I want to thank everyone who reads my blog on a regular basis. When I first started this website almost two and a half years ago, it seemed that while I was posting articles on a regular basis, it seemed like no one was reading them. I am afraid that in many cases this perception was also reality. However, eventually a number of folks started signing up as users. I was initially elated, and then I found out that most if not all of my new users were known spammers who were paid to leave comments with numerous hyperlinks on blogs like mine to increase traffic on other websites. I eventually wised up and installed software which recognized the robots the spammers were using and the traffic on my website decreased to almost nothing again.

However, over time my website statistics indicated that traffic was gradually picking up. My statistics also indicated that spiders from Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc., were finding my bog, apparently gathering and storing the data on my articles for their search engines. However, I’m sure that data from my site wasn’t, and probably still isn’t ranked anywhere near the top of their search results. Given that reality, I don’t know how people found my bog site, but somehow they did, and over time their numbers increased. In recent months the site has recorded between 3,200 and 5,400 unique visitors per month.

I realize that trivial fraction of the billions of people around the world who use the internet, and certainly not large number of visitors for blog like mine, but it’s a big deal for me. I like tell myself that I write primarily because I like writing and because it gives me an outlet for the thoughts I have about world around me, but I have to admit that it is nice that someone out there thinks what I write is good enough to read, at least once in a while.

What amazes me is many people around the globe who read I write.   Whenever I see hit on my website from a new city, state, or country, I write it down on a list I keep on my iPad. People from each of the fifty states and the District of Columbus plus 101 other countries around the world have read or at least accessed my blog. Anytime I think about that it blows my mind. Wow, people all around world are reading what I write, or are at least visiting a website I created. Simply amazing.

My statistics show that my blog has been accessed numerous times from counties like Japan, India, Vietnam, and most if not all of the countries which were formally part of or were dominated by the USSR, like Estonia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, and the Ukraine. This website has had numerous visits from the countries in Western Europe, South America, African, and the Middle East including Pakistan, Iraq and Iran and the United Arab Emirates. My website has also been accessed from island countries such as Jamaica, the Philippines, and some I had never heard of before like Seychelles which are islands in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa.

Every time I find a new city or country in my blog statistics I look it up on line using Wikipedia. The cities range from several in China with populations in over 10 million to small villages in the US with populations just over a thousand or even just a few hundred. I just counted up over 55 cities in Brazil in my statistics and I have been amazed how many of them have populations over a million souls.  I must admit many are cities i have never heard of.

I sometimes tried to figure out why people in cities like Rio de Janeiro, Moscow or Beijing were accessing my website. I often saw that in the website statistic they moved from article to article at five to ten minute intervals, giving every indication that they were actually reading them. I am always amazed that people in all of those non English speaking countries read English well enough to understand my articles and wonder if they are actually interested in stuff that I write about like American politics or if they are just practicing reading English. I have had a chuckle or two when the thought crosses my mind that maybe some spy agency in Russia or China might be reading my blog to try to understand the political thinking of common US citizens. If that is the case I’m sure that I have added much confusion to their lives.

Well, the bottom line is that it has been fun. My only regret is that I seldom get any feedback in the form of comments, so I really don’t know why people are reading my articles or whether they like them or not. Like everyone else I could use some constructive criticism. I is probably don’t get many comments on my website because you need to be a registered user to leave a comment, but I need to leave that requirement in place or my website would be swarming with spammers.

To make it easier to contact me I have set up a new email account just for my blog: cajunscomments@yahoo.com    If you have read this articles and maybe others on this website, I would love to receive an email from you with any information you would like to share. You don’t have to include you name, but I would like to know where you live, why you access my blog and what you think about it plus any other information you would like to provide.  I am hoping that I will hear from you soon.

Cajun   12/26/2015

PS: I plan to republish some of my favorite blog articles from the past two years plus years everyday between now and the end of the year. You might want to look them if you are interested.