1,000,000 Views

Around 6:00 a.m. on March 7, 2022, the blog went over 1,000,000 views.

In the overall context of world events, this is no big deal, but as a blog item, it ought to be noted.  Lots of blogs never reach that tally.

In context, that's 1,000,000 views in 13 years, so it took awhile to be sure.  Indeed, early on the views of things that were posted were quite low, to say the least.  Chances are, while I haven't checked it, some of those sixteen posts from 2009 still have really low viewer counts.  None of those posts are in the most viewed categories, in spite of being the oldest posts here, although the oldest post this one;

Lex Anteinternet?

received its very first comment this year.  That comment was such a non sequitur I remain uncertain whether it was a spam post or not, although I don't think so as its author didn't attempt to link it to anything else.

That first post, as I've noted here more than once, set out what this blog is supposed to be about, and what that was, was this:

The intent of this blog is to try to explore and learn a few things about the practice of law prior to the current era. That is, prior to the internet, prior to easy roads, and the like. How did it work, how regional was it, how did lawyers perceive their roles, and how were they perceived?

Part of the reason for this, quite frankly, has something to do with minor research for a very slow moving book I've been pondering. And part of it is just because I'm curious. Hopefully it'll generate enough minor interest so that anyone who stops by might find something of interest, once it begins to develop a bit.

That's still the purpose, but early on the posts were few and far between as I attempted to explore individual topics. What was transportation like a century ago? What was home heating like?  Things of that type, as well as observations.

All of that remains part of the purpose of the blog, indeed the main purpose really, but fairly early on it began to expand out from that into, well everything.  In that fashion, it became the successor to an earlier blog which had a lot of commentary in it, but which I shut down. That one didn't, however, share the historical exploration purpose that this one does.

The first foray, sort of, into commentary was this post here:

1920, law, and the Geology Museum

That came in 2009, but showing how slow the blog was at first, there weren't any posts at all in 2010.  Not one.

Things picked up again in 2011, with the first post being one called:

Some things don't change that much.

That post was simply a picture of my messy office desk, and office, which was arranged a bit differently than it is now. That was before my 100+ year old secretary desk came into my office, which means it was before my mother's desk, which is where that was before.

There were only 127 posts in that year, but that was the year the blog took a turn towards its current mix of topics, with some being fully contemporary.

In 2016 the blog started tracking the Punitive Expedition day by day, which was a real alteration of former practices.  It was, in other words, the Punitive Expedition in real time, a century removed. The original intent was just to track the raid on Columbus, New Mexico, but we kept on going.  When we got to the end of that, in early 2017, we were obviously into the history regarding the American entry into World War One, so we kept on through the war and the war's aftermath.  Only very recently did we stop day by day tracking of events exactly one century past, as we finally got past the nearly daily stories that linked back to the Great War.

When we were doing that, the blog received a huge boost in readership.  Then, some time in 2017, we started linking items into Reddit's 100 Years Ago Today subreddit, which we didn't know we were not supposed to do. That created a massive additional boost in readership.  When we quit doing that, after learning we weren't supposed to, readership stayed very high until World War One ended. Today, most days, it's down to around 200 to 300 views per day.

The Punitive Expedition and the Reddit links really changed the lineup on what had been the most popular entries here, which is worth noting.  Before that, there were a number of material item threads that were enduringly popular.  One was one on Brunton Compasses:

Brunton Compass

Another was on my old Filson briefcase:

The Filson

Those were both items I routinely used at the time, but oddly enough, they aren't now.  The Brunton is now fully retired in favor of a Garmin GPS.  That Filson bag finally completely blew out.

Peculiarly, a material item that's been hugely popular recently, and seems headed towards being one of the top ten this year, has been one on my old L. L. Bean boots from 2016, after the Punitive Expedition threads took off:

Munson Last Boots, or how I became a hipster and didn't even know it. And reflections what hipster affectations mean.

So obviously material item threads still have some interest.  

Indeed, one that went into the top ten early on and has stayed there is a 2014 one on hats.

Caps, Hats, Fashion and Perceptions of Decency and being Dressed.

That thread, however, is the only one to have survived in the top ranks after the Reddit experience. All of the other top ten posts were during the Reddit era, and their popularity must be explained by that. They displaced ones on Queen Elizabeth, and travel, for example, that were quite popular before, but below the 2,700 some views that it requires to get up into that group.  The one on the Somme has been viewed over 5,000 times.

This blog still serves its original purpose, and perhaps that's about to actually start being employed by me for that purpose.  At any rate, I hope the people who stopped in to view it 1,000,000 times have enjoyed it some, and perhaps learned a little.  They've contributed enjoyment and knowledge to me.