Shut Down and Shut Out

I started writing a blog for E San Joaquin way back in 2014. The Editor of The Record invited me to write about Stockton Cycling. But I pretty much wrote about whatever I wanted, although I tried to keep it mostly apolitical.

Things went along like that for years. I didn’t think anybody was reading most of the time. But then I wrote a piece about a colonoscopy in 2017. I did the prep, that delightful prep. I arrived at the outpatient center on a very windy and rainy winter day, and then the power went out. And it didn’t come back on, so they sent me home fully prepped but un-scoped and furious at the fact that I was going to have to do all that ‘prep’ again in a few weeks.

This was on a Friday. Two days later on Sunday we were attending the Italian Gardeners Society annual members’ dinner. I know this is hard to believe, but there were over 400 people there all shaking hands or embracing and standing close together and jabbering away without a surgical mask in sight.

I walked over to say hello to my friend Don and his wife Jennifer, both of whom I’ve known for years. Jennifer told me she laughed hard when she read about my colonoscopy fail while at the same time saying she felt so sorry for my situation. I had no idea she even knew I wrote a blog but she said she read it all the time. The proof was she was aware of something I posted the day before!

So there are a few folks out there who at least scan my offerings. I know Stoker hangs on every word of every piece. But until I wrote ‘Going Digital’ I never got much attention from my overseers. That changed, as you know if you are a regular reader.

So I left E San Joaquin and payed for my own domain and now I can write pretty much what I like. But the other day I wanted to retrieve something from an earlier blog so I went to my old E San Joaquin home. All my stuff was gone!!

I thought man, they must really have not liked ‘Going Digital’. Or they didn’t like that I was writing on my own, even though The Editor suggested in a terse e mail that I probably should take my act elsewhere. I thought removing everything was a bit ‘cancelling’.

But I was wrong, the purge wasn’t just for me. E San Joaquin disappeared completely. None of the other bloggers got notice or a chance to save their stuff. Since I’m pretty sure I signed something that said they could do that, I’m not overly concerned. I would like to have been able to save the prose for my own perusal and for some ‘best of’ blog posts, but Avanti! Avanti! Dai Dai Dai! Rough translation is Forward! Come on!

Which I will endeavor to do.