Bye, Bye, Love

Last summer I took August off from writing blog posts. I’m going to do the same this year, So, this is my last post until September 6, 2026. Letting the mind lie fallow for a month will help replenish the soil. It should also let readers recalibrate their expectations after posts about expired food and sticking Q-tips in my ears. This kind of blog runs the risk of not just getting lost in the weeds of personality, but thinking they’re wild roses.

“So, what kind of blog is it, anyway? “a woman asked recently.

I gave a vague reply about it being neither this nor that, here nor there, featuring topics that have little to do with conventional content. It’s not about health, food, fitness, travel, or politics, although any given post can be about those things. You just won’t find a post with “Five Easy Steps” in the title (see Five Easy Pieces of Management).

“Then what is it about?” she pressed, unimpressed.

I thought back to the advice I gave years ago to an undergraduate student trying to decide which course to take. I told him to forget the course and take the professor. What doesn’t matter nearly as much as who. In college, who the professor is carries more weight than what is being taught. Why? Because to echo Martin Buber, learning is an encounter, an event, not a textbook of concepts. Not that they use textbooks anymore, but that’s another story.

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Two things. First, while these posts are essays, that doesn’t mean they are always factual. Like a pair of nylon stockings, there’s some stretching involved. They almost always contain some enhancement layered upon a bedrock of truth (see Anonymous Me). Indeed, George Washington may have slept here, but it may not have been by a sealed crock of butter in a millstream. There is a crock, to be sure, but it has more to do with my taking poetic license to entertain as well as inform. You can’t fault me there. Cicero said that one of the purposes of writing is delectare, to delight. Otherwise, the reader may fall asleep. You may do it, regardless.

Second, my confession. Writing about serious topics, whether political, historical, cultural or anything else in depth requires time and research. This is true even in a typical blog post of 750 words. In fact, sometimes the shorter the post, the harder it is to condense an argument or narrative and still do it justice. For instance, writing about Cardinal Mindszenty is more involved than opining about vending machines. At least one reader of the latter would have no problem agreeing.

So, it isn’t just a deliberate choice to be quirky. It’s also a practical necessity brought about by the demands of publishing a post every week with the precision if not of an atomic clock, then certainly of a cuckoo clock. If I take on a weighty topic, I want to spend time on it. But lighter topics are no walk in the park, either. They often require a new insight, an unfamiliar twist or nuance. As Gypsy Rose Lee said, “You gotta have a gimmick if you wanna get ahead.”

Someone else–not the woman above–asked me what I have learned in twelve years of weekly posting, which I do every Sunday morning, “rain or shine.” That’s a harder question. Cicero adds docere (to teach or persuade through reason) and movere (to move the emotions) as the other purposes of writing. I’d like to add illustrare (to illuminate or give insight) to that list. I’m not saying I achieve that or even come close, but it’s what I have been aiming for. If I haven’t gotten there when discussing things like shoes, the fault is mine. But writing–like murder–will out.

A deeper confession. I don’t know how much longer I will continue this blog. I may stop publishing new posts and repost old ones. There are more than seven hundred to choose from at this point. Or I may pick up right where I left off. Where we left off. It’s not easy to walk away from a form of writing that lets you reference Cicero, Buber, and Gypsy Rose Lee at one time. Then again, it’s not the form, it’s the writer. It’s not the content, it’s the reader.

Whatever lies ahead, I wish you a fallowed August filled with new insights.

Images: Jorgen Hendriksen, Hartono Creative Studio. Want more? Go to Robert Brancatelli. The Brancatelli Blog is a member of The Free Media Alliance, which promotes “alternatives to software, culture, and hardware monopolies.”