300,000

I posted the first blog entry for Not Dark Yet on New Year’s Eve, 2009. Five years later, I had received 100,000 page views on my blog. Following that milestone, it took just over two years to reach 200,000 page views on January 26, 2017. On Christmas Day, a little less than a year later, the blog achieved another 100,000 views to reach 300,000. For whatever reason, more people are visiting. 

To mark that 300,000 occasion, I am doing a brief review of select posts from the past year in which those last 100,000 views occurred. Each title is hyperlinked, so you can click on the title to see the actual blog post. (Also, if you look to the right-hand column of this site, you will see the top ten posts for the past month)

I. Haiku

I do an original haiku every Saturday. Here are three from last year:

“Riverside” – using a painting by Renoir as inspiration, I was able to capture a quiet summer afternoon sensation.  

“Mount Fuji” – probably the shortest haiku I have written, only six syllables in all. Yet is was one of my most viewed. What I particularly like about it is the visual effect. The poem itself resembles a reflection of the mountain it addresses. 

“Solar Eclipse” – commemoration of the total eclipse seen by much of the country last summer.  

II. Poetry

“Sufi Tears” was written as a lament in response to the terrorist bombing of a mosque in Egypt.

“The Why of Daffodils” is one of a series of journalist poems I wrote called “Bearing Witness to the Times.” It asks the question, “why are we comforted by such beauty in the presence of our sorrow?”  

“The Government We Get” speaks to the notion that fascism seems to be the default means of government that people tend to fall back to when times are uncertain.  

“Life is a Seamless Garment” was written around 2001, but I did not release it until this year. It is one of my longer poems that speaks to the varied wonders of existence.

III. Essay

“Grace in a Time of Hate” is a reflection on a visit to Grace Episcopal Church after the dismay of watching the white supremacist march in Charlottesville, VA last August. 

“The Windows of St. David’s Church” tells about four unusual church windows depicting the literary heritage of the Anglican Church. It also recalls my first remarkable encounter with St. Hilda of Whitby.

IV. Music

“Seven Story Mountain” – Every Monday on my blog, it’s “Monday Music,” featuring a different music video each week from an eclectic choice of musical styles. One of the most viewed was a new discovery for me of a new grass Americana group called “Railroad Earth.” For me, “Seven Story Mountain” brought forth echoes of Dante and Thomas Merton.  

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