The Rosewater Chronicles has Moved!

I started my weblog, "The Rosewater Chronicles," in the fall of 2002 in order to join my colleagues and friends who had left Friendster, Livejournal, and MySpace for personal-public writing on WordPress.  I had written the equivalent of numerous books there, mostly on academic life and scholarly topics, but there were more than a few musings on daily life too.  My first post was about moving to Baton Rouge from Minneapolis and comprehending the charms of culture shock, including the shift from indoor to front porch life, or what my new neighbor Shappy and I dubbed "Front Porch Action." 

In those early days I discovered a recipe in the letter of a Civil War general (I forget which side) for Mint Juleps (originally "Juleb") that called for the cold, fresh water from a spring, mint, lovingly smashed ice, and a touch of rosewater.  That's where I got the name for the blog, writing as I sipped a julep--not Kurt Vonnegut.  Although the premise of the novel is fitting, as it refers to the establishment of the Rosewater Foundation by Lister Ames Rosewater: anyone who visited got gobs of love and money.  Would that I could say the same about the thousands of visitors to my blog over the years! 

Alas, the readership dwindled with the arrival of social networking, especially the "micro-blogging" features of Facebook and Twitter, and so I only took to updating the blog on a weekly basis, then a monthly basis, and eventually a yearly basis.  Eventually RoseChron became a personal mirror-site for more public posts on Medium.com. 

Since The Great Dwindling of Bloggington, large hacking-bot operations repeatedly attacked the RoseChron.  WordPress spam and virus filters protected it, for the most part, but deleting hundreds of comments consisting of broken English and nonsensical twaddle got tiresome.  I mostly haven't given the blog much attention in recent years, although I did consult the archive from time to time for discussions I remembered that seemed important (such a frequent interactions with a couple of friends who are, sadly, no longer with us).  It was important for me to keep the archive, because much has happened in sixteen years.  I also had some good writing ideas from time to time that ended up on the blog but nowhere else (e.g., I remember a psychoanalytic take on Tom Cruise and Scientology that I'd like to turn into an essay one day). 

A couple of months ago, however, I discovered someone and hacked my account, changing the template.  That's when I knew I had a problem.  I changed my passwords and the template hoping this would do the trick, but in a week or so the blog was completely taken over by Malware, mostly in perverted php index files and invisible files that I cannot figure out how to delete.  After having no luck with my service provider (DreamHost, whom I would not recommend to anyone who does not program), I decided it was time to move to a different service provider.  The next step is to figure out how to save the archives and port them here.  I have a few friends, thankfully, to consult for that process.

In the meantime, though, like the return of vinyl and community radio, there appears to be a trend back to blogging. Recent paranoia about security and privacy issues on Facebook is, apparently, leading folks back to the long-form, anti-micro approach.  Perhaps, I don't know.  I know I won't have the time to post every other day, as I did when the blog-thing began.  But maybe there will be a place for blogging in my life once again.  We shall see . . . .