This blogging grandfather started this blog two years ago today. It began out of frustration that this country was headed in a bad direction. I had concerns that the future for my grand kids was looking bleak. I had this feeling for several years, but did nothing to share the concerns or try to remedy the problems.
The initial blog: Grandparents of America Awaken was on billrobertson.squarespace.com. I committed to do a daily blog for a year. As readership picked up and comments came in I decided to go another year. In April this year, I moved the blog to this site and changed the title to no smoke blown. The majority of the readers were not grandparents, but younger. I was appealing to a different audience.
Now, it’s reassessment time again. As I looked at the statistics for 2009 I saw a growing audience. Unfortunately, I don’t have the numbers for 2008, since, square space, the host does not keep them, nor did I. But, for 2009, I had readers from 37 countries. There were over 300,000 hits. Of those over 20,000 actually chose to read something. There were 80,000 pages read, so many read several pages. There were 7,000 unique visitors, or first-timers. Each month the numbers go up.
I guess this will get to me keep going for one more year. Things are worse now than when I started on 1-26-08. Thanks in large part to Obama.
If this blog influences a few of those 20,000 readers in 2009 to take some kind of action to stop what is happening in our country today, then all those hours and all that thought was well worth it.
I am most encouraged by the senate vote in Massachusetts. It seems that the tide is changing. More and more of us are tired of having an ineffective government try to run everything in our lives. We are sick of the way government processes work or don’tt work today. We have had it with the spending, the lying, the backroom dealing, the blame pointing, the regulations, the special interests, and the whole mess in Washington today. We sense less government would help get our country back on track and create new jobs.
So, for another year, I will write a daily blog about something I feel you might want to know something about. It makes me think to come up with that daily idea, and my hope is that it will make you think, too. Or, even better, go to a tea party protest, write a check to someone who you believe might make a difference, or volunteer to help someone good get elected.
