For the lurkers

Let's get this out in the open right away: I'm getting lazier and lazier. Whole days go by when I don't do much but read, and eat, and look out the window. That is, no doubt, the main reason that nothing has been posted here for a long time. I have had reason to suspect, though, that a few persons have been offended by things they read on this poor innocuous little blog. That has bothered me. I forgot to comfort myself, as I did when I was a nerdy high schooler, with words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, i.e. "To be great is to be misunderstood." I had about decided to let Letters From The North slip off into the wide world web or whatever it is that w.w.w. stands for. But then I heard a radio program about blogging. Since personal computing is all the rage these days, [I heard last night that you can confess your sins on-line now] someone has done research on blogs. This person has discovered that for everyone who reads a post and writes a comment on it there are several hundred, perhaps as many as a thousand people who read it and say nothing. These people have been designated 'lurkers'. Wow! Who knew? I realize that the researcher was probably dealing with famous blogs, but still.... Let's say that you had three regular readers who commented. [It doesn't matter at all if one is your husband and the other two are your sons.] And in addition to each of them, you had maybe ten lurkers. Well, that's a nice little group of people listening to what you have to say. A blogger is not so alone in the world as she thought she was. So this one's for you, my dear lurkers. Lurk on.