Cultural Heritage Matters

A few days ago, I was talking to my co-workers Beth and Chris when we got on the topic of blogging. If we blog, why we blog, do we even like blogging, how do we get people to read our blogs, do we care whether or not people read our blogs, and so on. After our conversation, I was clear about one thing: I needed a new blog.

Not really a new blog, but a new angle. When my friend Amy encouraged me two years ago to start a blog, I did so mainly for personal reasons. But as time went on, I became less interested in writing on personal topics. For a while, I tried mixing it up by blogging about both personal and professional matters, but in the end I had just become tired of that blog.

My decision to retire my old blog and start a new one stems from two developments. One is my career. With each passing month, my career becomes more complex and interesting to me (a good thing since I went through hell and a whole lot of money to get here), so my preference to focus what energy I do have for writing is usually on issues related to the stewardship of cultural resources.

The second reason is Facebook. Facebook is perfect for the brand of personal expression I mostly used my old blog for. It’s fun, fast, and easy. When I first signed up last fall, my old blog quickly became obsolete. Nicely done, Mr. Zuckerberg. You deserve to be a rich man.

I suppose there is a third reason – I’ve come to prefer WordPress over Blogger. WordPress has cooler templates and I really like that you can add pages. I’m well aware one can do a lot on any blogging platform if one is markup language savvy, but I’m not. Nor can I afford to pay someone to build a bitchen website for me, so I’ll just have to make do in the meantime.

But do not weep, dear ones. I’m not ditching the old stuff entirely. I’ve imported my old blog so all of that outstanding content I created over the last two years is not lost. And because I’m a firm believer in digital preservation, I’m not deleting my old blog. That same content in all of its vexing beauty will be forever held in its original context (unless someone nukes the server it lives on in Bhutan or wherever). I’ve even established a link on the sidebar for those of you who might want to visit New Spectrum’s grave from time to time. I am sensitive to the fact that we must all grieve in our own ways.

At any rate, it’s quite conceivable that this blog will turn out to be no different than the old. When I want to blog about personal stuff, I’ll blog about personal stuff. My old pattern of blogging once every six to eight weeks is likely to continue as well. So you can take comfort in that.

Also, the name of this blog will be something of a misnomer until I can figure out how to change the domain name over. Please be patient.

Time to move on. As my man Captain Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation always said, “Engage.”