The New Era Dawns

Hello, and welcome to the blog!

In 1996 or so, I published my first personal Web site. I'd seen a few such sites posted by others (notably Harry Nilsson's son Zak) and decided to give it a try myself. In my case, the personal Web site would be a place to share my photography with my friends and family without the unpleasant side effect of burying them all in unwanted prints. In addition, my site usually had a comment or two about whatever was going on in my life.

The site suddenly became an important tool of communication when my wife Kim became pregnant. Posting ultrasound pictures was a new idea at the time, but one that I co-opted gladly. This gave the out-of-state component of our families (all of them, that is) to see what was going on and read our reactions. Finally, when our daughter Anya was born, I made sure that first pictures were posted to my Web site as soon as I could get them ready. (While I was completing the posting, I got email from my Uncle Mike asking why my site wasn't working properly—seems he had my mom at his house and they assumed I'd be putting up the pictures.)

Shortly after Anya was born (Spring 1998), I restructured the Web site for easier navigation—and easier maintenance, as I was updating it frequently with baby news and more pictures. In the new edition of the Web site, there was a separate Personal News page (alias Message of the Day) where I would communicate the latest information and images. I kept the Personal News page updated regularly for about four years and have updated it sporadically since then.

So why the history lesson? Well, blogging wasn't widely known (at least not under that term or in its current form) in 1998, but I was doing it without knowing it. Unfortunately, in recent years, I haven't been able to maintain the Personal News page as often as I'd like. So ... effective immediately, the Personal News page is retired. It will carry a link to this blog, and that's all.

Why the title? Well, when Anya was two and a half years old, we bought a house in the town of Sultan, Washington. We found out pretty quickly that most people who don't live in Sultan don't know much about it, and out-of-state readers of this blog will know considerably less. So I'll be adding a few posts to fill everyone in as we go.

I hope you'll check in from time to time to see how things are going. So once again, welcome, and as I was fond of saying to close the Personal News page ... watch this space!