My 1,000th Post

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This is a personal milestone for me. This is my 1,000th post on this blog.

It all began with a simple post about picking a name for my blog two years ago tomorrow — on Saturday, Sept. 29, 2007.

I'm going all Ted Baxter here.

Do you remember Ted Baxter, the pompous anchorman from The Mary Tyler Moore Show? One of the running jokes on the show was the acceptance speech Ted had prepared in anticipation of winning an award — and always had it memorized, ready to recite at the drop of a hat. Oddly, it was the same answer he had prepared for anyone who wanted to interview him for a biographical feature.

"It all began at a 5,000–watt radio station ..." and I believe the fictional station was in Fresno, Calif., but I'm not certain about that. You would think I would remember. I was a big fan of The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the 1970s.

The joke was that, most of the time, he didn't win, and his speech went undelivered. But it seems to me that Ted finally won the recognition he craved — in an episode in which Walter Cronkite was the guest star.

Anyway, I started writing this blog two years ago. An old friend recommended it to me, and I am grateful he did. But I made a mistake with this blog. I used it to write about anything that came to mind — and it became unwieldy.

So last year, as I approached the first anniversary of the debut of my blog, I decided I needed to be more topical. I had been using this blog to write about a lot of different topics, but last September I decided that I needed to start two other blogs and dedicate them to sports and entertainment.

Then, on Sept. 25, 2008, I announced the creation of two new blogs.

I'm still writing those blogs. When I want to write about football or baseball or horse racing (other sports, too, but those are probably the main ones for me) or, sometimes, the people who tell us about the sports we watch, I write at my Tomato Cans blog. Mostly, I have been writing about football recently, posting my predictions in the weekly college and pro football schedules. In the coming weeks, I'll be writing about the baseball playoffs. And, in the last few weeks, I have posted sports–oriented comedy videos featuring routines by Andy Griffith and George Carlin.

And when I want to write about books or movies or music or TV — or if I want to indulge in some free association — I write at my Birth of a Notion blog.

And that has helped me focus this blog more on current events and history. Sometimes, being a journalist, I write about language.

All three blogs are works in progress, though. My style is still emerging, and there remain some inconsistencies. They probably aren't noticeable to casual readers, but, for someone who spent many years working on newspaper copy desks, it's just part of my DNA to have a signature style that is consistent in all of my blogs.

Anyway, thanks for reading my blogs. I hope you will come back.