First "Overview" in a While

The first really cold weather of the coming winter season--if you call upper teens cold--might be with us overnight in the Bedminster region. I gave the forecast a quick scan, so as to judge whether or not marginally safe ice may form on ponds. Doesn't look like it, but I'm not about to pass judgment on points further north.

Clicked on the blog's "Round Valley" label and read "Fortune or Misfortune" from not really all that long ago. Though I'm not disvaluing the followers who help make what the blog is now by being there for it, we used to have many more, and you can see that reflected by the number of share bar clicks at the bottom of each page. (If you access the blog by mobile device, Microsoft Edge, and likely ohter browsers besides Google, the share bar might not appear for you.) Actually, 2020 was the banner year for number of followers and clicks shortly after posting, as COVID got so many interested in fishing, as well as in slowing down to read more at length.

You may have noticed my posts are much shorter these days, and stick tight to the fishing, rather than going deep into ideas. Before I began blogging, I used to write in notebooks nobody read. For the most part, I didn't even read them myself. And yet, for decades, I wrote passionately, and even as I grow older, and wiser about what's possible and what isn't, I still wonder if my journals--big stacks of them--have posthumous value. Imagine, people reading Bruce Litton a hundred years from now. No, I don't think it's likely. But history offers any reader so many examples of writers--and other artists--who were totally ignored during their lifetime and later became icons. At least I have you for readers. William Blake literally made no more than pocket change for a day or two from his poems and paintings. Same for Vincent Van Gogh. He was a nobody. Now, just one of his paintings is worth about $100 million.

It was even worse for poor Blake. Everybody thought he was mad. At least Van Gogh proved he was mad at least some of the time by spending time in mental institutions. 

It's not as if I've forgotten you by no longer writing long and in-depth. Everybody seems to say nobody reads any more, but that's not true. I know it isn't, because many of my long and in-depth posts--even ones without photo support--have lots of share bar clicks. I'm not saying there are people who wish no one would read any more, people who hope our entire civilization goes up in flames, perhaps; people who might feel triumphant as nuclear missiles descend upon us, their hatred of humankind vanquished, but I believe we not only will see no such end, but that people will go right on reading, no matter what those who wish people would be illiterate say.