Happy 20th birthday, part two: more statistics

July 4, day one of this year's Waterfront Blues Festival.

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A few weeks ago I celebrated the twentieth birthday of this blog. I wanted to add a few more statistics in that post, but I ran out of time, so I thought I'd squeeze them in here.

You'd think that with today being election day in the UK, and repercussions from the first U.S. presidential election debate all over my news and opinion feeds, I'd have something less self-focused to write about! However, I'm quite sure that you're as closely in touch with all those developments as you want to be, and don't need me to fill you in. I, on the other hand, have taken most of today off to enjoy day one of Portland's Waterfront Blues Festival. I'm too exhausted (happily so!) to think very deeply, so sharing some blog statistics seems a safe choice.

Since the current count started on June 30, 2010, I've had 1,758,175 visits. I'm pretty sure that 95% or more of those visits were accounted for by visitors landing as a result of a search that had little to do with my content. For example, five of the six most popular individual pages have the word "repost" in the title. How many hundreds or thousands of search engine users included the word "repost" in their searches and found ... me?

Blog post title	date	total views since 06/30/2010	number of weeks since post (starting 06/30/2010)	adjusted view count
The atheist's gift (partly a repost)	10/05/2023	9,330	39	239.23
Vanity of vanities (partly a repost)	03/02/2023	9,750	70	139.29
Quaker communion (partly a repost)	10/22/2020	17,000	193	88.08
Redeeming Germany (partly a repost)	10/07/2021	11,000	143	76.92
Sitting in the Russian section	09/16/2021	10,100	146	69.18
Abortion and the cost of rhetoric (repost)	05/05/2022	7,280	113	64.42
When fear is a gift	05/21/2020	13,800	215	64.19
Earlham College, ESR, and Anna Karenina	12/17/2020	4,420	185	23.89
Benefit of the doubt, part one (repost)	02/02/2017	7,730	387	19.97
What's so urgent about sex?	01/19/2018	4,690	337	13.92
A good Quaker is hard to find	07/13/2017	4,710	364	12.94
The Quaker movement: decline and persistence	02/22/2018	4,100	335	12.24
When grief just won't come	05/24/2018	3,520	319	11.03
Hell, holiness, and Jerusalem	05/17/2018	2,580	320	8.06
Women's Day reflections	03/08/2018	2,550	330	7.73
Faith, commitment, and aspiration (repost)	07/14/2016	3,020	416	7.26
Khrushchev and his time	03/11/2010	4,190	731	5.73
An Eastwood film with no villain	04/14/2005	3,920	731	5.36
What differentiates Quakers from other Christians?	05/03/2007	3,440	731	4.71
Biblical realism	11/06/2008	3,590	817	4.39

This list includes the twenty most popular posts for the whole history of my blog, by raw count. Probably some posts from before 2010 are undercounted here, but I still find the list interesting. Totals for the posts are in the third column, and the fifth column ("adjusted view count") divides those totals by the number of weeks that have passed since the count started on each post. This was my way of evening out the ranking, so the old posts don't have an unfair advantage.

The result, in that adjusted order, is in the table above. I'm using Chrome to edit and read this post, with data imported from a Google spreadsheet; I hope it works with your browser.

I should point out that two of these top twenty were not written by me; they're guest posts written by Judy Maurer: "Sitting in the Russian section," and "When fear is a gift."

This particular set of twenty higher-scoring posts touches on most of my favorite themes: faith, discipleship, and religious rhetoric; faith and politics; Russia, where I spent almost ten of those twenty years; and, finally, thoughts and stories about human relationships. (I'm still working on the grief that "just won't come.")

Stats by country since 2010. The
last few lines are cut off (screenshot).

Most of my blog posts since about 2007 have come with blues videos at the end, but as with all links, some of those clips vanish from the Internet. Pictures on the older posts, especially those dating back to my use of Photobucket, also have a tendency to vanish, but I still have my Photobucket archives, and I'm slowly trying to restore those pictures. Links to interesting sites and blogs frequently get changed or abandoned, and I'm gradually replacing them, when possible, with links found on the Wayback Machine. Let me know if you find a post that might be worth refurbishing.

One important theme that didn't show up on this list was the story of my sister Ellen. Last Sunday would have been her 69th birthday. I posted some photos on Facebook  to remind the world that she was once among us, and added a link to this post I wrote when she (would have) turned 60.

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OK, no more self-referential blog posts until the next worthwhile anniversary! See you again after the blues festival.

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Hank Shreve played his harmonica this evening at Kim Field's Harmonica Blow-Off, an annual feature of our blues festival. Here's a relatively recent video of Hank and his band.