Downtown Amherst on New Year's Day, as seen from Starbucks.
A giant snowpile in downtown of Northampton.
Well, another year done gone. Lots to be happy and grateful about, with only an occasional mishap here and there. At the start of 2018, here's an update of where my online projects are at the start of 2018:
The Ogulewicz Chronicles - 2017 marked the first full year that this newly re-released and expanded memoir of Springfield politics has been available. This insider account by former City Councilor Mitch Ogulewicz, now features over 50 historic supplemental videos, making The Chronicles essential reading and viewing for anyone wanting to better understand what happened to the once great (and soon to be great again?) City of Springfield in the seminal decade of the 1980's.
The Diary of J. Wesley Miller - This massive Pioneer Valley history database kept expanding throughout the past year, as we followed the always interesting, insightful and sometimes downright bizarre adventures of one of Springfield's Grand Eccentrics (and his friend Eamon). Wesley knew everyone, and his behind the scenes views of our Valley's prominent personalities, politics and culture brings the modern history of our Valley fully to life with a degree of color and depth never before available. There's no end in sight, as the material currently available online covers only the years 1999 thru 2005. While certain years are missing, there is still decades worth of material yet to be released, going back as far as 1968. I only hope I live long enough to completely release all the contents of this historical treasure chest, which gets an average of between 50 and 60 hits per day, not bad considering what it is.
Tumblin' Thomas - This is the most popular website I edit, a fact which sort of irks me. I started Tumblin Thomas as a way of spreading memes, those one frame, one thought visual creations that can be anything from funny, to beautiful to sharply political. I created the tumblr in response to the meme craze so I wouldn't clog up my other blogs with them. That means it is the blog where the least amount of the material originates with me. In other words, the most popular blog I do is the blog I personally contribute the least material to. That makes the thousands of hits it gets weekly personally less gratifying than the numbers might suggest it should be.
The Baystate Objectivist - This, of course, is the blog you are reading right now, and it is the one on which appears my most serious writing about the endless kaleidoscope of topics that interest me. I'm gratified by the 9,000 to 10,000 hits it gets per month, but wish it was more popular than, say, my stoner memes on Tumblin Thomas. Oh well, this blog still has the distinction of being the Pioneer Valley's longest running blog - 20 years online this year, with seven years as a print publication before that. It is also the Pioneer Valley's first blog (I saw nobody else around when I started) which has sometimes caused me to be referred to as "The Father of the Valley Blogosphere" although I am demanding a paternity test. In any case, I'll try to do some retrospective pieces at various points throughout this year in celebration of the twenty years online anniversary, so that will be fun.
In the meantime, Peace and Love to you all in 2018!
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