With all the digital help today, it's pretty unusual to miss a significant milestone. You get a reminder for birthdays, be it for your wife, your kids or your golf partner. You get a pop up for Arbor Day and Flag Day, not to mention Greek Independence Day and Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day. But I confess with all that is happening this summer I almost missed this one. And that's hardly surprising, as its celebrants are basically nil save for an audience of, well, me.
For you are looking at column number 1600.
At the rate of one a week, that's an unbroken streak just a dozen shy of 31 years. If you read the first column and kept going, and also invested in new company Dollar Tree at the same time, you would have accumulated approximately 1,200,000 words of miscellany as well as a +10,630% return. In either case you would have done better than putting your attention and money in things that went belly up including Netscape Navigator, Caldor, and yes, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts.
Some of you might be stopping by for the first time and are wondering what you might have missed. At the risk of blowing my own horn, we have indeed covered a lot of ground. There was a look at weathermen (#14 – "Chance of Being Right") and home improvements (#54 – "Whose House Is It Anyways?"). There were discussions about female crash test dummies (#155 – "Hit Her Again") and grooming (#324 – "Brush Till You Drop"). We touched on celebrity perfumes (#541 – "Sweet Smell of Success") and the best beds (#741 - "Going to the Mattresses"). I feel pretty safe in saying that we have ventured at least a mile wide, even if in this space we only have time to go an inch or so deep.
Note that I say "we." While the creation of this is a solo endeavor, I do so knowing (hoping??) that I have any number of fellow travelers. Some drop me a note when something resonates with them or to suggest a possible topic to explore. Others take a quieter approach, responding to a particular effort with a "like" or thumbs up. And many more keep to themselves, occasionally and/or irregularly remarking to me "that one you wrote about... what was it?... I liked that one!" All are welcome. In each of those cases I am sincerely grateful that my efforts have pierced the noise and commotion that I know I myself am inundated with every single day.
I am often asked how much time it takes to create these. This one is an easy one to write, as I have all the material at my fingertips. Others, not so much. I invest a good deal of time and effort researching the underlying idea, stretching it this way and that, and crafting something I hope you will enjoy reading and might even find interesting. Through that process I learn more about mail services or limeade or solar storms than one needs to live comfortably. From that I try and mine a few tidbits that support my thesis, while also enabling you to be a better cocktail conversationalist. Hopefully I am successful more often than I am not.
As a curious individual there is still so much more to look into, topics which fill some unexplainable urge I have to learn about, and which I love to share with y'all. In the hopper are the germ of explorations on how AI is stopping me from swearing, how cars need more buttons, as well as the implications of the clock in our den advancing every two seconds instead of one. Is any of that important? I don't know, but stick around as I try and figure it out.
I will end this note as I do with my usual Faustian bargain. Thankfully it is not as damning as the original, "I am a servant to great Lucifer, and may not follow thee without his leave." Rather I offer you this: if you keep on reading I will keep on writing. I promise to use all 26 letters (when I can), try to go where the waters don't usually trickle and attempt to put a smile on your face a decent amount of the time. And know above all else that you have my eternal gratitude for coming along for the ride. That said, let's get back in the car and hit the road once again.
-END-
Marc Wollin of Bedford plans to keep this effort going, if you will have it. His column appears weekly via email and online on Substack and Blogspot as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.
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