Noman passed 12,000 hits today and thought to reflect on his first nine months of blogging.
He started on February 12th with a post entitled "Jimmy Carter's Second Term." It concerned Hosni Mubarak's fall in Egypt with American consent (if not help), and the comparison between President Obama and President Carter's governance of domestic and international affairs.
Since then, he has vacillated from short-to-mid-size comments to lengthy essays. As hoped for, blogging has served to stimulate more formal writing for other fora, and even to order thoughts for a series of radio interviews.
There have been 213 posts in toto, with only three during June and July, most of which time was spent teaching in Spain.
A note about culture. Blogging is an activity that requires being alone with one's thoughts, which not only gives time to formulate ideas, but also the impetus to share them with others. In America, one is often alone, at least between the ears.
Life in Spain is so communal, so communicative as a matter of course--e.g., long, social lunches, multiple trips to the bar with colleagues for coffee, lots of short meetings and conversations with department colleagues, hallway residents, students, etc.--that there is little time to work one's thoughts out, and virtually no desire to do anymore communicating.
Noman has thought to blog on the topic, but will leave it here for the moment.
The goal of the blog loosely has been to depict the life, entertainments and considered opinions of a family man, academic and American of faith who has strong ideas about the way things are and ought to be.
Readers top ten posts are the following, indicating a preference for religious themes, Barca, Bristol Palin, and politics:
Friendship With Christ
Feb 18, 2011
692 Pageviews
Barca 3, Manchester United 1
May 28, 2011, 1 comment
675 Pageviews
Bristol Palin 1 - Loud Mouth Boor 0
Sep 23, 2011, 2 comments
421 Pageviews
Karol Wojtyla, aka Pope John Paul II
Feb 26, 2011
225 Pageviews
The Left's Nervous Breakdown
Oct 13, 2011
138 Pageviews
Family
Mar 19, 2011, 1 comment
116 Pageviews
David Axelrod's Pattern of Sexual Behavior
Nov 15, 2011
111 Pageviews
Big News in Catholic Education
Aug 24, 2011
109 Pageviews
She's Baaaaack!
Sep 26, 2011
108 Pageviews
State of the Union - An About Face
Feb 25, 2011
104 Pageviews |
Of the 12,000+ hits, roughly 60% come from the US. Large smatterings come from Europe and the Pacific region.
Detail from the Cluster Map shows roughly half the activity (why, Noman doesn't know), but gives a more detailed picture of traffic.
| From 6 Feb 2011 to 19 Nov 2011 |
  United States (US) 3,454 |
| District of Columbia (DC) 18 |
  Spain (ES) 146 |
 United Kingdom (GB) 142 |
 Canada (CA) 131 |
 Philippines (PH) 78 |
 Australia (AU) 76 |
 Egypt (EG) 68 |
 India (IN) 57 |
 France (FR) 55 |
 Indonesia (ID) 48 |
 Germany (DE) 39 |
 Algeria (DZ) 38 |
 Poland (PL) 32 |
 Sweden (SE) 29 |
 Netherlands (NL) 28 |
 Italy (IT) 27 |
 Ireland (IE) 25 |
 Brazil (BR) 25 |
 Mexico (MX) 25 |
 Singapore (SG) 22 |
 Macedonia (MK) 22 |
 Pakistan (PK) 20 |
 Morocco (MA) 20 |
 Belgium (BE) 20 |
 Malaysia (MY) 19 |
 Japan (JP) 18 |
 Czech Republic (CZ) 17 |
 Taiwan (TW) 17 |
 Slovenia (SI) 17 |
 Georgia (GE) 16 |
 Hungary (HU) 15 |
 Bulgaria (BG) 15 |
 Croatia (HR) 15 |
 Serbia (RS) 14 |
 Israel (IL) 14 |
 New Zealand (NZ) 14 |
 Austria (AT) 13 |
 Russian Federation (RU) 13 |
 South Africa (ZA) 13 |
 Vietnam (VN) 13 |
| Asia/Pacific Region (AP) 12 |
 Armenia (AM) 12 |
 Bosnia and Herzegovina (BA) 12 |
 Ukraine (UA) 12 |
 United Arab Emirates (AE) 11 |
 Sri Lanka (LK) 11 |
 Finland (FI) 10 |
 Korea, Republic of (KR) 10 |
 Argentina (AR) 9 |
 Saudi Arabia (SA) 9 |
 Puerto Rico (PR) 9 |
 Turkey (TR) 9 |
 Slovakia (SK) 9 |
 Switzerland (CH) 8 |
 Tunisia (TN) 8 |
 Greece (GR) 8 |
 Lebanon (LB) 8 |
 Romania (RO) 8 |
 Europe (EU) 8 |
 Malta (MT) 7 |
 Azerbaijan (AZ) 7 |
 Thailand (TH) 7 |
 Jordan (JO) 6 |
 Norway (NO) 6 |
 Honduras (HN) 5 |
 Nigeria (NG) 5 |
 Latvia (LV) 5 |
 Guatemala (GT) 5 |
 Venezuela (VE) 5 |
 Montenegro (ME) 5 |
 Palestinian Territory (PS) 5 |
 Costa Rica (CR) 5 |
 Denmark (DK) 4 |
 Panama (PA) 4 |
 Belarus (BY) 4 |
 Colombia (CO) 4 |
 Albania (AL) 4 |
 Qatar (QA) 4 |
 Hong Kong (HK) 4 |
 Estonia (EE) 3 |
 Chile (CL) 3 |
 Dominican Republic (DO) 3 |
 Bangladesh (BD) 3 |
 Kuwait (KW) 3 |
 Trinidad and Tobago (TT) 3 |
 Bahrain (BH) 3 |
 Mongolia (MN) 3 |
 Lithuania (LT) 3 |
 Peru (PE) 3 |
 Nepal (NP) 2 |
 El Salvador (SV) 2 |
 Sudan (SD) 2 |
 Uzbekistan (UZ) 2 |
 Nicaragua (NI) 2 |
 Netherlands Antilles (AN) 2 |
 Kenya (KE) 2 |
 Jamaica (JM) 2 |
 Afghanistan (AF) 2 |
 Syrian Arab Republic (SY) 2 |
 Mauritius (MU) 2 |
 Portugal (PT) 2 |
 Uruguay (UY) 2 |
 Ghana (GH) 1 |
 Brunei Darussalam (BN) 1 |
 Botswana (BW) 1 |
 Tanzania, United Republic of (TZ) 1 |
 Suriname (SR) 1 |
 Ecuador (EC) 1 |
 Maldives (MV) 1 |
 Solomon Islands (SB) 1 |
 Gambia (GM) 1 |
 Oman (OM) 1 |
 Bahamas (BS) 1 |
 Iraq (IQ) 1 |
 Kazakstan (KZ) 1 |
 Mauritania (MR) 1 |
 Antigua and Barbuda (AG) 1 |
 Guam (GU) 1 |
 Dominica (DM) 1 |
 Moldova, Republic of (MD) 1 |
 Guernsey (GG) 1 |
Noman is appreciative for all his readers, but especially for readers in foreign countries who (like Noman's countrymen) are inundated with a Leftward-skewed view of America from American media, movies, NGO's, universities and academics. He is happy and honored to provide a contrary voice for readers the world over, including in his own states: Michigan (residence) and California (origin).
In his opinion, America has few problems that could not be surmounted, or at least ameliorated, by a free press; perhaps it would be more correct to say a "diverse" press/media. The proliferation of alternative media--of which bloggers, like radio and the web, form part--goes a long, but still inadequate, way towards redressing the ills of Left-dominated visual and print media.
Noman feels compelled to write his mind about religious, ethical, political, economic, business-related, social, cultural and other themes, and is thrilled that people read him. This ability to communicate ideas to people the world over strikes him as miraculous.
Regular blogging about things he considers to be important to persons, family, church, country, world and fellow man reminds Noman of a conversation between Rick Blaine and Victor Laszlo in the movie "Casablanca."
Rick: Don't you sometimes wonder if it's worth all this? I mean what you're fighting for.
Victor Laszlo: You might as well question why we breathe. If we stop breathing, we'll die. If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die.
Noman spent many years, too many, holding his breathe so as not to give offense, jeopardize employers, alienate colleagues, etc. It only served to frustrate him. No longer.
Thank you for reading, and sharing these ideas with your friends the world over. Best of luck in your own endeavors to change things.
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