Today is the second anniversary of Home in Henderson. Happy Birthday to us!
We’ve been trying for the past week to think of something profound to write about it. No luck so far, and here it is, press time. But the miracle of the medium is such that if we think of something later on, we can always come back and change it.
In case you’re curious, here’s the link to the first article that ever went up for public consumption on our humble blog. It was written by Michael Jacobs, the now-legendary founder of this enterprise, and a sublime journalist to boot. Give it a read. No one else did that day, unfortunately. No one logged in at all that Tuesday.
In fact, in February of 2005, only 299 IP addresses visited the site a mere 833 times.
In January of 2007, with the final numbers not yet in, over 7,100 IP addresses visited the site over 41,300 times.
You might say we’ve grown some. In fact, it’s hard to imagine the Henderson landscape without this blog on it. But that’s not because of anything we’ve done. We just crank out the articles. The credit belongs to you, the readers. Without the comment posts, we’d be just another newspaper without nearly the usefulness as the next day’s packing material, fire-starter, or the liquid-absorbing qualities.
Home in Henderson has also been the focus of praise, derision, controversy, and political debate. It has been hailed as an instrument of change, dismissed as an electronic gossip column, used as a social barometer, and scrutinized like a doctoral dissertation. We cannot agree or disagree with many of the conclusions that have been reached, because at times it has been worthy of all of those names and uses. It’s something new, and its novelty still holds some surprises, even for those of us who think we’re holding the reins.
As for me, sometimes I think about the life I had planned for myself B.B. (Before Blog). My goal was to enjoy a respectable middle age as a fuddy-duddy, slightly quirky English teacher, and I wonder if I might not have been happier fulfilling that destiny in anonymous obscurity. On the other hand, I’ve learned so much in my tenure as the editor of the blog and become involved with Henderson on a level I never would have otherwise achieved. These are invaluable experiences that I would not trade for anything.
As a person who never felt at home anywhere, it’s ironic that Home in Henderson made Henderson my true home.