Thousandth Post Retrospective
Sharon December 4th, 2009
Sometime last week, when I wasn’t paying attention, I hit the thousand post mark in my blogging. There are only 982 on this site, but I have counted at least 25 posts that somehow went astray during the shift from the old blogspot blog, which puts me past the 1000 mark pretty solidly. There are also a few that were never published here, but appeared first at Hen and Harvest, Grist, Groovy Green or Energy Bulletin. And back in September, I hit the five year anniversary of my blogging endeavor. Given that I’m in the process of shifting over to the third iteration of this blog (formal announcement coming Monday morning, along with the winner of the new banner ad!), it seems a good time to consider my past.
The blog has won a bunch of awards over the last five years, but the one I’ve probably best earned is the most typos in a published genre. I’m a terrible self-proofreader, and I always miss a bunch of stuff. So thanks to all of you who have corrected my more egregious errors over the years and borne with the boring ones.
The best honors of this blog have never come as awards though – they’ve come in other forms, usually as the attention of someone I really admire – and occasionally not so much. Still my favorite honor was when one of my posts was “debunked” by junkscience.com, a Fox News connected site that pretends to offer impartial analysis, but actually is a right wing political loon site (note, I am not saying here that being right wing makes you a loon, just that being a loon and a right winger has been known to happen ;-)), designed to slant science. I’ve honestly never been so proud as when “The Ethics of Biofuels,” one of my early opuses hit their pages to their outrage. Annoying complete twits is one of my favorite things!
My next greatest moment would be when George Monbiot actually argued with me in the pages of the London Guardian on my post “A New Deal or a War Footing” about what was required to address climate change. That was just about as awesome as something could be.
Mark Bittman made a kind mention of this blog on his blog once, thanks to reader Leila’s kind pimping of my site. Since Mark Bittman is the holy grail of fabulous cooking this was utterly awesome.
Getting to blog over at Grist with so many wonderful environmental writers was terrific. I eventually petered out writing there, because of the editing and length limits, and the comparative hassle of using their site, but getting to see my stuff up with David Roberts, Tom Philpott and Van Jones was awesome.
Rod Dreher, author of the awesome book _Crunchy Cons_ and the Crunchy Con Blog has kindly done an enormous amount to spread the word of my writing, and is living proof you don’t have to agree with all your friends on everything. He also got me a chance to write columns twice for the Dallas Morning News, for which I am enormously grateful.
Blog posts here have led to a number of news articles – I’ve been interviewed by the New York Times (not so successful, as you may recall), the Washington Post, the AP, CNN, Voice of America, NPR and a whole host of others.
It is sort of funny what sticks and what doesn’t – apparently I’m very mildly famous as the inventor of the terms “slow clothing” and “slow fashion” and periodically I get media requests for interviews about the subject. Anyone who has seen me dress will probably laugh really hard at the thought that I do fashion interviews, but there it is.
I’m a bit of a pugnacious type, and I rarely think twice about saying what I think. When I was first doing the blog, I admit, it never really occurred to me that anyone would actually read what I was writing, so I was totally stunned the first few times I wrote a criticism of someone, only to find out that that someone read what I wrote and wanted to argue.
What’s even funnier is how often someone I start out attacking becomes a friend – that happened with Toby Hemenway – one of my early posts on the old blog was an attack on an essay he’d written. We fought it out in comments, and later, he invited me out to teach with him in a Permaculture class. Some of my favorite readers are people who started out battling with me – and who still do. I appreciate the degree to which people do respectful and thoughtful debate here and I hope it will continue on the new site.
The very best single thing about this blog is my readership – getting to know you all has been awesome. I’ve met some wonderful people in person at various events, while others I will probably never have a chance to meet in person, but I’ve gotten an awful lot of kindness and aid from all of you – from the criticisms of my posts, which make them better (and which often affect how things that go into my books come out) to advice and assistance. I know that whenever I have a question or a problem about something, I can ask here and find dozen readers with good advice.
Over the years you’ve helped me improve my pita bread and figure out whether goat health problems were serious. You’ve given me ideas about parenting and politics, soil amendments and safety, sex, drugs, rock and roll, lawyers, guns and money. I’ve ummm…borrowed from you a whole lot. So thank you!
And I’m enormously grateful for the support I’ve gotten over the years – whether I’m whining about some small problem in my life or grumpy because I’m wrong and I secretly know it, I’m lucky enough to have readers who are supportive by being kind and also by occasionally providing a much needed kick in the pants.
In over five years of blogging, I haven’t covered every conceivable subject, of course, but I’ve covered a lot them. I’ve written posts that were serious and posts that were funny (or at least I was trying to be). I’ve written about love and sex, death and birth, trivial things and really serious ones. I’ve tried never to be a one-trick pony – because my life is such a muddle of serious and frivolous, hands-on and theory I’ve tried to run that through the blog, and it has been a lot of fun for me.
I think my favorite posts were the funny one “How to Explain Peak Oil To Anyone” may be my personal favorite but I also like “Get Out the Deprogrammers” mostly because of the lively discussion in comments about what the members of my personal cult should wear, “Get Thee Over By Me Satan” which explains how the 7 Deadly Sins can be properly adapted (and committed) after an energy peak, and “We’re Gonna Need More Pie”.
My all-time favorite serious post is my essay on “The Theory of Everything” which of course, wasn’t my idea, even thought I’ve reprinted it in two of my books - it belongs to one of my oldest internet friends, Pat Meadows, who I’ve borrowed more ideas from over the years than anyone else. She has given unstintingly to me, and deserves special attention. So do MEA and Elaine Solowsky, who have written pieces that I’ve reproduced here, and done a great deal to influence my thought.
Your favorites and least favorites are probably different than mine – I’m always surprised by how much attention some things get, and sometimes I work for days on something that I think will really spur debate, and get none. But hey, that’s writing. A half-dozen of my posts have broken the 100 comment mark, including the dark “We Regret to Inform You” and several of the Independence Days Challenge Start Up Posts.
My biggest screw ups in five years? Well, unless the financial crisis gets a lot worse a lot fast, the biggest one will probably have been last year’s end of year predictions – but hey, there’s three weeks to go in December yet 
. I’ve certainly said some stupid things, and lost a few readers I wish I hadn’t. If I’ve been out and out wrong, I’ve tried to say so, but I probably missed a few. The ones I regret most are the ones where I wasn’t thinking enough about how other people would feel about something I said.
Besides the surprise of actually being read and writing books, I’d say that the biggest surprise has been how important my religious writings have become to me, and how much they’ve begun to shape how I’m perceived. I didn’t think it was terribly unusual to be a religious person writing about energy and environmental issues, but I find myself now being asked almost daily to come speak to religious groups of many stripes, because I’m seen as unusual in being a person of faith who speaks about our predicament in that context.
The other biggest surprise has been how tolerant and kind my whole family has been about becoming characters on my blog. You now know my kids, my husband, my Moms, my in-laws and my extended family and friends as people in my story, and for the most part they never complain, even when I use them as comic relief. The boys are continually thrilled that I wrote about them, and everyone else is pretty gracious. I hope I say often enough that the portraits you get here are necessarily fond, but limited – all of them are way more awesome than you get to hear about.
Ok, that’s my five year, 1000 post wrap up. The new blog’s tires will need rotating and a check under the hood eventually too, but that’s a long way off now. See you in the new spot on Monday – look here for the announcement!
Sharon