HinesSight

One million page views…so what?

Given the self-referential nature of the blogosphere, it seems obligatory for me to put up a blog post about a blog post milestone – namely, TypePad having informed me that today HinesSight passed the one million page view milestone.

Congratulations to me, from me.

However, the question to me, from me, is "so what?" A embarrassingly high proportion of those 1,000,114 page views came from people looking for photos of Paris Hilton.

So whoop-de-do, I'm serving humanity by including some photos from other web sites that got ranked high on a Google Images search for "Paris Hilton," thereby generating thousands of page views a day for a while.

Even though I called my all-time most popular post "The Tao of Paris Hilton," I have a suspicion that visitors to my blog were more interested in her physical attributes than the deep philosophical implications of her seeming vacuousness.

Still, a million page views for any reason is cool. And many of my posts lie higher on the social value scale that my Paris Hilton musings.

For example, "Corporation Compliance Recorder scam."

Since I dashed off this expose of a mailing that tries to con corporations (non-profits included) into forking over $95 to $125 for submitting annual meeting minutes that don't need submitting, I've gotten almost three hundred comments from people who are thankful that a Google search turned up my post and saved them the money.

I figure that I helped these folks alone save over $30,000. And this doesn't include all the others who learned about the scam and didn't leave a comment.

In the end, blogging isn't about numbers. It's saying what you want to say, whether or not anybody pays attention.

Three years ago, this guy estimated that of five million or so active bloggers, 100 averaged 150,000 hits daily per blog; 2,000 averaged 1,500 daily hits; and 18,000 averaged 500 daily hits.

The rest were virtually hitless. But the way I see it, how many people does it take to have a great conversation with? Answer: one.

And that person could be me. So I'm pleased to consistently get over 600 page views a day on this blog – now without much help from the Paris Hilton post.

The most satisfying emails and comments I get, though, come one at a time. Whether it's a "thank you" or "you're an idiot," I know that I've made contact with someone.

That's what blogging is all about.

Bloggers, you’ll love Word 2007

Oh, my god, I'm in love. At first blog post. I just installed Word 2007, which I bought at Amazon for a reasonable $90 (upgrade price). Right away I wanted to see if the blog publishing feature worked as promised.

It did. Appropriately, my first Word 2007 post was about Shakira's "Hips don't lie" Grammy performance last night. She's beautiful. So is Word's new blogging capability.

I write my posts in Word. I don't like to use TypePad's online editor. One glitch and all your writing can disappear. Plus, I like to have a backup of posts on my laptop.

But it's been frustrating to have to reformat the Word 2003-generated post after I copied it into the TypePad post editor. Italics, boldface, hyperlinks—all that stuff had to be manually put back in, because of some incompatibility between Word and the HTML TypePad expected (I'm vague on the technical details).

Now, though, what I write in Word is what appears on my blog. I can publish directly from Word 2007.

The setup was simple, once I figured how to get the blog post ball rolling (strangely, Word's Help wasn't much help in this regard—I discovered on my own how to click on the circle thingie in the upper left, then select "publish," followed by "blog").

Here's some set-up tips from another happy Word 2007 blogger.

This is going to change my blogging life. I'll have more time to cruise YouTube for Shakira videos, now that I don't have to fuss around so much with the TypePad text editor.

Except for photos, it seems. I had no problem inserting a photo into my post, but it was full-sized. It'd be nice to be able to use TypePad's thumbnail feature directly from Word. For now, it looks like I'll have to add photos from the online text editor, along with indenting quotes, perhaps.

"Well, let's try a test. Can I indent the left side of this fake quoted paragraph? Yes, I can. But whether it can be indented on the right side also, that is another question. But I can highlight it!"

Aside from its blogging feature, Word 2007 looks much improved in other ways. The "menus" now are tabs, laid out in a pleasing writer-friendly fashion. Microsoft does a lot of things wrong. With Word 2007, though, I give the often evil software empire a big thumbs up.

[Update later in the day: Well, here's one downside to Word 2007. If you buy it singly, like I did, you'll find that now you can't compose email messages in Word with Outlook 2003. You're confined to using the Outlook email editor, which doesn't do spell checking and some other stuff.

So, okay, I'll play the Microsoft game and fork out another $90 to get Outlook 2007, even though I didn't really want or need it. A bit frustrating, though.]

Blogs or books, it’s cool to comment

These “Pearls Before Swine” comic strips humorously address the sad state of the blogger who doesn’t get comments. I know just how the goat feels.

It’s cool to get blog comments. Or, reader reviews. Last month Boudewijn Koole of The Netherlands made my day when I noticed his lengthy Amazon review of my book about Plotinus. The ending made me smile:

Altogether this is a very valuable introduction into the original philosophy of Plotinos. Not difficult to read, nor does it reduce to meaninglessness the sometimes profound or complex questions that can be posed. On the contrary, this book is often elucidating and inspiring. Very much recommended.

Thank you, Boudewijn. We’ve connected across two continents, which is the beauty of the Internet. You also have inspired me to get off my lazy commenting/reviewing butt and do more connecting of my own.

For someone who loves to get comments on my blogs, I don’t leave many on other peoples’ postings. Usually I don’t even think about it. My mouse finger clicks on another link and, zip, I’m off to somewhere else in cyberspace, having lost the opportunity to say what touched me about the post I just read.

I vow to change my ways. Tomorrow, when I next venture into the blogosphere, I’ll leave a comment or two. I’ll remember how much I enjoyed a brief eleven words from someone who left a comment yesterday about “My grocery list system, a gift to the world.”

Darn good list. I’m a list man myself and I’m impressed.

My friends, pass on praise (or criticism) when it is deserved. Writers will love you for it. A few minutes ago I began to atone for my dearth of Amazon reader reviews by submitting a 5-star review of Linda Hess’ “The Bijak of Kabir.”

Published in 1983, mine is only the second review. I’ve read the book twice and have enjoyed it immensely. I’ve quoted from it on my Church of the Churchless weblog, yet until now never thought of sharing how much I like it.

I’m pretty sure that one day Hess will read my words. I hope she smiles.

Wenn Gott flüstert, donnert es in der Schöpfung

If you can understand the title of this post, then you should buy the recently-published German translation of my first book. Heck, even if you can’t understand it, go ahead and buy the book with the same name anyway.

Currently Amazon is selling it at a generous discount. So for $10.17 plus shipping you get 300 pages of either comprehensible or incomprehensible German. Either way, that’s a great deal.

Kudos to Matthias Schneider-Marfels, who I know as “Matt,” for having the linguistic fortitude to translate a revised version of my “God’s Whisper, Creation’s Thunder,” which has been out of print for quite a while. Matt lives in New Zealand. We’ve only communicated by email, but I feel like I’ve come to know Matt well. He’s become a friend.

Working on a complicated book project that spanned many months brought us close together. Matt wanted to make my book available to German-speaking readers. So we agreed that he’d contribute his time and energy, and I’d contribute whatever else was needed to get the book in print.

I ended up publishing it under the aegis of my own imprint, Adrasteia Publishing. It’s a print on demand title that gets produced one copy at a time through Lightning Source, an Ingram subsidiary.

One day I’ll write about the benefits of writers setting up their own “publishing house.” It’s not as good as finding a big name commercial publisher for your book, but it’s a heck of a lot better than signing up with a print on demand firm like IUniverse, XLibris, or Trafford—who are going to charge you for the privilege of keeping a good share of the profits from your book sales.

Getting this book successfully published, with the invaluable aid of ace book designer Charles King, has given me the confidence to get the English version of my shorter, simpler, and less preachy “God’s Whisper, Creation’s Thunder” back in print. In my utterly biased opinion, it still is one of the best treatments of how the old mystics and the new physics relate.

“Wenn Gott flüstert, donnert es in der Schöpfung” is available on Amazon Germany, but for reasons known only to Lightning Source, Ingram, and Amazon, at the moment the umlauts are messed up on the book’s listing. This is just one of those many things in the book distribution process that drives writers/publishers/translators crazy.

[Next day update: naturally, after writing the previous paragraph the title now looks fine. I can only wish that every time I blog about some gripe, the world will change according to my wishes.]

Of course, anyone who goes through all the trouble to write, publish, or translate a book that likely will sell only a few hundred (or, if you’re lucky, a few thousand) copies is already demonstrably crazy. So a little more post-publication craziness isn’t bothering Matt and me all that much.

I’d like to close with some profound phrase dragged out of the memory bin of my four years of high school German, but all I can remember is the beginning of the record that I was given my freshman year and listened to so many times it is forever burned into my brain cells.

Guten tag, Luisa. Wie gehts?
Sehr gut. Und dir?

(my apologies to the Germanic world for any spelling errors; 1962 was a long time ago)

What I’ve learned after 500,000 page views

Today my HinesSight blog passed the 500,000 page view mark. In celebration of this milestone I’ll reveal what people look for most in my corner of the blogosphere. Can you guess?

Three choices: (1) Cogent political analyses, (2) Profound philosophical insights, (3) Photos of sexy women.

No big surprise here. I should have said: “three choices, and the first two don’t count.”

My “The Tao of Paris Hilton” post accounted for a large share of those half a million page views. After Google Images put several of the photos in that post on the first page of a “Paris Hilton” search I began getting over 10,000 visits a day from Paris fans.

Another popular post, not surprisingly, is my “Most beautiful woman in the world” offering that features Aishwarya Rai. After a link was included on a Pakistani newspaper web site, the post became a forum for passionate debate about which country—such as India or Pakistan—has the most beauteous babes. The comments got so nasty I eventually decided to shut them down.

Other posts with at least a toe in the prurient interest water that attracted quite a bit of attention include “Shocked!—I discover my wife’s late-night Internet lusting,” “Lust and longing at the dog park,” and the innocuously titled “The clouds speak to me” (the Sky Goddess photo spoke to lots of Google Images searchers).

Every blogger wants gobs of visitors. The question becomes: to what extent are you willing to sell your blogging soul in return for page views? Do you write about high-minded important subjects that, by and large, generate a “yawn” from Internet surfers? Or do you give people what they want?

These are important questions that deserve my careful consideration. Which I’ll get to after I post a few photos.

Cool! I’m a Diogenist

I was admiring Keith’s remodel of his Word Shadows blog when I noticed that his link to HinesSight now was in a “Diogenist” category.

Wow! My heart fluttered. Diogenist sounded so cool.

At first. Then I started to wonder if it meant what I thought it did: someone who, like Diogenes, searches for an honest man or, more broadly, truth.

Maybe it’s really an insult, something bad, like misogynist. I rushed to my dictionary.

And couldn’t find it. “Diogenes,” yes. “Diogenist,” no.

Clicked on to Google. Found a mere 36 entries. None seemed to be informative.

Keith, man—I think you’ve come up with a new word. Congratulations!

In hopes that the search engines will find this post, I hereby declare that Keith, a.k.a. Imaginary Keith, a.k.a. the Garden Poet, has revealed a new word to the world: Diogenist.

Of course, he might have stolen it from someone else. In which case I take back what I just said.

In any event, a Word Generation Prize will soon arrive in Keith’s mailbox. It may look a lot like payment for a Garden Poet tree-cutting and pruning bill that I’ve had for a while, but it should be considered a literary prize.

In Imaginary Keith’s mind, at least.

Blogging fame proves easy to handle

A day after my blogger self was prominently displayed in the Salem newspaper, complete with not one but three photos of my blogging face, I’m finding it easy to handle my new fame.

I’m handling it in the same way I handle the leprechauns in our garden, since managing something non-existent doesn’t require a lot of work.

But before I realized that those who say “fame is fleeting” are vastly overstating the duration of my local blogging notoriety, I wasted quite a bit of time yesterday fretting about how to deal with the repercussions of the newspaper article.

I wanted to buy three more copies of the Friday paper. I planned out the best way to do this without looking like an egomaniac. If I went to a convenience store and plopped the papers down on the counter, a front page facing the clerk, he could glance at the photo in the upper left corner, match it up with the guy buying all the papers, and think to himself, “What an egotistical asshole.”

I thought of wearing a ski mask, but that didn’t seem like a good idea given that it’s August and I’d be walking up to a 7-Eleven cash register. So my preferred plan was to find six quarters and an isolated Statesman-Journal paper box.

However, when I went into town in the afternoon I needed to get gas and figured that I might as well venture into the station’s mini-mart and scope out the newspaper supply. “Praise Allah!” I said to myself, even though I’m not a Muslim, when I saw that (1) there were exactly three papers left in the display rack, and (2) there wasn’t a clerk visible anywhere in the store.

So I plunked $1.50 down on the counter, held the copies so my photo wasn’t showing, and walked back to my car with a “I left a buck fifty inside for the papers” to the attendants. Mission accomplished.

My next worry was how I was going to run a bunch of errands without getting engaged in lengthy conversations about the story with people who knew me. I rehearsed witty repartees to the expected “So, how are you dealing with your fifteen minutes of fame?” I practiced humble expressions in the rear-view mirror.

More wasted time. First, I had to drop off our neighborhood group’s checkbook at the treasurer’s house. He and his wife were pruning their extensive garden. I chit-chatted longer than the occasion demanded, waiting for them to bring up the subject of the blogging article, how I look younger in person than in the photo, and so on.

I waited. And waited. Either they hadn’t read the paper, or the blogging story didn’t catch their eye sufficiently to match up the featured blogger with the human presence standing right in front of them.

It turned out that this either-or hypothesis was going to be repeated in my mind quite a few times. Like, at the Animal Clinic; at Oak Tree Pharmacy; at Office Depot; and at the Courthouse Athletic Club.

Some of these were long shots for recognition, but I had high hopes for the athletic club where I’ve been a long time member, copies of the Statesman-Journal are scattered all over, and you spend quite a bit in a room with fellow exercisers, thereby allowing sufficient time for them to make a connection between the fascinating article that they had read only that morning and the graying man on the Stairmaster or Nautilus machine.

Realizing that many people are reluctant to intrude upon a celebrity’s privacy, in both of the exercise rooms I used at the athletic club I listened carefully for any hint of a whispered “Is that really him? The guy whose photo was on the front page of the paper today? I think it could be. He’s better looking in person, though.”

I listened. And listened. The either-or hypothesis made its appearance again. Sigh…

So far only my friends Patricia and Keith have commented on my blogging story glory. Patricia via a phone call, and Keith via his weblog, where he cries in his beer (or, rather, tofu) about not being featured in the story himself. Hey, like I said in my previous post, I tried to get the reporter to contact Salem bloggers Keith and Trey along with William (who did make it into the story).

Oh, yes, I should add my sister to the “Wow! That’s cool” feedback list. She just posted a comment saying, “I knew one of us would be famous! I'm glad it's you.”

Um, not quite.

Local blogger featured in Salem Statesman-Journal

Namely, me. I pulled our paper out of the box today and saw a graying, grizzled, plaintive face peering from the top left corner of the front page next to a “Local blogger likes instant feedback” caption.

It didn’t take me long to realize, “Aaaagh, that’s me! I look horrible.” Well, at least I got some instant feedback from myself. Fortunately, the larger photo in the Life Section article “Got blogs?” cast my quizzical look in a broader context and, thankfully, reduced the focus on my face.

Unfortunately, Serena (our dog) was crouched just out of sight. She had popped up just before the photographer snapped the picture, but ducked down too quickly to be included in the photo. I shall remedy this slight with a link to her oft-linked Wonder Dog portrait that was posed on the banks of the Metolius River.

Speaking of slights, when I wrote to the Statesman-Journal suggesting that they do a story on local bloggers, I said that the paper should buy us coffee at a local café and have a roundtable discussion about our blogging lives. I certainly didn’t expect that one blogger, moi, would be the central focus of an article about blogs. But reporters and editors do what they do, a fact I learned long ago when I was a publicist for a statewide health organization.

Salem blogger Keith of WordShadows and Scrine is much more literary and creative than I am. Plus he uses Expression Engine to design his weblog, which requires hugely more expertise than tinkering with a preset TypePad layout, like I do. And Salem blogger Trey of The Rambling Taoist is much more progressive and politically active than I am. He also contributes to Blue Oregon, a blog that I visit daily.

On the corrections front, I’m pretty sure that I told the reporter it was Trey who said that he, a self-professed liberal, “can post comments on a conservative blog, but he [Trey, not me] said his comments are deleted immediately.”

And a statement by the reporter that my books, “including a 2004 meditation on the Greek philosopher Plotinus, seemed to disappear as soon as they hit the shelves,” could be misinterpreted as meaning that the books were best-sellers (I only wish). Actually, I think she means that after a book is bought by a reader, the author rarely gets any feedback about what he or she wrote—which is absolutely true.

I’m pleased that my post, “American Splendor/I learn to wash lettuce,” was mentioned in the article. Google has this highly ranked in the “wash lettuce” results, but like the article says, my theme wasn’t so much about how to wash lettuce as how men and women relate in the kitchen (and elsewhere). I can report that my lettuce washing tutoring continues episodically, Laurel being ever vigilant to preserve the Right Way of Doing Things, which is a sacred wifely duty that I heartily endorse.

Up to a point.

Nice review of my book, but...

I really appreciate an Amazon reader review that's titled, "All my life I've been looking for a book like this."

But I do wish that the "suck" in the first sentence could have read "such." That is a typo, I hope.

Rejection letter humor

There's a lot of rejection letter humor on the Internet. The best of it is put there by people who reject the rejection letters rather than letting the letters drag them down into drunken despair, which is just what the bastards who sent them want.

I came across this classic today. It's probably been circulating in cyberspace for a long time, but I hadn't seen it before.

And I like this rejected writer's sardonic reply style.

I'm still waiting to hear back from Beacon Press about my query concerning my own ultimate rejection letter. I'll keep checking the mailbox.

Blogging retrospective

I’m in a look-back mood today…

The position I took in “Religious zealots run amok in Terri Schiavo case” has been proven to be absolutely correct, now that the results of Schiavo’s autopsy have been released. Schiavo was brain-dead and blind when Frist and other Christian fundamentalists were claiming that she could recognize people and follow a moving balloon with her eyes. Memo from God to Earth: Science, including neurology, is how you learn about creation—faith is a crock of shit when it comes to knowing reality. (When She speaks through me, God likes to use earthy language to get Her Point across).

I appreciated the comments I got on “Corporation Compliance Recorder scam” from people who found my post via Google and had their suspicion confirmed that sending $95 off to these rip-off artists would be a complete waste of money. Now the Oregon Department of Justice has launched a probe to determine whether the mailings violate the Unlawful Trade Practices Act. Way to go, you 280 people who complained to the Department about this scam (I was one of them).

It’s still outrageous that “Oregon’s climatologist denies global warming,” and I haven’t backed away from my view that George Taylor has fringe views on global warming that are at odds with the consensus of the scientific community. But I will admit that Taylor was right on the money with his prediction of a wet spring. His short-term forecast was good; it’s his long-range outlook on the world’s weather that continues to bother me.

Watching TV last night I saw a report about a machine that may be the solution to the anxieties I expressed in my “Oh, God, I’m shrinking!” post. In China “stretching machines” are being advertised that claim to increase a person’s height. I just noted that the claim is that it can “boost young people’s height,” but I’m willing to, um, stretch the definition of young to include 56 years old. I had been thinking about building a medieval rack torture machine similar to what Mel Gibson found himself on at the end of “Braveheart” (I’d be screaming “taller!” instead of “freedom!”), but this machine looks to be slightly less tortuous.

We’ve learned that the nearby Measure 37 claim that I wrote about in “Measure 37 hits close to our home” has been denied by a Marion County hearings officer, Ann Gasser. Gasser concluded that “It is not clear who the current owners of the subject property are and who should or should not sign the measure 37 compensation claim application form. Under current zoning regulations the subject property cannot be subdivided.” That’s good news. However, the Oregon legislature is considering Measure 37 “reform” bills such as HB 3120 that would make the state’s land use problems worse rather than better. Laurel has testified against HB 3120 and, along with 1000 Friends of Oregon, we urge others to express their opposition.

Lastly, I’ve still got my broadband hopes pinned on “WildBlue satellite internet, my backup to Lucy Liu.” It’s becoming apparent that not even a crazed band of samurai sword-wielding Yakuza would be able to convince the S.O.B.s at Qwest to extend DSL service to our area. So I’m patiently waiting for WildBlue to rescue me from my deathly slow dialup connection. WildBlue installed its first customer early this month, who unfortunately wasn’t me. They keep saying that a Salem-area dealer will be announced in June or July. Before it was the “second quarter.” They’d better not keep slipping on the date or I’ll have to sic Lucy Liu on them.

Political blogger bumper sticker quiz

Here’s a can’t-miss quiz for you. Match this blogger’s car with the political weblog that he or she contributes to. Is it (A) The Oregon Republican Party’s Journal, or (B) BlueOregon? (enlarge the photo by clicking on it to read the bumper stickers).

Answer is here.

Yes, this car belongs to Trey Smith, BlueOregon contributor who was the Socialist Party candidate for Governor in 1998 (I like Trey’s statement in the election guide under “Prior Governmental Experience: none”—to my mind that’s an excellent qualification.) Trey is someone who definitely doesn’t need to go to a How to feel free to publicly express your views workshop.

Laurel and I met Trey and his wife, Della, yesterday afternoon for some tea/lattes at a Salem coffeehouse. I’ve come to know Trey through his The Rambling Taoist weblog, but previously we’d only met in the blogosphere, not in three dimensional reality. We had a good time talking about all sorts of progressive and philosophical subjects.

When I saw “The right-wing blogger aristocracy” post on Daily Kos this morning, I recalled that Trey talked about the fact that the conservative blogs he frequents don’t allow him to post truly independent opinions. He said that they’ll let him agree with a right-wing viewpoint, or mildly disagree, but if he marshals forceful progressive arguments—especially if combined with links that support his conclusion—then his comments get deleted.

That’s precisely the point of Chris Bowers’ political blog analysis, “Aristocratic Right Wing Blogosphere Stagnating,” that was summarized in the Daily Kos post. Bowers says, “The anti-community nature of right-wing blogs has resulted in a stagnant aristocracy within the conservative blogosphere that prevents the emergence of new voices and, as a result, new reasons for people to visit conservative blogs.”

I don’t regularly visit right-wing blogs like Trey does, but recently I came across a mention of a post on the Benton County Republicans blog about the outrageous attempt by House Republicans to defy the will of Oregonians and allow counties to authorize hunting cougars with dogs and bears with bait (of course, the Benton County folks' take was that Democrats were “blocking local management of bear and cougar populations.”

I’d written about this subject myself and wanted to comment on the Benton County Republicans post. However, I found that you have to prove that you’re a registered Republican who lives in Benton County before you can leave a comment. This assures that few dissenting views will be expressed. It also assures that I won’t return to the Benton County Republicans weblog, just as Chris Bowers said, since they only are interested in preaching to the right-wing choir and don’t want to hear any other voices.

The moribund state of conservative blogging in Oregon is reflected in the above-mentioned Oregon Republican Party’s Journal, whose most-recent post is dated April 19. As several people commented on a Blue Oregon post about the site, this blog is horribly designed.

I guess they figured that since President Bush gives most of his speeches in front of a backdrop festooned with the theme of the day—such as “Making America Stronger”—having a conservative blog wallpapered with rows and rows of Oregon Republican Party symbols would be really cool.

It really gives me a headache, as appears to be the case with right-wingers also, given the blog’s death-bed status. R.I.P., Oregon Republican Party’s Journal. You won’t be missed.

PostSecret, a confessional blog

A NYTimes.com article, “Bless Me Blog, for I’ve Sinned,” pointed me to the PostSecret weblog where anonymous 4x6 confessional postcards are displayed. They’re wonderfully creative and moving.

You need to see the artwork pasted on most of the cards to get the full impact of the PostSecrets. But here’s a sampling of words:

“My older sister has tried to kill herself three (3) times. Sometimes I wish she’d succeeded.”

“I make up fantasy stories because my real life sucks. And now my fantasy life is starting to suck, too.”

“Sometimes I think that other people are reading my thoughts so I think to myself ‘stop reading my mind,’ just in case they are listening.”

“I know that sending in a stupid postcard to share a secret with a bunch of strangers won’t do a damn thing to change the daily loneliness and unhappiness in my life. And I sent this anyway.”

Here’s another article about PostSecret from The Telegraph of Calcutta, India. People from all over the world are sharing their secrets. Most of the comments at the bottom of the PostSecret page are positive, though one questions the weblog creator’s motivations.

A PostSecret traveling exhibit exists now; a stage production is in the works; a book surely will be published. But I don’t begrudge the creator, Frank, from publicizing the secrets beyond the Internet.

That’s what the people who sent in their secrets want: to not have them be secret anymore.

Blogmobile

Here's a depiction of the Blogmobile concept car, courtesy of the April 4, 2005 The New Yorker. The driver kind of looks like me. Given how much time I spend on my weblogs, my wife probably would say "It is you!"

Ultimate rejection letter

Last month I was excited to receive an ultimate rejection letter from Beacon Press. Like most writers I’m a connoisseur of rejection letters. Since I’ve received so many, I figure I might as well appreciate them.

I’d sent a copy of my book, “Return to the One,” off to Beacon Press, The University of Chicago Press, and the State University of New York Press. I told them that on Amazon it was currently the #1 best selling title about the Greek mystic philosopher Plotinus. And this was with very minimal publicity/promotion.

I candidly admitted that I’d probably been wrong to publish “Return to the One” in a POD (print on demand) fashion. As good as the book is, most reviewers won’t even consider reviewing it because it’s tainted with the dreaded POD Mark of the Beast: Unclean! It's self-published! Quick, cast this work of the literary devil into the trash!

Most rejection letters include boilerplate language like “Although your work would no doubt be of interest to many…” (U of C Press) and “Your project seems to us to be an important one…” (SUNY Press).

Gee, guys, if it’s interesting to so many and so important, why don’t you publish it?! Oh, I forgot. You’re just trying to soften the smack of the rejection letter.

Beacon Press, on the other hand, didn’t mess around with any niceties. They sent me this postcard.

Which, when I turned it over, contained this message.

So beautiful. Nothing. A marvelous rejection letter literary device. I could make up my own rejectory language:

“Mr. Hines, we have read every word of your book with great enthusiasm. Truly, you have written a masterpiece. Sadly, we consider Beacon Press unworthy to publish such a work of genius. You deserve so much better than us. We could never live with ourselves if our acceptance of ‘Return to the One’ prevented it from being published by the most prestigious book company in the world. Hopefully you won’t mind that we have forwarded your book to ________ with our highest commendations, whom we expect you’ll be hearing from soon.”

Of course, another possibility is that Beacon Press’ rejection card printer ran out of ink at an inopportune moment. And it could even be that the back of the card was intended to say, “We are very much interested in publishing your book. Please contact us immediately to discuss the terms of our generous agreement.”

I suppose I should write Beacon Press and ask them to send me a non-blank card. But I’ve gotten attached to the nothingness of what I now have. I don’t think that I’m ever going to get a more Zen rejection notice. Maybe it’s time to quit while I’m behind.

Icon envy?

If you have a weblog or web site, do you have icon envy? When your beloved cyber-creation loads in a web browser, does the address bar just show a bland generic icon next to your URL? Have you ever thought to yourself, “I’d be so much happier if I had an icon of my own?”

Until recently I answered “yes” to each of those questions. Now you likely can see (if you’ve got Firefox) that I’ve got my own HinesSight “H” favicon (favorites icon) proudly displayed. With a few fairly easy steps, you can have your own favicon just like me, CNN, and Google.

If an HTML-ignoramus such as myself can get a favicon up and showing, just about anyone can. The kind folks at Chami.com make it pretty easy. I just added a favicon to my Church of the Churchless weblog and I didn’t even need a triple latte to get me through the process.

Step 1. Come up with a image for an icon. All you need is a graphic of some sort that will be recognizable when it’s teeny-tiny. I took the easy way out and simply used the first letter of each of my weblogs: “H” and “C” Today I made a JPEG file of the Church of the Churchless “C” and saved it on my computer.

Step 2. Then, using the Chami.com tool, I browsed to that image and clicked on the “generate FavIcon.ico” button. Don’t worry if you have no idea what an “.ico” file format is. The tool takes care of that worry for you. If you’re like me, you don’t have a way of saving an image file in that format on your own, so Praise Chami.com.

Step 3. I now had a favicon.ico file that I downloaded to my desktop. I then uploaded that file to the folder on my weblog where files are kept. TypePad conveniently has a button that gives you the path to a file. I jotted down that path: http://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/files/favicon.ico

Step 4. All I had to do now was plug a little bit of HTML code somewhere into my weblog. I chose the “Welcome” section, using Method 2 described on the Chami page. The code in between the angly things, < and > (see, I really am an HTML doofus) looked like this: link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/files/favicon.ico"

And then came the big chills-up-the-spine moment (my life isn’t very exciting, so adding a favicon to my weblog is a pretty big deal, right up there with throwing caution to the winds and having two handfuls of Kettle Chips as a midnight snack inside of just one).

I clicked on the Church of the Churchless bookmark. And voila, there my “C” icon was. In Firefox, at least. I haven’t had any luck getting the favicon to show up in Internet Explorer 6, but that doesn’t break my heart. I hardly ever use IE anymore. Plus, my IE browser doesn’t even show a icon for CNN (or any other site, for that matter), piece of junk that it is.

You can validate your favicon work here. Somewhat strangely, I didn’t get a very positive validation. The validator said it couldn't recognize the HTML code and apparently just found the old generic TypePad icon. Yet every time I check, I’m able to fondly gaze upon my personalized “H” and “C” in the address bar (and in the Firefox Bookmarks list).

Go figure. The ways of the Internet are passingly strange, and I’ve spent more than an hour on a sunny late afternoon trying to unravel the strangeness. All for a 16 x 16 bunch of pixels. (Looking upon them makes me happy though, so it’s been worth it).

“Return to the One” reviewed in Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Soon after my book about the Greek mystic philosopher Plotinus was published, I sent a copy off to the Bryn Mawr Classical Review. Since I managed to write “Return to the One” without any formal education in the classics or Greek philosophy, I figured it would be cool to even have a chance of being reviewed by an entity that “publishes timely reviews of current scholarly work in the field of classical studies.”

Yesterday I decided to see if a review had been posted. My timing was excellent. A review by Dr. G.S. Bowe of Bilkent University had just appeared. You can read it here.

I’m fairly happy with the review. Applying editing techniques similar to those used in writing movie ads, I’ll be able to make good use of Dr. Bowe’s positive comments: Written in a fresh and accessible style…surprisingly sane, clear-headed, and well-written. Well, maybe I should leave out “surprisingly,” which Bowe apparently threw in because of my “idiosyncrasy of presentation” and “jarring insistence of naming all 43 sub-sections with alliterative subtitles.”

Hey! I should get extra credit for those subtitles (God is the Goal, Love is Limitless, Beauty is Beyond, and so on). You can’t believe how long it took me to find alliterations for every one of those 43 subjects. My dictionary was exceedingly well-thumbed by the time I got to the final “Vision is Veracity” chapter.

I could also quibble with some other critiques in the review. I might send off a response to the Bryn Mawr folks on a few points where I feel Dr. Bowe, well, missed the point. Most notably, he doesn’t appreciate my emphasis on looking upon Plotinus as a mystic who urges us to experience the metaphysical truths described in the Enneads, as opposed to intellectually understanding them.

Right on p. xvii, before the book even starts using regular numbers on the pages, I said: “I do believe that it is possible to know the spiritual truths that Plotinus knew, but only if we inwardly become our true selves, which will be found to be identical with Plotinus’s true self. This obviously separates my approach from most scholars, for they poke and probe Plotinus’s teachings as if they were external objects of knowledge akin to fossils excavated from an ancient riverbed, which is exactly how Plotinus says we should not consider his philosophy.”

So when Dr. Bowe laments that I fail to discuss how Plotinus’s teachings were influenced by Aristotle, Parmenides, and other philosophers, I don’t feel that I failed to be true to the heart of Plotinus’s mystical message. Plotinus doesn’t want us to think our way to wisdom, but to intuit our way to union with the One—the ultimate source of all that is good, true, and beautiful.

All in all, though, I’m pleased that Dr. Bowe took the time to read and review a book by a non-scholar. I entirely agree with him that my approach limits “the text’s usefulness to Plotinus scholarship.” I never intended that “Return to the One” be a scholarly book. It is a book aimed at those who want to really return to the One, not just think about returning.

Google God, your blessings overwhelm me

As the saying goes, “Be careful of what you wish for, since you may get it.” Previously I have prayed that the great Google God would grace me with a multitude of hits, allowing me to know that my weblog labors are bearing fruit in the garden of the blogosphere.

And now, ever since Google Images indexed some photos that I included in a “The Tao of Paris Hilton” post, my Google cup runneth over. Whereas previously daily visitors to HinesSight typically numbered in the hundreds, now my weblog statistics reveal that it is in the thousands—today, over eight thousand, most of them interested in an image of Paris and Nicole provocatively posing with a pole.

I’m happy to be providing so many people with something they want. Which, clearly, isn’t my profound musings about Greek philosophy or the other posts where I reveal how the mysteries of the universe appear to my HinesSight vision. Google and the other search engines reveal what humanity is actually interested in, not the high-minded and largely hypocritical assertions that we publicly proclaim.

“Man seeking woman for long walks on the beach at sunset.” Yeah, right.

I am not asking for the Google God to withdraw her blessings. Yet I do miss the days when I could peruse my Typepad statistics and see the full range of what led visitors to this weblog. Now I click from page to page on the referral list and observe a endless stream of “images.google.com/imgres,” the link leading to the much-desired Paris Hilton photo.

On the plus side, my sense of being connected to the international community—more precisely, the community of Paris Hilton-obsessed human beings, many of whom are female, judging from weblog comments—soars as I scan the countries the Google image search originated from: Italy, France, Spain, Great Britain, Germany, and many others.

We are one world when it comes to interest in Paris Hilton. Now I must turn my Google prayers to making the world interested more metaphysically in how to “Return to the One.”

Anxiously analyzing Amazon’s text stats

Just what I didn’t need the first “work” (using that term in a writer’s sense, extremely loosely) day after a relaxing vacation in Maui. In the course of checking on my book’s miniscule sales status, I discovered that the geniuses at Amazon.com have added some new features to their already filled-to-the-gills web site that can make an author anxious:

Readability statistics for books included in their Search Inside the Book program (where authors/publishers send Amazon a book to be scanned, after which every darn word can be searched for and sample pages perused). Plus a concordance of the 100 most frequently used words in a book. And a statistically improbable phrases feature helpfully described by Amazon in a pop-up window:

“Amazon.com's Statistically Improbable Phrases, or ‘SIPs’, show you the interesting, distinctive, or unlikely phrases that occur in the text of books in Search Inside the Book. Our computers scan the text of all books in the Search Inside program. If they find a phrase that occurs a large number of times in a particular book relative to how many times it occurs across all Search Inside books, that phrase is a SIP in that book.”

I was thrilled to see that “Return to the One” garnered five SIPS: mystic philosophy, mystic philosopher, intuitive intelligence, first emanation, inward contemplation. I would have been disappointed if there weren’t any interesting, distinctive, or unlikely phrases in my book.

I also enjoyed looking at the graphically enhanced concordance (elsewhere on the page linked above). Of the 100 most common words in a book, Amazon apparently puts the most common of the common in a larger, bolder font. So I could quickly see that my book talked a lot about soul, Plotinus, spirit, and spiritual—which is absolutely true.

It wasn’t quite as much fun to anxiously analyze the readability statistics. At first I fantasized that my score of 14.6 on the Fog Index sounded admirably low. But then I saw that 7-8 is considered ideal, and anything over 12 means the book is difficult to read. OK, I’ll admit to “Return to the One” being more or less guilty as charged.

Yet let’s see the developer of the Fog Index write a really easy to read book about one of the densest and most profound philosophers of all time. (Oops, make that “mystic philosopher”—might as well use my special Statistically Improbable Phrases as much as I can.) So I decided to check out some of the related competition, a few of the Books on Related Topics that Amazon lists on my book’s page.

Yeah, baby. Let’s go head to head with Pierre Hadot’s “Plotinus or the simplicity of vision,” which is one of the most popular (in the sense of both best-selling and easy to read) books about this Greek philosopher.

Fog Index: Hines scores 14.6 and Hadot 17.5. Yay, a point for Hines!

Flesch Index (90-100 appropriate for 5th-6th graders, 0-30 means you need a college degree to understand the book): Hines scores 51.5 and Hadot 44.0. Boo, a point for Hadot.

We’ve got a tie, one point each. It all comes down to the Flesch-Kincaid Index, a refinement of the Flesch Index that relates the score to a U.S. grade level. You would think that Hadot would win out again here, but no…

Flesch-Kincaid Index: Hines scores 11.5 and Hadot 14.2. Yay, another point for Hines! He wins 2-1! If you just made it halfway through your senior year in high school, you can still enjoy “Return to the One”—no need to plow onward into the junior year of college just to be able to understand Hadot’s book.

Plus, take a look at Amazon’s Fun Stats: with my book you get a whopping 10,324 words per dollar; with Hadot’s book you just get a measly 2,755. Where can you get 10,324 of anything for just a buck? And here you get 10,324 words of profound mystic philosophy for your $1 (to work in another SIP; by the way, Hadot only managed to come up with two SIPS, “total presence” and “our true self”; you get five in my book.

Sure, you could get your philosophy from the “Tao of Pooh” and only need a 6th grade education to understand it. But come on: the concordance shows that you’re going to read “Pooh said” over and over and over. For about $4 more you can get almost 100,000 additional words in “Return to the One” and learn about a mystic philosopher who wrote that the nature of God, the One, can’t begin to be expressed in language.

To get at the root of that paradox you’re going to have to buy the book.

Blogging about Nightline's blogging program

If you missed it, here’s a recap of last week’s Nightline program about bloggers and blogging. True to the blogging spirit, I’m working from my middle-aged memory. I didn’t take any notes while watching the program, nor do I want to take the time to review it—though it still resides on my digital video recorder.

This is my take on the program. Take it or leave it.

Bloggers, said Nightline, are wonderfully opinionated. Well, if you are on the wrong side of their opinion, then it won’t seem so wonderful. But the subjectivity of weblogs is what makes them so appealing. And, to some, dangerous. A blogger was asked if she feels that she should be subject to journalistic conventions such as having at least two sources for every significant news item. “No,” she said. “I’m not a newspaper.”

And yet she is. Nightline showed two computer screens, one with the New York Times online home page and another with a weblog home page (I’ll use BlueOregon as a nicely designed example). To compete with the New York Times newspaper you’d need many millions of dollars, printing presses, distribution channels, and lots of employees. However, anyone can become a blogger, With minimal expertise and $$$, in a few minutes you can have a weblog that can be read worldwide. And it can look just as good as the New York Times web presence.

Bloggers spoke enthusiastically about their love of blogging. How blogs are interactive, allowing readers to click on links that lead to more information about the subject, which lead to even more information, and so on ever deeper into the blogosphere. By contrast, traditional media are one-way streets where news and opinion are transmitted, but rarely permit responses by readers, viewers, or listeners.

Blogs create communities. They allow people with common interests to congregate in cyberspace, people who otherwise never would have been able to find each other. Amen. Whenever I peruse the TypePad statistics for my weblogs, I get a warm feeling as I see that someone from India, say, has used a search engine to find a post that I wrote on some esoteric subject. I realize that just a few people in the world care about my subject. But that person did. And I do. Two makes a party when it comes to weblogging.

Nightline featured a woman who was aghast that a state legislator was sponsoring a bill requiring that miscarriages be reported to a government agency. This wasn’t the main intent of the bill (which I can’t clearly remember), yet it would have been an unintended consequence of the way it was written. She fired up her weblog and began writing about the bill. Soon her posts got the attention of expecting mother’s groups and the like. Emails started flooding into the legislator’s inbox.

He withdrew the bill. And he wasn’t happy about becoming the brunt of a blogger’s righteous indignation. “Why didn’t she talk to me first?” he asked. When Nightline asked her the same question, she said, “I didn’t feel like I had to. He is a public official. The proposed bill was a public record. I have the right to express my opinions on my weblog.”

I side with the blogger, though I commiserate with the legislator. As bloggers become more visible and influential, they need to be increasingly careful that opinions are clearly separated from facts. In the blogosphere, these lines can easily become blurred. The anti-bill blogger spoke of how her original posts opposing the legislation got more and more garbled as other web sites passed on her words. Like the game where a message is whispered from ear to ear around a circle of people, errors accumulate with repetition.

All in all, though, watching the Nightline program left me standing prouder as a blogger. Blogging is helping to restore a sense of balance to media outlets that have gotten way too big, too corporate, too powerful, too unfair and unbalanced.

One of the most memorable images I remember from the program was when the moderator spoke about the above-mentioned woman pressing the “post” button on her weblog. Nightline showed a Formula 1 race and a voiceover something like, “Bloggers, start your engines.”

This is the power of weblogging, they said. One person’s opinion can become amplified into a powerful howling mass of supercharged outrage. If you’re standing on the track watching the energized blogosphere speed toward you, it can be an awesome experience.

Just ask Dan Rather.

Blogging focus of "Nightline" tonight

Bloggers and those who love them will want to watch "Nightline" tonight (ABC, 11:35 pm on our local Portland station). The scheduled subject is blogs and their effect on society. Here's an excerpt from today's Nightline email:

Tonight's piece is a fascinating one. Turns out that as John and producer Elissa Rubin were conducting interviews with bloggers, they were being blogged. The bloggers had some interesting opinions, to say the least. And as this program airs (and this e-mail is read by viewers), there's no doubt that bloggers will blog about it.

Yes, they got that right.
(See post continuation for the full Nightline email about this program).

I feel your Google pain

Burnside skateboard park blogger, via Orblogs I noticed your “Google can kiss my …” post where you complained that the Great God Google had dropped you from page 1 to page 23 on a “burnside skatepark” search.

I feel your pain, my friend. I’ve also written about how “Google hath forsaken me.” I too have wandered in the search engine wilderness, wondering if I ever would be found again.

Hearing of my difficult times, several Oregon bloggers took pity on my poor weblogged soul and linked my site to theirs. Eventually I returned to Google’s good graces, though the reason for my temporary exile seems different from yours. Still, though the ways of Google are deeply mysterious, we do know that links are loved.

Clearly, it is an affront to all that is good and Googley to have a blog called Burnside Skatepark so far down in the "burnside skatepark" search engine rankings. I hope this mention helps. Maybe some other bloggers will similarly give your blog a Google charge.

Skate on. At the end of the day, Google (and everything else in the world) will do what it has to do and you’ll do what you have to do. That’s the only way for you, or me, to stay sane.

I'm 56 years old and have never skateboarded. But some 46 years ago I used to attach roller skates to my shoes and zip around our flat concrete California carport. Different times; a lot different technology; hugely different topology.

Majnun, madness, and blog writing

Bloggers want to know that people read what they write. I’ve followed with interest Betsy’s (“My Whim is Law”) passionate call for comments on her posts, and Michael’s (“Michael J. Totten”) desire to have an accurate count of how many visits are made to his blog.

I too am happiest when I am noticed. Every morning I peruse the daily statistics TypePad keeps on my two weblogs, my spirits rising when a post reaps lots of clicks and falling when the world fails to beat a path to my HinesSight and Church of the Churchless doors.

And yet…the madness of blog writing cuts two ways. There is the lesser madness (as in “angry”) of not getting the reader responses that you want. Then there is the greater madness (as in “crazy”) of not caring a whit about how anyone responds to what you’re saying.

I wish I had more of the latter madness, and less of the former. What I love most about blogs is coming across a post that is written from the heart: raw, open, honest, unfiltered. This sort of writing flows from a passion to speak, not to be heard.

I’ve only taken one writing workshop in my life. I don’t remember a thing about it except a question I asked the workshop leader while we were eating lunch together: “How do you decide what to write about?” She looked at me as if the question was so ridiculously easy to answer, I was a fool for asking it: “Why, you write about what you feel passion for.” End of discussion.

“The Story of Layla and Majnun” by Nizami is the tale of a classic Persian love story dating from the seventh century and retold many times in various forms. I often think about Majnun when I click the “post” button and send something I’ve written off into the blogosphere.

There are many twists and turns in the telling of the star-crossed love between Majnun and Layla. They come together, and then are parted. When Majnun is unable to be with Layla, he wanders around the wilderness composing love songs to her:

Desperately longing to speak to Layla, but unable to reach her, he engaged the wind as his messenger, and many were the verses he sent to her. The wind obligingly carried his lines away, but response there was none. Bitter is the wine of lonely love, yet, if sometimes in his grief Majnun doubted Layla, his own passion did not abate. So he went on singing.

Sequestered, Layla doesn’t hear him directly, and can’t speak to him directly. But Nizami tells us:

Yet her lover’s voice reached her. Was he not a poet? No tent curtain was woven so closely as to keep out his poems. Every child from the bazaar was singing his verses; every passer-by was humming one of his love-songs, bringing Layla a message from her beloved, whether he knew it or not.

The Internet always has existed, though only recently in electronic form. Passionate voices from the heart will be communicated by a network of people who pass them on; no power can stop them. It isn’t necessary to force the hearing; simply speaking will suffice.

Layla secretly collects Majnun’s songs, memorizes them, and composes her answers. She writes them down on little scraps of paper and entrusts them to the wind—the ancient equivalent of the info-breezes that blow today through the atmosphere of cyberspace.

It happened often that someone found one of these little papers, and guessed the hidden meaning, realizing for whom they were intended….And true enough, there was no veil which could hide his beloved from Majnun. He answered at once, in verse, and whoever received the message saw to it that Layla should hear it at once. Thus many a melody passed to and fro between the two nightingales, drunk with their passion.

Whenever I hear from someone who comments on, or expresses appreciation for, a scrap of prose that I released into the blogosphere, I feel good. But I also feel good just from the releasing itself, whether or not I learn that the message has been received.

Such is the love of writing: when requited, it is wonderful; yet even when unrequited, it is still as strong.

Laurel gets published

“I’m at LifeSource and I can’t believe it!” So began Laurel’s cell phone call to me this afternoon. I immediately thought that, for the second week in a row, our regular “save us a loaf” order for Alpine Bakery’s 2 Seed Sourdough Whole Wheat bread hadn’t come in (great bread, by the way).

But no, it was good news. Laurel had picked up the January issue of Salem Monthly from a stand outside of the store and her “Religion Should Unite, Not Divide” article had been published! This was a surprise, as the Salem Monthly folks had never responded after Laurel emailed in the article, so we assumed that the article had been rejected.

It’s fun to see your name in print, so I could share in Laurel’s excitement—especially since my name also got in at the end, along with a plug for my Church of the Churchless weblog. The title of her piece was changed to “Fearing Fundamentalism” and several paragraphs got cut, but such is par for the writer’s course.

Salem Monthly is on its way to becoming a valuable Willamette Week-lite countercultural asset for our overly staid community. Congratulations to the paper’s staff, plus whoever redesigned their web site, which is much improved. I found Laurel’s article without any trouble using the site search engine (though the unformatted format leaves something to be desired: paragraphs).

Speaking of search engines, I got the Google bug yesterday morning and managed to figure out how to install a search capability for HinesSight. Now, I realize that any HTML competent person reading this would have been able to get a Google search capability up and running in a few minutes. For HTML challenged me, it was much longer.

Yet when I finally got the search box in the left column to more or less fit in 200 pixels, I felt as excited as Laurel was today. “I’m searching my own weblog and I can’t believe it!”

Wanting to be prepared with a response in case my daughter thought of this, my first two searches were on “Celeste” (23 relevant results) and “Serena” (56 relevant results). And my response is: This doesn’t mean that I love our dog twice as much as I love you, my daughter. Serena simply lives with us, and you don’t, so she gets more press.

But when you and Patrick have your first child (which, gosh, I guess would be my first grandchild—but don’t let this fact put any pressure on you) I guarantee that your HinesSight Google ranking will go way up.