can see here and in the next photo.
But midway through the set they picked up the second guitarist to play some Van Halen and other classics. Yes, there was a KISS song too – ‘Detroit Rock City.’
We reached the midway point with another hard rock cover band, Dust ‘n Bones.
While they played a solid, workmanlike set I wonder why they don’t play their namesake Guns ‘n Roses song. Maybe next time I see them.
One has a bad leg, another has a surgically-repaired wrist, and they’ve gone through more drummers than Spinal Tap lately. Yet Semiblind keeps on playing as they remain a staple of Skip’s events.
But Jim Hogsett’s wrist held out and Michele Hogsett managed to stand through the whole half-dozen songs they played, gamely going through several of their newer cover songs. Semiblind doesn’t just play standard classic rock anymore, as they can toss out some country, funk, or Top 40 too. They are perhaps the most versatile band playing about these parts.
We took a short break to draw the 50-50 winner and hear a little bit from this friend of Skip’s.
Tim “Thunder Walrus” Yarosh is a comedian of some repute, although I wasn’t familiar with him. But perhaps I should check him out further since he was kind of a funny guy. (That or he may threaten to stay at my house.) I won’t dislike him simply because he didn’t draw my 50-50 ticket. Nor will I blame him for messing up the sound, as I’ll explain a bit later.
After the brief bit from Yarosh, we got back to music. A band which apparently hadn’t been playing around here of late was Abby’s Cage.
Just by a close listen I thought maybe they weren’t quite as tight as a couple of the other bands, but that would come back as they return to the fray. And Abby’s Cage liked the hard stuff, too.
Yet most of those who stayed waited to hear We Might Collide, a band making their debut at this show. The six-man band could be construed as a local supergroup of sorts as it includes three former members of the popular local band Lennex and two others from the late Baltimore-based band Fourth Element. Both of these late, lamented groups were talented enough to write a number of good, original songs – some of which I own on CD.
And they played all new material, too. So when I figured out that these guys shouldn’t have been that rusty, I had to concede that the last bands in this 9-band show suffered from a lack of sound quality – the mix didn’t seem right to me. Perhaps it sounded great in the stage monitors that the bands hear themselves from, but on my end it seemed too muddled together. So I’d rather not judge either Abby’s Cage or We Might Collide based on this show.
The sound was really off by the time Witches Brew, the final band of the night, took the stage. I couldn’t even hear the drums on the first song and the overall sound detracted from should have been a better effort to close the night.
I know Witches Brew can play their Judas Priest covers better than they sounded, because I’ve seen them enough – they’re also reliable veterans of Skip’s shows. But I have to chastise the fans as well.
Sure, they probably came out to see We Might Collide. But it always annoys me that so few stay around to see the last band, which gets to play to a half-empty bar but works just as hard as the other bands do. To me, it’s just common courtesy to stick around. Maybe that’s just me, and of course I wasn’t looking to get smashed or pick up someone. I just wanted to hear some good tunes and support local music. It’s what I do.
So the next time Skip has one of these shows – probably Spring Luau 2012 – come out and stay for all the bands. You won’t be sorry.
monoblogue turns six
Another year, another dollar. Actually, $95.40 to be exact because that’s my server fee for the year.
As I embark on another year of monoblogue and celebrate the achievements of the last, I’m reminded of something I wrote five years ago this very day:
On my previous blog site, my best week readership-wise was 197 readers (according to my Site Meter) but generally I would get between 30 and 50 readers a week. I was hoping for 100-200 a week from monoblogue…
Sheesh, did I have low goals or what? Since that point, I have had over 250,000 readers – and that’s the ones my Site Meter and other tracking systems caught. If you add in the places where I’ve had my works reprinted and republished I daresay I’m well into seven figures. Judging by the decline of my Alexa numbers (lower is good, and I reached my all-time low today of 333,458 for world rank and sit at a near-record 57,457 for U.S. rank) I figure someone has to be reading this space.
Getting an audience isn’t that difficult, though – the trick is keeping them. Once I had over 5,000 readers in a day (my Rushalanche) but most of them have drifted away. Not for lack of trying to keep them, though.
I normally don’t share a lot of readership information (although my Site Meter has been open for most of the time I’ve had it) but when I checked the other night my analytics showed that just under 56% of my readers were “new” while the other 44% or so were “returning” visitors. Presumably, if I had 1,000 visitors in a given time period, 440 of them had visited previously.
However, I also checked the trailing three months and found the percentage of return visitors had increased from 42% to 44% – not huge, but encouraging. Obviously I don’t want 100% return visitors because that would mean my audience had reached a saturation point but I think something in the 50-60 percent range would be healthy. So that’s my first goal for the next year. I don’t doubt readership will jump – I have a mostly political site and it’s an election year – but I want them to be a base for even bigger things in the years to come. So they have to be regular readers and a foundation to build around.
The second goal for 2012 is to fill out my advertiser base.
Unlike some other sites, I really don’t want ads to line both sidebars all the way down the page because, frankly, it looks terrible for the site layout and it’s not fair to the advertisers at the bottom who may never be seen if I write a truncated post. But I would like to first of all maintain my loyal advertisers – thanks goes to John Robinson and the Robinson Family of Businesses, Marty Pusey at The Perfect Dress, and Muir Boda of Sby4Rent.Com – and add three to seven more. I think 6 to 10 advertisers is a reachable goal, and given the fact my readership extends well beyond the local area it may be a good opportunity for national or regional clients. I don’t charge a ton for space, and perhaps it means I don’t monetize this site like I should, selling myself short. But I’d rather have plenty of business charging a little than no business charging a lot.
Oh, by the way, I’m also an Amazon.com affiliate so if you have Christmas shopping to do, by all means do it through monoblogue.
My third goal is going to be the most difficult to achieve. You see, for most of the last three years I wasn’t working outside the home, although that was certainly not by design or choice. When the local building industry went away, so did that fulltime job. And though I have accomplished a small amount of success as a freelance writer for various outlets, it’s not an easy market to break through in because millions of other people around the world fancy themselves as pundits, too.
So now I have a good job but it’s one which frequently necessitates I work for most of my day outside the home, therefore it’s not as easy for me to create plentiful content. Still, in looking at my monthly posting numbers I’ve found that I’ve put up nearly 500 posts over the last year so I get at least one in per day. Surprisingly, I’ve never cracked 60 posts a month or 600 in a calendar year so my pace isn’t that bad right now, and more importantly it’s manageable with my schedule. Granted, there will be times I’m a little behind on the news but my bread and butter is commentary anyway so if you can put up with 450 to 500 posts a year we’ll be just fine. That may violate the idea some bloggers have of writing no fewer than 2,500 words per day but I’d rather write 600 good words than 2,500 words of fluff. (Some take the easy way out and copy and paste to get to a certain number of words or posts, but I don’t – hence the phrase up top “mostly original content.”)
My last goal, though, is probably the most important for my goals in the long run. You see, everything I have built here comes because I have taken the high road, stuck to the facts and reasoned opinions, and stayed away from making this a personality-based site. Unfortunately, from time to time I get caught up in the various personality battles which occur in this small town, no matter how much I try to stay away. I am getting better at this, though, and perhaps it’s a sign of maturity on the part of all the local blogging participants that the “blog wars” are more or less behind us. By no means do all the local website owners like each other, and as a group we ain’t going to be singing “Kumbaya” by the campfire anytime soon, but the differences of opinion seem to be a little more civil.
Admittedly, I don’t think I’m ever going to be everyone’s cup of tea – certainly some readers probably can’t figure out why I do Shorebird of the Week or Weekend of local rock on a political site, but that’s what keeps me from getting burned out.
And Lord knows I don’t often pull my punches when I write, but I don’t lose sleep over my content and that’s what’s important. For a website, respect is the toughest thing to build and the easiest thing to lose.
With that, I start anew on another year of this website. As always, I’m hoping to make it a better year than the last one and there’s a lot of writing I want to get to before the next year closes on monoblogue, including wrapping up a manuscript I’ve been working with off and on over the last three years. It may be ready by year’s end, so if you know something about publishing I’m all ears.
In closing, I want to give thanks to my readers and my supporters. I’m not always on the winning side of the fights I pick and choose, but (as it were) I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees. There’s plenty of fight left in me and battles everywhere I turn, so there’s no use waiting on me to give up this ship or not having fun in the process.
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Please note that the opinions expressed on monoblogue are not necessarily those of the Wicomico County Republican Party Central Committee, of which I'm a member. (But they probably should be.)
