Today marks the tenth anniversary of the Webner House blog. The blog was a Christmas gift from Richard during the Christmas of 2008, but it took a while before I steeled myself to write something. The first posts appeared on February 1, 2009.
A lot has happened in the intervening years, both generally and in our little corner of the world, and we’ve written about some of it — whether it involves politics, movies, musics, art, food, TV shows, or places to take a vacation. According to the WordPress statistics, 7,948 posts have been published during those 10 years, which comes out to a bit more than an average of two a day. The postings are definitely a mixed bag. We’ve shared family memories, tackled some of the issues of the day, vented about air travel woes and the perils of being a pedestrian, written some bad poetry, and presented a view of the world from the perspective of our dog Penny.
During the past 10 years, writing a blog post about something while I drink my coffee has become a cornerstone part of my morning routine and, as any regular reader of the blog probably knows, I’m definitely a creature of habit. Writing the morning posts helps to get my brain moving and prepares me for the day to come. The blog clearly been one of the best Christmas gifts I’ve ever received. How many presents do you get to use on a daily basis over a 10-year span?
The WordPress stats also tell us that the blog has more than 4,000 followers, and during the last decade it’s had more than half a million different visitors, some of whom have left “likes” and comments. We appreciate everybody who stops by and has a read — particularly the “regulars.” Thank you for making the last 10 years more interesting!
Well, apparently because . . . it’s Facebook and it can do whatever the hell it wants. 
When I was going to college, lack of happiness and “deprioritizing” personal happiness and fulfillment was not a problem. If anything, Ohio State students of the ’70s tended to overprioritize their dedicated, incessant, deep-seated, Frodo Baggins-like quest for happiness. The notion that fresh-faced students, still possessing the bloom of youth and newly freed from the constant supervision and irksome rules of Mom and Dad, need to take a college class to learn how to be happier would have been totally alien to the undergrads of my era. And it’s really kind of depressing to think that, in any era, college students would need to sit in a lecture hall to get tips on how to be happier. College must have become a grim, hellish place indeed!
Sometimes, though, the words aren’t exactly easy to fit into everyday conversation. On Monday, for example, the word was “eclogue.” What’s an eclogue (pronounced ek-log), you ask? Why, it’s a poem in which shepherds converse, of course. The sentence the calendar offers to illustrate its meaning is: “The poet’s new volume offers modern translations of Virgil’s eclogues.” Even at an erudite workplace like mine, it’s hard to imagine a discussion where you could smoothly use “eclogue.”
When I saw we hit 400,000 views, I searched Google for photos representing 400,000. There are a lot of pictures of odometers hitting 400,000, and when I thought about it I realized that our family blog is a lot like an old, dependable car. Vehicles that make it to 400,000 miles aren’t the flashy, expensive cars that men buy when they’re experiencing mid-life crises. No, vehicles that make it to 400,000 miles are the basic, everyday sources of family or work transportation that have suffered some battle scars during their years of service. They are the battered pick-up truck, or the dented station wagon with the scratch on the side, or the Honda Accord that still has a faint but familiar sour smell after one of your kids spilled milk in the back seat years ago on a hot summer day and didn’t tell you until you got back into the car and the spoiled smell made you want to gag, but you really liked the reliability of the car so much that you scrubbed the back seat and aired it out and used air freshener and took it to the car wash for a shampoo and couldn’t quite completely eliminate the smell, but decided you were willing to live with it.
The most irritating aspect of the click-counting emphasis, however, are the articles that clearly are “clickbait.” You’ve seen them featured on the websites you visit, cluttering things up like unsightly litter on the side of a highway: where are members of the cast of an old TV show now, what “jaw-dropping” dresses got worn to a recent awards show, which celebrities have killed a person (number 8 will shock you!), what “weird trick” will allow you to immediately lose 20 pounds or secure your retirement, and on and on. You’ve probably gotten to the point that you don’t even notice them anymore on the websites you visit.
John is an avid reader and he’s always got something interesting to say — so naturally he’s starting up a blog. It’s called 