10th Anniversary

I almost always miss anniversaries, and this one was no different. I still want to celebrate it, though. 

The first post on The Zees Go West appeared 10 years ago this month on July 5, 2007. It was called Aux Arcs and Beyond and was about our trip by car when we moved from New Hampshire to New Mexico.

We traveled 2000 miles through 14 states in four days; used 11 tanks of gas; and saw license plates from every state but Wyoming, Montana, North and South Dakota, Alaska, and Hawaii. We traveled in three time zones, saw the World's Largest Cross, and lots of kudzu. We saw signs for parks named Hungry Mother, Frozen Head, and Toad Suck; we passed by Pickles Gap Village and Dollywood; and we drove by exits for Little Skin Bayou and Mount Magazine.

We traveled with two dogs (one of whom is still living) and three cats (one still with us; the others are buried out back in the pet graveyard) and lots of houseplants.

Gracie loves chicken TV

I wondered at the time what I would write about next. It turns out that wasn't such a problem after all, as there have been 1135 posts since then. Good grief, 1135! And 381,695 page views...

A Year on The Zees Go West

This idea came from Nan of Letters from a Hill Farm, who got the idea from another blogger, and so on: Once again, this fun meme is great for the end of the year. Take the first line of each month's post over the past year and see what it tells you about your blogging year.

It's an interesting way (more interesting to me than to you, I suspect) of looking back to see where the blog has wandered from January to December. In the case of The Zees, there have been book reviews, memories about younger years, a little homesickness for New England, some spring decorating around the house, art by our own Auntie Bucksnort, explorations around New Mexico and research into its history, and a lot of raving about the wonders of adobe and our home-to-be in Las Cruces.

If you are a blogger, you might give this meme a try. I hope you'll let us know if you do so, via the comments below.

January:

As the minutes pass, it feels to me like we are collectively pulling the [new] year...toward us. From Eat, Pray, Love, by Elizabeth Gilbert.

February:

I once took an undergraduate class in logic from a Catholic priest.

March:

When I was first married, my brilliant new husband teased me about making what he called Heatherstone curtains--referring to my family’s home on Heatherstone Drive and my mother’s love of decorating (and re-decorating).

April:

You know you’re in [eastern] New Mexico when:

...It's 72 degrees outside and the weather channel tells you that it's fixin' to blizzard in a couple of hours. And it does.

May:

I thought I'd share a couple more pieces of art done by our own Auntie Bucksnort, since she isn't likely to show you any (challenge, Auntie!) over on her blog.

June:

A word about the fibers that I use: This is as good a time as any to admit that I am no longer the fiber snob I started out to be.

July:

Herbert Eugene Bolton, an authority on Spanish American history, had this to say about Pecos:

[Pecos] was the gateway for Pueblo Indians when they went buffalo hunting on the Plains; a two-way pass for barter and war between Pueblos and Plains tribes; a portal through the mountains for Spanish explorers, traders, and buffalo hunters; for the St. Louis caravan traders with Santa Fe; for pioneer Anglo American settlers; for Spanish and Saxon Indian fighters; for Civil War armies; and for a transcontinental railroad passing through the Southwest.

August:

[Caption on a photo of cars buried in snow]: Spring in New England--those are my cars, and this is why I still keep an ice scraper in the car year round

September:

The good news today is that you get a big laugh--and an even bigger laugh if you've owned sheep and have tried to move them where you want them to go.

October:

I was out early the other morning admiring this sliver of moon next to Venus.

November:

Walking into an adobe is like walking into welcoming arms

December:

[On a video of an “extraordinary musical instrument”]:Update, 12/5/09: A musical friend pointed out the improbability of this "instrument," and, sure enough, he was right.

Two Women You Should Meet

I am not giving Obama a free pass. I’m giving him a chance.

This is a quote from the blog, Margaret and Helen; Best Friends for Sixty Years and Counting.

Here is what Helen has to say about herself: My name is Helen Philpot. I am 82 years old. My grandson taught me how to do this so that I could “blog” with my best friend Margaret Schmechtman who I met in college almost 60 years ago. I have three children with my husband Harold. Margaret has three dogs with her husband Howard. I live in Texas and Margaret lives in Maine.

You really don't want to miss their blog post called, Rush Limbaugh is Bigger than Walter Cronkite. It's a perfect example of why so many people read their blog and leave comments.

A Blog Anniversary

In our family, we are so casual about birthdays and anniversaries that we generally miss them and end up celebrating whenever we remember. It's not surprising, therefore, that although I marked it on calendars and scheduled email reminders to be sent to myself, I almost completely missed an important occasion (to me, anyway):

It's the 2nd anniversary of The Zees Go West!

I am certainly surprised that the blog has reached this milestone. I can clearly remember sitting in The Seedy Motel when we first arrived in Clovis, typing out my first post, Aux Arcs and Beyond, on July 5, 2007, and thinking, I'll never come up with anything else to post about.

You wish!

Since then, I've written 494 posts on subjects ranging from adobe houses to Zunis, from the White Sands Missile Range to Bottomless Lakes State Park, from life in a colonial New England home to the life of ancient desert peoples in New Mexico. Scanning through the post labels, I see subject headings for The Geneva Conventions, Alzheimer's Disease, and one called (gulp!) "ravings."

Along the way, I've done a lot of traveling, a ton of photography, a huge amount of reading and research, and I've learned a lot. I've had a lot of fun and I hope you have, too. As of today's count, the blog has received almost 12,800 visits since I installed the counter in October 2008, so someone must be reading all this stuff!

Anniversary

Today I am celebrating the end of my first year of retirement. It seems to have gone by quickly but when I take stock of what has been accomplished, I am amazed. I ended my last school year early because of foot surgery and while I was still stumping around in a cast we packed up our house in New Hampshire, took a fast trip out to Clovis to find a new house, and then moved cross country. During this past year I have figured out how to "do" retirement; I've found great joy in volunteering at a local school (see the thank you note from my young friend, Anjelica) and in the adult literacy program at the community college. I've joined a wonderful group of women who knit for needy families. My husband and I bought a second house and have rented it to my sister--it is so wonderful to have her close by. I have started swimming several times a week and have spent a lot of time riding through neighborhoods on my bike. I read whenever I want. I meet new people every day.

I've made three of the My Clovis videos now and have posted them on this blog and on YouTube. I love to see who has been watching them, and am amazed that people as far away as Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands have taken a look at my view of this prairie place.

This blog has become an important part of who I am. The written word has become a piece of my daily life and I continually work to improve both my writing and my photography. Because of this blog I see, hear, and experience almost everything in a much more intense way. I love exploring my new part of the world and learning about its history, its places, and its people, then writing about it for my imaginary audience of readers who live far away from this wonderful place. Today's post will be my 156th, something I never could have imagined. When I first started blogging I wondered what I could possibly have to say, but it ended up that I needed to write about prairie dogs, posole, cowboy boots, radio telescopes, charity knitting, adobe houses, curanderas, Harvey Houses, chuck wagons, and tarantulas. Who knew?

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who reads this blog and those who have left comments. You have no idea how much you mean to me.

A Happy Convergence: Blogging, Feeds, and Viral Knitting

I love to blog; I like exploring, experiencing, and researching subjects that I find interesting, and then sharing what I learn.


I love to knit. I like the zen of it, the peaceful rhythm and the quiet click of the needles and the way I can think about things as I produce something useful. I have that Yankee need to know that I am not wasting time. Ever.


So sometimes I blog a bit about knitting. The Zees Go West started out as a journal of new western experiences for a Yankee family, and has evolved into a melange of everything that interests me--knitting and traveling and reading and photography and bike riding and camels and tarantulas and more.


My son recently introduced me to Bloglines, a free service started back in 2003 that helps you subscribe to blogs and newsfeeds. Instead of having to go to each of my favorite blogs to check if there is anything new, I can just go my Bloglines Feed page for my personalized list showing what's new.


When I first signed up for my Bloglines account, I started discovering lots and lots of blogs about knitting. There is Wendy Knits, which has over 8000 subscribers; and the wonderfully-named Yarn Harlot, which has almost 11,000 subscribers and is no. 58 on the Bloglines Top 1000 Blogs. There are so many knitting blogs, in fact, that you can search "top knitting blogs" and come up with all kinds of lists, including this one.


With all this sharing of knitting information and discoveries, new knitting ideas become viral, in the sense of a message "intended to be spread," as the Encarta Dictionary defines the word. Every time I read a knitting blog, I get another idea for a project or a technique. What a wonderful time we are living in.

You can subscribe to The Zees Go West by clicking on the Bloglines button on the right side of this page. That would help me know how many people are reading the blog, which would be intensely interesting to me!