I figure since the blog felt dead for 24 hours… I would tell about the circumstances in which this communique of mine was born:
The year was around 2000 and I was busy playing horn for OCG, working on my bachelors, and plotting a move to France for a semester or so. I’d been an internaut since the early nineties, so it only made sense that I have some kind of website that Geocities provided, where I would throw up some photos I scanned in the WPU art department computer lab, and then I’d rant about world news for a few paragraphs. When I did this, I was thinking of myself as a sort-of columnist for my own little newspaper. I tried to write in a very “i know everything” manner, because when it came to world affairs, I probably believed I knew everything.
So I’d update my little website every week or so, and put up a new, what I called, Communiqué for my readership of 5 or so. Many of those original 5 still come here daily! (I do love you for your courage and dedication!)
Eventually this wasn’t good enough. It was just after Sept.11th and I had moved to Lisbon; Chavez was overthrown for 24 hours, Israel was shooting up churches in Bethlehem, and fascist patriotism had taken over the United States. I needed a better outlet for my rants, and I felt like newspapers had too many gatekeepers who wouldn’t accept my work. But I hadn’t heard about blogs, so I kept on writing articles for my site, more and more.
And then I moved to Amsterdam right around this date in 2002, and I discovered blogger, and I purchased bicyclemark.org, because I had often been called that name, and I wanted to express my dedication to people and progress by making it a .org instead of a .com .
The rest is history, especially in 2004 when this thing began to really bloom. And I made tons of fellow blog friends as well as reader friends. Many of them are still going today, like brian, tony, and the wonderful bronwyn. So as my blog birthday approaches, I just wanted to share and remember how and when it all started. Thanks for reading, and you can bet- I’ve only just begun.