Sunday, June 22, 2008
Comments Appreciated
As an occasional blogger I've come to accept that a lot of visitors drop by for a minute or less and move on when they find no pictures or rants of interest. But I've also come to treasure a few non-family fellow bloggers who regularly read this blog and sometimes offer comment. My recent paeon lamenting changes going on at my university (and effectively cancelling core English and Art Appreciation requirements I'm qualified to teach) apparently touched a nerve in two favorite readers, by the thoughtful and passionate comments they offered (read in two posts below). They are friends and I view them as colleagues, though we've never met outside our blogs. I appreciate what insights they've given me about teaching and higher education very much. Thanks, Pat and Carol Anne. I'm keeping my mind open to returning to the classroom if I get antsy, and it would probably be at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton or Broward Community College if I do. I, too, have taught and administered in four-year universities, private colleges, and community colleges; and I, too, enjoy the latter perhaps best. But for now, I'm kind of looking forward to a semester of down time this fall to try some other ideas. At 69, with gas prices making driving even across town regularly a pain in the wallet, and with SoFla drivers all but running one off the road or shooting one if he looks askance at them, I'm in no hurry to jump back into the fray.
Grand Ole Opry-- Super Show, Super Folks
On our way to Indiana to see the folks this June, we stopped in Nashville for a Grand Ole Opry show. Last year we tried to see the fabled show, but there was no performance the night we were in town. We made up for that by watching some of the regulars of the Grand Ole Opry like Jeannie Seeley perform in Nashville Nights supper and show near our campground. But this year we made it on a performance night, and we loved the experience.
On Briley Parkway the main building (there are four Grand Ole Opry sites) sits next to a huge Gaylord Grand resort hotel on one side and a big shopping mall on another, so parking was no problem, and our tickets of $39 each for Mezzanine front row seats were very reasonable, I thought. Outside before the show we posed with Minnie Pearl and Hank Williams and Roy Acuff live lookalikes, browsed the souvenir store, and listened to a warmup band on the front plaza.
Inside, the seating is surprisingly on long curving benches rather than individual armrested seats, but the padded benches were comfortable for the two-hour show. As in any broadcast studio, the wood stage had equipment strewn about everywhere, with cameras. cables, microphones, lighting and props skillfully manouvered by operators and stagehands who pirhouetted about in an intricate choreography. Talent waited in the shadows diagonally downstage left to await their call, and at eight o'clock on the dot a brief history of the Grand Ole Opry, its stars, novices, and rich traditions flashed over three jumbotron screens left, center, and right. An announcer approached the podium and introduced Jeannie Seely, hostess for the first segment (sponsored by Cracker Barrel.) Other acts whom she introduced were Jimmy C. Newman, the Whites, and Carolina Rain.
If we'd paid closer attention to past Opry broadcasts on radio and tv more, we wouldn't have been surprised. We weren't just watching a closed musical show. We were involved in a live network tv and radio broadcast, syndicated worldwide as part of the studio audience du jour. The show was in four thirty-minute segments, each with two to four different acts, commercial pauses and its own brand sponsor.
The second half-hour (sponsored by Bass Pro Shops) was headlined by the venerable pint-sized cowboy crooner Little Jimmy Dickens, all of 87 years old this month and still going strong. His only complaint: something in his ear was bothering him, and he went to the doctor, who retrieved a suppository. "Oh thank goodness," he told the doc, "Now I know where I lost my hearing aid." The Little General Cloggers from Kennesaw, Georgia clogged away onstage and Mountain Heart bluegrass band completed the segment.
9:00 to 9:30 featured Jean Shepard, Bobby Osborne and The Rocky Top X-press, hootin' and hollerin' out "Good Old Rocky Top, Tennessee," with Bobby's son on bass fiddle (sponsored by Humana.)
But the last half-hour was for me the best. The curtain rose on Riders of the Sky singing the Rawhide theme they recorded originally for the hit show, and they did Roy Rogers' "Happy Trails to You" and Gene Autry's "Back In the Saddle Again" with warm audience participation. Connie Smith and Kathy Mattea closed the evening with performances sponsored by Johnson Controls.
I have to admit that country/western isn't always my favorite style of music, but overall it is more tuneful, foot-tapping in its rhythms and listenable in its harmonies than a lot of other more popular genres. I think everyone has a little bit of country in him or her, and some of it I really enjoy. It's a national music, the closest thing we probably have to a traditional American genre. Jazz is American as well, but not perhaps as enduring and unchanging. The country/western music we heard this night was the same fifty years ago, in style and instrumentation, themes of love and heartache, patriotism and courage, religion and family. And far from its lyrics bashing the society and everything in it like rap's often trash-talking obscenities often do, country/western is unabashedly patriotic and proud to be an American. I like that--a lot.
As we left for our motel, I couldn't help but be impressed with a couple of things about Nashville's stars, and the overriding impression was one of honesty and openness, no guile, no phoniness, no pretentiousness in any of them. They seem totally at home onstage or off, willing to share their lives and talents with anyone and anxious to help newcomers make it to the top. Unlike the superstars of Broadway and Hollywood, they don't seem to have the giant egos that make them like planets in orbit, avoiding the pull of other planets and stars, isolated in their own groupies and fans and very lonely. These performers--some multimillionaires--are seemingly comfortable in their own skins with all levels of society and with each other.
And why not? After all, there are thirteen hundred and fifty-two guitar pickers in Nashville, according to Lovin' Spoonful in "Nashville Cats." Everybody is a singer-songwriter, and they write about their lives and feelings. It's one of the few non-phony professional groups I've ever met, and I felt right at home. I remembered last year when we saw the Opry stars and regulars perform on their off-night, they waited on us, served us our dinners before they took to the stage to do the show. I remember the drummer bringing me my iced tea, and our waitress joining in onstage for a couple of numbers.
On our way back to South Florida we stopped in Gatlinburg for some Christmas shopping and the local ambience, and heard some more country/western local bands performing on the streets. So we had fun despite the straight line route this year, and counted ourselves fortunate. There are far fewer travellers on the roads this year than we've found in years past. People are taking "staycations," as the travel editors call them on network news.
USA Today reported Americans drove thirty billion fewer miles in the first quarter this year than during the same period last year. Yet that amount represents only 3% of our annual fossil fuel consumption, I believe it said. That is a staggering figure indeed.
On Briley Parkway the main building (there are four Grand Ole Opry sites) sits next to a huge Gaylord Grand resort hotel on one side and a big shopping mall on another, so parking was no problem, and our tickets of $39 each for Mezzanine front row seats were very reasonable, I thought. Outside before the show we posed with Minnie Pearl and Hank Williams and Roy Acuff live lookalikes, browsed the souvenir store, and listened to a warmup band on the front plaza.
Inside, the seating is surprisingly on long curving benches rather than individual armrested seats, but the padded benches were comfortable for the two-hour show. As in any broadcast studio, the wood stage had equipment strewn about everywhere, with cameras. cables, microphones, lighting and props skillfully manouvered by operators and stagehands who pirhouetted about in an intricate choreography. Talent waited in the shadows diagonally downstage left to await their call, and at eight o'clock on the dot a brief history of the Grand Ole Opry, its stars, novices, and rich traditions flashed over three jumbotron screens left, center, and right. An announcer approached the podium and introduced Jeannie Seely, hostess for the first segment (sponsored by Cracker Barrel.) Other acts whom she introduced were Jimmy C. Newman, the Whites, and Carolina Rain.
If we'd paid closer attention to past Opry broadcasts on radio and tv more, we wouldn't have been surprised. We weren't just watching a closed musical show. We were involved in a live network tv and radio broadcast, syndicated worldwide as part of the studio audience du jour. The show was in four thirty-minute segments, each with two to four different acts, commercial pauses and its own brand sponsor.
The second half-hour (sponsored by Bass Pro Shops) was headlined by the venerable pint-sized cowboy crooner Little Jimmy Dickens, all of 87 years old this month and still going strong. His only complaint: something in his ear was bothering him, and he went to the doctor, who retrieved a suppository. "Oh thank goodness," he told the doc, "Now I know where I lost my hearing aid." The Little General Cloggers from Kennesaw, Georgia clogged away onstage and Mountain Heart bluegrass band completed the segment.
9:00 to 9:30 featured Jean Shepard, Bobby Osborne and The Rocky Top X-press, hootin' and hollerin' out "Good Old Rocky Top, Tennessee," with Bobby's son on bass fiddle (sponsored by Humana.)
But the last half-hour was for me the best. The curtain rose on Riders of the Sky singing the Rawhide theme they recorded originally for the hit show, and they did Roy Rogers' "Happy Trails to You" and Gene Autry's "Back In the Saddle Again" with warm audience participation. Connie Smith and Kathy Mattea closed the evening with performances sponsored by Johnson Controls.
I have to admit that country/western isn't always my favorite style of music, but overall it is more tuneful, foot-tapping in its rhythms and listenable in its harmonies than a lot of other more popular genres. I think everyone has a little bit of country in him or her, and some of it I really enjoy. It's a national music, the closest thing we probably have to a traditional American genre. Jazz is American as well, but not perhaps as enduring and unchanging. The country/western music we heard this night was the same fifty years ago, in style and instrumentation, themes of love and heartache, patriotism and courage, religion and family. And far from its lyrics bashing the society and everything in it like rap's often trash-talking obscenities often do, country/western is unabashedly patriotic and proud to be an American. I like that--a lot.
As we left for our motel, I couldn't help but be impressed with a couple of things about Nashville's stars, and the overriding impression was one of honesty and openness, no guile, no phoniness, no pretentiousness in any of them. They seem totally at home onstage or off, willing to share their lives and talents with anyone and anxious to help newcomers make it to the top. Unlike the superstars of Broadway and Hollywood, they don't seem to have the giant egos that make them like planets in orbit, avoiding the pull of other planets and stars, isolated in their own groupies and fans and very lonely. These performers--some multimillionaires--are seemingly comfortable in their own skins with all levels of society and with each other.
And why not? After all, there are thirteen hundred and fifty-two guitar pickers in Nashville, according to Lovin' Spoonful in "Nashville Cats." Everybody is a singer-songwriter, and they write about their lives and feelings. It's one of the few non-phony professional groups I've ever met, and I felt right at home. I remembered last year when we saw the Opry stars and regulars perform on their off-night, they waited on us, served us our dinners before they took to the stage to do the show. I remember the drummer bringing me my iced tea, and our waitress joining in onstage for a couple of numbers.
On our way back to South Florida we stopped in Gatlinburg for some Christmas shopping and the local ambience, and heard some more country/western local bands performing on the streets. So we had fun despite the straight line route this year, and counted ourselves fortunate. There are far fewer travellers on the roads this year than we've found in years past. People are taking "staycations," as the travel editors call them on network news.
USA Today reported Americans drove thirty billion fewer miles in the first quarter this year than during the same period last year. Yet that amount represents only 3% of our annual fossil fuel consumption, I believe it said. That is a staggering figure indeed.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
No Teaching beyond Christmas?
My college is changing its core curriculum and is basically no longer requiring things I teach: English, Literature, Humanities and Art Appreciation. They say the accrediting body, Southern Association, has changed its distribution requirements, and a consultant has assured them they can do it. It puts my continued teaching there at risk. But I'm doing the art apprec. this summer term--probably for the last time, and a "shadow English II Lit" this fall for those who have already completed English Composition I and will need it.
Whether they are risking re-accreditation, I don't know. I've been retired fulltime and out of the information loop for several years, teaching part-time only. But I can't imagine parents putting out the kind of money they charge to send their sons and daughters to a university that doesn't require English, math, humanities or public speaking courses. They say they're replacing them with interdisciplinary "dialogues" that students will begin in their sophomore years, and all faculty will teach.
I think they're crazy, and I predict that rather than enhance enrollment they will find students leaving in droves and not being able to recruit new ones. Who in their right mind will go to a university whose credits will no longer transfer, and may not continue to be regionally accredited? But I may not understand the issues, as I said, being on the outside now.
I had hoped to continue teaching at least one more year before I turn away from the rigors of the classroom altogether. I realize I will need to at some point. But I'm not looking forward to retiring completely. And I know I don't want to do the usual things well-meaning relatives and friends suggest to keep busy: volunteer work, golf, tennis, involvement in clubs, groups, church work, part-time work here or there. I'll be damned if I'll be a Walmart greeter or help people find galvanized nails at Home Depot. I'm a teacher
It looks now like I'll be able to keep teaching through Christmas, enough to stay out of trouble. I only need one section a couple of days a week to do the trick. Two is better, but at this point I'll take one. There's not much distance between one and two, but there's a vast distance between none and one. I'm hoping the university will come to its senses at some point and scrap the changes to the core. But I don't think it will happen for a year or two at the earliest, and that may be too late. If I run out of teaching opportunities before I'm ready to call it quits, I may try to get a class at one of the community colleges within driving distance. "Hello and welcome to Walmart" is not for me.
Whether they are risking re-accreditation, I don't know. I've been retired fulltime and out of the information loop for several years, teaching part-time only. But I can't imagine parents putting out the kind of money they charge to send their sons and daughters to a university that doesn't require English, math, humanities or public speaking courses. They say they're replacing them with interdisciplinary "dialogues" that students will begin in their sophomore years, and all faculty will teach.
I think they're crazy, and I predict that rather than enhance enrollment they will find students leaving in droves and not being able to recruit new ones. Who in their right mind will go to a university whose credits will no longer transfer, and may not continue to be regionally accredited? But I may not understand the issues, as I said, being on the outside now.
I had hoped to continue teaching at least one more year before I turn away from the rigors of the classroom altogether. I realize I will need to at some point. But I'm not looking forward to retiring completely. And I know I don't want to do the usual things well-meaning relatives and friends suggest to keep busy: volunteer work, golf, tennis, involvement in clubs, groups, church work, part-time work here or there. I'll be damned if I'll be a Walmart greeter or help people find galvanized nails at Home Depot. I'm a teacher
It looks now like I'll be able to keep teaching through Christmas, enough to stay out of trouble. I only need one section a couple of days a week to do the trick. Two is better, but at this point I'll take one. There's not much distance between one and two, but there's a vast distance between none and one. I'm hoping the university will come to its senses at some point and scrap the changes to the core. But I don't think it will happen for a year or two at the earliest, and that may be too late. If I run out of teaching opportunities before I'm ready to call it quits, I may try to get a class at one of the community colleges within driving distance. "Hello and welcome to Walmart" is not for me.
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Parade of Shames
I could hardly believe my eyes and ears as I witnessed the evening news cover a limosine full of prospective home buyers being paraded from foreclosed home to foreclosed home in South Florida by realtors hired by the lenders to unload the seized properties. The video was festive and the mood bubbly. Here were bargain basement prices for many homes of much greater value than the asking price, and the sellers and buyers alike were drooling. One clip showed a small group of them toasting the occasion with champagne.
It made me ill. The apparent attitude was as if someone in a monopoly game had landed on a high-improvement property of theirs and they now got to seize all the opponent's properties, cash, and other assets and put him out of the game. How could people be so crass! Don't they realize they are dealing with people's former homes? With their lives? With what remains as all they had to live in? With what, but for the hasty greed and avarice of unscrupulous lenders, they would have been able to still be in until this horrible recession passes?
Millions, we're talking about, Millions of families have lost their homes across the nation to foreclosure, even as they have lost their jobs, in many cases permanently, and the government just drags its feet trying to do something to slow the process and get the banks and finance companies to work something out so people can stay in their homes. What's the rush? Those houses are not going anywhere. What's the rush to ruin lives? It's not like they will make more money by seizing and selling them for pennies on the dollar, for gosh sake.
And as for the parade of shames (not the parade of homes), if those champagne-tippling philistines have the money to bargain-shop for houses they don't even need for themselves but undoubtedly want to flip just for a fast fat profit, why don't they use it instead to try to help those foreclosed people stay in their homes and ride out these tough times? They're the ones who need help. And for that matter, the banks who created the crisis with their sub-prime loans, the government who refused to regulate it, the rich oil companies who have exascerbated the poverty of those poor families with their obscene gas prices, big corporations, the churches, synagogues, mosques, charities, and anyone else who can afford to offer assistance should do so as well. This is an unprecendented human crisis, not a time for bargain shopping. There aren't many things that are worse for a family than to lose its home. It's bad enough when it happens from natural disasters or accidental causes, but to look out your window and see a limo of greedy vultures drive by sipping champagne and eyeing your house is enough to push one over the edge.
At the very least, lose the champagne and lose the limo. If you can live with the idea that you have a home that was basically stolen at the misfortune of another, then at least have the decency to buy it quietly and discretely.
It made me ill. The apparent attitude was as if someone in a monopoly game had landed on a high-improvement property of theirs and they now got to seize all the opponent's properties, cash, and other assets and put him out of the game. How could people be so crass! Don't they realize they are dealing with people's former homes? With their lives? With what remains as all they had to live in? With what, but for the hasty greed and avarice of unscrupulous lenders, they would have been able to still be in until this horrible recession passes?
Millions, we're talking about, Millions of families have lost their homes across the nation to foreclosure, even as they have lost their jobs, in many cases permanently, and the government just drags its feet trying to do something to slow the process and get the banks and finance companies to work something out so people can stay in their homes. What's the rush? Those houses are not going anywhere. What's the rush to ruin lives? It's not like they will make more money by seizing and selling them for pennies on the dollar, for gosh sake.
And as for the parade of shames (not the parade of homes), if those champagne-tippling philistines have the money to bargain-shop for houses they don't even need for themselves but undoubtedly want to flip just for a fast fat profit, why don't they use it instead to try to help those foreclosed people stay in their homes and ride out these tough times? They're the ones who need help. And for that matter, the banks who created the crisis with their sub-prime loans, the government who refused to regulate it, the rich oil companies who have exascerbated the poverty of those poor families with their obscene gas prices, big corporations, the churches, synagogues, mosques, charities, and anyone else who can afford to offer assistance should do so as well. This is an unprecendented human crisis, not a time for bargain shopping. There aren't many things that are worse for a family than to lose its home. It's bad enough when it happens from natural disasters or accidental causes, but to look out your window and see a limo of greedy vultures drive by sipping champagne and eyeing your house is enough to push one over the edge.
At the very least, lose the champagne and lose the limo. If you can live with the idea that you have a home that was basically stolen at the misfortune of another, then at least have the decency to buy it quietly and discretely.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
If an infinite number of monkeys and typewriters....
Discouraged by no sales of my spreadsheet budget after a couple of weeks' trying, I turned again to internet publishing to renew my hopes of rewarding enterprise. I'd like to call it internet publishing because blog sounds so blug, though it's just a lazy word for weblog, but internet publishing sounds like a respectable use of my time.
I quickly decided I'm too old to fight the code for setting up my own site from scratch with Frontpage or MySQL or Perl modules, etc., which younger geeks seem to take to like ducks to water, and my best bet would be to either use this space on Writetosayit or start afresh with another blog. The thing about blogs on established host sites is that they're so easy to set up and maintain that I can get a lot of bang for my buck with minimal technical hassle. So I went shopping for another space to vent my angst.
There are many free and low-cost blog hosting sites out there, and I've tried several over the years. But one which was still on Google's directory of weblog hosts was BlogHi. BlogHi used to be very appealing to me. Along with Writetosayit, my nbknotes blog there attracted me to write well over a hundred posts, and offered several strengths I haven't found either here at Blogspot or anywhere else. Not only was it a free blogsite, it was the best-syndicated and best-set-up site of any I found, and within several months I found my posts reaching hundreds through the rss links and the site itself.
Out of curiosity I clicked it again, and was amazed to find my former blog still just as I had left it when I took my portrait avatar and my xml file of posts I'd written, and migrated to wordpress. The posts were gone, but the notebook template, header, and other sections and choices I'd made earlier were still there, all ready for me to just write another post! In fact, since I still have that .xml and .jpg, I realized I could quickly restore everything to my former BlogHi blog and continue as if I had never dropped out! Maybe my search for a "new" blog was over.
So I wrote and posted a little blurb welcoming myself back after a few years' hiatus, and felt really good about using BlogHi's comfortable and efficient, user-friendly and intuitive features. I was home again, in a sense.
In fact, with its advantages, I couldn't think why I left in the first place. I remembered a rough patch when the owner, an engineer at a Munich company, got out of it and sold it to someone else. I had scrambled to save my posts and migrate to another site before BlogHi closed up shop.
But what I had forgotten was the real reason I left BlogHi. And as I proudly reviewed my page as published, I scrolled down and instantly remembered. There, at the bottom, was what appeared to be some sort of box ad for a GPS device, with a button to push for more information. Foolishly, I pushed it, and made a few cents for the new BlogHi owners through Google's AdSense. You see, at BlogHi, the writer benefits from a free space to blog and post all he wants, but the company gets the money that accrues from advertising on the published pages, not the author.
I was livid. In fact, I remember blogging against that unfairness at BlogHi itself when I was getting quite a number of hits, only to find many of my fellows commenting, "Hey, it's a win-win situation, isn't it? We get free blogspace and syndication; they get some revenue to defray their costs."
That's not the way I saw it. I figured if I wrote it and chose to let Google put some non-intrusive ads on my pages through AdSense, I should get the revenue, or at least the bigger part of it, not the host. I felt like one of the proverbial infinite number of monkeys chained to an infinite number of typewriters, pecking away endlessly to see if all the great books would be written. That, I realized, was what really drove me from BlogHi hosting. I didn't want to feel like an employee every time I sat down to enter a post, with someone else reaping the profit of my efforts.
It's not that I expect to get rich at blogging or "internet publishing" of any kind, and I recognize that few personal blogs attract that kind of traffic to generate more than a pittance of revenue. But it's that the policy of BlogHi taking the potential pot with no way to reward the writer kills the hope of tangible rewards. And every writer hopes for tangible rewards in time, no matter who he or she is.
A host can't just give us a ream of blank paper and say, "Go to it, Bubba." We write and we publish our ideas because we hope that over time somehow we'll attract readers. And we hope that if our words attract enough readers, we'll be able to make some money at it. AdSense is the most accessible way a writer has to do that. Take that collection plate away, and the hope of income goes with it. We're left with only the rewards of seeing our ideas in print and receiving readers' comments--significant rewards to be sure, but not tangible.
I haven't tried AdSense here yet, and I doubt I will. There's something about spotting some ad for a GPS on my blog page that raises my dander. But I may try it on another blogsite, just to keep the hope of tangible reward alive.
I quickly decided I'm too old to fight the code for setting up my own site from scratch with Frontpage or MySQL or Perl modules, etc., which younger geeks seem to take to like ducks to water, and my best bet would be to either use this space on Writetosayit or start afresh with another blog. The thing about blogs on established host sites is that they're so easy to set up and maintain that I can get a lot of bang for my buck with minimal technical hassle. So I went shopping for another space to vent my angst.
There are many free and low-cost blog hosting sites out there, and I've tried several over the years. But one which was still on Google's directory of weblog hosts was BlogHi. BlogHi used to be very appealing to me. Along with Writetosayit, my nbknotes blog there attracted me to write well over a hundred posts, and offered several strengths I haven't found either here at Blogspot or anywhere else. Not only was it a free blogsite, it was the best-syndicated and best-set-up site of any I found, and within several months I found my posts reaching hundreds through the rss links and the site itself.
Out of curiosity I clicked it again, and was amazed to find my former blog still just as I had left it when I took my portrait avatar and my xml file of posts I'd written, and migrated to wordpress. The posts were gone, but the notebook template, header, and other sections and choices I'd made earlier were still there, all ready for me to just write another post! In fact, since I still have that .xml and .jpg, I realized I could quickly restore everything to my former BlogHi blog and continue as if I had never dropped out! Maybe my search for a "new" blog was over.
So I wrote and posted a little blurb welcoming myself back after a few years' hiatus, and felt really good about using BlogHi's comfortable and efficient, user-friendly and intuitive features. I was home again, in a sense.
In fact, with its advantages, I couldn't think why I left in the first place. I remembered a rough patch when the owner, an engineer at a Munich company, got out of it and sold it to someone else. I had scrambled to save my posts and migrate to another site before BlogHi closed up shop.
But what I had forgotten was the real reason I left BlogHi. And as I proudly reviewed my page as published, I scrolled down and instantly remembered. There, at the bottom, was what appeared to be some sort of box ad for a GPS device, with a button to push for more information. Foolishly, I pushed it, and made a few cents for the new BlogHi owners through Google's AdSense. You see, at BlogHi, the writer benefits from a free space to blog and post all he wants, but the company gets the money that accrues from advertising on the published pages, not the author.
I was livid. In fact, I remember blogging against that unfairness at BlogHi itself when I was getting quite a number of hits, only to find many of my fellows commenting, "Hey, it's a win-win situation, isn't it? We get free blogspace and syndication; they get some revenue to defray their costs."
That's not the way I saw it. I figured if I wrote it and chose to let Google put some non-intrusive ads on my pages through AdSense, I should get the revenue, or at least the bigger part of it, not the host. I felt like one of the proverbial infinite number of monkeys chained to an infinite number of typewriters, pecking away endlessly to see if all the great books would be written. That, I realized, was what really drove me from BlogHi hosting. I didn't want to feel like an employee every time I sat down to enter a post, with someone else reaping the profit of my efforts.
It's not that I expect to get rich at blogging or "internet publishing" of any kind, and I recognize that few personal blogs attract that kind of traffic to generate more than a pittance of revenue. But it's that the policy of BlogHi taking the potential pot with no way to reward the writer kills the hope of tangible rewards. And every writer hopes for tangible rewards in time, no matter who he or she is.
A host can't just give us a ream of blank paper and say, "Go to it, Bubba." We write and we publish our ideas because we hope that over time somehow we'll attract readers. And we hope that if our words attract enough readers, we'll be able to make some money at it. AdSense is the most accessible way a writer has to do that. Take that collection plate away, and the hope of income goes with it. We're left with only the rewards of seeing our ideas in print and receiving readers' comments--significant rewards to be sure, but not tangible.
I haven't tried AdSense here yet, and I doubt I will. There's something about spotting some ad for a GPS on my blog page that raises my dander. But I may try it on another blogsite, just to keep the hope of tangible reward alive.
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