I wanted to make one final post for 2017 to thank everyone who has been reading my blog over the past 6 months, and especially to those of you who have reached out to me in person and via instant messenger. I really appreciate both the acknowledgement and the encouragement I have received - it makes writing this worthwhile, knowing people are reading and enjoying it.
Originally I had intended only to give summaries of school board and town council meetings, just to the get the facts out in the public before they were spun. I would write up a summary, place it on Facebook and people could either read them or skip them as they so desired. After a couple posts on Facebook, what I realized was needed was an easy way for people to refer back to the posts, as Facebook does not make searching for threads easy - and thus the blog was born, as a repository for my posts.
My first non-council and non-school board meeting blog post was about my memories of TriTowne Plaza. I'm not sure what prompted me to write that, but I found that I really liked the lack of constraints in writing about a topic of my own choosing. Looking through old newspaper articles, researching land ownership records, town council minutes and retail turnover - these are a few of my favorite things. And based on the feedback, people enjoyed reading about it. Looking back at my blog posts over the past 6 months, the top 5 most viewed posts are about Marlton itself, not town council meetings or school board meetings. I enjoy writing the non-meeting posts a lot more than summarizing a meeting. Those posts also seem to generate more online discussion.
Here are the top 5 blogs to date, based on pageviews:
- What are they building at...?
- Upcoming Tuesday 10/17/17 Town Council Meeting - More Apartments on Main Street
- Summary of Meet the Candidates Night
- Finding the Truth in Enrollment Numbers
- Heritage Park in Pictures - A Park in Disrepair
Years ago I read a book by Jared Diamond called 'Guns Germs and Steel'. It is a really long and dry book describing the development of societies in excruciatingly small details. One thing from that book that always stuck with me was the description of the development of pea (or possibly the bean, its been a few years), describing how it changed due to human intervention and cultivation from a small mostly inedible plant to a staple crop in civilizations. After reading about this, I was so fascinated by this new knowledge that I tried to share it with my wife. I've never seen anyone's eyes roll back in their head and get bored as quickly as when I was describing that. So I know what I find interesting doesn't always translate into something I will write about.
The map dissection will definitely continue. When I was in 5th Grade, my elementary school library was destroyed in a fire (in Cherry Hill, August 1979). Over the next several months, I helped check in new books and magazines for the new library. Neighborhood residents donated years and years worth of old National Geographic magazines in pristine condition. Each magazine came with a detailed full-sized map, and the librarian didn't want the maps. I was allowed to take them home and I've been a map geek every since.
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| Believe it or not, I was 11 in this photo |
A few of my favorite blog posts involved plotting out maps - exploring and writing about Stow Road and Sharp Road. I've also enjoyed writing about the music programs at Cherokee, both the Marching Band and Jazz Band, though those are less frequently read than I would have hoped. Being a former band geek and the father of a current band geek, those will continue.
For me, this has been a learning experience. I learned that a blog post that pleases some will displease others. I learned that no matter how many times I proofread, there will still be typos. I learned that the vast majority (almost 90%) of people read my blog on their phones, which caused me to rethink how I used pictures in the blog. I write the blog on a computer, but now I know I need to review on a phone prior to publishing. I learned that either I have foreign readers, or more likely that some people are using a proxy server for internet anonymity. If anyone is actually reading my blog from one of these countries, I'd love to hear from you and learn why.
If there is anything you'd like to read about, feel free to send me a message via Facebook Instant Messenger, or you can email me at MarltonNeil@yahoo.com. I can't promise I'll write about them, but if something strikes me as interesting, I surely will. But realize I am not a reporter nor an investigative journalist, just a guy with too much time on his hands.
For me, this has been a learning experience. I learned that a blog post that pleases some will displease others. I learned that no matter how many times I proofread, there will still be typos. I learned that the vast majority (almost 90%) of people read my blog on their phones, which caused me to rethink how I used pictures in the blog. I write the blog on a computer, but now I know I need to review on a phone prior to publishing. I learned that either I have foreign readers, or more likely that some people are using a proxy server for internet anonymity. If anyone is actually reading my blog from one of these countries, I'd love to hear from you and learn why.
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| Non United States page views |
Here's wishing everyone a healthy and happy 2018. May we all enjoy our lives, our town and each other. (If not, thankfully we now have a brewery in town. See you at Zeds.)