Dear Readers

Ah, my readers, you're quite a group. You're spread out from northern Idaho to southern California, from the Oregon Coast to Washington D.C. Your age ranges from ten to ninety-four. You live in huge cities and tiny, isolated towns. You live in dinky apartments crammed with too many kids and large rattly empty nests. You are mostly female, but you come from a variety of professions: opera singer, lawyer, professor, chef, fashion designer, quilt appraiser. You are pursuing graduate degrees, entering beauty pageants and triathlons, writing novels, and educating your children. You know who you are.

But I don't!

When I started blogging in earnest 2 years ago, I installed StatCounter to track the traffic on my site. I could tell from it that my sister and my mother-in-law and a couple of my friends were reading my blog regularly. Every once in awhile I would get a random hit from England or Japan and I'd get so excited. I didn't want a vast international readership, but it was cool to think of someone so far away reading about me.

Then I did a private blog for a year, and of course only the 25 or so people who had subscriptions could even access the site. With both these blogs I averaged maybe 6 or 8 hits a day.

When I started up this public blog, I of course put StatCounter on it. And very soon after that I started noticing that I was getting way more hits than ever before, as many as 80 in a day, and a steady average of over 30. My hits map was peppered with little red pins and they were all over the world. Most of them didn't stay on my site very long, but I get occasional comments from total strangers in remote places who are actually reading my blog.

Why is this, does anyone know? Is it just because blogs are a bigger deal than they were two years ago, so more people are spending more time looking for blogs to read? Did my blog get featured on the "Random Blog of the Day" somewhere?

Since I lead a simple life and have no interest in exaggerating or sensationalizing I have no illusions of gaining a massive readership of thousands, but it's kind of fun to have a broader audience. It's a great way to challenge my writing skills as I try to portray my simple, ordinary life with words and photos that will be engaging to more people than the doting grandparents.

You, dear readers, really are a part of this blog. And I would like to make you more a part of it. Of course I always love it when you leave comments, but I would like to feature you on the main page. I am going to put up a photo collage with pictures of as many of you as I can pry out of the woodwork. Yes, I would like to have YOUR photo! Please email me a photo of yourself. Send it to mapletree@moose-mail.com. You know you want to.

I will not post your name, just your photo, so your privacy will be protected.

I already have photos of many of my close family readers in my personal archives. If I make you mad by putting up a photo you didn't send me, ask me nicely and I'll take it down.

I won't snitch any photos from your blog or from facebook or google web albums unless I have your permission. So please give it to me.

I think you're all wonderful and I want you on my blog!