I have been reading a blog for almost ten years, a blog I considered a model for comments on current events, on political matters, and opinion blogging regarding anything. The man who wrote this blog lives in Cincinnati. He blogged five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year for a little over ten years. I admired him as a blogger and as a writer. The last few years a friend he called "the Big Guy" wrote the blog on Thursdays. Anyone can write a blog but few can write one for ten years, write something interesting each week and get and sustain a loyal following as he did. He had followers from Seattle, Washington to Tampa, Florida. After I moved to Oklahoma I didn’t read his blog every day. Some time I would go two or three weeks and not look at it, Then I’d log on and read all he had written and catch up. Over the years we have emailed each other a number of times and I have long thought of him as a friend. It was a shock yesterday when I signed on and read his last blog. He explained why he was quitting and he had several good reasons. He thanked his loyal followers. Someone commented she was glad she didn’t read this on Friday when it was published, it would have ruined her weekend. Instead she said she read it on Monday ad it ruined her week. That was similar the way it struct me; he ruined my weekend. It left me sad. I’ve read him so long I supposed he would go on writing even someday as they scattered my ashes. Even when you couldn’t agree with him you admired the way he said what he said, and over the years he introduced me to some interesting people. I’m going to miss Grumpy. Damn it!
I'll let him tell you: I love Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The two outlaws, on the run in Boliva, are finally cornered in an adobe building. We know and they know that a large contingent of the Bolivian army is outside. Wounded, low on ammunition, they decide they should next live in Australia. Then, acknowledging their certain death, they charge from the building, guns blazing, as the screen goes blank. Writing a blog, in a broad metaphorical sense, is like Butch and Sundance. Crouching in an abandoned building, the author puts their words to paper, knowing that outside the door, the world waits to judge them. At dawn those words charge out the door into the sunlight, only their fate, unlike Butch and Sundance, is uncertain. Will they be met with acclaim or disdain, approval or rejection, respect or contempt, attraction or revulsion? The author doesn't know but sends the words out, anyway. For over ten years The Big Guy and I have thrown our words out there each day, leaving them, and in a sense ourselves, open to the judgement of whoever finds them in the sunlight. It's been a fun ride expressing our thoughts, opinions, memories and viewpoint to the interwebs. But all rides must end; ours ends today. We have mutually agreed that the time has come. We haven't said it all but we have said all we wanted. Our sincere thank you to our loyal followers. The Big Guy and I are going to charge out into the sunlight together, guns blazing, with the hope that, as The Big Guy put it, there are better days ahead. Maybe we'll go to Australia. We will leave you with this final thought: "It is always darkest before the day dawneth". -Thomas Fuller