And then I happened to review the list of visitors during the last 24 hours:
1. Novi Sad (Serbia)
2. London (England)
3. Taipei (Taiwan)
4. Eastham, Massachusetts (U.S.)
5. Mountain View, California (U.S.)
6. Warsaw, Mazowiecke (Poland)
7. Italy
8. Little Rock, Arkansas (U.S.)
9. Hilton Head Island, South Carolina (U.S.)
10. Fort Worth, Texas (U.S.)
11. Jakarta, Jakarta Raya (Indonesia)
12. Council Bluffs, Iowa (U.S.)
13. Longview, Texas (U.S.)
14. Manti, Utah (U.S.)
15. Chihuahua (Mexico)
16. Tubarão, Santa Catarina (Brazil)
17. Honolulu, Hawaii (U.S.)
18. Birmingham, Alabama (U.S.)
19. Russellville, Arkansas (U.S.)
20. Strongsville, Ohio (U.S.)
21. Clayton, North Carolina (U.S.)
22. Chicago, Illinois (U.S.)
23. Hopkins, Minnesota (U.S.)
24. Santa Maria, Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil)
25. Warner Robins, Georgia (U.S.)
26. Savannah, Georgia (U.S.)
27. Sunnyvale, California (U.S.)
28. Kristianstad, Skane Lan (Sweden)
29. Mumbai, Maharashtra (India)
30. Fountain Valley, California (U.S.)
31. Jyväskylä, Western Finland (Finland)
32. Quezon City (Philippines)
33. Carrollton, Texas (U.S.)
34. Calcutta, West Bengal (India)
35. Whitchurch, Shropshire (England)
and my heart was made happy.
That list doesn’t even include some of my regular commenters from Oregon and Florida and British Columbia and New Zealand and Australia and the Netherlands, all of whom apparently are taking a long-deserved vacation (whether individually or together, I cannot say).
And then there’s the fact that ever since I wrote the first post with fear and trembling nearly four years ago, I have managed to save most of the little flags of the countries of the world that have visited my blog. Know how many I have saved so far?
131.
Who woulda thunk?
Of course, it isn’t about quantity; it’s about quality. Some of those folks may show up for a second or two, not like what they see, and depart posthaste, saying, “This isn’t my cup of tea.”
And that’s okay.
There will always be naysayers.
You can’t please everybody.
Actually, you can please all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
Somebody famous said that, I think. Either Abraham Lincoln or Lady Gaga.
Everybody blogs differently. Some people post photographs almost exclusively, some people have a mixture of text and photos, and some people have mostly words. I’m in the last two groups, moving back and forth between them depending on my mood. But mostly, in my heart of hearts, I’m a word person.
My friend Rosezilla (whose real name is Tracie) down in Florida says, “A word is worth a thousand pictures,” and I tend to agree.
I will make you a solemn promise. If you continue to read my blog, I will never post photo after photo of my children and grandchildren. I will never post a recipe that contains twelve ingredients and thirty-six photographs. I will never show you any handcrafts I have made, in or out of rehab, computer-assisted or otherwise, except for possibly the occasional poem or short story.
If you don’t continue to read my blog, I make you another solemn promise:
You will never know what you’re missing.
Note. The photo on the right was selected at random from thousands of possibilities. The person in the photo is not Mrs. Rhymeswithplague nor is it a child or grandchild of ours. As to whether it might be me, I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate me.
Note 2. I would like to make two exceptions to the “no handicrafts” rule, and those are Pat of Arkansas and Katherine DeChevalle who produce exquisite greeting cards and oil paintings, respectively. In fact, I am a recipient personally of their work, and am in awe of their talents and abilities. When I said “handicrafts” I was thinking mostly of knitted squares for afghans and pasted-together covers for boxes of Kleenex.
