Good-bye, 2024

Look, I'm on the marquee! dwm text art

The biggest event and the one most likely to be remembered the longest, is the 2024 General Election.

It seems fitting the result has almost equal numbers of people believing it is either the best or worst thing to happen for the United States. 

 

History will be the judge of that. 

 

Sadly, mass shootings in general and school shootings in particular, are a regular part of the news cycle until it happens in your community. 

 

It happened twice this year less than 20 miles from where we live. 

 

Thankfully, in the first only the student carrying the gun died, because Mt. Horeb's school safety measures didn't allow the boy who planned the attack in the school. When he refused to surrender, police shot and killed him. 

 

It happened again just before Christmas on Madison's east side at a Christian school, leaving a student and teacher dead, two students that were initially hospitalized in critical condition, and three students and a teacher who suffered non-life threatening injuries. The girl identified as the perpetrator, died of a self-inflicted gun shot wound.

 

There ae a number of positive things that happened. People got married, had children, and continued to make plans for the future. 

 

Personally, other than a week in February enduring a kidney stone, I'm thankful it passed without further incident and the year was otherwise a healthy one. I rode more this year than I have in a long time, recording 1,500 miles over 38 rides. Professionally, the biggest accomplishment will likely be the transition to a new and more efficient donor database. It was a long and difficult road but it was worth it. It was another strong year of donor support, twelve straight years of receiving more than one million dollars.

In my corner of the internet, you've been kind to spend time reading some of my posts, here are a few statistics:

• They used to call me Pointdexter, had 50,600 views during the past 12 months.
• The top three days, in terms of views: August 21 (881), December 19 (768), and April 7 (735) 
• The 2024 10 Most-Read Blogs:

1. Michigan Lights - St Joseph and New Buffalo, published 10/21/2017 340 views
2. God, Your Family, and the Green Bay Packers published 12/15/2013 298 views
3. High School Days - Naked and Afraid published 9/23/2013 134 views
4. Happy Anniversary published 1/25/2024 109 views 
5. Michigan Lights - Kalamazoo published 5/27/2018  92 views
6. Happy Thanksgiving published 11/28.2024  58 views
7. Tour de Cheese published 8/4/2024  55 views
8. State Fair published 8/11/2024  51 views
9. A Big Day published 11/5/2024  47 views
10. My Week that Was -October 5 10/5/2024  45 views

Blogs in bold were published this year. 

It is interesting to see a lot of the Pages devoted to specific topics get regular visits. The top three in 2024 are:

1. My Covered Bridge Collection 261 visits

2. Lighthouse Visits 112 visits - which reminds me, I've not added all of the new Michigan lights to that page!

3. Biking to Bucky on Parade 104 visits  

This is my 3,331st blog since it began in August 2012 and the 220th in 2024. Once in a while I have trouble coming up with a topic which sends me to the NationalToday.com site to see if any of the daily 'holidays' triggers an idea, but I continue to enjoy writing four days each week and occasionally more. 

I don't know who you are on the other side of the screen, but several of you have mentioned checking out these pages. Thank you for reading!