Am I just doing it wrong?

I started this with doubts, and they've grown. It's been a fortnight. Two posts. E-mailed the second one (which I thought fairly attractive) to tons of people. 'Twould appear that the folks in my Address Book are as quick as I on the delete button, when they receive mass mailings.

The system reports a dozen anonymous peeks at my "profile," but the only actual comment (kindly, but brief and not very substantive) came from the person who suggested I try this avenue.

I still think folks, at least those within my family, “ought to” have a look at my life's work and tell me whether they find anything worth a second look. Or maybe silence is the kindest response... Maybe I'm just deceiving myself.

We did my mother's 100th birthday on Saturday, and it was marvelous; I'm updating her Gedenkschrift with a report.

Today, I quit procrastinating and reorganized the first few screens of my Stories site. 'Cause it seemed I'd made it unnecessarily difficult to get to the full list of topics, represented there as “ Presentations.” Now it's easier. I think. If a list falls in a forest and nobody hears it…

Maybe I'll go out into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind, and compel them to look at my stuff.

Or maybe I'll just find some other way to spend my time.

Why might you want to look at my stuff? Well, maybe…

… you enjoy a good love story? An adventure story? A crime story? A rags-to-riches story? A true story?

… you’re kin to my mother, Leola Seely Anderson (1910-1968 )? Or you may remember her as a friend, teacher, writer, counselor, neighbor, mover, or shaker. That’s she at left, as a teenager. We’re celebrating her hundredth birthday on the 19th of this month.

… you care about what happened at Lexington and Concord in 1775?

… you’re connected to Cambridge, Watertown, Carlisle, Concord, Salem, Sandisfield, or other places in colonial Massachusetts?

… You have Mayflower ancestry?

… you’re connected to Hartford, New Haven, Colebrook, Norfolk, or other places in colonial Connecticut?

I’ve organized my family-stories material into about a score of “Presentations”, each of which can stand alone as a hypertext treatment of its topic. Presentations come, and presentations go, as my understanding and knowledge develop.

I keep an alphabetic list of current offerings at the page that this link sends you to. Most pages in the collection include a Presentations link, with which you can go immediately to this table-of-contents page.

Nearby pages cross-index the same material by People and Places.

Do I really want a blog?

You folks say this is a new tool that will help my work. Guess I'm willing to give it a try.

For ten years now, I've wandered about, collecting stories and images that say where my family comes from. Some of it's really exciting. To me, anyway. Others have stumbled upon my Web presence, mainly indexed at

  http://commensa.net

and some say they've enjoyed my stuff. Maybe you will, too. I've made new friends and learned of cousinly contacts already; if a blog can make those connections grow, I'll be glad.

Descendants and other kinfolk who themselves share this marvelous picture, or pieces of it, will be the most interested, I suppose.

My folks also took part in historical events and lived in places you've heard of: the American Revolution, the Civil War, the Crusades, the settlement of Massachusetts and later the West, the Mormon saga, and so forth.

If I can make my blog entries address these areas of shared interest, maybe folks will be moved to visit them, perhaps to enjoy them, and at least to tell me why they did or didn't.