This is the 100th post to this blog.
I started the blog in August, 2010. It started with a defense of freedom of religion. The first post was about Muslims who wanted to build a community center in Manhattan, not far from where the destroyed World Trade Center once stood. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2010/08/what-islamic-community-center.html
Since it started, this blog has had 2,675 page views. I can tell the number of page views, what country the viewer is from, and which blog post has had recent visits. I can’t tell who has visited.
Some of the blog posts have been more popular than others. The most popular posts, with the number of viewers, follow here:
"Ten Things that Liberals Believe" (August 15, 2011; 58 visits) This post was about ten principles that I think inhabit liberal thought. I don’t know why it’s the most popular. It still gets traffic. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/08/ten-things-that-liberals-believe.html
"Eliminating Bigotry for a More Perfect Union: Part 1." (September 30, 2010; 56 visits.) This was the first of a three-part series. I examined bigotry toward different groups, and what to do about it. This post is popular with foreign visitors. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2010/09/eliminating-bigotry-for-more-perfect.html
"List". (May 22, 2011; 42 visits.) This is simply a list of 25 thoughts – proverbs, if you will – that I have come to believe. Again, I have no explanation for its relative popularity. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/05/list.html
"In Praise of Older Women." (July 16, 2011; 36 visits.) I explain how awesome older women are. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/07/in-praise-of-older-women.html
"Suicide and Storm" (February 27, 2011; 35 visits) This was my most personal post. It is about the last time I tried to take my own life, about a decade ago. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/02/suicide-and-storm.html
The least popular blog post was "Principles of Power and Reality Among Nations." (August 20, 2011) It has had one page-view. That’s probably all it deserved. It was leaden and ponderous, and I probably didn’t have business writing about this subject. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/08/principles-of-power-and-reality-among.html
I’ve been specifically criticized for one post: "When Christians are Assholes". A friend of mine hated it, and she said so. It was posted on August 7, 2011, and it has had 26 visits.
http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/08/when-christians-are-assholes.html
Some types of my blog posts are reliably well-visited. That’s usually the case when I try to lacerate a politician. For example, I made fun of Mitt Romney in a post called "Mitt Romney Up a Tree". (February 25, 2012) It quickly got 25 page views. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2012/02/mitt-romney-up-tree.html
My efforts at humor reliably only get modest traffic. Here are three that haven’t been popular, although I enjoyed writing them. "Rolling Over in their Graves" (September 4, 2011; six page views.) This was an account of an imagined meeting of the Founding Fathers, called to pass judgment on a 21st Century controversy. It was inspired by the constant invocation of what the Founding Fathers would have thought or done about this-or-that issue. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/09/rolling-over-in-their-graves.html
"The Night of the Santa" got seven visits, and it was posted on December 24, 2011. I look at the evidence and deduce that Santa Clause is a vampire. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/12/night-of-santa.html
"Listening in on Adam and Eve" (August 11, 2011) has had only four visits. It looks sardonically on Biblical literalism. Its unpopularity was predictable. My religious friends tend to read the Bible literally, even parts that I don’t; my non-religious friends don’t care. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/08/listening-in-on-adam-and-eve.html A more serious look at the Bible and literalism is "The Bible on Itself" (November 14, 2010). It has had ten visits. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2010/11/bible-on-itself.html
But my post called "Punctuation with Personality" has been relatively popular. (Twenty-one page views.) I posted it on April 25, 2011, and in it I attribute certain character-traits to different punctuation marks. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/04/punctuation-with-personality.html
Another exception to the generally light traffic to humorous posts is one called "Humor Now". It’s about the place of humor in public life, with examples. It was posted on March 27, 2011and it still gets occasional traffic. It has been visited 26 times. It seems to be popular with foreig visitors to the blog. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/03/humor-now.html
Another kind of blog post that doesn’t get much traffic are those in which I laud a politician that I otherwise don’t like. I do this as an exercise is public decency. I think there is something right about looking at the good qualities of someone you oppose. This is very true in these hyper-partisan times. It’s just that those posts aren’t usually popular. My post on Ron Paul got 11 visits, but my post on Rick Perry got only four. Ron Paul: http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/12/ron-paul-ten-virtues.html Rick Perry: http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/09/rick-perry-ten-virtues.html
In these hyper-partisan times, I also have written about the need for civility. In "Tribes" (May 16, 2011; 12 visits) I wrote about this hyper-partisanship, and the need for mutual charity, and why charity is astute. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/05/tribes.html Another post on public civility is "Why and Act of Kindness is an Act of Patriotism. (June 22, 2011; 22 visits.) http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/06/why-act-of-kindness-is-act-of.html
My blog gets visitors from other countries. I can view the countries with the top-ten number of visitors. But there are many countries from which I have had just one or a handful of visits. These are the top ten countries that have visited the blog:
United States: 2,203
Russia: 111
Germany 58
Malaysia 51
Slovenia 36
Mexico 24
Canada 21
United Kingdom 16
Republic of Georgia 15
Denmark 10
Only once before did I blog about blogging. It was a post called "The Pleasure of It", which I posted on September 18, 2010. It has had 19 visits.
http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2010/09/pleasure-of-it.html
At a certain point, I started writing religious-themed posts. That’s because religion is one of my very deep interests. When I advertise the posts on Facebook, now-days I try to remember to flag them as religiously-themed, if they are. People who don’t like reading theology can avoid them; but many of my friends, like me, have a keen interest in conversation about God. A recent example is "Less Smart than We Think". It’s about the sovereignty of God and his power in human success and failure. I wrote it on March 3, 2012, and it has had eight visits. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2012/03/less-smart-than-we-think.html
Another one is "Rebellion and Restoration". It’s about obedience to God, and how the classical spiritual disciplines aid this. I posted it on February 22, 2012, and it has had seven visits. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2012/02/rebellion-and-restoration.html
A relatively more-popular religious post was "God, Satan, Bets, History and Us". It’s about the Book of Job. I ponder that the bet placed by God and Satan on Job is like bets that God places on us, our friends, our churches, and our nations. I posted it on November 26, 2011, and it has had 28 visits. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/03/humor-now.html
Some of my posts have been very personal. Often, I have been very reluctant to publish these posts. But it’s often the case that, after I do, I get messages from friends thanking me for sharing something so personal. Sometimes the post reminds them of something that happened to them personally, or to someone they cared about. Those posts have been hard to share; they probably have done the most good.
Probably the most personal post was "Suicide and Storm". http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/02/suicide-and-storm.html I also wrote "God, Madness, and Me" (October 22, 2010; 30 visits), about my madness and how it changed my religion. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2010/10/god-madness-and-me_22.html "Sleepless" was about my use of medical marijuana to treat my insomnia. (May 7, 2011; 36 visits.) I worried that my friends and others would label me a pot-head, but I got positive responses to the post. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/05/sleepless.html
Usually, my posts are my own work, but I owe a lot to the ideas of others. The exception is a blog I wrote with my friend John Engle. We both were moved to write about the need to fund treatment for the mentally ill. I incorporated his words into "Liberals and Conservatives Can Agree about Re-Funding Mental-Health Treatment." (January 20, 2011; eight visits.) http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/01/liberals-and-conservatives-can-agree.html
One advantage to writing a blog is that often an issue comes up with friends, like on Facebook, and I might remember that I’ve already written on that. Instead of writing out a whole argument, I refer my debate-partner to what I’ve already written. This most often happens when discussing the Affordable Care Act (aka "Obamacare"). This is my post on that: "What We Think When We Love Health-Care Reform, Or Hate It". (February 1, 2011; 30 visits.)
http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/02/what-we-think-when-we-love-health-care.html
Sometimes, I’m self-critical, but with a motive. "Dickish Me" (December 29, 2010; 22 visits). http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2010/12/dickish-me.html
There’s been a little poetry. For example, I wrote "What Gift Do I Have to Give My Wife" about my contributions to a hypothetical marriage. (April 12, 2011; 24 visits.) http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/04/what-gift-do-i-have-to-give-my-wife.html More doggerel than poetry: "Three Poems in Bad Taste for May 1, 2011". (May 2, 2011; nine visits.) These are pieces about the killing of Osama bin Laden. They form probably my least-favorite post, but not my least-popular. http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/05/three-poems-in-bad-taste-for-may-1-2011.html
But, by and large, I’m happy with what I’ve written. I look forward to more blogging.
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