Clio and her mortal Musette gave up blogging in December 2009 to allow Musette time to prepare for her wedding the following spring, as their readers may remember, if any of them are still around. Yet another reason for their decision, however, was the fact that Musette – your present writer – was feeling as if she had mined all the shallower areas of her experience for material for her blog. Digging deeper would require spending more time on posts and taking more risks. More risks? What’s risky about blogging, readers may well ask? Well, nothing serious, really. It does involve, though, the risk of self-exposure: here I am, and here are the things I love or hate. While this experience may be salutary, it is also painful in a way that’s hard to justify for a mere pastime. Another risk, too, is the threat to one’s working life posed by blogging and other online activity. Prospective employers in a city like Ottawa do not take kindly to bloggers’ free expression of their opinions, and this problem is exacerbated if one’s views happen to be conservative.
However, Musette has long since married her B(est)B(eloved). She is less preoccupied and has more time for free-range thinking. As for the risks of blogging, with Clio’s support, I’ve decided that the time for such cowardice has passed. I don’t know whether I’m prepared to blog under my real name (probably not), but I’m certainly prepared to state a few opinions in public without worrying overmuch that the thought police will be knocking on my doors any time soon. And if they do, I’m prepared to fight.
But enough melodrama.
I don’t intend to allow the blog to be as personal as it once was: I’ve lost interest in that kind of writing, for the moment. What I intend to do, instead, is use this blog for its original purpose: to write about history. (That’s why I called it “alias clio”, after all.) And because the prospect of writing and researching essays about different historical events, personalities, and so forth every day or even once a week is a bit daunting, I think what I will do is review history books, one a week perhaps, with the rest of the week devoted to discussing the issues raised by the review and the book, with whoever happens to show up and wants to take part. If I have to, I’ll discuss the book and related issues without any contribution from readers, but I hope that won’t be necessary.
Tupac and I are rejoicing! Our beloved Miss Clio, the Queen of all the blogging Muses, is back, returned from her nuptial pleasures. A year and a half of darkness has lifted, light has returned, true joy and love will once again reign on earth. True and pure beauty once again permeates the world! Oh how blessed we all are!
Alleluia!
Harrumph.
Might have known the first person I’d hear from after my long absence would be you.
Good to have you back, Racer X. Sort of, anyway.
Hi Clio
Long-time lurker & admirer, great to see some new blog posts. I particularly look forward to the book discussions.
Best
SD
Thank you, sdaed. I heard of you only a day or two ago from one of my former readers who goes by the handle of Tupac Chopra. I don’t think you were blog-keeping back in the days when my blog was at its, er, peak, but your online handle does seem familiar and I wonder if I saw it in the comments on some of the sites I used to frequent. At any rate, it has good associations for me.
I checked out your blog and it looks like lots of fun. Will certainly be reading it again.
Having assumed you had left your blog for good, I thought the very last line of its very last comment, in the blog’s presumably final post, was very apt and dramatic.
Indeed the effect was highly dramatic.
For the record, my husband is only a few years older than I am.
Welcome back. Thought we’d never see you again.
Where’s Tupac? Not in prison!
Not so far as I know. But as Clio always reminds me, the world is full of surprises. Still, Tupac appears to be free to send emails, so we assume he is presently at liberty in the world. Prison does not usually provide inmates with internet privileges.
Clio
p.s. I appear to have clicked the like button for my own post. This was accidental: the “like” button didn’t exist when I last ran my blog, and I was trying to see what exactly it did. Now I can’t figure out how to undo it.
The good old days