Welcome.

When my daughter-in-law Courtney asked me if I’d be willing to start a blog, I had two questions.

The first was, “What is a blog?”

Too embarrassed to confess my ignorance to my daughter-in-law by asking this question directly, I did what any 21st-century American male would do. I Googled it.

A blog, apparently, is an online diary of sorts. They have art blogs, music blogs, video blogs, blogs that are educational (edublogs), very short blogs (microblogs). There are blogs about every type of topic imaginable.

Or unimaginable. There is a blog dedicated to describing the contents of various people’s pockets. There is a blog that transforms pop songs into Shakespearean sonnets. One guy cut a hole in a piece of bread, put it over his cat’s head, and took a picture. People submit similar photos to him, which he posts on his blog. It’s called Breaded Cats.

I’m afraid mine will be much more sedate. I’m a boomer, after all.

Oh, yeah, so the second question was “Why should I do a blog?”

I’m still trying to figure that out, but I told my daughter-in-law “yes” anyway.

What do I expect to post? Jokes and puns, almost certainly. Travelogues. Random lists. Perhaps some “microstories.” Excerpts from my so-called books, published or unpublished. Musings on various topics. You can suggest motifs to me, which I will either enthusiastically adopt or (more likely) bemusedly ignore. Make your own blog.

What am I NOT going to post? My thoughts on politics - there is too much of this going around as it is, and we only want to read stuff that we agree with, right? Ditto for spirituality/religion. Photos of breaded cats.

Andy Warhol was wrong. In the future, not everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.

But I predict that everyone WILL have a blog.

Well, we’ll see how this goes for a while.

Pete Simons