Some thoughts on blogging:  It's now been about two months since I started blogging.  So far, I've had over 800 pageviews, which seems a pretty good number to me.  I've tried to add a counter to the page, but blogspot (which is free) doesn't seem to support that.  Sometimes I feel guilty that I haven't added pictures or videos or links just to make the blog more visually appealing, but it's really the narrative (and the many digressions, as indicated by my love of parentheses) that interests me and, I hope, my readers.

A number of people have indicated that they've tried to become followers, but have been unable to do so.  I have no idea why this is so, since in the settings, there are no restrictions on who can follow.  So, too, some people have tried to comment, gotten messages that their comments are accepted, and then never seen them appear.  They just seem to disappear into cyberspace.  I did change the setting there to accept even anonymous comments.  I don't know whether this will change anything or not.  A lot of people have sent their comments via e-mail, which is even better, since the messages are likely to be longer and more personal.

I've tried to find a rhythm of a post every three days or so.  I don't want the entries to be so frequent that reading them seems like an obligation, but also I don't want them to be so infrequent that readers forget about the blog.  It's hard, too, to limit the length of the posts.  I like to write (and talk--no surprise there), but I don't want to get carried away with myself.

The hardest part of doing the blog is having a precise sense of the audience.  In part, with many exceptions, I don't know who's reading the blog.  Friends that I thought would don't seem to be reading it (but I can't very well ask someone whether s/he's following it; it would sound as if I were trying to shame them), while there have many old friends and colleagues with whom I've been able to re-establish contact.  But writing a blog is very different from writing an e-mail with a specific reader in mind.  For one thing, it's public, so chronicles of personal quirks, which I often think make for funny reading, are ruled out.  And then lots of people who read the blog are also friends who already know much of what I recount. 

Tone is tricky too.  I think I can avoid being maudlin, and I don't want to be complain too much.  I'd like to be funnier..  I worry most about being too teachy (more so than being preachy); 45 years of being a prof makes me just want to explain and explicate.  I don't think doing the blog is therapeutic exactly, as a couple of readers have suggested.  More likely, it just lets me slip back into the role that I filled so happily for all those years.  Of all that I've written, the entry about Mohamed and what he means to me certainly got the most responses, all of them very touching.

I've resisted joining Facebook; I think I'm too obsessive to be able to restrain myself from spending way too much time there.  And I've resisted Twitter, since limiting myself to 140 characters would be too frustrating.  But blogging is very satisfying.  Thanks to all of you who've been keeping up and sending me good thoughts.