Two Things

The first thing:  We have had company for the past two days; very old friends from southern California who have lived there all their lives, as we had lived there many years before we came to the northwest.  One of them mentioned to me this morning that in Irvine, where they now live, there is a law that does not permit the use of leaf blowers prior to 8:00 a.m.  And, she said, you scarcely need an alarm clock if you are willing to awaken at 8 a.m., because every gardener at every house in the neighborhood turns his leaf blower on at precisely 8 a.m.  She imagined them all, looking at their watches, finely calibrated to the  precisely accurate time, with their fingers pressed upon the 'on' button.  And then, on the movement of the minute hand, there they go, and there comes the noise.

And I thought about how quiet it is in Point Roberts, even with the trucks and cars and overhead planes and that no moment in my life here is even vaguely like that moment she experiences five times a week (I am assuming they don't garden and blow leaves on the weekend, but that might be wrong).  And I am grateful for the (relative) silence that we have to accompany our journey here.

The second thing: And, speaking of silence, I have concluded that, for me, the noise of the comments has grown too loud, too grating, and thus, I will remove comments from my blog.  There have never been many comments on the blog and that seemed perfectly okay.  I did not begin writing the blog to create a spirited or lively or angry discussion about living in Point Roberts.  Rather, its purpose was to talk about what it felt like, to me, to live in Point Roberts with all its beauty and its oddities.  No one, really, can argue about whether I feel the way I feel. 

Nevertheless, I am grateful for those of you who have written via the comments section on occasion to tell me something I was helped to know, to thank me for some piece of writing, to introduce yourself and ask some question you had about life in Point Roberts.  But I find that what in the blogging world are sometimes called 'flame wars,' though occurring very rarely on this blog, are now too often for me to want to support them by offering the comments section as a venue for some peoples' very angry words.

I have the choice, as the blog owner, to have unmoderated comments (which has been my practice up until today), to have moderated comments (which means that I choose which comments appear and which are rejected), or to have no comments at all.  I don't much like the idea of picking and choosing, and now the first option seems to have worn out its welcome with me.  So, I am left with the third one.  If anyone yet wishes to write to me to express a contrary view, to ask a question, to rave on, my email address is on the front page, right-hand column of the blog, and any reader is welcome to use it to reach me. 

Blog Network

I heard Twitter described today as a ‘mini-blog’. Very helpful, as I had not otherwise figured what Twitter was about, although I tried it a few times. Somehow, writing down what I am doing at just this moment seems monumentally boring, not only to the writer but also to the reader. Facebook has a similar feature and it has about the same mashed-potato quality to it: recognizable, clearly food, but not very tasty on its own. Needs gravy, salt, cheese, onions, something. With a real blog, I think you get more of the tastiness. Or at least you should.

I read a lot of blogs, but mostly I read political blogs. So, it may be puzzling that I don’t want to write a political blog. The reason, I think, is that there are plenty of people far more knowledgeable about politics than I am. I follow politics closely; I worked for a U.S. Congressman some years ago, I read obsessively about it, but I don’t feel any particular need to put it all together into a single picture. By contrast, writing about Point Roberts seems more manageable: it has the advantage of being a strange place and one’s views about it are unlikely (usually) to elicit strong reactions; the kinds of feelings that cause friends/relatives/strangers to vent their disagreement with and disapproval of you.

Since my blog isn’t one that has a lot of reader comments, isn’t a bid to create a ‘forum discussion community,’ it may not seem, to the readers, to be much in the way of a network. The readers know a lot about me, but they don’t know each other for the most part, and I don’t know them either (with the exception of close friends, children and grandchildren). But I do know more about them—about you—than you/they think.

My blog has a google counter on it and it tells me something about you all. I know how many of you there are in any given 30-day period (usually 300-400 unique individuals who look at the blog during that time at least once) and how many of you there are on any given day (15-40), I know what continent and even what country you are from. I know in what city your internet server has its place of business., and I know about how long each visitor from each place spends in an average visit, and how many pages he/she reads. I know what internet browsers people use (47% Internet Explorer, 40% Firefox, and 11% Safari—apparently the Mac crowd isn’t interested in Point Roberts). And, finally, I know whether your connection is by cable, DSL line, OC3 line, or a T1 line. Why I would want to know this latter is beyond my technical capacities, but I offer it because it may have more meaning to you.

The information changes from day to day, from month to month, and so I have some sense of you out there and your responses. But, of course, I don’t really know anything about you. Recently, someone in Hawaii visited the blog and spent about ten minutes each time. There were three such Hawaiian visits, though I don’t know whether it was the same person each time. But I want to say that I hope the weather is beautiful there now.

Right from the beginning, there has been a steady stream of visits from Plano, Texas. I don’t think I know anybody in Plano or even nearby Plano, but there are a lot of visits from an ISP there, and I want to take this opportunity to say thanks for coming by. And to the rest of you too, the Americans, Canadians, Brits, South Africans, Australians, Italians, French, Mexicans (all from this past month). At a miminum, you brighten my day just by your being there, even if I don’t know exactly who you are. Beyond that, you are the audience whom I think about when I write, so you are very present in every page, and I think about the writing as something of which we are both a part. I’m not here just talking to myself.

However, I can’t send you a card because—despite all I do know about you--I don’t know your name or email address. So, this one’s for you: Good Wishes, Good Times for the Season, Much Thanks, and I’ll Be Seeing You Always.