Goodbye to World Wide Webers

This is my last post on World Wide Webers. The blog has come full circle: Launched in November, 2004, based on a conversation between my daughter Karen and me about the distressing outcome of one presidential election, it concludes with Karen's eloquent comments about the much more hopeful outcome of another presidential election. Thus, our 635 posts neatly cover the years of Bush's second term, which of course provided much of the fodder for our observations. (Decades from now, researchers into the period may discover this blog, and we will become a footnote to a footnote in some history of America's worst presidential administration.)

I'm retiring World Wide Webers mainly because I think it's time for a new online vehicle, one whose format reflects more accurately the style and structure of the contents. Intended as a "family blog," World Wide Webers never quite attained that character, since the vast bulk of the contents was created by one person.

(I used to daydream about a wonderful blog enriched with posts about business and finance by Matt, posts about academia, music, history, and feminism by Laura and Karen, posts about health care and many other topics by Mary-Jo, posts about law and food by Janee, and posts about pop culture by Ingrid . . . but over time I've sadly realized that all of my family members actually have lives, which means that writing blog posts isn't at the top of their to-do lists. Go figure.)

Time passed, our family configuration evolved (making the photo on our masthead outdated), and I kept trying to figure out how to recast the blog to make it fit the changing circumstances. Finally I have decided to just make a clean break and start something new.

My new blog is called Saxifrage. (As you English majors may recognize, it's a reference to William Carlos Williams--when you visit the blog, you'll find a little more context that should help explain what it all means.) Saxifrage will be linked to a website focused on my work as a book writer and editor. My intention is to write about many of the same topics I've been dealing with on World Wide Webers--politics, culture, social issues, personal experiences--and to link these topics as much as possible to my work: authors I am collaborating with, trends I am tracking, causes I am trying to promote. I'll also try to include observations about book publishing and the literary life, which I hope will make the blog interesting to my colleagues, clients, students, and acquaintances in the industry.

If you've enjoyed World Wide Webers, I think you'll like Saxifrage too. (And if you've been enjoying Janee's writings about food and cooking here at World Wide Webers, you owe it to yourself to visit her new blog, Revel & Feast. It's a gorgeous site laden with mouth-watering photos of the brilliant dishes she teaches you how to cook. Nice to see Janee spreading her creative wings in a forum tailor-made for her.)

Thanks to everyone who has spent ten minutes or ten hours reading and perhaps enjoying, hating, or arguing with our observations here at World Wide Webers. Our readership never became huge but it included some very smart and interesting people, which is even more important. Here's hoping that, over the next four years, we'll have some better news to write about than we had during the last four.