When you aren’t working or going to school, it’s easy to not know what day of the week it is, much else is being celebrated. I often don’t know what day of the week it is, though because I blog and pay bills, I’m pretty aware of the day of month it is.
Inauguration
As much as Garry dislikes political mud-slinging, he loves the ceremonies that mark America‘s traditions. For him, an inauguration is not the inauguration of a Democrat or a Republican … it’s the inauguration of an American President and he enjoys it, even if it isn’t a candidate for whom he voted. It’s American, not political.
He wrote something about it on Facebook and at least one person went into a political tirade about how he voted for Obama but wished he’d had another choice. Garry pointed out this wasn’t political. It was a celebration, the peaceful affirmation of our power that is far more American than apple pie.
Granted that other countries now have peaceful transfers of power, but only the U.S. from its birth made this a symbol of what we are as a nation … that no matter how hard-fought the campaign, when the votes are counted, the winner takes his place in the White House without violence or bloodshed. The ballot box is where we settle our differences, not the streets and not with weapons.
My take on this is simple: there are far too many people who have forgotten how to be Americans. They are so wedded to party politics, to a set of “positions,” that they are incapable, even for a single day, of just being Americans.
It seems that these folks are constantly gloating (“my guy is IN and your guy is OUT nyah nyah nyah!”) or whining (“We wuz cheated!”). Whether you fall on the side of the gloaters or whiners, if you want to make any claim to being an American or any kind of patriot, you need to be an American first and foremost, with your political affiliation secondary.
If you cannot do that, you really have no idea what this country is about.
Today I read a rant on Facebook by someone who still can’t accept the cruel reality that the election ended and his candidate lost. He declares that President Barack Obama is not his president, will never be his president. As if he gets to pick his own personal President, separate from the inconvenience of a legal election.
I feel obliged to point out that if you are an American citizen, the legally elected President of the United States is your President, whether you like him, voted for him — or not. If you are unhappy with the results of the election and you are a citizen of this nation, you have only two choices.
Obey the laws of this country including accepting the duly elected President as your President and as your Commander-in-Chief.
Abandon your identity as an American, renounce your citizenship, and move to another country if you can find one that will have you.
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There is no other choice until 2016 and there’s no guarantee that you’ll like the results of that election any better than you liked this one. Until then, Barack Obama is your president, my president, and the President of every other citizen of this country. You do not have a choice. This is a nation of laws which we follow even when it’s not convenient or easy. That is the price you pay for living in a democracy.
You cannot claim to be a patriot while simultaneously rejecting our system of government. I have lived through presidencies of men I thoroughly disliked, for whom I didn’t vote, and who I thought were harming our nation and myself, but I never had the temerity– or disrespect — to declare that the President wasn’t my President.
I believe in our system of government, laws, and justice system. It’s not perfect, but it’s way better than most. I don’t make a big deal about it. I don’t wrap myself in the flag. I just follow the laws, try to work within the system to effect change. I vote. I don’t trust people who make a big fuss about how patriotic they are. The more noise they make, the more I wonder what they are hiding.
I’m fed up with self-declared patriots who are not merely unpatriotic, but actually treasonous. If you don’t like our system of government, go somewhere you like better, but don’t tell me you’re a patriot. You’re not.
I am terribly disappointed in a lot of my fellow Americans. They seem bound and determined to cause as much trouble as they can because their candidates lost the election. They don’t seem to care how many problems they make for the rest of us because they don’t recognize we have rights too, or that our opinions matter. They don’t get the whole “democracy” thing. They want what they want, everyone and everything else be damned.
Residence of Washington in High Street, Philadelphia.
I’m no expert, but I’ve been around a while. As far as I recall, the way our electoral process works, each time we have an election a lot of people come up on the losing team. One side wins; the other loses. This has been true since John Adams.
George Washington ran unopposed so it wasn’t an issue for him, but don’t think that protected him from being shredded by the press while he was President. By the time he was done with his second term, he said he’d rather be hanged than serve a third.
The battle over a strong central government versus more power for the states was the primary issue dividing Americans in 1792. It was the issue that pushed this country into two opposing political parties and this split viewpoint preceded the revolution itself.
It has always been with us. In its own way, this division is as fundamental to the structure of our body politic as our laws. It resulted in the two-party system and is the primary political issue today, just as it was more than 200 years ago. I doubt it will ever be settled to everyone’s satisfaction.
That’s okay. We are allowed, even encouraged to hold differing opinions. It keeps the dialogue going, it forces us to find solutions despite our differences. It encourages creative problem solving on a national level. Sometimes one position prevails, sometimes the other is ascendant. But trying to do an end-run around the constitution because you didn’t get what you wanted is very uncool. Push it too far, and it slides imperceptibly from controversy and debate to obstructionism and outright rebellion. The line is thin; it’s wise to tread gently.
George Washington faced the same issue and the result was a most unhappy President. He didn’t want the job. He strongly objected to having to do it twice. He hadn’t been thrilled to lead the Continental Army either, but his sense of duty trumped his personal desires. He was the very best kind of leader: reluctant. A leader who’d rather go home to his farm is someone you can trust. Washington hated politics and who could blame him?
It wasn’t really an address or speech. It was an open letter to the public that got published in nearly every American newspaper. Washington’s fellow Americans dubbed it “The Farewell Address,” as it if was our first President’s valedictory address, but it was actually a letter of resignation. George Washington was done with politics.
Painting by John Trumbull of Washington resigning
James Madison talked him into a second term. But when a third term was proposed, Washington dug his heels in and said the equivalent of “No man should be forced to serve more than 8 years. Stuff your Presidency. I’m going home.” If you carefully read his farewell letter to the nation, it’s a most elegant way of saying “Hell no, not me!”
Because we prefer to print the legend, this was interpreted to mean “No man should be allowed to serve as President for more than 8 years” whereas a more accurate reading is “no man should be forced to serve more than 8 years. Washington considered the Presidency akin to cruel and inhuman punishment and believed that no man should have to endure it more than 8 years and probably couldn’t imagine why anyone might want to.
That’s a pretty major disparity between legend and truth. But we prefer our history clean and tidy. We like our heroes heroic, swords shining, mounted on bright white horses. Presidents are not supposed to have feelings. They aren’t allowed to get tired or discouraged.
We can tear them to pieces in public debates and media criticism, circulate vicious, often unfounded attacks on their character, but Presidents unlike mortal men, aren’t allowed to get angry, fight back, or even get discouraged. They have to take it on the chin and keep smiling. Moreover, no matter how horribly we treat them, we expect them to keep doing their job and keep taking care of our business. If a President takes a vacation, millions of people act as if it is a heinous crime. He’s made of steel, right? No vacations required.
If you look at before-and-after pictures of Presidents, all of them appear to have aged 20 years during their 4 to 8 years in office. It’s a killer of a job for anyone, regardless of affiliation. The Presidency is a marathon performed on a tightrope over an open trench full of rattlesnakes while the entire world trains its cameras on every move he makes and onlookers throw rotten tomatoes.
Most sane people don’t want the job. Would you? I know I wouldn’t.
So now we have tens of thousands of so-called Americans in a snit because their guy lost. They show no respect for the country they claim to love and no concern for how much they are embarrassing the U.S. Without regard for whatever their issues are, however weirdly paranoid they are and whether or not they believe the Anti-Christ is in office in Washington D.C., they throw their rotten tomatoes and go out of their way to make a hard job as difficult as possible.
If I were President, I’d lock them all up. Together.
I’d keep them together, isolated from everybody but each other until they learn how to keep a civil tongue in their heads. If I had a child behaving like that, I’d lock the little creep in his or her room until the kid was ready to apologize and remember his or her manners. Pity we can’t do it on a national scale.
These people, humiliating reminders of how unevolved some of our neighbors are, deserve a country of their own. I suggest an uninhabited island that lacks all communications with the outside world. Let them enjoy self-rule without benefit of law. They would have exactly what they say they want: freedom from government interference. If they feel they need guns, I think they should have them. All they could do is kill each other.
Does anyone happen to have a large uninhabited island lying around unused? I think we have just the right population for it. Best remove the wildlife first, though. We wouldn’t want to foist these losers on poor unsuspecting animals. That would be too cruel.
None. Not a single state has filed anything suggesting secession.
Why? First, because no state government is stupid enough to lose the benefits they get from the central government. Secession is illegal. The Civil War decided the issue and there’s no going back. All of these petitions are bunches of discontented sore losers who don’t understand that in the United States, an election decides the issue.
We don’t govern by petition. We protect your right to petition (thank you, First Amendment), but that only means we don’t throw you in jail for doing it, not that your petition has any force of law. We don’t govern by opinion. We vote. No matter how much you tell the world about your dissatisfaction on the internet, on social media sites, or anything else, it’s the ballot box where we collect and count votes. We have a constitution. We have laws. We vote. We count votes. The winner is decided, the loser takes his marbles and goes home. A petition by the losers of an election does not trump the right of the people of the United States to freely elect their representatives. That you have the right to petition doesn’t mean your petition is going to change anything. Its existence is a testament to how free a country this is. Most other places, you’d be jailed or shot.
The reason that not a single state government has petitioned for secession is because no one running a state is as stupid as these petitioners. They know they can’t go it on their own and aren’t going to try. Not to mention that a state trying to secede is considered to be in rebellion, for which there are serious penalties. As for the argument that we seceded from England, we were never part of England. We were a colony, a far different legal position than that held by a state. We did not secede from England. We rebelled against English rule. We are heroes because we won, but had we lost, it would have been ugly. Rebellion is a serious matter and the price of losing is dreadful. Rebels are hanged or shot, pretty much universally, so anyone who thinks they ought to rebel needs to be prepared to die.
AN HISTORICAL NOTE: The American colonists’ first choice was not to break away from England. We wanted the rights of full British citizenship and full representation in Parliament. In other words, far from preferring rebellion, we wanted inclusion. We wanted our status as a colony upgraded to the British equivalent of statehood … something that our American secessionist wannabes already have … and are too ignorant to value.
No one is going to secede.
As for all the mindless, blood-thirsty idiots who think a civil war is a good idea:
The Civil War cost more than 620.000 American lives, above and below the Mason-Dixon line. Death doesn’t care what color uniform you wear or what color skin you have. Dead is dead. The war between the states caused more American deaths than all other wars this nation has fought combined. ALL of them combined. I don’t know the actual percentage of the population that perished in that hideous conflict, the gory legacy of which we are still dealing with 150 years later, but it was a very substantial percentage. Anyone who suggests that doing that again is a good idea is a criminal.
I don’t care what you believe. No one who values human life, believes in God, or has any kind of conscience or moral compass would suggest we take up arm and start slaughtering each other.
The Peacemakers.
If we are unable to live together, we will not survive as a nation. How can anyone claim to care about this country and then suggest we destroy it because they don’t like the President? Does this sound like patriotism?
I’ve had enough. I keep trying to put this to sleep and someone always feel obliged to wake it up. Some folks need to grasp the concept that in a contest, some people lose. You guys lost. Deal with it. Respect the constitution. Work within our excellent system of laws. If you don’t respect our government enough to honor its fundamental principles, you really should go live somewhere else, if you can find anywhere else that will have your sorry asses.
Does it surprise anyone that the “leaders” of this bogus “movement” to secede are largely from the same states that produced the glorious Civil War? You think race might have something to do with it? The number of signatories, assuming that they could be verified as real people, does not come close to a majority of citizens of any state nor even enough to elect someone to congress. It’s just a bunch of annoying malcontents trying to get media attention. In other words, losers.
A lot of people seem to think we will get better government by making sure no one in congress gets to stay there for a long time. I don’t know why anyone would assume inexperience will produce better government. In no other field of endeavor do we prefer newbies to experience. Would you want an inexperienced surgeon? Would you prefer a lawyer fresh out of law school? Why do you want amateurs making your laws? It’s illogical to assume that in government, unlike any other profession, less knowledgable people will do a better job than those with experience. If you think about it, it doesn’t really make sense.
The less attractive you make the job, the lower will be the quality of candidates. It’s axiomatic. This holds true for any job in any field. Government is not exempt. A job with no future is not a job for which the best and the brightest will apply.
In practice, these ideas worked so badly that our newly formed country was falling apart. Elected representatives came to the capital (New York), hung around awhile, then went home. They had no motivation to stay. The job had no future and they weren’t getting paid enough (often no salary at all) to cover their costs while were away from home, much less support their families. So they left. Just wandered off. It turns out that if you don’t pay people and don’t give them a chance to build a career, they have no motivation to do the job. That’s why term limits were soundly rejected by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. These are ideas that were tried and failed miserably. Now, the goal was to get professionals to run the country, ambitious men who would make government their career. It was not a casual decision. They were right.
Research has shown that money is not the first or even the second most important motivator for a worker. It turns out the biggest motivator is job satisfaction. People will work incredibly hard to get a chance to feel good about the work they do. Number two on the list? A sense of belonging, companionship, fellowship with other workers. Everyone needs a family and for most people, relationships at work are as important as relationships at home, sometimes more important. Many people … these days, maybe most people … spend more awake hours at work than at home. However you feel about that, it’s still true.
Constitution of the United States of America (page 4) (Photo credit: The U.S. National Archives)
In third place, there’s money. A lot of money is nice, but for most people, satisfaction and friends come first.
Term limits remove any chance for an elected official to establish a career in government. No matter how good he or she is, no matter how hard he works, it’s a temp job.
The current salary (2011-2012) for rank-and-file members of the House and Senateis $174,000 per year. A third year associate at a good law firm will do that well and after six to twelve years (one or two senate terms), a competent attorney in a major market will make more.
In case you didn’t already know, senators and representatives have to maintain two homes, one in their home state and the other in DC. This comes out of their pockets; no reimbursement.
Articles of Confederation (Photo credit: The U.S. National Archives)
No one goes into politics for the money. If they want to earn big bucks, a government salary isn’t the ticket.
Term limits effectively remove motivation to do the job well or for that matter, at all. Most people who run for office have a law degree. They’d earn more staying home. They aren’t doing it for power because freshman congressmen and senators have no power.
Most important, writing laws is not a skill you learn in college or law school. It takes years of practice to understand how to write a law that will stand up to scrutiny by the courts or for that matter, to other members of congress. You don’t just waltz in from Anywhere, USA and start writing laws. There’s a hell of a learning curve and even with practice, great legislators are rare.
Above and beyond the skill it take to write legislation, it takes even longer to gain sufficient seniority and influence to be able get something passed. Frank Capra movies notwithstanding, first term congressmen are not major players.
So why do you think anyone would want to run for office?
If you eliminate money and power, what’s left is just what you would expect. They think they have something to offer and want to serve. They believe in public service. They may turn out to be stupid, inept, wrong-headed and ultimately corrupt, but they start wanting to serve the people who elected them.
Most hope they will be able to build a career in the political arena. Some are winners and you get a Tip O’Neill, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Bob Dole, Ted Kennedy or one of the other senior legislators who gets the stuff done that needs doing. Every legislator you can name connected to important legislation was a multi term representative or senator.
Term limits would eliminate any chance of ever having great legislators.
What you then will end up with are a bunch of amateurs fumbling their way around congress, trying to figure out how it works. As soon as they get good at it, they are out. Does that make sense? Really?
Garry and Tip O’Neill
If you think your congressman or senator is doing a lousy job, it’s up to you to replace him or her with someone you believe will do better.
If you don’t elect them, they won’t be in congress. It is as simple as that. Term limits are called elections. Throw the bums out. Vote for the other guy. Term limits were an awful idea in 1788 and they are just as bad in 2012.
Among the biggest concerns Democrats had about Barack Obama in 2008 was he didn’t have enough experience, hadn’t been in the senate long enough. With term limits, no one would ever have enough experience. Where would we get candidates suitable to be President?
If you think we have a pathetic field of candidates now, set term limits and see how bad it can be.
We don’t need term limits. We need better candidates. We need dedicated men and women willing to learn their craft, who have good ideas and can work with others to get America’s business done.
Our government does not rest on the Presidency. It rests on 435 congressmen and 100 senators.
The President doesn’t run the country. Congress writes legislation and votes it into law. Ultimately, it’s you, me, our friends and neighbors who choose the people to make laws, pass budgets, approve cabinet members and Supreme Court justices. The President can offer appointees for approval, but he can’t force congress to accept them.
The 535 members of congress are chosen by us and if you don’t like one, don’t vote for him. If someone gets re-elected over and over, you have to figure that a lot of people vote for him or her. You may not like him, but obviously other people do. That’s what elections are about. It doesn’t necessarily work out the way you want, but changing the rules won’t solve the problems. The only thing that will make a difference is to make the job more, not less attractive, so that more good and dedicated people will be willing to go into public service. Otherwise, you’re just creating a job that no one will want.
I got more than a thousand hits the other day, more than half for a reblog of Presidential Election: “Sad and Tragic Day for Our Nation” ? The article resonated, so I picked it up as soon as I read it. I couldn’t have said it better and thus didn’t try. Apparently millions of other people felt the same way and the post went viral, which is good but not enough.
I feel obliged to point out to those who have failed to notice: THE ELECTION IS OVER.
Barack Obama won. Mitt Romney lost. The winner gets 4 years (or in this case, 4 more years) as President of the United States. The loser makes a gracious concession speech then retires, hopefully to serve his country in some other way and perhaps make another run for office down the road. For now, it’s over. The nation returns to normal.
That’s the way it’s supposed to work. But this time? Apparently not.
There’s a level of hysteria, anger, and raw racism I’ve never seen before. I’ve voted for candidates who won and voted for candidates who lost. I was upset and angry when G.W. Bush stole an election, but I got past it. I ground my teeth, survived 8 years of what I thought was a terrible presidency. When national elections came around, I voted for Barack Obama. That’s democracy.
The losing team this year can’t cope with defeat. They are having a temper tantrum, except their pique at losing seriously and negatively impacts the entire country. If a team was behaving like this because they lost the World Series or the Super Bowl, we’d be mortified at their lack of sportsmanship. They be sanctioned. The sports channels would be all over them and fans would be up in arms. Yet we put up with it from a major political party? Why? If this kind of behavior is unacceptable in a baseball team, how can it be okay for a political party?
Why the frenzy and desperation? Surely everyone who runs for office knows losing is a possibility. In politics and horse-racing, there’s no sure thing. Why the hysteria? Why not let the wounds heal and let everyone settle down and go back to living? NOTE: There are more than a few on the Liberal side of this shouting match who need to shut up too. Let it go. Even if I agree with you, I’ve had enough. We don’t need to raise temperatures any higher. You won. Stop crowing and beating the drums. Go home. Relax. Let us all take a break from the insanity.
If you look at a map of red versus blue states, the underlying reason is apparent. If anyone doubts for a minute that this election was about race, look at the map. Compare the map of the “red states” to the old lines of the confederacy. With minor changes, it’s the same old, same old. Just when you think you’ve gotten that piano out the door, it comes right back in through the window. 620,000 Americans died fighting the Civil War, more than all the losses we’ve taken in all the other wars we’ve ever fought, from the Revolution through Vietnam. Are we are still fighting it?
Notice a certain consistency? Thought you might.
I hereby declare that not only is the election over, but the Civil War is over. It has been over for a long time and if there is a merciful God, we will never have another. The fundamental changes in our demographics have decided the issue for good and all. This nation will never be “white.” It never really was. The government was dominated by white people, but that’s finished. It will not return. Diehards may continue to try resurrecting it. They can keep disrupting the functioning of the government to the detriment of all, but it won’t restore the status quo they so dearly loved.
I’m grateful and if you examine the election results, so are most people. Splintering of the U.S. into groups who can’t even talk to each other just makes this an ugly place to live and undermines our credibility with other nations. Surely no one really wants that.
The United States of America is built on the premise that unity is strength. The motto “E pluribus unum” means “Out of many, one.” It is the phrase on the Seal of the United States and was adopted by an Act of Congress in 1782. “E pluribus unum” appears on the front of the Seal. Its image is used as the national emblem of the United States. It appears on official documents such as passports. It is on the seal of the President, as well as the seals of the Vice President, Congress, House of Representatives, United States Senate, and U.S. Supreme Court. It’s part of our national identity.
Is it obsolete? Are we ready to trash unity? And with what shall we replace it?
“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” is taken from Mark 3:25 “And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.” When Lincoln said it, he was referring to the division of the country between slave and free states. The “house divided” phrase has a long history in this country.
Lincoln used it in another context in 1843, most famously during the Senate debate on the Compromise of 1850. Sam Houston used it too, proclaiming: “A nation divided against itself cannot stand.” Thomas Paine, in his famous 1776 , in Common Sense said, “this hath all the distinctions of a house divided against itself . . .”
It’s hardly a new concept dating as it does back at least 2000 years. It is as true now as it was then. Those among us who continue to sow dissension are not patriots and are not working for the common good. They are stuck in the past. They cannot accept a changed world and try to play on the prejudices, fears, and passions of anyone willing to listen until they pull the house down around us.
The Conservative wing of the GOP led their constituents down a road that turned out to be a dead-end. They believed that they could rouse enough ire to bring down the house, but they were wrong. They lost. Despite their wailing, it isn’t the end of the world. It’s a defeat, certainly, but a tragedy only if they make it so. It’s time for them to show a little class, accept their loss, take responsibility. Regroup. Rethink positions. Become a more inclusive party. Come up with some fresh ideas that appeal to a wider population. If they do that, maybe they won’t lose next time. That’s how it’s done in a Democracy. It’s the definition of a democracy. Republican cry babies, man up, repair your party and move on.
Hate and blame are easy. It’s harder to give up your personal agenda and seek common ground. Working with people who have different ideas will always be necessary because we will never have a consensus. No country has a consensus. Tyranny can force the appearance of consensus, but no one and nothing can make everyone agree. To govern in a nation founded on diversity requires intelligence and creativity, qualities that seem to be in short supply. For every voice calling for reconciliation and coöperation, there is another strident one trying to drown it out. It’s stupid. Time for solutions that include all kinds of people, not just grumpy white folks who feel threatened by the growing population of non-white citizens who expect their fair share of America.
That is the promise we make: everyone gets a piece of the American pie, regardless of race, religion, or country of origin. If we aren’t that country, what are we?
We’ve got a good thing going here. We used to have a common sense of purpose. We need to find it again, to discover what unites us rather than eternally focusing on issues that divide us. There have always been and always will be differences and disagreements. It’s up to us to get past them, to unite and be Americans.
I’ve read a few articles lately in newspapers and online that “prove” it is Liberalism that creates classes. In their view, if we were all conservatives, we wouldn’t have classes and all men would finally really be equal. It worked for Louis XVI, so it ought to work here, right?
I have a hot flash for conservatives who are trying to prove the unprovable: there were classes before there was democracy, before the concept of elections by the people, before there were political parties and long before the United States existed. To say anything else, no matter how many big words you use, is absurd.
Classes exist in the United States because some people have a lot of money and many others have little or none.
Classes exist in the United States because we have a shameful legacy of slavery and oppression of anyone who isn’t white and Christian.
Classes exist in the United States because laws are not enforced equally and never were.
Classes exist because they exist, always have and no doubt always will.
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This quote from a popular columnist in the Washington Post makes me want to scream. Does she think that using big words changes the facts?
We can’t eliminate them, but we can do our best to lessen the differences between them, to enable movement between classes. We can do our best to eliminate the barriers to upward movement by the poor by making education affordable, by equalizing job opportunities and pay between men and women, white and non-white workers.
The real tension in America today is not about black versus white but about liberalism versus conservatism.
Liberalism is about government as a political agent, not as a protector of individual freedom. By it’s very nature, liberalism creates political classes – whether based on race or gender or business interests. Those that get the goodies are happy. Those that pay for them are not. Tensions and animosities get worse, not better.
In the end, we all suffer because giving politicians more power means less growth and prosperity.
Things will never get solved until we finally take “e pluribus unum” seriously – that American diversity can only be finally united through one set of values, under God, that enable freedom, one set of true values for all.
Really? I thought it was about poor versus rich, the haves versus the have-nots … you know, like it’s always been throughout history. Or have we decided that anything that didn’t happen during this election cycle no longer counts? Shall we exclude any history that fails to agree with your warped view of reality?
Get the goodies? What goodies? The Social Security and Medicare for which I paid for more than 40 years? I thought this was my money coming back to me as promised. Free public education? Roads without potholes? Medical care so I don’t have to worry I’ll die for want of money to pay a doctor? What other goodies do I, or anyone else, get? You mean food stamps so that people who are desperately poor don’t starve? Those goodies? How about educational programs to help people develop enough skills to earn a living wage? Are those the goodies creating classes in this country?
What piece of the government’s infrastructure would you like to eliminate? How about student loans? Maybe even state colleges are too much. Let’s go back to the good old days when only the wealthy could afford an education, thus enabling the persistent domination of everybody else by a privileged few.
I am tired of being told about my entitlements. My husband and I worked our butts off for 40 plus years. The bit we get back now will never equal the amount we contributed, but I’ll shut up about the unfairness of that if you’ll shut up about “entitlements.”
As a matter of fact, please, just shut up. I’d appreciate a big empty silence where your voice used to be. Until you have walked in my shoes, or better yet, until you have lost your shoes and had to go barefoot and hungry, shut up. Your silence would go a long way to healing the open sores of society.
My own numbers almost got lost in the election count the other night. I crossed over the 20,000 mark sometime during the course of election coverage.
20,000 (and a few hundred more)
From February 2012, through the end of September, I gathered 10,000 hits. It took me a few days more than a month to get the next 10,000 hits. As of today, or as of a little while go, I am at 20, 783.
I get a lot more visitors that I used to and they show up regularly. When Serendipity’s visitor count first popped up from 70 or 80 on a good day to more than 600, I figured it was a fluke that would quickly fizzle. It leveled off, but didn’t fizzle.
I feel like Sally Field saying “You like me, you really LIKE me.” I need to say yet another thank you to Sharla at Awakenings and CatnipofLife who has helped me navigate the growth process. I have learned an incredible amount from her and she is such a gracious, good-hearted woman. Sharla, you are a star!
Now, although there are dips and peaks, on a “bad” day I get two to three hundred visitors (not counting followers on WordPress,Bloggers, Pinterest and Twitter). On a good day, 500 to 600 isn’t unusual. I have accepted that something happened, something changed. It isn’t the audience — they don’t change — so it had to be me.
I’ve given this a lot of thought and I think I have finally figured out some of the reasons why people read my blog or probably, any blog.
It starts with writing about interesting stuff and presenting it well. That ought to go without saying, but it doesn’t, not really. Many of us — especially me! — have favorite subjects, subjects that are important to us and that are not popular. I won’t stop writing this material, but it is never going to have a huge audience either.
There are a lot of unattractive sites on the web. Too cluttered, bad color choices, hard on the eyes. Too much happening on the page. A lot of people apparently throw things together without much regard for the aesthetic elements. I am much more likely to read something that’s easy on the eyes and I suspect so are most people.
A lightbulb went off when I got thousands of hits on a reblog about hurricane Sandy. Anyone could have as easily read the same article on its original website. I was also NOT showing up at the top of a Google search. I searched using the phrase everyone else was using and I could not find me at all … so people had to be intentionally seeking me out. Instead of reading the original article, they flocked to my site. So let’s give me a point or two for presentation. My blog is easy to look at. I follow the rules for keeping white space aplenty and making sure there are more than enough graphics to break up blocks of text.
But that could not be all of it. I examined the total content for various days when the number went very high and I realized that all of them involved current stories in which everyone was interested. I tended to clump stories around a theme, then add more pieces. I typically supplement a reblogged post with extra graphics and photographs if I can, plus my commentary and analysis. I leave the original story intact, but add to it. Sometimes my additions are longer than the original, but I never mess with the author’s original (except to occasionally fix typos that my auto-editor catches … I’m sure no author minds having typos fixed — I sure don’t!)
Unlike the original blog which was a standalone feature, I followed a trail. I gathered up pictures and memories of hurricanes and other storms and wrote about them. I got Garry to talk about his experiences with the Blizzard of 1978, and other storms. I roamed the web to see what was happening in various places being hit by the storm. Although I focused on Sandy and it’s impact on Coney Island, I found other places down on the Jersey coast being equally (or worse) affected and posted what I could get about these area.
I added material, especially photographs, historical background and apocryphal stories. There was no intentional method to my madness. I just did what I do for myself when something interests me. I get into bloodhound mode and I follow wherever the scent leads me. That’s how I learn. I started in one place and the circles widened to include more and more stuff.
I included stories that were not directly related to the impact of Sandy on the mid-Atlantic coast, but were thematically related; second cousins by marriage, if you like. There have been other monster storms that have paralyzed the region, relatively recently and in the remembered past. It was a good time to feed my personal fondness for history by giving it facts to munch on. A lifetime’s enthusiasm for research doesn’t hurt. Some people get bored, but I find research fascinating. It can keep me glued to the computer for days on end.
I Googled “hurricanes past 100 years East Coast” and could have filled an encyclopedia with the results. Research became stories. I hunted down historical photographs. I remembered stories I heard from relatives and friends about storms they remembered. And then, there is my secret weapon: my husband who in covering storms in New England for more than 30 years, is a bottomless repository of amazing stories.
I offered a lot of information, stories, mood pieces and more or less stitched them together so that while each post was separate, they formed a continuity. One thing led to another. When I thought about this storm, I remembered other storms, wrote about the storm that hit on my birthday in 1889 … and I offered facts, stories, and historical background, sidebars, and photographs. The combination worked. Folks came to read one story and stayed to read more. Some of them signed on as followers. Others check in less regularly, but they come back.
I have a lot more visitors than I used to. And finally, I think I have a pretty good idea what attracts visitors.
Here are three little ideas to help boost your numbers, if that matters to you. If you don’t care about whether or not anyone reads what you write, that’s okay. To each his own. But if like most of us, you would prefer to have more rather than fewer visitors, here we go:
Be current. You don’t have to be a newspaper or make every post about current events or other news, but don’t ignore big events going on in the world around you. You don’t even have to write these stories yourself. Which brings me to the next point.
Reblog or use ScoopIt when you find well-written, relevant posts. If other people have done a great job writing about important issues, you can better spend your time doing something that hasn’t been thoroughly covered by others. It can be a different slant on the same subject, graphics rather than text, or something completely different. Being relevant doesn’t mean you have to write it, only that you should include it. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. If you find well-written stories on an important issue, the author’s voice can speak through you.
When something very signficant or interesting is happening … the election, the hurricane, the new season of television, the upcoming Oscars … pay attention. You don’t have to write exclusively about that one subject, but you should not ignore major events either. It’s fine to march to the beat of your own drum, but it’s good to also pay attention to what the rest of the band is playing.
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Ivory towers can be lonely places. If you want company, you need to associate with the rest of the world and pay at least some attention to what interests them. If you write entirely for yourself, it’s a diary, not a blog.
With camera in hand, exploring European lands, cultures, food, and drink...mostly with a plan, but sometimes enjoying the adventure of just getting lost.
