One year ago, two days early . . .

. . ., I started this blog. I'm jumping the ol' anniversary gun because on the 27th, Mrs. Meridian and I will be in Oklahoma City for a wedding. So, what follows are a few musings about the almost-completed first year.
It's been a good year for me, I have to say. A marriage. I continue to to call and see my children whenever possible. I still like my work, and/but on the side I still want to explore the ideas that produced a dissertation. This is the most settled I've felt in many a year. I would not say the blog is the cause of this contentment, but it does, in various ways, reflect it.
And as for the blog . . . 103 posts (despite what the counter on my Blogger profile says). I'm not sure of how many visitors I have had in all, since I've had the counter only since July. Pleasant meetings, via comments, with, true, not hordes of people, but certainly enough that they make me anxious to post about things that are interesting in themselves and/or to post about them in a substantive way. What's more, these people, on three continents and, in this country, various time zones, are people I never would have met in the Usual Ways. Google searches that have brought people here who are looking for information on topics as diverse as CV joints, High Noon, Vermeer, Rothko, Huckleberry Finn, Homi Bhabha, Vertigo, Barry Lopez, Arvo Part's Passio, Basquiat, the sign on the toll road in Oklahoma that says "Failure to pay toll strictly enforced," good ol' Wal-Mart . . . and I know I'm forgetting some others. That diversity of subject matter is both something I simply hadn't anticipated, and something that I'm pleased to see.
Maudlin alert: If you reread the first post (and the next couple as well), you see there a certain wondering about the audience for this (or any) blog. I still wonder about those of you who have become regular readers, whether you just visit and read or you choose to comment. That is, I wonder what it is that keeps you returning here. Perhaps it's better that I don't know. Whatever else I have wanted to accomplish with this space, one goal of mine has been never to pander to my readers, so it's gratifying to me that you occasionally find something of interest to you in stuff that happens to catch my mind's eye. I also assume that you find this a good place for you to return to, and I'm humbled that you find it to be that--indeed, given my recent posts on public space, I've even considered working that phrase into the description in some way. Anyway. If I had not found a responsive audience, I know I would not have kept it up, no matter how pleasurable I found the writing--otherwise, why not just keep a journal? So: thanks for reading, and for continuing to read.
Even more intriguing to me: a couple of you have told me that you have blogs now in part because of mine. I'll let you decide whether that decision has been a good or a bad thing as I have led you away from Hamlin, Pied Piper-like, into the blogosphere. But I consider your choice to havce blogs a sign that I haven't completely embarrassed myself here--and, because I do have an ego, stunted though it is, I'm pleased about that.
Thanks to all, again, for seeing Blog Meridian through its first year. It's been a pleasure and honor.

One last item, that shows that the various warnings about the dangers of smoking have been received in rather confused fashion among certain younger members of the American populace: last night I talked to my daughters' mother on the phone, and she related that C. was reading Bedtime for Frances by Russell Hoban. The Frances books, which are about a family of badgers, are among the very best children's books out there--they are funny and sly. Anyway, because C., were she older, would be a rather obnoxious anti-smoking advocate, her mom felt it necessary to tell her that in the book, Frances' father smokes a pipe.
"That's okay," C. said. "That was back when they didn't know smoking is bad for you--and besides: he's an animal."

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