A Year in Blogging

I started this blog on Jan. 5th, 2010.

In some ways it has been less a blog and more a chronicle of my poetry career… but that is what it was always meant to be, so it’s all good. 🙂

As 2010 winds down I thought I would take a stroll through the blog and find some factoids… a year in review, as it were.

Total # of views (Not including my own) : 2,741
Busiest day: June 9th, 2010 – 74 views

Not exactly Wil Wheaton…

Top Referrer: Facebook and rpriske.livejournal.com get the nods, but that is almost unfair since that (along with Twitter) is where I announce a new entry.

Top Referrer that wasn’t directly from one of my pages: monkeypudding.livejournal.com/friends

That is the one and only R.C.Weslowski!

Top Search Engine Terms that led to this blog: “Ian Keteku”

Hey, a guy becomes World Slam Champion and suddenly gets important.

I just tried to look at which post had the most subscribers…. but it is a big tie…

The biggest Click Through FROM this blog (after the links to my Live Journal and the JRSW blog I share with some friends) is a tie between:

Ian Keteku and Song for an Ancient City by Amal El-Mohtar.

Before I get to the TOP POST of the year, what about it’s poor cousin, the BOTTOM POST of the year…

Which post got the least hits? (Not counting one line posts that just give an update on my weekend poetry plans. Only entries with actual content are eligible):

What is Art?

A poem that was a sequal of sorts to Why Art? that I wrote to perform at the National Art Gallery.

It isn’t the worst poem I ever wrote, but neither does it deserve great fanfare.

So, which post is the TOP POST of the year?

Amal El-Mohtar

That says more about Amal’s fans that my blog. She linked to the post I gave me a cavalcade of hits.

The POEM that received the most hits was Moving to Arizona.

Interesting. That isn’t my most popular poem, but it seemed to strike a chord on-line.

So, my poetry career, crammed into a year, with some interesting side tangents along the way.

Not a bad year. 🙂

Anyway… here is 2011… and the new poem I will be debuting on January 3rd!

Red

CONTEXT: June, 2010

Working on material for the first Copper Conundrum shows, we got into a discussion about what it was like to grow up with red hair.

The thing is – it wasn’t until I was an adult that I even HEARD of the idea that red-heads were treated badly. That wasn’t what I experienced. (Though I do HATE the term ginger.)

Now being named RUSTY on the other hand… 🙂

But really, it isn’t that I LIKE having red hair, it is more that I couldn’t picture NOT having it. It is who I am.

So I wrote a silly little poem.

Note: When I was coming up with alternate names if I wasn’t called Rusty I picked Ricky and Randy. Then I decided to switch Randy as a tribute to the one and only RC Weslowski.

Red

Red isn’t just a colour to me.
Red is my identity.
More times than I can count
I have been asked
“Why do they call you Rusty?”
Accompanied by a wry smile
Or knowing glance –
Really an unknowing glance
Since their rhetorical
Question has led them astray.
They assume my name followed
My curly red locks –
Once perched atop
Of my head – now migrated
Chinward…
But NO!
On the fateful day in
March, 1968, a brand-new
Pasty white beach-ball
Bounced into the world
As bald as Picard.
Birth certificate says Russell
But I’ve been called Rusty
Since my hair was
Nothing more than a
Daydream.
But I have grown into my hair colour
As my hair colour has grown into me.

Would I still be me
If I was a blonde named Ricky?
Or a dark haired
RC Priskowski?
But alas, that we will never see
For I am red
And red is me.

““““““““““““““““““““

Next is a fairly new, fairly popular piece about angst.