Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Three reasons we hibernated this summer

It wasn't a good summer for the Kensington Blog, was it? We had a whopping 13 posts for June, July, and August, and let's be honest, none of them are going to shortlist us for a Pulitzer (well, maybe this one). During that time we have received many comments and emails that ranged from smug (Hey, Rosesman!) to accusatory (We're looking at you, Muhammed), to downright distressed. We've even gotten a couple emails from people giving us stuff to post! We'll use one email in particular to sum them all up:
FROM: LERAN ****** 330 WEST to KENSINGTONBLOG
DATE: Aug 29 (3 days ago)
SUBJ: WHERE THE UPDATES TO THIS BLOG?????

last update is july 29th...did you guys give up on the blog?
Nope! But allow ourselves to explain...ourselves. Between June 1st and August 31st,
1. One of us got burgled
2. One of us got married
3. One of us moved
Of all of these, the one most directly impactful on the blog was #1. It was a serious burglary, it happened while my wife (fiance at the time) was actually home, and a lot of stuff was taken. No one was hurt, thankfully, but confidence in the building and the neighborhood at large was temporarily shaken. So event #1 affected everything, including planning for event #2, and ultimately led to event #3.

As of September 1, we are in a newer, nicer, off-the-first-floorier, and altogether better place on Ocean Parkway (whose opulence is evidenced by what appears to be a solid gold front door). The wedding went off without a hitch. The trauma of home invasion is in the rear view mirror. The United States doesn't seem to be collapsing like we all thought it was going to 9 months ago. Things are far from perfect, but I think most experts will take this blog coming back in force as a positive indicator of economic recovery.

We missed a couple interesting stories (El Gavilan shut down?) but for the most part it was a pretty quiet summer in the 'hood. We'll try and post anything important-sounding that we missed as we dig for new stuff to post.

I won't over-impress this point, as I've made it many times before, but please, please send anything in, however mundane. I know at least three of you have sent stuff in over the last 4 months and not all of it got posted, but we weren't exactly posting anything ourselves at the time. But alone, there's only so much content we can squeeze out of google and our own four eyes. The more you send, the better the blog can be.

And now, for the few of you who haven't fallen asleep before getting this far, I'd better stop typing.