Well, if you are reading this it means we made it to the year 2017. Hope you behaved last night and the light from your computer is not hurting your eyes. Traditionally my New Year’s Day article predicts what the big stories of the New Year will be. I’m breaking from tradition a bit and also announcing some changes. Let’s explore.
As for the big stories they will revolve around one of two things: Donald Trump and the unexpected. I suspect more often than not they two will be intertwined. The Trump administration appears destined to be an unmitigated disaster; the only question is how long the calm before the storm will last. Remember the last time we elected someone who was unqualified and not particularly bright (George W. Bush) it didn’t appear to start that badly but it certainly ended that way. Here is the scary part; W was far more qualified for the post than The Donald is. He also didn’t enter with the history of corruption that Trump has.
About a week ago I wrote of spending the afternoon of September 7th with Jeff McKnight in Florida. Immediately before that I met with Terry Ogden at a Starbucks in Brooksville, Florida. Terry and our mutual friend Judy Lee were my two saviors when the previous server for this site suddenly disappeared. Within 48 hours telltheturhonthem.com was back up. Initially all the information was lost. Some has been recover and reposted. More work remains to be done in that area. The meeting with Terry was an extension of several phone conversations and part of the inspiration for a few changes I’m announcing today.
Effective today, I have given up my weekly op-ed column in The Franklin Times. I have nothing but good things to say about the paper and its publisher Gary Cunard whose friendship I value! I now live in an adjacent county and wanted to lighten my writing load a bit to accommodate another writing project and spend more time with family (really, not the standard excuse).
For the same reasons, starting today I will publish regularly scheduled articles on this site only five days a week; after some thought I have settled on a schedule of Sundays through Thursdays. My reasoning is that people generally have a bit more time to read on a Sunday and I often cover what I feel is the biggest political story of the preceding week on Sundays.
There is an old adage about when one door closes another opens. I was able to find most, but not all of my daily posting on a flash drive. Reposting them to the website with the appropriate tags would be a cumbersome task. Two things I pride myself on is that the site is free and searchable. However the prospect of trying to recreate the “archive” on the site in a searchable form was simply more than I was willing to undertake.
One of my desires in life is to write one or more books. Over the years I have started to write several books. They all remain unfinished in various stages and forms. Here is where the closed door becomes an open door. Since I have most of the material available from over five years of writing, why not do a “best of” book? I talked about the possibility with Terry and he walked me through much of the technical challenge. I talked about it with my wife who has always wanted me to write a book. They both encouraged me to do it. With my previous writing schedule and my desire to spend more of my retirement as Grandpa and husband, I simply didn’t have the time and energy to complete a book project. I did not want to take a book leave from the website, so this is a compromise that has the potential to be the best of all possible worlds.
At this point my plans are to do an e-book that will be available sometime in 2017 at a very low cost. I am toying with the idea of print on demand copies. Other than that it is a work in progress. That and possibly some further reconstruction of the original website are my writing plans for 2017. (I need to see if more of Harry’s Hell and the Essays are recoverable.)
I would like to thank all my readers for their continued support and wish everyone a Happy New Year; politically I don’t think it will be a boring one!
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