It's a ridiculous situation from the start: a youth runs up a steep mountain in deep winter while carrying a banner inscribed with one word in Latin--Excelsior!--a very nice thought for those who read Latin, but others might find it incomprehensible. Why is he running up the mountain? With whom is he trying to communicate? Why won't he accept his neighbors' advice and trade his futile quest for a nice mug of hot cocoa? Longfellow doesn't tell us, so nobody knows.
These days blogging feels like an equally futile quest, especially when humanity seems determined to outsource all its reading and writing needs to robots. Have I been pouring my heart and soul into words in this space for twenty long years only to provide fodder for training mindless conglomerations of code?
Twenty years! It seems like a long time, but if this blog were a person, it wouldn't be old enough to drink. Just over four thousand posts and 1.5 million visits, though I place no confidence in the numbers because who knows how many visitors possess a mind rather than a circuit board?
I started blogging on January 18, 2006, with a post setting forth a sort of purpose, though it's couched no more clearly than the message on Longfellow's "banner with the strange device." Though that explanatory post is linked on my home page, it is only the second-most-visited post I've produced. The most-visited post, for reasons I can't fathom, is called "Meeting the OMBD Candidate." It describes academic job candidates who make members of the search committee declare, "Over my dead body!" It's not the greatest thing I've ever written but it must have struck a chord, with over 9000 visits since 2007.
"Teaching" is the most common label affixed to these posts at 1117, with "The perils of being me" and "Life in the Slow Lane" coming in a distant second and third at 835 and 831. Apparently I've written quite a lot about family, birds, books, and writing, but I also scribbled 166 posts labeled Coronavirus Chronicles and 136 labeled The New Normal, which seems odd because I feel as if cancer dominated a larger stretch of my life than did Covid-19.
Amidst all the posts about Serious Academic Matters as well as rampant silliness, I was surprised to find five posts from 2015 labeled The End of the World as We Know It, There we find George Washington seeking the name of Margaret Thatcher's wigmaker, John Muir providing inspiration for tinkerers and wanderers everywhere, academics becoming zombies at a conference, students learning novel ways to plagiarize, and teachers coping with the challenges of the Listicle Generation. I don't quite see the connection, nor do I recall why I abandoned the label not long after introducing it.
But I'm never quite sure what I'm doing here besides playing with words in a way that may provide some pleasure and insight to others. Longfellow's ridiculous youth engaged in a futile quest could be the mascot for any English professor's career, but I also quite enjoy another meaning of Excelsior: wood wool, the shavings used as packing material before the advent of styrofoam peanuts. Twenty years ago I concluded my first-ever blog post with a promise to share the "curly little shavings from the wood block of my mind," which expresses, as clearly as anything, what I'm trying to do here.
And I'm still trying to do it despite everything. Not long ago I resolved to restore three habits that I'd thoughtlessly abandoned last year: taking long walks, snapping frequent photos, and writing silly poetry. In the new year I've done some walking in the woods (ouch ouch ouch) and I've finally bought a new zoom lens, but thus far I've somehow avoided writing any doggerel. Time to fulfill my vow! What better way to celebrate a blogiversary?
Onward and Upward with Excelsior
I blogged about life in the slow lane and cancer;
I blogged my confusions and questions (and answers!).
I blogged about books, about teaching and writing,
I wrote on how tech breaks my neck--not indicting
its use but admitting my weakness. I posted
some pix of my grandkids, and sometimes I boasted
of tenure, promotion, awards--how I coasted!
I wrote about Covid and struggles with Zooming.
I wrote about birds, bees, and flowers a-blooming.
I wrote of The End of the World (hypothetical),
of Zombies and tinkerers, texts theoretical,
of life in the woods, on the road, on some beaches,
of sweet corn and pawpaws and pies full of peaches.
I blogged and I blogged and I wondered, "Who's reading?"
In what way is my goal (so bizarre!) still succeeding?
Though the bots boost my numbers, I can't see the point
of my yammering on in a vast, empty joint.
I think about quitting or splitting for Substackl
I wonder how long I'll have something to say.
What would happen, I ask, if one blog were to subtract
itself from the burgeoning media fray?
I think of the Longfellow poem, that poor youth
who sacrificed all for a hard, painful truth:
you can carry your message up Alps, ever higher,
you can trot, sprint, or sashay, but if you aspire
to communicate urgent commandments on satin,
it's best, perhaps, not to proclaim them in Latin.
But this blog is a box full of thoughts and impressions,
all packed in with wood wool (excelsior!). I press on
and up with my strange banner waving, and even
if no one is reading, I can't help believing
that writing still matters, so I'll sing to the choir:
"Excelsior!" Sing with me! (It simply means "higher.")
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