A fun part of blogging. September 7, 2009
Posted by ourfriendben in Ben Franklin, pets, recipes, wit and wisdom.Tags: blogging, blogs, the joy of blogging
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Here at Poor Richard’s Almanac, we’ve been blogging since February 2008. And we try to post at least once a day, more often if several of us (our contributors are our friend Ben, Silence Dogood, and Richard Saunders, with occasional guest posts by our hero and blog mentor Benjamin Franklin, OFB and Silence’s clueless cat Linus, and our big, bad black German shepherd puppy Shiloh) all want to talk at the same time. What this means is that we’ve said a whole lot over the past year and a half, and we usually don’t have a clue what half those posts were about.
But here’s the fun part: Readers continue to come onto our blog searching for posts from the past, and our blog home, WordPress, records the posts they’re reading for us. If we see a post that looks unfamiliar, we can click on it and read along, reminding ourselves of what the heck we were going on about back in the day. Just today, we came upon two that we’d completely forgotten, “Attention Chocoholics!” (about Tar Heel Pie, a recipe Silence discovered when she and OFB were vacationing down on Emerald Isle, North Carolina), and “How to Dress as Ben Franklin” (a post about Colonial dress that had been inspired by a reader query). We encounter at least one of these forgotten posts every day.
Not only do these posts give us a chance to learn things we’d like to know but have obviously forgotten, they give us a chance to check our writing skills. Were these good posts, indifferent, or bad? Were they funnier or more clever than the posts we’re writing now? Did they have a timeless message that might be worth revisiting in a current post? Or, as in the case of Tar Heel Pie, a forgotten recipe that’s worth resurrecting?
This is an aspect of blogging that we find awe-inspiring, that a post once written never dies, that people—sometimes thousands of people—continue to come seeking out what we’ve said about pluots or pirate movies or cats or Amish friendship bread or you name it. It makes us happy that we try to take the time to write well and to think before we write. But it also just makes us happy that people keep on dropping by. Thanks for coming!!!
I love that you have a record of a visitor’s search ~~One of these days I might finish moving to WP…comment editing is very attractive, too. Hoping you all have had a great holiday weekend. gail
If you switch to WordPress I think you’ll like it, Gail! Meanwhile, hope you’re having a wonderful holiday too!!!
I love all the funny search terms people use. Today I got “sowbugs taste bitter”. I’ve never tasted my sowbugs to see if they are bitter or not and I’m not going to. I’m really hoping they were trying to find out if sowbug damage made the leaves bitter, but you never know.
Gulp. I still remember the comment from someone on one of my stinkbug posts who’d inadvertently bitten into a stinkbug hidden in a bag of prepared salad. “Bitter” apparently didn’t even begin to describe it. I think I’d still be washing my mouth out…
Eeew, I just read your response to Daphne, and now I’ve completely lost my train of thought.
Ah yes, those of us who visit (or try to!) regularly come here for the same reasons as you re-read your posts: there is always good writing about interesting and informative topics. It’s what makes a good blog and Poor Richard’s Almanac will always be on my list of regular reads.
Bless you for that, Nancy! It’s why we love your blog as well. We always learn something when we visit you!
Your blog has such a wealth of great info – we readers need an index ourselves. I know I’ve had to come back and look up the names of cookbooks you’ve posted about several times! How did I miss the post about Tarheel pie?
Thanks, Jen! We love and are inspired by your books lists as well—we’ve found some really great books thanks to you! As for the Tarheel pie, you’ve got to try it. Yum!!!!