A Tuesday Night Memo: The First Anniversary

A Tuesday Night Memo /
Musings about my life filled with
music, sport and urban travel.

A Tuesday Night Memo celebrates its first anniversary on January 26.  The year has passed quickly.  Yet, there's been so much to write about. And, now that I have an iPhone, I can jot down ideas and store them electronically for instant retrieval instead of trying to commit them all to memory.

Has it really been a year since I launched this blog?

The pleasure of our gardens /
Calla lily.

Here's some background about my blog:  I started writing A Tuesday Night Memo as a means of sharing musings about my life filled with music, sport, and urban travel and to foster community with my friends, family and Facebook colleagues while giving me an opportunity to hone my writing skills.  People who know me well know that I'm passionate about these three areas: music, sport and urban travel.  Additionally, I have used my blog as a vehicle for sharing news and photos about our flower gardens at home. These posts always seem to generate great interest and enthusiasm.  Maybe, it's because of the pretty shapes and colors of the flowers?

A European icon /
The Eiffel Tower on
a spring day in Paris.

Up to now, I have "blogged" 80 entries for A Tuesday Night Memo. Among the subjects I have written about include:  my appreciation of tennis champion Roger Federer, CNN International, classical music, validating our travel through pictures, my interest in wine, photography as art or science, the Giants winning their first World Series since moving to San Francisco, and a profile of Issues, my favorite news and magazine store in Oakland, Calif. I have combined my interest in digital photography with my blog, which has enabled me to illustrate my posts with nice visuals to match the words I write.

A favorite local destination /
Issues, Oakland, Calif.

The feedback you have given me after reading my posts is not only very much appreciated, but I also find it very useful.  Most of it has been positive, but sometimes it's also been critical. Whether good or bad, I've found the feedback a learning tool. From time to time, I like to sneak a peek at my blog's statistics, which are the key indicators showing how many total "hits" the blog has received, which entries have been read the most, and what countries comprise the blog's readership.  The numbers are modest, but nevertheless interesting.

Alondra de la Parra /
"Summer, the Symphony
and the Maestro" is
my most widely-read
blog entry.

Here are a few fun facts about A Tuesday Night Memo I thought you might enjoy:


* Since May 2010 (the earliest date data is available), my blog has been read in at least 19 different countries, including  the United States, Canada, Mexico, France and Russia ~ even India, Brazil and Australia.  The top 10 countries for readership of my blog include  the United States, Canada, Mexico, France, Russia, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, South Korea, China, and Germany.

* The biggest spike in my blog's readership happened last October after A Tuesday Night Memo received notice in the Class Notes section of Macalester Today, the alumni quarterly for my alma mater, Macalester College. (Hopefully, a few of my fellow alums bookmarked the page and have been coming back to it regularly.)

* The most widely-read blog entry has been "Summer, the Symphony and the Maestro," about a young (29 years old) and energetic conductor, Alondra de la Parra, whom I saw conduct the San Francisco Symphony last July, with over 300 hits.

Writing about wine /
One of my many
interests.

Looking ahead, a few ideas that I'm eager to explore this year include:

* Is imagination more important than knowledge?
* My recent visits to Bay Area museums.
* Connecting our world through music and media.
* My continuing fascination with British television.
* Urban cities: cosmopolitan vs. metropolitan.

In the meantime, I've thoroughly enjoyed sharing my thoughts with you throughout the past year, and I look forward to another exciting year that awaits us.  By the way, I think I know which side of the debate I'm going to take between imagination versus knowledge.

Stay tuned.

All photographs by Michael Dickens; copyright 2004, 2010.