Thirteen years at the "Blogger" dashboard ...

I intended to mark the 13th anniversary of The Lucas Countyan, launched during May of 2005, last month --- then didn't quite get around to it. But in blog years, this exercise in self-expression is very old, so it deserves some recognition.

It started as a venue for local and family history and these remain the principal topics, even though I write now and then about other stuff. Probably should write more about the latter --- because doing so clarifies thinking, not because I've any illusions about winning hearts and minds.

Feeding the beast is the equivalent of a part-time job when effort spent on research, jiggering photographs and other tasks is rolled into the time spent actually writing, usually a couple of hours starting in the neighborhood of 4-5 a.m. daily.

I'm not at all sentimental about the past, but fascinated by it --- and love a good story. If the experiences of our forebears incorporate lessons applicable now, I'll do my best to share them. Among the greatest pleasures is restoring a little flesh to the bones of an interesting character who has been largely forgotten.

I try to be upfront about from whence I write --- about as left-wing and liberal as it gets politically, a religious skeptic, a proud veteran of Vietnam who has no patience with the pseudo-religion of nationalism and the product of parents who loved that gay kid of theirs, now something of an LGBTQ+ elder in a field narrowed by AIDS.

And as always, I remain hopeful.