 |
| Almost a year ago I saw the Broard-Bodied Chaser dragonfly laying her egg's around my pond.... If you want to use my pictures please attribute this blog - thanks! |
[Here we are - almost a year after I started this website...
I decided when I started to carry on for a year come what may, and look back at the end of the first year to see how successful (or not) it had been. Here is what I found out -
I have had about 13,700 hits since starting, December 2010 being the highest with over 2,300 hits. Posting certainly does make a difference to the number of hits I receive, and original posts are far better than the archiving, mapping and key-wording of old stories available elsewhere on the web (unsurprisingly!). It is rather a shame that the only format I could find to use (a blog) is not ideal for creating a database - it is more useful for immediate news - the archive doesn't receive many hits.
By far the most hits was received for a post I did on Widecome fair and the Devil. Almost every day someone will conduct a search for "Widecome Haunted" or some such - I am really confused by this! Why so much interest...?
In terms of money generated I have only had 47 hits on adverts raising £9.48 in a year (and I cant access this until it reaches the magic £60 mark!) This really was a secondary concern for me - I was very unsure weather to monetize my blog in the first place - I didn't want it to put people off. However, it would be nice to realise it, so, you know, if an advert catches your eye....
My primary desire was to make a searchable database of lore, and I thought I might as well do this publicly, for the greater good. I feel quite passionately that we are not educated enough in what real past people thought and believed or how they entertained themselves (old entertainment is not the same as bad entertainment - yes - I enjoy folk music...). Rather we are given some fictional ungrounded construction of aristocrat/celebrity history. This is why I studied Archaeology - you get to see quite truthfully how tangled peoples lives where - and just how much of our past is full of really interesting dinamic people without coats of arms! Where we live is amazing, and so are our ancestors - they weren't all off enslaving foreigners.
Someone once said (I think it was a lecturer - but he was quoting) "the past is a foreign country". I don't quite agree with this - I think the past is this country, here, under your feet, populated by a people with a mostly foreign culture - and sometimes their perspective on land is very enlightening, guiding me in how I can think of the land around me. I have learned a lot of respect for the land from past peoples (and piskies!) examples and mistakes. To see nature personified helps give us anthropocentric humans a way back into the vast weave of nature. I have to some extent been 'pixy led' by this lore away from the plight of seeing the world (past and present) through the cold dead eyes of economics and back into the healthy verdure of human scale interactions and emotions. For an aspiring archaeologist I think this is vital...
Right - drink the water of Fitzes Well, turn my mental pockets inside-out - get back to the point....
Another purpose of this blog is that I have some vague ideas for a big Westcountry/Devonian folklore book in the future...
I also wished to raise my profile a bit - I am going to publish a very local book sometime soon (about Chagford Folklore) and I have written for magazines. I have sold a bit of artwork through here as well.
Keeping it all legal has been a bit of a challenge - Britain has some really hard to use copyright laws - 70 years after the death of an author - with obscure authors and in journals this is imposable to find. When writing on folklore it is also hard to work out WHAT is copyrighted - I know peoples exact words are, but is the lore itself ? Does a collector somehow 'own' the stuff they collect? This seems pretty horrible given the free nature of folklore...
Incidentally all the images here are either copyright free or only require adequate attribution to use again - feel free!
Apologies for the dyslexic spelling...
So - I would love your thoughts on the project and where to go next. Currently I am thinking about cutting down what I use from digital texts (mapping, illustrating and key-wording them) to 3 posts a week (3 being the most folkloric number!). I will also aim for one original post a week.
Let me know what you think... What direction would you like to see this blog go?]
 |
| ...And now 11 months later this beautiful insect emerges from the waters, casts her skin and reveals herself. If you want to use my pictures please attribute this blog - thanks! |
I have loved watching you emerging from the waters this year, slowly casting your skin. I love what you're doing with this blog. It's deceptively simple, but as you make plain here, there's an important passion running underground, shaping the contours. The 3:1 ratio sounds about right, although do bear in mind how late you're working when you're on Hinky Punk duty the next morning. And L. P. Hartley said 'The past is a foreign country.' And I love your piskie-led spelling :o).
ReplyDelete